‘MacDonald!’
‘He’s picked the same stand as my boy.’
Sean did not understand for a moment. ‘He’s in among the oak trunks, he’s sitting right on top of Mark. They picked the same stand.’
The vicious stinging discharge of the Mauser was so close, so high and sharp, that for a few seconds afterwards, Mark’s ear-drums buzzed with the mosquito hum of auditory memory.
For seconds he was stunned, frozen with the shock of it. The German sniper was somewhere within twenty feet of where he lay. By some freak of coincidence, he had chosen the same point on the slope as Mark. No, it was no freak of coincidence. With the hunter’s eye for ground, both men had selected the ideal position for their common purpose – to deliver swift death from hiding. The pendulum of Mark’s fortune had swung to the other end of its arc.
Mark had not moved in the seconds since the Mauser shot, but every sense was heightened by the adrenalin that sang through his veins and his heart beat with a force that seemed to reverberate against the cage of his ribs.
The German was on his left, higher up the slope, slightly behind his shoulder. The left was his unprotected side, away from the tangled oak roots.
He trained his eyes around, without moving his head, and in the periphery of his vision saw another of the fallen oak trunks close by. He did not move for another full minute, watching for the flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. There was nothing, and the silence was awesome and oppressive — until a Spandau fired a shot burst, a mile or more away down the line.
Mark began to turn his head towards the left, as slowly as a chameleon stalking a fly. Gradually the distortion of peripheral vision cleared, and he could sweep the whole of the slope above him.
The nearest oak trunk had been savaged with shrapnel, all the bark was torn away and raw chunks of timber ripped from it. It had fallen across a hollow in the earth, forming a bridge; and although the snow had piled up against it, there was a narrow gap between earth and oak. The gap was perhaps three inches wide at the centre, and Mark could see reflected light from the snow beyond.
At that moment, a minute blur of movement snapped his eyes in his skull. It was a fleeting movement of a mere sixteenth of an inch, but it riveted Mark’s attention. He started for fully five seconds, before he realized what he was seeing.
Beyond the screening end of the oak trunk, the very tip of a Mauser barrel protruded. It had been bound with burlap to break the stark outline and to prevent reflection of light off metal – but the cruel little mouth of the muzzle was uncovered.
The German was lying behind the oak log, like Mark his right flank protected, facing half way from Mark – and less than twenty feet separated them.
Mark watched the tip of the Mauser barrel for ten minutes more, and it did not move again. The German had stillness and patience. Once he had reloaded, he had frozen again into that rigour of watchfulness.
‘He’s so good that there is no way I can clear the shot,’ Mark thought. ‘If I move an inch, he’ll hear me, and he’ll be fast. Very fast.’ .
To get a clear shot, Mark would have to move back twenty feet or more, and then he would be looking directly into the muzzle of the Mauser; a head-on shot, with the German alerted by his movements. Mark knew he could not afford to give away that much advantage, not against an adversary of this calibre.
The long still minutes crawled by without any break in tension. Mark had the illusion that every nerve and sinew of his body was quivering visibly, but in reality the only movement was in the glove of his right hand. The fingers moved steadily in a kneading motion, keeping supple and warm, and the eyes moved in Mark’s skull, swivelling slowly back and forth across the battered trunk of the oak, blinking regularly to clear the tears that tension and the icy air induced.
‘What the hell is happening up there?’ Fergus MacDonald fretted nervously, peering into the lens of the periscope that allowed the observer to keep well down below the sand-bagged parapet.
‘The boy is pinned down.’ General Sean Courtney did not remove his own eyes from the other periscope, but swung it slightly, sweeping back and forth across the slope. ‘Try the Hun with Cuthbert again.’
‘I don’t think he’ll fall for it again,’ Fergus began to protest immediately, looking up with those close-set eyes, rimmed with pink now by the cold and the strain of waiting.
‘That’s an order, Sergeant.’ Sean Courtney’s broad forehead wrinkled and the dark brows drew sharply together, his voice growled like an old lion and the dark-blue eyes snapped. The power and presence of the man in this mood awed even Fergus MacDonald.
