Chapter 27
Murphy’s Laws of Combat #33
“Weather ain’t neutral.”
Night had come, leaving only a howling blackness. The sleet blew sideways. Rig pulled out his black and tan keffiyeh scarf, a necessity in Iraqi sandstorms. He draped it over his head as he’d seen others do, covering his ears, and held it in place with the hat and chinstrap. Even with the Vaseline, his face and ears still ached with the cold.
Men at intervals carried lanterns to light the column’s path, but they were too few to do more than indicate where the columns were up ahead. Horses and people stumbled in the ankle-deep, freezing mud. Men swore up and down the line.
In places, the edge of the road fell off, a sheer cliff invisible in the night. The soldiers naturally crowded to the center away from the invisible edge of the abyss, slowing the pace even more. They’d been trudging up the cutbacks for six hours. Only thirty hours to go.
He glanced at Mel. He could barely make her out from the faint light of the lanterns. She sat back straight, eyes ahead. When her roan stopped, she’d whisper to it and give a gentle kick. And every time, the horse would jerk his head and blow steam in protest, but Mel would convince it to step out again. He smiled. There was steel in that woman. He bet she could march forever.
Whipped together by the winds, snow hit him in wet clumps. Rig pulled the cape tighter around him and leaned into the tempest. Lightning broke above the mountains ahead, though no thunder could be heard over the wailing of the storm.
~ ~ ~
Melissa could not see anything, feel anything. All she could hear was the shriek of the wind and the moaning of men and women as they struggled in the blackness. She felt isolated in the din, disembodied, and floating. Only the stumbling gait of her horse confirmed the passage of time.
“Mel.”
She wiped the ice off her face with her gloved hand. Had she heard something?
“Mel.”
A hand covered hers. Her fingers were cramped around the reins in her efforts to hold the wet leather. She looked up and saw several lanterns bobbing behind a dark silhouette before her. A rider. The pressure on her hand brought her horse to a stop. There was a snap of metal and a light appeared. She stared as the flame struggled in the wind. Slowly, she realized she was looking at the captain’s lighter. In the flickering light, his visage appeared worn, his eyebrows and unshaven face covered with whisps of ice. She reached over and brushed off the offending white.
“Mel, we’ve reached Nogales. We can rest, have something to eat.”
“What time is it?”
“Oh-three hundred.” She must have appeared confused because he frowned and said, “Three in the morning.”
The flat area before the city was illuminated by bobbing spots of light, silhouetting hundreds of milling ghosts in the dark. She could see fires in the town, but the city gate appeared too crammed with troops to enter. Those nearest to her sat, attempting to start fires in spite of the wind and sparse vegetation. The captain took her reins and walked the horses up to the leeward side of a stone building.
He slid off and laid out one of the piles of hay she’d tied to the horses. The horses faced the wall, their rumps almost touching while they ate. He stood inside the ‘V’ they created. Leaving the capes draped over the horses, he helped her off on the wrong side of the saddle. Melissa absently realized he’d created a windbreak with the horses. He brushed off the snow on a rock jutting out of the foundation and sat her on it.
With the cape off, she began to shiver. Then suddenly she felt the weight of the great coat on her shoulders and tensed, but she couldn’t smell it. She relaxed and began to feel warmer. She thanked him, but between the noise of the wind and milling hordes around them, he didn’t seem to hear her.
The captain took off his knapsack and worked on something, his back to her. People continued to wander by, some bumping into the horses, their bodies blocking the way, then revealing the light from fires beyond like a peep show.
“Here.” He handed her a steaming bag of stew and a spoon. The delicious smell stunned her for a moment. “Enjoy it. It’s the last of the MREs.”
Even with cold-stiffened hands, she devoured it. The food burned her mouth and warmed her middle. The cobbler tasted even better. He used the ‘Sterno’ can to heat up the ‘instant’ coffee. She wanted to kiss him, but all she did was nod thanks when he handed her a cup.
It was only when she’d finished her second cup and began to relax that full consciousness returned. She became aware of the aching knots of muscles in her back, leg, and of course, her shoulder. She retrieved her sling and put it on. No help for her back, but her shoulder began to unknot with her arm secured.
