by Damon Alan
“You needed it, mate,” Tim answered. “You’ve been looking out for us since that mess in Roeselare started. We owed you a chance to recharge.”
Harry nodded, grateful for his friend. “I’ll double it tonight. You can sleep my watch and yours.”
“Sort of defeats letting you sleep last night, doesn’t it?” Tim whispered back to him in response. “Get over it. I did it for the men. They deserve a leader with a clear mind.”
Smiling, Harry clasped his friend’s back. “Anything from below?”
“Not a thing.” Tim tapped his MAS. “The waiting is killing me. We can’t leave, we can’t stay, they’re oblivious we’re even here anymore. It’s the strangest stalemate I’ve ever seen.”
“It is,” Harry agreed. “We won’t act yet, but eventually we’ll have to try to bust our way to the lorry.”
“Death mission,” Garrett, the private next to Tim said.
Harry shrugged. “So is starving.” He stood back up and quit whispering. “We’ll meet in the radio room inside the hour, I’ll let everyone know. One person will guard the stair and miss the meeting, but I’ll brief them separate.”
“You have a plan?”
“We count our stores, bullets, grenades, food supplies, anything else that might get us to the Matador alive. We ransack this floor. Then we figure out where to set up the Hotchkiss, I’ll cut an arc to the lorry with it.”
“You’ll be left here,” Tim replied. “That’s a bad plan.”
“You could, once you get to the lorry, drive them down.”
“One man can do that,” Tim said. “We don’t need to risk everyone else. One man makes it to the Matador, the rest cut the path.”
“That’s why I’m glad we’re friends,” Harry said. “Your idea is better. Bring the lorry to the house, we climb out the window on top, then you drive us off.” He scratched his stubble covered chin. “That work?”
“Better than starving, but not much,” Tim said. “I’ll make the run for it. Someone must, and I’m not that great of a shot. Which is why you make me load the machine gun, don’t deny it.”
Harry laughed. “You win this one, Timothy Martin.”
“Lucky me. Should rather win a poker pot.”
Harry no longer cared to be quiet, the more of the things in the house, the fewer between the outer walls and the Matador. He clacked his boots against the floor as he walked toward the radio room. Groans and whistles greeted him from below. He called for the men to assemble with him and told them the plan.
“What stores do we have?” he asked the assembly. “Hans, you can hold back. Unless you have some grenades I don’t know about.”
The German shook his head no. “Can’t hide those very well, big long sticks that they are.”
As the men listed off their stores, it was apparent to Harry they needed to stock up better if they survived the day.
Six grenades, four cans of lighter fluid, for some reason Parker had a small can of black powder, and eight knives between the lot.
“Rightly pathetic,” Harry said. “But for now, the grenades are important. Maybe the rest will come into play if we get desperate, but we already have no food up here, let’s not add a fire to the problem.”
“How do we deploy?” one soldier asked.
“Get a table in here for the Hotchkiss’ firing position, and all the other windows on this side get two men each. Careful not the shoot the Matador, a flat tire or holed engine block and we’re done.”
“Why not knock some of the wall out to open up some more firing positions?” Miller asked.
“Smart one,” Harry said, complimenting him. “You have a way?”
“Da is a miner back in Devon, pulling tungsten out of the ground,” Miller said. They bore a hole, filled it with powder, then ignited it. Same would work for opening up a wall or two here.”
“Can you do it?” Harry asked.
Miller smirked at him. The lad was confident, Harry had to give him that.
“Then get it on it. The rest of you take an hour to pick your spots and work out your fire zones. Decide who will wait for the wall to open to grab those spots. Miller, we open these walls for business at…” Harry looked at his watch. “Eleven AM.”
Miller walked over to the wall and used his knife to start digging into the plaster to create a blast hole. “One of you get the radio out by the stairwell to keep it safe, and you clumsy oafs be careful with it. Parker, leave that powder, Wilkes, you leave your lighter fluid.”
