Chapter 427 — The Line Bends III

Chapter 427: Chapter 427 — The Line Bends III

The radio was busy. Farrell’s voice was on it every minute.

"*Kelleher, Farrell. West road. What’s your state? Over.*"

There was a pause, too long, and then Eamon’s voice.

"*Farrell, Kelleher. We’re still here. They’ve come at us along the side. We’ve lost the front of the road. The first two houses. We’re holding the line at the chapel. Over.*"

"*Can you hold that? Over.*"

"*For now. If they bring another Challenger round on this side, no. I’m not going to tell you yes when it’s no. Over.*"

"*Understood.*"

"*Request. Over.*"

"*Go.*"

"*I want to move the volunteers off the road and into the chapel yard. They’re too exposed where they are, and they’re no good to the lads in the ditch if they’re dead. It shortens the line. We’d still cover the road. Over.*"

There was a pause.

"*Approved. Do it. Keep the road covered. Over.*"

"*Will do.*"

James listened to it with Durendal in his hand behind the sandbags. Eamon did not ask for him. Eamon did not even mention him. He had asked for permission to do the sensible thing and been given it.

---

He heard the next part on the radio, too.

A shout, and a voice he did not know: "*Man down, man down, at the chapel wall, he’s down in the road—*"

Then Eamon: "*Walsh, no—*"

Then a lot of noise, all at once, and nothing he could make out.

He found out later, in pieces, from Owen and from Eamon and from a lad called Dunne who had been in the chapel yard.

A soldier called Carey had been at the end of the chapel wall when the British came along the road. A round had taken him in the leg and he had gone down out in the open, in the road, two metres past the end of the wall. He was lying there, trying to drag himself back, and getting nowhere.

Owen had been closest. He had gone over the wall to get him.

The British were at the far end of the chapel yard by then, thirty metres away. There was a British Challenger with them, a woman with a heavy mace, coming down the road, and she had seen Owen go over the wall. If Owen tried to drag Carey back along the road, she would be on both of them before they got a metre.

Eamon had seen it too.

He had gone over the wall after Owen. He had not gone to Carey. He had gone past Carey and Owen, into the road, straight at the woman with the mace, and put a ward up in front of himself and met her with it.

Dunne said she hit the ward three times before it broke. Then Eamon was fighting her without it, with his sword, his short sword he never used if he could help it. And he was fighting with one arm, because the other one was the side he had torn.

He did not beat her. Dunne was clear about that. She was strong, and she was good, and she kept coming. But he did not let her past him. Every time she tried to go round him to the two men in the road, he was there. He gave ground, a step, then another, and every step he gave was a step she had not taken toward Owen.

Dunne said you could see it every time Eamon lifted his left arm. You could see what it was costing him.

And Owen got Carey by the webbing and dragged him back along the road, two metres, four, to the end of the chapel wall. Somebody else came over the wall and got Carey’s other arm, and the two of them got him behind it.

Eamon saw them go behind the wall.

He did not run after them. He kept fighting her, backing up the road toward the wall himself, slowly, until he was level with it. Then he put another ward up between them, a small one, all he had left. He went over the wall behind it before she could break it.

---

They got Carey out. He was on a stretcher going down the connector inside ten minutes.

But the British got the chapel yard.

Eamon’s group had gone back to the wall to cover the two men in the road, and they could not get back to where they had been. By the time the British woman with the mace and the infantry behind her had finished, Eamon’s line was at the far end of the chapel yard. It was a hundred metres further back than it should have been.

The British were across the front of the western road.

Finn heard it on the radio.

James heard him come on.

"*Farrell, Hale. The east’s holding at the last house. We’ve shortened up, we’re good for now. Kelleher’s in trouble on the west. I can get across to him behind the petrol station without opening the east if Lieutenant Cronin’s lot can cover my spot for ten minutes. Over.*"

There was a pause.

"*Cronin, can you cover him? Over.*"

"*Ten minutes. Yeah. Go.*"

"*Hale, go. Ten minutes. Then back. Over.*"

James saw Finn come across the back of the junction, behind the petrol station, at a run. He did not look at James as he went past. He was not going to the centre. James watched him go into the western road and out of sight among the houses.

He found out what Finn did there later as well.

Finn got there as the British were pushing past the chapel yard to the next row of houses. Their Challenger, the woman with the mace, was trying to get round Eamon’s line on the left, toward the soldiers carrying a second wounded man back along the road. Finn hit her from the side, the way he hit things. While she turned to deal with him, Eamon got the last of the soldiers back from the front of the road into the houses behind the chapel.

The two of them held her together for two or three minutes, Finn in front and Eamon at his shoulder, with the last ward Eamon had left. It was long enough for every soldier on the western road who could still walk to get back to where they could be covered.

Then she withdrew. She went back toward her own people, because there were two of them and she was one.

And the western road stayed where it was now. It was a hundred metres back, behind the chapel. It was held, but it was a hundred metres short of where it had been.

The British were across the front of the southern approach.