The captain collected the bags, threw them in a nearby fire, and packed away the rest. She needed to relieve herself and knew that soon the horses would too. She had to move.
Melissa stood, groaned as she stretched, and said, “Captain, I will go water the horses while you clean up.”
He grinned at her, his teeth bright in the glow of the Sterno flame. “So, you’re using my bum leg to get out of helping with the cleanup?”
She smiled and shook her head, then grabbed the reins. With the horses out of their windbreak formation, the storm rushed in and blew out the Sterno flame.
The captain muttered something in the dark.
She teasingly said, “Enjoy the morning air.”
Across the main road, officers were breaking the ice in a trough set against the town wall. A torch held high illuminated their mounts standing nearby, backs steaming. She recognized two of the officers from the 52nd. Her steps faltered, but then she stood straighter. Still, she worried what they might say about her travels with the captain?
“Miss Graham.” A young officer came forward and took the reins, leading the horses to the water. “We heard you had been found.” Eyeing her arm in the sling, he said, “You look well.”
“Lieutenant Bentley, thank you.” She walked up to the other three officers, who all tipped their hats to her. One was coughing and another kept rubbing his hands hard against his thighs. He had no gloves.
When he saw her watching him, he held them out with a shrug. “I cannot feel them.” The fingertips were darkened as though he had dipped them in an ink well.
“Ensign Merriweather, you must have the regimental physician see to those hands.”
“If only I could, Mum, but he is at the head of the army with the rest of the battalion.”
Lieutenant Bentley broke in to introduce the other two men. “Miss Graham, may I present Lieutenant Drummold of the Seventy-Sixth, and Captain Mountharron of the Fourteenth.”
Acknowledging the two, she remembered the Seventy-sixth to be a slack unit and the Fourteenth was ‘Calvert’s Entire.’ A regiment of dandies commanded by Sir Harry Calvert. Like too many commands, he and his officers were more concerned with their social standing than mastering the military arts. She held on to her proper English. “Gentlemen, well met on such a cold night.”
“Miss Graham, these are French mounts,” Captain Mountharron said while he ran a hand over the roan’s shoulder. “Belonging to Guard Chasseurs by the look of the horse furniture.”
“That they are.”
“How did you come by them?” the captain asked, glancing at her as he inspected her horse and the imperial crown brand, a pleased look on his face.
Melissa squinted at the young man. He had the look of a coxcomb. His prying question was not simply curiosity. He hungered for l’haut or de société, glory, scandal, and gossip.
“We took them, Captain.”
He faced her with a patronizing smile and an eager “We?”
“Yes, Captain St—Sparhawk and myself.” She gestured behind her. “I was accosted by a mounted patrol. The captain came to my rescue, dispatching them. We took their horses.”
Captain Mountharron frowned and rubbed his hands together, breathing on them. “How many did he dispatch?
“Four.”
“Fourcavaliers of the Imperial Guard, on foot? Come now, Miss Graham, who is this paragon of military might?”
“Only three. Miss Graham shot the fourth.” Her captain limped up to the group, shouldering a pack, his sheathed rifle over the same shoulder. He also wore his sling. “The last one was about to put a bullet in my eye.”
The men stared, mouths open for a moment. Melissa introduced the group to the captain. Mountharron looked him over. “And how did she accomplish that, pray tell?”
“With a French musket.” The captain tied the pack behind his saddle.
“Remarkable.” Lt. Bentley appeared impressed.
Captain Mountharron kept an incredulous eyebrow arched. He pulled his gloves tight. “I am surprised that an officer would admit to such a necessity.”
Melissa stiffened at the insult but knew coming to the captain’s defense would be more blather fodder for this fop.
Rig finished securing the pack and turned to the group. He strode toward Mountharron, who took a quick step back, eyes on the captain’s height. Her captain passed by and took one of Ensign Merriweather hands and examined it.
“Are you surprised?” her captain said over his shoulder. “I wonder what kind of officer would fail to acknowledge such timely help from a heroic lady.”
Bentley and Drummold chuckled, but Mountharron blew fog through clenched teeth.
Mountharron puffed up. “Sir, you presume to disparage me and my fellow officers.”
“I do? How?”
Mountharron turned red, even in the half-light of the torch. “Where is your battalion, Captain?”
