The Space Between (8 page)

"Hey."

A little boy was crying nearby. He was
bleeding from a wound on his leg.

"Hey. Help me with this, will you."

Kim turned and saw one of the 'German'
cannoneers — a short, balding man on the wrong side of fifty. He
had picked up one of the ropes used to pull a cannon into position
and was trying to get it out of the camp and into the open.

"Hey." He was talking to an archer but the
man stood in shocked silence and it was doubtful he'd be any use at
all for a while yet. Then he saw Kim and turned his attention to
her. "Help me with this," he said in his English accent. "There's
another one of the damn birds."

Kim followed his pointing finger.

"Just grab the rope and pull."

Kim was trained to follow orders in battle.
She did as told and Keeble came to help as well.

“
[This had better be a
cannon,]” he said as he pushed at the back. “[It looks a bit
flimsy.]”

Kim had no idea what he said, but she pulled
on the rope and tried to keep up. The little man was surprisingly
strong and his low center of gravity gave him good leverage.

The cannoneer stopped pulling for a moment
to shout at five of his friends. "Sonneberg Artillery. Don't just
stand there. Gets those cannon moving." He let go of the rope
completely and went to shout from closer range. The other men
hadn't moved.

"Are you crazy, Johnno?" said someone from
inside a tent. It wasn't the best place to seek protection from
bombs.

Keeble kept pushing, so Kim kept working as
well. It seemed better than thinking about the people in the crowd.
Or about any of the other things she might think about. She pulled
on the rope and tried not to think.

"Are we artillery men or are we just playing
with our toy guns?" Johnno shouted.

He pushed someone towards a second cannon
and glared at another man until he went to help. Soon all three
cannons were heading for the open ground. Another four men were
getting a large chest from beside a tent. They pushed through the
onlookers, straining with their burden.

“
[This is the worst bunch
of soldiers I've ever seen,]” Keeble said as he took a quick look
over his shoulder. “[Pathetic.]”

Johnno encouraged his men one moment and
abused them the next and soon had all the cannons lined up about
five meters apart.

"Harry, what's the range at maximum
elevation?"

"Christ, Johnno, I don't know," a big man
replied, barely keeping the quaver out of his voice. "We've never
fired them at maximum elevation."

"We've got no chance of hitting a moving
target," said one of the men lugging the chest. "Can we load
shrapnel of some kind? Cutlery maybe?"

Johnno pointed at the bat. "We don't have
time."

Kim looked again. "Shit." She took a couple
of steps back and looked over her shoulder to see just how far away
the forest was. Her heart was racing.

"Come on boys, let's do this." Johnno strode
along behind the three cannon, checking to see the alignment of
each, as if they could possibly know what they were going to need.
"We've fired these things hundreds of times. Easy as pie."

One of the men looked at him and shook his
head. "Who're you kidding, John?" A couple of the others looked at
him as if he were crazy.

"Where's Boydie?"

"Here." He'd been helping with the chest and
was now pulling a key from a chain around his neck. He was a thin
man with a long nose and hollow cheeks. His costume seemed about
two sizes too big, as if he was expected to grow into it. Now was
his chance.

Johnno jumped. Up until then he had been as
calm as a seasoned campaigner but his tension finally came through
for a moment. He took a deep breath, trying to calm himself, with
mixed results. "Good. Excellent. Let's load up then." His leg was
shaking. He grabbed it with his hand to get it under control. Kim
wished it were all that easy as she wiped sweat from her own
hands.

The bat was coming in over the trees.

Two men adjusted the cannon's muzzle height
while Boydie supervised the loading.

Kim watched as Johnno took a packet of
matches from his pocket. She wiped sweat from her face, licked her
lips and examined the bat. Two minutes at most. Did they have time?
Did they have any choice? She looked back at the remains of the
crowd. A couple of hundred injured people and bodies littered the
edge of the cricket field. They were a writhing, moaning mass.
About the same number had come from the forest. Some were helping
while many just stood and stared.

