A finger jabbed at his shoulder. ‘This order must be attended to at once, General Mitterick. At once!’ Felnigg nearly shrieked the last words, blasting Mitterick with spit. He could hardly believe the man’s obsession with proper form. Rules cost lives at times like these. What kind of an officer insisted on them in a headquarters while outside men were fighting? Dying? He ran a furious eye over the order:
Colonel Vallimir
General Mitterick’s troops are heavily engaged at the Old Bridge. Soon he will force the enemy to commit all his reserves. I wish you to begin your attack immediately, therefore, as discussed, and with every man at your disposal. Good luck.
Kroy
The First had been attached to Mitterick’s division and so, as their commander, it was his responsibility to clarify their instructions. Kroy’s order was lean and efficient as the marshal himself, as always, and the timing was apt. But Mitterick was damned if he was going to miss an opportunity to frustrate the marshal’s chinless stick-insect of a right hand man. If he wanted it by the book, he could have it by the book and bloody choke on it. So he spread the paper out on top of his map, snapped his fingers until someone thrust a pen into them, and added a scratchy line of his own at the bottom almost without considering the content.
Ensure that the enemy are fully engaged before crossing the stream, and in the meantime take care not to give away your position on their flank. My men and I are giving our all. I will not have them let down.
General Mitterick, Second Division
He took a route to his tent flap that enabled him to shoulder Felnigg rudely out of the way. ‘Where the hell is that boy from Vallimir’s regiment?’ he bellowed into the thinning drizzle. ‘What was his name? Leperlisper?’
‘Lederlingen, sir!’ A tall, pale, nervous-looking young man stepped forward, gave an uncertain salute and finished it off with an even more uncertain, ‘General Mitterick, sir.’ Mitterick would not have trusted him to convey his chamber pot safely to the stream, let alone to carry a vital order, but he supposed, as Bialoveld once said, ‘In battle one must often make the best of contrary conditions.’
‘Take this order to Colonel Vallimir at once. It’s from the lord marshal, d’you understand? Highest importance.’ And Mitterick pressed the folded, creased and now slightly ink-blotted paper into his limp hand.
Lederlingen stood there for a moment, staring at the order.
‘Well?’ snapped the general.
‘Er …’ He saluted again. ‘Sir, yes—’
‘Move!’ roared Mitterick in his face. ‘Move!’
Lederlingen backed away, still at absurd attention, then hurried through the boot-mashed mud and over to his horse.
By the time he’d struggled into his wet saddle, a thin, chinless officer in a heavily starched uniform had emerged from Mitterick’s tent and was hissing something incomprehensible at the general while a collection of guards and officers looked on, among them a large, sad-eyed man with virtually no neck who seemed vaguely familiar.
Lederlingen had no time to waste trying to place him. Finally, he had a job worth the doing. He turned his back on the unedifying spectacle of two of his Majesty’s most senior officers bitterly arguing with one another and spurred off to the west. He couldn’t honestly say he was sorry to be going. A headquarters appeared to be an even more frightening and disorientating place than the front line.
He rode through the tight-packed men before the tent, shouting for them to give him room, then through the looser mass making ready for another attack on the bridge, all the time with one hand on the reins and the order clutched in the other. He should have put it in his pocket, it was only making it harder for him to ride, but he was terrified of losing it. An order from Lord Marshal Kroy himself. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d been hoping for when he first signed up, bright-eyed, was it really only three months ago?
He’d cleared the main body of Mitterick’s division now, their clamour fading behind him. He upped the pace, bending low over his horse’s back, thumping down a patchy track away from the Old Bridge and towards the marshes. He’d have to leave his horse with the picket at the south bank, unfortunately, and cross the bogs on foot to take the order to Vallimir. If he didn’t put a foot wrong and end up taking the order down to Klige instead.
That thought gave him a shudder. His cousin had warned him not to enlist. Had told him wars were upside-down places where good men did worse than bad. Had told him wars were all about rich men’s ambitions and poor men’s graves, and there hadn’t been two honest fellows to strike a spark of decency in the whole company he served with. That officers were all arrogance, ignorance and incompetence. That soldiers were all cowards, braggarts, bullies or thieves. Lederlingen had supposed his cousin to be exaggerating for effect, but now had to admit that he seemed rather to have understated the case. Corporal Tunny, in particular, gave the strong impression of being coward, braggart, bully and thief all at once, as thorough a villain as Lederlingen had laid eyes upon in his life, but by some magic almost celebrated by the other men as a hero. All hail good old Corporal Tunny, the shabbiest cheat and shirker in the whole division!
The track had become a stony path, threading through a gully alongside a stream, or at any rate a wide ditch full of wet mud, trees heavy with red berries growing out over it. The place smelled of rot. It was impossible to ride at anything faster than a bumpy trot. Truly, the soldier’s life took a man to some beautiful and exotic locations.
Lederlingen heaved out a sigh. War was an upside-down place, all right, and he was rapidly coming around to his cousin’s opinion that it was no place for him at all. He would just have to keep his head low, stay out of trouble and follow Tunny’s advice never to volunteer for anything—
‘Ah!’ A wasp had stung his leg. Or that was what he thought at first, though the pain was considerably worse. When he looked down, there was an arrow in his thigh. He stared at it. A long, straight stick with grey and white flights. An arrow. He wondered if someone was playing a joke on him for a moment. A fake arrow. It hurt so much less than he’d ever thought it might. But there was blood soaking into his trousers. It was a real arrow.
Someone was shooting at him!
He dug his heels into his horse’s flanks and screamed. Now the arrow hurt. It hurt like a flaming brand rammed through his leg. His mount jerked forwards on the rocky path and he lost his grip on the reins, bounced once in the saddle, the hand clutching the order flailing at the air. Then he hit the ground, teeth rattling, head spinning, tumbling over and over.
He staggered up, sobbing at the pain in his leg, half-hopped about, trying to get his bearings. He managed to draw his sword. There were two men on the path behind. Northmen. One was walking towards him, purposeful, a knife in his hand. The other had a bow raised.
‘Help!’ shouted Lederlingen, but it was breathy, weak. He wasn’t sure when he last passed a Union soldier. Before he came into the gully, maybe, he’d seen some scouts, but that had been a while back. ‘Help—’