Chapter 422 — No Ground to Give II

Chapter 422: Chapter 422 — No Ground to Give II

Owen showed her.

He put his finger on the junction, a crossroads where the connector road met a smaller one coming in from the west. On the north-east corner was a building, two storeys, an old agricultural supply place. On the south-west corner was a petrol station, closed. There were a few houses along the western road, and a field behind them.

"They came in from the north," said Owen. "Down the road, and across the field there behind the houses. The Challenger was here." He tapped the two-storey building. "Right beside it. Most of the time behind their lads, sort of in the middle. Whenever we put fire on anybody near that building, it didn’t land."

"Didn’t land how?" said Eamon. He had come over to listen. "Did he fight? Or did he stay back?"

"Stayed back, mostly." Owen frowned. "He’d come forward a bit, then back. I don’t know what it was. I’m not a Challenger. There was this sort of shimmer. We’d put a burst into the lads beside him, and it would hit something in the air in front of them and just stop. Not all of them. Some of them we hit fine. But the ones nearest him, we couldn’t."

"How many at once?"

"Five? Six? It moved. Like he moved it."

James listened.

A Challenger who could cover five or six soldiers at a time was worth a whole company on a crossroads. As long as he stood in the middle of it, nobody was getting the British off that junction with rifles.

But Owen had said *not all of them*. He had said *it moved, like he moved it*.

That meant it had edges, and the man had to choose where to put it.

James did not know what class that was. He was not going to guess from one corporal’s description. But he knew he wanted to see the shimmer work before he got anywhere near it.

A soldier came running down from the wall.

"Ma’am. Movement at the junction. They’re bringing more up. Two vehicles, maybe more. They’re reinforcing."

Farrell folded the map.

"Right," she said. "Then we go now, before they’re dug in." She looked round. "Everyone to your groups. Five minutes."

James looked north, past the bend.

Over the roofs of the houses he could see smoke going up, thin and grey, from somewhere near the junction. Something moved on the road beside the two-storey building. It was small at this distance, a man, and then another.

Since he had arrived at the front, the Irish had only ever been holding.

This time they were going forward.

---

Farrell spent two of the five minutes with the lieutenant from the farmyard.

She did not take all of his soldiers. Half of them were done in, and three were walking wounded who should not have been standing up at all. She left those in the farmyard to keep reorganising. She took the ones who were fit, about a dozen, and split them between her two groups.

Owen put his hand up.

"I’ll go with the road group, ma’am."

Farrell looked at him. "You were at that junction this morning."

"I know. That’s why."

"Are you hurt?"

"Nothing that matters."

"That’s not what I asked."

"No, ma’am. I’m not hurt."

She held his eyes a second longer. Then she nodded. "Road group. Stay with Hale and Kelleher. Show them where you were."

---

They went up through the houses.

James had six soldiers with him, a sergeant and five privates. Before they set off, he stopped and told them.

"If something happens and I bring out undead," he said, "they’re mine. Skeletons. They’re on your side. Don’t shoot them."

The sergeant looked at him.

"Are you allowed to do that? Out here?"

"If I’m being attacked. Yeah. That’s the rule." He did not explain further. "I’ll tell you if I’m doing it. Just don’t shoot them."

"Right," said the sergeant. "Skeletons. Don’t shoot the skeletons." He said it to the others as if it were the most normal instruction in the world. "You heard him."

They went on.

Off to his left, through the gaps between the houses, James could see the road group moving up the connector. Finn was near the front, with Eamon behind him and the younger Challengers bunched round Eamon. Owen was at the shoulder of the officer leading the soldiers, pointing.

The road was quiet. It was quieter than the bridge had been. Glass crunched under James’s boots where somebody’s front windows had come in. The wind came round the end of the houses in gusts, and every gust brought a wash of smoke across the road and then took it away again. Somewhere off to the east the gunfire went on, a long way off.

They came to the last house on the western road.

James crouched at the corner of it, beside the sergeant.

There was the junction, eighty metres off, with the petrol station on the near corner. The two-storey building stood on the far one, with a faded sign across the front.

There were British soldiers at the entrance of the building, five or six of them in good positions behind sandbags. There were more moving between the pumps at the petrol station. Behind the building, two vehicles had pulled in, and men were taking things off the back of them. There were boxes, a heavy weapon on a tripod and rolls of wire.

They were not leaving. They were building.

---

The British saw them before they were ready.

Somebody on the roof of the petrol station shouted. Then the whole junction opened up at once, rifles and something heavier. Rounds came into the corner of the house beside James and took chips of render off it in a spray.

The sergeant pulled him back behind the wall.

Further along, the road group had gone flat. James heard Finn shouting something. He heard rifles answering from the Irish side, short bursts, then longer ones.

He looked round the corner again, low.

