" 'Tis time to cut and run," Ariel announced. "The Maggots are coming thick and fast from back there."
"We should be getting backup soon. We'd better dig in. Issue rations all round," said Fitz. "Radio. Let's get the Colonel and find out why they aren't here yet."
Minutes later Fitz knew fear. "We've taken their gun pod. Three fieldpieces, sir. But we need reinforcements if we're to hold them."
The colonel paused. "Er. I consulted General Blucher, and he refused to countenance moving troops until morning."
"Morning will be too late, Colonel," snapped Fitz. "The Magh' are just about solid out there. They want to retake their guns and they're not counting costs. If you want these guns, if you want this trench, if you want my men to survive, I need reinforcements now."
"Well, I'm sorry, Captain Fitzhugh," said the colonel huffily. "but there is nothing I can do, now."
"Useless asshole."
There was a splutter of outrage from the radio. But Fitz was too busy to care.
"If we try to pull back now, we'll be exposed to the faster Magh'. So. We'll need a rear guard."
"What about these guns, sir?" asked the surviving lieutenant.
"We'll do our best to destroy them, Lieutenant Cavanagh. You've done well today. You'll be leading the retreat back to trench two. We'll hold them as long as we can here. It'll be over to you to hold them there. Bring up as many men as possible from trench three. Sergeant. Drawing straws time. I want one man in three staying here."
The young lieutenant was pale. "With respect, sir. I'll stay here. You lead them back. You're worth a lot more than I am to the troops. I'm going to try and turn these guns on them."
A good kid, thought Fitz. I wonder why he got sent to "Fort Despair?" Probably too good, just as the other one had been too obnoxious. In the midst of mediocrity and incompetence, "good" was unpopular. He shook his head. "Lieutenant, thank you. But what I'm asking you to do is no lesser task. It's a tough one. You must keep the retreat orderly, keep it disciplined or it'll turn into a rout, and then we're lost. If the troops are panicked and half-dead with exhaustion when they get to trench two, they won't hold that. And I'm relying on you to do that, rather, because the rats will stay for me. They won't for you. And without them we have no rear guard. But it is a good idea about the guns. Now, move out. Go. Give us a flare when you have less than fifty yards to go."
The lieutenant saluted crisply. "Damn that lily-livered colonel and his stupid general to hell, sir. I'll hold that trench, come hell or high water." He turned. "Sergeant. Move them out in an orderly fashion. The first man to run or panic had better keep running because he'd be better off if the Maggots killed him than if I caught him." His voice cracked slightly. But the troops obeyed him, as if he were a veteran.
Three minutes later the old front line was populated by a skeleton crew of men and rats. And Fitz was wrestling with the guns. SmallMac and Ewen were assisting. Fitz's heart had fallen still lower when he'd seen the faces of his old squad mates. But . . . the lots had been drawn. Someone had to get the short straws. Some of those who retreated had families too. But he wished like hell he could have sent SmallMac back too.
Ewen, a man who could lift half an ox carcass back when he'd been a meat packer, strained with Fitz to turn barrels. They could tilt the entire structure but not turn it. There were no wheels, just flat metal platforms.
SmallMac nearly knocked them both flying, as the barrel began to rotate under its own steam. "What the hell are you fiddling with, Mac!"
The ex-horse-breaker gave a wry grin. "There must be electronic locks holding them, Fitz. Damned if I'm going to call you 'Captain' when we're all going to die. This disc here looked likely, and we need to learn to work them before the Maggots arrive."
"Hell's teeth. You're right and I'm an idiot. Each of you to a gun. Fiddle. I just hope we don't shoot at our own men or blow these things up."
Three minutes later they had rotation and elevation licked. They had reloading done too. Firing . . . well it was only when Fitz thought of the flat-scorpion shape of the gunners that Ariel discovered where the firing lever was. Tailgunners! Still, the shots they managed to direct toward the enemy were probably ineffectual, especially as the guns could not be elevated beyond a certain point.
"Bugger this for a joke!" yelled Ewen as the first Magh' came over the top. He cranked the gun barrel down furiously. Instead of using it as the howitzer it was designed as, he directed the barrel straight at the oncoming mass. It couldn't be elevated enough, but it could be depressed.
For the next few moments it rained slowshielded Maggots and earth.
"Yes!" The other two also hauled their gun barrels down.
The Maggot shells couldn't actually blow the enemy apart, not inside slowshields. But their weapons had been intended to fling a shell at high trajectory for a few miles. At this close a range it could physically remove anything. Blow them away if not apart. And the flying debris hardened slowshields and stopped the Magh' advance.
"Gather around the guns!" yelled Fitz. As long as they could keep them off the guns, as long as the shells lasted, they could hold back the bulk of the Maggot tide. With more luck than judgement he managed a skimming, plowing shot along the ground nearly parallel to the trench. Not only did it blow away the bulk of the wave of Magh' who had been pressing forward, but it also hardened the slowshields behind them. "Retreat on the guns," he yelled again, desperately reloading, knowing that his lucky shot had bought them the time to do so. Ariel bit down on something and a claw cut Fitz's face. He was in pain, but this was no time to stop and think about it. He must fire again! The rear guard surged back toward the gun pod, fighting their way through the few Maggots who had reached the trench. Soon, he had a reloader. And as the humans and rats fended off close attackers, the curiously silent alien howitzers were used in the fashion of the siege cannon of the fourteenth century.
