T HOK . THOK. THOK. THOK. THOK.
I opened my eyes staring into dawn-lit frozen granite, in the crevasse that had become my home. The mortar men were up early.
Blam. Blam. Blam. Blam. Blam.
Early, but still inaccurate. Evidently, the Forty-fifth’s commander had a trainload of mortar ammunition that he didn’t care to haul home as “deteriorating stores.” I shrugged. He wouldn’t be the first commander who failed to win a battle because he stood off and shelled an enemy to avoid the unpleasantness of digging them out of their holes. Of course, the Forty-fifth’s commander didn’t know that in his case failing to win-and win quickly-was to lose.
I crept back to my vantage at the notched boulder and swore. The Forty-fifth’s commander had awakened on a more aggressive side of his Pullman berth.
Across the twilit snow a scout company, their torsos cross-slung with ropes, jogged not toward the canyon mouth but toward, well, me.
Through my scope, their faces looked grumpy and purposeful. In the pantheon of military nobility, snipers like I had become occupy an unfavored niche. Also, I suspected, the slaughter of the last couple days had persuaded Forty-fifth’s commander to seek a way around the canyon. Which the scouts would soon locate and secure if I didn’t do something about it.
I set to work with my rifle and left too many scouts facedown in the snow.
The survivors, also too many, finally disappeared beneath me, under the mountain’s curve, invisible and no longer shootable by me.
I shook my head and shrugged into my pack. “Checkout time.”
It was no longer a question of whether my position would become indefensible, but when. I had no way of estimating how long it would take the scouts to scale their side of the mountain, and I dared not cut my primary responsibility, to deny the enemy the flanking ledge behind me, too fine.
Meanwhile, out on the plain, troops formed up in black phalanxes against the snow. There had to be four thousand troops out there. I swallowed. The theory was that an inferior force could hold perfect terrain indefinitely. “Indefinitely” was about to become a precise term.
My panting smothered by the incessant, percussive rain of mortar rounds, I crabbed back across the narrowest fifty feet of the ledge, above the explosives-packed string of joints and crevasses that crisscrossed below the ledge.
From there, I could see down into the canyon, where lead elements of the Forty-fifth and the defenders had already engaged, rifle crackle intertwining with the constant crump of the mortars. I still had fifty rounds for the rifle, and I put forty to good use.
After an hour, a mortar round whistled clean between the canyon walls and burst in the center of the defender’s position. I counted thirty motionless bodies and heard more wounded than I could count. One silent, bleeding figure who remained defiant on the parapet was Aud Planck.
The attack wave crested, then receded. But the defense was wearing ever more rapidly. If it were outflanked, or grenaded from above, the end would come too soon.
I tugged out a box of wooden kitchen matches and crept to the bunched fuses. I had test-burned some back at the camp and figured these would burn through in ninety seconds.
Two hundred yards away, down the ledge, the first scout’s helmet peeked above the ledge.
I struck my match, but it broke in my numbed fingers. I grabbed for it and spilled the rest of the box, the tiny sticks floating down the eight hundred feet to the canyon floor like dandelion seed.
Spang. A scout’s bullet exploded granite six feet above my head, then sang away into the distance.
I peered into the matchbox. One left.
My unpracticed fingers shook as I struck the match once, twice without result. I cursed my smoke-free lifestyle, then tried again. The match burst into yellow flame, and I cupped it with my other hand around it, then lit the fuses.
They spat and crackled as they burned toward the dynamite.
Another scout bullet struck the ledge, in front of me.
I spent a remaining round to keep the scouts’ heads down while I begged the fuses to burn faster.
The count in my head reached ninety seconds.
Nothing.
I counted ten seconds more, then peeked out to see whether the fuses were burning.
Spang.
I earned a near-miss and a stone chip through my cheek for my curiosity.
Boom!
Boom! Boom! Booomm!
The explosions lifted me off the ledge, then belly-flopped me on the stone.
Granite flew.
Acrid smoke billowed.
The noise level returned to the background sizzle of small arms and the drum of mortars.
As I got to my feet, head lowered, and turned to pick my way north away from the battle, I muttered, “You cut that too close.”
I glanced back.
The smoke cleared. Jagged gaps had been torn in the granite.
But the ledge was still there.