Something was coming out from behind the British soldiers at the entrance of the building.

It was a man in practical Challenger armour, grey and dark green, with nothing ornate on it. He did not run forward. He came out from behind the sandbags and stood just behind the line of British soldiers, looking left and right, as if he were taking a register.

On the left, a group of Irish soldiers from the road group put a long burst into the British line at the sandbags.

The air in front of the sandbags shimmered.

It was a sheet of something faintly visible, like heat haze. The rounds hit it and stopped. James saw them stop, the little flashes as they struck and fell.

The man turned his head toward the right, toward the petrol station, where James’s own group had started firing.

The shimmer went with his head. It slid along the front of the British line like a curtain on a rail, away from the sandbags and over to the pumps.

The soldiers at the sandbags were no longer covered. One of them went down.

The man turned back and the shimmer came back with him.

James watched it twice more.

It worked well, very well. But it did not cover everything at once. It had a width, maybe twelve or fifteen metres, and the man had to look where he wanted it. Every time he moved it to save one part of his line, he left another part open, if only for a second.

He was what was holding that junction. As long as he stood there, the British behind him could not be beaten with rifles.

"There’s your Challenger," said James to the sergeant. "Building entrance. He’s putting a shield in front of his lads. It covers about fifteen metres and he has to point it." He keyed the radio on the sergeant’s shoulder. "Farrell. Ganner. Enemy Challenger at the building entrance. Defensive, a moving shield, about fifteen metres wide. He has to aim it. I’m going for him."

"*Understood. Go.*"

---

The road group gave him his chance.

On the left, Finn’s group all opened up at once on the sandbags, everything they had. The man’s head snapped round and the shimmer went with it.

James came out from behind the corner of the house and across the junction.

It was eighty metres. He made the first sixty before the man saw him.

The man’s head came round. The shimmer came round with it, and it was in front of him, between him and James, before James got there.

James put his hand up at it.

`[NECRO BLAST — 60 MANA]`

`[MANA: 2,860 / 3,100]`

Black force went into the shimmer and hit it like a fist into a pane of glass. The shimmer flexed. It went darker where the blast hit, with lines spreading out through it. But it held. Nothing came through to the man behind it.

He was already moving. He brought his other hand up, and something came off it, a hard flat burst of force, not at James’s body but at his legs, to drive him back.

James jumped it. He felt it go under him like a wave. He landed on the far side of it, closer.

He came at the man with Durendal from the right.

The shimmer was there. The man had swung it round to meet him. Durendal hit it and stopped as though it had hit a door, and the shock went up James’s arms into his shoulders.

He went left. The shimmer went left with him. He came round low. The man stepped back and turned and the shimmer turned with him, and Durendal hit it again.

He was good. He was not as good as Eleanor Harcourt, but he was good. He kept the shimmer between himself and the blade every time. He did not panic, and he did not try to trade blows. He was content to keep James on the wrong side of it. While he did, his soldiers on either side kept firing at the Irish.

James stepped back.

He could not just hit his way through that. He could do it all day and the man would turn the shimmer into every cut. It was built for exactly that.

But he had seen something.

Every few seconds, the man’s eyes went past James. They went to the sandbags, where Finn’s group was still putting fire in, and to the petrol station, where James’s six were shooting from the houses. Each time, the shimmer flickered toward that side, a fraction, as if the man wanted to move it there and was making himself hold it in front of James instead.

He was trying to do two jobs. He was trying to protect his soldiers and keep James off him at the same time, with one shield.

James decided to give him a third.

---

There was a field behind the petrol station on the far side of the junction, the one Owen had pointed to on the map. James had seen it on the way in. It belonged to a farm. Somebody had been keeping cattle in it, and the shells that had come down on the junction in the night had not cared.

There were four of them lying against the hedge, dead since the morning.

It was not what he would have chosen. But it was what there was. He was not going to put his hands on the dead men from the other unit, wherever they were lying. He would never do that, rule or no rule.

He went sideways, fast, out of the man’s line and over the low wall of the petrol station forecourt, as if he were retreating. Then he dropped down the far side against the hedge and put his hand flat on the nearest of the dead animals.

"Sergeant!" he shouted, back toward the houses. "Undead! *Mine!*"

`[SUMMON UNDEAD SKELETON — 80 MANA] ×2`

`[MANA: 2,700 / 3,100]`

It was a horrible thing to watch even for him. The flesh came off the two nearest carcasses in a wet rush, and two great heavy skeletons stood up out of it. They were long-skulled and broad as a car bonnet across the ribs, with the hooves gone to bare bone. They turned their heads toward him and waited.

On the British side, somebody screamed.

James did not blame him.

"Go," he said. "That way." He pointed, one at the British soldiers at the pumps. "Go round the side." He pointed the other one at the building, at the left of the British line, where the shimmer was not.