He checked the clinometer and set O’Gilroy to digging in the slightly high right wheel with an empty shell-case, then indicated he needed the trail spade shoved firmly into the earth. The Arabs took a moment to get the point of this – keeping the gun as firm as possible against the recoil – then began stamping the spade down to China.
The elevating wheel was set to 1950 metres; that didn’t mean it was actually that far to the monastery – the map made it 1800 – just that that setting was right for this wind (there was none, thank God), temperature, pressure and the fact that the monastery was perhaps two hundred feet higher. Which meant that, to fire at the trench . . . Figures jostled in his head and he organised and related them, if this then that, a familiar routine that boiled down to microscopic twiddles on the two aiming wheels. This was home . . .
He straightened up. O’Gilroy was already in the right-hand seat, finding out how the breech-lever and firing lanyard worked. “Right,” Ranklin ordered. “You be number two: Corinna, you load.” He handed her the round: it was about the diameter of a wine bottle but far heavier and rather longer, almost half being the brass case that held the charge. “Lay it over your right forearm and push it firmly home with your left palm – and get that damned coat off, it’ll catch in everything.”
She gave him a sharp look but said nothing and tossed the expensive fur coat aside.
“Load.”
She had to kneel on the shingle and damp sand, leaning in to her left behind O’Gilroy’s back. It was not dignified, and if Ranklin had been less preoccupied he might have overheard what she was muttering. O’Gilroy did hear and turned his head, startled.
He recovered himself to report: “Ready!”
“Put your hands over your ears,” Ranklin instructed – but he was talking about the noise to come, and demonstrating to the Arabs. “Fire!”
26
Corinna balanced the fourth shell on her forearm and rammed it home savagely. It slid more easily now that the grease from previous shells was building up nicely on her jumper sleeve.
“When does -” she clapped her greasy hands briefly to her greasy ears “- the utter fascination -” she took the fifth shell “- of artillery-”
“Fire!”
“-set in?”
“Stop. That’ll do. What did you say?”
“No matter.”
Ranklin had no idea whether they’d hit anything, all he could tell was that the shells had exploded. And nearer the trench than the monastery.
Anyway, there was no point in going on firing into the mist. Better to switch aim and try to hit the second gun. He laid out the survey map and fell comfortably into the world of figures and calculations again. But this was a trickier problem, since the only idea he had about that gun’s position was the rough bearing he’d taken from the shell-scrape at the monastery, and an assumption that it, too, must be in this dry riverbed. Moreover, now he was trying to hit a small target, not just pass a message to a big one.
Then he realised he’d sent a message to Zurga, too. He’d hardly believe the Hon. Patrick or the Arabs could have laid and fired this gun, so probably he’d guessed that the man in the sheepskin waistcoat really was the Warrior Sheep. Which evened things up, you might say. But what would Zurga now do?
And the answer to that was very easy: he was a gunner, so he’d rush back to direct the one gun he still had. Someone else could bring back the troops from the trench if need be (and the ravine would stop them from attacking this gun from where they were; they must come down into the stream bed and then past Bertie’s outpost, so he was safe from surprise).
Then he remembered that Zurga had probably spent the last two days scouting this area: measuring and taking bearings, picking the gun positions . . . Damn it! – he’d know to a yard just where this gun was!
“We’ve got to move!” He peered desperately up and down the riverbed. Now it didn’t matter being close to the far bank, he wouldn’t be trying to shoot over it. What he needed was any scant cover . . . there, a clutter of rocks tumbled from the opposite bank a couple of hundred yards down-stream . . .
“Swing her right around! And HAUL!”
With the two Arabs carrying the trail, O’Gilroy pushing the barrel and he and Corinna at each wheel, a thousand pounds of gun began to trundle, horribly slowly and reluctantly, across shingle, obstinate rocks and grasping patches of wet sand, down the riverbed beach.
Keeping the momentum, they covered fifty yards, then a hundred . . . There was a distant fusillade of rifle fire: Bertie’s men were in action. Mentally, Ranklin patted himself on the back for his foresight in sending them forward – then knew that God would punish his hubris by bogging down the gun in the soft centre of the riverbed. They still had to swing across that.
“All right, hold it, take a breather.” They had come nearly level with his chosen rocks on the far side.
“Ammunition?” O’Gilroy suggested.
“Fetch it later.” Ranklin was choosing the least-soft place to cross. “O’Gilroy, you take the trail-”
BANG – a shrapnel shell had exploded behind them, more-or-less over their old position. So Zurga was back: nobody else would know so precisely where they were supposed to be. In a way, he welcomed that: he’d rather have Zurga firing accurately at the wrong place than someone else dropping shells all over the shop.
“The rest of us take the wheels. Grab the spokes and just keep it moving – never give it a chance to sink in.” The Arabs nodded, following his demonstration, then both attached themselves to one wheel. He’d rather have had their wiry strength evenly distributed, but neither wanted to share a wheel with a woman, so he had to.
Another shell burst back up the stream bed. They weren’t hearing Zurga’s gun fire; distance, and the solid ground in between, mopped up the sound. “Go!”
They made five yards in an accelerating rush, then slewed to a near-halt in a marshy patch. “Heave!” Ranklin pushed at the metal spoke, hands sweating and slipping, moving it by millimetres, then centimetres, everyone gasping, grunting, the gun twisting with the Arabs’ strength, O’Gilroy trying to wrench it straight . . . Then they bumped over a rock and rolled free on shingle.
Despite their breathlessness, it seemed easy to twitch the gun into line behind the rocks. These weren’t much protection, not as much as the missing shield would have been, but what mattered most was being in a new, unknown, position. Shrapnel shells still burst over the old one – where the ammunition still was.
“Ye want me to go back?” O’Gilroy asked.
“Wait. He won’t go on for ever. If we don’t fire, he may think he’s got us.”
“Mebbe Bertie’ll be thinking the same,” O’Gilroy pointed out. “Mebbe his fellers’ll get a bit down-hearted, thinking we’re dead like. Difficult to keep them in line . . .”
“Just wait,” Ranklin said angrily. Even if he had something to fire, he would still be guessing at his target. Whereas Zurga, once they fired and so told him they had moved, could fire a pattern to seek them out, knowing where to start and that they couldn’t have gone far. He needed an advantage before he fired again . . .
“Can’t wait for ever,” O’Gilroy said remorselessly. “T’other soldiers’ll be coming back, likely, and we’ll have a hundred of ’em coming up this valley. Bertie can’t hold off that.”