Hubbard, L. Ron (6 page)

For eight days the Fourth Brigade lived off the Russians. It was not luxurious, but it was better than crumbs scraped out of a fortress twenty years in its grave. Apparently the Russians had met and defeated other forces to the east, for the stores included a kind of bread, made of bark and wild wheat, peculiar to Rumanian troops and a wine which Alsatian soldiers concocted from certain roots. Too, there were some spare tunics and overcoats, evidently located in some hitherto-forgotten dump. These, though slightly moldy and insect-frayed, were most welcome, especially since they were light tan, a color which blended well with the autumn which was upon them.

But at the end of eight days the brigade began to show signs of restlessness. Wild geese, in increasing flock, had begun to wing southward, and the men lay on their backs, staring moodily into the blue, idly counting.

The lieutenant paced along a broken slab of concrete which had once been part of a pillbox commanding the valley. For, with the new guns and even the scarce ammunition, the troops did not need to fear sunlight.

In his ears, there sounded the honking which heralded an early winter. And the caterpillars which inched along and tumbled off the guns had narrow tan ruffs which clearly stated that the winter would be a hard one. Spiders, too, confirmed it.

It was one of those infrequent times when the lieutenant did not smile, which heightened the effect of his seriousness. Men moved quietly when they came near and aid not linger but cat-footed away. The battery crew silently sat along the grass-niched wall and studiously regarded their boots, only glancing up when the lieutenant went the other way.

All hoped they knew what he was thinking. The winter past had not been a comfortable one: starving, they had huddled in an all-but-roofless church, parsimoniously munching upon the stores they had found buried there-stores which had not lasted through. At that time the Germans were still making sporadic raids, not yet convinced that their own democracy could win out against the French king, but bent more upon food than glory. The brigade had marched into that town four hundred and twelve strong.

And now winter was here again, knocking with bony fingers upon their consciousness. Longingly they looked south and watched to see if the lieutenant gave any more heed to one direction than another.

Not for their lives would they have bothered him. Even Mawkey stayed afar.

And it came to them with an unholy shock when they saw that a man had been passed through the sentries and was approaching the lieutenant with every evidence of accosting him. Several snatched at the fellow, but, imperiously, he swept on.

He might have been a ludicrous figure at a less tense moment. He was a powerful brute, his massive, hairy head set close down upon his oxlike shoulders. But about him he clutched some kind of cloak which would have heeled an ordinary being but only came to his thighs. On his head he had a cocked hat decorated with a plume. At his side swung a sword. On his chest was a gaudy ribbon fully two feet long.

Without ceremony he planted himself squarely before the lieutenant and lifted off his hat in a sweeping, grandiloquent bow.

The lieutenant was so astonished that he did not immediately return the salutation. Carefully he looked the fellow up and down, from heavy boots back again to the now-replaced cocked hat.

"General…" began the intruder, "I come to pay my respects."

"I am no general, and if you wish to see me get permission from my sergeant major. Pollard! Who let this by?"

"A moment." said the hairy one. "I have a proposition to offer you, one which will mean food and employment!'

"You are very sure of yourself, fellow. Are we mercenaries that we can be bought?"

"Food is a matter of need, general. Allow me to introduce myself I am Duke LeCroisaut."

"Ekike? May I ask of what?"

"Of a town, general. I received the grant from the king not three years ago!'

"King?"

"The King of France, His Majesty Renard the First. My credentials." And he took forth a scroll from his cloak and unwound it.

Without touching it, the lieutenant read the flowing phrases in the flourishing hand.

"Renard the First has been executed these last six months. And I, fellow, have nothing to do with the politics of France. We waste time, I think."

"General, do not judge so abruptly. My town, St. Hubert, has come into the hands of a brigand named Despard, a former private in the French army, who has seen fit to settle himself upon my people, oppressing them!'

"This is nothing to me. Guard, escort this n beyond the sentries!"

"But the food
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" said the Duke with a leer.

The lieutenant shook his head at the guard, staying them for a moment.

"What about this food?"

"The peasants have some. If you do as I ask, it shall be yours."

"Where is this town?"

"About a week's march south and west for you and your men; two days' march for myself."

"You evidently had some troops. What happened to them?"

"Perhaps unwisely, general, I dispensed with their services some months ago."

"Then you wish us to take a town, set you up and
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Here! What's this?"

The fellow had sunk back against the concrete wall. He had been breathing with difficulty and his hand now sought his throat. His eyes began to protrude and some flecks of blood rose to his lips. He shook.

"An old wound
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" he gasped. "Gas
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"

The lieutenant unlimbered his pistol and slid off the catches.

"No! No no!" screamed the Duke. "It is not soldier's sickness, I swear it!

No! For the love of God, of your king
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"

Smoke leaped from the lieutenant's hand and the roar of the shot rolled around the valley below. The empty tinkled on the stones. The lieutenant stepped away from the jerking body and made a sweeping motion with his arm.

"March in an hour. I do not have to caution you to stay away from this body. Mawkey, pack my things."

"The guns?" said Gian, worriedly glancing at his pets and then beseechingly at the lieutenant.

"Detail men … to haul them. They're light enough. But leave the three-inch.

It would bog before the day was out."

"Si," said Gian gladly.

Shortly, Sergeant Hanley hurried up. "Third Regiment ready, sir."

An old man named Chipper piped, "First Regimerit ready, sir."

Toutou bounded back and forth, making a final check from the muster roll he carried in his head. Then he snapped about and cried, "Second Regiment ready, sir."

