The Last Legionnaire

by Paul Fraser Collard

  Kearney sucked down a breath. The blood in the wound bubbled up, pink and frothy, then he choked, more blood gurgling in his throat.

  Jack could find no words. He reached into Kearney’s jacket and pulled out a pale blue scarf he must have picked up in Genoa, his first thought to bandage the wound. But the American would not lie still. His hands scrabbled against Jack’s, fighting his attempts to fix the scarf in place. It took several minutes before the grotesque gash was finally hidden from sight.

  ‘There you are. That should do.’ Jack spoke in little more than a whisper. He rocked back on his haunches, looking at the fresh blood streaked across his hands. He wanted to run. To flee from the horror of Kearney’s wound. Instead he just sat there, powerless. He had never felt so impotent.

  Kearney’s right hand jerked across his chest, trying to get inside his blood-soaked jacket. It fumbled with the buttons, the fingers clumsy.

  ‘Rest easy.’ Jack reached forward to take hold of the sergeant’s wrist. ‘I’ll do it.’ He gently placed Kearney’s hand on his breast, then reached inside his jacket and pulled out a thick wedge of what looked to be letters held together with string.

  ‘Give them …’

  Blood rattled in Kearney’s throat, making the words barely audible, but Jack understood them well enough. He glanced at the uppermost letter. An address was written on the envelope in pencil. He did not bother to read it. Instead he shoved the bundle into his own pocket, not caring that he left dark streaks of blood across it.

  ‘You can deliver them yourself.’ He offered the lie with a flicker of a smile.

  Kearney tried to speak, but no sound emerged. Blood flecked his lips as he tried again. When they came, the words were so quiet that Jack could hardly hear them.

  ‘Kill me.’

  For a moment, Jack could not breathe. Kearney’s eyes bored into him. The stare was fierce, and it was proud.

  ‘Kill me.’

  The words were almost completely drowned by the constant flow of blood that filled Kearney’s throat. But Jack had heard them well enough. He knew what Kearney wanted. He understood what was being asked. It was what he would want were the roles reversed. He had seen enough wounds to know which would kill. The American faced a long, agonising and drawn-out death.

  Kearney gasped as he fought against the pain. He was shaking now, every muscle trembling. Somehow he managed to lift a hand. It clutched clumsily at Jack’s, then pushed it lower so that it rested against the short sword at his waist. He shuddered, and his grip tightened around Jack’s wrist, the fingers digging in like claws, before it fell away.

  Jack let his own hand stay on the hilt of the short sword. It was not a weapon made for fighting. The Legion’s sergeants wore it as a badge of their rank, the tradition of more importance than the blade itself. But Jack knew that Kearney would have kept the edge sharp. It would do the job well enough.

  It was easy to draw the blade. It fitted snugly into his hand. It did not weigh much, not like an officer’s sword, or a maharajah’s talwar. But it would be enough to kill a man.

  He held it beside his thigh and out of Kearney’s sight. He understood what had to be done, but still he hesitated. He knew that killing the American would be a mercy. He had heard such pleas before, just as every survivor of battle had. Wounded men, crazed by suffering, would beg for a bullet to put an end to their misery. Often they were given it, their fellow soldiers willing to do that one last thing for their comrades in arms.

  Jack knew what had to be. It was a soldier’s duty to a comrade. At the very last, a man had the right to die.

  Kearney’s eyes had closed. He was still alive, his chest rising and falling with every shallow gasp of breath. His face was screwed tight against the pain, and a thin trail of blood snaked from the corner of his mouth.

  For a moment Jack hoped the American would just die. The notion tempted him. He could simply sit and wait for the inevitable. It would surely take a long time, but at least he would be spared from having to act, from having to be the one to end another life.

  Kearney shuddered. He was suffering, every breath laboured, every second lived in agony.

  Jack sucked down a breath, then held it. He looked at Kearney. The American’s eyes flickered open and locked on to Jack’s as he began to move the sword. They stayed there even as the blade pressed against his heart, the tip sliding through cloth and then into flesh. Then they closed for the last time, the window to his soul shut off for all eternity.

