The Border Reiver (22 page)

“They seem to be having a bloody chat! There are a lot of them, so I would advise that you pull back to the school. Wait there for news, because if they overwhelm us here they will be on you like lions on a limping goat.”

“Ok, Quentin. Remember reinforcements are on their way; if you can repel them this time, we’ll smash them the second…”

“I’ll see what these boys are made of.” He passed the phone to the man by his side.  He looked up the street and saw the mass of bodies charging down the hill. They were roaring like a battle charge from centuries before. He stepped into the middle of the street and shouted to his men:

“It’s your ammo against their numbers, remember men! I want them to meet a wall of lead.” With that, he skipped back across the road and behind his men. There he rested a heavy machine gun across the wall of a pretty garden and squeezed the trigger pumping round after round of twelve point seven millimetre shells into the approaching mass. All his men lit up too and the rebel force was being cut down before they had any opportunity to fire back. The noise was ferocious, sixty weapons firing at about thirteen hundred rounds per minute into the narrow road.

The rebels who came within four hundred yards were mown down as they ran; the rest turned and ran back up the street to where they had come. Harris allowed himself a smile but knew that the fluidity of urban conflict might only allow his troops a fleeting glimpse of victory. He commanded them to show no mercy.

*    *    *    *    *

As they began running down the road, Nat realised the mistake, but it was too late. He couldn’t keep up with the younger people; both he and Stuart were left behind and when the shooting began the horror of what lay before them was unimaginable. The violence of lead tearing through flesh and bone with an initial thud and damp fizzing as the rounds ricochet out of bodies. The falling bodies were taking their last agonizing steps. The horrific howls of injured men and women who were helplessly lying in no man’s land, screamed above the gunfire. This was the sound of war. Nat watched as Susan was hit by a volley of shots, her body convulsed as it was pummelled. She screamed as though her insides had been set on fire before wilting onto the hard tarmac of the road. Andrew too went down, although he knew nothing of his final moment: on one knee firing aimlessly at the regimes positions, a round hit him in the eye and passed through his head.

Nat stood helplessly staring at the mayhem. The taste of blood in his mouth, the air laced with agony, he was unsure what to do until a large hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled him sideways into a gated inlet, behind which was a garden and house surrounded by high walls. The panicking rebels were crushing into the small turn in between the road and the gate. The gate fell open under the sheer weight of numbers pushing up against it. The stunned rebel force fell over each other into the safety of the garden.

The force split into three - those in the garden, those running back from where they had come and those lying in the street – with the NSO continuing to take pot shots at the living. Nat looked at the faces around him, blood soaked bodies, tears streaming from their eyes; it had been a massacre, but they had to counteract the situation, or they would all perish in that street.

Some of the rebels had climbed the trees flanking the high wall and were firing over the wall at the NSO positions. Nat looked around the yard and saw a shed. He quickly ran to it and opened the door. There in front of him stood a sledgehammer among more garden equipment. He hurried back to the wall with the hammer, and he swung it hard against the bricks. Within two strikes he had knocked out a brick, another thud, and there was a good hole: ample swing and leverage from which to fire a gun. He walked a few paces along the wall and swung the hammer again. The human metronome moved systematically down the wall smashing small holes into it; others began using the butts of their weapons or other implements they were carrying.

Nat looked out over the carnage, the death, the people around him young and old breaking down with the horror. It was the noise that drove them insane, an incessant hammering of gunfire spelling out the danger, the all-consuming screaming foretelling the nightmare of injury and madness. The bodies were everywhere, inert, rushing with activity and rocking with madness; the living sent wild by their proximity to the dead. There was no time for thoughts to reason, to calculate. Nat just kept screaming for people to fire their weapons at the enemy positions. The chaos was all-consuming.

Gradually, however, Nat, Stuart and Barty were able to bring the rebels under some sort of organisation. The men and women who could still face the fight took up better positions and the weight of numbers began to tell as the rebels were able to contain the NSO bullets with suppressing fire of their own.

Once it was possible, Nat and Barty ran the gauntlet back up the hill to the rest of the force who were aimlessly waiting out of range and under cover for a sign or an order.

*    *    *    *    *

General Harris felt in control, the stalemate suited their plan, and he could sit like this for days. He knew the reinforcements would be here long before that. He moved away from his men, down the side of the police station. He was cocooned between the high wall of the perimeter of the station and the building itself. Behind him was the back of the station and a car park, again there was the perimeter wall enclosing the rear of the building.

The area was littered with rubbish that had blown in on the wind, and there was an overturned salt bin. It was here that he turned and planted his backside. He had a view of his men’s positions, and he could see the rebel bullets puffing in dusty clouds off the brickwork. The rebels were keeping his fighters’ heads low, but they were not killing any of them; so, if the rebels were to attempt another charge he would be able to repeat the massacre.

He took out his cell phone and dialled Beaston. The General wiped the dust from his face as he perched on the bin. He crossed his legs by resting his ankle on his knee and he picked at his boot where a scalding hot shell had slightly melted the sole.

“Tell me,” Beaston answered.

“We have them locked down for now.”

