Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 9

safety of the General's rock. "We must have more water. A dozen of my men have heat-stroke – and we have no time to tend them."
    As I spoke, the sharp tat-tat-tat of the machine-rifles on the knoll began again. There were cries from the northeastern trench as the bullets ripped their way through the left flank. The northeastern trench, as Tice had promised, was enduring the worst of the casualties, but none of us were immune from the shells and shrapnel that were falling at us from the sky, nor from the carefully aimed bullets of the Mippite sharpshooters on the ledge.
    Fairview nodded. He looked weary beyond words. Three times he'd led attacks against the sharpshooters on the ledge, trying to drive them from the hill. Major Arundel, grimly holding together the scattered ruins of Tice's mounted infantry, had led two additional attacks. The faithfulness of him and his men made me ashamed of the suspicions that Fairview and I had held toward the Eighth Landstead's soldiers.
    But all of our work would be for nothing if our men passed out from lack of water.
    "The colonials are doing their best," replied Fairview, waving his hand toward the western edge of the summit, where several of the colonials crouched, waiting for a brief pause in the explosion of shells and bullets that continued on the summit. "But they're dying as quickly as our men are, whenever they try to deliver water to us or bring stretchers."
    "I know." I looked back at the battlefield. It was littered with dead men, dying men, and men who might be saved, if they could reach the hospital in time. The doctors at the field hospital – brave men, all of them – had sent up men to start a new dressing station. The Mippites had shelled that. Another doctor and his attendants had been sent; a third dressing station had been destroyed. Either the Mippites were unwilling to observe the common courtesies of warfare and spare the lives of medical men, or else – more likely – they simply couldn't distinguish between soldier and doctor from the distance of two miles at which they were shooting their shell guns.
    May the man who invented modern warfare be cursed. Battle was better in the old days, when you had to come within boarding distance of the boat you were shooting at, because the guns wouldn't shoot any further.
    I covered my handkerchief with sweat as I mopped at my throat; I'd long since removed my collar. A wind was beginning to blow from the south, but it barely seemed to make a difference. "What shall we do? It's hot as a Vovimian hell on this hill."
    "Reinforcements are coming." Fairview showed me the note from the Commander-in-Chief, scribbled in the hand of one of our signalmen, who was valiantly and fruitlessly trying to stand up long enough to send flag dispatches off the hill. Three signalmen had already died that way.
    "'I am sending two battalions, and the Fifth Light Infantry—' There's no mention here of water or ammunition or big guns." I scrutinized the Commander-in-Chief's bluntly worded message.
    "No. I don't know whether any of my messages have reached the Commander-in-Chief. I've received no word from him, other than this and a message that I'm in charge here. Rook, do you think—?"
    The scream of a shell obscured the remainder of Fairview's words. The shell passed inches from the General's rock and exploded several yards south of the right flank's trench. One of my soldiers, who had been raising his rifle up in an attempt to fire at the Mippite sharpshooters on the ledge, stared with a stupefied expression at where his rifle had been a moment before. His hand was gone as well. His eyes turned up in his face, and he fell backwards into the trench.
    I cursed and looked over at the stretcher-bearers. There might still be time to save Fulton; in such cases, sometimes the heat of the shell cauterizes the wound. But shrapnel was falling now on the field; the leader of the stretcher-bearers was holding back his men.
    I looked back at the right flank's trench. So shallow was it that I could see some of my men scrambling through the trench, trying to reach Fulton. They were blocked, not only by the dead and wounded men who had not yet been removed from the trench, but by soldiers who had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion.
    Another shell landed near the right flank's trench, closer than the first; I heard cries as shell fragments shattered down onto the far end of the trench. The soldiers who had been trying to reach Fulton shrank back,