Down: Trilogy Box Set (126 page)

The men of A Squadron had been in peril so many times they had lost count. From Afghanistan to Iraq to Tajikistan to Sierra Leone to Libya they had been asked to do the impossible time after time. They had seen it all; tempered by the crucible of firefights, nothing fazed them. Until now.

They were in a clearing on high enough ground to see they were only a short distance from a meandering river. In the opposite direction but equally close was a row of low cottages and one substantial house. It had a square stone tower rising into the dull, overcast sky.

While the SAS soldiers, Kyle, and Professor Nightingale tried to get a grip on their abrupt change of venue, John, Trevor, and Emily instantly alerted to the danger.

“Trev, stay with them,” John said, sprinting to the head of the column where he snapped Captain Gatti out of his trance.

“Is this according to plan?” Gatti asked him.

“We’re here,” John said. “We’ve got to move fast. That tower’s a bit of bad luck. There’ll be some kind of feudal lord in there, possibly with his own militia. I don’t see how they’ll miss us.”

“Any of you have your weapons?” Gatti said to the men in D group.

They were all unarmed.

“If that’s The River Mole,” John said, “that’s north. It’s twelve miles to Richmond that way. We should push west around the village and hope we’re not seen.”

“Pick up any good-sized rocks, heavy sticks, anything you can weaponize,” Gatti told his people.

“I’ll pass it along to the trailing groups,” John said, falling back.

From his vantage point on Moose’s shoulders, Nightingale exclaimed, “All that was modern has disappeared. Marvelous, absolutely marvelous. Emily, as one scientist to another, I am literally gobsmacked.”

“That’s the right word for it,” she said.

“Is it?” the burly corporal said, giving the chemist a tour as he swiveled on his feet. “I’d say the right word is fucking hell.”

“Two words that,” Nightingale said, “but they’re two precise ones.”

John rejoined his people and told everyone the plan.

“This is seriously messed up,” Kyle said looking around in bewilderment.

“You got that right,” John said, checking Kyle’s backpack. Like the other four it was still full of vital materials. “Stay low and follow the pack.”

Emily touched John’s arm. “We’re back,” she said ruefully.

“Third time lucky?” he asked. “Stay by me. Every step.”

“You know I will.”

As the column swung around the village, John saw a distant figure atop the tower, then two more, gesticulating wildly.

He called out to the squadron. “We’ve been spotted!”

Gatti ordered a double-time march and the column picked up speed. John kept eyes on the tower. He thought he saw one of the men with something in his hand. They were out of range of a long bow and in the best of hands a musketeer would have to get amazingly lucky so he wasn’t too worried. But then he heard the air rippling.

“Crossbow!” he shouted, pulling Emily around so that he was shielding her.

The bolt fell short but not by much.

He called out to Moose, “Get Nightingale down. He'll be their aiming point.”

Moose scooped the chemist off his shoulders with one arm and began carrying him like a baby as everyone broke into a full run. Another bolt whistled overhead, then another fell in the midst of A Group, narrowly missing a soldier who paused to dig it out of the ground.

“Come on,” Captain Marsh shouted at him. “Don’t muck about.”

“Who’s mucking about?” the trooper shouted back. “I’m the only one who’s got a weapon now.”

They covered enough ground to the northwest that John had to keep looking over his shoulder to keep tabs on the threat and what he saw was not good. A dozen or more horses and riders appeared from behind the tower and began to gallop toward them.

Captain Yates saw them too and barked orders. The squadron had done some limited training on tactical options to repel an attack unarmed but there hadn’t been time to drill on all scenarios. An attack from horseback was one of those.

The squadron halted their march and spontaneously formed into dispersed groups of four to five. John led the civilians to their rear, he and Trevor ready to deal with any rider who broke through. Each of the captains shed heavy backpacks and tossed them to John and Trevor for safekeeping.

The Leatherhead militiamen, led by the lord of the manor, swooped down on them, brandishing swords and a few pistols.

Twenty yards away, a shot rang out and one of the troopers in B Group clutched his chest and fell. Another flintlock fired and a corporal in C Group was hobbled.

“Single shots only!” John shouted. “They won’t be reloading on horseback. Watch the swords!”