“How long can you hold them?”

“I don’t know; it depends on what they do next.”

“Well, a few hours and we’ll have reinforcements.”

“That’s it, I figure, we have a bit of a stalemate as we stand…” Harris broke off as he spoke, distracted for a second then continued, “So if we can…” He stopped again; his words drifted as he sensed something, a presence. Before his brain registered the feelings, he felt warm air, breath on his ear, right next to the phone and a small certain voice whispered,

“You’ll never win here. This is our country.”

As he heard the words, he felt a thud in the side of his neck like a hammer blow, but no pain to speak of. He staggered to his feet, the phone still to his ear.

“What…what was that? Who said that? What…Harris?” shouted Beaston down the line.

Harris could only utter a guttural gurgle, the whites of his eyes shining in the darkness and his heart pumping blood harder and harder in an effort to reach his brain. But it wasn’t getting anywhere near his brain, his blood was spraying out of the deep wound in his neck which had completely severed his jugular. As he held his free hand to the wound, the blood covered his face and body. As his eyesight began to cloud over and dizziness set in, Harris looked down at his assassin. A young woman with auburn hair and vivid blue eyes, her face covered in black mud or war paint. In her hand, an oozing bloody hunting knife a full nine inch blade and fresh from its most recent kill.

As the geyser of red began to wane, Harris, the invincible General, fell to his knees then flat on that famous face at the feet of Amber. The mobile phone skidded across the floor; she picked it up and hung up on Beaston who turned to Truter, 

“You take thirty of my men and your ten and defend this position. Hold it until reinforcements arrive; I’m moving back to the school.”

Amber put the phone in her pocket, turned ran back into the car park; moving like a cat, she pounced up onto the armoured vehicle parked next to the wall and over the obstacle.

*    *    *    *    *

The rebels charged again, only this time they had the covering fire of those in the garden suppressing the NSO positions. The NSO seemed in disarray now. The wall of lead was now sporadic, as they ducked the fire from the rebels in the garden and from those charging down the hill.

Stuart was dug-in behind the wall in the garden and had Nat's hunting rifle. He was able to take down a regime soldier with every shot he made. It was slow going, and rebel fighters continued to fall in the charge, but the regime’s line was soon broken. Rather than bullets, the rebels were soon beating those who had massacred them an hour earlier with the butts of their weapons.

The sheer weight of numbers left the NSO no chance, and the rebels flooded into the houses either side of the road to clear them of NSO fighters. The incessant mind-bending din and chaos of gunfire now quelled to short bursts as the rebels cleared the surrounding buildings. As the rebels looked back up the hill, it was evident that the victory had been at substantial loss to them and was no cause for celebration. They had routed about sixty NSO troops but lost well over one hundred of their own.

The absolute despair of seeing the piles of mangled bodies, heaped in the narrowest part of the road, hit the rebels. With streams of red trickling down the tarmac towards them, the nightmare of war had emblazoned itself on those young men and women in their first sally. As a stunned silence fell over the force, some broke down in tears, others wondered at their lack of emotion, while others seethed with aggression towards this enemy. It was not long before this latter group drove the force on to the police station.

Nat and Stuart caught up with each other now in the simmering crowd energised by the upper hand in the battle,

“Now, we get in there, get Claire, and get the fuck out of this chaos, ok, Nat?” Stuart exclaimed with a seriousness Nat rarely witnessed from his old friend.

“Aye,” Nat responded nodding, “let’s get this done and back to the country where we can see these bastards coming.”

The rebel army surrounded the police station and began by peppering it with gun fire which made no in- roads as the NSO troops inside were well organised by Truter. They waited in the body of the building only firing at those rebels who ventured too close. The tactic worked and the battle became a siege.

*    *    *    *    *

Word filtered through that the rest of the rebel force had broken the NSO lines and they were in control of the town, running the retreating NSO soldiers down through the streets. Beaston had taken a frantic situation report from a dying commander on the eastern flank of his force. The story was that John Rowell had returned to the battle from the east; he was late but his tardiness meant that the NSO had concentrated their forces on the northern attack. He had been able to swan into town from an easterly direction totally outflanking the NSO and attacking them from behind, almost annihilating the regime’s troops in the chaos.

With word of his force’s collapse, General Beaston led the remainder of the NSO Troops to a quick retreat up the steep banks of Causey Hill and Eastgate: two narrow, winding country tracks, edged by high hedgerows. The government forces beat up the steep tarmac with fear powering their tired legs. They occupied the old racecourse as a base and Beaston fanned his thinning force out along the high limestone ridge just north of Causey Hill Road, which cradled the town. This position allowed Beaston and his army an elevated position with a view over the whole town. If they were going to hold off the greater numbers of the rebel force, it was this position that would afford them the best chance.

The tarmac was lacerated by the battle that had ripped through the street like a hurricane. Two of the Rowell brothers were sitting side by side on the stone wall of someone’s front garden. The owners would not recognise their house now. Bullets had peppered the sandstone building. It looked as though acid had been thrown at the house. The pock-marked facia seemed to be melting away, the windows gone, expensive curtains hanging in rags and blowing in the breeze.

