Battlesaurus (26 page)

“Are you wounded?” Frost asks.

“I'm not sure, sir,” Jack says. “But I'm trapped.”

“Trapped?”

“I can't move. My arm is trapped under … it,” Jack says.

“Under what?” Frost asks.

“I don't know, sir,” Jack says.

“You mean the saur?” Frost asks.

“If that is what it is,” Jack says.

“Is it dead?” Frost asks.

“Almost, I think, sir,” Jack says.

“I'll come to you,” Frost says.

There comes the sound of shuffling movement.

“Where are you?” Frost asks.

“Under the … saur,” Jack says.

“Yes, but where is that?” Frost asks.

Jack thinks for a moment how to answer this. The moon has risen and the battlefield, what little he can see of it, flat on his back next to a giant carcass, is silvered.

“Can't you see it, sir?” he asks.

“I can't see anything,” Frost says.

There is silence for a moment while Jack thinks that through.

“Keep talking. I'm following your voice,” Frost says. He sounds close.

Jack, unsure of what to say, begins to sing. A children's rhyme about a wooden toy. He barely gets through the first verse when Lieutenant Frost appears, clambering over the carcass of a horse. His face is a mask of blood, except where a red-stained rag is tied around his eyes. His uniform is dirtied and torn, and he has lost his beautiful bearskin crested helmet.

“Is it safe, sir?” Jack asks.

“Safe?” Frost asks back.

“I mean are there any Frenchies around?” Jack asks.

Frost shakes his head. The bloodied rag around his head flaps with a soft slapping sound. He feels around Jack's body, finding the arm where it is trapped under the beast.

“I haven't heard any for hours,” he says. “There were many earlier. I played dead and I guess I was lucky. There were so many bodies that they just didn't have time to check them all. Stay here.”

Perhaps it is the lieutenant who isn't very bright, if he thinks Jack is going to go somewhere.

Frost is back a few moments later with a bayonet, feeling his way across the ground.

“Lieutenant Frost, sir,” Jack says.

“Yes, Sullivan?”

“Please don't cut me arm off, sir,” Jack says.

Frost gives the same half laugh as earlier. “I'll try not to,” he says.

He stabs at the ground on either side of Jack's arm, cutting the turf and loosening the damp soil underneath. He scrapes away underneath the arm, taking care not to cut it.

“Try and wriggle it free,” he says.

Jack pulls and is rewarded with an agonizing bolt of pain. He clenches his teeth but does not cry out. Who knows who else is lurking around this absurd charnel house this night.

“Can you do it?” Frost asks.

“No, sir,” Jack says. “I think it might be broken, sir.”

“All right,” Frost says. He begins to dig again. This time he is more thorough, digging farther and more deeply than before.

Slowly Jack feels his arm come free. But with it comes the pain. Not the stabbing, piercing pain of the first time, but a long, slow, constant burn.

“What happened tonight, sir?” Jack asks. “I can't make head nor tail of it.”

Frost digs deeply into the ground with the bayonet.

“Nor I,” he says. “Try now.”

Jack reaches into the hole that Frost has dug and supports his trapped left arm with his right. He pulls. It is still agonizing, but the arm slips free and he rolls over, away from the beast. The arm flops around, beyond his control, and he clutches it to his body with his right hand.

“How is it?” Frost asks.

“Good as gold, sir,” Jack replies, somewhat amazed that the arm isn't flattened. “Just a wee bit broken, I think.”

“You have the rain to thank for that,” Frost says. “Soft ground. Otherwise that arm would be pulp.”

Working by touch, Frost straightens Jack's arm as best as he can and fashions a makeshift splint out of the bayonet, tying it with a lanyard from his uniform.

“What happened to the men, sir?” Jack asks.

There is a long silence. There is a shout and a gunshot somewhere in the distance, down in the valley. A looter perhaps, who met a wounded soldier with a pistol.

“I do not know,” Frost says. “Perhaps they were able to retreat.”

Jack presses him no further on that. He hopes it is true, but cannot shake the memory of Wacker's body, in pieces, hurtling through the blood-red smoke.

