Big Bang Fic: Rat and Sword Go To War, Chapter 6 part 2
Title: Rat and Sword Go To War
Author: rthstewart
Rating: T, for a soldier's salty language
Pairings/characters: Peter Pevensie, Susan Pevensie
Disclaimer: This work of historical fiction is offered respectfully and with deep admiration for the men and women herein depicted as well as C.S. Lewis and the other content owners of the Chronicles of Narnia and its related properties. Any original content in this derivative fiction is in the public domain and may be used freely and without notice to me or attribution.
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: All of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Summary: The High King and the Gentle Queen go to war, again.
Chapter 6, part 2
ooOOoo
“Madame Vion, we must go to the roof. It is the tallest…”
“You may not, Lieutenant Hoeller. This is a hospital. A women’s hospital with newborns. You cannot. I won’t permit it.”
Susan had seen Lieutenant Hoeller at the checkpoints. His French was passable. He was with one of the Panzer Grenadier Regiments quartered in Bénouville. She took her place by Madame Vion. Lieutenant Becker was with him, probably for the language support, and a Sergeant she did not know. Becker kept trying to catch her eye. Susan ignored him. The Sergeant and Becker were both carrying rifles with sniper sights and Susan felt her anger cool to hardness.
“Madame Vion, please, this is very dangerous,” Lieutenant Becker said. “We must survey the area. Our communications have been sabotaged and…”
“Your defence is not my concern,” Madame Vion countered.
“This is the tallest…” Hoeller repeated and Madame cut him off.
“Climb the water tower up the road! You can see from there!”
With a jerk of Hoeller’s head, the Sergeant stepped forward and firmly pushed Madame Vion out of the way. Becker and Hoeller sprinted for the marbled staircase.
“This is outrageous!” Madame Vion spat, and ran after them. Susan followed.
By the time they made it to the roof, Becker and Hoeller were already there, with binoculars, speaking rapidly in German and pointing north in the direction of Bénouville and Le Port.
Madame Vion pushed right by the Sergeant who tried feebly to block her way through the door onto the roof. “Lieutenant! What is it!? Tell me!”
“We cannot get into Bénouville,” Hoeller began.
“The resistance in the streets is too great,” Becker put in more fluently. “We have snipers, but we must get some high ground, set up our batteries…”
“Here?!” Madame Vion shrieked. “You will not. I forbid it.”
“But Madame…”
Madame Vion’s furious rebuke died in the making as another shell hurtled into the side of the Château. They all staggered and even so far up and away they could hear from below the women screaming and the piercing wail of infants. Susan grabbed onto Madame’s arm, keeping them both upright.
Madame shook herself off and marched up to Hoeller and Becker. She had to shove her helmet out of her eyes to stare up at them.
“Get off my roof or I’ll push you off. You are endangering my patients and their babies, many of whom, I’ll remind you, are your babies.” She poked Becker in the chest with her finger.
They all flinched as a single shot rang out from somewhere close, followed by the pinging ricochet of the bullet off the Bridge.
“The Allies are shelling us because you are here!” Madame Vion cried. “This is your fault. They think we are shielding snipers! And if you put a battery here, they will level us.” She took a step forward and both men took an alarmed step back. “I will not evacuate my hospital, my patients, and your babies for a war your Führer forced on us.”
Another shell smashing into the corner of the Château decided the matter. The force of it shook them all. She and Madame Vion both fell to their knees, Becker nearly pitched over the edge and the returning sniper fire intensified.
The stalwart Sergeant helped Madame Vion off the roof and Susan found that somehow Becker had managed to both recover his footing and take her arm.
Hoeller rushed back down the flights of stairs, protected by the Sergeant and berated by Madame Vion the whole way. He surely could not understand more than a word in four of Madame’s furious French. Susan tried to hurry after her but now Becker had her arm and at the landing pulled her to a stop.
“A moment, Mademoiselle.”
It did not matter the time, the place, or the language. Susan recognized the situation immediately and felt impatience that this time she was not going to graciously hide.
“Only a moment, Lieutenant.”
He was an attractive young man. So earnest, very well-meaning, certainly not naïve, and wholly committed to the wrong cause.
