George held out an arm and prevented him from leaving while a squad of sappers jogged past, shovels in hand and carrying slit lanterns, then he signalled for Aubrey that the way was clear.
Aubrey stretched more than his legs as he wandered along the trench. He rolled his shoulders and swung his arms and felt as if his whole body was uncoiling.
A flare bloomed in the sky, turning night into a ghastly sort of day. Aubrey found a step and carefully levered himself to the parapet. Finding a loophole in the sandbags, he surveyed the scene, reminding himself of exactly what he was doing.
George joined him. ‘A scrap of land,’ he said softly. ‘Hardly worth fighting over.’
‘We’re not fighting for that scrap of land. We’re fighting for what it represents. Not fighting for it would mean we were giving in.’
‘I wouldn’t be happy with that,’ George said, ‘but I wish we didn’t have to. I suppose it’s stand up or be knocked down.’
‘Something like that.’ Aubrey sought for his location point and found it, unmistakable in the broken landscape. He thought it a perfect place to see how stupid war was. He could even worm his way out there himself, if he followed that chain of pot holes, and then worked his way under that forest of barbed wire someone had risked himself to set up. Aubrey traced the route with his eye, then the flare faded and left him thinking.
Three closely spaced explosions erupted on the ridge behind the Holmland lines. ‘We’re shelling the hills, now?’ Aubrey asked.
‘Communications have been spotty, up and down the line, but we’ve been told that artillery commanders have been ordered to use their initiative. If they see a target up there, they can have a dash.’
‘Have a dash. Sounds jolly.’ Aubrey peered into the night for a moment, its blackness hiding the magnitude of his task.
An idea jumped out of the darkness and hit him between the eyes. He stared, unseeing for a while, examining the idea from all sides, to see if its lunacy was simply ridiculous or if it was the special sort of outrageousness that he had come to value. ‘I have to get back to it, George.’
‘See? It did you good, getting away for a while.’
‘It did that,’ Aubrey said vaguely, his mind working elsewhere at a rate hitherto thought impossible. ‘Which way is the dugout?’
When they entered, Stanley was at the makeshift table, yawning and doing his best to focus on the scattered papers in front of him. Aubrey noticed that his eyes were bloodshot. ‘Impressive stuff, Fitzwilliam. Damned impressive.’
‘Sir.’
Sophie stretched out on a bench under a map of Stalsfrieden. George went to rouse her, but Aubrey shook his head. ‘Let her sleep.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘I might need her later. Let her sleep now.’
George nodded and found a blanket for her.
Caroline was sitting on a packing case, tinkering with wireless equipment. ‘You should get some rest, too,’ he said to her.
‘I slept earlier.’
Aubrey had no idea whether she had or not, but immediately understood that arguing the point would be futile. ‘Nice capacitor.’
She held up the thumb-sized component she’d been polishing. ‘It’s a valve, Aubrey, but thank you for trying.’
He smiled, vaguely, and addressed his workings. He straightened some of the loose sheets of paper he’d torn from the ledger, and then reordered them. He screwed one up and discarded it.
Then he took a deep breath. Re-engaging with a spell of this difficulty was like standing on a high diving tower, readying for the plunge.
Only if the water was aflame with burning oil, he thought, and full of crocodiles. Flameproof crocodiles, with long snorkels.
He realised his mind was spinning off in peculiar directions and he admonished himself. He needed to use every possible brain function in the pursuit of an answer to his problem. Spinning was not to be tolerated.
The obstacle that had brought him to such an abrupt halt needed a very special solution and he now thought he had one. The trouble was, it required his casting the spell from the middle of no-man’s-land.
Since the reunification of his body and soul he had been acutely conscious of his whereabouts in a more than physical sense. Wherever he was, he was present in a very real and concrete way. Knowing this, he thought he could use his own location as a homing beacon. He could act as a human set of coordinates.
Drawbacks aplenty presented themselves, but as he looked for other ways around the impasse, he kept coming back to this one. It had the advantage of simplicity – and the disadvantage of acute personal danger. While he didn’t shy away from acute personal danger, he didn’t go out of his way to seek it, either. He was willing to entertain alternatives. In fact, he was willing to offer champagne, dancing and a night on the town to any useful alternative, but none presented itself, even with such entertainment on offer.
He also had an inkling that some people around about might want to have a say about whether it was a good idea or not.
The trench raiders managed it in their midnight excursions, he told himself. The barbed wire teams managed it when they crept out to stretch out more of the cursed stuff. No-man’s-land wasn’t an impossible place to be. It was simply extremely dangerous.
‘I have it, Colonel,’ he announced.
Stanley looked up from where he was working through a pile of papers. He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose before replacing them. ‘Fitzwilliam, I only understand half of what you’ve done here – less than half – but from what I’ve seen, I think you do too.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘And if it’s true, I’m wondering if you’ve really thought this thing through.’
‘Sir?’
‘If you can bring the Chancellor and his friends to the middle of no-man’s-land to throw a scare into them, why not simply bring them here and we’ll shoot the lot of them?’
It was the colonel’s tone that shook Aubrey most. It said ‘I’m a reasonable man’ and ‘All things considered’, decidedly rational things like that. It was the tone used in lecture theatres and board rooms all over Albion.
In military terms, it was a sensible suggestion. Lieutenant-Colonel Stanley wasn’t a monster. He was a hard-working man, doing the best he could. He probably had a wife and family and a dog waiting for him at home in Albion.
Yet he was calmly suggesting a massacre.
In some ways, it made sense. Lop off the head and Holmland would be in trouble. It might run around for a while, squawking, but eventually it would realise the state of affairs and it would fall over.
Shoot a dozen to save thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Millions.
As arithmetic, it made perfect sense, but Aubrey had never thought that humanity could be reduced to a matter of counting. What sort of a world would it be if that sort of thing was considered a good plan? What sort of country would it be that endorsed such action?
He was sure it wasn’t the sort of world that he was trying to save – or to make. He was also sure that Caroline would agree, and George and Sophie.
So what if a superior officer ordered him to do it?
‘Sir, that would be extremely efficient,’ he said, carefully not agreeing with the suggestion. ‘We need to put some arrangements into place, however. What’s the time?’
Caroline had been following the exchange between Aubrey and Stanley carefully. ‘It’s just after eleven.’
‘I need some rest before I cast a spell like this. What if we aim for 0100 hours?’
‘The wee small hours,’ Stanley said, with a wisp of a smile.
‘And we follow it with an artillery barrage at 0200 hours, directly opposite our position here.’
‘Eh?’
‘A show of strength. Can you arrange it?’
Colonel Stanley frowned. ‘I’ll have to find a communications post.’
‘If we arrange it now, sir, I think it would be best.’
As soon as Colonel Stanley left, Caroline put aside her wireless equipment and buttonholed Aubrey. ‘And what exactly are you planning?’