Ever resourceful, the SAS troopers improvised. While one man waved his arms to attract a swordsman like a matador coaxing a bull, three or four others did a pincer maneuver, launching themselves at the horse’s flanks and the rider’s legs, trying to dismount him before he could deliver a cutting blow. The Geordie Lance-Corporal who had professed his hatred of horses, had two of his mates bodily launch him into one of the riders, taking him down. For a moment or two he rode the beast, belly to saddle, before slipping off and spewing curses at the horse as it galloped away, riderless. As soon as a militiaman went down, he was swarmed by a knot of SAS, kicked, punched, and gouged into oblivion and then his sword was theirs.

John watched the battle play out, itching to get his licks in but unwilling to leave Emily and the others unprotected. Soon, there were as many weapons in the hands of the SAS as their attackers.

“The tide’s turning,” Trevor said.

“Man, these guys know how to fight,” Kyle said.

Suddenly the lord of the manor, a longhaired brute with a flowing beard, pierced the SAS curtain and charged the civilian group.

Trevor ran out to distract him and John ordered Emily, Kyle, and Nightingale to lie flat on their stomachs. The lord swung his heavy sword, missing Trevor’s shoulder by inches. John was next. The swordsman was right-handed and just as the horse was upon him John sidestepped it to the left ducking the cross-saddle lunge. The lord had to turn his horse to re-engage John and as he did, John saw that Kyle had disobeyed and was grabbing at his left foot in the stirrup.

The lord raised his sword to bring it down on Kyle’s head but as he did John reached his opposite leg and got a fistful of trousers. With a sharp yank, the man was off his saddle and Trevor was there to deliver a deadly kick to his head and retrieve his sword.

“I told you to lie down, goddamn it,” John shouted at Kyle.

“You’re welcome,” Kyle replied. “God, you’re an asshole, you know that?”

“Disobey an order and you bet I am.”

“I don’t take orders from you,” Kyle said. “Never did, never will.”

They heard Nightingale say excitedly, “Look! We’ve won!”

All of the militiamen were down and a few horses had been commandeered.

“We’ve got casualties,” John said.

Emily was already running to help. She knelt over a fallen trooper, bleeding from a scalp wound. She took a roll of cotton bandages from her backpack and began dressing the man’s wound. Each group had a medic, equipped only with bandage rolls, and they fanned out, doing the best they could.

Marsh had lost his cap. Breathing heavily, he rubbed the sweat off his bald head, and pointed at one of the militiamen writhing in the grass, his neck grotesquely crooked and broken.

“This man should be dead,” Marsh told John. “Is that what you were going on about?”

“That’s as good a demonstration as you’ll get short of seeing him headless,” John said.

“So there’s no point putting the sod out of his misery?”

“None whatsoever. He’s permanently screwed.”

Marsh shook his head and said, “Fuck me, what a place. We’ve taken casualties but at least we’ve got a few horses and some proper weapons.”

A medic from A Group called Marsh and John over. Kneeling by the trooper who’d taken the bullet to his chest, the medic declared the man killed in action.

“Our lot seem to die just as surely as they do back home,” Marsh said. “This was a good man. Wife and two children.”

“We should bury him and keep moving,” John said. “If we don’t rovers might take his flesh tonight.”

Marsh spit on the ground as a sign of his disgust. “Petersen,” Marsh shouted over to his group sergeant. “Use swords and hands to bury Jonesy. Get it done and let’s get cracking.”

The march north took them about six hours. Although they checked their progress against the silk maps, the navigation wasn’t difficult. The River Thames ran a northerly course between Leatherhead and Richmond and they had only to keep it within sight to their left. Moose was spared carrying Nightingale. He lifted the professor onto the saddle of a horse and led it by its reins. Emily, Kyle, and the wounded men also rode. One horse was used as a pack animal for their five heavy backpacks.

Along the way, most of the unarmed SAS men picked up ersatz weapons, makeshift clubs mostly, though one trooper found a shovel leaning against a tree. Any time they saw distant smoke coming from a chimney or open fire they gave the area a wide berth. They didn’t go completely unnoticed. Sailors on a few passing river barges spotted their column and pointed though John doubted they looked any different from a troop of King Henry’s army from a distance.

