Hour of Need tlom-6

by Michael Pryor

  Aubrey outlined the plan, simply leaving out the necessity for him to be the locus of the spell. ‘And the artillery bombardment is icing on the cake,’ he concluded. ‘The Chancellor and his friends will see what it’s truly like out here. Being the people they are, they’re bound to try to take command once they’re safely in their trenches. I’m wagering that this will create all sorts of chaos.’

  ‘Should win some time for reinforcements to get here,’ George said.

  ‘Neat and precise,’ Caroline said. ‘And it has the virtue of not turning us into murderers. And I fully understand the irony of saying such a thing in the middle of a battle zone, but there you have it.’

  ‘“War is confusion” according to the Scholar Tan,’ Aubrey murmured. ‘I used to think that he meant in tactics and battle plans, but I’m starting to understand just how wise he was.’

  ‘To more practical things,’ Caroline said, ‘what about resting, as you suggested?’

  ‘I’d love to, but the best thing to do is to get this under way before the colonel comes back. I’d like to spare him any repercussions.’

  ‘You’re assuming there will be repercussions,’ George said.

  ‘Oh, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of repercussions to go around,’ Aubrey said.

  ‘Don’t worry, Aubrey,’ Caroline said. ‘We’ll take care of that.’

  ‘But before I start, I’ll need a large clear area in here. I have to work on the floor. And I need some powdered chalk for a restraining diagram.’

  George was already starting to move boxes. ‘Good luck with finding chalk, old man. It’s not exactly High Street around here, if you haven’t noticed.’

  ‘Would flour do, Aubrey?’ Sophie said. ‘I saw a store dump just along the way.’

  ‘Perfect. I was going to stretch my legs a little anyway.’ He reached out and shuffled the papers together that held the final version of his spell workings. He stowed them in a satchel.

  Caroline had a large box in her arms. She paused. ‘What do you need those papers for?’

  Aubrey was so smooth, he picked up a few beats rather than missing one. ‘I thought I’d sit outside while you ready the dugout. I still have some memorising to do.’

  It was only the slightest of prevarications. The spell was well and truly seared into his brain after all the work he’d done on it. What he’d actually be memorising was the best route to his selected shell hole.

  He left his friends discussing the neatest arrangement of boxes and that gave him some hope. He simply couldn’t countenance the idea that his last memories of his friends would be of them arguing over the placement of makeshift furniture, so it suggested he must be coming back alive. If he had to have last memories of his friends, he wanted them to be heartfelt protestations about love, friendship and what a difference he’d made to their lives. Some tears would be acceptable, but he was afraid they would be more likely to come from George than Sophie or Caroline, so he scratched that from his imaginings. The phrase ‘life won’t be the same without you’ had a comforting ring and he contemplated that as he wandered along the duck-boards until he found the store.

  The corporal in charge was suspicious until Aubrey showed his Directorate identification and after that he couldn’t be helpful enough. Aubrey settled for two pounds of flour in a brown paper bag. In the dim light of the store he made out a stamp that said it had come all the way from Antipodea. He was unaccountably pleased that as well as sending their strapping soldiers, the colonies were also sending foodstuffs. Loyalty indeed.

  Aubrey found a nearby firing bay and had a quiet conversation with the captain of the Lancefield Fusiliers who was on duty. Captain Robinson was young enough to be impressed with Aubrey’s credentials and intrigued by the possibility of a magical trench raid, as Aubrey put it. He offered some suggestions to make the way easier, as well as some burnt cork for his face. He also gave Aubrey a password, at which Aubrey blinked, felt a cold wind on the back of his neck, and realised that he’d just avoided a horrible fate. If all went unaccountably well and he was able to crawl back toward the Albion trenches, he would have been in dire trouble without a password. Anyone approaching in the middle of the night was assumed, sensibly, to be a Holmlander up to no good.

  A handshake, a slap on the back, a helmet thrust into his hands and Aubrey was up over the top and into no-man’s-land.

