She was white with fear, he saw, and her eyes held a haunted look to them, as though she had witnessed things she’d vowed never to see again.
He recalled that she was a Lagosian, and that she’d survived all the crimes the Mannians had perpetrated against her people. In that moment, and with the greatest of intensity, Bahn thought: These bastard Mannians… if there is any justice in this world at all, we will somehow win this fight, and crush this army, and hang their Holy Matriarch by her stiff neck.
A body in the way, clearly dead. They both stepped over it as they walked onwards. Curl pressed a wad of bandage against his wound. ‘Hold that a moment,’ she told him, and searched through her bag again. She pulled out another bandage, began to wrap it around his arm. ‘You can let go of it now.’
Bahn reached for his flask of water. He pulled the cork out with his teeth and held it in the same hand as the flask and took a quick drink of the cool water. He was losing track of time here. How long had they been fighting now?
‘Drink?’ he asked Curl.
She opened her mouth and let him pour a little into it. When she finished tying the knot in his bandage, she took the cork from his hand and closed the flask and hung it across her shoulder from its strap. ‘I need it more than you,’ she told him. ‘For the wounded.’
He missed his chance to reply. Creed had spotted something up ahead, and was striding forwards to peer through the bristling spikes of the forward chartassa.
Bahn followed his gaze, barely believing what he saw. The Matriarch’s standard was flying directly ahead of them. Sasheen had joined the battle.
Sweet Dao, we might still reach her yet.
With the mortar shells continuing to fall down before them, shattering the enemy lines in confusion, Bahn experienced a momentary spike of hope.
If only Halahan can hold on to that ridge.
‘Colonel Halahan!’
‘I see it, Staff Sergeant.’
The Mannians were trying to attack from the other side of the ridge, the southern side away from the battle. He’d been expecting that for some time. A dozen Greyjackets were positioned there, crouched behind a low wall of snow and whatever dirt they’d been able to scrape up from the ground. They aimed their rifles and fired down on the enemy troops that scrabbled up the slope towards them.
A hail of rifle shots crackled back in reply. A Greyjacket tumbled backwards. The defenders managed another volley, and then they were drawing their shortswords to meet the attack.
The rest of the ridge was a similar scene of dispute, every flank hard pressed.
On the east flank, across the waist of the ridge, the surviving Greyjackets stood in two ranks and chopped and shoved against seemingly endless numbers of Ghazni regulars. They were exhausted, and being forced back step by step.
On the northern side, the majority of Greyjackets fought hand-to-hand against more infantry climbing the slope. Behind them, in the centre of the ridge, the mortar crews maintained their fire as fast as they could, though their supply of shells was starting to run low.
Watch it.
A Mannian broke through from the southern side where the newest attack had been launched. Colonel Halahan took the man in the chest with a shot from his pistol. He reloaded the piece as he studied the buckling lines, looking for areas of stress and weakness, judging tensions, breaking points, knots of strength, as an artisan might inspect the materials of his craft.
The lines were too damned thin. Two more Imperials broke through from the south. The colonel fired his pistol, yanked out another with his other hand, cocked it and fired that too. They were going to break at any moment, and after that the men across the waist would fold, and the rest of them would be finished.
‘Staff Sergeant Jay! Five men from the mortars to support the waist. Another five to the south.’
It was all he could do; if he relieved the mortar crews of any more men, their effect on the Mannian lines would be minimal.
Halahan leaned on his good leg as he drew life back into his pipe. He wondered if it was the last time he would experience the simple pleasure of a smoke. He hoped not, for the taste of it was bitter in his mouth just then.
Strange how his own mood could do that.
Halahan grunted. It seemed he was fated never to defeat these people.
Sergeant Jay was shouting something from the northern side of the ridge. Halahan turned and saw Imperials breaking through all along the line. The staff sergeant was laying into them left and right with his curved Nathalese tulwar as he yelled back over his shoulder. Halahan took aim and fired, sending an imperial beside the sergeant spinning away. He swung around in instinct, drawing another pistol and cocking it as he twisted, pointed it over his shoulder at a soldier rushing at him with a raised sword. Halahan pulled the trigger.
The firing arm snapped down, but nothing happened.
Halahan was too old to gape at such a surprise. He swerved a wild slash of the sword and punched the barrel of the gun into the man’s throat. His eyes saw him go down, but his mind was already taking in the line to the south.
It was collapsing too.
‘Hold tight!’ he roared around the stem of his pipe, fighting an urge to rush to the aid of his men. He discharged his fifth pistol into a soldier attacking the remaining mortar crews in the centre. He tossed it aside and drew out his last gun.
This is it, then, he thought grimly to himself. At least we took the fight to the bastards for once.
‘Colonel!’
Staff Sergeant Jay stood panting in exhaustion on the northern flank. All of the Greyjackets there were panting hard, steam rising off their bodies, swords dripping, looking down the slope. Somehow they’d fought off the attack.
Halahan left the desperate melee behind to step over and join them.
On the slope amongst the trees, black-garbed figures struggled upwards stabbing through the remaining Imperials as they climbed; Specials, all of them.
For an instant, Halahan was indeed surprised.
Hands reached down to aid the new arrivals. Faces appeared out of the night’s gloom, filthy, grim, wide-eyed. Perhaps forty in all, many of them wounded.
‘Glad you could make it,’ said Halahan as he pulled a woman to the top.
‘Glad to be here,’ she replied without breath.
‘Any officers?’
‘Dead,’ she told him.
Typical that, of the Specials, for their officers always led from the front. Halahan faced the newcomers. ‘Quickly, now. Those who can fight, spread out to support the lines. We are required to hold this ridge for as long as we can.’
Every one of them moved into a position of defence. In moments the lines stabilized and the remaining attacks were repulsed, save for the continuing thrust along the waist. At least they were holding their ground now.
Along all sides of the ridge, bodies were rolled against the makeshift walls to strengthen the defences.
‘Well done, Staff Sergeant.’
‘Thank you,’ said the old smith, dabbing at a cut on his brow.
‘Pull back those who need a few minutes to rest. See to the wounded, and pass out some water.’
The sergeant nodded, eyeing the Specials spread out amongst them. He leaned towards Halahan.
Quietly, he said, ‘You know that if they attack again, it still won’t be enough?’
‘I know it. But let’s keep that to ourselves for now, shall we?’
Now that Curl was within the relative protection of the main Khosian force, and had time to look about her, to think and feel, she found that terror was beginning swamping her.
It was no longer even the madness of the violence, nor the risk to her own life. No, it was her proximity to
