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damage he had done.
    Almost no face was turned towards him: they were toward O’Donnell, who sat very still, eyes lowered. He spoke to the doctor without looking up. “Owen Roe is right, Shane, when he says there’s no fault of yours in this. There are some things you can’t fix.” He looked up at the surgeon and smiled. “Not yet, that is.”
    Connal nodded—and O’Neill swallowed hard: looking at O’Donnell’s smile, he could see—could almost feel—how much that had cost the earl of Tyrconnell. But Hugh kept that expression in place for a long moment, only allowing it to dim when he asked, “Dr. Connal, can you shed any light on our Franciscan visitors? Were they here to save our souls by hastening us to our reward?”
    A few snickers underscored the surgeon’s answer. “Not unless the Franciscans are sending disguised mercenaries to carry out their holy work, m’lord. And desperate ones, too, to take such a job as this. Judging from the grooming and the gear under the habits, I’d say most of them were part-Spanish mercenaries—mixed-bloods, born in the Lowlands—and the rest Germans or Walloons. Some may have been simple cutthroats: no military gear on those—and not even a hint of third-rate camp hygiene. Dirty as pigs and twice the stink.”
    Owen nodded and looked at O’Donnell. “So who do you think sent them?”
    “I don’t know—and right now, there aren’t enough hours or facts to puzzle it out.” He stood. “I’ve stayed too long. But before I go, I feel I must tell you all this: the tercios are dead.”
    Owen recoiled as if struck—in fact, felt as if he had been. “What fine, parting words of encouragement for all the men, Sir O’Donnell. I’m not sure the earl of Tyrone will agree to disband his tercios on your say-so, though.”
    “Owen, I’m not talking about the existence of our regiments. I’m saying that the concept of the tercios —of that kind of warfare—is dying on its feet. The first victories of the USE are just initial freshets of proof: soon, it will be an inarguable flood. The new muskets—and now, Turenne’s breechloaders—are changing the battlefield. And those who do not learn to change with it will be the first to die upon it.”
    “So this is the reason for all the hide-and-seek I saw when I came in?”
    “The up-timer manuals call it ‘close quarters combat.’ Or, ‘CQC.’ ”
    “And the USE forces train to use these tactics?”
    “No, their equipment isn’t right for it, yet—and there aren’t enough up-timers who can teach them, either. But some special units—like Harry Lefferts and his group—use a simplified version. Granted, it seems their ‘CQC’ is based more on ‘movies’ than training manuals. But we can choose to do it right . We’ve got the discipline—and now the manuals—to genuinely learn these tactics, and then use them once we get our hands on enough revolvers and double-barreled weapons.” O’Donnell paused, looked around the ring of faces focused on him. “And if we want to be the victors instead of the vanquished, we must start learning these tactics now—before they are used upon us.”
    O’Neill made as sour a face as he could. “They look more like tomfoolery than ‘tactics.’ ”
    “And so they might, but this is just one of the ways in which war is changing—and each change will spawn more. New weapons, new training, new skills, new organization: before long, we’ll be revising everything we learned as our stock-in-trade. But we have to do it, even if it goes against our grain.”
    “Heh. It doesn’t seem to go against your grain, Hugh.”
    O’Donnell nodded somberly. “I suppose it doesn’t—not any longer. I’ve read their unit histories and accounts; I’ve seen up-timer military ‘documentaries’ that show how they—and before long, we—will wage war. Trust me, whether or not we’re comfortable with it, our tactical doctrines must change.” He looked around the tent. “And