by High Citadel
O'Hara's mind leapt immediately to the remaining drum of paraffin and to the empty bottles he had seen lying round the camp. "My God, you've done it again," he said. "Gather together all the bottles you can find."
He strode across to the hut where the paraffin was stored, and Willis called after him. "It's open -- I was in there this morning."
He pushed open the door and paused as he saw the crate of liquor. Slowly he bent down and pulled out a bottle. He cradled it in his hand, then held it up to the light; the clear liquid could have been water, but he knew the deception. This was the water of Lethe which brought blessed forgetful-ness, which untied the knots in his soul. His tongue crept out to lick his lips.
He heard someone approaching the hut and quickly put the bottle on a shelf, pushing it behind a box and out of sight. When Benedetta came in he was bending over the paraffin drum, unscrewing the cap.
She was laden with empty bottles. "Willis said you wanted these. What are they for?"
"We're making bombs of a sort. We'll need some strips of cloth to make wicks and stoppers; see if you can find something."
He began to fill the bottles and presently Benedetta came back with the cloth and he showed her how to stuff the necks of the bottles, leaving an easily ignitable wick. "Where are the others?" he asked.
"Willis had an idea," she said. "Armstrong and my uncle are helping him."
He filled another bottle. "Do you. mind leaving your uncle up here alone?"
"What else can we do?" she asked. She bent her head. "He has always been alone. He never married, you know. And then he has known a different kind of loneliness -- the loneliness of power."
"And have you been lonely -- since ..."
"Since my family were killed?" She looked up and there was something in her dark eyes that he could not fathom. "Yes, I have. I joined my uncle and we were two lonely people together in foreign countries." Her lip curved. "I think you are also a lonely man, Tim."
"I get along," he said shortly, and wiped his hands on a piece of rag.
She stood up. "What will you do when we leave here?"
"Don't you mean, if we leave here?" He stood too and looked down at her upraised face. "I think I'll move on; there's nothing for me in Cordillera now. Filson will never forgive me for bending one of his aeroplanes."
"Is there nothing you want to stay for?"
Her lips were parted and on impulse he bent his head and kissed her. She clung to him and after a long moment he sighed. A sudden wonder had burst upon him and he said in surprise. "Yes, I think there is something to stay for."
They stood together quietly for a few minutes, not speaking. It is in the nature of lovers to make plans, but what could they plan for? So there was nothing to say.
At last Benedetta said. "We must go, Tim. There is work to do."
He released her. "I'll see what the others are doing. You'd better .throw the booze out of the liquor crate and put the paraffin bottles in it; we can strap it on to the trebuchet."
He walked out of the hut and up to the other end of the camp to see what was happening. Half way there he stopped in deep thought and cursed quietly. He had at last recognised the strange look in Benedetta's eyes. It had been compassion.
He took a deep breath, then straightened his shoulders and walked forward again, viciously kicking at a stone. He heard voices to his left and tramped over to the hillside, where he saw Willis, Armstrong and Aguillar grouped round an old cable drum.
"What's all this?" he asked abruptly.
"Insurance," said Armstrong cheerfully. "In case the enemy gets across the bridge."
Willis gave another bang with the rock he was holding and O'Hara saw he had hammered a wedge to hold the drum in position. "You know what this is," he said. "It's one of those wooden drums used to transport heavy cable -- looks like a big cotton reel, doesn't it?"
It did indeed look like a cotton reel, eight feet in diameter. "Well?" said O'Hara.
"The wood is rotten, of course -- it must have been standing in the open for years," said Willis. "But it's heavy and it will roll. Take a few steps down the hill and tell me what you see."
O'Hara walked" down the hill and came to a steep drop, and found he was overlooking a cutting, blasted when the road was being made. Willis said from behind him. "The drum is out of sight of the road. We wait until a jeep or a truck is coming up, then we pull away the chocks and with a bit of luck we cause a smash and block the road."
O'Hara looked back at Aguillar, whose grey face told of the exertions he had made. He felt anger welling up inside him and jerked his head curtly to Willis and Armstrong. He walked out of earshot of Aguillar, then said evenly, suppressing his anger. "I think it would be a good idea if we didn't go off half-cocked on independent tracks."
