'Sir!' O'Neill tried to whisper yet still be heard amidst the turmoil. 'Russian infantry!'
'Where?' Jack peered forward.
O'Neill took pointed. 'Over there, sir.'
They were gathering in three columns, dense bodies of men in dark uniforms, temporarily revealed by the flashes of mortar explosions and then vanishing again into the gloom of the summer night.
'There are too many for us to handle.' Jack made a quick decision. 'Time to retire; get the men back to the Quarries!'
The private of the 90th responded to his challenge of 'Rule' with a grumpy, 'bloody Britannia,' followed by a 'oh sorry sir, I didnae ken you were an officer,' as Jack led his dozen men back over the parapet.
'There are three columns of Russian infantry massing two hundred yards away,' Jack warned Campbell, who nodded.
'Right Windrush. That will be a change from this damned bombardment.' He raised his voice. 'Stand to your arms! They're coming again!'
Grumbling, swearing, shaking from the effects of the cannonade, the British infantry returned to their positions behind the sandbags and gabions, wiped sweating hands on grimy trousers, hitched up their trousers, straightened their shakos and peered into the darkness from where the Russians would erupt.
'Come on then you bastards,' the private of the 90th muttered. 'I'm waiting for you.'
'You don't have a cousin called Logan do you?'Jack asked.
The private looked confused. 'No, sir. Why?'
'Never mind. Here they are now,' Jack said, and fired into the advancing mass.
Brave as always, the Russians surged forward, to be met with shot and steel. Jack's world shrunk to the few square yards around him and the nightmare vision of advancing Russian soldiers and redcoated British defenders. He fired when he had a target, ignored the curses and blasphemy of his men and allowed his mind to blank out most of the horrors that he witnessed. He knew that the images would return later when he lay in bed or was on watch some dark night but for now all that mattered was survival, killing and avoiding being killed, and looking out for his men.
A huge, moustached Russian loomed in front of him; Jack shot him without compulsion, saw him fall, saw another take his place. He heard Logan's semi-coherent yell as he mounted the parapet and swung his rifle-butt at a broad-faced man. He saw O'Neill fire his rifle at a Russian officer, saw the officer stagger back and two more Russians rush forward. He saw Fletcher fire, miss and lunge forward with his bayonet.
All these incidents were simultaneous, glimpsed and then stored in some chest of horrors in his mind.
'They're drawing back,' Riley dropped another bullet down the muzzle of his rifle, banged the stock on the ground and lifted it to his cheek. 'We've won.'
Jack nodded. He shrugged off the waves of exhaustion that passed over him. 'We've won this round,' he said. 'But the Russians are canny prize-fighters. They store up their energy for the final few moments of the bout.'
'Aye; they'll be back,' Campbell said. He wiped blood from the blade of his sword and slid the weapon into its scabbard. 'They always are.' He nodded to Jack. 'The artillery will start again now. You'd better get back to your position out there.' His grin was a little less easy than it had been earlier that night. 'If nothing else you give us a few moments warning.'
Jack looked over his men. They were tired, with Fletcher and Hitchins nursing minor wounds and Logan searching for a new bayonet as his was bent almost double, yet there was still plenty of fight left in them. 'Yes, sir.'
There were other attacks that night, acting as breaks to an otherwise incessant artillery bombardment. Each time Jack pulled his men back to the Quarries and each time they fought with the garrison against the stubborn, courageous Russian infantry.
On the fifth assault many of the defenders ran out of ammunition and the Russians breached the parapet.
'Come on you bastards!' Logan threw himself forward with his third bayonet of the night. The others of the 113th were at his side, with the men of the 90th, 49th and Royal Malverns equally keen. For the second time that night, Jack drew his sword; although he preferred to fight with rifle and bayonet the men liked to see an officer acting as an officer, and a sword was a mark of his rank.
