The Furies (14 page)

‘I'd better send someone forward again to find out what's going on,' he said, thinking out loud.

‘Good idea,' Klaus replied. ‘But Trauber's exhausted: he's been up all night. I'll go if you want.'

Gabriel thought for a moment. ‘Alright. We can manage without you for a while, but don't take any chances. As soon as you know what the situation is, report back to me. I'll get one of the other orderlies to accompany me on the round this morning.'

Klaus nodded and, still finishing his toast, trailed off towards the stables.

Gabriel sipped the remainder of his coffee and chewed on a piece of toast as he watched Klaus saddle a horse and lead it towards the gate on the eastern hedgerow. The warmth of the coffee in Gabriel's stomach and the heat of the fire on his face were so comforting that the urge to sleep washed through him again. He really should go to the recovery tent and start the round of the post-ops, but the feeling of heaviness over his eyes was back and the desire to let them close for an instant was irresistible. He shouldn't really, but he couldn't stop himself giving in to the urge. He would only shut them for a few moments…Just one or two minutes of delicious rest…

***

Some sixth sense, or noise, or subconscious awareness roused him, and Gabriel awoke with a jolt. In the confusion of his post-sleep stupor he was uncertain whether he was dreaming or not, because standing in front of him was a young soldier dressed in grey Serbian uniform, his rifle held at hip height, the barrel pointed directly at Gabriel's chest.

‘
Ustati, ustati,
' the soldier said, motioning upwards with the rifle barrel, but Gabriel – sleepily bewildered – remained frozen to the spot.

‘
Aufstehen!
' the soldier shouted, and then stepped forward and jabbed Gabriel with the rifle barrel. There was no doubting the painful reality of the hard metal tip on his chest and Gabriel finally understood he was not dreaming. Behind the youth he could see a dozen other Serbian soldiers with rifles. Dear God – what had happened? He rose to his feet – teetering slightly – and the soldier took a step back; he pointed the rifle at Gabriel's hands and then motioned skywards.

‘
Hande hoch!
'

Gabriel obeyed and lifted both arms into the air. Over the head of the soldier he saw Berger and Schwann and the rest of the orderlies being marched out of the tents at rifle-point and made to stand in the middle of the field with their hands raised. Klaus was standing by the wooden cattle gate next to his horse, his greatcoat on the ground and arms above his head as two Serbian soldiers searched through his clothes. Gabriel realised he must have dozed off for only a minute or so, as it appeared that Klaus was leaving the paddock just as the Serbs arrived. Why had they had no warning? Why in God's name hadn't they received orders to evacuate?

The young soldier moved behind Gabriel and with a thrust of his chin indicated that he should walk over to join the other captives sitting in the middle of the field. Gabriel did as instructed. As he arrived at the group, one of the guards surrounding the prisoners motioned to Gabriel that he should sit down. The ground was muddy and Gabriel squatted on his haunches with his arms raised, trying to keep his balance. Klaus was marched across to join the circle of prisoners and sat down on the tails of his greatcoat next to Gabriel.

‘Those bastards took my hipflask,' he whispered.

‘I think that's the least of our problems, Klaus.'

'I can't believe this is happening, Captain.'

‘How far did you manage to get?'

‘I was just leaving the field when I collided this group of Serbs. They took my horse and ordered me back into the field. I think they must be an advance patrol, because in the distance I could see a large column of enemy coming towards us. I couldn't see any sign of our own soldiers. It looks like a disaster, Captain. They must have completely overrun all our forward positions.'

‘Any sign of Flieger or anybody else from the forward dressing station?'

‘No, all I could see was Serbs.'

‘No talking!' one of the guards shouted in German, glowering at Klaus, who cast his eyes down submissively.

Gabriel shifted uncomfortably as he observed the Serbian captors surrounding them. The guards were grinning confidently as they looked down at their prisoners, and a feeling of utter hopelessness grew in Gabriel's chest and throat; for the Serbs to have captured his hospital so easily, told him that the entire Austrian front must have collapsed during the night. The magnitude of this insight was so shocking, so humiliating, that he was almost incapacitated with frustration, angry that incompetent leadership had resulted in this catastrophe. After several minutes of squatting in the mud, the feeling of helplessness became so unbearable that he decided he must do something.

