With each snap of Billy Mowry’s clippers another strand of the wire popped free. Florry could feel his own breath rasping in his chest. His knees felt like warm jelly. How could he be so hot and so cold, so dry and so wet, at once? He could feel each raindrop individually strike against his skin; a million, a trillion of them. And from the Fascists, there was still nothing, though they were less than thirty-five or forty paces away, gathered about their cooking fires.
Hurry, damn you, Billy Mowry, Florry thought.
Sylvia came into his mind suddenly. We had a night, didn’t we, darling. Whatever there wasn’t, there was that. He could feel the tension in his thighs like steel springs cranking tighter and tighter. The bomb was growing in weight, deadening his arm. The rifle leaning against him seemed a long ton of coal.
Hurry, damn you, Bill Mowry, hurry!
The last snip sounded and Billy Mowry pulled himself up, peeling back the wire. He wore heavy engineer’s gloves. His face, even in the dim light, shone with mad excitement and zealotry. He looked insane, like Jack the Ripper.
Julian dashed through the gap first. All right, that’s one for him. Would a spy risk the first bullet, the first thrust of bayonet? Florry rose and scrambled after, feeling a singing in his ears. He could feel men clumping through behind him, slipping and straining in the mud. A wonderful strangeness passed over them all: it felt like some huge opera, all stylized and abstract and mighty with song and mass and chorus. It seemed incredible; they were doing it! The excitement poured through Florry’s veins and a great hope blossomed like an exotic flower in his imagination and—
The first shot seemed to come from very close by. It was a spurt of flame just at the horizon, accompanied by a loud percussion. Perhaps there was a yell, too, with the noise of the rifle. And then an instant of horrified silence as if each side were unwilling to believe what was about to happen. A second later, a hundred shots spattered out, an attack of fireflies, brief novas of light and sound in the whizzing rain.
Florry was astounded by the cold beauty of the gunfire. He seemed suddenly to be among clouds of insects and could not quite understand what was happening. The bullets struck all about him, kicking up puffs of spray.
Billy Mowry, just ahead, rose and hurled a bomb. It detonated behind the parapet with a flash and perhaps there was another scream lost in the ring of the burst. But the fire on the militia did not lapse in the least.
“Bombs, boys,” Mowry screamed, fussing with another. “Throw your fookin’ bombs!”
Florry remembered the treasure he clutched, and yanked on the second pin, certain that at any second a bullet would come along to bash his brains out. The pin would not budge, though he twisted it insanely. He looked down at it: he had been turning it the wrong way! Reversing direction, he got the thing out with a tug and a grunt, and the effort transfigured itself into a toss as he heaved it forward where it immediately disappeared in the dark. He dove back to the earth and it suddenly seemed as if the foundations of the planet had become unbolted. Explosions burst behind the parapet, a chorus of them, three or four or five or six, then far too many to count.
“Again, boys, again!” shouted Mowry.
Florry got the pins out of another bomb and hurled it off, too, feeling all the while the buzz of bullets. He threw himself back and tasted the sandy grit and pebbles of the earth pressing against his lips when suddenly, quite close up, the powerful clap of another bomb shook him. The Fascists were throwing the bloody things, too. The blast was orange and hot and stung him with a harsh spray of pebbles. The echo died reluctantly and he could hear moaning and pleading in the ringing in his ears. Miraculously, he realized he was unhurt. He picked his rifle up, shouldered it, and fired. It bucked against his bones and he threw the bolt quickly, ejecting a spent shell, and fired again.
He was aware that Billy Mowry had risen to fire steadily on the Fascist position with his Luger. Mowry suddenly slipped back, clutching his knee.
Florry felt sick. Without Billy, they were lost.
“Damn!” howled Mowry, coming to rest in his tumble near Florry. “Pranged again. The fookers.” He looked at Florry. “Get going, damn you. You’re dead for certain if you stay here.”
