Tapestry of Spies

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 get 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.”