"An enemy command over that ridge, sir. About three hundred and fifty and machine guns."
"Weasel! Scout the position. Pollard, make sure we can march in ten minutes. Bulger, apportion those supplies. Carstone, are your guns in condition? Good. Stand by."
"Sir, there's damn near a regiment in that town."
"Pollard! Stand ready to feint a front attack. Hanley! Prepare to take cover on the right. Toutou! Your outfit take cover on the left. Carstone!
Make ready an ambush. When Pollard sucks them out, roll up their flanks, cut their retreat and give Carstone his chance!'
Yes, what if something should happen?
What if something had happened?
Gian went over his artillery again and wiped away some mythical dust and gave his men seven brands of Hades if they slipped up again.
"What you think, Gian?" said Toutou.
"How can I know what to think? These staff officers!"
"The sun's down. At least, those helios aren't working."
"He said he'd be back," said Gian.
"But he hasn't come back," said Toutou.
They wandered away from each other.
"Maybe he got sick all of a sudden," said Weasel. "Maybe he got sick and we weren't there!"
"Maybe they fed him some poison," said Bulger. "They know nothin' about food in a rat burrow like this!"
"Was he all right when you saw him last, Mawkey?" said Weasel for, the thirty-second time.
"Yes," said Mawkey. "He'll be along. He hasn't seen those other officers for a long, long time and maybe he's sick of talking to stupid rabbits like us."
"Sure, that's it," said Bulger.
But nobody believed it.
There was another false alarm, and everybody eased down as soon as the noncom was clearly seen in the door. Nobody knew him, but as he was a sergeant major, Pollard received his greeting.
"I hear this is the Fourth Brigade," said the newcomer. "I'm Thomas O'Thomas of the Tenth Regiment, Second Brigade, Third Division, Tenth Army Corps." But when he said it he looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was listening. "That's the old outfit, of course," he added. "Major Swinburne commanding."
"Sergeant major Pollard, at your service. Second in command of the Fourth Brigade. Come in and have something."
"I thought that was food I smelled."
"Right you are," said Pollard, leading his guest back to the square on the floor which was Pollard's office.
Thomas O'Thomas didn't miss anything as he came down the barrack. He saw haversack after haversack bulging with food and loot, belt after belt full of ammunition. This outfit was wealthy!
"And Heaven blind me!" said O'Thomas. "Artillery!"
"Yes-s-s indeed," said Gian.
"There are some guns around here but they're shot out until a crew won't touch them. And these here weapons look like new."
Gian beamed happily and was greatly taken with Thomas O'Thomas.
Pollard seated his guest at the table and signaled to Bulger to have a man bring some barley soup and bark tea and real flour bread. O'Thomas could hardly believe his eyes and nose and, without apology, fell to with voracity.
"Some more?" said Pollard. "Theres plenty."
"Plenty?" said Thomas O'Thomas.
"A bigger dish, Bulger."
Thomas O'Thomas slurped avidly through that and a third and then, scoffing off the tea with its liberal portion of beet sugar, felt that the age of miracles had returned.
"How do you manage it?" said Thomas O'Thomas.
"It's the leftenant!" said Pollard. "He thinks of rations and bullets and the brigade, and nothin' else."
"Blind me! What an officer!"
"We picked this up in four days," said Pollard.
"Four¯Aw, now, there ain't that much food in this whole bleeding country, drum."
"There is. That's the kind of commanding officer we got. "
"We bloody well starved in the Tenth Regiment. That's why we came back here. But there ain't a thing to eat in this hole, let me tell you. And since they relieved Major Swinburne of his command, we never get nothing."
"They ... they what?" cried Pollard, half on his feet.
"Why, certainly. Every time a field officer comes back to this rabbit warren, the staff takes away his troops and hands them over to some simpering mamma's boy that'd run forty miles if he ever heard a rifle cocked. And let me tell you, when you get your new officer you'll find out all about etiquette saluting and playing nurse¯" He found, suddenly, that he was surrounded by a group of tense faces belonging to all the noncoms of the organization. "Oh, I say, you chaps. You seem to be worked up!"