Willis looked surprised and his face flushed. "But "
O'Hara cut him short. "It's a bloody good idea, but you might have had some consultation about it. I could have helped to get the drum down into position and the old man could have filled paraffin bottles. You know he's got a heart condition, and if he drops dead on us those swine on the other side of the river have won." He tapped Willis on the chest. "And I don't intend to let that happen if I have to kill you, me and every other member of this party to get Aguillar away to safety."
Willis looked shocked. "Speak for yourself, O'Hara," he said angrily. "I'm fighting for my own life."
"Not while I'm in command, you're not. You'll bloody well obey orders and you'll consult me on everything you do."
Willis flared up. "And who put you in command?"
"I did," said O'Hara briefly. He stared at Willis. "Want to make an issue of it?"
"I might," said Willis tightly.
O'Hara stared him down. "You won't," he said with finality.
Willis's eyes flickered away. Armstrong said quietly. "It would be a good idea if we didn't fight among ourselves." He turned to Willis. "O'Hara is right, though; we shouldn't have let Aguillar push the drum."
"Okay, okay," said Willis impatiently. "But I don't go for this death-or-glory stuff."
"Look," said O'Hara. "You know what I think? I think I'm a dead man as I stand here right now. I don't think we've a hope in hell of stopping those communist bastards c rossing the bridge; we might slow them down but we can't stop them. And once they get across they'll hunt us down and slaughter us like pigs -- that's why I think I'm a dead man. It's not that I particularly like Aguillar, but the communists want him and I'm out to stop them -- that's why I'm so tender of him."
Willis had gone pale. "But what about Forester and Rohde?"
"I think they're dead too," said O'Hara coldly. "Have you any idea what it's like up there? Look, Willis; I flew men and equipment for two Yankee mountaineering expeditions and one German. And with all their modern gadgets they failed in their objectives three-quarters of the time." He waved his arm at the mountains. "Hell, half these mountains don't even have names, they're so inaccessible."
Armstrong said, . "You paint a black picture, O'Hara."
"Is it a true picture?"
"I fear it is," said Armstrong ruefully.
O'Hara shook his head irritably. "This isn't doing any good. Let's get that contraption down to the bridge."
ii
It was not as difficult as O'Hara anticipated getting the trebuchet down the mountain road. Willis had done a good job in mounting it for ease of transportation and it took only three hours to get back, the main difficulty being to manoeuvre the clumsy machine round the hairpin bends. At every bend he half expected to see Miss Ponsky running up to tell them that the communists had made their attack, but all was quiet and he did not even hear the crack of a rifle. Things were too quiet, he thought; maybe they were running out of ammunition -- there was none of the desultory firing that had gone on the previous day.
They pushed the trebuchet off the road to the place indicated by Willis, and O'Hara said expressionlessly. "Benedetta, relieve Jenny; tell her to come up and see me."
/> She looked at him curiously, but he had turned away to help Willis and Armstrong dismantle the trebuchet preparatory to erecting it as a weapon. They were going to mount it on a small knoll in order to get the height, so that the heavy weight on the shorter aim could have a good fall.
Miss Ponsky came up to him and told him that everything had been quiet. He thought for a moment and then said. "Did you hear any trucks?"
"Not since they took away the jeep this morning."
He rubbed his chin. "Maybe we hit them harder than we thought. You're sure they're still there?"
"Oh, yes," she said brightly. "I had that thought myself some hours ago so I waggled something in full view." She blushed. "I put my hat on a stick -- I've seen it done on old movies on TV."
He smiled. "Did they hit it?"
"No -- but they came close."
"You're doing all right, Jenny."
"You must be hungry -- I'll make a meal." Her lips twitched. "I think this is fun, you know." She turned and hurried up the road, leaving him standing dumbfounded. Fun!