“Mademoiselle Lambert, Jeanne, please, would you accept our protection? Might you use your influence to convince Madame to do so? I worry that you might be injured.”
How many times had she heard this before? His touch to her arm was gentle, not overbearing at all. It was still most unwelcome. Susan stared at his offending hand on her arm and, with a disapproving quirk of her brow and imperious frown, he quickly removed it.
She straightened. “Thank you, but no, Lieutenant. We will take care of ourselves. We only need protection because your Führer chose to destroy Europe with his insane notions of Aryan purity. The sooner you are gone, the safer we will be.”
Hoeller was calling for Becker and Susan turned and marched down the stairs. He was not the first young man whose unfounded hopes she had dashed and she felt no guilt over it.
Becker followed, looking crestfallen. At the bottom of the stair, he tipped his helmet. “Good bye, Mademoiselle. God keep you safe.”
“I hope that the Allies treat you honourably, Lieutenant.”
Madame Vion was holding the front door open and the Germans waded through the foyer of crying babies, terrified mothers, and bandaged old men.
This misery you have wrought. Aslan save us all from the intelligent, well-meaning men of the enemy.
An armoured car was waiting for them in the drive. The Germans all looked up as a wing of Spitfires roared overhead coming in from the beaches and they could all hear, but not see, strafing in the direction of Caen.
Madame stood in the doorway, putting her body between them and the hospital, just in case they changed their minds. They did not. The two Lieutenants got into the car, the Sergeant took the driver’s seat, and they roared off.
They both sighed in relief. The moment of peace was shattered with another shot from a sniper’s rifle. The sound bounced between the walls of the Château and the trees.
Madame Vion turned on her heels and grabbed Susan’s arms. “There must be a sniper here, in the hospital. It’s why they started shelling us. He might have snuck in during all the chaos of this morning.”
“One of the upper floors, one of the wings we aren’t using?”
“Yes, on the north side facing the Bridge, the east wing. They seemed to have stopped shelling us, I pray to God they have. But Jeanne, you must find him. If the Allies think we are shooting at them we can expect them to shoot back.”
She nodded. “I know. I will find him.”
“Do what you must. Then go to the Bridge. Tell them our situation.”
Madame clasped her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. “You are a brave girl. Go!”
Susan ran to her room, pulled out the drawer in the bottom of her dresser and removed its false bottom. She quickly strapped on her knives, put the knuckle duster and garrote wire in her pocket. She didn’t think she would need them, but who knew?
She ducked under her bed and carefully slid her Little Joe Crossbow out from among the slats. She left the hollowed out quarrels - she wouldn’t be loading any explosives in these. A fleeting regret - she wished she had her old quiver, gifted by Father Christmas.
More explosions and the windows rattled again but these were more distant. Perhaps a bombing run or a Panzer column being strafed by Allied fighters. Surely that was part of the plan. The Allies would harry and attack the tank columns by day and keep them from reaching the beaches so that the landing forces could disembark and bring their own heavy equipment ashore.
Susan put the speculation aside. The landing was not her concern. Now she fully understood what Colonel Walker-Smythe had done, and Major al-Masri, and Tebbitt. They had known all along the invasion was coming here. They had all misled her. She understood, bitter though it was. She felt some grudging admiration. They all respected her, Tebbitt loved her, and still they had been the loyal spies, surely an oxymoron, and lied to her.
She was shoving the hard quarrels into a shoulder bag when the burden of the task hit her.
Killing a dumb deer in a pen in Inverness-shire could not begin to prepare someone for this. Susan sat down on her bed, closed her eyes, and tried to shut out the sounds of the crying babies and gunfire and the feel of plaster and dust swirling everywhere.
She hated death yet had been steeped in it: the families killed in the Blitz; the brothers, fathers, and sons who would never return home from Italy, Singapore, Libya, or Dunkirk; the thousands who would surely die today. To protect the Bridges and the men guarding them, to protect the Allied advance to liberate and secure France and then the rest of Europe, to protect the women and children caught in the literal crossfire, she must be prepared to kill.
Aslan? Aslan? Forgive me. I may send brothers to you today. Greet them for me? Comfort their loved ones who will not see them again?
