Chapter Nineteen – Aftermath
Unlike his great contemporary Napoleon The Duke of Wellington was affected by the casualties in his battles, and at the close-run victory of Waterloo he lost friends and colleagues who had been with him for years. “Next to a battle lost,” he wrote later in a letter, “the greatest misery is a battle gained.”
The final casualty count for the two days came to forty one dead and about four times that wounded, mostly through survivable spear thrusts but a few from musket balls that caused fearful damage - close to one fifth of the defending force. A Company, which had taken the brunt of the final thrust in the centre, including hand to hand combat on the parapets and inside the redoubt, had suffered the worst. Those were the figures. The loss of individuals brought those figures to sorrowful life.
Musketeer Sweet had died a pace behind Gideon without him being aware of it until he discovered the body. She had been told to get a musket, but it was not clear that she had been armed. The luminously beautiful Angela was dug out from underneath a pile of Midi corpses. She was one of those who had rallied in the final, desperate fight at the centre and had gone down fighting. Her boyfriend Gustav had been fighting beside her but had been unable to save her. His own left arm hanging uselessly, he was led away to the medics, weeping uncontrollably. The card-playing Dean died clearing out the storage buildings on the left after the first attack.
“Good card player,” Sam told Gideon several times after seeing the body. “Pity.”
The hippie who had handed Gideon the peace symbol took a sword thrust to his throat in one of the fierce assaults on the right. None of his companions had the heart to reclaim the cheap peace symbol and it remained on Gideon’s desk. But the casualty that affected the colonel the most was that of Turnbull, the musketeer he had kicked out for being unable to stop listening to music and who had snuck back in. He found him in the hospital tent heavily bandaged from a stomach wound, in obvious pain and sinking fast.
“Now can I use my earphones, colonel?” he asked, shakily, on catching sight of Gideon.
“Rule doesn’t apply to wounded,” Gideon heard himself say.
“Thanks man,” said Turns, fumbling for them in his jacket pocket.
He died an hour later, his earphones on.
After visiting the casualties, Gideon thought to look for Kat and found her, sitting back to the wall and chatting with another female musketeer, quite unharmed despite being in the thick of the battle on the right. Her bayonet was still smeared with blood.
“Well, you’re safe,” said Gideon.
“Colonel Swift!” she exclaimed, standing up and hugging him, to Gideon’s surprise. After a moment’s hesitation he hugged back. The musketeers around them grinned. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve said to me. Sure beats threatening me with double guard duty.”
“That never did any good anyway.”
“Have you seen BD today?” asked Kat, releasing him.
“I know she’s over there somewhere, well back. She texted me before the phones went out. But this isn’t a social occasion. As soon as we can figure out what’s left, over there,” Gideon indicated the other side of the wall, every musketeer within earshot had stopped and was listening intently, “we’ll move. Now the drones are back we’ll be able to see what’s coming.”
“Wasn’t there some trouble back at the Witches’ building?” asked Kat.
“There was, and that’s what I’m going to have to deal with next before we move far from here.”
The musketeers were not now angry with the Midis. The creatures had been cruel to humans. They had killed relatives of many of those at the fort. But the Midis had now paid a terrible price, one far greater than the musketeers had expected to exact. The musketeers were angry, however, about being stabbed in the back by Boothroyd’s gang. There had to be a reckoning but there were details to attend to first.
He walked along the length of the wall, answering questions from musketeers and telling them they had done their job well. They nodded. Most didn’t feel like being congratulated – as with soldiers throughout history a big battle had left them drained – but they appreciated the gesture. Then Gideon was called to the ruins of the bridge. By that time the haze, where ever it had come from, had lifted revealing the true extent of the human induced carnage. The field around terminus was littered with corpses, on the right blackened and scorched where the fire had got to them and heaped in silent ridges where the fighting had been fiercest around the bridge and on the two wings. The log jam of bodies on the right had broken down but there were still so many bodies in the stream itself that the water had lapped over its banks creating a marsh on either side. Gideon could hear the water trickling around the islands of dead that had formed. As he watched a Red Band corpse floated free from one of these islands, only to get caught up on another a little further downstream. Many of these were the ersatz Midis flung into the fray, probably by Black Robes, but there were plenty of the real Midis. The stink of roasted flesh where the fires had caught the wounded hung over the battlefield but Gideon knew that when the bodies started decomposing the stench would become truly appalling.
BD was on the other side of the stream, standing on what remained of the roadway with two grim-faced Midis under a White Flag. She was obviously upset.
“Are you okay?” he called to her.
“Yes – it’s just that I know women who’ve lost husbands, brothers, sons. It’s – it’s hard..”
“Of course,” said Gideon.
“They want a truce to collect wounded. Maybe until midday tomorrow?”
“You’ve got it,” said Gideon. “No weapons and my guys won’t fire, but no coming over this stream. We’ll collect wounded on this side.”
No one mentioned wounded in the stream. They would have long since drowned.
BD nodded, and spoke to one of her grim-faced escorts who glared at Gideon but then grunted and nodded.
“Okay,” she said.
“Shame we couldn’t meet under better circumstances.”
She smiled slightly, nodded then left.
On his return Gideon gave his least popular order. Having killed the Midis the Musketeers had to dispose of those bodies they could reach, while the truce was still in operation. In the mean time Gideon and a small force of musketeers had to return to the witch’s structure at once. They had business with the Boothroyd gang.
Monster had the final say on the field of dead in front of the Terminus redoubt. “What we got here,” he said after standing with Gideon on the wall for a time and indicating the field in front of him with a slight motion of his left hand, “is real fucked-up shit.”