‘I will dae this, sir. I swear it.’
William could hardly squeeze the words from his lips, so choked was he with grief. He nonetheless spoke them as solemnly as he could. Captain Liversage nodded, almost imperceptibly, and a flickering ghost of a barely perceptible smile came across his haggard face.
‘Thank you … Thank you my dear, dear boy … Now I must … prepare … my soul … for its journey … Give my will … to the sergeant outside … but take the paper … recommending … your promotion … directly to … Lord Cardigan himself.’
‘I’ll dae tha’, sir.’
‘Now leave me … Make sure nobody enters this tent … until you hear … silence from within … Then, my soul … will have left.’
Tears streamed down William’s cheeks, and he made no attempt to hide the outpouring of his grief.
‘Sir … farewell. Farewell Captain Liversage, farewell,’ he stammered through choking, body-racking sobs.
He stood up and pain shot through his legs, but he managed to steady himself and remain upright. Before he left, he turned around to face the captain one last time, and spoke as clearly and proudly as he could through his agony and sorrow.
‘You’re the finest, most honourable gentleman I’ve e’er come across in my short life, Captain Liversage. True nobility you are, more so than any toff-nosed aristocrat, sir. Go well intae the great beyond, sir, go well. I will miss you … most severely.’
‘Farewell, William, and good luck … Good luck to you … my boy.’
William turned around, swallowing bitter sobs of sorrow, and Captain Liversage began chanting in Sanskrit, beginning the ancient ritual that would mark the passing of his soul from this realm.
Outside the tent the chubby sergeant was waiting, his countenance stony and severe.
‘What’s going on in there, trooper? What’s that strange noise and babbling? Has the captain lost his mind?!’
‘This is his l-, last will and t-, testament, sir,’ William rasped, handing one of the papers to the sergeant, sobbing and gasping as the tears continued to stream down his cheeks. ‘And he has requested tha’ n-, nobody disturb him until h-, his chanting is done, sir.’
‘Chanting?! Like some sort of uncivilised savage? What on earth do you mean?’
‘Tha’s an order, sir, from the Captain himself,’ William said coldly, stiffening with defiant resolution. ‘Take his will, sir, an’ deal wi’ it, an’ leave him be until this tent falls silent. Sir.’
The sergeant did not look at all happy with this, but he nonetheless complied, albeit with a scowl upon his face. As it had before, however, his temper subsided as quickly as it had flared up, and he adopted a sympathetic and congenial tone.
‘Well, come then lad, let’s get you back. You’re looking mighty pale and sickly, you are, and I believe there’s still a musket ball in your leg that needs extracting?’
‘Aye sir, tha’ wee gift from our Russian friends across the valley is still there,’ William croaked hoarsely, all too aware of the throbbing, intensifying pain in his leg.
‘And sir,’ he added, ‘I really dae need tae find out about my friends an’ my horse…’
‘It will have to wait, I’m afraid. Now I must get you back to the doctors, as I have many things that I need to do.’
‘Wait sir, there is one more thing.’
‘And what’s that, lad?’
‘The captain has requested tha’ his heart be removed from his body after he has passed. Please have that brought tae me when it’s done.’
The sergeant raised a suspicious eyebrow.
‘What? That is a most unusual request. He said that? Are you sure?’
‘His orders were crystal clear on this matter, sir.’
The sergeant nodded solemnly.
‘Well … all right then, I’ll see to it that it’s done, and will make sure it gets to you. Is that all, Private?’
‘It is, sir. Thank you, sir.’
‘You’re looking mighty poorly yourself. Come on, let’s get you back to the medical tent.’
‘Very well sir,’ William gasped.
Inside his mind, all sorts of horrific recollections – or were they hallucinations, he wondered – were swimming and swirling about with frightening abandon. Things that were too horrible to be real, too tragic to have happened to him, for surely such an immensity of tragedy could not occur in such a short space of time in one person’s existence. Surely the universe could not be so cruel and unkind as that. Surely these images of his friends’ deaths were merely fading stills from some awful nightmare…
A shudder ran through William’s body and a surreal feeling, like being stuck inside a waking dream, settled with an uncomfortable chill on his shoulders. The sergeant’s gruff voice, however, snapped him quickly out of his trance.
‘Come on, hold on to my shoulder then. Let’s go.’
William took one final look at the closed tent flap behind him, and listened one last time to Captain Liversage’s voice as he chanted in thin and weak tones. He then swallowed his grief and pain, gritted his teeth, gripped the burly sergeant’s shoulder and began the pain-soaked trip back to the tent. As they limped along, through his semi-conscious haze the demon-memories of the battle and the anxious worry about his friends’ whereabouts swirled about him like a chaos of debris in an otherworldly tempest. Little spots of blurry light started to swim at the edges of his vision, and a hoary howl began droning with exponentially increasing volume in his ears, like a gale wind through dry rushes.
‘Sergeant,’ he gasped suddenly, ‘I’m—’
With that, the world plunged into blackness and William crumpled into an unconscious heap on the muddy ground.
***
He was not
