Chapter 441 — The Next Line II

Chapter 441: Chapter 441 — The Next Line II

Most of Brennan’s section did not even turn. Two of them had been at Rathduff. One had been at the junction. But a young soldier at the end of the wall, one who had come in on the truck that afternoon, swung his rifle round, and his face went white.

"*They’re ours, Kiely!*" Brennan roared. "*Shoot the ones with skin on!*"

Kiely lowered his rifle.

James sent the two skeletons north-west along the field wall, the way the British had been trying to work round the line, so the British would have to deal with them before they could get round.

The British dealt with them.

They did not panic. A section of British infantry along the far ditch saw them coming and opened up on them. One skeleton lost its left arm at the elbow and kept going. The other took a burst through the ribs that blew half of them out the back. It staggered and kept going.

But every British rifle that was pointed at them was not pointed at Brennan.

---

Across the road, Finn and the big man with the hammer stood shoulder to shoulder in the ditch, pushing a lean British spearman back up the field. Eimear had driven her long-sword man to the far side of the farmyard and did not chase him. She stopped at the wall where the soldiers behind her were still under fire, and stood there with the spear up.

Then the British changed.

James saw it. The armoured vehicle’s turret swung away from the houses on the rise and onto the road, onto the bridge, south of it, where the trucks had been. The infantry in the far ditch started shifting east, toward that side of the road, toward the route.

"*They’re going for the road,*" said Brennan into his radio. "*Kavanagh, Brennan. They’re putting everything on the road. I can’t hold the west end and cover the road at the same time.*"

"*Hold the west end. I’m sending you a section from the houses.*"

Rounds started hitting the road surface south of the bridge. A truck that had not quite got away, one of the last, was just pulling off, and the soldiers who had been helping push it went flat behind it.

---

The skeleton with one arm had got thirty metres north along the field wall, past a section where the wall had come down in a heap of stone.

The British were concentrating on the soldiers behind that section. They had rifles on it from the far ditch. To get there on foot, James would have to cross twenty metres of open field with all of that firing across it.

He did not need to get there on foot.

The skeleton was thirty metres away. That was inside forty, and there was nobody standing right next to it.

`[GRAVE STEP — MANA COST: 120]`

`[MANA: 2,790 / 3,100]`

The world folded and he was beside the skeleton, behind what was left of the wall. The bad second hit him. The ground tilted and his side lit up, and he put a hand on the cold stone and held it.

When it passed, he was behind cover. The British in the far ditch had not seen him go.

A British soldier was coming along the line of the wall from the north, alone, at a crouch, trying to get round behind Brennan’s section where the wall had come down. He was ten metres off. He saw James at the same moment James saw him.

He brought his rifle up.

`[NECRO BLAST — 60 MANA]`

`[MANA: 2,730 / 3,100]`

He went down in the field.

`[BRITISH COMBATANT SLAIN]`

`[EXP GAINED: +200]`

`[CALL OF SOULS — MANA RESTORED: +30]`

`[MANA: 2,760 / 3,100]`

James sent both skeletons on up the wall, north, into the British infantry who were shifting east. He did not want them to win. He wanted them to be in the way.

Behind him, the section from the houses came down the hill at a run and into the gap in the wall, and Brennan had the west end again.

---

It went the other way after that.

With the west end held, Brennan’s section put its fire across the road again. Finn’s Challenger went back over a hedge, and Eimear’s stopped coming forward. The British commander did not throw more in.

James saw the armoured vehicle start to reverse. The infantry in the far ditch began to fall back by sections, covering each other. The two surviving British Challengers went with them, back up the road and round the bend, and the British dead stayed where they were in the field.

They had come to find out what was at Mullaghmore Cross. Now they knew.

"*All sections, Kavanagh. Do not pursue. Hold your positions. Nobody goes over that bridge.*"

James felt the second skeleton go out, somewhere up the field, just as the British went round the bend. The one-armed one was still standing.

---

Brennan was already moving along the wall when the firing stopped.

"Who’s hit? Who’s hit? Sound off."

Two of his section were hit. One had a round through the shoulder and was swearing about it, which Brennan said was a good sign. The other was the young one, Kiely, with a graze along the side of his head that had bled all down his neck and terrified him. A medic came up from the farmyard and took him back down the road toward Grange with an arm round his shoulders.

"Ammo," said Brennan. "Everybody. What have you got left? Tell me now."

James looked at his window.

`[MANA: 2,760 / 3,100]`

`[EXP GAINED THIS ENGAGEMENT: +400]`

`[EXP: 33,785 / 96,000]`

He had one skeleton left, the one-armed one, standing at the end of the field wall where he had told it to stand.

---

Kavanagh came up from Grange half an hour later.