  Jack threw the sword away. He could feel the warmth of fresh blood on his hand. He did not have the will to wipe it away.

  Palmer led the borrowed horse away from the fighting. The Austrian cavalry were still cutting down the stragglers, but the French retreat had been halted, the battered battalions in the brigade strong enough to ward off the enemy riders.

  No one paid him any attention. The wounded were streaming to the rear, absolved from the need to fight. They staggered, limped and lurched towards some half-understood notion of safety, their bloody, torn bodies the defining emblem of courage. Many would not make it. They fell to the ground, ignored and forgotten, their battle, and their lives, ending on a churned-up field.

  Palmer walked past them all. He paid no heed to the entreaties for aid. He had no water left to share and his well of compassion had run dry. He thought only of his duty, and of delivering Fleming to Ballard.

  As he walked, he looked at the man draped across the saddle. For a moment he worried that he had hit Fleming too hard, a thin trickle of blood running down from the man’s temple. Then Fleming stirred, his eyes fluttering open for a half-second as he drifted in out and out consciousness before closing again. It was reassuring. It meant he would live.

  Palmer found it hard to understand why Ballard had declared Fleming’s life to be worth so much more than Jack’s. He had felt a moment’s sorrow when he saw Jack go down, the death of the younger man reaching a place inside him that he had ignored for so long that he had believed it to be gone for ever. He had enjoyed working with a partner, even one as cocksure and strong-willed as Jack had been.

  Such thoughts were interrupted as he heard shouting coming from behind him. At first he paid them no attention. Then the shouts and the screams intensified, and he found the energy to glance over his shoulder.

  The remains of the Austrian cavalry had turned from the squares that the other French battalions had formed. Their horses were tired and their arms were bloodied to the shoulder. But they still had the desire to kill. They left the hastily formed squares behind and turned their attention to the last men still in the open.

  Palmer had turned in time to see the cavalrymen cut into the wounded stragglers behind him. The enemy regiments no longer rode stirrup to stirrup, their formed ranks long since disrupted by the fighting. But they still hit the fugitives in style, the defenceless men dying in droves.

  The screams stopped almost immediately. Those still strong enough to run did so in silence, the time for cries of terror now long past. Those without that strength died where they were, their final moments spent in soundless horror.

  Palmer looked at the battered rifle he still carried. Its bayonet was bloodied to the hilt, and the tip had been bent out of shape. Both the barrel and the stock were pitted and scarred, and the butt was caked in blood. He had not bothered to reload, the thought that he should have done so a fleeting regret. It did not take him long to tie the reins across the saddle, the temporary lashing the best he could hope to do in the time left to him, then he slapped the horse hard across the flank, goading the tired animal into motion. It lurched away at little more than a half-arsed trot, Fleming’s body bouncing in the saddle.

  Palmer sighed as he turned to fight one final time. The Austrian riders were close now. The enemy’s horses were on their last legs, but he did not doubt that they would come for him. There would be no reprieve, no miraculous escape like at the end of a great fable. He knew what fate had planned for him. He planted his feet and hefted hi
s rifle in both hands. At least he would go down fighting.

  He felt a few heavy raindrops land on his head. The rain that had threatened to fall all day was finally making a belated appearance. It heralded the arrival of a storm that would likely put an end to the fighting. But it would come too late for him.

  An Austrian cavalryman spurred towards him. Palmer saw that the man had lost his shako so now rode with his hair ruffled by the wind. He tensed, thinking to repeat the blow to the horse’s mouth that had served him well so many times before.

  But he was tired. And he was slow.

  The Austrian rider gave his mount the spur, urging the beast to find a final burst of speed. Palmer saw the change in the horse’s motion. He started to swing the butt of his rifle, trying to time the blow so that it would land square and true.

  He was too late. The Austrian rider was already on him. The man’s sword tore into his chest, the notched blade gouging a deep crevice across his front before the horse’s momentum ripped the blade free.

