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Ca
His soaked clothes had gone cold again, and it was raining. He had taken the coil of smoking slow-match from the bombardier and tied it in its bag to his own belt. His fingers were stiff, clumsy; he had difficulty forcing the lighted fuse into the linstock, but forced himself to keep the rhythm, shouting orders in a voice that cracked like broken iron. Sponge. Vent. Load cartridge. Ram. Load wadding. Ram. Check vent. Powder. Fall back! And the hissing small flame at the end of the linstock coming down toward the touchhole, sure and graceful, with no sense at all that his own hand guided it.
That moment of suspended animation and the crash and buck of the gun. The first one left him deafened; he knew he was still shouting only because his throat hurt. He snatched a lump of damp wadding from the ground and hastily crammed some of it into his ears. It didn’t help much.
The rain grew momentarily heavier, cutting through the smoke and taste of blood with a freshness that eased his aching chest. The powder, was it covered? Yes, yes, the powder monkey was still at his post, a scorched-looking boy wide-eyed with fright but holding the canvas tight over the powder kegs, against the pull of the wind.
“Sponge piece!” he shouted, and heard the word muffled inside his skull as though it came from some vast distance, far away. “Load piece! Ram!”
He spared a moment to look before touching off the next shot—so far, he had been firing with not the slightest thought for attitude or effect—and forced himself not to blink as the gun went off with a jump like a live thing and the thunder that made you feel as though the ground shook, though in fact it was your own flesh shaking.
The shot soared high, came down a dozen yards short of a patch of French artillery—smoke sucked suddenly away by the wind, he saw the red of their uniforms and the belch of black smoke from the French gun’s barrel. The shot came wide of his own position and he made a hasty calculation of wind, already shouting orders to adjust the tru
Now he saw the milling blur of white, green, and blue, infantry massing behind the French ca
Dare he try for that interesting maneuver whereby a ca
“Five!” he shouted, an eye on the moving French line, “and one degree west!” The rammer at once jammed his rod in the barrel and the powder monkey ran to lend his strength, as the loaders jerked out the tru
“Load!”
The rain came and went in gusty squalls; it had stopped for a moment and he wiped his face again on his sleeve, feeling some liquid—water, sweat, blood—drip down inside his coat from his queued hair.
“Fire!”
By God, it worked, and a cheer went up from his crew as they saw the ball hop murderously across the field, knocking Frenchmen down like ninepins as it went.
“Again, again!” he bellowed, striking his fist on the breech. The sponger was sponging like a maniac, not waiting for the order, and the loaders were already passing the next cartridge to the mouth.
“Down!” he shouted, and fell flat along with the crew as a shot in reply thudded into the ground six feet away. They rose up again, yelling like demons and shaking their fists. The French gun crew was hopping up and down like fleas, gleeful at the effect of their shot. Grey was obliged to bellow and slap one man across the back with the flat of his sword again to bring his own crew to their senses.
“Swivel! Swivel to bear on them! Hurry, damn you!”
Suddenly realizing their precarious position of opportunity and peril, his crew fell to like fiends, swinging the barrel to bear directly upon the French ca
The French had the range already, were sure to beat them—Grey snatched the useless pistol from his belt and charged the French position, shrieking like a madman and waving both pistol and sword. The ground seemed to pitch and sway beneath his feet, a blur of grass and mud.
It was perhaps two hundred yards between the English and the French ca
“Duck!” came a faint cry, and he threw himself headlong in the sopping grass just as his own gun spoke near at hand. Without looking to see the possible effect of the shot, he scrambled up into a crouch and scuttled the rest of the way, arriving winded and wheezing to the cheers of his men.
“Once more,” he panted. “Give it them again!”
The men were already at it; the linstock was thrust into his hand and he fumbled for the fuse, but his hand was shaking too badly to manage. The powder monkey seized the wobbling end of the slow-match and thrust it through the hole, slashing off the bit of fuse so hastily that the knife tip scratched Grey’s hand, though he didn’t feel it.
“Fall back!” he gasped, and lowered the hissing match to the touchhole.
There was an instant of breathless expectancy, and then the world disappeared in a blast of fire and darkness.
He woke to a sensation of drowning and gasped for air, then froze, gripped by a pain so intense that he actually sawit, as a physical entity separate from himself. A red thing, shot with black, pulsing and whirling like a pinwheel. Sharp—he felt his lungs bursting and had to breathe, would have screamed if he’d had any breath, the knife edge of the spi
“Major! Major!”
Someone touched him, and he flung out a hand, blind, grappling for help, God, help, he couldn’t breathe…
Something smaller than the pain pushed him, hard, and he was suddenly on his side, doubled up, coughing, jerking in agony with each involuntary cough, but hadto, couldn’t not, couldn’t stop, and spikes of air stabbed his chest coming in, as though he’d breathed in a mass of drawing pins, went out in a blinding sheet of white-hot pain and black smoke.
“Major!”
“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit!” someone said nearby.
He was in complete agreement with this, but couldn’t say so. He was still coughing, but not as much; saliva was ru
Hands on him, he felt them, frantic thumps and grabs, pulling at his coat, his limbs. He made a frenzied noise of protest and felt bone ends grate—Christ, he heardthem grate—and a mass of green and brown and blue and red spun past, and he realized dimly that his eyes were open.