‘Very well, sir,’ he muttered sulkily, and went to where the dummy was propped against the firing step.
The lash of the Mauser cracked again, and at the shock Mark Anders’ eyelids blinked twice very quickly and then flared wide open. The golden brown eyes stared fixedly up the slope, intent as those of the hunting peregrine.
The instant after the shot, he heard the rattle of the Mauser bolt being drawn back and then thrust forward to reload, and again the tip of the hessian-wrapped muzzle stirred slightly – but then Mark’s eyes flicked sideways.
There had been another movement, so fine that it might have gone unnoticed by eyes less keen. The movement had been a mere breath, and it had been in the narrow three-inch gap between the oak trunk and the snow-coated earth. Just that one brief stir and then stillness once more.
Mark stared into the gap for long seconds, and saw nothing. Merely shadow and undefined shape, trickily reflected light from the snow beyond. Then suddenly, he was seeing something else.
It was the texture of cloth, a thin sliver of it in the narrow gap, then his eyes picked up the stitched seam in the grey cloth, bulging slightly over the living flesh beneath.
There was some small portion of the German’s body showing through the gap. He was lying close up on the far side of the log, and his head was pointed in the direction from which the muzzle of the Mauser projected.
Carefully Mark proportioned the man’s body in his imagination. Using the rifle muzzle as his only reference point, he placed the man’s head and shoulders, his trunk and his hips —
‘Yes, his hips,’ Mark thought. ‘That is his hip or upper thigh—’ and then there was a change in the light. The sun found a weak spot in the cloud cover overhead and the light brightened briefly.
In the better light, Mark made out a small portion of a German service belt, with the empty loop which should have held a bayonet. It confirmed his guess. Now he knew that the slight bulge in the field grey material was caused by the head of the femur where it fitted into the cup of the pelvic girdle.
‘Through both hips,’ Mark thought coldly. ‘It’s a pinning shot, and then there is the femoral artery—’ Carefully he began to work the glove off his right hand.
He must roll on his side, and swing the long barrel of the P.14 through an arc of over ninety degrees, without making the least sound.
‘Please, God,’ Mark asked silently, and began to make the move. Achingly slowly, the barrel of his rifle swung and, at the same time, he began to transfer his weight on to his other elbow.
It seemed to be a complete round of eternity before the P.14 pointed into the narrow gap below the oak trunk, and Mark was doubled up, straining to keep the barrel bearing from this unnatural position. He could not slip the safety-catch from the rifle before firing; even that tiny metallic snick would alert the German.
He curled his finger on the trigger, and took up the pull, feeling the dead lock of the safety mechanism. He aimed carefully, his head twisted awkwardly, and he began to push the safety-catch across with his thumb, while holding pressure on the hair-trigger. It had to be done smoothly, so as not to pull his aim off the sliver of grey uniform cloth.
The thunder of the shot seemed to bounce against the low grey sky, and the bullet crashed through the tiny gap. Mark saw the impact of it, the rubbery shock of metal into flesh.
He heard the Ger
man cry out, a wild sound without form or meaning, and Mark swept back the bolt of the P.14, and reloaded with instinctive dexterity. The next shot blended with the echo of the first, coming so close together that they seemed as one. The jacketed bullet crashed through the gap, and this time Mark saw blood spurt, a bright scarlet spray of it that splattered the snow, turning swiftly to pale pink as it was diluted by the melt of its own heat.
Then there was nothing in the gap, the German had been thrown back by the impact – or had rolled aside. Only the smear of pink stained snow.
Mark waited, a fresh cartridge in the breach of the P.14, turned now to face the oak trunk, tensed for the next shot. If it had not been a decisive wound, the German would be coming after him, and he was ready for the snap shot.
He felt coldly unemotional, but vitally aware, his every fibre and nerve pitched to its utmost, his vision sharp and bright and his hearing enhanced.
