All Honourable Men

by Gavin Lyall

  “Probably.”

  “And you know how?”

  “It’s my work.”

  Bertie smiled. “Not the Honourable Snaipe.” He turned back to the Arabs. None of them wanted to go with him. They wanted to shoot Turks, yes, but that was old hat; right now they wanted to see this gun fired, maybe even help. But Bertie knew his business: he chose three of them, then trotted off. Reluctantly, they followed.

  Ranklin turned to the ammunition boxes, a dozen of them with eight rounds to a box. He hadn’t time to fathom the abbreviated German on each shell that told what it was, but could identify two boxes of shrapnel by the time-fuse bands on their noses. He didn’t want to fool with unfamiliar time-fuses and was relieved that the rest had pull-ring safety pins so must be common shell.

  O’Gilroy and Corinna tacked down the slope from the pass, each leading a pony and keeping them well apart.

  Ranklin went towards them. “I think—”

  “Captain Ranklin of the Artillery, I presume? Well, looks like you’ve got yourself a gun again.”

  “I think” Ranklin said firmly, “you should get on that horse and get back to . . . wherever. Somewhere safer.”

  Corinna just slapped the leading rein into the hand of the nearest, and rather astonished, Arab. “I’ve been stuck out of sight being a horse-holder the last half-hour. So who are you going to fire it at? And why are those guys sleeping on – oh.”

  She realised she was looking at a row of bodies, collected against the bank.

  “You heard shooting,” Ranklin growled. “That’s what it causes. Now will you get on that horse?”

  She may have looked a little paler, but: “I’d be more scared on my own in this country. I’ll stick with you, so give me something to do. Who are you going to shoot at?”

  “I’m not sure.” He waved to O’Gilroy. “Tie up the horses upstream, away from the mules.” Those, more than a dozen of them, were tethered a hundred yards down the riverbed. They should be closer, but these were civilian animals, not accustomed to gunfire.

  He went on: “It might be better to blow this gun up than actually fire it at anyone—”

  “Oh, you’ll fire it at someone, all right.”

  Ranklin clenched his teeth. Of course he wanted to shoot this gun, as much as any of the Arabs, but he needed a sensible target. Or to persuade himself he had one.

  He reopened the survey map. He couldn’t be sure of his exact position, but the map showed the line of the riverbed well enough that he could guess within a few yards. Measuring with the boxwood protractor he reckoned the gun had been firing at nineteen degrees magnetic, and the attackers’ trench lay at about forty-three – “about” because it was a linear target. But he’d need to be pretty exact about the range, always the most difficult. Or maybe not: the important thing might be to let the Turkish troops know they were now under fire, give their morale a jolt. Or would that just be confirming to Zurga that the gun had been captured?

  Damn it, fire the thing and you may be lucky, even hit Zurga. You won’t if you don’t.

  He had O’Gilroy, Corinna and two Arabs as his crew.

  “Hoick up the trail and swing her round . . . No! Wait!” He stooped to the sight and squinted; it was focussed on a dead pine standing out on the bank two hundred yards upstream. He might as well keep that as the aiming point; it was meaningless in itself, just a reference point from which you measured the angles of targets. “All right, move her now . . . point about here . . .” He adjusted the sight to show the aiming point again and found they had moved only fifteen degrees. “Bit further round . . . stop! . . . back a fraction . . .” With O’Gilroy translating orders into action, the Arabs jostled each other to help. They were willing slaves if he proved master of this weapon.

  He checked the clinometer and set O’Gilroy to digging in the slightly high right wheel with an empty shell-case, then indicated he needed the trail spade shoved firmly into the earth. The Arabs took a moment to get the point of this – keeping the gun as firm as possible against the recoil – then began stamping the spade down to China.

  The elevating wheel was set to 1950 metres; that didn’t mean it was actually that far to the monastery – the map made it 1800 – just that that setting was right for this wind (there was none, thank God), temperature, pressure and the fact that the monastery was perhaps two hundred feet higher. Which meant that, to fire at the trench . . . Figures jostled in his head and he organised and related them, if this then that, a familiar routine that boiled down to microscopic twiddles on the two aiming wheels. This was home . . .

