Page 66 of The Gathering Storm (Morland Dynasty #36)

‘It won’t be cancelled this time,’ said one of the Spanish boys, known as Primo – Primo meant ‘cousin’, but it also had a slang meaning of ‘mug’ or ‘dupe’, and Basil could never determine which applied to him.

‘Aguila told me.’ Aguila was Primo’s cousin, who was second in command of the battalion.

Primo often presented himself as possessor of inside information.

‘There’ll be seventy tropas de asalto attacking the next position, on the right, so we can take the redoubt by surprise. ’

Dupont was at that moment saying the same thing, so it seemed Primo’s information was right this time.

The redoubt was positioned at a point where the Fascist parapet bent round almost at a right angle, making it a natural weak spot, and the next position was two hundred yards further along.

The storm troopers were the elite of the militia, and a determined assault by them would take attention away from Dupont’s action.

‘We’ll sneak in and take a chicken while the farmer’s chasing the fox,’ said another of the Spanish boys.

They were issued with cartridges, and three bombs per man.

They set off at midnight across no man’s land, creeping in the pitch dark, bent double, tripping over the rough tussocks, slipping on the mud, stumbling into drainage ditches that were full to waist height after the recent rain.

Before they even reached the wire they were all coated with mud, wet and cold.

A halt was called while the wire-cutting party went forward.

They were close enough now that they were in range of the Fascist machine-guns, and it was essential to be absolutely quiet.

In the black, still, damp night, the snip of the cutters sounded horribly loud, and Basil crouched, cold dread in his stomach, expecting any moment a shout from up ahead.

Then the night would light up with whirring death.

At this range, the gunners would not need to aim, only spray bullets from side to side.

But the wire was cut, and they filed through the gap and moved on.

There was a second line of wire only twenty yards from the Fascists, and the parapet was just visible now, a looming darker shadow in the blackness.

Basil felt they had been creeping forward for hours, so slow was their progress, and he scanned the sky anxiously for signs of dawn.

But it was still black, the dead black of the small hours.

Still there was no sound from the enemy.

They crawled through the gap in the second line of wire.

Basil was just behind Dupont; he heard Javier’s noisy breathing as he came up on his left; shadows, more felt than seen, crept past him as the men spread out to form a line.

Then Dupont lifted his arm, swung it back and hurled a bomb over the parapet.

It exploded with a noise that was huge in the silence, but immediately, as if at a signal, the night lit up with a roar, with vivid light and black shadow, as a whole line of enemy rifles opened fire at once – twenty or thirty, Basil guessed.

The attack was no surprise after all: the Fascists had been waiting for them.

Basil flung himself flat, pressing his face into the mud as the bullets whined overhead.

The darkness spat with flame and heaved with noise as the more ready of the loyalists hurled their bombs.

Basil dragged out the first of his, wrested away the pin, rose to his knees and flung it wildly, then dropped again to the mud.

He had no idea where it went. The Fascists were throwing bombs now too: one burst a little to Basil’s left, in a red glare and a gout of heat, and he heard a high-pitched scream close by him.

Javier gave a cry. ‘He’s hit! Jorge, Jorge! ’

Basil felt him try to get up, and reached out a hand to yank him down.

‘Stay down, you bloody fool!’ In the heat of the moment, his Spanish abandoned him.

He fumbled out his second bomb and threw it, and saw it hit the parapet with a burst of light and dust. He dropped again, hearing the bullets sing around him.

How could he not be hit? He was aware of Javier wriggling away from him, presumably trying to get to his brother, whom he could hear crying for Javier in a voice of childish fear.

‘I’m coming, pequeno !’ Javier replied.

Basil actually heard the bullet strike – a solid smack, like someone pounding a steak – and a gurgling grunt from Javier. But the firing intensified just then, and Basil burrowed into the mud, unable to look.

After what seemed like an eternity, the firing suddenly died, and Dupont at once got up and shouted, in Spanish and then English, ‘Come on! Forward! Charge!’ Basil was on his feet without volition, only desperately glad to be doing something rather than waiting passively for death.