  52

  Aubrey had never felt so exposed. His imagination, never needing much prompting, immediately told him that dozens of snipers with supernaturally good night vision were all taking bets on which of them would be the first to bring him down.

  Which would be an achievement, he thought, as he was as down as it was humanly possible to be. If he were any downer, he’d be moving in a subterranean mode. Wriggling along on his stomach, he’d positioned the sack of flour directly in front of his head, following the theory that a bullet would be better off hitting anything, foodstuff or not, before it hit him.

  The next hour was a mixture of terror, panic and loss of skin. Periodic phantom attacks swept across the ruined landscape. Cavalry charges, waves of infantry, and even an elephant brigade at one stage. With each one Aubrey experienced the gut-wrenching trepidation that the phantoms had been designed to inspire. Every time a wave of attackers appeared from nowhere he huddled in shell holes or rolled up as close as he could to barbed wire barriers until he was sure that the shadowy figures weren’t real. Then he crawled on, pushing his bag of flour in front of him, and dragging the satchel with his precious notes behind him.

  At one stage, Aubrey froze when, some distance away, a figure approaching his level of furtiveness made its way between two shattered trees. Aubrey watched as the stranger progressed in inches, swarming along on his belly. Since every movement was taking him close to the Allied lines, Aubrey decided that he was a Holmlander raider.

  Aubrey’s heart, which had been running at a steady gallop ever since he left the Albionite trench, showed it was fully capable of a lift in tempo. Aubrey was tempted to blame the trembling in his hands on the sheer amount of blood being pumped about his body by the overactive organ, and not on fear – but he wasn’t that foolish. He was right to be afraid in a place where evidence of certain death was only too plain and too commonplace. Once again, though, all his rational thinking and appraisal had little effect on his body and its reactions. Accepting that being afraid was sensible was one thing. Trying to slow his heart was another.

  Aubrey lay beside a mound of earth thrown up by an explosion and his hand moved almost of its own volition toward his sidearm. The range was extreme, so there was no point in his having it in his hand, but nevertheless something in him wanted to be armed in such a situation. Shaking, he made a fist of the traitor hand so that it couldn’t open his holster, and he peered toward the enemy raider.

  A slight ‘clink’ came from the raider. In his hands, he held a cylinder a few feet long, blackened but showing a tiny gleam of metal. He pushed it ahead of him as he crawled.

  After making the noise, the raider didn’t move for some time. Aubrey applauded his discretion. At night, sentries on both sides used hearing as much as sight.

  The raider was moving again, but he wasn’t getting any closer to the Allied lines. Aubrey risked taking out his field glasses and saw that the raider was unscrewing the cylinder, working with both hands.

  Another ‘clink’ and the end of the cylinder popped off, but before anyone from either trench could commence firing, a torrent of ghostly figures poured from the cylinder as if it were a Roman Candle. In an instant, the figures had assumed solidity, colour and shape, milling about uncertainly until the last had emerged, then they arranged themselves in a line. A cavalry charge, complete with regimental colours and a bugler, thundered toward the Albion trenches.

  The raider quickly reversed and began scrambling back to Holmland territory. A wild fusillade of shots rang out from the Albionite lines where someone wasn’t willing to bet that the cavalry charge was another illusion.
Aubrey pulled his head in, aiming to make himself the smallest target possible.

  By the way the shots died out quickly, Albion officers had summed up the situation and declared the cavalry as unreal. He lost sight of the horses as they crested a barbed wire barrier and plunged in the direction of the trenches, and he’d also lost interest in them because of something much more urgent.

  Someone was nearby.

  He cursed himself, internally. He’d taken his eye off the Holmland raider, lost him in the shadows – and someone else had crept up on him.

  He caught his breath. That fall of earth over there couldn’t be natural, especially since it had followed a scraping sound; the two together were enough to make his gaze dart about, trying to sort harmless shadow from Holmland raider. The difficulty was, in this frame of mind everything looked like a Holmland raider – and a battle-hardened one at that. That broken wagon, for instance. That tangle of barbed wire. And that smashed ammunition box could be two Holmland raiders at least.