  He straightened up. O’Gilroy was already in the right-hand seat, finding out how the breech-lever and firing lanyard worked. “Right,” Ranklin ordered. “You be number two: Corinna, you load.” He handed her the round: it was about the diameter of a wine bottle but far heavier and rather longer, almost half being the brass case that held the charge. “Lay it over your right forearm and push it firmly home with your left palm – and get that damned coat off, it’ll catch in everything.”

  She gave him a sharp look but said nothing and tossed the expensive fur coat aside.

  “Load.”

  She had to kneel on the shingle and damp sand, leaning in to her left behind O’Gilroy’s back. It was not dignified, and if Ranklin had been less preoccupied he might have overheard what she was muttering. O’Gilroy did hear and turned his head, startled.

  He recovered himself to report: “Ready!”

  “Put your hands over your ears,” Ranklin instructed – but he was talking about the noise to come, and demonstrating to the Arabs. “Fire!”

  26

  Corinna balanced the fourth shell on her forearm and rammed it home savagely. It slid more easily now that the grease from previous shells was building up nicely on her jumper sleeve.

  “When does –” she clapped her greasy hands briefly to her greasy ears “– the utter fascination –” she took the fifth shell “– of artillery—”

  “Fire!”

  “—set in?”

  “Stop. That’ll do. What did you say?”

  “No matter.”

  Ranklin had no idea whether they’d hit anything, all he could tell was that the shells had exploded. And nearer the trench than the monastery.

  Anyway, there was no point in going on firing into the mist. Better to switch aim and try to hit the second gun. He laid out the survey map and fell comfortably into the world of figures and calculations again. But this was a trickier problem, since the only idea he had about that gun’s position was the rough bearing he’d taken from the shell-scrape at the monastery, and an assumption that it, too, must be in this dry riverbed. Moreover, now he was trying to hit a small target, not just pass a message to a big one.

  Then he realised he’d sent a message to Zurga, too. He’d hardly believe the Hon. Patrick or the Arabs could have laid and fired this gun, so probably he’d guessed that the man in the sheepskin waistcoat really was the Warrior Sheep. Which evened things up, you might say. But what would Zurga now do?

  And the answer to that was very easy: he was a gunner, so he’d rush back to direct the one gun he still had. Someone else could bring back the troops from the trench if need be (and the ravine would stop them from attacking this gun from where they were; they must come down into the stream bed and then past Bertie’s outpost, so he was safe from surprise).

  Then he remembered that Zurga had probably spent the last two days scouting this area: measuring and taking bearings, picking the gun positions . . . Damn it! – he’d know to a yard just where this gun was!

  “We’ve got to move!” He peered desperately up and down the riverbed. Now it didn’t matter being close to the far bank, he wouldn’t be trying to shoot over it. What he needed was any scant cover . . . there, a clutter of rocks tumbled from the opposite bank a couple of hundred yards down-stream . . .

  “Swing her right around! And HAUL!”

  With the two Arabs carrying the trail, O’Gilroy pushin
g the barrel and he and Corinna at each wheel, a thousand pounds of gun began to trundle, horribly slowly and reluctantly, across shingle, obstinate rocks and grasping patches of wet sand, down the riverbed beach.

  Keeping the momentum, they covered fifty yards, then a hundred . . . There was a distant fusillade of rifle fire: Bertie’s men were in action. Mentally, Ranklin patted himself on the back for his foresight in sending them forward – then knew that God would punish his hubris by bogging down the gun in the soft centre of the riverbed. They still had to swing across that.

  “All right, hold it, take a breather.” They had come nearly level with his chosen rocks on the far side.

  “Ammunition?” O’Gilroy suggested.

  “Fetch it later.” Ranklin was choosing the least-soft place to cross. “O’Gilroy, you take the trail—”

  BANG – a shrapnel shell had exploded behind them, more-or-less over their old position. So Zurga was back: nobody else would know so precisely where they were supposed to be. In a way, he welcomed that: he’d rather have Zurga firing accurately at the wrong place than someone else dropping shells all over the shop.

  “The rest of us take the wheels. Grab the spokes and just keep it moving – never give it a chance to sink in.” The Arabs nodded, following his demonstration, then both attached themselves to one wheel. He’d rather have had their wiry strength evenly distributed, but neither wanted to share a wheel with a woman, so he had to.