The silence drew out for a while longer – and then there was a sound. For a moment Mark did not recognize it, then it came again. The sound of a man sobbing.
It came stronger now, more hysterical, gut-racking.
‘Ach, mein Gott – mein lieber Gott—’ the man’s voice, pitiful, broken. ‘Das Blut – ach Gott – das Blut.’
Suddenly the sound was tearing at Mark’s soul, cutting deeply into his being. His hand began to shake, and he felt the tremor of his lips once again. He tried to clench his jaw, but now his teeth were chattering wildly.
‘Stop it, oh God, stop it,’ he whispered, and the rifle fell from his hands. He pressed his mittened hands to his ears, trying to shut out the terrible sounds of the dying German.
‘Please, please,’ Mark pleaded aloud. ‘Stop it, please.’
And the German seemed to hear him.
‘Hilf mir, lieber Gott – das Blut!’ His voice was broken by the wet helpless sounds of his despair.
Suddenly Mark was crawling forward, through the snow, blindly up the slope.
‘I’m coming. It’s all right,’ he muttered. ‘Only stop it.’ He felt his senses swaying.
‘Ach mein lieber Gott, ach, meme Mutti …’
‘Oh Jesus – stop it. Stop it.’
Mark dragged himself around the end of the oak log.
The German was half propped against the log. With both hands he was trying vainly to stem the fountain of bright pulsing arterial blood that flowed through his fumbling fingers. The two bullets had shattered both his hips, and the snow was a sodden mushy porridge of blood.
He turned his face to Mark, and already it was drained of all colour, a shiny greyish white, slick with a fine sheen of perspiration. The German was young, as young as Mark, but swiftly approaching death had smoothed out his features so he seemed younger still. It was the face of a marble angel, smooth and white, and strangely beautiful, with blue eyes in pale blue sockets, a burst of pale golden curls escaping from under the helmet on the smooth pale forehead.
He opened his mouth and said something that Mark did not understand, and the teeth were white and even, beyond the full pale lips.
Then, slowly, the German sagged back against the log still staring at Mark. His hands fell away from his groin and the regular pulsing spurt of blood from the shattered flesh slowed and shrivelled away. The pale blue eyes lost their feverish lustre, and dulled, no longer focused.
Mark felt a thread pull in the fabric of his mind, like silk beginning to tear. It was almost a physical thing — he could hear it beginning to give way inside him.
His vision wavered, the dead German’s features seemed to run like melting wax, and then slowly reformed again. Mark felt the tear widening, the silken veil of his reason ripping through; beyond it was a dark and echoing chasm.
The dead German’s features went on reforming, until they hardened and Mark was looking into his own face as through a wavering distorted mirror. His own haunted face, the eyes golden brown and terrified, the mouth that was his mouth opened – and a cry came from it that was the despair and the agony of all the world.
The last shreds of Mark’s reason whipped away on the tempest of horror, and he heard himself screaming – and felt his feet running under him, but there was only blackness in his head, and his body was light and without weight, like the body of a bird in flight.
The German machine-gunner cocked the Maxim with a single savage wrench on the crank handle, and traversed sharply left, at the same time depressing the thick water-jacketed barrel of the weapon until it pointed directly down the slope below the sand-bagged emplacement towards the British lines.
The single wildly running figure was angling away towards the left, and the gunner pulled the wooden butt of the Maxim into his shoulder and fired a single short traversing burst, aiming a fraction low to counteract the natural tendency to shoot high at a downhill target.
Mark Anders hardly felt the mighty hammer strokes of the two bullets that smashed into his back.
Fergus MacDonald was crying. That surprised Sean, he had not expected it. The tears slid slowly from pink-rimmed eyes, and he struck them away with a single angry movement.
‘Permission to take out a patrol, sir?’ he asked, and the young Captain glanced uncertainly at Sean over the Sergeant’s shoulder.
Sean nodded slightly, a mere inclination of the head.
‘Do you think you can find volunteers?’ the Captain asked uncertainly, and the red-faced Sergeant answered gruffly.