  He sought for some magic, something silent but disabling, but his mind was too full of the transference spell to accommodate anything else. Fragments eluded his grasp as he clutched for them.

  He felt the tip of the blade touch him just behind the ear, just before he heard the voice – very soft, very deadly. ‘It would be a very bad idea to move, except to take your hand away from your pistol. Turn slowly.’

  For once, Aubrey followed orders, to the letter, to see Caroline on the ground next to him. He could have kissed her, so he did.

  53

  They had to nestle very close to each other to fit into the tiny shell hole Aubrey had found. It had a bank thrown up toward the Holmland direction, which was useful, but it was open to the Albion side, so they had to – perforce – come even closer to whisper in each other’s ear. To communicate, share intelligence, status reports, that sort of thing.

  ‘You were appalling,’ Caroline said and her breath on his ear nearly made him swoon. She, too, had used the burnt cork on her face and looked exotically adorable. ‘You may as well have worn a sandwich board saying, “I’m about to sneak off and risk my life to try to save you all.”’

  He was moderately crestfallen; he found it hard to be entirely crestfallen with Caroline in his arms. ‘It was that obvious?’

  ‘Not to someone who doesn’t know you. Colonel Stanley probably assumes you’re following the orders he thinks he gave you.’

  ‘You noticed that too?’

  ‘Between the three of us, we have most things covered.’

  ‘I feel like I’m up on stage for you all to laugh at.’

  ‘No you don’t. You feel surrounded by loyal and concerned friends.’

  ‘One of whom followed me out here.’

  ‘Captain Robinson was kind enough to tell me where you’d gone. He’s a lovely man.’

  ‘I’m sure he is. And I’m sure he fell over himself to help you.’

  ‘Something like that. Or it may have been Sophie. We both questioned him.’

  Aubrey spared a moment to feel sorry for the captain. The poor man hadn’t stood a chance. ‘But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing out here. This is magic. I know what I’m doing.’

  ‘That’s as may be, but the three of us agreed that someone had to be with you to take care of what you’d forgotten.’

  ‘Forgotten? What have I forgotten?’

  She looked sternly at him. ‘We’re just taking it on past experience that you’ve forgotten something.’

  Aubrey should have been offended, but couldn’t be. He was surrounded by faithful and concerned friends. ‘You know, this is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had in the middle of a battlefield.’

  ‘I want you to remember it, Aubrey. For a long time.’

  ‘I shall.’ Realising he was taking his life into his hands in a way he hadn’t been anticipating, he gazed into Caroline’s eyes and said: ‘I want you to go back.’

  ‘Go back? To our trenches?’

  ‘That’s right. I can’t take you into danger like this.’

  Through a tilting of a shoulder and an abrupt shift of her hips, they were suddenly as far apart as they could be in a shell hole a few feet across. She crossed her arms and fixed on him. ‘And what makes you think that you have any say in my actions?’

  Aubrey instantly decided it was a poor time to bring up small things like his being her commanding officer. ‘Now, I understand that you’re angry, having come all this way…’

  ‘Angry? If you think this is angry -’

  ‘Irritated, then. Annoyed. Miffed.’

  ‘Miffed? Miffed? ’

  ‘I didn’t mean miffed. What’s that word that sounds like miffed but describes exactly how you’re feeling right now?’

  Aubrey could hear the slow breath Caroline took as she tried to control herself. ‘Aubrey, my being here is my decision to make, not yours. You simply have to overcome this desire to move people about to suit your own ends.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ For an instant, Aubrey felt as if he were balanced at the top of the world’s highest skiing slope, then he plunged. ‘It’s just that I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’

  Caroline was silent for a moment. She touched her cheek with a hand, then went on: ‘If I got in the way of whatever it is you’re planning, you mean.’

  Aubrey realised that matters were well and truly running away from him, but in this unlikeliest of places he had a moment of insight, a moment of apprehension where he understood something that had been frustrating him for ages. ‘It’s your decision to make,’ he said slowly, ‘not mine.’

  She speared him with a look. ‘What did you say?’