Rig pulled out the Vaseline from the pack and covered the ensign’s fingers with the jelly. He then pulled out a pair of gloves, one of the pairs taken from the French soldiers, tugging them on the boy’s hands. “Keep your hands covered under your armpits. You have frostbite. If you want to keep your fingers, flex the fingers as much as you can. If your hands start aching, and I mean unbearably, that is a good thing. You just might have saved them.”
With a shocked nod, the ensign buried his hands inside his coat. Rig said “Good” and picked up his horse’s reins, motioning Melissa to follow.
“Captain Sparhawk, I asked you a question. Where is your battalion, sir?”
Without stopping to look back, her captain said, “The same place yours appears to be. Not here.”
Mountharron shouted something else, but it was drowned out in a sudden pounding of hooves.
Several British dragoons galloped up to the nearest troops and called out, “Move out. French cavalry is only a mile away.”
The warning was like a whip cracking over the crowds. In moments, the infantry had formed up on the road and were marching away, fires left sputtering in the wind. More British cavalry came up and formed a line facing east, awaiting the enemy. Torches flared around the end of the column.
Melissa quickly hid behind some trees to relieve herself before mounting and waiting as the captain struggled into the saddle.
Then they were on the move again. The snow had stopped, but the wind continued to howl through the town as they marched.
The captain leaned over and shouted, “Please don’t tell me all your officers are like those back there.”
“Too many, but those men are from recently formed battalions. All the officers are flappers.”
“Are what?”
“New officers, like ducks learning to fly: Flappers.” The captain grunted and sat up.
Melissa chewed her lip. Captain Starke had baited Mountharron in equal fashion, rather than attempt to defuse his barbs. He—no she—should have explained and avoided the confrontation. Mountharron, the prig, would be sure to spread the tale to whoever would listen, wildly embellished to be sure.
She turned to tell this to the captain, but another thought stopped her. The question of how long she and the captain had been traveling together would only add real scandal to the whispers.
If Nancy said anything about what she saw in the attic this afternoon or Mountharron assumed the worst, Melissa didn’t know how she would face the humiliation once the stories spread. Or what her uncle would say when he heard them. A shudder shook her, the probabilities too humiliating to contemplate.
She felt brittle, as though her heart was a hunk of cracked ice, ready to shatter if hit one more time. After the horrors and blows of the last week, her back ached with the effort to keep up the fa?ade of respectability, keeping her dignity.
Physical shocks were so much easier to handle than the emotional slashes, the challenges dealing with this man from the future. But Captain Starke had lauded her, called her heroic. Her eyes stung and a tear rolled down her cheek and threatening to freeze on her jaw. His praise fortified her, knowing what strictures and rumors she would face back with the army, once again in the bosom of British Society.
~ ~ ~
January 5th
As the horizon began to brighten, they reached the pass at Monte del Castro. The Cantabrian Mountains rose to no more than 6500 feet, but Rig swore the climb had been the most torturous in his experience. A rotten highway maintained by an idiot, turned into a swamp by thousands of tramping feet. The halfway point. Below them the road to Lugo disappeared among rugged hills that wrinkled the high plain.
Chief stumbled again as they began downhill. His head hung down and his movements were listless. Rig pulled off the road and painfully dismounted.
“What are you doing?” Mel gazed down with a disapproving frown.
“I’m going to walk for a while. Chief is beat and we can’t stop.”
She rubbed her forehead before saying, “Are ye sure about this?” Rig nodded. “Hey, it’s downhill.” She studied him, eyes narrowed, but waited for him to start walking.
Mel gazed at the long column snaking down the mountain, then mumbled, “So be it,” and slid off her horse.
Rig rubbed his hands and buried the free one in the pocket of his great coat still holding the reins. It felt good to move, to walk out the stinging cold and stiffness, the pain in marching bearable as his muscles warmed up. That and Ibuprofen. He’d been chewing the tablets like they were breath mints.
Hiking downhill could be harder than uphill with his leg, but he’d decided. He knew Chief would carry him until the big guy dropped. Rig wouldn’t do that to a team member.
Here and there, men and women sat on the side of the road, resting, or too worn out to continue. He and Mel rounded a corner and by the road sat a wagon on its side. The cargo had tumbled out into the snow. The cart’s oxen were down.