"The last of the trucks in this lot got through," she said. "Every one we knew was coming. They’re in Grange." She looked along the wall. "Well done. All of you."

Down the road, the trucks that had just got through were unloading outside the community hall. Brennan went down to them with his clipboard.

James went with him.

Brennan went down the line with his list, saying names. Some answered and he ticked them off. Some names he said twice, louder, and then went on.

A soldier who had come in on the last truck sat on the kerb by the pub with his rifle across his knees.

"Sarge," he said, as Brennan went past. "Can we stop now? Can we just stop?"

"Medical station," said Brennan. "First. You’re bleeding through your sleeve. Get that looked at. Then they’ll tell you what you’re doing. Not before."

"I’m not bleeding."

"Look at your sleeve."

The soldier looked at his sleeve, then got up and went to the medical station.

Further down the line, two men from different trucks had found each other. One was asking the other whether he had seen somebody called Devlin. *Devlin. Big lad. Red hair. He was in the third truck. Did the third truck get out?* The other man did not know.

James had heard that question before. Owen had been asking it at Rathduff at three in the morning, going round every section with a list.

---

The radio in the community hall went at half five.

Kavanagh was at the trestle table with James and Finn and Brennan. She listened for a long time, then said, "Say again." She listened again.

"*Forward observer two. That was the front of it. Repeat, that was the front. There’s a larger British formation on the N15 north of Cliffoney, coming south. I count eight, maybe ten armoured vehicles, troop transports behind them, and Challengers, several, I can’t count them from here. And there’s movement on the inland road too, the one past Ballintrillick. Separate. Smaller. Coming south as well. Over.*"

"How far?"

"*Two hours to the Cross at the rate they’re going. Maybe less. Over.*"

Kavanagh looked at the map.

"Confirm the inland group," she said. "I want to know if it’s real before I move anyone. Over."

She put the handset down and picked up another one, and started talking to somebody further back, at Sligo. Artillery. Who was on the inland road. What was coming up from Sligo and when.

James listened. Other formations on the line toward Benbulben were moving into position. A Galway contingent was coming up from Sligo. An artillery battery near Drumcliff was being asked for, and given. It was not just Kavanagh’s people. But it was Kavanagh’s people at the Cross.

---

Brennan’s radio went.

He walked away from the table to take it. James watched him listen and his face go still.

He came back.

"There’s another group still coming," he said. "Out of Finner. The last of them. Two trucks of wounded and a jeep, maybe thirty people, maybe more. Some of them got separated in the dark last night and they’ve been trying to get down since. Their officer just got through." He looked at the map. "They’re north of Cliffoney. The road’s broken somewhere above Mullaghmore, a bridge or something, they had to go round on the back roads. They’re slow. They’re not here yet."

"How far behind the British?" said Kavanagh.

"In front of them. Not by much."

Nobody said anything.

James looked at Kavanagh. He could see her working it out.

If they pulled back to Grange now, everyone at the Cross lived, and thirty people came down the N15 to a bridge with nobody on it and the British right behind them. If they stayed, they held against ten armoured vehicles, with a second group coming round the side the way the British always did. Too long, and they would not get out.

Kavanagh picked up the handset.

She told headquarters all of it, short and flat. There was a large British formation two hours out. There was a possible second group on the inland road, unconfirmed. And there were thirty Irish personnel and wounded still north of the line.

She waited.

The answer took four minutes.

"*Kavanagh, Sligo. Hold the Cross. Hold it till the last group’s through. Prepare a fallback to Grange and have it ready to go. But hold. Over.*"

"Understood. Holding. Out."

She put the handset down.

---

James went out of the hall and stood by the church wall and looked north.

The light was going and Benbulben was black against the sky. Somewhere beyond the bend toward Cliffoney, ten armoured vehicles were coming down the road. What they had beaten off at four o’clock had cost him a skeleton and two of Brennan’s section. The real thing had not even started.

Finn came out and stood beside him.

"How many Challengers do you reckon?" he said. "With that."

"I don’t know. Several, the man said."

"Several." Finn looked north. "That could mean three. It could mean twenty."

"Yeah."

"Great."

Neither of them said anything else.

Down at the Cross, Brennan was walking along the wall, stopping at every man. Eimear was in the farmyard, crouched beside the man with the hammer, looking at his arm. James’s one skeleton still stood at the end of the field wall, one-armed, facing north. He had 2,760 mana, and a field full of British dead he could raise if he could reach them.

He went back into the hall.

Kavanagh was standing at the trestle table with all her section commanders round her.

"Right," she said. "Here’s how it is. There’s thirty of ours still coming down that road. There’s a lot of British coming down behind them. We hold the Cross till our lot are through. Then we go back to Grange, in order, and not before. Nobody goes back early. Nobody goes forward over that bridge. We hold."

She looked round the table.

"Go and tell your people."