Harilek

by Martin Louis Alan Gompertz

I climbed back to my post on the higher hill, and told off Payindah to mark the little bridge some eight hundred yards away, where the road crossed the smaller stream. Some rapid fire on that would check the enemy’s first efforts to cross, and time was everything. I intended to lend him a hand myself in the opening moves.

Our preparations were only just completed when we saw Stephnos’s mounted men coming back, pursued by considerably greater numbers. I thought at first they would come straight back on to us, but instead of that they swung out to our right on the farther side of the stream, and the fight followed them beyond the marshes. There was a narrow strip of firm ground there about a mile from us, and when Stephnos had got the leading enemy bogged, his men took to their bows and dealt with them. For his age the lad was a cool-headed leader.

Then the enemy advanced on us—a body of mounted men in front—and as the first of them reached the bridge Payindah and I opened fire. The range was longish, but we knocked over several as they checked in a mass at the crossing. Our men cheered and shouted at seeing the foe struck down at such an undreamt-of range, and the enemy were evidently disconcerted. But at that distance with only two rifles the effect was but momentary, and before long they were streaming over the bridge and moving up toward us. I told Payindah to spend his time picking off any one that looked like a leader, and then I stood up as the first formed mass of the enemy approached. We let them come to well within the hundred yards before our bowmen let drive, and the first attack just melted away in swathes of stricken men, very few getting within twenty yards, while such as reached us—all men with good mail—were dealt with, while they tried to call on their fellows or tore at the hedge in their efforts to get through. They had not supported their attack with arrows, and as a result we had hardly any casualties at all.

As the survivors drew off discomfited, parties of my men rushed out to gather up arrows, and I fear upon occasion to finish off some of the wounded. We had a little difficulty in getting them back again, and I went round again to impress once more on the officers the importance of not letting their men get out of hand.

Then the enemy came on again, and this time, profiting by experience, supported their attack with showers of arrows from bowmen on the flanks, and we began to lose men, though the shooting was not too good, and our people had fair cover. We beat them back a second time, but there were many gaps in our ranks now, and the orchard was sprinkled with dead and wounded men; while in one place a wild Shaman rush secured a momentary lodgment inside our defences, and was only killed out by a quick rush of the reserve. While we were filling up our ranks and getting ready for their next onslaught, I blessed Philos’s forethought that had brought along the spare sheaves of arrows. We should want them all soon.

So far the enemy’s main attention had been directed to us, though there was some brisk work on the lower hill. But the next time they left us alone, massing heavily against the little hill, sweeping up in wave after wave of shouting men. They carried the wall and pushed on to the building, and for some minutes there was close hand-to-hand fighting. Then the enemy swayed back again as the company reserve rushed in, and they were slowly pushed backward down the hill, till the last of them turned and fled down to the bottom again.

I seized the moment’s respite to run across and see how things were. Over half that company were out of action, and Philos’s cousin, bleeding from a knife gash in the left arm, was closing his men back to a smaller circle around the huts, some of which he had hurriedly loopholed for his bowmen.

“They pressed us hard that time,” he panted, as he tied up the cut on his arm. “I thought they would drive us down. I doubt our standing another charge like that. See, many of my men are dead, and more are badly hurt.”

“You must hold on somehow. I will send you thirty men from Philos’s company, which is all I can spare.”

As I returned to my position I could see the enemy massing anew in still greater strength, as the main body pressed up the road toward the bridge. I told Philos to send thirty of his men over to his cousin, and they got there just as the enemy advanced once more.