The Lion did not speak to her, not directly. She was not Lucy and it was hard to hear him in a moment like this. But she felt a breeze stir her hair and delicious fragrance very far from the odours of fire, blood, antiseptic, and sour wine.
Thank you.
She was wild with longing: for Peter who knew what it was to kill cleanly and magnificently, certain of his righteous cause; for Edmund who understood just and unjust death and spoke the words of forgiveness in both cases; and for fearless Lucy who loved and cried with her after.
Susan did not fear her death today. She loathed the death war made it necessary for her to dispense. Which of her selves must she call upon? Susan Pevensie who had survived bombs raining down upon London? Queen Susan the Gentle, the greatest bowman in Narnian history who ran with the wolves and had killed, at need, to save herself, her loved ones, her country? Mrs. Caspian, who had bludgeoned a murderer with a pot and would have finished the job with a letter opener? Jeanne Lambert, who was rat and wolf? Today, this moment, she was all of these, the culmination of all her selves.
Father Christmas had been so very, very wrong. Battles were not made any more ugly when women fought in them. Were not the women’s hospital, all of England, and all of France the proof that war was a woman’s business, as much as a man’s? Women fought as surely as the men, for all that they might do it differently. All battles were ugly, no matter who fought in them, for they all died the same way.
Slinging bag and bow over her shoulder, she was going a-hunting.
Susan avoided the crowded foyer and went to one of the back ways that they had used for hiding the Allied fliers, men avoiding conscription, and the weapons. Dust choked the area, broken mirrors dangled from cracked walls. Susan climbed the staircase, picking her way through the debris, listening closely, moving as her Wolf-Guard had taught her, silent and alert. A sniper would be in the northern part of the building, with the best views of the Bridge.
The shelling had stopped, so that made it feel safer and easier to listen. The hospital noise disappeared entirely. In between the thunderous artillery barrages from the beaches there was the occasional crack of a German sniper rifle.
She loaded a quarrel, cocked the bow, brought it up, and carefully climbed the last flight.
At a landing on the upper most floor, she paused, turning her head this way and that, wishing for the pinpoint hearing of a Wolf or an Owl, or the scenting of a Hound who could tell her if someone was near.
Down one hallway, she could see, through a haze of smoke, a gaping hole in the wall and rubble. It was possible the shelling had taken out the sniper, if he had even been here. It was a predator’s instinct, but Susan didn’t think that had happened. He was here and was still here. She waited, listening so hard she could sense the dust settling.
There was another rifle shot. The noise reverberated inside the hall, stirred the air, and echoed on cracked black and white marble. Location revealed, Susan stalked her quarry, as surely as she had targeted the deer in the pen, and hunted with the Wolves of Narnia. She heard noises she knew well, a body shifting and a small cough, a gun scraping on wood, a casing rolling on tile, fingers manipulating bullets, and the mechanical snaps of a rifle being loaded.
A room facing north and the Canal was just ahead, its door ajar. Susan crept forward, eased to the doorway, hefted her crossbow, and waited until it sounded as if the sniper was settling again at his post, his attention not here, but on the Bridge and her countrymen.
As she slipped into the room, the door creaked, ever so slightly. Her mind registered the back of a German uniform and the butt of a German rifle. The man started, spun about, trying to bring his rifle to bear. Her training held, first in Narnia, then honed to a finer edge in the SOE. She reacted, without thought or hesitation, before the gun was even clear of the window. Susan fired, felt the surge as the quarrel left the bow and knew her shot was true, straight through his vulnerable neck.
His body snapped with the force of the quarrel’s blow and the momentum pitched him backwards, out the window. He didn’t even cry out but she heard the hard crack of a helmet hitting the ground and the clatter of the rifle. Susan ran to the window, reloading as she went, though her hit was surely fatal. She looked down.
Feldwebel Müller, the kindly checkpoint Sergeant who had shown her pictures of his wife and three children, who had slipped sausage and batteries into her wooden box, would not see his family again.
She pulled away from the window, shaking and heart sick.
Thank you, Aslan. Thank you for making this so terrible.