  Another shell burst back up the stream bed. They weren’t hearing Zurga’s gun fire; distance, and the solid ground in between, mopped up the sound. “Go!”

  They made five yards in an accelerating rush, then slewed to a near-halt in a marshy patch. “Heave!” Ranklin pushed at the metal spoke, hands sweating and slipping, moving it by millimetres, then centimetres, everyone gasping, grunting, the gun twisting with the Arabs’ strength, O’Gilroy trying to wrench it straight . . . Then they bumped over a rock and rolled free on shingle.

  Despite their breathlessness, it seemed easy to twitch the gun into line behind the rocks. These weren’t much protection, not as much as the missing shield would have been, but what mattered most was being in a new, unknown, position. Shrapnel shells still burst over the old one – where the ammunition still was.

  “Ye want me to go back?” O’Gilroy asked.

  “Wait. He won’t go on for ever. If we don’t fire, he may think he’s got us.”

  “Mebbe Bertie’ll be thinking the same,” O’Gilroy pointed out. “Mebbe his fellers’ll get a bit down-hearted, thinking we’re dead like. Difficult to keep them in line . . .”

  “Just wait,” Ranklin said angrily. Even if he had something to fire, he would still be guessing at his target. Whereas Zurga, once they fired and so told him they had moved, could fire a pattern to seek them out, knowing where to start and that they couldn’t have gone far. He needed an advantage before he fired again . . .

  “Can’t wait for ever,” O’Gilroy said remorselessly. “T’other soldiers’ll be coming back, likely, and we’ll have a hundred of ’em coming up this valley. Bertie can’t hold off that.”

  “What we need,” Ranklin said, “is an observer up there—”

  O’Gilroy said: “I’ll do that.”

  “—if we had a way of signalling. By sound.”

  “A whistle do?”

  “Have you got one?”

  O’Gilroy took it from his pea-jacket pocket. “Took it off Albrecht, he was captain of this gun . . .” He sounded a little sheepish – perhaps it had been a sentimental souvenir – but Ranklin hadn’t time to bother.

  He decided quickly: “One blast for over, then clockwise: two for right, three for short, four for left. On target, continuous short blasts.”

  O’Gilroy nodded, snatched up a rifle and ran off downstream.

  Corinna was looking back towards the cluster of ammunition boxes. “They seem to have stopped. Let’s get some ammunition.”

  “Not you –” Ranklin began.

  “You get the gun nicely pointed. None of us can do that.” She scooped up her skirts and trotted off. Startled, the two Arabs looked at Ranklin. He gestured and they rushed away, overtaking her.

  Cursing to himself, Ranklin turned to the gun. She was right, damn her. So at least he’d better get this right . . . By moving, he’d lost the aiming point; he had to choose another – he picked a tree on the opposite bank – and start again from the map. Call the range now 1040 metres, bearing eighty-two degrees, and—

  BANG.

  He jerked around. Smoke was melting in the air – but, thank God, off to the left.

  “Get among the trees!” he yelled. “Get behind them!” Zurga had fooled him. Guessing they might have temporarily abandoned the gun – artillery steel wouldn’t be harmed by lead shrapnel balls – he had just paused until they were lulled into going back to it. Wrong in theory, but horribly right in practice . . .

  Corinna scurried across to the trees on the bank, but the two Arabs had already started back with a box between them, and they staggered on. The second shell burst on graze – right in front of one of them. He must have taken almost all of its hundred-odd balls, and what was left was just a scatter of meat and clothing on the shingle. The other Arab reeled out of the dissolving smoke, dragging the box by one rope handle. Then, dazed, he sank to his knees.

  Ranklin began to run.

  But he had gone only a few yards when a shell burst over the ammunition boxes, safely behind the Arab and his box. Immediately, Corinna charged out of the trees, almost tumbled as she caught a foot on his skirts, recovered, grabbed up one handle and pulled. The Arab scrambled to his feet, seized the other handle and together they sprinted twenty-five yards as if they were carrying a feather pillow.

  Ranklin ran, too, with the number thirteen in his head. Instinctively, he’d been counting the seconds between the bursts, and now it was ten . . . eleven—

  “Get down!”

  They flopped on the wet shingle and this time the shell didn’t burst at all, just clanged off a rock and tumbled away, a dud.