He staggered forward, weighted with mud, following Dupont.

He saw Zennor to his right, and was vaguely glad, saw, to his amazement, skinny Jorge to his left, limping gamely, but no Javier.

Dupont threw another bomb, and Basil did the same with his last, seeing it burst well inside this time, in a satisfying fountain of debris.

There was a short slope leading to the parapet.

It proved to be made of sandbags, which gave a foothold, enabling them to scramble over easily.

Basil assumed there would be a Fascist waiting for him on the other side, and how could he possibly miss at that range?

But there was no-one, only a scene of devastation from the bombs they had thrown: shattered huts, gaping holes, splintered wood and flung corrugated iron, here and there a dead body.

They had driven them off; or had they rallied to the other attack point?

Off to the right there was still firing, rifle flashes stabbing the darkness, greenish against the red of fires.

The sound was oddly inconsequential, like water rattling over stones.

Dupont waved a hand. ‘See what you can find, lads. Ammunition, rifles, food. Anything.’

Zennor came up to Basil. There was a shallow cut across his brow, and he had smeared blood into his hair as he’d brushed it out of his eyes. ‘We ought to try and find the machine-gun,’ he said. ‘If we can get that back …’

‘Right.’ Basil turned and banged into Jorge, who was standing so close behind him he was almost touching him. He was trembling all over. Remembering that he had been limping – and remembering the scream – Basil said, ‘Are you hit?’

‘My foot,’ Jorge said. ‘But it doesn’t hurt.’ He plucked at Basil’s sleeve. ‘Javier’s down. He’s wounded. Hurt bad. You must come.’

Basil pulled away. ‘I can’t. I have to—’ He waved vaguely at Zennor’s retreating back.

‘Please!’ Jorge cried, the whites of his eyes showing in the darkness. ‘Help me, for the love of God. I can’t go back without him. Mama will kill me. Help him!’

He clutched again but Basil wrested himself away and went after Zennor, who was disappearing into a structure that must have been a machine-gun nest. He ran to catch up.

As he reached the doorway, he saw that there was a tripod and stacked boxes of ammunition, but no gun – they must have carried it away.

And as Zennor turned to say the same thing, someone who had been hiding behind the stack rose and came out.

Basil cried a warning, even as he saw the soldier, his face wild and stretched with panic, lunge forward, saw Zennor jerk at the impact, saw his puzzled, almost enquiring look.

Then he pressed his hands to his chest, made a gulping sort of noise, and crumpled to the ground, pulling the soldier’s bayonet out of his hands so that it clattered to the floor.

Basil found he had lifted his rifle into the firing position without even knowing it.

The soldier screamed, a high-pitched sound like a girl, and clapped his hands to his cheeks in terror.

Basil saw that he expected to be shot, even as he also saw he was a scrawny youth, probably not seventeen.

It seemed only sad and pointless now, but he felt obliged to do it.

With a sense of weariness, of a terrible weight rolling over him, he pulled the trigger.

The boy was flung backwards, smacked into the wall, and slithered down into a sitting position.

He stared a moment at Basil, and then his eyes closed and his chin fell onto his chest.

Zennor was trying to get up. He had got his hands and knees under him but seemed unable to lift himself.

Basil put his rifle down carefully, as though it might go off again, and knelt beside Zennor.

He was too heavy for Basil to get him to his feet, so he helped turn him into a sitting position, supporting him with an arm.

Zennor seemed to be about to speak, but instead he coughed, a horrible choking, gurgling sound, expelling a great gout of blood, that soaked the front of his tunic.

He tried again to say something, staring into Basil’s eyes as though willing him to understand, but only coughed again, and the blood this time was a wet flood.

Basil was going to say, ‘Don’t try to talk, old man,’ when he realised Zennor wasn’t looking at him any more.

The eyes were fixed, but not on him. He had never seen anyone die before, but he discovered that the difference between a living body and a dead one was too profound to be mistaken. His friend had gone.