Florry picked up his rifle and began to scramble with the mob toward the ridge. Around him, men were clawing their lugubrious way up the slope through what seemed a sudden, blessed respite in the firing.
Florry reached the sandbag parapet and jumped over, landing heavily in the Fascist trench, ready to get up close and jam his monstrous bayonet into somebody’s guts, preferably an Italian or a Moorish colonel or a Falangist executioner. He was full of murderous exultation and rage; at the same time, he felt terrified. But the trench was deserted; there was nobody to stick. He looked up and down it and could see only his comrades tumbling in like parachutists, as eager for combat as he and as equally disappointed.
Off to the left, there seemed to be a gap in the trench wall of some sort. He moved quickly to discover it was a communications trench, that is, a sort of gutterlike path scooped out of the dirt to facilitate low-profile movement between the different trenches. He began to work his way through the litter and the mud, heading deeper toward the Fascist position, when a shot flashed in the dark and the bullet whipped with a thud into the trench wall near him. He answered with a shot at the noise and got a bomb off his harness. He pulled the two pins and hurled it down the way, falling back. The explosion was as bright as a flare, fragmenting his night vision and filling his ears with a roar. He sat up, dazed, wondering what on earth to do, when someone grabbed him.
“Eh?”
“No, no. Stay here. They’ll be back soon enough.” It was Julian. One arm hung limply at his side.
“You’re hurt!”
“It’s nothing. A piece of shrapnel or something gave me a shaving cut on the arm. Brilliant Julian will never play the viola again. Congratulations on surviving.”
“Terrifying, wasn’t it?”
“Gloriously full of fear. I’m afraid to check my pants. They may be wet and one doesn’t want to humiliate oneself in front of the servants.”
“I’m sure they’re dry as the Sahara.”
“We seem to have won, by the way. That fellow Jones is dead. He caught one in the head and went down as if he’d been … well, as if he’d been shot in the head. Several others are variously messed up, including our beloved Billy Mowry, whose leg has been perforated. But he always gets banged up; otherwise, he’s indestructible. When he was a babe, his mother dipped him by the knee into a pot of socialist marmalade, thus rendering him invulnerable to capitalist bullets.”
“Will they come back, do you think?” Florry asked.
“Oh, shortly. They’ll have to get the priests to whip up their frenzy, but they’ll come. God, if they had mortars, they could wipe us out in a second. If they had tanks, they’d squash us like insects. Lucky for us these chaps don’t know any more about fighting a war than our chaps do. I say, did you get yourself a Fascist?”
“I-I don’t know. Maybe.”
“I caught one with my bayonet. He’s farther down the ditch. Ghastly, but interesting. There was so much blood. I had no idea a man had that much blood in him. You look rather ill.”
“It’s all so—”
“Elemental. Yes, isn’t it, rather.”
A bugle sounded off in the distance where the Fascists had retreated. Florry saw shapes scrambling about far off, yet they were too indistinct to waste bullets on.
“They must be massing for their show. I can’t imagine they’re too happy about all this work on a wet night.”
Dust spurts began to kick to life all about the sandbags, just as the noise of high-pitched, rapid typing rose from the dark. Julian and Florry ducked back, hearing the crack-crack-crack of projectiles rushing through the air above them.
“They’ve a Maxim, damn them,” said Julian. “We’ll not be going any farther tonight. But we’ll have some bloody sport when they attack. Oh, I wish I could g
et my hands on a Vickers or a Lewis instead of this neolithic implement,” Julian said, clapping his crude Russian rifle with disgust. “Why is it the bloody nasties have all the fancy toys?”
“Florry!” someone whispered.
“‘Eh?”
“Bloody Billy wants to see you.”
“Where is he?”
“Back down the trench, by the bunker.”
“All right. Pass the word, I’m coming.”
Florry crawled off, past the shapes of the other section men in the trench. In time, crawling over litter and junk, he reached the Fascist bunker. He ducked into it, finding it as crude as their own quarters. Billy sat on a cot, his bloody leg up and swaddled before him.