He slowly began to stand; Klaus's eyes widened as he watched him. ‘Captain, what are you doing?' he hissed. ‘They'll shoot you if you're not careful!'

Gabriel – ignoring him – was now standing completely upright, his arms still above his head. Two of the guards saw him and suddenly unslung their rifles. ‘
Hirurga
,' Gabriel shouted. He had picked up a few basic Serbian phrases and words, and the Serbian for ‘surgeon' was one of them.

Now all the guards had their rifles raised and pointed at Gabriel's chest. His heart was pounding furiously and he knew he was taking a chance, but it was better than the feeling of vulnerability he had squatting on the ground.

‘
Hirurga
,' he shouted again and then – hands still raised – he lifted an index finger and bent his wrist to point at the Red Cross armband on his greatcoat.

An irate-looking Serbian lieutenant, hand on the butt of his holstered revolver, walked through the circle of guards.

‘You are prisoner of Serbian army,' he said angrily in pidgin German. ‘You must sit down, obey orders, or will be shot.'

‘I am a surgeon,' Gabriel replied in German. ‘There are Serbian and Austrian wounded in my tents.'

‘
Serbian
?' The officer frowned and then turned to look at the hospital tents. ‘Serbian soldiers in there?'

‘Yes, Lieutenant. Under the Geneva Convention, medical staff should not be made prisoner—'

‘Psshht.' The Serbian lieutenant held his index finger to his lips and Gabriel stopped talking as the officer thought for a moment. ‘Who chief here?' he asked.

‘I am the senior surgeon,' Gabriel replied. The officer turned to speak to two of the guards standing nearby, who stepped towards Gabriel. The lieutenant spoke again.

‘You will follow. Bring one other.'

Gabriel looked down at Klaus, who nodded and then stood. The lieutenant motioned that they should lower their hands: with relief Gabriel obeyed, feeling the blood rush back to his fingertips. With Klaus beside him, Gabriel followed the officer towards the tents; the two guards trailed behind. The lieutenant lifted the entrance flap to the recovery tent and ducked inside, and Gabriel and the others followed him in. Inside the tent the officer quickly scanned the rows of cots and lines of bandaged men, then barked a few words of Serbian.

Three soldiers slowly raised their hands and the lieutenant walked over to the nearest. The man – a huge, bushy bearded Chetnik called Luka, wearing an eye-patch over his left eye – had arrived at the aid station four days earlier, blinded by grenade fragments from his own, very-short-fused, Serbian grenade. Angry at being taken prisoner, the surly guerrilla fighter had initially refused treatment from the Austrian medical staff. But eventually he had let Gabriel examine him: after anaesthetising the Chetnik's eyes with cocaine and using a magnifying glass and tweezers, Gabriel had managed to pick out several fragments of grenade casing imbedded in the man's cornea. Klaus had regularly irrigated his eyes with saline, and within a few days his sight had returned – completely in his right eye and partially in his left – for which the Chetnik appeared very grateful.

With his curly black beard and eye-patch the grinning Serb resembled a medieval pirate, and Gabriel watched anxiously as he spoke with the lieutenant. But the Serbian officer seemed satisfied and after a moment he walked back to Gabriel.

‘He says you make good care,' the lieutenant said to Gabriel. ‘But all Serbian patients will be transferred to military hospital in Kragujevac. Maybe is today, maybe is tomorrow. Until they go, you will look after, will make good care.' He pointed at Gabriel and Klaus. ‘You two will look after everybody here.'

‘I need the other doctors and orderlies—' Gabriel began to say, but the lieutenant shook his head, his hand moving assertively to the handle of his revolver.

‘No. Just you two,' he repeated and then, leaving no time for further discussion, turned to speak to the two guards before leaving the tent.