"What happened to your command officer?" said Pollard.
"Well, he was just relieved, that's all. We hated to lose him, because he was a fine man. A wonderful field officer and we all liked him. But what can we do? We haven't even been able to find out what happened to him."
"You haven't¯ See here!" said Toutou. "You actually let them take him away from you and never made a move to find him?"
"When we got it through our heads," said Thomas O'Thomas, "we were already broken up into other outfits, just like you'll be. Wait and see. They'll spread you thin. That way there ain't no way you can give trouble' He felt uneasy, as though they didn't approve of him quite. "If you don't mind, now, I'll be going. I slid past the guard. Nobody is supposed to come here yet, you know."
"You mean were isolated?" said Pollard.
"Well, call it that. They don't want anybody to start any trouble, you know!' And so, bidding them farewell, Thomas O'Thomas left.
O'Thomas' going was the signal for the whole room to begin talking at once.
Even the carriers, beasts of burden though they had been made by him, became anxious for the safety of the lieutenant lest they thereby receive a worse fate than having to eat well and work hard.
Before they had even started to get this talked out, two more high-ranking noncoms filtered in, on the alert for food. They were fed and they were pumped thoroughly.
"Look, you chaps," said one. "There's no use getting worked up. When the mutinies commenced they equipped all these barracks with regurgitant gas.
Calm down or you'll have it dumped on your heads." Several more noncoms got through the guard and these added further confirmation.
"Your command officer?" said one. "Why, if he was a field officer, it's pretty plain what's happened to him. I'm from old Tin Can Jack's Hellfire Highlanders and I know. Tin Can Jack couldn't get us back three weeks ago and so he sloped."
"He ran away?" said the brigade, incredulous.
"And left you?" said Bulger.
"The whole blooming eighty-nine of us. He had to save his life, didn't he?"
"His life¯" in horror.
"You ain't got any idea of these new staff officers," said the noncom from the Hellfire Highlanders. "You see, when they killed the last dictator in England and set up the B.C.P., it was General Victor what turned his coat and handed over the London garrison to the Commies. Him and all his officers. And when that was done, the B.C.R had to do something for him and they was scared of him, because a traitor once may be a traitor twice and so they just shipped him over here with all his blinking officers to remove General Bealfeather. So they aren't nothing, these staff officers, but a lot of whipped cream and gold braid and they're scared of the field officers¯"
And so it went throughout the night. The stores of the Fourth Brigade went rapidly down and their alarm went rapidly up. They paid good food for information, despite the repeated warning, sotto Voce, that they wouldn't get such fare here in the garrison. They were too desperate to care.
And when morning came, finding them without sleen they were at last quiet.
At least, Malcolm found them so.
"Attenshun!" barked a noncom they hadn't seen before.
Captain Malcolm came in. He was freshly shaved and laundered and he carried a crop under his arm and wore gloves. He scowled when he saw that very few had co
me to their feet. He turned and beckoned in a picked squad of garrison soldiers. Sullenly, the Fourth Brigade stood up.
Malcolm looked them over, not very complimentary to their condition, or deportment, or weapons. Pollard followed him around more to keep him from doing anything than to aid his inspection.
At last Captain Malcolm came to the center of the room. He felt that he should make a speech.
"Soldiers," said Malcolm, "you are, of course, in very sorry shape! From what the Fourth had seen of the garrison, they did not believe it. And your discipline, it is plain to see, has been very slack." There was a mutter and Malcolm glanced around to see if the garrison guard was handy and alert. "However, as soon as you are split up into your new organizations and your ranks filled from theirs, we shall go about improving you. As your commanding officer, I¯"
"Beg pardon?" said Pollard.
Malcolm glanced back and was reassured by the garrison guard. "Sergeant major, if you wish to see the orders," ¯gently sarcastic¯ "I shall be glad to show them to you."
