Chapter 420 — A Day in the Capital III (Bonus)

Chapter 420: Chapter 420 — A Day in the Capital III (Bonus)

He went back across the open ground toward the tyre centre and his own people. James went after him ten metres, enough to make sure he kept going, and then stopped. He did not chase him. That was not the job.

Eamon had blood on his upper arm, coming through a tear in his sleeve. He looked at it and swore.

"Is that bad?"

"It’s not good." He pressed his hand over it. "It’s grand. It’s grand. Come on."

Behind them, the soldiers got the stretcher behind the blocks, and somebody shouted *clear*, and somebody else shouted it back.

---

Finn came over a minute later, at a jog.

The corner of the tyre centre was holding behind him. His face was black with smoke, and there was a cut on his forehead that had bled down into his eyebrow.

"Did you get her?" he said. "The woman. The one with the sword."

"No," said James. "She pulled back."

Finn looked at him. He looked at the cut on the back of James’s hand, the burn across his cheek and ear, the hole in his coat at the hip, and the other hole in his side from the ditch that morning.

"Was it bad?"

"She’s good," said James. "Really good. If we meet her again, we need to take her seriously."

"Harcourt," said Eamon. He had his hand clamped over his arm. "She said Harcourt?"

"Eleanor Harcourt."

Eamon was quiet for a moment.

"I’ve heard the name," he said. "Not from a stream. From people who’ve been on contracts in England. She’s state. She’s one of theirs, properly." He shook his head. "I don’t know what she does. Not exactly. Nobody I know has ever fought her. But she’s not some lad they’ve handed a uniform to. I know that much."

A soldier came round the end of the blocks.

"Last ones are on," he said. "The four. They’re loaded. Ambulance is going."

---

Farrell came through on the radio a minute later and checked with every call sign, one after another. The tyre centre was holding. The blocks were holding. The four wounded were loaded and the ambulance was moving. The last of the civilians had passed the checkpoint a kilometre south.

"*That’s the objective,*" she said. "*Well done. Hold where you are.*"

The relief went down the line like a breath being let out.

Some of the soldiers sat down where they were, against the pallets, against the wall, on the road. One lay flat on his back on a bag of sand with his rifle across his chest and his eyes closed. Others started checking their mates, their kit and their ammunition.

But some of them did not sit down. James noticed that. Some of them were still kneeling with their rifles up, watching the bridge.

They had held long enough, and the wounded were out.

The British were still on the other side of the stream.

---

James went back with Eamon and Finn to where the medical team had set up, behind the builders’ merchant in a loading bay. The ambulance had gone, but the next lot of wounded were already coming in.

Ruth was there.

She had a soldier on a stretcher on the concrete and was kneeling over him, and a medic beside her was writing something on his arm in marker. She looked up as they came in, looked at Eamon, and looked at the blood coming through his fingers.

"Sit," she said.

"There’s lads worse than me—"

"I know there’s lads worse than you. I’m looking at one. It doesn’t make yours go away." She pointed at an upturned crate without looking up again. "Sit on that and wait until I get to you."

Eamon sat on the crate.

Finn snorted.

James helped a medic move a stack of equipment boxes out of the way of the stretchers, carrying them back against the wall of the bay. When he had done it, he went to look for the soldiers from the yard.

He found one of them, the lad who had hauled his mate back behind the blocks. He was sitting against the wall with a bottle of water.

The lad recognised him and got half up.

"You’re all right," said James. "Stay there."

"Thanks. For earlier. Both times."

"Your mate? The one with the arm?"

"They took him to Dundalk. The hospital." The lad looked at the water bottle. "I don’t know. They said it’s his elbow. I don’t know if he’s going to come back from it. Like, come back to this."

James nodded.

He did not tell him it would be grand. He did not know that.

"I hope he does," he said.

The lad nodded, and drank some water.

---

Ruth got to Eamon about ten minutes later.

She cut his sleeve off with a pair of scissors, looked at the arm, and pulled a face.

"Shrapnel," she said. "There’s a bit still in there."

"Lovely."

"Hold still."

He held still. She went in after it with a pair of forceps, and his jaw went tight and he looked at the ceiling of the loading bay.