When it came to this sort of fist and boot fighting, few if any could match British soldiers, reared in some of the worst slums in the world or brought up to punishingly long hours behind a plough, followed by relentless discipline in Queen Victoria's army. They met the Russians head on, and the Russians did not flinch. Aided by force of numbers, the Russians pushed the thin red line of British back, step by gasping step, until Jack thought they would be forced right out of the Quarries.
'You need real soldiers here!' The voice was strong and as welcome as the body of men who joined them.
'Who are you?' Jack looked round in surprise.
'We're the 62nd Wiltshire!' The sergeant said cheerfully. 'You can't keep us out of it for long!'
Ordered to repair and restore the defences of the Quarries, the 62nd had seen how hard pressed defenders were, downed tools and rushed to help. Jack looked up as the Russians poured across the sandbags, a great grey tide of angry, stubborn men. The reinforced British met them with fist and boot and bayonet in a bloody, vicious battle that would not have been out of place in the Middle Ages. The air filled with curses and yells, groans and screams as men died under the blade of the bayonet or the bludgeoning crunch of a rifle butt.
'They're giving way!' O'Neill said, thrusting his bayonet into a struggling Russian soldier.
Jack took a swing at a Russian with his sword, cursed as the man's thick coat turned the blade, and drew back for a thrust. He grunted as Logan was there first, ducking low to plunge his bayonet into the man's groin and rip upward.
'And that's done for you,' Logan said with heat but no malice.
Once again the Russians retired, step by step, inch by inch as they reluctantly gave up this tiny section of their country.
'We can follow them, sir,' Thorpe said.
'Let them go,' Jack said, although in truth he knew his men had little energy left to pursue the Russians even if they had chosen to do so. They were drooping, holding on to the parapet for support, gasping for breath, even squatting to regain some strength. Despite the roar of battle Hitchins was asleep, face up on a pile of sandbags and with his head resting on a Russian corpse.
'You men of the 62nd,' Jack said. 'Pass over any spare ammunition, if you please. We're running short here.' He watched as O'Neill garnered unused cartridges from the British dead.
'What now, sir?' O'Neill asked. 'Do we expect supports?'
'I don't know,' Jack said honestly. If even O'Neill was hoping for reinforcements, then the men were nearing the limit of their endurance, Months of privation, of short rations and of the strain of impending combat, followed by two sleepless nights and a battle, were taking their toll. Nobody could carry on forever under these circumstances.
Campbell was distinctly haggard now, unshaven and tousle haired under his forage cap. 'Get you back out there, Windrush.'
Jack nodded. 'Yes, sir.'
'We are an hour short of dawn,' Campbell said. 'They will come again just before the sun breaks. Our engineers and the 62nd are working like beavers to connect the Quarries with our advanced parallels so we can have this as our most forward work. The Russians don't wish that so they will do all they can to recapture this position.'
'Yes, sir,' Jack did not tell the colonel that he was fully aware of their peril.
'Off you go then.' Campbell ordered.
The ground in front of the Quarries was familiar now, except there were more bodies on the ground, more twisted, gasping wounded, more shell holes and spent cartridges, more warm round-shot or fragments of mortar shells. Jack crawled forward and found the same spot as he occupied before.
He sensed rather than heard his men taking their previous places around him. He knew they were there; he did not have to check. He could concentrate his entire being on watching
and listening for any approaching Russians and trying to ignore the groaning wounded. He hoped that there would be a truce soon to care for the injured. While the British could be taken back to their own camp for treatment, the Russian casualties had to lie on the battlefield until there was a truce.
A wolf called, once, twice, to be answered by another not far away. Jack felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. The last time he had heard that sound the Cossacks had ambushed them.
Inching backward, Jack kicked sideways to alert O'Neill.
'I heard it, sir.' O'Neill whispered. 'Another bloody wolf.'
'That one has two legs and carries a shashka.'
'Cossacks?'
'I believe so.' Jack heard O'Neill pass the news on, with a few shufflings from his men as they adjusted to this new threat from their front.
The wolf call came again, and then Jack saw a movement about a hundred yards in front of him. It was tiny; a flicker he would not have noticed if he had not heard that wolf call. He fixed his eyes on that spot, seeing nothing. Remembering MacRae's teachings he sniffed the air, catching a faint whiff of something, some sort of cooked meat.
