The Heroes

He could hardly believe the man’s obsession with proper form. Rules cost lives at times like these. What kind of an officer insisted on them in a headquarters while outside men were fighting? Dying? He ran a furious eye over the order:

Colonel Vallimir
    General Mitterick’s troops are heavily engaged at the Old Bridge. Soon he will force the enemy to commit all his reserves. I wish you to begin your attack immediately, therefore, as discussed, and with every man at your disposal. Good luck.
    Kroy

    The First had been attached to Mitterick’s division and so, as their commander, it was his responsibility to clarify their instructions. Kroy’s order was lean and efficient as the marshal himself, as always, and the timing was apt. But Mitterick was damned if he was going to miss an opportunity to frustrate the marshal’s chinless stick-insect of a right hand man. If he wanted it by the book, he could have it by the book and bloodychoke on it. So he spread the paper out on top of his map, snapped his fingers until someone thrust a pen into them, and added a scratchy line of his own at the bottom almost without considering the content.

Ensure that the enemy are fully engaged before crossing the stream, and in the meantime take care not to give away your position on their flank. My men and I are giving our all. I will not have them let down.
    General Mitterick, Second Division

    He took a route to his tent flap that enabled him to shoulder Felnigg rudely out of the way. ‘Where the hell is that boy from Vallimir’s regiment?’ he bellowed into the thinning drizzle. ‘What was his name? Leperlisper?’
    ‘Lederlingen, sir!’ A tall, pale, nervous-looking young man stepped forward, gave an uncertain salute and finished it off with an even more uncertain, ‘General Mitterick, sir.’ Mitterick would not have trusted him to convey his chamber pot safely to the stream, let alone to carry a vital order, but he supposed, as Bialoveld once said, ‘In battle one must often make the best of contrary conditions.’
    ‘Take this order to Colonel Vallimir at once. It’s from the lord marshal, d’you understand? Highest importance.’ And Mitterick pressed the folded, creased and now slightly ink-blotted paper into his limp hand.
    Lederlingen stood there for a moment, staring at the order.
    ‘Well?’ snapped the general.
    ‘Er …’ He saluted again. ‘Sir, yes—’
    ‘Move!’ roared Mitterick in his face. ‘Move!’
    Lederlingen backed away, still at absurd attention, then hurried through the boot-mashed mud and over to his horse.
    By the time he’d struggled into his wet saddle, a thin, chinless officer in a heavily starched uniform had emerged from Mitterick’s tent and was hissing something incomprehensible at the general while a collection of guards and officers looked on, among them a large, sad-eyed man with virtually no neck who seemed vaguely familiar.
    Lederlingen had no time to waste trying to place him. Finally, he had a job worth the doing. He turned his back on the unedifying spectacle of two of his Majesty’s most senior officers bitterly arguing with one another and spurred off to the west. He couldn’t honestly say he was sorry to be going. A headquarters appeared to be an even more frightening and disorientating place than the front line.
    He rode through the tight-packed men before the tent, shouting for them to give him room, then through the looser mass making ready for another attack on the bridge, all the time with one hand on the reins and the order clutched in the other. He should have put it in his pocket, it wasonly making it harder for him to ride, but he was terrified of losing it. An order from Lord Marshal Kroy himself. This was exactly the kind of thing he’d been hoping for when he first signed up, bright-eyed, was it really only three months ago?
    He’d cleared the main body of Mitterick’s division now, their clamour fading behind him. He upped the pace, bending low over his horse’s back, thumping down a patchy track away from the Old Bridge and towards the marshes. He’d have to leave his horse with the picket at the south bank, unfortunately, and cross the bogs on foot to take the order to Vallimir. If he didn’t put a foot wrong and end up taking the order down to Klige instead.
    That thought gave him a shudder. His cousin had warned him not to enlist. Had told him wars were upside-down places where good men did worse than bad. Had told him wars were all about