Assembling the trebuchet took two hours and when it was completed Armstrong, begrimed but happy, said with satisfaction. "There, now; I never expected to see one of these in action." He turned to O'Hara. "Forester came upon me sketching a trebuchet for Willis; he asked if I were drawing the scales of justice and I said that I was. He must have thought me mad, but it was perceptive of him."
He closed his eyes and recited as though quoting a dictionary entry. "From the medieval Latin trebuchetum; old French, trebuchet; a pair of scales, an assay balance." He opened his eyes and pointed. "You see the resemblance?"
O'Hara did see. The trebuchet looked like a warped balance, very much out of proportion, with one arm much longer than the other. He said. "Does this thing have much of a kick -- much recoil?"
"Nothing detectable; the impact is absorbed by the ground."
O'Hara looked at the crazy system of ropes and pulleys. "The question is now -- will the beast work?"
There was an edge of irritability to Willis's voice. "Of course it will work. Let's chuck this thing." He pointed to a round boulder about the size of a man's head.
"All right," said O'Hara. "Let's give it a bang. What do we do?"
"First we haul like hell on this rope," said Willis.
The rope was connected, through a three-part pulley arrangement, to the end of the long arm. As O'Hara and Willis pulled, the arm came down and the shorter arm with me weight rose into the air. The weight was a big, rusty iron bucket which Willis had found and filled with stones. As the long arm came to the ground, Armstrong stepped forward and threw over a lever and a wooden block dropped over the arm, holding it down. Willis picked up the boulder and placed it in the hub-cap which served as a cup.
"We're ready," he said. "I've already aligned the thing in the general direction of the bridge; we need someone down there to call the fall of the shot."
"I'll go," said O'Hara. He walked across to where Benedetta was keeping watch and slid down beside her, being careful to keep his head down. "They're going to let fly," he said.
She turned her head to look at the trebuchet. "Do you think this will work?"
"I don't know." He grimaced. "All I know is that it's a hell of a way to fight a war,"
"We're ready," shouted Armstrong.
O'Hara waved and Armstrong pulled the firing lever sharply. The weight dropped and the long arm bearing the missile flipped up into the air. There was an almighty crash as the iron bucket hit the ground, but O'Hara's attention was on the rock as it arched over his head. It was in the air a long time and went very high; then it reached the top of its trajectory and started to fall to earth, gaining speed appreciably as it plummeted. It fell far on the other side of the bridge, beyond the road and the burned vehicles, into the mountainside. A plume of dust fountained from the side of the hill to mark its fall.
"Jesus!" whispered O'Hara. "The thing has range." He slipped from his place and ran back. "Thirty yards over -- fifteen to the right. How heavy was that rock?"
"About thirty pounds," said Willis offhandedly. "We need a bigger one." He heaved on the trebuchet. "We'll swing her a bit to the left."
O'Hara could hear a babble of voices from across the river and there was a brief rattle of rifle fire. Or should I call it musketry? he thought, just to keep it in period. He laughed and smote Armstrong on the back. "You've done it again," he roared. "We'll pound that bridge to matchwood."
But it was not to prove as easy as he thought. It took an hour to fire the next six shots -- and not one of them hit the bridge. They had two near misses and one that grazed the catenary rope on the left, making the bridge shiver from end to end. But there were no direct hits.
Curiously, too, there was no marked reaction from the enemy. A lot of running about and random shooting followed each attempt, but there was no coherent action. What could they do after all, O'Hara thought; nothing could stop the rocks once they were in flight.
"Why can't we get the range right -- what the hell's the matter with this thing?" he demanded at last.
Armstrong said mildly. "I knew a trebuchet wasn't a precision weapon, in a general way, of course; but this brings it home. It does tend to scatter a bit, doesn't it?"
Willis looked worried. "There's a bit of a whip in the arm," he said. "It isn't stiff enough. Then again, we haven't a standard shot; there are variations in weight and that causes the overs and unders. It's the whip that's responsible for the variations from side to side."
"Can you do anything about the whip in the arm?"
Willis shook his head. "A steel girder would help," he said ironically.
"There must be some way of getting a standard weight of shot."
