Chapter 429 — The Line Bends V (Bonus)

Chapter 429: Chapter 429 — The Line Bends V (Bonus)

He sat. He took the shirt off. She cut the old dressing away and looked underneath it, and her face went very flat.

"You’ve torn it open. You’ve torn the whole thing open. You had *three stitches* in that and you’ve torn every one of them." She got a clean pair of gloves on and a tray from the trolley beside her. "I told you. I told you on the road. I *told* you."

"I know you did."

"Then why—"

She stopped. She looked past him at the other stretchers in the barn, the ones still waiting. She did not finish it. She got the tray onto her knee and started cleaning the wound, quickly, without saying anything else.

James and Finn stood behind her.

"Are you two going to stand there all night?" said Ruth, not turning round. "Because I’ve enough people in here already who need me and you’re not one of them. Go and be useful. Somewhere else."

Finn laughed and went.

James went with him.

---

On the way out of the barn he looked at the faces.

He knew some of them from the junction. There was a man with a bandage round his head who had been at the petrol station when the pumps went over. A lad sat on the end of a stretcher with his arm strapped up, asking the medic beside him whether McGrath had come back yet, whether anyone had seen McGrath, and the medic was saying she didn’t know, she was sorry, she didn’t know. Further along, a man sat on a bale of straw with his hands on his knees while somebody stitched his scalp, and he did not move or speak.

James did not know most of their names.

---

He found Farrell later, at the table in the corner of the yard with an officer from one of the other units.

"That’s everyone," she said, when she saw him. She did not look up from the list. "Everyone who left the junction got here. We’ve four more dead than we had at midnight. Eleven wounded. More kit lost than I want to think about." She put the pen down. "But the unit’s here. Most of it. If we’d stayed, it wouldn’t be."

"Are we going back?" said James. "For the junction?"

"Nobody’s said." She rubbed her eyes. "They’ve put more into it. A lot more. If we went back up that road tonight with what’s in this yard, we’d leave half of it on the road. I’m more worried they’ll come on from it. Come down here, before we’re ready."

"So what happens?"

"Command’s looking at the whole sector," said Farrell. "Not just us. There are other units along here that have had the same night as we have. They’re deciding what to do before anyone else gets sent up a road on their own." She looked at him. "And I’ve been told the Challenger contingents are being looked at. The big ones. Where they are and where they should be."

James thought of Marcus, in some room somewhere since the first night, and of Saoirse, wherever she was. Neither of them had been anywhere near this junction since it started.

Whatever came next, it was not going to be one unit going up a road on its own in the dark.

---

The firing to the north died down a little after four.

James was on the wall again with Finn, watching the glow over the junction fade as the building burned itself out. In the yard behind them the generator thudded. Inside the barn somebody was being sick.

Farrell’s radio went at the table.

She answered it, listened for a while, and then said, "Say again." She took the handset away from the lamp so she could hear.

James and Finn came down off the wall.

"—urgent coordination," the voice on the radio was saying. "Brigade wants all unit commanders on the northern sector at the forward HQ at Castlebellingham by six. That includes you, Farrell."

"Is this about the junction? Over."

"It’s about the junction. And Knockcrane. And the river line. The British have kept reinforcing everything they took tonight. They’re doing the same up and down the sector. Over."

"What’s the plan? Over."

"Not on the radio. But it’s not another unit going back up the road on its own." A pause. "Brigade wants to stop this before they dig in. They’re putting a proper operation together. More than one formation. Over."

"Which units? Over."

"Yours. Two from the river line. A battalion coming up from Drogheda." Another pause. "And the Challenger contingents. Hale’s Emerald Spire lot are being looked at for redeployment from the Monaghan side. Doyle’s helping coordinate the Challenger end of it. Over."

Finn went very still beside James.

"Understood," said Farrell. "My unit will be ready for instructions once the wounded are seen to and we’ve reorganised. Over."

"Six o’clock. Castlebellingham. Bring your Challengers. The ones who fought at that junction. Brigade wants to hear what they saw. Out."

The radio went quiet.

---

Farrell put the handset down.

She turned to the two of them.

"There’s an operation," she said. "A big one. They’re pulling units together. Not just us. And they want to hear from people who were actually at that junction. What came at us, and how. The Challengers. What they did."

"Are they sending us back in?" said Finn. "Now?"

"Not now. I don’t know when. They haven’t decided." She looked at the list on the table and then back up. "But it’s started. They’re getting ready."

James looked north.

The glow over the junction had nearly gone. There was just smoke now, going up grey against a sky that was beginning to lighten at the eastern edge.

He thought of Eleanor Harcourt walking along the hedge looking at things. He thought of the man with the waves going behind the trucks, holding his arm, and the woman with the mace in the chapel yard. He thought of Owen in the road with Carey, and Eamon putting the last ward he had between them and her.

He thought of the soldiers he had stood behind the sandbags with for three hours, most of whose names he did not know.

The British had taken back the junction.

But this time it was not just going to be one battered unit going up the road after it.

"Get a coat," said Farrell. "Both of you. It’s cold in the car. Castlebellingham. Now."