Crispin's Army
Chapter 21

As soon as he felt his blade go in, Barney Sherman knew he’d been played for a sucker. There was no sound, no movement, and whatever it was his knife was embedded in, he knew for sure it wasn’t a body. He snatched up a lantern and seized a fistful of Tana’s jet black hair from where it lay cascading over a blanket, and his hand flew up. The hair had been cut.

Cursing, he threw back the blanket to be confronted with a sack of grain, punctured in its middle by his blade. “We’ve fallen for the oldest trick in the book, fellers,” he announced to the others, who had reached the same conclusion. “Let’s get out of here. What the old lady will say is anyone’s guess.”

He stepped out through the doorway. In the same moment, the others behind him heard the unmistakable report of a laser weapon, and Barney screamed and stumbled backward into the hut, clutching his knee.

“Come out slowly with your hands on your heads,” Crispin’s voice was heard to command from a few metres away.

Tam Hunter was the first to obey, stepping blindly into the inky darkness with his hands on his head. All he could see outside was the strange apparition of Elizabeth’s head and upper body, seeming to hang in space, illuminated by a lantern held by someone standing to one side of her, and a blaster, its red operational light looking like a tiny ruby in the night, held to her head by someone standing on the other side of her.

“As you can see,” Crispin’s voice boomed, “we have the architect of your coup safe and sound.”

Tam strained his eyes into the darkness, but could see nothing in the direction from which Crispin’s voice was emanating. He decided to risk making a run for it. His hand dropped towards the handle of his blaster and at the same time he curled his body into a roll. Before his hand came anywhere close to his gun, he too was writhing with a shattered kneecap.

“You idiot!” moaned Barney from the shelter of the doorway. “Have you been away from the smoke so long you’re brain’s addled? He’s got an infra-red sight, of course.” He turned to the six remaining men. “They’ve got the old lady. She’ll tell them who we are to save her own skin.”

A smattering of zapper shots rattled off the stones of the shelter, and one or two penetrated gaps, momentarily illuminating the interior with their brilliance. The others glimpsed Barney’s pain-wracked face.

“I can’t do anything, fellers,” he winced through gritted teeth. “But I can lay down some covering fire if you want to make a run for it. Who knows? I could even get lucky and hit the old girl. Keep her from fingering you.”

Before any of the men could reply, chaos erupted. The sound of shots had alerted ’s other supporters that the assassination plot had gone awry, and they were rushing to the rescue.

Gus flung the lantern aside and threw Elizabeth to the ground. He screeched in pain as a laser bolt seared across his thigh, and he plunged for cover. He landed awkwardly on top of another body, which let out a gasp.

“Who’s that?” he hissed.

“It’s me, Charlie. Is that you, Gus?”

“Yes,” Gus winced, clasping his leg.

“Keep your head down,” Charlie whispered. “We’re going to need you in one piece.”

“Now you tell me,” Gus murmured, as Charlie extricated his bulk from beneath him. “I promise I’ll do my best to stay intact.” Laser bolts criss-crossed in the air above them, seeming to come from all around them. “But it’s not easy. It’s not easy.”

The former occupants of the hut were gathered in a huddle among the rocks, returning fire against a barrage from enemies who had encircled their position. Crispin, Cath, Ralph, Nick, Simone, Mina, and Charlie formed themselves into a circle with zappers with infra-red sights and tried to spot where the enemy fire was coming from. Gus kept pinned to the ground with a blaster pressed to her head, while Tana and Josie tried to pacify their screaming children, their hands never far from the blasters on their belts.

“Ugh,” moaned Elizabeth. “You’re bleeding on me, man.”

“I’ll do more than bleed on you if you don’t shut up,” barked Gus with belligerence that surprised even him.

And then suddenly there was more firing coming from further off. ’s supporters, having encircled Crispin and his companions and having begun to close the net on them, were now being attacked from below and from left and right by others still true to their pledge to the Underground, spurred into action by Arne and Nold when they heard the fighting coming from Crispin’s encampment. And those loyal to Crispin vastly outnumbered the turncoats.

Barney Sherman’s fellow-traitors found themselves suddenly fighting on two fronts, exchanging fire with Crispin and his party in front of them, and at the same time holding off Crispin’s would-be rescuers behind them. Crispin and his party immediately benefitted from a reduction in the firepower directed at them from three sides. Only from positions further up the mountain did the firing remain unabated.