  He grinned. ‘This is why some people back in Albion are so afraid of women’s suffrage, you know. They don’t realise that we all have the right to self-determination.’

  ‘Aubrey, you’re going off at a tangent.’

  ‘Not really. Thousands of men, oldsters mostly, take it for granted that they can tell women what to do. The idea that women should be in charge of their own lives is completely alien to them. It may as well be a foreign language.’

  ‘Ah. You’ve seen our problem.’

  ‘Independence. Freedom. Liberty.’

  ‘Well worth fighting for, I would think.’

  He took her hand. He was pleased – and relieved – when she didn’t resist. ‘I’m sorry, Caroline. I shouldn’t order you about like that. I accept your decision, whatever it may be, but -’

  ‘I don’t know if I like buts.’

  ‘But please – can you accept that I feel protective toward you?’

  She studied him. ‘I can.’ She paused and she touched her lips. ‘Probably because I feel the same way about you.’

  Aubrey had never been punched so hard that it made him smile, but he imagined it was something like the sensation he had now. ‘You do?’

  ‘All in all, Aubrey, I’d rather be near you when you’re in danger than not. Especially since that might mean I could do something about it.’

  It was difficult to talk, Aubrey found, when he was smiling as broadly as he was. ‘I understand entirely.’

  He wasn’t exactly sure what happened next, but suddenly – without any apparent movement – he had an armful of Caroline.

  They talked – in low, private voices – and waited for the right hour to come.

  54

  Aubrey reluctantly disengaged himself. ‘We have to move.’

  ‘Do we?’

  ‘Only if we want to win the war.’

  ‘Oh, very well then.’

  Aubrey explained about the need to find the double shell crater he’d spied earlier. Then he had to detail his plan for Caroline. Carefully. Without leaving out anything, or covering up in obfuscation.

  When he finished, she crossed her arms and studied him. ‘That is one of the more fanciful, flamboyant, outrageous schemes you’ve come up with.’

  ‘Ah ha.’

  ‘And probably the most hero
ic.’

  ‘It is?’ Aubrey felt the warmth of a blush creeping up from under his collar.

  ‘It’s one of the things I love about you, Aubrey. The extent of your imagination is only matched by your willingness to put yourself in harm’s way for the right cause.’

  ‘I do?’

  ‘That, and your penchant for two-word answers when you’re dazed.’

  Dazed was a fair description. Aubrey was still lagging behind, trying to come to terms with what Caroline had said. ‘I don’t!’

  ‘And there you have it.’

  Aubrey shook himself. ‘And here’s where you try to dissuade me from this course of action, correct? Where you try to tell me it’s too dangerous, too risky, something like that?’

  ‘I should say not. I wouldn’t think an expedition with you would be complete without an extremely hazardous situation.’ Caroline peeped over the lip of their shell hole. ‘I can see the best way. Follow me.’

  55

  The double shell hole proved to be just as Aubrey had hoped. Large, and close enough to the middle of no-man’s-land to serve his purposes.

  He began preparing the spell. Caroline divided her attention between him and the surroundings, keeping low but alert, pistol in hand.

  Firstly, Aubrey had to organise a relatively flat area. To this end, he’d brought the wonderfully named entrenching tool, the neat folding spade favoured by raiding and expeditionary forces. He used it to level the bottom of the crater, working steadily, and eventually used his hands as much as the metal tool, sweeping the dry earth away until he had rough oval area formed from the intersection of the two shell impacts and, once again, he was grateful that the weather was clear. Rain would no doubt have filled the bottom of the crater and the earth was fine enough to make the sort of glutinous mud that would be a misery.

  He crawled around the perimeter of the desired area with the flour, marking his restraining and focusing diagram with a substantial line. Making the required symbols was trickier, but they were necessary adjuncts in bringing the results of the spell to the correct location and to no other. The symbol was a combination Aubrey had invented after some consideration, bringing together the spiral of the Babylonian sigil for ‘sun’ and the Chaldean symbol for ‘moon,’ both powerful symbols in their day for renewal and return, handy in this context.