The First to Land (1984)

by Reeman, Douglas

  ‘Second Platoon?’ Fox marched beside the train, his stick at right-angles beneath his arm. He would be missing Sergeant Kirby. They lived only a street apart before they had enlisted. And what of Kirby, still in pain in Mediator’s sickbay, but far worse off now that his world had deserted him. Fox paused as someone spoke from one of the windows. It was Private Kempster, telling him about the locomotive.

  Fox snarled, ‘Leeds? I thought you all lived in bleedin’ caves up there! Now pull yer ’ead inside, man, or they’ll be thinkin’ it’s a cattle truck!’

  Ralf Blackwood said quietly, ‘I’m glad I’m coming this time, sir.’

  Blackwood looked at him and wanted more than anything in the world to like him. Especially now that Neil had gone.

  ‘I am too, Ralf. Keep with the old hands. Don’t try to outsmart the NCOs. Most of them have been through it several times.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Ralf looked up at the leading truck with the machine-gun and jutting rifle muzzles.

  O’Neil was standing with his hands on his hips exchanging cheerful insults with the driver and his mate. Ralf tried to hide his contempt. A drunken lout. He had heard Fox telling Gravatt that the Irish corporal was to get his third stripe, a decoration too if he lived through this escapade.

  Gravatt had replied seriously, ‘A VC I shouldn’t wonder. It will look good back at the depot.’

  Was that all that mattered to them? He could barely contain his feelings. There was no point to it. He did not belong here. Ralf thought of London, of the girl named Helen. The daughter of a cabinet minister. She understood what he wanted, and taunted him about his family tradition, the Corps, or the Regiment as she called it. Summer balls, bare shoulders and gowns swinging to the orchestra. His stomach contracted. With him overseas she might find someone else. When they had first met her dance-card had always been filled.

  Blair snapped, ‘Ready, Mr Blackwood?’

  Ralf clambered up the steps, hating Blair for drawing attention to him, for the grins from the marines.

  Blackwood watched him and then looked at his colonel.

  ‘Right on the half-hour, sir.’ It was strange. The bustle and frantic preparations, and now this station was deserted, all his men and their hopes gathered into carriages like fish in boxes.

  Blair still hesitated. ‘I expect we shall be too busy to gossip later on, David. I’ve felt that I can always talk to you.’

  Blackwood waited. ‘Thank you. Like the day you took it on yourself to tell me about my brother. I appreciated it.’

  Blair looked at him searchingly. ‘Did you?’ He sounded vague. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ He turned away so that Blackwood could only see his profile, the neat moustache, a mask for the man behind it.

  Blair said, ‘I don’t have any relatives who count. Not any more. I’ve left a letter aboard Mediator which you can give to a lady in Hong Kong if you would.’ His mouth twitched in a smile. ‘I’d be grateful.’

  Blackwood waited for him to climb aboard. What was there to say? Blackwood was only twenty-seven but he had seen and done enough to know the signs. Blair was old for his rank and he would know too. It was pointless to utter some pretence.

  Blackwood hung on the short ladder and waved to the engine driver. The train shuddered and gave a lurch forward as it took the weight of its load.

  It was as obvious as a shouted command. Blair was not coming back.

  The train rattled along the tracks, the speed held down in case of damage or hidden mines.

  Blackwood sat in one corner of the compartment, the window lowered to its full extent to encourage a flow of air. With the sun getting higher above the flat landscape the carriage was already an oven, and he knew they would all have to guard against dozing or falling asleep. Clack-clack-clack-clack, even the wheels on the rails seemed to lull him away from any sort of vigilance.

  Occasionally he saw a tiny village or perhaps a farm. Low, yellow buildings almost lost in the heat haze and the train’s drifting dust. They always seemed to be a long way from the railway tracks, as if the inhabitants had never really trusted its invasion, another invention of the foreigners.

  Private Dago Trent was on the opposite side, his eyes slitted against the glare, his rifle propped on the window ledge. It reminded Blackwood of the youth Erskine who had lost a foot. He and Dago had been friends. The veteran and the wide-eyed recruit. They had been inseparable. Trent was probably thinking of him right now, that he would be better dead than a cripple for all those years to come.