The guards were clearly under instructions to watch Gabriel carefully. They sat on upturned wooden supply boxes just inside the entrance-flap to the tent, watching as Gabriel and Klaus began the post-op round of the casualties. Most of the Austrian casualties were terrified at the double uncertainty of their predicament – of being wounded, and of being taken prisoner by a bitter foe – and the only happy faces were those of the three Serbian patients. Luka grinned as Gabriel peeled away the dressings on his arms and then looked underneath the eye patch, noting with a degree of professional pride that all the wounds were healing without infection. He told Luka – using a mixture of pidgin German and Serbian – that in time the sight in his left eye might improve further, but that he should wear the eye patch for the next few weeks. Luka extended his hand and even though the Chetnik's arm had several wounds in it, Gabriel's hand was crushed from the strength of the other man's grip.

‘Good luck, Luka. Stay out of trouble,' Gabriel said in German.

‘
I
no need luck,' Luka deep voice boomed back at him. ‘
You
need luck,
Hirurga
: Austria finished now.' He drew a finger across his neck in a throat-cutting gesture and then laughed, a low-pitched rumble from his chest, white teeth gleaming through the thick tangle of his beard.

The Austrian soldiers were more difficult to comfort, although Gabriel did his best to assure them he would do everything in his power to help. For the next few hours he and Klaus continued their round, inspecting wounds, removing dirty dressings, putting on new bandages and providing the injured with what little food and water was available.

As he worked, Gabriel could hear increasingly frenetic activity through the canvas of the tent: the tramp of feet on wet earth, the clank of buckles and buttons on field webbing and straps, the noises and voices of growing numbers of men. In spite of the wood-burning brazier in the tent it grew steadily colder as the morning progressed, and, looking upwards, Gabriel could see a gently spreading shadow on the sagging canvas roof as snow settled onto the tent. By early afternoon they had run out of water, so Gabriel picked up a small steel basin and empty water can and walked over to the guards at the entrance-flap. Both soldiers stood as he approached, warily gripping their rifles tighter as Gabriel tipped the basin upside down to show it was empty. He put the basin on the ground and pointed outside the tent, and then waggled his fingers to mime snow falling. The two guards looked at each other for a moment; then one of them stood and opened the entrance-flap, indicating that Gabriel should follow him outside.

After being inside the tent all day, the brightness of the freshly fallen snow – even in the low December light – was dazzling, and Gabriel was forced to shield his eyes from the glare. Although it had already stopped snowing, several centimetres lay on the ground, and, squinting against the brightness, Gabriel was astonished to see that the field was now full of Austrian prisoners, either huddled under the awnings of the stables, or standing in groups in the central part of the field. Pairs of Serbian guards patrolled the periphery of the paddock just inside the hedgerow, their rifles pointed inwards as they walked. In the cold air, clouds of steam rose from the prisoners' mouths as they clustered together for warmth, like penguins in an arctic storm. Gabriel guessed there must now be three or four hundred men standing in the paddock, with a further unknown number inside the stables.

The guard appeared impatient, jabbing the rifle barrel into the small of Gabriel's back. Gabriel walked forward and chose an area where the ground looked undisturbed. He bent to scoop handfuls of clean snow into the steel bowl, compressing it until it was full of compacted ice. As he did this he discreetly scanned the men standing in the centre of the field: amongst the uniformly grey and blue coats he quickly spotted a flash of red; a Red Cross armband. The man looked towards Gabriel at the same time and began to wave his arms, and as Gabriel squinted back at him he realised with relief that it was Flieger.

Gabriel stood and turned to the guard, pointing first at his own Red Cross armband and then at Flieger, who was walking quickly towards him. The guard looked uneasy as Flieger approached but allowed him to walk up to Gabriel. Flieger's nose was red from the cold and his lips and ear lobes were blue, but he appeared otherwise unharmed.

‘Thank goodness you're alright, Peter,' Gabriel said. ‘What's happened?'

Flieger's breath was a cloud of white in the freezing air. ‘Our frontline troops ran out of ammunition and entire regiments surrendered en masse. It's a disaster.'

Gabriel heard the guard stamp his feet and turned to see him gesture with his rifle that Gabriel should pick the snow-filled basin up. Gabriel lifted the basin, but before starting back to the tent he turned to Flieger again.

‘Find the senior-ranking Austrian officer and ask him to talk to the Serbian commander. It looks as though they are turning this field into a holding camp and we'll need to dig latrines and find shelter for the men.' He looked up at the sky. ‘In this weather and with little food or shelter, we can expect a lot of medical problems.'