He took them to the trenches where most of the Redeemers had died in the last attack.
‘Where’s the front?’
By now the Purgators were beginning to catch on.
‘There’s no point in hiding. Make your mistakes now when there’s only me to answer to.’
One of the men pointed to the Drift forward of the trench.
‘Wrong. There is no front here. The direction of attack is to the side, the rear and facing you. Here it’s front all around. What ground should you take?’
‘The high ground.’
This came out of the Purgators as naturally as the response to a priest in morning mass. At the familiarity there was a buzz, almost like amusement at the memory of something in common, of no longer being outcast.
‘Wrong again. The ground you take is the best ground. Usually, but not here, it’s the high ground. I’m telling you that if you do what’s usually right, you’ll usually end up dead.’ He pointed at the U-shaped bend in the river.
On either side of the bank it was as ragged as if it had been cut into repeatedly by a giant axe.
‘Use the land around you. Those cuts in the bank can be deepened and prepared, but look at it – most of the work has been done for you. This is the best cover for twenty miles.’
‘Hold on, sir,’ said one of the Purgators. ‘You said we needn’t be next to the ford as no one can steal it. This plan puts us right on top of it.’
‘If it wasn’t for the fact that I used up the last fresh egg I’d have given it to you. I changed my mind because I didn’t want to think about giving up the high ground. Just like the rest of you.’ He pointed out into the scrub beyond the U of the river. ‘The ford could be defended from there well enough – but on balance the ravines on the bank are better. At least you better hope so. Besides, remember there is no front or rear in this place. I’m going to put some of you on the high ground. If the Folk try to get in between us, they’ll be trapped from both sides.’ He looked around the group. ‘Are any of you Sodality Marksmen?’ Mostly Redeemer archers were used in massed ranks and great accuracy was not required but where it was needed the specially trained Sodality Marksmen were used. There were six. He told them to collect food and water for three days and while they were doing this set most of the Purgators to digging into the ravines on either side of the bank to improve on what nature had offered them. Thirty of the others were set to digging trenches.
‘Make sure you cut a space big enough inside the bottom of the trench to hide from arrows coming at you from directly above.’ He gave Gil some further instructions and then set off, running to the tabletop mountain in front of the U with the six marksmen.
As the Redeemers dug they talked. Friends of the priest Cale had dropped for pretending he couldn’t hear were muttering.
‘A few months ago and anyone of us could have disembowelled the little shitehawk for even thinking of touching one of us.’
‘He better not try it on me or ...’
‘Or what?’ said another. ‘The days when we could do anything to anyone have gone. He’s annointed by God, you can hear it in his voice and what he says.’
‘And the way he said it.’
‘He’s an acolyte gone cocky. I’ve seen it before – one of them claims he’s seen a vision of the Holy Mother and suddenly they’re all over him until he’s found out for the little liar he is.’
There was a mumble of agreement all around. Acolytes claiming to have seen visions of this or that saint prophesying one thing or another and causing general excitement until they were, unless particularly skilled, caught out and made an example of were not uncommon.
‘Well,’ said another, ‘you better hope you’re wrong because he’s all that stands between us and a blunt knife. I want to believe in him and I do. You can hear it in his voice. Everything he said makes sense once he explained – the fact that he’s just a boy makes it true. Only God could have put knowledge like that into a child’s head.’
‘Shut your gob and get on with your digging,’ said Gil as he passed by. To him they were Purgators but the mixture of awe and doubt about Cale was clattering about in his brain just the same.
Within two hours Cale was back, this time alone and putting in place the notions he had conceived while looking down on the site from the top of the mountain. One of the marksmen, a veteran of the Eastern Front, had come up with an idea of his own he’d seen at Swineburg during the Advent offensive. He was promoted on the spot by a delighted Cale to the position of Bum-Bailey – a deadly insult in Memphis, but important-sounding to the other Redeemers. On his way down the mountain he felt that what had seemed like a good joke at the time was in fact childish and, worse, might come back to haunt him. What was done was done but he stayed away from that kind of thing in the future.
When he got back to the Drift he ordered up the twenty best riders and then told them to take off their cassocks. Having collected a bale’s worth of prairie grass from the scrub he had the cassocks filled with the grass and then impaled the scarecrowish results on twenty staves driven into the bottom of the old trench in which so many Redeemers had died in the previous attack. Once you were thirty yards away or more you couldn’t tell the difference. It was unlikely that the Folk would catch on that Redeemers had no reason to fight with their cowls over their heads.
‘What do you want the riders for?’ asked a suspicious Redeemer Gil. Cale considered avoiding a straight answer but there was no reason to.
‘I need protecting when I watch you from up on the hill back there,’ he said, nodding to the rise half a mile away from which they’d watched the previous two massacres.
‘What about leading your men?’
‘I’m not here to save people, isn’t that right? That’s what you believe, isn’t it?’
Gil stared at him.
‘Yes.’
‘I remember you saying once that a man in command has to make two choices – lead from the front always or only sometimes. Yes?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, try never. Who am I, Redeemer?’
They just stared at each other at first.
‘You are The Left Hand of God.’
‘And why am I here?’
Gil did not reply.
‘Is there anything here,’ continued Cale, ‘you don’t understand?’
‘No, sir.’
Hooke walked over to them having spent several minutes examining a curiously coloured boulder.
‘I think there is brimstone in these rocks.’
‘Get on your horse. We’re leaving.’
Thirty minutes later Cale with Hooke only next to him was looking down on his handiwork from the familiar rise. He was pleased with himself. Except for the dozen or so men he had sent out to place rocks and boulders to give the archers ranges at fifty-yard intervals, he could see no one – even though he knew where to look.
It was two hours after first light the next morning that Hooke spotted a cloud of dust away to the north. Cale ordered a blunt arrow to be fired into the centre of the Drift to warn the Purgators that the Folk were coming. Within the hour Cale could see scouts coming in clumps of two, sometimes three, in a ragged line that extended over a front of a thousand yards or so on either side of a small group of ten heading for the Drift. As they approached the crossing and saw nothing, the land dipped inwards herding the inner groups together. Cale felt an intense thrill gripping him along the back of the neck, pleasant and unpleasant at the same time. By now a group of fifteen scouts had carelessly bunched together about a hundred and fifty yards from the nearest line of about seventy Redeemer archers. Then they stopped, clearly spooked by something.