Swarms of insects, drawn by the blood, settled in clouds. The amtrac jerked forward. Danton saw the drivers sitting up there like gray plaster figurines. One of the men started to mumble a song, a kind of chant, more like a dirge.
"Shut up! You'll get us shot!"
"Borkan's back there. He can't hear."
Danton listened. His stomach went hollow and icy at the song. It was old. It was full of ghosts, ghost treads, and ghost shadows marching out of the past, out of the present.
"The men of the tattered battalion, which fights 'till it stumbles and dies,
Dazed with the scream of the battle, the din and damned glare and the cries,
The men with the broken heads backward, and the blood running out of their eyes!"
"Shut up!"
"The Powers have all of the music, the glory and color and gold;
Ours be a handful of ashes, a bountiful mouthful of mould."