Five hours into their trek, the river made an eastward loop. In the distance they saw it make a switch-back, westward loop.

“We’re getting close,” John told Emily.

He left her in Trevor’s care and sprinted through the ranks to let the captains know what he thought.

They all concurred but Marsh ladled up some sarcasm. “Thank God the Yank’s here to help us poor bastards read a map.”

Gatti, at the point, asked, “You’re sure there’s no bridges across anywhere close?”

“Pretty sure,” John said. “Can all of you manage the current?”

“All the lads are strong swimmers. We’ll have to find a way to get the civilians across. A boat would be handier than driftwood.”

The last mile of their journey across a large, grassy plain corresponded to the earthly location of the Old Deer Park in Richmond. Ahead, John identified their crossing point by the thin column of black smoke rising into a parchment-colored afternoon sky. On reaching the south riverbank, the civilians and the wounded dismounted. Greene led his group east and Yates led his men west. The rest of the soldiers stayed put on guard duty. It took an hour but both groups returned, one empty-handed, Yates’ group with something better than gold—two medium-sized rowboats which they portaged.

They tethered the watered horses to trees and left them mounds of pulled-up grass. Moose was assigned the precious cargo of Nightingale, two of the wounded, the backpacks, and their assorted weapons. He began rowing, surrounded by half of A Squadron swimming alongside. The rest of the squadron swam with the other boat. John took its oars and rowed Emily, Kyle, Trevor, and one wounded man. The current was swift but they chose the narrowest section and all made it across safely.

From there it was a short walk uphill toward the brick chimney belching out smoke.

There was no one outside the low brick forge. Using hand signals, the SAS men split into two groups and ducking below the windows glowing orange from the hot furnace, they encircled the building.

When they were in position, John strode up to the main entrance and called out, “Is William the forger here?”

A small man, naked from the waist up, emerged, squinting into the daylight. At the sight of the strangers he yelped like a dog whose tail had been trampled and ran back inside.

Gatti’s C Group who were closest to the entrance prepared themselves for a fight but John reassured them with a calming hand gesture.

A giant of a man emerged at the entrance wielding an iron rod. He too was bare-chested, his skin black with soot and shiny with sweat. “Who’s looking for him?” he bellowed before spotting John. “Well, would you look at this?” he cried. “It’s John who is not from here. Were you not able to return to your own land?”

“I made it back, all right. Twice. This is my third visit to your fair country.”

“Fair? This shit hole? Always good for a laugh, you are. Come here.”

The two men embraced and much of William’s soot wound up on John’s shirt. The last time John saw him, William was atop the chalky cliffs on Brittania’s southeastern coast, manning a battery of John’s La Hitte cannon and John was setting sail for Francia aboard the
Hellfire
.

“So, you make it to the Norselands,” John said.

“I did but how did you come to know that?”

“A certain king told me.”

“Well, we had a winning campaign against old King Christian and seized his mines. As you said, the Norse iron is, indeed, superior stuff. We did bring back a goodly amount. Who are all these men deployed around my forge? They do not look like Henry’s men.”

“They’re not from here either.”

“Live men? All of them?”

“They are. Most of them are British soldiers, the best of the best. They’re called the SAS. And there’s one live woman. Emily, come and meet an old friend of mine.”

William wiped his hands against his leather apron, took her hand in his huge paw and kissed it.

“So he found you, did he?”

“He did,” she said. “He brought me home. He was very brave.”

“If you’ve come back here then you are the brave one,” William said. “And fair. And comely. And …”

John put an end to the compliments with a laugh. “You’re going to step on your tongue if you don’t shut your mouth, my friend. So the ore. Is there any left?”

“Some. Why?”

“I need it.”

“I’d love to help you but it’s not mine to give. It belongs to the king.”

John was ready for that. He reached into his trouser pocket for the folded piece of paper he had carried from Earth and presented it to William.

William read it out loud, “I Henry, King of Brittania, do command that my master forger, William, give unto John Camp the iron ore he may need for the making of steel, the brass he may need, and all the good labor required of the forgers of Richmond.” He looked up, nodding. “It is signed by the hand of my monarch and I will certainly obey. Tell me John who is not from here, what is it you wish to forge?”