As Rig came closer, details became clear. First were the huge chunks of meat carved from the oxens’ hunches, a meal for a few soldiers. Then he recognized the cargo. Men. The cargo had been wounded soldiers, now frozen in contorted death. The scene sickened him. They had been left to die once the oxen dropped and no one had moved to help them. You never left a man behind. He saw that most soldiers were ignoring it all. He looked to see Mel glancing back at him, pale with an anguished turn to her mouth.
As the morning grew lighter, Rig noticed that not all the people sitting alongside the road were alive, but frozen statues. A soldier sat motionless, staring off into space, ice hanging from his nose. A mile later, a woman holding a child, their blue-white skin reflecting the torchlight. The stabbing ache of his leg demanded more of his attention in the following hours, the landscape of death purposely ignored.
The slosh of thousands of footsteps and weary curses was all that could be heard above the wind. Then in the distance, a torch waved about, yells echoing off the hillsides. In an open area next to the cliff, an officer wielding a sword and torch fought off three soldiers. He seemed to be protecting a wagon, a saddled horse tied to it. All the carts’ oxen were down.
The columns trudged past the scene without a glance. Handing Mel his reins, Rig reached up to the saddle and slid out the cavalry saber. Approaching the group, he removed his sling, pointed the saber at the three men, shouting. “Stand back.” The soldiers in red took in Rig’s size, the sword, and ran.
Rig handed his saber to Mel and limped over to the officer who leaned against the tongue of the cart rising in the air, the two-wheeled wagon squatting on its backend. The officer sheathed his sword under his overcoat and nodded to Rig, panting, “Damn glad to see you. Those buggers were apt to kill me.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I was ordered to dump the wagon over the cliff, and those scoffers had other ideas.”
“Ah. So, you need help?”
“I say, much obliged.” He wedged the torch in a rock and held out his hand. “Major Henry Brooks, First Guards.”
Rig had to pause to remember his new name but shook the officer’s hand and introduced himself, “Captain Sparhawk, Ninety-Fifth Rifles.”
The cart was upended by the cliff. They both leaned on the tongue of the cart to right it and once righted, used the saddled horse to help push it to the cliff. The wagon was a heavy sucker and with Rig digging in with just one leg and shoulder, it took time. They finally got it rolling and over it went, the final crash a long way down.
“There were only four barrels in the wagon. Why was it so heavy? Ammunition?”
Captain Brooks grinned. “Over ￡25,000 in Spanish coin, old boy. The army’s treasury. With the oxen down, we couldn’t have it fall into French hands.”
“Jesus.”
“Exactly.” He laughed and shaking hands again, said, “Thank you, sir, for your timely assistance.” He untied his horse saying, “I must find my battalion, but as we are all going the same way, I look forward to buying you a pint in Lugo.”
Rig watched Brooks mount and merge with the passing flood of humanity, before disappearing into the blackness. Rig went to retrieve the forgotten torch and saw among the rocks two cloth sacks tied together at the top, each about three feet long. He lifted them. They weighed over fifty pounds. He opened each sack and peered inside. The torchlight revealed hundreds of silver and gold coins, each with the words, Carlos III, HISPAN*ET* IND* REX M * Reales. Spanish doubloons, pieces of eight.
In the time it took to re-tie the bag, Rig decided to take them. Totting the bags to Chief, with apologies to the horse as he slung them over the front of the saddle, he covered them with a French cape. Without speaking, Mel handed him Chief’s reins and followed him back into the masses trudging toward the next pass. They exchanged weak smiles and marched on.
What seemed like an eternity later, the morning came, turning the roiling clouds of gun-metal gray instead of black. The snow fell in flurries when the wind gusted. The high desert remained bleak, covered with a few bare trees and little vegetation. After many more miles, it began to rain, then sleet, then snow again. Outer clothing froze, or worse, remained wet.
Mel did better with her plastic poncho, but her skirts were sodden and sticking to her legs. The horses, heads lowered, continued to stumble down the road behind them. The hundreds of men and women around them, sullen and silent, tramped on, a slow tide pulling all along. There were no breaks, no rests called.
By midmorning, Rig knew his adventure in hiking was over. He wobbled instead of marched, jerking stiff-legged downhill. With each step, his leg threatened to give out. He hadn’t seen anything he could use as a crutch.