‘There’ll be volunteers, sir, the lads have a feeling for what that youngster did.’
‘Very well, then — as soon as it’s dark.’
They found Mark a little after eight o’clock. He hung in the rusting barbed wire at the bottom of the slope, like a broken doll. Fergus MacDonald had to use a pair of wire-cutters to cut him down, and it took them nearly another hour to get him back to the British lines, dragging the stretcher between them through the mud and slushy snow.
‘He’s dead,’ said General Courtney, looking down at the white drained face on the stretcher in the lantern light.
‘No, he’s not,’ Fergus MacDonald denied it fiercely. ‘They don’t kill my boy that easy.’
The locomotive whistled shrilly as it clattered over the steelwork of the bridge. Silver steam flew high in a bright plume, and then smeared back on the wind.
Mark Anders leaned far out over the balcony of the single passenger carriage and the same wind ruffled the soft brown wing of his hair and a spattering of ash particles from the furnace stung his cheek, but he screwed up his eyes and looked down into the bed of the river as they roared across.
The water flowed down under the dipping reeds, and then met the pylons of the bridge and swirled sullenly, flowing green and strong and full down to the sea.
‘Water’s high for this time of year,’ Mark muttered aloud. ‘Grandpapa will be happy,’ and he felt his lips tugging up into the unaccustomed smile. He had smiled only infrequently during the past months.
The locomotive hurtled across the steel bridge, and threw itself at the far slope. Immediately, the beat of its engine changed and its speed bled away.
Mark stooped and hefted his old military pack, opened the gate of the balcony and clambered down on to the steel steps, hanging with one arm over the racing gravel embankment.
The train slowed rapidly as the incline steepened and he swung the pack off his shoulder and leaned far out to let it drop as gently as possible on to the gravel. It bounced once and went bounding away down the embankment, crashing into the shrubbery like a living animal in flight.
Then he swung down towards the racing earth himself and, judging his moment finely as the train crested the ridge, he let go to hit the embankment on flying feet, throwing his weight forward to ride the impact and feel the gravel sliding under him.
He stayed upright, and came to a halt as the rest of the train clattered past him, and the guard looked out sternly from the last van and called a reprimand.
‘Hey, that’s against the law.’
‘Send the
sheriff,’ Mark shouted back, and gave him an ironic salute as the locomotive picked up speed on the reverse slope with explosive grunts of power, the rhythm of the tracks rising sharply. The guard clenched a fist and Mark turned away.
The jolt had hurt his back again and he slipped a hand into his shirt and ran it around under his armpit as he started back along the tracks. He fingered the twin depressions below the shoulder blade and marvelled again at how close one of them was to the bony projections of the spine. The scar tissue had a silky, almost sensuous feel, but they had taken long months to close. Mark shuddered involuntarily as he remembered the rattle of the trolley that carried the dressings, and the impassive almost masculine face of the matron as she stuffed the long cotton plugs into the open mouths of the bullet wounds; he remembered also the slow tearing agony as the bloody dressing was pulled out again with the glittering steel forceps, and his own breathing sobbing in his ears and the matron’s voice, harsh and impersonal.
‘Oh, don’t be a baby!’
Every day – day after day, week after week – until the hot feverish delirium of the pneumonia that had attacked his bullet-damaged lung had seemed a blessed relief. How long had it been—from the V.A.D. Station in a French field with the muddy snow deeply rutted by the ambulances and the burial details digging graves beyond the tented hospital – to the general hospital near Brighton and the dark mists of pneumonia, the hospital ship home down the length of the Atlantic, baking in the airless tropics, the convalescent hospital with its pleasant lawns and gardens – how long? Fourteen months in all, months during which the war which men were already misnaming ‘Great’ had ended. Pain and delirium had clouded the passage of time, yet it seemed a whole lifetime.
He had lived one life in the killing and the carnage, in the pain and the suffering, and now he was reborn. The pain in his back abated swiftly. It was almost mended now, he thought happily, and he pushed away the dark and terrible memories and scrambled down the embankment to retrieve his pack.