with calm nerveless fingers. He found his lighter and flicked it open -
then, without warning, his hands started to shake.
The flame of the lighter fluttered and he had to hold it steady with
both hands. There was blood on his hands, new sticky blood. He
snapped the lighter closed and breathed in the smoke. It tasted bitter
and the saliva flooded into his mouth. He swallowed it down, nausea in
his stomach, and his breathing quickened.
It was not like this before, he remembered, even that night at the road
bridge when they broke through on the flank and we met them with
bayonets in the dark. Before it had no meaning, but now I can feel
again. Once more I'm alive.
Suddenly he had to be alone; he stood up.
'Ruffy.'
'Yes, boss?'
'Clean up here. Get blankets from the hotel for de Sullier and the
women, also those men down in the station yard.'
It was someone else speaking; he could hear the voice as though it were
a long way off.
'You okay, boss?'
'Yes.'
'Your head? Bruce lifted his hand and touched the long dent in his
helmet.
'It's nothing,' he said.
'Your leg?'
'Just a touch, get on with it.'
'Okay, boss. What shall we do with these others?'
'Throw them in the river,' said Bruce and walked out into the street.
Hendry and his gendarmes were still on
the verandah of the hotel, but they had started on the corpses there,
using their bayonets like butchers' knives, taking the ears, laughing
also the strained nervous laughter.
Bruce crossed the street to the station yard. The dawn was coming,
drawing out across the sky like a sheet of steel rolled from the mill,
purple and lilac at first, then red as it spread above the forest.
The Ford Ranchero stood on the station platform where he had left it. He
opened the door, slid in behind the wheel, and watched the dawn become
day.
Captain, the sergeant major asks you to come. There is something he
wants to show you.' Bruce lifted his head from where it was resting on
the steering wheel. He had not heard the gendarme approach.
'I'll come,' he said, picked up his helmet and his rifle from the seat
beside him and followed the man back to the office block.
His gendarmes were loading a dead man into one of the trucks, swinging
him by his arms and legs.
Un, deux, trois,' and a shout of laughter as the limp body flew over the
tailboard on to the gruesome pile already there.
Sergeant Jacque came out of the office dragging a man by his heels. The
head bumped loosely down the steps and there was a wet brown drag mark
left on the cement verandah.
'Like pork,' Jacque called cheerily. The corpse was that of a small