“Where are we going to go, sir?” Jack asks.

Frost sits down on the rump of a dead horse. He looks even smaller in the moonlight. Not like a British officer at all. More like a frightened little boy on his first day in school. But when he speaks, his voice, although still soft and high, has authority and determination.

“The French were moving on to Brussels,” Frost says. “If they are going west, then we must head east. There is a field hospital in the village of Gaillemarde. That is less than an hour away.”

“Will it still be there?” Jack asks. “The field hospital I mean, sir, not the village.”

“We will find out when we get there,” Frost says. “Won't we, Sullivan?”

“Lieutenant Frost, sir,” Jack says. “My name is Jack. Sullivan was me dad, sir.”

“All right, Jack,” Frost says. “And mine is Hunter.”

“I'll just call you sir, sir,” Jack says. “If that's all right, sir.”

Frost nods. “What does your father do, Jack?” he asks.

“Ship's carpenter,” Jack says. “Helped carve the figurehead on the
Victory
.”

“Nelson's ship?”

“The same, sir. And he served on her at Trafalgar.”

“That was a great victory,” Frost says.

“Not for Nelson, sir, he died,” Jack says. “And not for me dad, neither.”

Frost is quiet.

“We should leave now, sir,” Jack says. “I don't know what the time is, but we should try to be off the battlefield before it gets light.”

“Indeed, a wise observation,” Frost says. “But first I need you to do something for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Can you see the beast that trapped your arm?”

“Yes, sir, the moon is out, and I can see it plain as day,” Jack says.

“Describe it for me, Jack,” Frost says.

“Describe it?”

“Yes, what does it look like?”

“Terrifying, sir,” Jack says.

“So I remember,” Frost says. “But give me some details. Tell me everything you can see.”

“Bloody great beast from hell, if you'll pardon me language, sir,” Jack says. He walks around to the other side of the dead animal. “It's a saur, sir, no doubt about that. But it's much bigger than anything I've even heard of before.”

“Or I,” Frost says.

“It's got a saddle, sir,” Jack says.

“A saddle?”

“Yes, sir. With a Frenchie in it.”

“A French soldier?” Frost asks.

“What's left of 'im, sir,” Jack says. “'E's a bit squished.”

“What about the animal itself? Any feathers?” Frost asks.

“Not that I can see,” Jack says.

“Spines?”

“No, Lieutenant, sir. It's got very hard, thick skin. Lumpy, sir.”

“And the legs?” Frost asks.

“Very big back legs, sir. Got big claws on them too,” Jack says. “Funny little front legs though. Like little arms. I think he walks on his back legs, sir.”

“I think you are probably right, Jack,” Frost says. “How tall do you think it is?”

“Standing up or lying down, sir?”

“Standing up.” Frost smiles. “In your best guess. Compared to you.”

“Oh, it's definitely taller than me, sir,” Jack says.

“Yes, but how many times?” Frost asks.

Jack walks around the carcass examining the feet and the giant legs in the moonlight. “Two or three times me, sir,” he says. “If it was standing up.”

“All right, good work, Jack,” Frost says. “Now tell me every little detail you can see.”

And so Jack does. But there is one detail that he leaves out, and it does not pertain to the dinosaur, but rather to the dead horse on which Lieutenant Frost has made his seat.

It is as well that the lieutenant cannot see for himself that he sits on the rump of a beautiful chestnut mare with two rear white stockings.

“Is it still dark?” Frost asks when Jack has run out of words to describe the beast.

“It is still night,” Jack says. “But there is a fine moon.”

*   *   *

On Saturday the fields around Mont-Saint-Jean were carpeted with softly waving stalks of corn. Now it is Sunday and the carpet is vastly different.

Jack and his lieutenant move through a bloody nightmare of corpses, carcasses, and much worse. It is a smoke-filled inferno of mud, blood, guts, and excrement. The dank night air is filled with the pathetic whinnying of dying horses and the cries of wounded men. Hands grab at their ankles as they pass but they wrench themselves free without even looking to see the color or rank. There is nothing that can be done. Only one thing comes for these men.