The men did as they were told, although Parker did so reluctantly. That made Harry wonder what Parker’s particular psychosis was. Everyone had one, some were more dangerous than others.
“Can I help?” Harry asked Miller.
“Can you get some fabric and make a fuse, Sergeant?”
“How do I go about that?”
“Roll the powder up in the cloth like the lead in a pencil. Two heaping tablespoons per foot.”
“You got it,” Harry said, visualizing what Miller wanted. “I assume tight so there are no gaps?”
“You’re made for this, Sergeant,” Miller said, nodding his head as he dug at the wall. “That’s how to do it.”
An hour later they were ready, Miller had one hole finished with a lot of precision, in a second bedroom Wilkes had a similar, if less precise, hole. The wall was plaster, behind that the bricks the house was made of. Luckily, the bricks were brittle, and the mortar between them even more so.
“Hand me your fuse,” Miller said.
Harry did so, alarmed to see Miller shake the powder out of three or four inches of one end. “I do that wrong?”
“Not at all. We want this end to burn slow so we can light it and get away. Once it gets to the powder, it will take off.”
“Right. Makes sense.” Harry would never have thought of that.
Once Miller had the fuse in the hole and the ends tied off with a bit of string to keep any more powder from getting out, he packed the hole with half of the remaining powder.
“That’s a lot,” Harry said. “You sure about this?”
“No, of course not. But it is a brick wall.”
“Hard to disagree.”
Once the hole was packed, Miller squirted a touch of lighter fluid on the end of the fuse that was cloth only. “It’ll start without a delay,” he explained.
They quickly packed the other blast hole; the process went even quicker.
“Hans, you take a lighter, you light that one,” Harry said, pointing to Wilkes’ room. “Miller, you light the one you dug. Everyone else to the stairs, know your positions after the blast, we’re not going to waste any time. I’ll be in the hall, counting down from three. At zero, you both light your fuse then bolt to the stairs.”
It was a plan. How good of one was probably not something to be discussed, but what it lacked in sensibility it made up for in desperation.
“Three… two… one… now!” Harry yelled.
The men lit their fuses, which flared up immediately thanks to the lighter fluid. All three ran to the stairs, out of sight of the blasts. By the time Harry knelt and covered his ears he heard one of the black powder fuses catch.
An explosion rocked the house, two seconds later another did the same.
The troops uncovered their ears and raced to their positions. Two holes, each about three feet in diameter, greeted them for their efforts. The windows were all shattered and knocked out.
The men cheered. Something had gone right.
Harry heard something even over the groaning of the dead.
“Wait!” he barked as his men began pushing more bricks from the walls out onto the dead below.
Everyone stood silent.
“Is that a marching cadence?” Timothy asked.
“Get down,” Harry hissed. “Everyone, get down behind cover!”
It was a marching cadence. But it wasn’t in English, and it wasn’t in German or French.
Harry peeked through a hole in the bricks and saw the
dead rushing toward the new threat. At least two hundred of the short armored men were coming down the road, bellowing something in their guttural language that couldn’t be anything else but a marching cadence.
Unlike the troops at Roeselare, these troops were wearing red armor. As he watched, the company commander of the enemy column ordered a stop.
He bellowed some orders and the otherworldly soldiers quickly formed three lines. The main barrier were soldiers with pikes with shields. They set themselves to receive the charge of the dead men. Kneeling in front of the pike bearers, ready to surge forward to dispatch any dead that passed the pike tips, were axes. Some of those had shields, some wielded two axes, some wielded axes so large both arms needed to carry them. Behind the pike soldiers, taking advantage of carefully maintained open space, were crossbowmen.
Harry had learned all too well to fear those.
The dead surged forward with surprising rapidity, making Harry wonder if Tim could have reached the Matador before the dead reached him.
“Should we open fire?” Tim asked, ready to service the Hotchkiss’ hungry magazine breech.