Susan never wanted death to be easy. Killing the bad, the evil, and the cruel could be justified and excused. Killing the good man doing his duty to your enemy was something Susan wished never to become accustomed to.
She stepped back into the hall. The wolf patrolled the corridor, checking all the empty, dusty rooms on the floor, but it was all empty. Satisfied, she ran back down the stairs and out the back door of the Château. The wolf would now hunt a sniper in the water tower.
ooOOoo
In the pillbox, they all hunched and winced at the sound. “For God’s sake, I wish they’d shut up those Moaning Minnies,” Gardner muttered.
The Minnies were a rocket launcher attached to the front of the German light armour that had mobilized in Bénouville and Le Port west of the Canal Bridge. The things made the most god-awful racket and were deadly accurate. The mortars were making life hell for D Company at the Bridge and the paras battling house by house in Le Port.
They were all feeling the pressure. If relief didn’t come up from the beaches soon, it would be too late.
“Parr’s right,” Gray said, staring up at the water tower. “There’s someone up there and he’s spotting for the Minnies.”
“That maniac just wants to shoot the gun again,” Bailey griped. “I never did get a cuppa, thanks to him.”
Peter looked out from the pillbox and he was sure he could see someone climbing the water tower. “They might be on the Château roof, too. Or maybe after we shelled it, they moved to the water tower.”
There was another rifle shot and Parr came running across the road and darted into the pillbox.
“Major says we can try the water tower.”
Bailey was right, though. Parr looked like a fiend, an especially gleeful fiend.
“Now, we’re going to do this proper, hear me, chaps?”
“Sure thing, boss,” Peter said. Who was he to get between a madman and his 75 mm anti-tank gun?
“NUMBER ONE GUN!” Parr roared so loudly in his broad Cockney accent he was nearly as deafening as the gun itself. “LOAD ONE ROUND.”
Rolling his eyes, Bailey opened the breech and they loaded the shell in with mutters of “Yes, sir, right away, sir.”
“NUMBER ONE GUN, LEFT 5 DEGREES!”
Gray got that job. He swiveled the telescopic sight and aimed the gun, dead to center, on the water tower. “Yep, you can see ‘em. There are at least two up there. One’s on the tower and there’s another one climbing the ladder on the far side.”
“NUMBER ONE GUN, PREPARE TO FIRE!”
They all moved out of the way so that Parr could do the honours. There was a curious, quiet lull. It seemed that even the shelling and street fighting had stopped to observe the bloody lunatic of a London Cockney shoot the NUMBER ONE GUN. Peter was sure everyone could hear Parr’s booming voice from the River Orne Bridge all the way to Le Port.
Peter clapped his hands over his ears.
“NUMBER ONE GUN, FIRE!”
Parr pushed the button. The gun roared and the shell hurtled off. It hit the water tower straight on, beautiful shot.
They all hollered and cheered. Men on both sides of the Canal threw their helmets into the air, then scrambled to get them back on because of the snipers.
“What the fuck?” Gray said. “It didn’t blow?”
“The water tower is just leaking. It didn’t explode.”
The shell had gone in one side of the water tower and out the other. Peter supposed the sniper might be drowned or forced off by the water spouting out the sides.
Parr swore under his breath. “It might be the shell. It’s armour-piercing.” He shrugged. “Nothing for it. Let’s do another.”
“NUMBER ONE GUN! LOAD ONE ROUND.”
Parr shot hole after hole through the thing and all he did was drain water from the tank. And maybe wash the snipers off the tower in a cascade.
The whole bridge was shaking with the pounding of the anti-tank gun. The snipers kept it up so Parr started aiming at the trees on the west bank, figuring the gunmen might be hiding there.
Between the roaring of both Parr and the NUMBER ONE GUN, Peter didn’t think he’d ever hear normally again.
In a pause, they heard Major Howard yell out from his command post in the trench, “'For Christ's sake, Parr, will you shut up! I can’t think! Keep that bloody gun quiet!”
“But sir!” Parr yelled back. “They’re snipers in the…”
“Only fire when necessary, and that doesn't mean at imaginary snipers. Keep quiet!”
Parr was visibly deflated. “Nobody told me it was going to be a quiet war.”
