Colonel Butler's Wolf

They stopped.

Butler knew instinctively that this was how it had been—how it must have been—when some band of young Pictish warriors, half cut on heather-beer or whatever they soused themselves in, came strutting up to the frontier post looking for trouble. The guard-commander's trick would be to get it into their addled heads in a stern but fatherly way that there was a regiment of Lusitanians just down the valley and that he was only the point of a thousand spears.

There was a murmur, confused and rising until Terry stilled it with a raised hand.

'This is a right-of-way, Colonel,' he said coolly. 'You can't stop us using it.'

'I'm afraid I must stop you.'

'By whose authority?'

By whose authority? Butler searched frantically in his memory for some authority these young men might accept, and found not one. It was precisely because they recognised no authority but their own judgement that they were here now: it was a question without an answer, and Terry, a veteran of so many confrontations, had known that before he asked it. He had out-manoeuvred Butler with ridiculous dummy2.htm

ease.

'It's for your own good,' he growled desperately, aware that whatever he said now would be wrong. The moment of earlier confidence faded like a dream.

'Of course. It always is.' Terry smiled. 'But our own good isn't good enough any more—'

'Come on, Terry!' came a rude shout from behind. There was a bunching of the crowd on the causeway.

Another second and they would be coming on.

Butler knew he had lost. There had never been a chance that he wouldn't lose—Klobucki had been right.

'WAIT!' Butler bellowed above the rising hubbub. If reason wouldn't work, lies at least might delay them. 'I tell you—Negreiros isn't coming! He won't be there!'

The noise subsided, then redoubled.

'Then why are you here?' Someone shouted, unanswerably, to be echoed instantly and derisively.

'Quiet!' Terry faced the demonstrators for a moment before turning back to Butler. 'If Negreiros isn't there, Colonel, you can't possibly object to us coming over the Wall. But even if he is there, all we're going to do is to demonstrate peacefully—we're not going to cause any trouble—'

'Kick him out of the way, Terry!'

They were moving, but even as they did so Butler saw Klobucki corning up on his left.

'Terry—' Klobucki yelped '—he's right. You're being taken for a ride. For God's sake—'

He was seconds too late, his words lost in the shouting. For a moment it looked as though Terry was trying to hold them to an organised movement, but as his mouth opened a stocky young man ducked past him and made to pass Butler. He slowed as Richardson came into the gap and Butler caught him by the arm and swung him backwards the way he had come—he tripped over his own feet and sprawled in front of the crowd. There was an angry growl and the whole body surged forward.

Butler closed an arm round first one man on his left and then another on his right, hugging them to him and bending forward into the press in an attempt to form a solid obstacle in the centre of the causeway.

But the weight of bodies was overwhelming and he felt himself slipping and slithering backwards, his boots searching for some solid anchorage in the mud.

He seemed suddenly surrounded by grunts and curses. The prisoner of his left arm—it was Terry—

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wriggled furiously. Feeling him slipping from his grasp Butler shifted his grip to take hold of a handful of windbreaker, only to feel the material rip under his hand. Then there was a joyful yell and a meaty thunk just outside his vision and Terry stumbled and was left behind in the mud.

Arthur had abandoned his post to join the fight.

'Bastards! Pigs!' someone was shouting, and a fist glanced off Butler's cheekbone. He looked up just in time to see the fist flying again and ducked smartly to take it on the side of his head. With his newly-freed left hand he seized the wrist and twisted it fiercely, bringing the puncher to his knees. But now the prisoner of his right arm had stopped trying to break away and was battering him on the body with short but hard jabs which made him wince with pain. At the same time someone tried to wrap an arm round his neck: he was inexorably being pulled down on to the muddy roadway, dragged to the ground like a bear under the weight of the dogs—he heard himself growling fiercely, bearlike and helpless.

The sound of the shot, when it came, seemed so unnaturally loud that he thought for a moment it was a noise inside his head. It was the slackening of the press around him rather than the report itself echoing from the cliffs which corrected the misinformation in his brain.

The hands on him loosened, and instinctively he slipped his own holds, shaking himself free backwards and upwards. He felt Richardson's hand under his elbow steadying him, lifting him. As the gap between defenders and demonstrators opened up he could see a confusion of bodies squirming on the causeway, scrabbling for footholds.

But they weren't looking at him.

'Well—I'll be buggered!' exclaimed Richardson.

Butler turned, his eye running up the line of the Wall on High Crags.

The one thing about amateurs, the one thing you could rely on, was that they would ignore the plainest and simplest orders.