She swallowed and watched
the cannoneers working. The bat seemed to come so quickly; the men
seemed to work so slowly.
Christ. What the
hell are they doing?

They were waving their sword at the dragon
and not waiting for the experts, that was what they were doing.

When the first cannon was loaded, the men
moved on to the next, and someone came forward to fill the fuse
hole with gunpowder.

Kim looked around, as if hoping someone
sensible would turn up to tell her what was really happening. Her
heart pounded. She suddenly needed to go to the toilet. Smoke
drifted across the field. The sounds of death and pain came with
it. And the smell. Burned flesh. Fire. Explosives. Fear.

"We ready?"

Kim looked back at Johnno in his costume.
Panic clawed at his eyes, trying to get out. But he held a match in
his hand, and it was as steady as a rock. The bat was still a long
way out; surely the cannon couldn't fire that far.

"Beware," Johnno yelled.

Everyone nearby turned to look at him, even
those in the important loading detail.

"Fire in the hole."

Everyone covered their ears, and Kim thought
it might be a good idea if she did the same. Keeble seemed to work
out what was going on just in time. He covered his ears just as
Johnno lit the match and touched it to the fuse.

The explosion was much louder close up.
Kim's ears were ringing as she watched the cannonball sail
majestically across the field. It cleared the pitch square, cleared
the field, and crashed into the trees on the far side. A couple of
hundred meters.

She stared through the drifts of smoke for a
long time after the ball had landed. It was crazy. The first shot
had fallen well short of the bat — Johnno obviously didn't know
much about the capabilities of his cannons — but possibly had some
use as a range finder. Stupid bloody Englishmen, trying to hit a
moving target with a cannon that had never been fired in anger.

The bat was still coming.

"Don't just stand there," Johnno bellowed.
"Finish loading those cannon."

Boydie and his assistants got back to work.
Keeble rushed over to watch them, chattering constantly in his
strange language. Meledrin had reappeared and stood watching. After
a few moments she said something to Keeble and he fell silent,
though he didn't look happy about it.

The next cannon was loaded, and Boydie moved
to the third.

"What do you think, Harry?" Johnno
asked.

"Not yet," the big man replied, suddenly an
expert after his earlier protestations. He seemed much calmer, too.
"A few more seconds."

"Range was good on that first one," Johnno
said proudly. Then he shook his head. "The height is what'll screw
us."

Harry gave a bark of humorless laughter.
"That's confidence for you. I reckon there's about a dozen things
that are gunna screw us."

Kim couldn't believe what she was hearing.
"This is crazy," she said. "What the hell are you doing?" She
looked into the woods and wondered if it was too late to run. It
probably wasn't, but she stayed where she was.

Johnno shrugged. "Some jobs
have got to be done," he said. "And some times the right person
isn't available, so the
only
person has to do it."

"Christ." Wiping her hand on her jeans, Kim
turned to look at the sky. The bat was coming. It was almost
there.

Johnno got out his matches again as he
shouted at some of his men to get the second cannon
repositioned.

"We ready?" Johnno shouted. He answered his
own question. "Looks good to me. Beware." And a couple of seconds
later, "Fire in the hole."

But that couple of seconds was too long. Kim
knew it as soon as she saw the ball's flight path. It was going to
cross behind the bat.

Kim uncovered her ears in time to hear
Johnno swear. He moved to the next cannon and shouted as his
companions to adjust it.

The bat was only a hundred meters from the
remains of the crowd. It was almost skimming along the ground,
moving fast and sure.

"Beware." Johnno came forward, and Kim
jumped back out of the way. "Fire in the hole."

It was going to be close. Maybe.

Kim shaded her eyes to watch. She willed the
cannonball on. Her heart skipped a beat. "Shit." She leaned to the
right. She leaned further, hoping to upset the tilt of the world.
Hoping to affect the spin of the universe for just one moment. She
was aware of others doing the same. "Shit."

The bat kept coming, bearing down on the
injured people as if they were still a threat. As if they'd ever
been a threat.