"The only orders we recognize," said the stolid Pollard, "are those that comes from the leftenant's mouth."
"Oh, now, see here, old man, I¯"
"I said it and I'll stick by it. Call this mutiny or anything you like, but you ain't going to do anything to our leftenant!"
Malcolm backed a pace and then stiffened with anger. "I care to call it mutiny! Sergeant of the guard, arrest this man!"
"Touch him," said Toutou. "Just go ahead and touch him."
"And this man," said Malcolm, pointing to the burly Toutou.
"Sergeant of the guard," said Malcolm, "sound the alarm. "
The clamor went screaming through the fortress.
"In a moment," said Malcolm, "we'll have an adequate force here. You will be relieved of your food and given strict confinement. Sergeant of the guard, take this brigade sergeant major in custody as well as his thick-skulled friend."
The sergeant hesitated a moment. But he heard troops coming on the run and it looked like a cheap way to make face for himself He advanced and laid a hand on Pollard.
A revolver cracked and smoke writhed from Hanley's fist. The sergeant caught at his guts and began to scream. The guards tried to get through the door and away but pinned themselves there by their very anxiety. Malcolm, white-faced, sought to claw through them.
A rifle blazed and the back of Malcolm's head came off, splattering the others in the door. Malcolm's arms kept on beating and then froze out straight.
Carstone's pneumatics began to pop like champagne corks and the blood began to flow. The door, in thirty seconds, was barricaded by the bodies of the garrison men.
Beyond, an officer leaped into view, not having heard the pneumatics in the roar of sound. He jerked and his hands flew to his chest and were full of holes.
Above them a powder began to flow out from automatic trips. The regurgitant.
"Clear away!" howled Gian. And the doorway was clear of the Fourth Brigade as far back as the artillery.
Three guns crashed as one,, and half the wall went out, fragments spattering through the corridor to knock back the garrison troops.
Hastily snatching their packs and trying not to breathe, the Fourth leaped into the corridor. Gian whiplashed the carriers into moving guns and caissons. Men were already beginning to gag and vomit.
Pollard's bellow brought eyes to him. He sorely missed his lieutenant but it was up to him and he had to act. He pointed up the least defended incline and they sped along it. Behind them Carstone's pneumatics were covering their retreat by hammering back the mob of garrison soldiers.
When the last of Gians artillery rumbled by, Carstone began to have his machine guns shifted at intervals. By picking up the first of the string in rotation and making it the last, he was able to keep the corridor behind them sprayed and still retreat.
A clang sounded up again and Pollard began to howl for Gian. The artillery came up, the brigade hastily making room for it. A great steel door had dropped into place across the corridor and powder was again beginning to sift from above it.
"Stand back!" screamed Gian. "Ready guns three and four. Fire!"
The center of the door bulged out.
"Guns three and four reload! Fire!"
The bulge increased. The brigade was retching. Behind them the pneumatics sputtered and hissed, interspersed at intervals with the coughing clatter of the Belgian alcohol gun.
"Guns three and four! Fire!" bawled Gian.
The door collapsed. The half-deafened troops sped through it, some of them hastily binding wounds received from the ricocheting splinters of steel and stone.
Soon Pollard faltered in dismay. Quite evidently the corridor he had chosen had only gone up long enough to avoid a particularly hard seam of rock and then had been built downward. They were on their way into the depths of the fortress!
Wildly he glared about for another passage and found none. He had to go forward now. All the way through the place. Thank Heaven the regurgitant effect had been slight and was wearing away. Oh, if the leftenant were only here to tell them!
He sensed rather than heard or felt the machine gun which had hastily been thrown on a barricade to bar their way. Before he came to the turn he halted and piled up the men behind him. They were glad to stop and breathe better air.
"There's a machine gun up there, Gian."
"Right. Gun one, forward. Load solid. Make way, will you, Pollard?"
Gian laid the gun himself with the care of an artist. He yanked the lanyard and the roar was too great for them to hear the shot bounce off the far end of the turn. There was a scream of agony from the barricade around the curve.