“On which side?” Harry replied. “No, we’ll let this unfold and deal with the remnants.” He yelled loud enough to be heard from the other room. “Keep under cover, those crossbowmen will end you!”
The dead would ensure the battle would reach a defining conclusion for one side or the other.
Despite his own advice, Harry watched from a smaller hole below the main hole Miller blasted. The dead didn’t disappoint his assessment of them. They assaulted the short men with fury, giving no quarter. The dead probably outnumbered the red company ten to one, but they didn’t have the discipline the strange soldiers had. As a pike found a home in the body of one of the dead, a crossbowman shot it in the head while the pikeman tried to hold it still. Then the pikeman would jerk the tip of his weapon from the body, the dead would fall to make a barrier his fellows would have to deal with.
If for some reason the crossbowman couldn’t fire, the axes ran forward to dispatch the impaled creature. Harry saw several of them dragged into the masses of the dead when they advanced too far. They disappeared under the mass of writhing skeletons and Harry shuddered at their fate, even if they were the enemy.
As the battle raged, the red company retreated strategically back up the road to keep room for their pikes to operate. Eventually, however, the pikes were overwhelmed, and the soldiers dropped them to the ground and drew short blades from scabbards at their sides.
“Arming swords,” Miller said.
“What?” Timothy asked, incredulous.
“Arming swords. Those are close quarter weapons.”
“How do you know this?”
“I like swords?” Miller replied. “Other kids played WWI when I was growing up. My friends and I played knights and … other knights.”
“Didn’t I tell you both to keep your heads down?” Harry snapped.
He was starting to develop a plan. Once the dead were gone up the road, he and the boys would have time to get out these windows and to the Matador. They’d race away from the short men and the dead men.
He waited until the time was right. Until the red company and the swarm around them was nearly a quarter mile up the road.
“Head for the lorry,” he yelled. “We’re making a break for it.”
“There are still dead downstairs that didn’t see the red guys,” Tim said. “They’ll hear us.”
“Do you see a better opportunity coming?” Harry said, exasperated.
“No,” Tim agreed as he pushed more bricks out onto the garden below.
“Guns at the ready, we’re going out. Nobody is going to be left here, nobody is going to die here.”
The squad seemed eager to take their chances.
“Tim, you go out, I’ll lower the machine gun to you. Everyone get your gear, we’re going now. Hans, Wilkes, get up on the back of the lorry and stand guard. Anything comes our way, open fire.”
Less than a minute later everyone was on the ground. Nobody except the two appointed guards bolted for the lorry, and the guard team dispatched the first few outside dead that noticed them.
Harry’s feet finally reached the ground where he grabbed the Hotchkiss he’d lowered.
“They’re rising up inside the house,” Tim said. “We need to go.”
“To the Matador,” Harry yelled, and ran with the gun. “Wilkes you drive. Follow the road away from the red company.”
Thirty seconds after that the Matador rumbled to life and they were off once again, patting themselves on the back for their good fortunes.
Harry scanned the surrounding territory for enemies.
The dead walked everywhere he looked, their heads snapping toward the sound of the lorry as it passed by.
Their fortune would turn again soon, he knew.
Chapter 17 - What Border?
It was his twelfth day in this world, and for all purposes that mattered, it was the world.
His home was a distant and sometimes cloudy memory thanks to his exhaustion. His body was tired, his axe nicked, his armor dented from the spitter sticks the gray armies carried. During the march away from the gate his troops engaged the enemy six times, at a loss of twenty-seven soldiers. His brother in the mix made it twenty-eight.
At the moment they traveled down a good gravel road in an alpine area, dead on target for their destination if nothing stopped them.
His scout, the only one of the company not in iron armor, returned to brief him for tomorrow’s march.
“There is a road block ahead, about a third of a full march,” Scout Numo told him. “It’s got dozens of the grays, but they’re facing the other way. On the other side, twenty cart lengths beyond, there are other soldiers facing this way.”