“You all right, commissar?”
“Ah, it’s nothing I won’t survive, the fookers. Listen, old man, I want you to tell the chaps on the left to keep their ears open. Keep track of them, Florry, chum, don’t let them wander away. I’m worried. There should have been a lot of shooting on our left, where the German battalion was to have hit the line farther down. Nobody’s heard anything. I’d hate to think of us in the middle of this picnic by ourselves, eh? And of course our bloody Colt at last snapped its fookin’ bolt, so we’ve no automatic weapons.”
Florry was surprised Billy had chosen him for this tiny smidgen of responsibility; why not the far more experienced Julian?
“And especially watch bloody Julian. You can see the bloody madness in his eyes. He’s liable to get himself kippered on something harebrained. He thinks he’s Lord Cardigan and Winston Churchill rolled up in one. If he’s to die, let him die for something beyond his own bloody vanity.”
“Right-o, Billy.”
“Now get back there, and send word if you hear anything. And get ready. The Fascists are sure to hit us back tonight.”
Florry scurried out.
He went on back and spread the word. But someone had vanished.
“Where’s Julian?”
“ ’E said ’e wanted to do a bit of poking about, and off ’e went.”
“Christ, you let him go?”
“Aw, ’n you could stop ’is majesty when ’e’s got ’is ’eart set on somethin’, chum?”
Florry supposed he couldn’t. He looked down the communications trench through which Julian had purportedly disappeared. The seconds ticked by, turning to minutes. They heard bugles again. The Maxim began to pepper the air over their heads.
“Damn him,” Florry cursed. “And if he’s out there when the bastards hit us, what then?”
“ ’E’s kippered certain, that’s wot. Relax, chum. The bloke figured to catch ’is doin’ somethin’ bloody ignorant. ’E’s too bloody brilliant for this ’ere world.”
Well, here it was. Julian off on some mad toot, sure to buy it in the neck.
Leave him, he thought. Leave him and be done. It solves everything. Your life can continue. Your obligations have been met. Everybody’s happy.
Yet what Florry discovered himself saying surprised himself as much as the men to whom he spoke.
“Look, I’m going to mosey down there a bit, see if I can’t rein him in, all right? Sammy, you keep watch.”
“Florry, chum, no point two fancy gents gettin’ kippered the same night.”
“I told bloody Billy I’d look after the fool.”
“Florry, mate, it’s bloody fool—”
“Shut up!” Florry barked, suddenly furious at the man. “I told damned Billy, don’t you understand?”
“Christ, chum, no need to get so worked up.”
Florry could see nothing down the trench except some broken timbers and eerily reflective puddles. About twenty yards ahead it took a jagged dogleg off to the right and vanished from his vision. He set down his rifle, which would do him no good in close quarters, and pulled out the Webley.
“Don’t be gone long, chum. No tellin’ when Billy’s going to pull us back. I don’t think we’re here for the season.”
“Yes. I’ll just be a while.”
He began to creep forward edgily, feeling his way with his hand in front of him. He advanced for what felt like hours in this fashion—it was more like fifteen minutes—while the odd shot popped overhead and the odd bomb exploded in the far distance. He had begun to feel like a Nottingham miner in the deepest, loneliest shaft. He imagined he could hear the groaning of the walls and smell the dust heavy in the air as the cave-in threatened.
Damn you, Julian, where the devil are you? Why do such a foolish thing?
At one point something moved just ahead, and Florry brought his pistol up; it was a rat, big as a cat, with filthy rotten eyes and quivering whiskers. It perched on its hind legs barring the way. Florry hated rats. He felt about on the gummy trench floor for a rock, found one, pried it free, and hurled it at the beast. The throw was off and the thing just stared balefully at him with what seemed to be Oxbridge arrogance. A university rat, eh? A bloody Trinity College rat. Finally, bored, it ambled haughtily off.