  “Now move!”

  He ran on. Now halfway home, they were theoretically safe; only bad luck would pitch a shell short enough to catch them, and it didn’t happen. They got back to their gun carrying the box between the three of them, gasping and panting.

  Corinna flopped to her knees and then her hands, her long and now-tangled dark hair dangling almost to the shingle. “I’m not. . .” she gasped, “. . . going to . . . marry Edouard . . . on account. . . life with you . . . is so much more . . . Goddamn fun.”

  Ranklin had nothing to say. She was on the edge of hysteria, where each new death or horror would be hilarious, because her mind had realised that was the only way to keep going. Maybe the Arab, splattered with the blood of his colleague, felt the same way. But Ranklin could only treat them as gun crew, try to sustain the high fever, because the alternative was the common sense of running away.

  He lifted a shell from the box and pulled the safety pin.

  Corinna said: “Here, that’s my job,” and scrambled to her feet. The Arab slid onto the number two seat, grasped the lever and whipped the breech open. Of course, he’d studied just how O’Gilroy had done it; this was a weapon, wasn’t it?

  The breech whanged shut, the Arab pulled the lanyard taut and shouted: “Ret-ti!” which was a good enough imitation of O’Gilroy’s call.

  Ranklin hesitated. Had O’Gilroy had time to get into position yet? They had only eight shells, little over two minutes’ firing time, they couldn’t afford to waste . . . Yet he had to keep up the pace, not give his amateur crew time for common sense to set in . . .

  The devil with it: “Fire.”

  The Arab opened the breech, the hot shell-case clattered off the trail and Corinna kicked it aside.

  “Quiet!” Ranklin ordered, listening. He heard the distant crump, then nothing. Damn. One wasted, with nobody seeing where it had fallen. Then blessedly, a single faint whistle. “Over.” Peep-peep
-peep-peep. “And to the left. Load.”

  He made the corrections as they reloaded. Zurga had stopped firing – it was well over thirteen seconds since the last shrapnel burst – so he must know they had moved their gun. And he would have heard the whistle, so guessed he was under observed fire. What would he do now?

  It was absurd how this thing had become a duel.

  He was about to give the fire order when there was the bang of shrapnel. But distant, in front.

  He frowned, then realised: if O’Gilroy could see Zurga’s gun, then vice versa. And instead of firing blindly at where Ranklin might or might not be, Zurga was trying to destroy O’Gilroy so as to blind Ranklin as well. Now it wasn’t a duel, it was a race.

  27

  The bang of the bursting shell was followed by the rattle of shrapnel balls among the trees and rocks and then the crackle of falling branches.

  Bertie raised his head, frowned, then said: “Quite logical. Our good colonel shoots at the target he can see, not the one he cannot. But does he really see us, or only guess from the noise of your whistle?”

  O’Gilroy crinkled his eyes with peering. Zurga’s gun was just a darkish blob near the misty edge of vision, an amoebic shape that seemed to wriggle as the crew moved, fetching and loading shells. “If’n he’s got good enough field-glasses – and he should have, being a Gunner – mebbe he can. We’d best move . . . split up, anyways, so one shell don’t get us both. Hold on.”

  They had heard the thud of Ranklin’s gun firing, now both fixed their stare on the far-off blob. A flash and a cloud of smoke and dust jumped from the slope to its right.

  “A droit – to the right now. And perhaps beyond still?”

  “I think so.” O’Gilroy slid down and turned his back to the tree-trunk, then blew a single peep and a double one. “Now let’s move.”

  Only it wasn’t that simple. Bertie’s diplomatic training had obviously been pretty comprehensive, for apart from being skilful and calm about shooting fellow human beings, he had picked good defensive positions on both sides of the riverbed. Two Arabs were up among the rocks on the Peak side, but the one who had come with him on the plateau side had been unlucky. O’Gilroy had passed him, seemingly having bled to death propped against a tree, as he climbed up to join Bertie among the trees just below the plateau. The ravine leading towards the monastery lay perhaps 150 yards ahead, and somewhere in its mouth were a handful of Turkish soldiers. The first encounter had left two of them dead in the dry bed itself; the rest were firing a shot every so often but clearly waiting for their comrades to get back from the trench and join in before they did anything else.