The doctor, grim-faced, had the blade of the saw pressed against the top of the boy’s thigh, and his assistant’s arms were statue-carven with tautly contracted muscles as he held the boy down with all of his might. The trooper’s eyes met William’s, and he fired him a look that was at once despair, horror, panic and dread, and this missile blasted straight through the membrane of William’s eyes into the core of his skull, where it thudded home and spread its macabre contagion in a brutal explosion.
Empathy twisted a jagged blade inside his innards, and he gasped involuntarily. At that moment, the doctor began his cutting with a back-and-forth sawing that verged on the maniacal in its intensity. The boy’s eyes howled out sheer but silent agony, and William looked away, hurrying out of the tent before the inevitable screaming started.
‘How far, sir?’ he asked the sergeant as he hobbled along, with each step shooting pain up through his legs into his core.
‘Just over there,’ the sergeant answered, pointing at a tent up the hill. ‘Come on lad, we’ll get you there shortly. Lean on me more, if you must.’
After a few minutes of struggle and toil William and the sergeant reached the tent in which Captain Liversage lay dying. The two of them stepped in and stood in sombre silence near the entrance while a doctor dabbed softly at the captain’s forehead with a damp rag. The captain turned to peer in the direction of the sliver of light thrown upon him by the parting of the canvas flap, and when he saw William his dulled eyes lit up in his wan face, which was deathly pale. He smiled and beckoned weakly to William.
‘Come here my boy,’ he croaked in a wheezy rattle. ‘Sergeant, please wait outside. Doctor, there is nothing more … you can do for me now … There are other patients … who may yet have the chance … to live … You should … attend to their needs … I think.’
The doctor nodded, gathered his things together and left the tent, as did the sergeant, after giving Captain Liversage a quick salute. William limped over to the captain, trying his best to disguise his pain and sadness, and hoping that the grimace he wore wasn’t too painfully obvious in the half-light.
‘I’m glad that … you survived, William,’ the captain rasped. ‘Very pleased … indeed, my boy.’
‘Sir, I—,’
‘Hush my lad … Let me speak … while I still can … My time … is … short.’
‘Aye, sir.’
‘Get a piece of paper and a quill … from the table there … and write down exactly … what I … dictate.’
‘Aye sir, I’ll do that.’
‘Good … Are you ready?’
William eased himself onto a stool at the table, wincing with pain but swallowing the cry as best he could. He dipped the quill into the inkwell and put it to the paper with a weak, shaky hand. It was taking every last ounce of energy he possessed to not pass out.
‘Ready, sir.’
‘This is the last … will and testament of … Mortimer Harold Liversage, a captain … of the 17th Lancers … I hereby bequeath … what coin, bonds … and savings I have to my name … to be equally divided … between my sister, Elizabeth Jayne Stephens … and her children … Charles Edmond Stephens … and Mary-Anne Hilary Stephens … My assorted items and trinkets … from India, are to … go to my old friend who served with me there … Colonel Peter James McHendry … My books … I will donate to my regiment … the 17th Lancers … I have no other possessions … Herewith ends my last will and testament … Do with my body as you will … It will be but an empty shell … when my soul moves on … to its next incarnation. Stop … Have you … recorded all of this … William?’
William, who had been scribbling furiously, nodded as he finished off the last sentence.
‘All ay it, aye,’ he croaked, still reeling with weakness. ‘But sir, what about your sword? It’s a work ay art sir, unique in all the world, an’ I’m sure one ay your relatives or friends would be most grateful tae have it.’
Captain Liversage chuckled sadly, and flecks of blood settled on his lips in a glittery spray of crimson.
‘I lost it on the battlefield, my boy. Some … Cossack has most likely … taken it as a trophy.’
‘No sir. I saved it. It’s in my trooper’s scabbard, sir.’
Captain Liversage beamed a beatific smile at William.
‘Good boy … then I must add … something … to my will.’
‘Dictate it, sir, an’ I’ll make sure it’s recorded.’
‘My sword and scabbard … I leave to my batman, Private William Gisborne … of the 17th Lancers.’
William stopped writing, the surprise of what Liversage had just said temporarily overpowering the pain and weariness that dogged him, and he set down the quill on the table.
‘Sir, no … no, I cannae take your sword, I cannae dae that. I dunnae deserve such—’
‘Hush, my boy … if you hadn’t retrieved it … some Russian soldiers would be … passing it around and … gambling over it with dice … as if it were … but a common trinket … You saved my sword, William … but you also saved … me.’
Tears stung at the corners of William’s eyes, and a tightness clamped his throat between bulldog jaws.
‘I didnae really save you sir, you’re … you’re—’
‘Dying. Yes, my boy … My soul is … about to leave … this incarnation … and begin another … But you came back … for me … saved me from violent death … at the hands … of the enemy.’
‘It was, it wasnae—’
‘Let me speak … boy.’
William nodded and held his tongue. Tears streamed unabashedly from his eyes, running down his cheeks and dripping with
