Then the bugle calls changed, and she recognized the note of recall. Over and over it sounded, but she could neither see nor hear any diminution in the savage conflict. The earth continued to throw up flame and burning bodies, whose hideous screams warred with the bellowing of the guns and the exploding mines. It was impossible to imagine anyone emerging alive from that inferno, and she stood by her nervous horse in a kind of numbed trance of horror, wondering why men would do this, would engage in such wholesale slaughter just to take over an insignificant heap of bricks and mortar.
But coherent reasoning wasn't possible, and her thoughts and emotions finally centered on the name of Julian St. Simon, repeating itself over and over again in her head like the refrain of a song that wouldn't be banished. He became the focus of the conflagration, the only reality her mind could grasp, but she couldn't manage to speculate where he was, whether he was alive, or whether he was lying somewhere under a heap of bodies, screaming in his agony, suffocating in the blood of others, or whether he was now only a cold, pale lump of bleeding clay.
It was half past eleven, an hour and a half after the murderous mayhem had begun, when an officer galloped ventre a terre through the group, his horse foam flecked around the bit, his flanks lathered.
Wellington turned as the horse came to a heaving, panting halt beside him. The exchange was short, but it was clear to the bystanders that something had changed.
“Gentlemen, General Picton's taken the castle.”
Lord March turned from the duke's side to make the announcement. “He's withdrawn troops from the trenches to enable him to maintain his position. We should have the city secured shortly.”
So they were in… or a toehold, at least. Tamsyn mounted her horse amid the murmured jubilation and rode slowly down toward the city walls. They were in, but at what horrendous cost. The bodies were piled high, the screams and groans as loud as ever. For the wounded and dying, Picton's success came too late. She rode along the walls, heedless of the firing that still continued along the ramparts. The ladders, warm and slippery with blood, still stood against the breaches, littered with severed limbs and tangled corpses.
Had Julian St. Simon survived? It seemed impossible to imagine anyone still living. But even as she thought this, a great cry of triumph went up from within the city walls, and a bugle sounded an exuberant note of victory. The city of Badajos had finally fallen to the besiegers.
Cesar threw up his head and pawed the earth frantically at the smell of blood and this new sound. Tamsyn steadied him and he stood still, obedient to his Mameluke training, but he was quivering with fright, nostrils flared, lips drawn back from the bit.
“All right,” she said softly. “Let's get out of here.”
She turned him away from the city, intending to leave him in Elvas and return on foot, but she hadn't gone more than a few yards when a man in the green tunic of a rifleman hailed her.
Tamsyn drew rein as the man, pouring blood from a shattered jaw, stumbled over to her. He was trying to hold his jaw together with one hand, while he gestured frantically into the darkness behind him.
Tamsyn dismounted swiftly, tearing off the bandanna she wore around her neck. She was used to wounded men and didn't flinch from offering what assistance she could. The fact that she swooned dead away at the sight of her own blood was a mortifying secret that only Gabriel knew.
She bound up the man's jaw with deft, sensitive fingers. “Mount my horse and I'll take you to the rear.”
The rifleman shook his head, gesturing again behind him, his eyes as eloquent as his mouth was dumb. She stepped into the darkness and almost tripped over a man groaning in the wet mud. Blood pumped from a gaping wound in his thigh, and he was using both hands to hold the severed flesh together as if it would stanch the flow.
“Me mate,” he whispered. “Get 'im to the 'ospital. 'E's got a chance. I'm done fer.”
“He's not going to leave you,” she said softly, bending over him. “I'll use your belt as a tourniquet, and if you can get onto Cesar, we'll have you with the surgeons in no time.”
She worked fast, aware even as she did so that the man's chances of survival were slim. His face was already assuming the ashen cast of a man who looked upon the grave. But his friend wouldn't leave him, and she understood the power of such loyalties.
With almost superhuman strength his friend lifted him into his arms and somehow onto Cesar's back.
“Mount behind him so you can hold him steady,” Tamsyn instructed, stroking Cesar's damp neck.
The rifleman hauled himself up into the high-backed, cushioned saddle. The expression in his eyes said clearly that he didn't much relish his position atop this restless white steed, but he took a firm hold of his comrade as Tamsyn began to lead the horse toward the rear.
The way was now thronged with limbers and drays bringing the wounded off the field now that the enfilading fire from the ramparts had ceased. People glanced curiously at the small figure, androgynous in the darkness, trudging along beside the magnificent beast and its wounded riders, but everyone was too occupied to do more than stare in passing.
There was chaos at the hospital tents, where torches swung from poles casting flickering light on the bloody work below. Tamsyn grabbed the sleeve of a passing orderly.
“I've two wounded men here. Can you take them?” He stared at her, distracted, for a minute, then said, “Put 'em down there. We'll get to 'em when we can.”
“One of them needs immediate attention,” Tamsyn insisted, her eyes flashing. “I didn't bring him off the field for him to die in the mud within reach of a surgeon.”
“What's going on here?” A man in the blood streaked apron of a surgeon paused beside them as he was hurrying along the stretchers, giving orders for the disposition of their occupants.
“I've two men in need of immediate attention,” Tamsyn declared. “And this dolt told me to leave them to die in the mud.”
The surgeon blinked and stared in astonishment.
“And just who might you be?”
“The commander in chief knows who l am,” she said smartly. “And I'm a friend-a close friend-of Colonel, Lord St. Simon of the Sixth. And while I'm bandying words with this village idiot, other men are dying out there because I'm not bringing them in!” She gestured to the hapless orderly with an expression of acute disgust and snapped, “Help them down.”
The surgeon examined the two men as they came off Cesar. “One walking wounded,” he pronounced. “Take him to the second tent.”
The rifleman with the bandaged jaw shook his head, pain flaring in his eyes and indicated his comrade with the same urgency he'd shown Tamsyn before.
“All right, I'll see to him,” the surgeon said with a hint of impatience. “I can't promise much, but that leg will have to come off… Hey, you there, bring that stretcher.” He hailed two orderlies, running past at the double.
They stopped and came over, lifting the wounded man onto the stretcher. Only when he saw his friend carried inside to the faint hope to be found in the butchery of the tents did the other rifleman go off with the orderly, sticking his hand out to Tamsyn in mute gratitude before he did so.
“Looks like we have work to do, Cesar,” Tamsyn said swinging into the saddle. “I know you'll hate it, but we can't stand around twiddling our thumbs.”