Chapter 5
Murphy’s Laws of Combat #13
“No combat situation is so bad that it can’t get worse.”
Rig walked his big gray up to the water and yelled over the rumble of the river, “Once we’re out in the middle, they will see us, so we have to move fast.” His horse hesitated and then walked tentatively into the shallows. “When you get to the other bank, head straight for the fog.” Mel nodded, a grim expression darkening her features. “Don’t follow too close, in case I find a deep hole.”
The tumbling din of the torrent was a physical pressure once they entered the river. The horses picked their way through the current, refusing to be hurried. The water rose to the horses’ knees, and then his gray stepped into the surging flow up to the stirrups. Freezing waves splashed his thighs, numbing his legs. He glanced back. The horsemen had seen them and were galloping down the bare slope.
They only had seconds. The packhorse stumbled, wrenching Rig’s shoulder. His swearing was lost in the river’s clamor as he urged the beast on, hauling on the reins.
Even gloved, he couldn’t feel his wet hands, but he kept kicking his horse. Behind him, Mel fought one-handed with her smaller horse, the water up to her calves, the thrashing river throwing spray over the back of her smaller horse.
There were at least twenty meters to go when a spout of water blossomed near him. Damn it! The bastards were shooting at them.
Just then, his mount found a purchase on higher ground and seemed to leap out of the deep water. Rig was nearly wrenched out of his saddle by the packhorse still struggling in the swirling main channel. He dropped the reins, burning knives of pain slashing through his back. Thankfully, the packhorse was heaved up to the shallows. Now loose, the beast stumbled up the riverbank and didn’t stop until well beyond it, blowing steam.
Mel was still battling the river, the current pounding her and the bay at thigh level, her sodden skirt tangling around her legs. He could see her teeth as she grimaced with the effort to stay in the saddle and drive the bay forward one-handed.
He prayed her horse kept his feet. Behind her, horsemen covered the last few hundred meters to the river at a dead run, some firing at them as they galloped.
“Come on, Mel,” he called out. “Only a little farther!” He trotted back into the water to help her, but bullets whizzed by him, others making zist sounds striking the water. He stared at the horsemen. Firing at her? Senseless.
Rig leaned over and unhooked his rifle from the back of his pack, taking off its cover. He felt his horse go still under him, as if he knew Rig would need a stable seat to fire. Mel was making progress, but neither she nor her horse could keep struggling much longer in that frigid water.
A hundred meters away, French troopers, clad in green coats and crested brass helmets, were at the shore dismounting to fire at them. Others plunged into the river, brandishing their swords like maniacs. Rig watched their horses bound through the torrent toward them and gritted his teeth. How many men would he have to kill this time?
He slapped in a clip and wrapped the shoulder strap around his bad arm, safety off. He took a breath, brought the sniper rifle to his shoulder, and began firing. He couldn’t concern himself with kill shots. He was shaking from the pain and cold and they were too close to Mel.
In quick succession, three riders went flying into the river. There was a stunned pause in the shooting on the far shore. The riderless horses crashed into one another in their attempts to turn back in the lashing flood, their struggles blocking the shooters’ line of sight.
Rig gave a whoop as Mel’s bay finally stumbled up to the shallows and stood trembling, blowing great clouds of steam from its nostrils a few meters from him. He motioned her on, but she seemed beyond exhaustion. Mel’s horse abruptly kicked, mud spurting around its hooves, and leaped to a trot, disappearing into the fog behind him. Rig turned to follow.
Another volley sounded across the river. Bullets zipped all around them, one plucking at his sleeve. Even after he emptied three saddles, those Frenchmen were still intent on crossing. With a kick to Chief’s side, Rig turned his horse around. He felt the sting of a bullet graze his cheek. Shit. One of their shots thudded into the saddle’s wood pommel and another snagged the tails of his coat. They sure weren’t getting the message.
He felt a jolt of adrenaline, heating his blood, drowning out the cold and confusing fear in his gut, the craziness enraging him. The world went hazy red.
He leveled his rifle and began firing. He didn’t stop until he heard the click of an empty magazine. Rig blinked at the opposite shore. Green-coated bodies covered the ground or lay bobbing in the shallow water. Three riders and many more riderless horses galloped away in the distance. “That’s right,” Rig roared above the river noise. “Run, you sons of bitches.” Message received.
He’d needed to discourage any effort to follow them. He regretted the necessity, but more deaths didn’t change the bottom line for him now.
Replacing the clip, Rig threw the rifle across his back and headed after Mel. The packhorse followed dragging its reins. With his wet legs numb, staying in the saddle slowed his progress. The evening mists instantly enveloped him in a freezing gray. All he could see was the muddy ruts on the ground beneath him. He kicked his horse into a brisk walk along the trail. As the seconds passed without finding Mel, he began to worry.
The fog swallowed up his calls to her. With a few choice words, he reached into his pack and pulled out the TI scope for his rifle. He’d been asked to teach the Spanish troops in the use of Thermal Imaging. He turned it on and scanned the surrounding fog.
Off to one side several meters away, he could see the red blur of Mel’s horse, its head drooping where it stood. Mel slumped in the saddle. He swore some more, and grabbing up the reins to the packhorse, trotted up to her.