Irsu laughed. “You haven’t traveled the underroads much, have you Numo?”
“I’m a surface scout, Commander.”
“Where the Iron Mountain clan territory stops, we have the exact same setup with the subterranean areas around us. None shall surprise our hold.”
“So, this is a border?”
“I should say it is,” Irsu confirmed. “I wish we spoke the human languages so I could have you spy on them, or we had a priest here who could gift you with understanding.”
The scout looked alarmed. “I didn’t come here to have magic cast on me, Commander.”
“Then you are fortunate that I don’t have a priest with me.”
Numo shook his head, unsettled that Irsu would force him to receive a spell. No matter, it was best the scout feared him a little. Fear enhanced job performance.
“Tell me about these soldiers on the other side of the border.”
“Humans. Their uniforms are almost the same color, a bit more blue-gray I suppose. But they wear different insignia. No armor at all except the helmet, just like the grays. Humans seem to think their noggins are the only thing that matters.”
“Was there hostility between the two sides?”
“Well, they did have a wall, and the road was barricaded with a lift gate, much like the surface road out of Iron Mountain where the caravans are inspected,” Numo replied.
“I see.” Irsu tugged at his armor to relieve himself of a section rubbing his skin. “Maybe they don’t wear armor because it chafes.”
“You should try leather, Commander. It’s most liberating.”
“I’m sure it is. The problem with wearing leather is everyone holds their money purse more tightly when you’re near.”
“Maybe.”
Irsu gestured toward Coragg, who had his axe and shield both on the left arm. His right gripped his money pouch tightly, unaware that the scout and commander were talking about him.
Numo laughed. “Now that’s funny.”
“Coragg, we’re breaking early,” Irsu barked. “Stop the column, get the company off this road, and set up camp. Make sure our fires are shielded. Get that cow down off the provisions wagon. Roast it up.”
“Something going on?”
“We’re about to travel new territory, and tomorrow we’re going to kill more humans. We’re down to a hundred and thirty-six soldiers, I want them well fed and deprived of nothing when we do.”
“Numo, how many humans guard the border?”
“Probably eighty of the grays. I only saw twenty or so of the others, but I didn’t go to their side of the border. Razor wire and sturdy fencing in both directions from the road made passing over problematic other than at the road barricade.”
“Good. Get some rest, tomorrow you’ll scout numbers again before we attack.”
“As you will,” Numo said officially before disappearing into the trees.
“Where’s he going?” Coragg asked. “He doesn’t want some beef?”
“Who knows? Probably saw something he wants to explore, or steal.”
They spent an hour setting up their camp, building banked firepits that would shield their light from onlookers who weren’t up on the mountain sides. There wasn’t anything to do about that, although this land seemed sparsely inhabited.
“We’re close, Coragg. Another five or six days.”
“You’re bold to travel the roads. Twice we’ve nearly been seen by the humans riding in their machines.”
“I wouldn’t mind having one of those, would you?”
“One of those infernal devices?” Coragg scoffed. “No thanks. They even smell gnomish as they pass.”
Behind them one of the soldiers skilled at butchering animals prepared the cow they’d absconded with earlier in the day. The farmer they took it from would probably attribute the loss to predation.
The butcher handed out multi-pound chunks to each fire circle, judging how far the meat would go. There were probably hundreds of pounds, certainly enough to feed the company tonight and maybe in the morning as well.
After the meal he talked about life back in Iron Mountain with Coragg, the other three soldiers sharing their fire listened intently. Since Irsu had taken over they’d eaten better and avoided conflict when they could. Most were grateful for that, they wanted to get home alive, not die heroes.
Still, in the morning they’d get enough wood and put it on the carts, so they could burn the bodies from tomorrow’s battle. Dwarven only, since the human bodies seemed to want to get back up not too long after they were killed, and that would delay anyone who might be following Iron Company.
