Col Buchanan - Stands a Shadow

Boldly, Ash walked up to the corpse of an Acolyte and pulled free the white cloak and then the mask. He glimpsed a surgeon at work within the brightly lit tent, the man sawing through a limb as his patient gabbled in a delirium.

Ash moved on, shadowing the Matriarch as she headed towards the clash of arms.

They were taking heavy losses now. Bahn himself had been wounded by an arrow that had gone through the flesh of his lower arm, nicking his tendons, he thought, for he could no longer clench his left hand fully. It hurt like fire, and as he kept pace with General Creed he gritted his teeth and bore it silently while a medico hastily treated the injury.

All was not lost, for they were moving again. Halahan’s Grey-jackets on the ridge seemed to be lobbing mortar shells onto the imperial lines directly before their formation, thinning them enough to allow the forward chartassa to push through. Creed’s mood had lifted at this development, as though his prayers to they sky had been answered. The general eyed the fighting chartassa before him, willing them onwards.

‘Keep your arm still!’ the medico hollered at Bahn as she cleaned out his wound with a flask of alcohol.

Through the pain of it, he looked down at the young woman in the black leathers of the Specials, noticing her properly for the time. She was no more than a girl, he saw, and pretty too, in a thin, fragile sort of way. Her tongue poked out from the corner of her mouth as she worked. Her honey-coloured hair was smeared over her head in a flattened mess.

For a moment he didn’t recognize her. Not here. Not in this place.

‘Curl?’ he croaked in surprise. ‘Is that you, girl?’

Her eyes met his for a moment before they returned to her task. ‘I wondered if you’d recognize me,’ she panted.

‘What are you doing here, for Fool’s sake?’

‘Fixing your arm, so you don’t bleed to death.’

‘Are you all right?’

She paused to look up at him. ‘No,’ she said with a shake of her head, and tugged a bandage from her bag. ‘Are you?’

She was white with fear, he saw, and her eyes held a haunted look to them, as though she had witnessed things she’d vowed never to see again.

He recalled that she was a Lagosian, and that she’d survived all the crimes the Mannians had perpetrated against her people. In that moment, and with the greatest of intensity, Bahn thought: These bastard Mannians… if there is any justice in this world at all, we will somehow win this fight, and crush this army, and hang their Holy Matriarch by her stiff neck.

A body in the way, clearly dead. They both stepped over it as they walked onwards. Curl pressed a wad of bandage against his wound. ‘Hold that a moment,’ she told him, and searched through her bag again. She pulled out another bandage, began to wrap it around his arm. ‘You can let go of it now.’

Bahn reached for his flask of water. He pulled the cork out with his teeth and held it in the same hand as the flask and took a quick drink of the cool water. He was losing track of time here. How long had they been fighting now?

‘Drink?’ he asked Curl.

She opened her mouth and let him pour a little into it. When she finished tying the knot in his bandage, she took the cork from his hand and closed the flask and hung it across her shoulder from its strap. ‘I need it more than you,’ she told him. ‘For the wounded.’

He missed his chance to reply. Creed had spotted something up ahead, and was striding forwards to peer through the bristling spikes of the forward chartassa.

Bahn followed his gaze, barely believing what he saw. The Matriarch’s standard was flying directly ahead of them. Sasheen had joined the battle.

Sweet Dao, we might still reach her yet.

With the mortar shells continuing to fall down before them, shattering the enemy lines in confusion, Bahn experienced a momentary spike of hope.

If only Halahan can hold on to that ridge.

‘Colonel Halahan!’

‘I see it, Staff Sergeant.’

The Mannians were trying to attack from the other side of the ridge, the southern side away from the battle. He’d been expecting that for some time. A dozen Greyjackets were positioned there, crouched behind a low wall of snow and whatever dirt they’d been able to scrape up from the ground. They aimed their rifles and fired down on the enemy troops that scrabbled up the slope towards them.

A hail of rifle shots crackled back in reply. A Greyjacket tumbled backwards. The defenders managed another volley, and then they were drawing their shortswords to meet the attack.

The rest of the ridge was a similar scene of dispute, every flank hard pressed.

On the east flank, across the waist of the ridge, the surviving Greyjackets stood in two ranks and chopped and shoved against seemingly endless numbers of Ghazni regulars. They were exhausted, and being forced back step by step.

On the northern side, the majority of Greyjackets fought hand-to-hand against more infantry climbing the slope. Behind them, in the centre of the ridge, the mortar crews maintained their fire as fast as they could, though their supply of shells was starting to run low.

Watch it.

A Mannian broke through from the southern side where the newest attack had been launched. Colonel Halahan took the man in the chest with a shot from his pistol. He reloaded the piece as he studied the buckling lines, looking for areas of stress and weakness, judging tensions, breaking points, knots of strength, as an artisan might inspect the materials of his craft.

The lines were too damned thin. Two more Imperials broke through from the south. The colonel fired his pistol, yanked out another with his other hand, cocked it and fired that too. They were going to break at any moment, and after that the men across the waist would fold, and the rest of them would be finished.

‘Staff Sergeant Jay! Five men from the mortars to support the waist. Another five to the south.’

It was all he could do; if he relieved the mortar crews of any more men, their effect on the Mannian lines would be minimal.

Halahan leaned on his good leg as he drew life back into his pipe. He wondered if it was the last time he would experience the simple pleasure of a smoke. He hoped not, for the taste of it was bitter in his mouth just then.

Strange how his own mood could do that.

Halahan grunted. It seemed he was fated never to defeat these people.

Sergeant Jay was shouting something from the northern side of the ridge. Halahan turned and saw Imperials breaking through all along the line. The staff sergeant was laying into them left and right with his curved Nathalese tulwar as he yelled back over his shoulder. Halahan took aim and fired, sending an imperial beside the sergeant spinning away. He swung around in instinct, drawing another pistol and cocking it as he twisted, pointed it over his shoulder at a soldier rushing at him with a raised sword. Halahan pulled the trigger.

The firing arm snapped down, but nothing happened.

Halahan was too old to gape at such a surprise. He swerved a wild slash of the sword and punched the barrel of the gun into the man’s throat. His eyes saw him go down, but his mind was already taking in the line to the south.

It was collapsing too.

‘Hold tight!’ he roared around the stem of his pipe, fighting an urge to rush to the aid of his men. He discharged his fifth pistol into a soldier attacking the remaining mortar crews in the centre. He tossed it aside and drew out his last gun.

This is it, then, he thought grimly to himself. At least we took the fight to the bastards for once.

‘Colonel!’

Staff Sergeant Jay stood panting in exhaustion on the northern flank. All of the Greyjackets there were panting hard, steam rising off their bodies, swords dripping, looking down the slope. Somehow they’d fought off the attack.