Florry was surprised to discover himself breathing hard at the ordeal. Gathering his nerves back in a tight little bundle, he proceeded along, adding rats to his worries. He clambered over a broken timber. A body lay nearby but Florry could make out nothing of it in the dark, so coated with mud as it was; it was like a sack of sodden rags. He went on farther. There was no movement and the only sound was the splashing of the drops into the puddles.
“Julian? Julian?” he whispered.
There was no answer. A fusillade sounded above, and then an angry reply. The Fascists were getting ready to counterattack. At the same time, a mist rose to cling to everything, a kind of ghastly soup lapped everywhere in the trench.
“Julian?” He thought Julian was probably back by this time, full of marvelous stories and having appropriated a flask of Fascist brandy and treated the troops to a sip. Damn you, Julian, so like you! And here I sit out on a bloody limb.
“Julian!” he whispered again. How far out was he? How close to their position? The urge to retire grew heavy and tempting. It was almost an ache. But he knew somehow that he could not. He could not abandon Julian, not here. He was bound to him in peculiar ways.
He squirmed ahead a few more feet, tripping through the mist. He reached another zigzag in the trench. He eased around it.
“Shhh! God, they’re right ahead, Stink.”
“Jul—”
“Shhh! Do you know I heard you the whole way? It’s a good thing they’re not paying attention.”
Julian was crouched in a niche in the wall.
“Thank God you’re all right. Come on, Mowry says they’ll attack any moment.”
“Of course they will. Now listen here, they won’t come through this trench because it zigs and zags so furiously and because they’ll assume we have it covered. They’ll be above, moving through the mist. When they go by—”
“Julian!”
“Just listen, chum. They’ll go by and we can squeeze ahead another few yards or so. It’s not far off. I was almost there. And I’ll chuck a bomb into that Maxim gun.”
“Julian, no. Christ. Listen, Mowry says the attack is all fouled up. We may be out here all by ourselves. The Germans never jumped off. We’re out on a limb.”
“Well, if that doesn’t just prove you can’t get good help any more. The cheeky bastards.”
“Come on, we’ve—”
But Florry was stunned into silence by the awkward shambling noise of a large body of men beginning to move up ahead. Julian pulled him back into the niche and they lay in the mud, enwrapped in each other. Florry could barely breathe. He felt his heart throbbing and his chest aching. He pressed himself into Julian’s chest and sensed the heart pumping madly. They could hear the low squish-slip of boots moving through the mud close by, but Florry was too scared to focus. Whispered commands in Spanish flew softly through the mist like sparrows. There was the jingle and clink of equipment, the occasional harder clack of a bolt being thrown.
Each second Florry knew they’d be discov
ered. Wave after wave passed by. They must have gotten reinforcements. A whole army seemed to be creeping by above them through the mist.
“Get ready,” Julian commanded, at last disconnecting himself from Florry. He began to slither down the trench with the bomb in his hand. Florry followed, cocking the Webley.
A sudden spatter of shots announced the beginning of the attack. Florry heard the pop and snap of rifle bullets and the bursting of bombs. With the cover of the noise, Julian rose and began to close the distance to the main trench with manful strides. Florry hurried after him.
The Maxim opened fire from quite nearby: its clatter was tremendous. It poured bullets out into the night at an incredible rate and seemed to Florry like some industrial instrument for the manufacture of wickets or camming gears, sparking and laboring mightily in its moorings. He could see Julian pluck the first pin from his bomb and then begin to slide toward the gap that marked the intersection between their trench and the larger enemy one.
What happened next happened fast, particularly after the long, slow miner’s descent toward it. A youth appeared as Julian stepped into the trench and pointed his rifle at him. Florry, just behind Julian, shot the young man in the face.
“Good show!” shouted Julian, bounding ahead and pulling the second pin, as he lobbed the bomb underhand toward the sound of the machine gun. In another instant he was back, knocking Florry flat. The burst, so close, lit the sky with burning fragments and hot wind and hurt their ears. The Maxim quit abruptly.