Boydie was already at work on the first
cannon, stuffing gunpowder down the muzzle. He would be too late,
though. There was no doubt about that. Way too late.

The bat was almost there. Kim thought of
closing her eyes. She sucked in a deep breath, wiped at her face.
She didn't want to watch but couldn't look away. Her heart still
pounded, a million beats a minute.

The bat dipped lower. Time seemed to stop.
For just a moment.

Breathe.

Then, out of nowhere, a jet streaked across
the sky.

"Harrier," Kim shouted. She felt like
jumping for joy but kept her feet on the ground. The plane looked
the worse for wear, but it was still a sight for smoke-stung eyes.
Kim relaxed slightly, wiped at her face again, started to breathe
without conscious thought.

The experts.

She watched a long line of tracers pummel
the bat from the side, seemed to feel each impact. The creature
fell from the sky like a lead balloon. It screeched and writhed,
tossing its head with the pain. Then the canisters strapped to its
belly exploded. Long arms of flame reached for the crowd. Almost
got them. Shrapnel did. Kim ducked instinctively as new screams
joined the ones from earlier.

More injuries. It wasn't good, but better
than it could've been.

Then the jet was gone, out of sight behind
the trees, and the sound washed over them like a tsunami.

Kim turned to look for Johnno, to tell him
that, sometimes, the right people were available. But Johnno was
dead. Gagging, Kim locked her knees to keep herself upright. He'd
been right there, a nice old guy who probably had a wife who cooked
him bacon and eggs for breakfast and ironed his cannoneer uniform
every week. Now he was lying on the ground with a piece of metal
the size of a CD embedded in his skull.

He could have run. It would
have been the sensible thing to do. If Kim had been able to get her
legs moving at the right time,
she
would've run. But now? Now it was too late. The
bat thing was dead. Johnno was dead. Half the crowd were
dead.

Kim fell to her knees and cried. The sound
of it was lost amongst the chorus.

Half the crowd were dead. The half that
weren't were either injured or trying to help. Sir Douglas was
nearby, crouched over a boy in a page's costume. The knight had a
fresh gash on his forehead, and the metal was still lodged in his
breastplate, but he didn't seem to notice. An old woman, dressed in
the lace and frills of a lady, was looking at someone else. They
probably weren't the right people for the job, but they, and others
like them, were the only people.

Kim climbed slowly to her feet. She was
probably more right than most. She'd been in the army. She had
training, even if it was a couple of years out of date. She should
be helping, not standing around like some stunned tourist. She'd
felt nothing but disdain for Douglas earlier, but he was doing his
best to prove her wrong.

"Shit." Kim didn't like being proven wrong.
Deep breath. There were injured people scattered amongst the tents
behind her, but relatively few. Most were already being seen to.
She glanced at Johnno wondering when someone would come to help
him. Swallowing, she set off across the field and tried to order
her thoughts. There would be burns. There would be panicking
friends and relatives. There would be people with good intentions
who should not be left in charge of a Band-Aid and a box of
aspirin. She dragged up memories from the army that she hadn't used
for years.

But Kim was only halfway to the edge of the
field when somebody tugged on her sleeve. She turned to see Keeble
and Meledrin.

"Will help us now?" Meledrin asked. "These
creature attack my people as well."

"What?"

“
[I don't think we're going
anywhere yet, woman.]”

Keeble was pointing again. Kim followed his
finger out to where another bat was heading towards them.

"Damn it." Kim almost fell to her knees
again. She'd thought the main danger was past. She looked in the
direction the jet had gone. It was probably halfway to London by
now. For a moment she was caught. She'd been on a mission to help
the injured and was suddenly loath to abort that plan. But if
nobody did anything about the bat then the help would be
short-lived and possibly painful.

So, she would wave her sword at the dragons.
She would tilt at the windmills. "Damn it." Kim raced back the way
she'd come. She was crying once more.

"Boydie?" she called. It came out as hardly
more than a squeak. She cleared her throat. "Boydie, get those
cannon loaded." The skinny man was sitting on the ground tying a
makeshift bandage around his leg.