Chapter 425 — The Line Bends I

Chapter 425: Chapter 425 — The Line Bends I

By midnight the junction looked like somewhere people meant to stay.

The Irish had dragged the burnt-out British vehicle across the northern road and packed sandbags along its side. They had cut firing slits in the upper windows of the two-storey building with a crowbar. They had gone through the boxes the British left behind and taken anything useful, and stacked the rest by the petrol station to be blown later. A tractor from the farm behind the houses had been borrowed, without the farmer’s permission, to tow the wrecked jeep off the connector road so the vehicles could get by.

Down the connector, trucks were coming up from the south with ammunition and water, and going back with wounded.

James was kneeling in the sandbagged position beside the burnt vehicle, with a sergeant he did not know. They were trying to work out why one end of it kept collapsing, when Finn came up the road.

"Farrell wants us," he said. "Challengers. Now."

"What’s happening?"

"The British are moving north of here. More of them than this afternoon. She’s got reports of vehicles." Finn crouched beside him and looked at the sandbags. "That’s going to fall over."

"I know it’s going to fall over. We’re fixing it."

"You’re not, though, are you."

The sergeant said, "Go on. I’ll sort it," and James got up and went with Finn.

---

They passed soldiers trying to sleep.

One sat on the kerb by the petrol station, eating something out of a ration pouch with a plastic spoon and not tasting it. Another had his back against the forecourt wall and his rifle across his knees in pieces. He was scraping dried mud out of the working parts with a twig, very carefully, like a man doing a jigsaw.

A young soldier stood by himself at the corner of the building with his phone to his ear.

"—no, but are you *there*? Did you get there? Is Nana with you?" A pause. "Okay. Okay. No, stay there. Stay there till—"

He saw James and Finn coming, lowered his voice and turned his back to them.

James walked past without looking.

---

Eamon was sitting on the step of a military jeep with his jacket half off, adjusting the dressing under his left arm. He had the face of a man who had been trying not to make faces for several hours.

"There they are," he said. "The famous ones. Nobody told me, you know. When I signed up. Nobody said there’d be walking. I’d have brought better boots."

"How’s the side?" said Finn.

"Grand."

"It’s not grand. You’ve been walking crooked since the bridge. I watched you the whole way up the connector."

Eamon looked at him, then at James, and then down at the dressing.

"It’s worse," he admitted. "Than it was. I tore something on that fella with the spear this afternoon. It’s not *bad*. It’s just—" He moved his arm, and his face did the thing he had been stopping it doing. "It’s worse."

"Get Ruth to look at it," said James. "Properly. When we’re back."

"Ruth has already told me," said Eamon, "in some detail, what will happen to me if I ignore her one more time. I’d rather not give her the satisfaction."

"Being stubborn’s not going to make it go away," said Finn.

"I’ve lived longer than most of the lads I started with," said Eamon, getting up, "on stubbornness alone. Don’t knock it."

---

Farrell had the map on the bonnet of the same jeep as before. There was a lamp clipped to the wing mirror, and four officers stood round it, with the attached Challengers behind them.

"The British have been reorganising since they lost this place," she said. "We’ve seen more vehicles coming south since dark. More infantry. And Challengers. More than this afternoon. I don’t know how many yet. I’ll know when they get here."

She put her hand on the map.

"We hold the junction. Here. That connects us to the unit up north, and it’s the only reason they’re not cut off." She moved her finger south, along two roads that ran down from the junction toward the town. "These two roads connect us back to everybody else. Supplies come up them. Wounded go down them. If the British get across either of those, we’re on our own up here with no way back."

"Are they coming straight at the junction?" said James.

"That’s the most likely. It’s what I’d do." She tapped the map to either side. "But I’ve had reports of movement on the roads either side of us as well. Small, so far. I’m not putting every Challenger I’ve got in one place and finding out in an hour that they’ve gone round."

"Are we getting anyone else?" said Finn. "My da? The other big contingents?"

"They’re fighting elsewhere. Every one of them. If they’re moved here, it’ll be because somebody above me moves them. Not because I ask."

She went round them.

"Ganner. The centre. The junction itself. If they bring their heavy Challengers, they’ll bring them there. That’s yours. Hale, the eastern approach road, with the section dug in at the houses. Kelleher, the western road, with the volunteers and Lieutenant Cronin’s lot." She looked at the folder. "Walsh is with you, Kelleher. He knows that road from this morning."

Owen, at the edge of the light, nodded.

"There’s a fallback," said Farrell. "Here. Two kilometres south. A farm complex on the crossroads at Rathduff, with good walls. If we lose the junction, we go there." She looked round at all of them. "But I want this understood. Nobody falls back without my order. The unit up north is relying on that connector. If we pull out because things are hard, they’re cut off. So we hold until I say otherwise."

James looked at the map.

He could see why she had done it. Three approaches, three experienced Challengers, one each. If she put him and Finn together in the centre, the eastern road would have nobody on it but riflemen.

He would rather have had Finn beside him.

He did not say so. Finn had his own road.

---

A radio went on the jeep’s dashboard.

"*Farrell, Farrell, north checkpoint. Vehicles. Six, seven. Coming down the north road. Over.*"

Then, before she had answered:

"*North checkpoint, correction. Infantry with them. And Challengers. I count three, maybe four. Over.*"

Farrell picked up the handset.

"Received. Everyone to positions." She did not look up from the map. "Now."

James drew Durendal as he went.

The British were coming back.

---

He got to the centre as the first engines came round the bend in the north road.

The sandbag position at the burnt vehicle had not fallen over. The sergeant had sorted it. James crouched behind the end of it, where he could see up the north road without getting in the way of the riflemen at the slits.

Smoke was drifting across the junction from the east, from a fire in one of the buildings that nobody had had time to put out. It came in gusts, and when it came it took the far end of the road away.

The vehicles came on, and stopped two hundred metres out. Infantry got down off the backs of them and spread out on both sides of the road, into the hedges and the field.

James watched the shapes that were not infantry.

There were three of them.

This was not like the afternoon. In the afternoon there had been one Challenger, Pryce, in the middle of everyone, with the whole company wrapped round him. Tonight they had split up. One was big, in heavy armour, walking with the infantry on the left side of the road. One hung back near the vehicles, not coming forward at all, just standing and looking at the Irish position.

And the third was with a group of soldiers on the right side of the road, moving along the hedge. She was a woman, with light brown hair tight to the back of her head and a long straight sword held low.

Eleanor Harcourt.

She was not running at the junction. She was walking with the soldiers, looking at the Irish positions one at a time. She looked at the burnt vehicle, at the building with the firing slits and the petrol station, then at the roads going off east and west.

She had come back. And James did not think for a second that she had come back knowing less than she had known this afternoon.

He keyed the radio.

"Ganner. Three Challengers on the north road. A heavy one on their left with the infantry. One back at the vehicles, not moving. And Harcourt. On their right, with a section. The one from the bridge."

"*Received.*" That was Farrell.

"*Received,*" said Finn, from the east.

"*Of course it’s her,*" said Eamon’s voice, from the west. "*You do attract them. Received.*"

James did not answer. He was watching the British move.

They were not lining up to come at the junction. They were spreading. The infantry were going out wide, into the fields on both sides, toward the east road and the west road, while the vehicles stayed in the middle.

They were going to come at all of it at once.