Despite this, the Magh' seemed endless. Even the light of a flare behind them was of no help. There was no retreat now. The Magh' had surrounded them. And the shells were getting few.
Fitz saw Ewen abandon his gun and attempt to wade though the swirl of Magh' fighter bodies, using his huge strength to pick them up and fling them away . . . And then he went down under the tide. The rat that had been on his shoulder ran across Magh' backs. It nearly made it, too. SmallMac also was plainly out of shells—and defenders. There were still some fifteen men and an equal number of rats around Fitz's gun.
And he had three more shells.
SmallMac must have seen the rat nearly make it running across Magh' backs. He leapt.
Only the man didn't try to run on their backs. He leapt onto the biggest long-legged runner there. Astride it. Out of reach of claws and stingers.
The horse-breaker used all the skills at his disposal to cling to something that hadn't ever been ridden. Stayed on and somehow propelled his alien steed though the press. And then flung himself at the raised tier at the far end of the gun platform.
A claw snagged his foot. For a moment it looked as if he'd be pulled down. Then a rat bit through the clawjoint. Screaming . . . grabbing anything for handholds . . . SmallMac was up.
And so were they. Whatever control SmallMac had grabbed on the tier was raising the entire platform. Men and rats scrambled, snatched for purchase as the whole platform wobbled gently up into the sky, the rotors underneath lifting, clanging into suddenly hardening slowshields, faltering, lifting again. Maggots leapt frantically after them. Fitz saw Ariel go down under one. He lunged at it, pulling it aside.
Its razor-edged claw cut into his thigh and up toward his belly . . . before something stopped it.
Ariel.
The hovercraft-mounted gun was genteelly blundering deeper into enemy territory. As he lay there bleeding, Fitz saw SmallMac, his face white with pain, sticking his bangstick into holes plainly intended for a claw. And, although it nearly had them off, turning the thing in a wobbling circle toward the HAR-held lines.
With Fitz holding on to Ariel, and she holding on to him, consciousness faded as the handful of rear guards headed home, in the dawn.
9
His first memory of the hospital was clouded with anesthetics and pain. But after a couple of weeks, that too cleared. On the first day that he actually knew just who he was, a Vat-visitor with glasses in a dressing gown and on crutches came to see him.
"SmallMac!"
"Captain." The bespectacled man managed a salute, despite the crutches.
"I thought you weren't going to call me that anymore."
"That was when we were going to die," said Lance Corporal McTavish with a grin. "And that appears to have been delayed."
"And the rest? Ariel?" There was a lump in his throat. He felt sick and weak and like crying.
SmallMac pulled a face. "Injured. Spanoletti came through it all with no worse than a few cuts. She's been to see all the rats. Apparently Ariel looks like she'd been through a fight with a grizzly. She'll live, though. We lost one of the rats to injuries. Pitti-Sing, I think. The rest of us . . . thirty-one men and rats in all . . . made it. Some of them won't fight again. We had our doubts about you making it though, Captain. You owe your life to Ariel and some pretty sharp medics."
"And to your riding and flying skills."
"For a minute I almost thought we had cavalry," said SmallMac, wryly. "But I won't be riding again for a while. I've lost the foot. On the plus side I won't be marching again either."
"Hell. I'm sorry. But . . . that's your livelihood."
SmallMac shrugged. "I was getting too old for the falls anyway. And, well, I was nearly dead, like poor bloody Ewen. I hear I'm due for a desk posting here in GBS city. I'll be able to sleep out with my family! There's many a poor bastard who would cut their own foot off for that."
After that came Fitz's father. Other survivors. Parachute Major Van Klomp.
And then Ariel came to visit him. Rats of course were strictly not allowed in the hospital.
Fitz looked at her. Ariel's rich fur was bandaged. So was one paw. The once beautiful little creature looked bedraggled. Her delicate ears were tattered.
But worst of all was the bandaged stump of a tail.
"I've just come to say good-bye," she said, in a voice that was unaccustomedly subdued.
"Have you been posted back to what's left of our unit?"
"No." She twitched her tail stump. "I . . . methinks . . . I'll . . . I just wanted to see you a last time. To be sure you were still alive."
Fitz knew this rat. He'd long since stopped regarding her as anything other than another person. The crucible of the front line was far too hot for the metals in it not to meld. He'd learned to understand some of the things she left unspoken. Ariel was going to die. Rats did without most things except food and sex. Losing her tail was like a man losing his balls, but a lot more public.
