Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 9

men close up that gap caused by the shell-deaths; if the Mippites on the hillside below us attack at bayonet range, the center is where they're most likely to charge. How much water do we have?"
    Fairview's cool enquiry brought me back to my senses. "Not enough. —Gillingham." I turned to my own second-in-command, who had followed me to the main trench. "Have the men save their water for the wounded. I don't know when we'll be getting our next supply. Also, they're to hold their fire unless they actually see something worth shooting at. Our ammunition won't last forever."
    "Here." Fairview had been scribbling in his notebook while I spoke; he tore off the page and handed it to Davey. "Give this to the signalmen. Have them send it to the Commander-in-Chief at once."
    Davey didn't so much as blink, good lad that he was. "Shall I say that our General handed this to me?"
    "Send it without a name; if anyone asks, the General is currently incapacitated. —For how long?" he asked in an undertone as Davey darted away.
    I shook my head wordlessly.
    "We need him in charge." Fairview glanced around as his officers scattered, returning to their companies. "I'll go this time."
    "We both will. I gave orders to my officers on my way back here. I've done everything I can for the moment."
    We found the General standing at the farthest end of the left flank's trench, staring down at the mangled, moaning men there.
    "Sir, get down!" urged Fairview. Like me, he had wriggled the final yards to the General on his belly; the rifle-fire had intensified, and the Mippites were showing what fine marksmen they were. One Mippite rifleman in particular – a field-cornet, I judged from what I had glimpsed of his ragged hat, which was rank-coded blue – seemed to bring down a man on our side every time he fired his rifle.
    The General ignored us. Again. "I've sent a message to the Commander-in-Chief, requesting water," he told one of the moaning soldiers, who was clutching what I recognized as our General's own water bottle. "You'll just have to wait, I'm afraid. —Here." He leaned over to offer his cigarette to the man.
    It was a ridiculous scene. The General should have been issuing orders, not handing out cigarettes to dying men. But in that moment, as I witnessed the man who had wanted a quiet diplomatic job step out of the safety of his rock in order to comfort a dying man, I felt the first stirrings of admiration toward Pentheusson.
    From the corner of my eye, I saw a blue cloth blur as the Mippite officer steadied his rifle. The rifle roared.
    CHAPTER 7
    OR ALL IS LOST
    Heliograph dispatch to the Commander-in-Chief at 9 AM, from the officer commanding the Allied forces at Spy Hill:
    "Reinforce at once or all is lost. General dead.
    Fairview."
    ****
    "He's not dead!" shouted the General's soldier-servant. "Sir, he's not dead!"
    "What?"
    I had to shout at the top of my lungs over the cacophony of noise on the summit. I had thought that, as a waterman, I was accustomed to loud sounds, having been caught in far too many storms on the Bay and at sea. But none of that compared to what I was experiencing now: the staccato shout of the machine-rifles, the screams of the shells, the whining of the shrapnel, the crack of rifle bullets rebounding off rocks—
    —the cries of dying men. Always that.
    Amidst all this, I thought I could hear faintly the shouts of Fairview, as he issued further orders. I had been in agony for the past couple of minutes, watching him dart his way across the battlefield. Now he crouched in the almost-as-deadly main trench.
    "The General isn't dead, sir!" the soldier-servant bellowed.
    I managed to tear my attention away from Fairview. He and I, with the help of the General's soldier-servant, had managed to drag the General's body back to the shelter of the rock. All of us had assumed that the General was dead; he had blood across his face. But now, as I made my way over to where the General's soldier-servant and newly returned messenger-lad knelt by his sides, I saw that the General was indeed alive. The bullet had landed in his shoulder, and the blood from the shoulder had spattered onto his face.
    He was moaning, trying to rock himself back and forth; the soldier-servant was hard-pressed to keep him lying still. I glanced at the wound; blood was still welling out of it. I knew a little first aid, but not enough to deal with a wound like this.
    I looked in an automatic manner toward the dressing station, which the