  Palmer fell to his knees, his rifle dropping from his hands. There was time to look down, to see the rush of blood that smothered him from nipple to navel, before he crumpled over.

  The storm that had threatened all day burst across the battlefield with biblical ferocity. Day turned to night as thick grey-black clouds smothered the sun. The rain came down in a torrent, any notion of carrying on the fight washed away by the downpour that soaked the combatants to the skin in minutes.

  With the rain came great gusts of wind. Whirlwinds of yellow dust billowed across the plain like powder smoke, reducing the visibility to mere yards. The few trees were battered, branches torn from their trunks like arms and legs ripped from bodies by fast-moving roundshot.

  Jack looked up and let the rain wash across his face. It felt cold as it drummed on his skin, but the sensation revived him. He did not know how long he had sat on the ground next to Kearney. He barely felt the cramp in his legs, or the pain in his back. His mind had been emptied of all thought. His soul was as numb as his flesh.

  A great bolt of lightning seared across the heavens. It was followed by a peal of thunder that would have overwhelmed the heaviest artillery barrage. The sound resonated through him, lighting the spark of life that had been nearly extinguished in the fighting.

  It was time to move.

  Gingerly he eased himself to his feet, slinging his rifle on to his shoulder. His back ached abominably, the pain searing up and down his body to leave his legs trembling. The wounds he had taken in the fight made themselves known, the aches and bruises interspersed with brighter flashes of pain caused by Austrian bayonets. He stood in the rain, letting the storm wash over him until the first chill came, the single shiver that ran through his abused flesh a delicious torture that reminded him he was still alive.

  He could not bear to look at Kearney’s corpse.

  He went north, walking through a field of flattened rye. The local population would likely go hungry that winter. Hundreds of acres of grain had been destroyed by the battle that had been fought on a front many miles wide. Yet there was a new crop that now smothered the ground, one that would improve the soil for generations.

  He steered clear of any formed bodies of French infantry that he saw. He supposed the French would claim victory, their occupation of the battlefield all the proof their eager generals would need to proclaim their success. For his part, he did not care who had won, or who had lost. He was indifferent as to how the French would write of their great success, or the strategy and manoeuvres they would claim had earned it for them. His part in the struggle meant nothing. His was no tale of a valiant hero, a fable where one man decided the fate of a battle. His was a tale of horror unleashed, where men died screaming and friends begged for death.

  He walked through a field of corpses. Many wore the same blue uniform he had borrowed, the colour now turned almost to black by the rain. The men from the Legion lay in every direction, some alone, others in small groups, cut down by the Austrian cavalry in the same desperate flight that had seen Jack and Kearney left cowering in a muddy ditch.

  A few bodies moved. Hands lifted towards him as he approached, voices begging for aid, for water, or simply for a bullet to put an end to their suffering. He ignored them all. There might be a time to try to help, but it had not yet arrived. He still had a mission, a purpose that he clung to lest his soul be suffocated by the suffering that surrounded him.

  He picked his way past the heaps of the dead and the dying. His boots caught against discarded equipment, the fields littered with knapsacks, mess tins, shakos, kepis, belts, bloodstained clothing, broken weapons and abandoned rifles. The rain fell constantly, driven by the wind so that at times it was almost horizontal. All the while great flashes of lightning were interspersed with the deep booms and crashes of thunder. It was as if the gods had been angered by the battle and now raged in the heavens, their display a vivid demonstration of their superiority over the struggles of man.

  Jack did not know where to search first, so he retraced the path of the Legion’s retreat as best he could, towards the scene of the hand-to-hand fight with the Hungarians. The enemy were close by, but the rain shrouded him, hiding him from view. He trod carefully amongst the bodies, always looking down as he searched the grey, lifeless faces of the dead. He did not find either of the men he was looking for.