"Weasel, mop up!" said Pollard.
Weasel and four men snaked forward. Twice their rifles crashed and then there wasn't any more sound at the barricade. The Fourth Brigade went forward.
The central offices were quite deserted save for one orderly who had risked all to rummage among the general's effects for any possible food cache.
Pollard hurried into the offices and glanced about, hoping to find a map of the fortress. But the grenade they had tossed into the place first had ripped up the wall chart beyond recognition. The remaining orderly, who had taken cover behind a desk, was hauled forth. He clearly expected to have his throat cut'
"Soldier," said Bulger, sticking his bayonet into the orderly's ribs and tickling him up a bit, "if you want to live, you'll lead us straight as a bullet to our leftenant."
"Y-y-y-You are the Fourth Brigade?"
"Right."
"J-j-j-just Pf-f-follow m-m-m-me!"
They followed him. Evidently the garrison had had a fiill belly for they were not again obstructed. They drew up and tried to straighten their uniforms when they came to the indicated door.
Pollard knocked with his pistol butt.
The lieutenant opened it.
Pollard gave one of his very rare salutes, though he forgot to take the gun out of his hand first. "Sergeant major Pollard, sir. Fourth Brigade all present and accounted for. Will...will you please take command?"
It was very hard, just then, for the lieutenant to remember to keep full control of his emotions.
Burrowed like a rat with a phobia against hawks, General Victor and his staff received fragments of news and acted accordingly. Their first effort was to order out the garrison, en masse, to engulf and put to death the leaders of the mutineers. Very confidently, then, they huddled in the darkness, awaiting report of results. A full hour passed before any orderly came down to them.
It seemed that the loyal garrison was perfectly willing but that the field soldiers, while only half their number, were opposed.
General Victor frothed and spluttered and sent out orders again, even sending a staff major along with them. Half an hour went by before the staff major came back.
It seems that he had somehow blundered into the north barrack which had housed the Fourth and there had found the corpse of Captain Malcolm.
/> "Mutiny and murder!" howled Victor. "Get back up there and sweep them into cells!"
"That is the point, sir," said the staff major. "The garrison soldiers state they would be only too glad to do it but it seems, somehow, that their rifles are missing."
"What's this? What's this? Missing! Incredible!"
"It would seem so, sir, but you must not forget that the field troops are quartered with the garrison troops now."
And so, bit by little, the staff pieced together the lieutenant's "fiendish" plan and their own defeat.
General Victor, once he understood, no longer raved. He just sat and stared at his boots in dumb dismay.
Smythe grew bitter, blaming everyone around him. "You should have understood! Why, I myself heard Captain Malcolm state his annoyance at the brigades slow progress back. They attacked every possible source of food supply. It's plain now. He's the devil incarnate!"
An orderly came down, the same that had found the lieutenant for Pollard.
He was happy to be momentarily free. "Sir, the compliments of the lieutenant and would the general come up under a flag of truce to discuss the terms?"
"Terms?" cried the officers. "For what?"
"Surrender, he says, sirs," apologized the orderly.
"Surrender! By all that ever was holy!" said Smythe. "Tell him no!"
"He says he'd hate to have to come down and get you, gentlemen. Begging your pardons."
"Come down¯ How perfectly ghastly!" Smythe grabbed the orderly by the coat and shook him. "Does he think he can take his own general headquarters?
Does he?"
General Victor stood up wearily. "It appears that he has. I shall go speak with him."
They protested, but Victor did not hear them. Unwillingly they filed after him up through the fortress to the higher levels. It was with great surprise that they found the troops all out of the ground.
The rain had ceased for the time and small shafts of sunlight were cutting along the slopes, flicking over the remains of many an attack and sparkling in the water which clung to the bottoms of shell holes. Nearly eighteen hundred men were out here, variously disposed upon the flat expanse between the hills.
Final Blackout: A Futuristic War Novel Page 9