So the ingenious Willis made a rough balance which, he said, would match one rock against another to the nearest half-pound. And they started again. Four shots later, they made the best one of the afternoon.
The trebuchet crashed again and a cloud of dust rose from where the bucket smashed into the ground. The long arm came over, just like a fast bowler at cricket, thought O'Hara, and the rock soared into the sky, higher and higher. Over O'Hara's head it reached it highest point and began to fall, seeming to go true to its target. "This is it," said O'Hara urgently. "This is going to be a smash hit."
The rock dropped faster and faster under the tug of gravity and O'Hara held his breath. It dropped right between the catenary ropes of the bridge and, to O'Hara's disgust, fell plumb through the gap in the middle, sending a plume of white spray leaping from the boiling river to splash on the underside of the planking.
"God Almighty!" he howled. "A perfect shot -- and in the wrong bloody place."
But he had a sudden hope that what he had said to Willis up at lie camp would prove to be wrong; that he was not a dead man -- that the enemy would not get over the bridge -- that they all had a fighting chance. As hope surged in him a knot of tension tightened in his stomach. When he had no hope his nerves had been taut enough, but the offer of continued life made life itself seem more precious and not to be lost or thrown away -- and so the tension was redoubled. A man who considers himself dead has no fear of dying, but with hope came a trace of fear.
He went back to the trebuchet. "You're a bloody fine artillery man," he said to Willis in mock-bitter tones.
Willis bristled. "What do you mean?"
"I mean what I say -- you're a bloody fine artillery man. That last shot was perfect -- but the bridge wasn't there at that point. The rock went through the gap."
Willis grinned self-consciously and seemed pleased. "It looks as though we've got the range."
"Let's get at it," said O'Hara.
For the rest of the afternoon the trebuchet thumped and crashed at irregular intervals. They worked like slaves hauling on the ropes and bringing rocks to the balance. O'Hara put Miss Pon sky in charge of the balance and as the afternoon wore on they became expert at judging the weight -- it was no fun to carry a forty-pound rock a matter of
a couple of hundred yards, only to have it rejected by Miss Ponsky.
O'Hara kept an eye on his watch and recorded the number of shots, finding that the rate of fire had speeded up to above twelve an hour. In two and a half hours they fired twenty-six rocks and scored about seven hits; about one in four. O'Hara had seen only two of them land but what he saw convinced him that the bridge could not take that kind of pounding for long. It was a pity that the hits were scattered on the bridge -- a concentration would have been better -- but they had opened a new gap of two planks and several more were badly bent. It was not enough to worry a man crossing the bridge -- not yet -- but no one would take a chance with a vehicle.
He was delighted -- as much by the fact that the enemy was helpless as by anything else. There was nothing they could do to stop the bridge being slowly pounded into fragments, short of bringing up a mortar to bombard the trebuchet. At first there had been the usual futile rifle-fire, but that soon ceased. Now there was merely a chorus of jeers from the opposite bank when a shot missed and a groan when a hit was scored.
It was half an hour from nightfall when Willis came to him and said. "We can't keep this up. The beast is taking a hell of a battering -- she's shaking herself to pieces. Another two or three shots and she'll collapse."
O'Hara swore and looked at the grey man -- Willis was covered in dust from heed to foot. He said slowly. "I had hoped to carry on through the night -- I wanted to ruin the bridge beyond repair."
"We can't," said Willis flatly. "She's loosened up a lot and there's a split in the arm -- it'll break off if we don't bind it up with something. If that happens the trebuchet is the pile of junk it started out as."
O'Hara felt impotent fury welling up inside him. He turned away without speaking and walked several paces before he said over his shoulder. "Can you fix it?"
"I can try," said Willis. "I think I can."
"Don't try -- don't think Fix it," said O'Hara harshly, as he walked away. He did not look back.
iii
Night.
A sheath of thin mist filmed the moon, but O'Hara could still see as he picked his way among the rocks. He found a comfortable place in which to sit, his back resting against a vertical slab. In front of him was a rock shelf on which he carefully placed the bottle he carried. It reflected the misted moon deep in its white depths as though enclosing a nacreous pearl.