---

James was still at the centre when the reports started coming from the south.

At first they did not make sense.

"*Farrell, this is Delta. We’ve got movement on the Rathduff road. Infantry. I think they’re British. Over.*"

"*Delta, confirm British. Over.*"

"*I can’t. It’s dark. They’re moving south. Over.*"

Then a different voice, from somewhere else, further away, on a frequency that bled through.

"*—have withdrawn from the Knockcrane crossroads, repeat, we have withdrawn—*"

Farrell’s voice came back.

"*Say again Knockcrane. Over.*"

"*Knockcrane, we’ve pulled back to—*" The rest was gone.

James was not at the map. But he heard Farrell’s voice change over the next five minutes.

She was asking more questions. Short ones, one after another. *Where. How many. When. Can you confirm.* And the answers coming back were shorter, and later, and less sure.

The man at the back had gone behind the trucks, holding his arm. The waves had stopped. The heavy Challenger had gone east. Nobody had come at the centre for ten minutes. The infantry in the field in front of the junction were lying down and firing, but they were not moving forward.

He went back to the jeep.

---

Farrell was at the map with the lamp and two officers and a radio handset in each hand.

"Finn," said James into his own radio. "What’s it like south of you?"

"*Not good.*" Finn sounded breathless. He was back on the east road. "*There’s British on the road behind the chapel. Behind us. Not many, but they’re there. They came round the west side while we were holding the front. They’re on the road south. The one we came up.*"

James looked down at the map on the bonnet.

He saw it.

The British had come at the junction from the front with a heavy Challenger, the man with the waves and Harcourt. They had made it loud. James had gone to the centre and stopped it, because that was what he was there for. Finn had gone east and held it, and Eamon had gone west and held it, mostly.

And while every Irish Challenger and every rifle in this unit had been facing north, British soldiers had been going round. They had gone along the back of the western road, through the field and past the chapel, toward Rathduff and the roads behind them. Those were the roads the trucks came up, and the roads the wounded went down. They had not had to beat anyone to do it. They had only needed everyone to be busy for an hour.

James did not think it had all been planned like that. Some of it was luck. Some of it was the Irish having three people to cover three roads and nothing left over. But the British had seen the gaps when they opened, and they had gone through them.

He looked at Farrell.

"I could go south," he said. "Now. If I get onto that road behind the chapel quickly enough, I can push whatever’s there back off it."

Farrell looked up.

She did not say no. She did not say it was stupid, either.

"And the centre?" she said. "If you go. Can you promise me nothing comes at those sandbags while you’re down there?"

He looked north up the road.

The infantry were still lying in the field. The trucks were still there. Somewhere behind them was a man with a broken arm, and somewhere beyond them was Eleanor Harcourt, who had not come forward once all night. She had walked along the hedge looking at things.

He could not promise.

He thought, very briefly, about Alice and Turiel.

They would go through what was on that south road like a scythe. But what was on that south road was in the dark, among Irish soldiers falling back, Irish trucks, Irish wounded on stretchers, all tangled up together on four different roads. It was not a room with a boss in it that he could turn them loose on. Turiel’s red did not know a British uniform from an Irish one unless James stood beside it and told it, one target at a time. And this would not be one fight. It would be six at once, two kilometres apart.

Killing what was in front of him had not been the problem. He had been doing that all night. Every one he had killed had been in front of him, and the British had gone round anyway.

"No," he said. "I can’t promise."

---

The radio went on the dashboard.

"*Farrell, Knockcrane. We’ve lost the crossroads. We’ve pulled back to the line of the river. Repeat, we’ve lost Knockcrane. Over.*"

Farrell closed her eyes for a second.

James looked at the map. He found Knockcrane. It was the next crossroads south and east, on the second road, the one the supplies came up.

Both roads were gone or going.

Farrell picked up the other handset and spoke to someone James could not hear. She gave the situation, short and flat, without dressing it. The junction was holding. The east was holding at the last house. The west had been pushed back a hundred metres. Enemy were on the road behind the chapel. Knockcrane was lost. Both southern routes were under threat.

"*Request instructions. Over.*"

While she waited, she turned to the officers round the jeep.

"Get ready to move," she said. "Everyone. Not yet. But be ready. If the order comes, we go to Rathduff, and we go quickly."

One of the officers was a lieutenant James had seen on the east road with Finn. He was very young. He looked at her.

"Ma’am. We took this place five hours ago. We lost men taking it."

"I know."

"And now we’re—"

"If we stay here and they close the road behind us," said Farrell, "we lose everyone. All of us. We get cut off up here with no way out and no way to get the wounded out, and the unit up north is cut off anyway." She did not raise her voice. "I don’t like it either. I’m not going to tell you it’s going to be all right. I’m telling you to get ready."

The lieutenant looked at her for a moment longer.

"Ma’am," he said, and went.

James watched him go. He saw the soldiers at the sandbags look at each other when the lieutenant told them. One of them started picking up boxes of ammunition and stacking them by the road, the ones they would not be able to carry if they had to go fast.