  Sergeant Major Fox came through from the rear of the carriage. Blackwood wondered how he always managed to appear neat and tidy no matter what the conditions were like. Even his tunic was whiter than anyone else’s.

  ‘All quiet?’

  Fox glanced at Blair who was apparently fast asleep, arms folded, his legs thrust out amongst the piled ammunition as if it was the first good rest he had had in weeks.

  He replied, ‘Corporal Lyde reckons he just spotted some ’orsemen to th’ right of us, sir.’ He smiled. He had almost said ‘starboard’.

  Blackwood said, ‘Pass the word to the machine-gun section. They might have been some of our people, I suppose.’ That was another unsettling thing about the haste of Seymour’s actions. There had been no proper information about who was doing what. It was rumoured that the Russians had landed some Cossacks, that the Germans too were to use their cavalry for the relief of Peking. But nobody really knew anything for certain. Corporal Lyde might be a brawler and a natural fighter, but he was a very reliable NCO. If he said he had seen mounted men then there was no doubting him. But if the horsemen stayed out of contact with the slow-moving train it seemed very likely that they were either Chinese regulars or Boxers.

  Fox climbed through the little door in the front of the carriage and over a pile of hastily filled sandbags.

  Without opening his eyes Blair murmured, ‘Boxers. Must be. The whole damned countryside will know we’re coming.’

  Blackwood grinned. ‘Thought you were asleep, sir.’

  ‘Never asleep. Not any more. Getting old. Past it.’

  Swan appeared with two steaming mugs. ‘Tea, sir.’ He saw their surprise. ‘One o’ th’ interpreters ‘as brewed up, sir.’

  The tea was surprisingly good and refreshing, and once again Blackwood drifted into his thought of Friedrike von Heiser, what she was doing, how she might receive him when they arrived. Her husband would soon suspect something, if he did not already.

  Blackwood shook himself. He was deluding himself all over again. The estates in East Prussia, the tradition and the power of the family would not allow such an intrusion. And yet – He touched the locket which hung around his neck, hidden beneath his tunic. Even that made him feel guilty as he glanced quickly at his drowsing companions. Gravatt and de Courcy were too weary to care, but Ralfs eyes were wide open, opaque as he stared through the open window. It must mean something more than a farewell or a paid-off gesture surely?

  Blair sat bolt upright. ‘Train’s slowing down!’ He glared at the others. ‘Are you all bloody deaf?’

  Blackwood leaned out of the window. Here there was a slight curve in the track and he could see the front of the train, the sandbags on the leading car, someone, probably Bannatyre, gesturing with his arm. Blackwood fumbled with his binoculars. Blair’s harsh comment had been directed at him also. That made him feel more guilty, as he knew he had earned it.

  The train sighed to a halt, steam belching from beneath the engine in a white cloud.

  He levelled the binoculars and held his breath. ‘The track’s been broken, sir.’

  Blair grunted testily. ‘Didn’t imagine we’d stopped to buy souvenirs!’

  Blackwood glanced at de Courcy. ‘Two sections, Edmund. Tell the others to cover them all the way.’ He shaded his eyes. ‘At least there’s not much shelter. Not enough for an ambush.’ He stared beyond the haze to the vague ridge of blue mountains. They never got any nearer. Like the horizon at sea.

  Blair said,
‘I’m going to take a look. Get the repairs moving. I don’t want Admiral Seymour’s advance train to catch up with us.’ It had obviously become something personal.

  Blair strode away from the train, his orderly having to run to keep up with his neat, lithe figure.

  Gravatt muttered, ‘So much for Peking in a day, sir. I doubt if we’ve made a good thirty miles.’

  Pickets were sent out, rations were served as well as a tot of rum per man to keep up their spirits.

  It did not take as long as Blackwood had expected to repair the broken tracks, and much of the credit went to a stoker petty officer from Mediator’s engine room. He soon had his working parties sweating back and forth in the boiling heat, laying down rails, and beating them into position.

  It was true what they said about sailors, Blackwood thought. They could turn their hands to anything.

