‘Twice. Both times I never thought I’d make it over there. Then I thought I’d never make it back. Three times? No thanks.’
‘What’s it like out there?’
Silence. Aubrey wondered if he’d offended the man, and then he thought the sentry must have nodded off. When he finally spoke, Aubrey started. ‘It smells,’ the sentry said. ‘Something horrible.’
Aubrey handed back the helmet and the field glasses.
Supper was brutally sparse: bread and cheese, followed by bread and jam, served with tin mugs of tea. The dugout was well floored with boards that looked as if they had come from a farm building. Aubrey noted how Colonel Stanley and Major Davidson both ate exactly what the small squad of infantrymen outside the dugout ate. The lantern light was low, the conversation muted.
Major Davidson had been at the front for weeks and it showed. His uniform and his moustache were trim and neat, but every movement, every gesture was jittery. His eyes kept straying to the field telephone sitting on an empty ammunition box by his side, and to the entrance of the dugout with its screen made from jute bags. He was a man waiting for something, Aubrey realised. It was going to be dreadful, whatever it was: the call to advance, news of a Holmland breakthrough – the exact nature was uncertain. Uncertainty bred imagining, imagining bred fear, and fear bred more fear. As Commanding Officer, Davidson couldn’t show his feelings, and this only made it worse.
The bread was stale and the cheese past its best but it was an awkward meal. Stanley tried to be positive, but Major Davidson had developed an armour plating against cheerfulness. He was polite, but restrained, as if any show of emotion could open the floodgates – and who would know what would pour out then?
He farewelled them, giving thanks for the extra protection of the magic neutralisers before vanishing back into the dugout, and to another sleepless night, if Aubrey was any judge.
Stanley took a deep breath, and then coughed to cover the fact that this was a bad idea. ‘He’s not unusual,’ he said as he led them back toward the rear. ‘All of the commanders are showing signs like that.’
‘And the troops?’ Sophie asked. ‘What about them?’
Aubrey had seen Sophie and George talking to the infantrymen in spare moments, asking for their impressions, their stories. Their honest approaches had been rewarded, again and again, with even the most taciturn soldier offering a thought or two.
‘They’re finding it hard as well,’ Stanley admitted. ‘They hate the inaction, but they fear the prospect of action. It’s an awful situation to be in.’
Another flare cast its light across the top of the trench. Dull hammering not far away made the ground shake and Aubrey raised an eyebrow. ‘Tunnelling?’
‘It could be,’ Stanley said. ‘It could be more trenching or shelling in the distance.’
Aubrey scratched his chin and he noticed that Caroline was also studying the ground in the light cast by Stanley’s lantern.
Before anyone could react, it was George who tried to settle the matter. He used a pair of stakes that had been hammered in at chest height to lever himself up the side of the trench. He peeked over the edge and then dropped, shouting, ‘Cavalry!’
Stanley goggled at George as Sophie helped him to his feet. ‘Are you mad? Cavalry at night?’
Aubrey knew better than to doubt George. ‘Use your whistle, Stanley, quickly.’
Stanley hesitated and that was enough for Caroline. She produced her pistol, pointed it at the sky and loosed three quick rounds.
Major Davidson bolted out of the dugout, his eyes bulging, brandishing his sidearm. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘You’re being attacked,’ Aubrey said as calmly as he could. ‘Rouse your men.’
‘Attacked? How? What?’ He spied the lone sentry. ‘What’s going on out there?’
‘Horses, sir,’ the sentry snapped. ‘Lots of horses.’
Davidson swore and bounded up onto the firing step, pushing the sentry aside. He swore again. ‘Get me a flare gun, damn you!’
The sentry darted into the dugout and staggered back with the bulky shape of a flare gun in his hand. With a show of initiative, he didn’t wait to give it to Major Davidson. Instead, he fired it.
Aubrey leaped onto the firing step just as the flare bloomed overhead. The ghastly white light revealed that they were under an unlikely attack. Scores of horsemen were charging toward them across the war-torn landscape. Stunned, Aubrey took in the improbable sight of a massed cavalry charge, their brass-spangled, white-belted navy jackets, their plumed shakos, their raised sabres. They flowed across no-man’s-land, weaving between obstacles without missing a step, holding the line as they leaped magnificently over the barbed wire as if it were hedgerows. A bugler was giving wind, urging his comrades forward.
Davidson blew his whistle, nearly deafening Aubrey, then he started shouting. Stanley assisted, running along the trench and rousing sleeping men, kicking their rifles at them.
Caroline leaped up onto the firing step. She took one look and then began reloading her pistol.
‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Aubrey said. ‘In this day and age? Here? A cavalry charge?’
George helped Sophie onto the step next to Aubrey, then joined her. ‘Plenty of cavalry regiments around, old man. Probably some old general convinced someone that it was a good idea.’
A wicked chatter came from their left and the cheers went up from the Albionite infantrymen. Volleys of rifle fire sounded one after the other as the officers bullied the men into ranks.
‘Against machine guns? Who’d ever think a cavalry charge against machine guns would be a good idea?’
Sophie tugged on his sleeve. She was wearing a helmet. It didn’t fit and made her look even more petite than she was. ‘Aubrey, it’s not real. It’s an illusion.’
Aubrey gaped. ‘Everything? The horses? The noise?’
The cry went up to fix bayonets.
‘It is very good magic. Many spells together.’
The charge was only fifty yards away, a line of warrior-laden horseflesh that was unfazed by any obstacle in its path.
Cries of horror went up from the Albionites as the charge came nearer and nearer. A grenade, hastily flung, exploded but didn’t make a dent in the wall of galloping death. Aubrey could see the eyes of the horses, the whites large and panicked.
His pistol was in his hand. He didn’t remember unholstering it. ‘Illusion?’ he said to Sophie.
‘Yes.’
He glared as the charge came to within forty yards – more panic from the Albionites – then thirty. The rifle fire was growing ragged, the Albionite ranks losing formation despite the oaths from the officers – then, when the horses reached the twenty-yard line, rising over the last of the barbed wire, they simply melted away like smoke on the wind.
‘Magic neutralisers,’ Aubrey said, and he tried to tell himself that the hammering of his heart at such a rate was entirely normal, given the circumstances. He sagged against the parapet. ‘At least we now know that they work.’
48
The night became a long one. Despite the debriefing, Major Davidson remained sceptical. Even Colonel Stanley’s backing didn’t convince him that the cavalry charge had been an illusion. After the second phantom infantry advance of the night, however, he began to understand.
Aubrey hoped that intelligence would help. With Major Davidson’s aid, he commandeered some of the messengers who were racing along trenches, bringing reports from up and down the line of similar phantom attacks. He wanted them to spread the word that the attacks were illusory, and that the entire Allied line was firing at thin air and wasting ammunition.
Knowledge was one thing. The sudden appearance of what looked like an enemy attack was another. An hour later, a squadron of low-flying ornithopters swooped toward their position. This caused panic in the troops and,