“Charlie, we need a two pronged attack on the emplacements up there,” Crispin declared, pointing up the slope. He found himself dropping into the military vernacular with ease. “Nick, you go with Charlie, Ralph, come with me. The rest of you, hold the fort.”

“Take care.” He was already sliding between two large rocks as Josie’s voice came to him through the darkness. “All of you,” she added.

Josie and Tana, still clutching their offspring, crawled to sheltered positions from where they might be able to pick off anyone who came within blaster range.

Trails of laser bolts streaked across the black mountain face this way and that, catapulting off in unpredictable ricochets as they hit outcrops of rock. Four dim figures slunk furtively over the snow, dividing up into pairs. In each pair the rear member took up a covering position while the front man ran across open ground and found new shelter. Then the latter would take up position while his comrade ran to join him. A hail of fire slammed down on them, but they succeeded in dodging it, and crept inexorably closer to the enemy’s position on a rocky spur with a commanding view of the encampment.

Crispin and Ralph half buried themselves in the snow as the vicious fire swished over their heads. Crispin glanced to his left, and saw the other two struggling forward under a similar hail of fire, some two hundred metres off. There was a broad open space in front of them which they would have to cross.

He opened up on the spur, firing continuously at the spot where he thought the attackers were, and was rewarded with cries of pain. But still there was intense fire concentrated on Charlie and Nick.

From the left came an agonised scream, the banshee wail of a dying man.

"Nick!” Ralph yelled, his voice racked with emotion.

Crispin ceased firing and looked over. Charlie had made it to cover. Nick had not. He was lying in the middle of open ground. Crispin felt Ralph squeezing his arm and heard his tortured sobs, and suddenly the fact he had somehow pushed to the back of his mind, the fact that Ralph and Nick were lovers, came crashing home to him.

"Nick!” Ralph screamed again. Out in the snow, the dark shape was moving, twitching, edging sideways.

Before Crispin could react, Ralph was up and running. He did not get ten metres before a shot slammed him to the ground.

A further fusillade fell on Nick, and his twitching motion ceased.

Charlie began moving forward, firing with a vengeance as he ran. Crispin directed covering fire at the same spot that Charlie was aiming at.

The returning fire ripped through the air for a few seconds, and then suddenly it fell silent. Crispin glimpsed a shadowy figure scrambling away from the spur, making its way clumsily upwards. He saw Charlie stand upright, a silhouette against the snow, take aim and fire a single shot. The man seeking to escape over the rocks uttered a gutteral cry and crashed backwards, lost from sight amid the rubble.

Charlie moved to where Nick was lying, grabbed him by an ankle and began dragging him back down the slope. Crispin moved over to Ralph, examined the wound at his temple, and similarly began dragging him back behind him.

Close to their sheltered position, the two living men were obliged to abandon their dead charges and leap for safety. Gus and the women were blazing away at assailants sheltering among the rock walls ten to fifteen metres away, while the two children continued to howl in dismay. Charlie and Crispin took up positions alongside the others and began shooting.

It was almost all over, for the last traitors were closely hemmed in from behind, and now grossly outnumbered, but they ignored all entreaties to surrender, even when these came from Elizabeth, apparently believing that if they surrendered they would be killed anyway. So they fought on to the last man.

The early light of dawn revealed the full extent of the carnage. All the bodies were counted, and it was quickly established which side of the fighting they were likely to have been on. Crispin was surprised to learn that, all in all, ’s cohorts numbered nearly two hundred. Perhaps a quarter of these had been involved in the main action against Crispin’s party, while the remainder had undertaken diversionary skirmishes. Of those who had come to Crispin’s aid, close to forty had given their lives.

A total of well over two hundred corpses were gathered and ranged on the mountainside. Crispin and Charlie marched to the spot and obliged her to walk past them, looking into their harrowed faces, observing their terrible wounds.

“This is your doing, Elizabeth,” Crispin admonished her superfluously. “You inspired this uprising with promises of I don’t know what kind of power and esteem when you returned to the city. I had hoped,” he continued unctuously, “that by giving you a degree of liberty we might have avoided something like this.”

“Oh, do shut up,” Elizabeth snapped irritably.

“But we’re going to have to keep you under armed guard from here on in,” Crispin continued.

He gave orders for the shelters to be dismantled, and for the stones to be used to build a giant cairn over the bodies of the slain. He insisted that take a full share in the manual labour, and while it was beginning, he had Charlie draw up a rota for guard duty, to oversee the self-styled Leader of the Presidium for the rest of the journey and beyond.