"I despair of ever winning affection." Voice synthesizers were not designed to carry the loss. But Fitz understood anyway. Ariel . . . Ariel had been accustomed to being the very best. To being sought after. To knowing herself as desirable. Well. He knew partly how it felt. The left side of his face was never going to be anything but a mask to frighten children. The wounds on his thigh and lower abdomen had been repaired. But he couldn't bet anyone his left ball anymore.
"I still love you, Ariel. I love you for what you are, not for what you look like. I don't have a tail myself."
The rat snuffled. "I always thought 'twas a sad lack in you."
She scrambled up the bedclothes, and gave his throat a slight nip. Rats didn't kiss but that as a gesture of trust and affection was as close as it came—a sort of "I could rip your jugular out but I won't."
"Take care," she snuffled, and got up to leave.
"Where are you going?"
"Away."
"Stay. Please stay," he begged, urgently.
She paused. "Why?"
"Because I need you. Well, because I still love you. And tails have never been very important to me. Um. And because I have chocolate for you. We humans never offer chocolate to those we don't love."
"Never?"
He knew the prescribed rat-reply. "Well, hardly ever."
She even summoned up a ratly look of acquisitiveness. "Chocolate Cointreau straws? I wouldn't stay for less. Someone who loved me would give me those."
"Hmph. Cupboard love," he said loftily, knowing he'd won at least a reprieve, especially as he had some of the desired item.
She took it. To his surprise she offered him a bite. It was the most unratly gesture he'd ever seen her make. Then, with her sticky chocolate, she burrowed under the bedclothes. "Well. I can't love your tail. I still think 'tis a sad lack in you. I mean size does count, and a girl could get some respect with a boyfriend like you, if you had a tail in proportion."
* * *
When Fitz opened his eyes again, there was a four-star general, and several other staff officers, looking at him. He hoped that the general was not aware of the beady eyes peering at him from under the blanket. There were also two people who bore the unmistakable mark of "press" even if one hadn't borne a shoulder-cam as well. The other one grimaced. "Better focus on the right side of his face. He's not a pretty sight on this side. Right, General, you're on. Roll it, Paul."
Fitz discovered that he was now a major. The bits of gold in his hand seemed a very poor recompense for his troops' lives. "And for service over and above the call of duty in the capture of the first intact Magh' fieldpiece: The George Bernard Shaw Cross, first class."
"Thank you, sir. But I believe the credit should go to the men and rats in my unit, sir. A number of them lost their lives in this action, and I'd like them to get the recognition for their courage. And we captured an entire pod of Magh' guns. We'd have held them if Colonel Brown had sent us the reinforcements we were promised. Loss of life and loss of those fieldpieces is due to his and General Bulcher's decisions not to back us up." Fitz hoped this was going out live.
The general was only momentarily discomfited. "General Bulcher was unfortunately misinformed by the colonel. The matter is under investigation. But you and the men under your command did very well under the circumstances. A rather substantial number of medals are being awarded. Lieutenant Cavanagh will command one of the most decorated units on the front." He cleared his throat. "I believe you may be invalided out of active frontline duty, Major. You're a valuable soldier. Too valuable to waste on just any desk job. Which is why I have ordered your transfer to the Military Intelligence Corps. You'll be replacing Major Dunsay."
"No thank you, sir. I'd like to try and get fit, and return to my unit."
The general looked as if he'd just bitten into a slug in his salad. He made a quick recovery. "Intelligence is where you can really make a contribution to the war effort, young man. However, I am open to other requests."
"Very well, sir. I'd like to add a severely injured rat to my staff. We need someone who understand rats, sir. They're valuable military assets. It's due to them and the courage of my troops that I owe what success we had. It is my feeling that the rats should be paid. They'd be much better motivated then."
The general blinked. "Yes. Well. We shall have to see what can be done. The bats that we are about to introduce will make a great deal of difference too, eh."
A little later when the general and his entourage had left, Ariel emerged. "Why did you agree?" she asked, helping herself to a grape.
Fitz shrugged. It was a painful experience. "Because . . . God knows if either of us will ever be fit to fight again. And, well, the Maggots always attacked where we were weakest. They obviously have good intelligence. We also need it. And maybe at Military Headquarters I can get something done about idiots like Colonel Brown and General Bulcher. Maybe we can make the system work."
Ariel chuckled. " 'Tis the HAR army we speak of, Fitz. Methinks it will be 'once more into their breeches' and bite their bollocks."
Fitz grinned. It hurt his face. "We'll try it my way first,
okay?" He looked at the order that the general had left behind.
It was signed: H. Cartup-Kreutzler.
He stared at the signature for a long time. He began to understand just why he'd been posted to "Fort Despair." Or why the orders for relief had been delayed. And just what his posting to "Intelligence" might be. It wouldn't stop him. But it would make for interesting times, ahead.
Ariel shrugged in her turn when he pointed it out. "Methinks we'll end up doing things in my way after all. 'Tis the only way the army works."
A few minutes later, they had another visitor. An elderly woman, this was, wearing what looked like a laboratory coat. She was holding an antique-looking item in her hands. A brass object of some sort. At first, Fitz though it was an oddly shaped teakettle, until he realized it was an oil lamp.