"You know what it is," he said, through his teeth, to the ceiling. "The Tower was much easier. At least the monsters had the manners to stay on the same floor. Nobody followed you home from Floor 14."

"You’re welcome to go back to the Tower," said Ruth, "the minute this is over. As long as you stop making my job harder in the meantime."

She held the forceps up with a small black piece of metal in them, dropped it in a dish with a clink, and started on the dressing.

The medic writing on the arm of the soldier on the stretcher laughed. So did the soldier on the stretcher, faintly. Finn laughed out loud.

James sat down on a crate against the wall and let his head go back against the brick. For the first time since the bridge, his shoulders came down.

---

Farrell found them there a while later.

She had her radio in one hand and her map case in the other. Her face was black down one side where she had rubbed it with a dirty hand.

"Good work," she said. "All three of you. The wounded are out and the civilians are out. That’s what we came for."

"Are they done?" said James. "The British. Have they stopped?"

"Here? For now." She glanced back toward the bridge. "They’ve pulled back off our bit. But it’s going on everywhere else. I’ve asked the units either side of us for an update. I’ll know in a—"

Her radio went.

She lifted it and listened, and did not say anything.

They all watched her face change.

---

"Say again," said Farrell.

She listened again.

The adjacent position, the one on their left beyond the industrial estate and across the fields, had been forced to withdraw. They had been pushed hard by British troops with Challengers in support, harder than anyone had expected. They had pulled back to avoid being overrun. They had managed it in good order, but they had lost the position.

That left a gap.

A soldier ran over with the map, and Farrell went down on one knee with it on the concrete of the loading bay. James and Finn crouched beside her.

He could see it. Their crossing was here, and it was still held. The next position along was there, where the road bent round behind a ridge, and now it was empty. Through that gap the British could come round the side of the industrial estate without going anywhere near the bridge. They could go straight down the back roads toward the town, past everything Farrell’s unit had just held.

They had done their job.

The British had simply gone round them.

"Are we pulling back as well?" said Eamon. He was standing at the back with his arm in a fresh dressing.

"I’m waiting for orders," said Farrell. "But they can’t leave the unit that’s pulled out on its own. Not with that gap open."

Nobody said anything.

Around the loading bay, the soldiers had started getting their kit back on. Nobody had told them to. But they had heard the radio, and they knew what came next. Rifles came up off the floor. Men who had been lying down sat up.

The relief James had felt ten minutes before went out of the room as if somebody had opened a door.

"Does my da know?" said Finn. "About the gap?"

"Everybody above me is being told," said Farrell. "The Challenger groups are being moved round as it changes. If your father’s needed somewhere, he’ll be told."

Finn nodded, and did not ask anything else.

---

James stood up and went to the open end of the loading bay.

He could see over the roofs of the industrial estate toward the ridge. There was smoke behind it, a thick grey column going up into the sky. The sound of fighting from over there had got louder again. There were rifles, and the heavier thump of something bigger.

An hour ago he had been trying to kill Eleanor Harcourt in the middle of a road. He had thought, while he was doing it, that she was the problem.

She was one of them. She was not the problem.

They had held their crossing and got every wounded man out of it. And somewhere a kilometre to their left, the British had just walked round them.

Farrell’s radio went again. She listened, said *understood*, and stood up.

"Right," she said, loud enough for the whole bay. "We’re moving. The unit that pulled back needs support, and we’re it. Expect contact. Expect a lot of it." She was already pulling the map back into its case. "Five minutes. Section commanders to me."

Eamon got up off his crate before Ruth had finished taping his arm.

"Kelleher. Sit *down*. I haven’t—"

"You can finish it in the truck."

"I can’t finish it in the—"

"Ruth."

She looked at him for a moment, then pulled a roll of tape out of her pocket and threw it at him. He caught it with his good hand.

Finn was checking his axes, one and then the other, running his thumb down each edge.

"You ready?" he said.

James looked out at the smoke beyond the ridge once more.

He had fought his first real British Challenger and not lost. He had helped the soldiers do the thing they had come to do. It had worked.

It had not stopped anything.

He settled Durendal on his hip, and turned round.

"Yeah," he said. "Let’s go."