Gian, overcome by new importance, saluted. "First Artillery ready, sir."

But it did not come off so well. The Fourth Brigade's First Artillery, a unit of .65-caliber field pieces, had been drowned to a man in a rising flood of the Somme while they strove to free their guns. For an instant the people here glanced around and knew how small they were, how many were dead and all that had gone before; they felt the chill in the wind which blew down from countless miles of graveyard.

"Weasel!" bawled the lieutenant. "Leadoff at a thousand yards with your scouts. Bonchamp! Bring up the rear and shoot all stragglers. Chipper and Herrero, wide out on the flanks! Fourth Brigade! Forward!"

The wind mourned along the deserted ridge, searching out something to twitch. But nearly all signs of the camp had been destroyed, just as there would be left no mark along the line of march by which another force could follow and attack. The wind had to content itself with the cloak of the dead man which it lifted off the legs time and again, and the gaudy ribbon which it rippled over the cooling face.

Malcolm matched the lieutenant's stride, glancing now and then at the man's quiet profile. Malcolm could not rid himself of the vision of the Duke trying to stop a bullet with his hands and screaming his pleas for life.

"Lieutenant," he said cautiously and respectfully, "if... if one of your men came down with soldier's sickness ... would you shoot him like that?"

Malcolm clearly meant himself.

The lieutenant did not glance at him. A shadow of distaste dropped over him and passed. "It has happened."

Malcolm avoided the finality of that statement. "But how would you know?

How do you know that that fellow back there had it? Wouldn't gas
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"

"Yes. It would."

"Then ... then
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"You've seen men die of soldier's sickness?"

"Of course."

"You were in England when the first waves of it came. Over here, when one man got it, his squad got it shortly after. No one knows how it travels.

Some say by lice, some by air. There was only one way to save a company and that was to execute the squad. "But ... but some are immune!"

"Maybe. The doctors who tried to make the tests died of it, also. Let's have an end of this, Malcolm!"

They walked in silence for some time and gradually forgot about it. They had come to a broad valley matted with young trees. Here and there stone walls showed brokenly in the undergrowth; less frequently the gashed sides of a house stared forlornly with its gaping windows. A city had once flourished them. But the lieutenant's only interest in it was to see that the squirrels, rabbits and birds, those Geiger counters of the soldier, flourished through it with the ease of familiarity. It was not radioactive then. Nevertheless the rubble made the walking hard. And they clung to the outskirts, choosing rather an old battlefield than the tomb of the civilians. Pounded into the earth by rain of a dozen years lay an ancient tank, its gun silently covering the clouds which scurried south.

The men were not in any recognizable formation of march, but there was a plan of sorts despite the appearance of straggling. Loosely they formed a circle two hundred yards in diameter, a formation which would allow both a swift withdrawal into a compact defense unit from any angle of attack and would permit a swift enveloping of any obstacle met, the foremost point merely opening out and closing around. But the movements of the men themselves were quite independent of the organization, for they marched as the pilot of an ailing plane had once flown-not from field to field, but from cover to cover. All open spaces were either traversed at top speed, completely skirted, or else crawled through. The equidistant posts were very flexible of position according to the greatest danger of the terrain; these, too, were loose circles save for the rear guard, which was a long line, the better to pick up any willful stragglers or extricate any which had been trapped in the pits with which all this land abounded-pits which had the appearance of solid ground, built to impede troops and used now by peasants who found a need for clothing and equipment.

The one officer, if such he could be called, who had latitude of movement for his small group was Bulger Bayonet thrust naked and ready in his belt, helmet pulled threateningly down over one eye, filthy warm flapping against his heels, he roved purposefully and thoroughly, rumbling from flank to flank and beyond, appearing magically inside and outside the circle of march. He would overrun the vanguard, inspect the ground ahead and then go rambling off with two or three scarecrows at his heels to poke into some suspicioned rise of ground and, sometimes, send a runner back to change the whole route of march to roll over the place and pick up cached supplies. After a good day Bulger would begin the evening meal by pulling birds, onions, old cans of beef from an unheard-of time, moldy loaves and wild potatoes from that warm which seemed to have the capacity of a full transport; for while the main discoveries had been shared around, Bulger took a joy in personal collection which outrivaled, if possible, his lieutenant's love of victory without casualty! These choice bits
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and scarce enough they were
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made first, the lieutenant's board and, second, the noncoms' fare. The brigade said of Bulger that he could hear a potato growing at the distance of four kilometers and could smell a can of beef at five.

The brigade flitted swiftly over an exposed chain of embankments,, which had been a railroad, long ago shelled out of existence and then robbed of its rails for bomb-proof beams. Bulger alone paused at the to his hairy nostrils quivering avidly. He broke his trance and sped forward, presently lumbering past the vanguard. Weasel's narrow face popped alertly from beyond a bush.

"I don't hear anything," complained Weasel.

Bulger touched his nose pridefully and swept on, vanishing into the undergrowth ahead. As this was the mid portion of the valley, the only difference of level was a stream. This was revengefully eating away at an old mill dam, having already toppled the shell-bursted mill down the bank. But there was no ocular evidence whatever of anything unusual.

Telepathically quiet, the word skimmed through the brigade and the route of march shifted. Gian's artillery, which had been annoying its motive power by forbidding their taking the best cover, was balked by the stream until Gian, scurrying up and down the bank, found a shallow bar which had been built up by the downfall of an old bridge.