Gavin Lyall - All Honourable Men

“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.