William opened his eyes. Through his bewilderment he started to patch the fragmented visual and aural puzzle pieces together into a semblance of coherence. For a few panic-heaving seconds he thought that he was back on the battlefield; the smells of blood and death were omnipresent and intense, and the screams and moans of the wounded and dying rang with horrific clarity in his ears. However, walls of canvas around him blocked off the earth and sky, and doctors were hurrying to and fro with bloodied hands and red-dripping surgical instruments.
William exhaled a drawn-out sigh of relief at the realisation that he was in a medical tent and was thus safe, for the time being at least. With the chilly air licking at his skin he noticed that he was shirtless, and that his upper body had been cleaned, and his wounds, which were frighteningly numerous, had been stitched up. His entire body ached with a persistent pain that ebbed and flowed in its debilitating intensity, with its focus being particularly concentrated at certain points: the bayonet wound in his thigh, and the bullet wounds in his shoulder and each respective leg.
His legs, on top of the bullet wounds, were still a mess of congealed blood and torn-up fabric, and while his boots had been removed, his socks remained on his feet and they were caked black with a gooey coagulation of blood and mud.
Above him a stern-faced and rotund sergeant was standing, regarding him with a pitiless scowl.
‘Come on man,’ the sergeant barked brusquely. ‘Did you not hear me? Up with you! The captain is breathing his last as we speak!’
Just as William was finally starting to piece together a cogent understanding of the state of his present circumstances, a terrifying bayonet-lunge of a thought plunged its unyielding steel through his heart.
‘My friends! Where are they?! Where are Paul, Michael an’ Andrew?! Where are they?! And where’s my horse, my boy River King?!’ he blurted out in a frenzied babble, as nightmarish, half-remembered images began to materialise in ghostly recollections in the drifting banks of memory-fog within his fragmented mind.
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about, Private, and there’s no blasted time to worry about such things now. And what’s more, from now on you’ll address me as “sir” and speak to me in a more respectful tone!’
‘But my friends sir, I—’
‘Enough of that!’ the sergeant snapped. ‘Your damned friends are none of my concern! I’ve got orders to bring you at once to Captain Liversage, and you’re wasting my bloody time about it!’
‘I’m sorry sir,’ William groaned through gritted teeth. ‘Let’s go then. Oh, an’ a little aid, sir, if you could, please.’
‘Here lad, grip my arm and my shoulder, come on then,’ the sergeant said, softening up a bit and adopting more of a sympathetic tone.
William gripped the man’s thick forearm and bulky shoulder with shaky hands, and hauled himself out of the cot, grimacing and gasping.
‘Excuse me, but where do you think you’re taking that trooper? He’s still got a musket ball lodged in one leg, and he has sabre cuts that need stitching up!’
An elderly doctor with gangly limbs and a wrinkled face, haggard with stress and exhaustion, was standing at the foot of the cot next to William’s. In his right hand he gripped a bloodied bone saw, and his sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, revealing forearms that were entirely crimson; his freckled skin was slick and glistening gruesomely with chunks and bubbles of gore in the dim light of the tent. Beneath him, on the cot, lay a whimpering, deliriously muttering trooper, a young lad who couldn’t have been older than seventeen. One of his legs was little more than a horrendous mess of shredded meat, hanging veins and shattered bone. From the look of the wound the boy must have taken a direct hit from a shell or cannonball, and his gentle, almost bovine brown eyes bulged white with absolute terror and crushing agony in his cherubic face. William looked away, tasting the bitter bite of inexorably rising vomit.
‘I asked you a question, sir!’ the doctor repeated, shooting a withering glare at the sergeant. ‘Where are you taking that man?’
‘Captain’s orders,’ the sergeant grunted. ‘Go about your work, Doctor, I’ll have this one back to you soon enough.’
‘He shouldn’t be standing up in his state, much less going anywhere!’
‘Doctor, please sir, allow me tae go,’ William croaked. His voice was raspy and shaky, but also braced with a firm resolve. ‘I must see the captain in his last moments, sir. He was like a father tae me.’
The doctor nodded reluctantly; he was too stressed and swamped with patients now to argue with anyone.
‘Very well,’ he muttered, ‘but come back here at once when you’re done. We need to sort those wounds out post-haste.’ The doctor then turned to his assistant, a pudgy, red-cheeked lad with a mop of ginger hair. ‘Come my lad, let’s prepare for the amputation. Hold him down, and hold him down fast. I’ll try to get through the flesh and bone as quickly as I can.’ The doctor passed a tightly rolled rag to his trembling patient. ‘Here you go, bite down on this while I cut. I’ll not tell a lie, this is going to hurt. A lot, I’m afraid.’
William turned away as the young trooper clamped the rag between his teeth, and then allowed the doctor’s assistant to pin his arms down. He wanted to get out before the cutting started, so he hobbled over towards the entrance to the tent as fast as he could, leaning heavily on the sergeant’s shoulder for support. As he reached the door to the outside world, with the fading daylight already beginning its caramel melt into the gloom