They were about three hundred metres from the police station. Jesse Rowell stared out at the human carnage that littered the street. His brother Phalin was watching his troops surrounding the police station. He had a necklace in his hand that he had found in the dirt; he was working it through his fingers like it was prayer beads.

As many leaders who had come before him, Phalin was questioning himself: examining his judgement, observing the loss of life, questioning the war. He knew it was not just his decision that brought all these people to this point. He knew he was the figurehead for a movement that would have taken shape sooner or later, in some form or other. As his trail of thought narrowed on feelings of fate and destiny, his brother nudged him,

“You want some biscuit?” He held out a ration pack biscuit in his grubby and bloody hand. His brother looked at it and his head turned away as though he had been offered arsenic,

“No, I don't want any of your biscuits. How can you eat, Jesse?” He didn't wait for an answer though, turning his eyes back on the bloody hand,

“You hurt?”

“No, no, I'm ok, just a bit of stone or something caught me on the arm.”

Phalin nodded towards the siege,

“We gotta get this done fast and sure up our positions in the town. They'll attack again in the morning.”

“I saw Mark die tonight - and Jennifer - and that guy from the builder’s merchants...”

Phalin put his hand onto his younger brother’s shoulder, “I know, a lot of people died. It’s down to us to make sure that doesn't happen again. We need to hide ourselves in the buildings and do to them what they did to us in this street tonight.” He was as sure as he could have been about his plan.

“Did you call Dad?”

“Yes. He's coming with a truck and help to pick up the bodies.” As he spoke, four men approached them, striding confidently, a slight spring in the step, totally out of place in this hell. Three of the men dropped back, leaving John, the other Rowell brother, to approach Phalin and Jesse alone. He wore black fatigues but he looked as though he had been in an explosion. His clothes were ripped, his hair was a mess and singed, his eyes bloodshot and face bloody; but, he was smiling and walking without injury. He spoke as he approached, his eyes intense and determined. Unlike his brothers’.

“What’s happening, Phalin? There's no time to sit, we need to push on and take Causey Hill.”

“No, John, there's been enough bloodshed for one night. We have the town, we have to swallow them in the streets. Fight in small forces, appearing and disappearing. We'll grind them down like that.”

John's face fell; Phalin could see he was exhausted, running on adrenalin.

“That’s ridiculous, Phalin! Why would we let them regroup, re-arm and re-organise?” John shouted.

“Because
we
need to regroup and stuff; we are out on our feet. I don't even know whether this lot will carry on tonight...also, we have more men arriving in the night- hundreds, I'm told - coming in from Haltwhistle way.”

“My men will fight, Phalin. It’s a mistake. The NSO are broken now...they might not be in the morning.”

Phalin looked at his feet. These were the decisions which cost lives, and he was a cautious man. He understood that the momentum was with the rebels, but, as he looked around, his force seemed decimated itself. He had watched as they laid siege to the Police Station. And asked himself the question: if they were unable to take that building, how could he organise or push them to take Causey Hill, another fully fledged battle.

“No John, I've made my decision. We rest, we eat, we regroup and attack at dawn, hopefully with reinforcements...what do you say, Jesse?”

Jesse looked up at John with sad and tired eyes, “John, they need some time,” pointing to their forlorn fighters. “A few hours won't ruin our upper hand...”

*    *    *    *    *

As the three brothers spoke, in the town that lay in the darkness below his position, Beaston spoke to Ben Baines and Lucas Start over the satellite phone. Beaston sat alone in the back of a personnel transporter which was dimly lit by a field light. Beaston was hunched over with the phone between shoulder and ear, he rubbed at some dirt on his hand as he spoke, his mind racing for a way out of this fix. He rarely spoke so slowly,

“...Look, don't ask for positives, at this stage there aren't any, we have taken heavy losses. Harris has been killed and we have been pushed back out of the town.”

“What about the farmer - is he dead?” asked Baines.

“Forget the fucking farmer,” interjected Start. “What are you going to do about it, Beaston? I brought you in on this because you said you could deal with it, what went wrong?”

“Numbers, Lucas. We were swamped. They attacked from three sides and at different times - the men on our eastern flank got sucked into the northern attack and then more rebels came in behind us...”

“To be honest, Beaston, I am not looking for a review of the battle. I need to know you have an imminent plan, a route back to taking this town.”

“I have more men in transit. If I get them we might be saved, but let me tell you, Start, if we are attacked again now, we are finished. I'll die here along with all these men. They are ragged, inexperienced and traumatised. We are two hours off getting the artillery set. We are exposed.”

                                                         *    *    *    *    *

John looked around him at the forlorn figures looking for loved ones in the dead, eating morsels of food and cleaning weapons. He could see they were out on their feet. Then he looked up the hill, he could see a glow from lights in the far distance, a mile or so away. A chill ran down his spine as he thought of the NSO being given time to regroup and set up a new offensive. He looked back to his brothers and Phalin said,

“Give them a few hours and then we'll attack...”

John shook his head with resignation, “Ok, Phalin, two hours. I hope you are right on this one...”