  He closed his eyes, picturing the flight from the Hungarians. He remembered seeing a group that had stood together, a square that he had glimpsed forming amidst the chaos. Angling northwards, he found the place easily enough, half a dozen dead enemy horses confirmation that at least some of the legionnaires had managed to hold their ground. There were a few French bodies, but here the wounded had gone, a sign that the men had been able to retreat in good order, taking their comrades with them. None of the dead legionnaires were familiar to him.

  He stood amidst the corpses and thought about lying down. It would be a sweet relief to let it all end, to close his eyes and allow oblivion to claim him. The temptation was strong, but he knew he would not give in to it. For the mission was not yet done. No matter what, he had to know what had happened to his comrades.

  Ballard stood outside the aid station, staring into space. The rain was lashing down, the drops jumping a good two feet back into the air as they hit the ground with all the force of a canister shell. It drummed off his head and shoulders, his hair slick to his scalp and his dark blue jacket doubled in weight as it absorbed the deluge. Yet standing here was a relief after enduring the cloying atmosphere inside the aid station for so long. The rain felt wonderfully clean, and he prayed that it would scour the stains from his soul as effectively as it was cleaning the blood and the sweat from his skin.

  ‘Mr Ballard! Mr Ballard, help me over here.’

  Ballard turned on command. A fresh wagon had pulled up outside the aid post. He could no longer tally how many had come in. One hundred? Two? Whey-coloured faces lifted in hope as they reached their destination, the wounded men looking down with wild eyes as a single orderly walked towards them with Mary at his side.

  It had been Mary who had summoned him. The apron she had borrowed was covered with gore, as were her bare arms, the streaks of blood smearing in the rain. She paid the storm no heed and trudged through the puddles with determination, her eyes fixed on the men waiting for her aid.

  Ballard watched her as she walked. Her dress had quickly become soaked and now clung to her body, and her hair was flattened against her head. She was covered in filth, and her face was puffy and haggard after so many hours doing all she could for the wounded. Yet to Ballard’s eyes she had never looked as beautiful.

  He found he did not regret making his offer. He had considered the idea of marrying again before, but he had always been so busy. Suggestions had been made. Once or twice a year, he would receive a letter from a distant family member, or an associate, which would gently mention some worthy woman in search of a husband. He had never paid them much heed, the itch fo
r a wife one that he never seemed to have the time to scratch. Until he had met Mary.

  ‘Mr Ballard! Mr Ballard!’

  Another voice called for his attention, one that scattered his foolish musings to the wind. He was moving towards it before any thought to do so fully formed in his mind. He walked fast, lifting a hand to shelter his eyes from the rain. His heart raced, the voice bringing hope that it heralded the arrival of the man he had come so far to find.

  His hope died. There were no horses. There were no strong men bringing in their quarry. Just a sorry-looking boy walking alone through the rain.

  ‘William!’ Ballard called out, shouting to be heard over the deluge.

  The boy came to stand in from of him. Ballard took him by the shoulders, holding the exhausted lad upright. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The reply came back as little more than a sob.

  ‘The horses? Did they take the horses?’

  Billy bit his lip, then shook his head, the motion flinging water to either side.

  Ballard saw the bruises on the boy’s face, the flesh around his ear and across his cheek blackened and blotchy. The lad had taken a beating.

  ‘Did you see them? Did you see them at all?’ Ballard shook him as he fired the questions.

  ‘No.’

  He let go of the boy then. The hopelessness of his situation was nearly more than he could bear. Exhaustion engulfed him and left his legs shaking with the effort of keeping himself upright.

  He gazed past the boy, no longer able to look at the bearer of such bad tidings. Another wagon was making its way along the track that led towards the aid station. Another cargo of ruined bodies about to vie for the scant attention that the handful of orderlies and surgeons could provide.

  ‘Billy!’

  Ballard did not turn to look at Mary as she spotted her child. The joy in her tone hurt him, her love displayed even amidst the foulness of a battlefield. He heard their voices, but could not bear to listen to their exchange. Jealousy ran through him with enough force to leave him shaking.