William’s aim was true, and the lance-tip plunged with savage force into the precise area at which he had aimed, just as if he were tent-pegging, at which he had excelled: the flabby throat of the Russian officer.
The impact threw the man backwards, lifting him off his feet despite his hefty weight. The lance-blade all but tore his head clean off his body, slicing his throat open from ear to ear and smashing into the spine at the very back of it, and as William raced past the half-decapitated officer, yanking his lance with fluid precision out of the now-prone body on his way past, a jet of the Russian’s arterial blood sprayed across the right half of his face.
The metallic taste of the blood registered on his tongue and he spat in revulsion as he galloped onward, his eagle-eyes already seeking out the next target in the pell-mell chaos of madly fleeing troops and rioting horses and belching smoke. There was no time to contemplate the life he had just taken. There was only the primordial reptilian mantra echoing its wordless chant through the subterranean caverns of his mind:
Kill or be killed.
Kill or be killed.
Kill
OR
BE
KILLED.
Two Russian troops appeared out of a billow of smoke directly ahead of William, and both raised their muskets and fired in blind, panicked unison. One of the musket balls missed completely, but the other skimmed William’s outstretched right arm, ripping a vertical tear in his sleeve and opening up a deep cut that ran up the length of his forearm, from his wrist to just below the elbow.
He felt no pain, however – not yet.
Having spent their rounds, both Russians sprang out of the way of the steaming horse and cavalryman. As William thundered through the gap between them he managed to spear the one on the right with his lance. The lance-blade caught the man – a short, thick-set fellow with a dense black beard and bushy eyebrows – right between his ribs. The steel sank into the soldier’s tubby body, and he let out a strange, gargling gasp as he fell. The combined force of the impact, the angle at which he was struck and the weight of the Russian’s body snapped the lance clean in two and sent a jarring shock rushing through William’s arm, numbing it temporarily.
The other Russian on the left jumped forward and lunged a vicious bayonet thrust at William as he sped past. The bayonet caught William in the left thigh, and the force of the thrust drove the thin spike of steel straight through his hamstring. The point jammed, deeply embedded, into the heavy leather of River King’s saddle. All of this happened in a split-second, and the speed at which William was travelling meant that the suddenly embedded bayonet, along with the musket it was attached to, were yanked right out of the enemy infantryman’s hands and carried away, a grotesque wood and metal addition now fused to the speeding horse and rider.
William had felt the impact of the thrust, but the pain of the wound didn’t register at all due to the free flow of raging adrenalin through his system, and it was only as he reached to his left to draw his sabre from its scabbard that he saw the rifle and bayonet protruding from his upper thigh.
‘Whoa boy, whoa!’ he shouted, slowing the careening stallion down.
In the midst of the mayhem he reined in River King, who reared up on his hind legs, his nostrils flared and eyes white with the deadly malady of brute fury and primal terror, while William fumbled with a trembling left hand at the blistering hot barrel of the musket, trying to pull it out of his leg.
‘Oh Lord, oh Jesus, oh Christ oh Jesus Jesus Jesus!’
The pain was now starting to push through the wall of adrenalin-sanctioned insanity, like a hell-demon trying to force its way through the veil of the now into our world, and with every terrible pump of blood that William’s hammering heart boosted through his veins the pain increased, and the fiend came closer to breaking through the tenuous barrier.
William started at the clap of a firearm discharged nearby, and a musket ball whizzed through his hair, skimming the top of his scalp. The shock of the shot spurred a new boost of strength into his arms, and with a heave he plucked the bayonet and musket from his leg and flung it off to the side, wheeling about to face the direction whence the shot had come.
Standing with shock-wide eyes and a gaping mouth was a thin, cherub-faced Russian soldier. The lad had a still-smoking musket pressed against his bony shoulder, and looked as if he couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old. He gasped with fright as William drew his sabre with a wordless roar and spurred River King into a blitzkrieg charge. The sight of the sword-wielding rider bearing down on him was too much for the fresh-faced neophyte; he threw down his weapon and fled in abject terror, with William hot on his heels.
As William was about to run down the screaming boy, out of the corner of his eye he saw another Russian troop just a few metres to his right, kneeling behind the cover of a mud-sunken cannon and raising a musket to his shoulder. There was no time to think; actions had to precede thoughts here. William veered right immediately, leaving the boy soldier to flee into the smoke, and instead he bore down on the other Russian. William directed River King to leap, hoping to vault clear over the cannon. The stallion was a strong and nimble enough mount to make the jump successfully, and as they landed, William hung off the side of his saddle, and with a quick, deep lean to his