~ ~ ~
In the late afternoon, their column stumbled into the small village of Constantino. Everyone broke for lunch, crowding the sides of the road. Finding a spot to rest, Melissa and the captain dismounted, leaning on their mounts to stay upright.
Gritting her teeth, Melissa forced herself to move, collect sticks from broken boxes to start a fire and make tea. She broke out the food Nancy had provided for the march, dried apples, dried meat, and biscuits. Sitting on a low rock wall by a church, she stared at the ground, too weary to eat. The captain hopped around the horses, giving them the last of the hay, making sure they were watered and covered. When done, he limped over to Melissa and dropped down beside her, offering her more tea, which she refused.
Her exhausted stare disappearing behind a frown, she said, “It’s Thursday.”
“Is it? I’ve no idea.”
“Yes, it must be because Sunday was New Year’s Day. Today is the fifth.” She looked up at him. “Isn’t it?”
Rig pursed his lips, trying to think. “Yes, I think it is.” He put his arm around her. “We’ve made good time. Lugo is six hours march away.”
She leaned into him with a sigh, relaxing. He held her close, the change from cold to the warmth of his body making her shiver. “This is good,” she whispered and laid her head on his good shoulder.
The captain chuckled. “It is.” She smiled and snuggled. His strong arm around her, she was safe, next to a man who honored her.
Sometime later, she woke, surprised she’d slept. She looked up at the crowds milling around them, more than one grinning or frowning at the sight of the two of them cuddling. She sat up and pushed him away. “Rig, wake up.”
~ ~ ~
Rig blew out a breath, watching it cloud in front of him. “No problem.” He couldn’t think straight anymore. Eyeing the surrounding faces, he vaguely knew why she pushed him away, but the frustration and hurt bubbled much closer to the surface than any rational thought. Forcing himself to stand, he put the last piece of apple in his mouth and packed away everything. He led Chief over to the wall and mounted stomach first, then swung the stiff leg over the horse’s back end. “Let’s get moving.”
None of the other people were stirring. “Why?”
“One more night, another forty miles, and we’ll be in Lugo. We can rest all we want there. Your uncle is there.” Rig patted his bad leg. “Because if I do rest any longer, in this cold, I don’t think I’ll be able to move again.”
“Aye.” Mel, shoulders drooping, rose and mounted, though it took her two tries. They walked the horses among the streets filled with soldiers eating, sleeping, cooking food, most simply slumped, slack-faced against a stone wall.
He was beyond exhaustion, unable to rest. Rig couldn’t sit among the hundreds of them. He had to get out of the town, get away, not when he couldn’t sit near Mel and hold her.
The road wasn’t clear. Here and there clumps of men marched in shambling formations and hundreds of stragglers walked along the sides of the road. The few wagons that made it through the passes creeped along, holding up everyone. The land flattened out, but the road still led down among valleys and hills, only a few trees and farmhouses to break up the deadening monotony.
Bodies collected by the road, their last expressions frozen on their faces, a lost and hopeless gaze waiting for the final sleep. Others, still living, sagging beside the dead.
The rest of the day on into night passed in a dream of fatigue, colorless, numb, and endless.
The snow fell and the wind blew and then would suddenly stop, only to have sleet or rain add to the sludge in the road churned up by thousands of feet.
~ ~ ~
January 6th
A frigid day dawned on huddled masses winding along the road. Rig finally dismounted again. He could tell Chief would not make it otherwise. Mel did the same, though all her movements were sluggish. Rig found them particularly ugly, unsettling compared to her usual energetic grace. They walked in silence as the sun turned the sky in front of them orange and yellow.
Suddenly Mel cried out and ran to a figure sitting on a rock beside the road, facing west. As Rig watched, her smile twisted to horror. She backed away, hands covering her mouth. Rig hobbled up with the horses. The woman had obviously been dead for hours. Her skin was a bluish white, the lips dark. A petite face, she had bad bruises, vivid against the translucent skin.
“Mel, what is it?” She didn’t respond. “Who is it?” Rig grabbed her arms and forced her to look at him. “Mel!”
Hands against his chest, she muttered a name. Then clearer. “Emily. It’s Emily.”