There was another small sound, the click of stone on stone, and then the rustle of grass at a time the wind dropped. If there were more sounds he could not hear them as the Russian cannon opened up again.
'Thank you, MacRae,' he said softly. He knew that his men were too tired to function properly; they were not at their best. He would love to have them ambush the Cossacks and capture their leader. He would love to have Anderson as his captive, but knew that this was not the time for it; his men would be fighting under the major disadvantage of extreme fatigue.
Better to fire now and pre-empt the engagement rather than have a close-quarter encounter with a more numerous and fresher foe.
'Aim for where you think they are and fire,' he said softly. The 113th had been waiting for his order and their volley rang out, with the shots seemed to echo the rumble of Russian artillery.
'Load and hold your fire!' Jack shouted as he heard a couple of screams from the enemy. The Cossacks would now advance, retreat or try and move around their flanks. 'Listen for movement!'
'I can't hear a bloody thing except the Russian artillery!' Thorpe said.
A whiff of that cooked meat smell came again. 'Aim low and fire!' Jack ordered, 'they're on the move again.'
The 113th fired immediately, twelve spurts of flame breaking the dark, twelve ear-cracking reports and then powder-smoke blanketing the smell of roast meat. A man groaned in pain, whimpered and was quiet. The Russian artillery continued, battering the Quarries as the British laboured on the defences.
'Reload quickly,' Jack ordered. 'They might come at us.'
Instead there were half a dozen shots followed by the scuffing sound of men moving.
'They're retiring,' O'Neill said.
A rocket flared overhead, casting momentary light across the tortured land. Jack had a glimpse of dark clad Cossacks withdrawing across the rough terrain, carrying two wounded men with them. For an instant his gaze locked with single eye of Anderson and then the rocket died and fell and darkness returned.
'Anderson!' Jack rose to his feet, 'I see you!' Pointing his revolver, he squeezed the trigger again and again until the hammer clicked on an empty chamber. 'Come and fight me man to man!'
There was no reply.
'Come on you murdering bastard!' Jack reloaded quickly, ramming the cartridges into his revolver as anger replaced his better judgement.
'Sir?' O'Neill had a question in that single word.
'That man is haunting me.' Jack had no other explanation for his sudden outburst. He forced a grin as he slid down again. 'Either that or I am over tired.'
'Sir,' Riley crawled toward them on his belly. 'There are more Russians coming, sir. Thousands of them.'
'It's their last attack,' Jack knew he sounded very calm despite his turmoil of emotions. 'They are going to have to take the Quarries before daylight, before we can strengthen it properly.'
The Russian infantry could be heard now; the regular thump of their boots on the ground, the rustle of their uniforms and finally the moaning yell with which they announced their attack.
'Back to the Quarries boys,' Jack said. He was not sure which was more powerful, his exhaustion or his anticipation of yet another battle with the Russians. He hoped that Anderson was with the Russians; he hoped, more than he ever had before, that he met him man to man. For an instant Jack contemplated running Anderson through the body with his sword, twisting the blade and sliding it back out, slowly. The image was so clear that Jack gasped. 'I did not know I was so bloody,' he voiced his thoughts aloud, ignored O'Neill's querulous look and crawled back toward the Quarries.
'I hear them now,' Colonel Campbell was still alive amidst the mortar and bomb shattered shambles. He stood erect, sword in hand and small, tight smile on his face. 'This will be their last attack of the night, so we will give them a hot reception.'
Jack looked around the earthworks. The engineers, with Lieutenant Wolseley to the fore, had been working hard, replacing gabions and sandbags and using everything else they could get their hands on. There were corpses built into the wall, British as well as Russian, soldiers doing their duty, defending the redoubt in death as they had in life.
'Here they come,' Elliot looked grey. His eyes were deep and dark, his mouth a bitter slash and his left hand clasping and unclasping as he glared into the gloom.