“Mel?” When she didn’t respond, he shook her good shoulder. “Miss Graham?” She stirred, raising a shaky hand. Satisfied she hadn’t been shot, he pulled up the pack roan. She’d lost the space blanket in the river, so he withdrew the other one out of a side pocket in his pack and covered her. She was trembling. They had to find some shelter quickly where they could dry off and recover.
He looked through the thermal scope and didn’t see anything like a house. Unable to hold both horses’ reins, he pulled Mel’s bay after him and let the packhorse go. Luckily, it followed its companions. All three horses were stumbling along with lowered heads. After what seemed like hours, but probably minutes, the trail widened, heading west into the mountains. It then split, one branch curving off to the north around a hill.
With the scope, Rig could see the faint heat signatures of other hoof prints that had recently used the trail coming from the north. Fighting the dread incited by the numbing cold and Mel’s condition, he forced himself to think. He sucked frigid air between his teeth, gazing at the hazy red glow of the trail. The tracks may be coming from houses or a village. With luck, those hoof prints on muddy ground would confuse anyone following them.
Once around the hill, the trail met a tributary of the Esla and followed it, curving west. Just when Rig was afraid he’d made a mistake, houses appeared, dark and silent. He passed the first few—too big and obvious. Where were their owners?
Then farther on, he caught the eerie glow of a low structure behind a stand of trees. He walked the horses up to it. The building looked like a small barn, but it had a chimney. Outstanding. It appeared abandoned. He couldn’t understand why he didn’t seen any power lines, but he pushed that question off beside the heap of today’s mysteries and dismounted. It was an agonizing process, coercing his legs to work. The cold sapped his strength, inviting him to collapse.
He gritted his teeth and limped to the door. He had to force it, but once inside, what amounted to a large shack proved promising. It reminded him of any one of a hundred houses in Iraq and Afghanistan he’d searched—or thrown grenades into. Poor, one-room homes with an attached room containing stalls for animals. This one even had a hayloft behind the stalls, with hay. Both rooms smelled of mildew and straw. The worn floorboards creaked, but the living quarters had a fireplace with plenty of wood stacked next to it.
In the dim light, he saw some furniture: a table, two chairs, and a wood-framed, rope bed without a mattress. All the shelves on the walls were empty but paper and rags were scattered about, like someone had left in a hurry, taking as much as they could with them—including dishes and bedding.
A large candle and metal holder sat all alone on the table. He lit it with the lighter every Ranger packed. The candle smoked and sputtered. The room took on a yellow cast in the candlelight, like an old photograph. He sniffed the candle and shook his head in disbelief. The thing was made of animal fat.
He limped outside into the fog, the cold clawing at his wet skin. He took a deep breath of the painfully crisp air and tried to think. Their situation threatened to overwhelm his cold-numbed brain and frayed nerves. Focus on the immediate, Starke. His leg helped his efforts to stay alert by painfully jolting him to pay attention with every misstep.
Afraid that the horses would wander off if he took Mel in first, he opened the double doors to the barn half of the shack and led the three exhausted beasts inside with her still in the saddle and barred the doors behind them. He worked to ease Mel off the bay, but in the semi-darkness, it seemed to take forever to get her feet out of the stirrups and untangle her wet skirts. She held the reins in a death grip.
Finally, with her on the ground and semi-conscious, they staggered through the connecting door into the living room. He set her down in one of the chairs. He straightened, eyes shut, breathing hard until the fire in his leg and shoulder subsided to a mild torture. Opening his eyes, he surveyed the room.
The chill darkness whistled through the shuttered windows, stirring the dust and the candle flame, making the feeble light on the wooden walls seem to shiver in the freezing air. He gritted his teeth and grabbed up scraps of cloth and paper which were lying everywhere, stuffing them in the cracks of both the shutters and the bottom of the door. When the whistling stopped, he set about starting a fire.
~ ~ ~
Melissa couldn’t control the shaking, or her coughing. She opened her eyes to the stinging smoke that filled the room. Captain Starke stood before a fire, trying to wave the smoke back into the hearth without any success.
“Y-Ye ne-need to open the devil’s trap.” The words wouldn’t come out right with her chattering teeth and coughing. He glanced over at her, hacking himself. She pointed into the fireplace. “Behind the fire proper.”
He crouched and looked. “That metal door set in the back?”
She nodded.
Captain Starke grabbed a stick and through the fire pushed the little door open. The smoke immediately started to clear. With a sheepish grin, he said, “Thanks. I didn’t see that.”
As she followed his efforts to build up the fire, she wondered how any man could fail to understand something as commonplace as a devil’s trap. The dimmed surroundings smelled of animals and hay mingled with the wood smoke. Yet, how had the dighted mon found this bothy n’ brye in the dark? For some reason, she couldn’t seem to concentrate on the questions, or stop shaking. Her limbs prickled, refusing to respond when she attempted to stand and move closer to the fire.
While she floundered one-armed in the chair, the captain limped into the next room and returned with all the packs. He laid out the shiny beige ground cloth before the fire, and then came over with an armload of clothes and blankets. From the pile on the groundcover in front of her, he retrieved a French wool blanket, throwing it over her shoulders. Captain Starke awkwardly hobbled around the pile, pulling the wet tails of his great coat back to avoid dripping on the dry clothes.
He lowered his head to speak to her face-to-face. “We’ve got to get you out of those wet clothes before you die of hypothermia.”