Chapter 431 — The Counterstroke II

Chapter 431: Chapter 431 — The Counterstroke II

Further along, Finn was meeting another British Challenger at the corner of the farmhouse, with soldiers putting fire past him on either side. He drove him back out of sight. James did not go over. Finn did not need him.

By eight o’clock the Spire had the eastern road, Saoirse’s group had the river crossing to the west, and for the first time in two days the formations south of Dundalk could talk to each other.

---

It got harder near the junction.

The British had put everything they had into the last three hundred metres. There were sandbags across the road and men at every window of the two-storey building. More were behind the burnt-out vehicle the Irish had pushed there themselves.

And there was the man with the waves.

James saw him before the first wave came. He was standing back among the British vehicles north of the junction, his right forearm strapped, his left hand out.

The wave hit the farm wall the Irish were moving up behind, and a section of it came down.

This time he was not alone. Two British Challengers stood in front of him, between him and the junction. They were placed so that anyone coming at him had to go through them first.

The British had learned from last night. James could not run up the ditch and make him choose. They had given him people to do the choosing for him.

So James did it differently.

There was a field beside the road. The fields round Dundalk had been full of cattle when the shelling started, and nobody had moved them since. He went over the wall and put his hand on the nearest carcass.

`[SUMMON UNDEAD SKELETON — 80 MANA]`

`[MANA: 2,310 / 3,100]`

"*Undead! Mine!*" he shouted, and down the line someone shouted back *don’t shoot the skeletons*. It had become a habit.

He sent both skeletons, the new one and the three-legged one, up the side of the road toward the left of the two British Challengers. He did not send them at the man with the waves. He sent them at the gap on the left of the British line, where an Irish section would otherwise have had to cross open ground to get at it.

The British turned to meet them.

The left-hand British Challenger, a woman with a long-hafted spear, put the spear through the new skeleton’s skull and wrenched sideways, and its neck came apart. It kept walking, but it was not much use now. James felt it go wrong.

He did not send it further. He pulled it back to the wall and left it there. He sent the three-legged one along the hedge to the far left instead, out wide, where the British would have to turn to watch it.

Then he went up the middle himself.

The right-hand Challenger met him. He was a stocky man with a buckler and a short sword. He was good, and James had to work. A wave came off the man at the vehicles, hit the road three metres from James’s feet and threw tarmac across both of them. James lost his footing and nearly lost the exchange.

He stepped back.

He was trying to bash his way through two Challengers to reach a third. They knew it, and the man at the back knew it, and they had built their whole position round stopping him.

So he stopped trying.

When the three-legged skeleton reached the far end of the hedge, the woman with the spear turned to watch it. James went at the stocky man from straight in front.

The man brought his buckler up to Durendal.

James’s left hand was already out.

`[NECRO BLAST — 60 MANA]`

`[MANA: 2,250 / 3,100]`

It caught the man under the buckler, and he went back two staggering steps. The Irish section behind James saw the gap open and went through it, rifles up, straight at the vehicles.

The man with the waves had a choice now. He could hold his ground with Irish soldiers coming at him, or he could go.

He went. He went back among the vehicles and north up the road with the British infantry, his strapped arm against his chest.

The stocky man tried to cover him. James caught him before he had finished turning.

`[CALL OF SOULS — MANA RESTORED: +30]`

`[MANA: 2,280 / 3,100]`

The man with the waves got away, but his position was gone.

---

"*Southern approach secure,*" said Farrell. "*All call signs, hold what you’ve got. The junction is still theirs.*"

On the radio, Marcus’s group was in the fight on the eastern side.

James could see part of it from where he stood, through the gap between the houses on the east road. The Spire was coming up along the houses, in the gardens, the way Finn had held them two nights ago. Marcus was in front.

A British Challenger came out of the last house to meet him. He was tall, in plate, with a two-handed sword, and he was good. James watched the first exchange and saw him put real weight behind it.

Marcus did not take it on his sword. He moved a half-step, let it go past him, and was inside the next swing before it started. He did not swing big. He did not do anything that looked fast. He watched the other man’s shoulders, and his feet, and when the British Challenger committed to a cut at his head, Marcus was already somewhere else. His blade went in under the plate at the armpit, once.

The tall man went down in the garden.

Marcus did not look at him. He was already turning to the next house.

---

Later, on the western road, James caught sight of Saoirse at the corner of a burnt shop, fighting a British Challenger with a pair of hooked blades. The man set himself for a long reaching hook at her leg. Saoirse was not there when it arrived. She had gone the other way round him and put her sword into his side. She did not stand over him. She turned straight to the Irish section pinned in the street behind her.

---

It was working. But the junction was still theirs, and the British had stopped trying to hold everything. They were pulling their best Challengers into the middle.

"*Farrell. All call signs. Expect a counterattack. Hold what you have.*"

It came twenty minutes later.

---

The British came out of the junction all at once, at the farmyard the Irish had just taken. There were four Challengers at least, with the infantry behind them, and the man with the waves back among the vehicles with his good arm out.

The Irish went down behind the walls they had taken that morning and held.

James met the first Challenger that came at Farrell’s people, a lean man with a spear, and put him down.

`[CALL OF SOULS — MANA RESTORED: +30]`

`[MANA: 2,310 / 3,100]`

Then there was another, and he was busy.

Off to his right, Finn had a heavy British Challenger in front of him, a big man with a hammer. He had come over the wall at the soldiers by the road, and he was pushing Finn back with every blow. Finn was giving ground, a step and then another. Then he stopped giving it. James saw him go low under the hammer and come up inside it with both axes. The big man went back over the wall he had come over.

Owen was with the section at the far end of the farmyard wall.

A wave came over and hit the wall beside them. A section of stone came down, and a soldier who had been kneeling behind it went over backward into the yard and lay still.

Owen started toward him.

The yard between them was open. British rifles on the north road were firing into it. A British Challenger had come round the end of the wall, ten metres from the man on the ground.

"*Walsh! Stay down! Stay where you are!*"

It was the sergeant beside him.

Owen stopped half up. James saw his face. He was looking at the man on the ground and at the British Challenger, and the two were ten metres apart. Then he went back down behind the wall.

James went across the yard.

He came at the British Challenger round the end of the wall before the man had made up his mind what to do. He drove him back out of the yard with Durendal, and back again, till he was far enough off that the fire on the yard eased. The two soldiers from the casualty section came over the wall at a crouch and got the man on the ground onto a stretcher.

James did not look at the stretcher. He kept the British Challenger where he was until it had gone.

Later, the medic came round to Owen’s section.

"Quinn," she said. "Sorry. He was gone before they got to him. I’m sorry."

Owen nodded. He did not say anything for a moment.

"Where’s he been taken?"

"Back to the farm. The casualty point."

"Right." Owen nodded again. "Thanks."

He picked up his rifle and went back to the wall.

James saw him there half an hour later. He was not talking to the soldiers on either side of him. When one of them said something to him, he answered with one word and went back to watching the road.