Several times they see bodies being pillaged by looters, who scatter when they see Frost and Jack approaching.

In the distance they see the lamps and ambulance wagons of French corpsmen and litter-bearers checking for wounded.

Footing is treacherous as the ground is a tangle of crushed corn-stalks, slick with blood. The breeze carries the stench of the battle, the acrid smoke, the rotten-egg residue of gunpowder, the cloy of freshly slaughtered meat.

There is something else in the air. Something that cannot be seen, heard, smelled, or explained. But Jack can taste it. He can feel it. He does not mention it to Frost, but knows that Frost can sense it too. The souls of so many: invisible, silent, odorless. They swoop and swirl a spirited dance of death above the battlefield: those who died gloriously, those who died in hopeless futility, and those who just died.

*   *   *

At first they think the soldier is dead, but he emerges from a tumble of bodies like Lazarus rising from the grave. He wears a British uniform but his skin is dark like that of an African. His teeth shine in the moonlight.

“Who goes there?” His musket is presented.

“Lieutenant Frost, Royal Horse Artillery, G troop,” Frost says. “And Private Sullivan of my troop.”

The musket lowers.

“Corporal Mathan Mogansondram, Royal Indian Brigade, twenty-five battalion,” the dark soldier says.

“I thought your brigade was at Halle, with Prince Frederick,” Frost says.

“We were, sir,” Mogansondram says. “The prince sent my colonel to report on the progress of the battle. We were caught up in the fighting when the British lines collapsed.”

“Are you injured, Corporal?” Frost asks.

“Yes, sir, in the leg, sir, but I can walk,” Mogansondram says.

“Then walk with us, Corporal. We are on our way to the field hospital at Gaillemarde,” Frost says.

“I cannot do that, sir,” Mogansondram says. “I must stay here.” He indicates a man lying nearby, who Jack had assumed was dead. “My colonel, sir. He made me promise to stay with him, to protect him from looters, until he can be evacuated.”

“I would talk to him,” Frost says.

“He is sleeping, sir,” Mogansondram says. “I do not like to wake him.”

“Where is he?” Frost asks. Jack takes him by the arm, leading him to where the colonel lies. Frost examines him with his soft, small hands, now blackened and bloodstained. He presses his ear to the man's chest and listens.

“Your colonel is dying,” he says.

“Yes, sir,” Mogansondram says. “I believe so.”

“His journey has begun,” Frost says, feeling the officer's pulse. “It will not be a long one.”

“I believe that too,” Mogansondram says.

“Then come with us. Get that leg looked at,” Frost says.

“I cannot do that, sir,” Mogansondram says. “I promised that I would stay with him.”

“He will never know,” Frost says gently.

“Even so, sir,” Mogansondram says, standing to attention.

“Of course,” Frost says. “Gaillemarde is to the northeast. Just follow the roads.”

“Indeed, sir,” Mogansondram says. “I hope to see you there, sir.”

Frost stands up straight, facing the soldier. He salutes.

Mogansondram, surprised at being saluted by a lieutenant when he has not saluted first, takes a moment to react, then quickly raises his hand to his forehead.

“He is returning your salute,” Jack says.

“I know,” Frost says.

It is only later that Jack realizes that neither of them were wearing their helmets.

 

RETREAT

It is late, but still Willem makes the rounds of the temporary hospital in the marketplace building.

The surgeons and nurses have gone, with their orderlies and carts full of medical equipment. With the help of the villagers they packed up their equipment and left, men with lanterns walking the eastern path in the darkness to light the way for the carts and the carriages.

The British army is retreating. There is little Willem can do, except keep an eye on the patients who remain, and cover the faces of those who die.

Jean's father enters quietly and moves down the rows, looking at the names written in chalk on the ends of the wooden cots. He seems to find what he is looking for and kneels by the side of the cot. It is a young British captain with long red hair. His right arm is missing and his face seems yellow in the light of Willem's lamp.

Monsieur Lejeune waits, trying to ascertain if the man is asleep or just resting. After a few minutes the captain seems to sense the villager's presence and his eyes open. Willem moves in that direction. Monsieur Lejeune notices him and nods.