The Russians marched toward them in a huge column, nearly as wide as the Quarries themselves and so long that in the dark Jack could not see the far end.
'They must have emptied Sebastopol of every soldier just to take our little redoubt,' Elliot said.
'And we have a few hundred men, totally exhausted and with only a handful of cartridges between us.' Jack checked his cartridge pouch; a solitary bullet rolled in the bottom. He regretted his wasteful expenditure of ammunition trying to kill Anderson. 'How many rounds do you have left?'
'Four,' Elliot said.
'Three sir,' O'Neill said quietly. He tapped his bayonet, 'after that it is all down to this.'
'Five, sir,' Riley said.
'I doubt there are two hundred men fight to fight,' Elliot sounded grimmer than Jack had ever heard him before.
Elliot was correct. All the men were nodding with exhaustion, many were sleeping as they stood; some had dropped to the ground and snored in discordant unison, oblivious of the thousands of Russian infantry that marched resolutely toward them. Jack saw a group of the 7th Fusiliers lying in a heap, some snoring, with two terribly young officers, obviously fresh from Sandhurst, sleeping at their side.
'These little rascals should still be with their mams,' O'Neill said. 'They're only children lost in this man's world. The Cossacks would eat them for breakfast.'
'Blasted cheepers,' Elliot forgot that he was only a year or so older.
'Come on lads!' Jack forced himself to stay awake. He kicked Hitchins with the side of his foot. 'Wake up, Hitchins! Logan: are you there? Riley, stay alert!'
Further to his left, Elliot was doing the same with his detachment and Jack heard Wolseley shouting at the men of the 90th.
'The men are done in!' Colonel Campbell said. 'They are fought to a standstill.'
'My men will stand!' Jack defended the 113th, as he had done so often before.
'I don't doubt it, Windrush,' Campbell said calmly, 'but they are exhausted to the point of stupidity.'
The Russian column marched on, boots tramping over the bodies of the dead from the previous assaults, massive, impassive, seeming impossible for the few British defenders to turn back.
'Bugler!' Campbell yelled, 'sound out! You know the regimental calls of the 90th, don't you?'
'Yes of course sir,'
'Then play, man, play, sound every call you can think of, from reveille to lights out and everything else in between; make so much racket that Johnny Russ thinks the entire Light Division as well as the
Brigade of Guards, John Company's sepoys and the blasted Highland Brigade are all here waiting for them.'
'Yes, sir!' Putting the bugle to his mouth, the man did as he was ordered so the thin, stirring call of the bugle rang across the field above the groans of the wounded and the sombre thunder of the marching Russian infantry.
'Right lads!' Jack saw his men staring forward through tired eyes. 'Here they come again!' On a whim he mounted the parapet, suddenly careless of Russian sharpshooters. Good luck to them if they saw him in the dark; anyway he was a British officer and should show an example to his men. Helen would prefer him to die a hero than live as a coward. 'Steady the 113th!'
'That's the spirit, Windrush!' Campbell clambered onto the sandbags at his side, with Wolseley following. 'Let the men see us.'
The Russians marched on. Now visible in the pre-dawn gloom they moved as stolidly and bravely as always.
'Bugler!' Campbell shouted 'keep these calls coming. Cheer boys, cheer for Queen and country, cheer for Great Britain, cheer for your lives!'
Those men who had remained alive, awake and unwounded, perhaps sixty strong, set out a roar that momentarily drowned out the sound of the bugle.
'Now fire!' Campbell showed the way by loosing three quick shots toward the Russians. Those men who had ammunition fired into the mass.
As some of their number fell, the leading ranks of Russians faltered. In the dim light they could see the British officers standing on the parapet waiting for them; they could head a medley of bugle calls and heard the British cheering, encouraging them to come on to the Minie bullets and the hungry points of bayonets.
'They're hesitating!' Elliot said. He lowered his pistol. 'I've a single shot left; I'll save it for an officer.' His laugh was high pitched and disturbingly erratic.
Windrush: Blood Price (Jack Windrush Book 3) Page 15