  In the afternoon the train moved forward again. There was still no sign of an enemy, but all the while Blackwood had the feeling they were being watched by unseen eyes.

  Blair unfolded his map and studied it for several minutes as the train clattered unhurriedly through the barren countryside.

  ‘There’s this village about ten miles ahead. We’ll stop there for the night.’ He sounded bitter. ‘I shall have to wait for Seymour now. Another day at least. But I’m not pushing ahead in the dark.’

  Blackwood leaned his back against the worn seat. He felt unusually tense. The feeling he had once had in Africa. It was often like that in the Royal Marines. A river, even a tiny stream, was better than nothing. But here they were cut off from the sea, and each turn of the wheels was carrying them further and further into the unknown.

  Blackwood said, ‘Tell the Sergeant Major, Toby, half-rations from now on.’

  Gravatt grinned. ‘They won’t like that, sir.’

  Blair waited for him to leave and said quietly, ‘We may get supplies at the village, but I doubt it.’ He ran his finger around his collar. ‘I’ve a nasty intuition about all this. I can see you’ve got it too.’

  Blackwood nodded. The colonel made him feel transparent.

  ‘You’re like a naked man out here, sir.’

  ‘Hmm.’ He stood up abruptly as a voice shouted, ‘Stand-to, lads!’ The train rolled to a standstill and while the resting marines snatched up their weapons again, Blackwood climbed through the little hatch and stood on the coal in the tender.

  He used levelled binoculars and to his astonishment saw a solitary horseman trotting down the track towards them. He was a white man, and swayed back and forth in the saddle as if he were drunk. The horse too was streaked in sweat and almost done for.

  ‘Go and help him! Corporal Lyde, take six men to that gully, at the double!’

  As the marines bounded across the open ground their torpor forgotten, the five-barrelled machine-gun swung round to follow their progress.

  There were more shouts as a few shots echoed across the track, but they had been fired at extreme range and whimpered overhead like dying hornets.

  The horseman toppled from his saddle even as two marines ran to catch him. They carried him to the train and laid him carefully on one of the seats while Swan moistened his lips with a water flask. Blackwood had expected him to be wounded but he was unhurt. As his strength began to return he stammered out his unbelievable story.

  His name was John Twiss and he had been a riding instructor in Peking and used regularly by civilian members of the various legations. He was English, and as he described the realization of the Boxers’ intentions and their savage attack on the Peking Racecourse his eyes grew brighter, as if he relived the nightmare.

  The legation quarter was surrounded by the Boxers and several large units of the Chinese army who had thrown in their lot with them. Prince Tuan now openly supported the Boxers and held the real power in Peking. It was just a matter of time before a full-scale attack supported by artillery was launched against the legations. Without reinforcements they had no chance of survival.

  Blackwood watched as Twiss spoke to the colonel. He seemed to exclude the rest of them. Perhaps even in his distress he had recognized in Blair another old China hand. One whose trust and hope had been hacked aside by the bloody uprising.

  The British minister had asked for volunteers to attempt to get through the enemy lines and carry word to Admiral Seymour about the mounting danger. Without telegraph or mail, there was no other way. This man Twiss, and he was nobody you would even notice under ordinary circumstances, had offered to ride along the track until he found help. He had left with two others, both of whom were excellent horsemen. One had been captured when his horse had fallen. The other had been shot dead just this morning near the village up ahead.

  Twiss looked at his hands. ‘He was the lucky one.’

  Blackwood glanced at Swan and saw his grim expression. He too was thinking of Earle’s terrible screams.

  Blair said, ‘Recall the pickets. We’ll move on as soon as that horse has been properly watered. Detail someone to ride it beside the train. Might come in handy sooner than we think.’ He was scheming ahead, creating obstacles only to find a way around them.

  He looked at Twiss. ‘You have achieved what you set out to do. You’re a brave fellow. I shall tell Admiral Seymour exactly what we all owe to your courage.’

  Twiss watched him, his eyes glazed with fatigue. ‘He’ll never get through, you know. The Boxers will cut the railway ahead of him, and then behind at Tientsin. I heard one of the officers say as much at the legation.’

  ‘Well, we shall have to see about that.’ Blair straightened his back and stared through the window at the dust which had begun to settle again. But not before Blackwood had seen the understanding in his eyes. The whole force could be cut off and destroyed piecemeal. It would be Seymour who needed help then.

  Eventually the train began to move forward again with many eyes probing the landscape and peering at the glittering rails ahead until they were almost blinded in the glare.

  It felt like an age before they sighted the village. Just a few small dwellings on either side of the track, and a water-tower on stilts.

  The marines crouched on either side of the train, rifles wavering as they searched for danger.

  Private Knowles, who had been raised on a Dorset farm, struggled to control the horse as it reared and kicked when moments earlier it had been trotting quite happily with its new rider.

  Blair said quietly, ‘Trouble, David. I can smell it. So can the horse.’

  The train halted and in sections the first marines fanned out on either side of the train, bayonets fixed in case of a sudden attack.

  Lieutenant Gravatt shouted, ‘Sar’nt Davis! Use the water-tower to refill all the flasks and canteens!’

  Blair snapped, ‘Belay that!’ He gestured towards a building beside the track. A marine was leaning against it vomiting helplessly.

  Blair said, ‘Come on. De Courcy, take charge here!’

  You would not really have known they were human, just that they had once been white-skinned. Headless and disembowelled the two corpses hung from a roof like obscene meat.

  Fox exclaimed hoarsely, ‘An’ one of ’em was already dead, yet they still did that to ’im!’

  Blair did not sound as if he had heard. ‘Send someone to the water-tower. Tell him to watch out for snipers.’ He made himself look at the dangling horror. ‘Cut those down and bury them.’

  It was not then the end of it. The Boxers must have struck the village like a tornado, murdering anyone they could find, men, women, even children in an orgy of horror.

  Blackwood walked through the small village, and forced himself to join his men as they searched for any survivors. The village was poor, but with the new railway running right through it, prosperity might one day have been theirs. Perhaps that too was a sin to the puritanical Boxers. A foreign infection which must be stamped out.

  He thought of Friedrike that night in her cabin with her little pistol, the terrible scenes of mutilation a
nd death he had seen aboard the Delhi Star.

  In one dwelling, little more than a hut, he found a young Chinese mother, her eyes wide with terror, but her arms locked protectively around the child which had been feeding at her breast. Mercifully they must both have died together, but what sort of monster could see this young girl with her baby and feel no pity as he swung his great blade.

  He leaned against a wall, sick of the stench, the busy murmur of flies. Blair joined him. ‘As I thought. The water’s poisoned. Full of corpses.’ He spoke without any emotion and yet Blackwood imagined he might be near to breaking-point.

  He saw some of his men staring around as if shocked out of their minds. The Boxers had achieved what they had set out to do. These men, even the recruits, would stand and fight, die if need be, if so ordered. But they were no match for such scenes as these, and Blackwood could feel their despair as it moved amongst them like a spectre.

  Gravatt crunched across the tracks and asked, ‘Orders, sir?’ He was as pale as death.

  Blackwood looked at the colonel. ‘No sense in pushing forward any further, sir.’

  ‘No. Twiss says there could be twenty thousand of the enemy converging on Peking. How many of us?’ He looked round at the silent, listless marines. ‘A hundred? Even for the Royals I fear we may be outmatched.’ He became brisk and businesslike just as quickly. ‘There is a siding of some kind here. Change the trucks around, we will reverse the train back to Tientsin, or as near as we can get to it.’

  Blackwood passed his orders and then asked, ‘What will the admiral do, sir?’

  ‘Do?’ Blair’s eyes settled on his and Blackwood saw the pain deep inside them for the first time. ‘He’ll run for the sea. At least I hope he does. If I meet him face to face I shall probably shoot him!’

  All that night the train stood beside the poisoned water-tower, surrounded by silence and the smell of death. Nobody slept, not even the sentries when they were relieved.

  At first light they found the heads of the two murdered riders, propped on stakes and within yards of where two sentries had been posted. They were as close as that.