It wasn’t a quiet war, but it was quieter, broken by the sounds of the fighting on the west side, the fighting going on at the River Orne Bridge, and the crack of sniper shots. Peter wondered if maybe they should try again with a cup of tea. A lot of the men were sagging under the fatigue. He knew from long Narnian campaigns that he still had plenty in reserve. He’d been saving the ration chocolate and biscuits, which were disgusting but would keep him going.
Gray, who had been dozing, standing up, stirred and cocked his head. “What’s that noise?”
Peter listened. With all the ringing in his ears, it was hard to hear anything but this was…
“Does Jerry play bagpipes?” Bailey asked, looking out of the pillbox, shielding his eyes, and looking west across the Bridge.
“I don’t think so,” Peter replied.
“Bagpipes? What are you talking about? You must be bloody nuts.”
Except that Bailey was right. It was bagpipes, coming from the west. They piled out of the pillbox and tore across the Bridge toward the sound, and even the snipers were too shocked to put up much resistance.
A bagpiper, in a kilt, marched along the tow path, playing Blue Bonnets Over the Border. A bugler stood up from a trench along the Bridge and sounded a call.
Behind the madman piper marched a tall man, the commander, in green beret and a white sweater, carrying a walking stick. Behind him, a long column of commandos, all marching smartly. And in case anyone might think they were merely on a brisk exercise in Scotland, behind the soldiers was a Sherman tank.
At 1330, contact had been made between the invasion force at the beaches and the paras of the 6th and D Company at the Bridges. Their relief had arrived - Lord Lovat, his green berets of the 1st Special Service Brigade, bagpiper, tank, and a draft horse pulling a cart with the men’s gear. The effect seemed oddly Narnian, in a way, though Peter had never seen or heard bagpipes in battle before.
It all became even more oddly Narnian when a man hurried from the Gondrée Café with a tray, glasses and a bottle of champagne.
It was too much for Parr.
“Blimey, I could use some of that!” Parr ran up to the man, who must be Monsieur Gondrée, and shouted, “Oui! Oui!”
Peter was very glad to see Monsieur Gondrée alive - he’d wondered if Lieutenant Smith had killed the man by mistake last night.
A woman burst out of the Café. She was covered in sooty black all over her face, arms, and clothes. Her state was explained when she threw her arms around Parr before he could even get his glass. Madame Gondrée was expressing her joy at being the first home liberated in France by kissing all of the Allied soldiers. Since they were all still wearing their camouflage paint from the night before, the black soot was rubbing off on her.
With the champagne corks popping, Peter decided he should take a glass, too.
He had to shift the Sten from one side to another and push his helmet out of his eyes. He got a very nice hug and a kiss from Madame Gondrée; tears were leaving muddy trails down her face.
She was babbling in French and Monsieur Gondrée was thanking him in English.
He was just reaching for his glass when a voice shrieked, “Where is that lunatic with the gun! I’m going to kill him!”
Wait. Peter knew that very harsh, very angry, and very feminine tone. It had been directed at him before. He spun around.
“SUSAN?!”
“PETER!”
His sister ran to him and threw her arms around him. Everything got fouled in his gun and grenade pouch and smock, both their helmets, and her … crossbow?
Peter picked Susan up and hugged her. She was so thin, so light. And sopping wet.
“I don’t believe it,” he whispered.
“I don’t either. Praise the Lion.”
“Were you the Rat who signed the reports? I saw the drawings. I didn’t dare even hope, but…”
She nodded against his neck. “I wrote them. Some of them. I wondered, when I saw the gliders last night… I can’t believe it.”
Susan choked on a dry sob.
He set her down. “I’m getting black camo all over you. Why are you wet?”
She regained her feet and said something over his shoulder to the Gondrées in French.
Monsieur Gondrée replied and Madame Gondrée said something, gesturing to her blackened clothing and the three of them laughed.
Then his sister turned back to him with a look that made a man who had pranged from a glider, been shot by soldiers, tanks, and rocket launchers, and taken and held a bridge for the last 13 hours in enemy territory shake in his boots.
“Where. Is. The. Lunatic. With. The. Gun?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Parr slowly edge away, glass in hand.
“Were you under the water tower?” Peter asked, wanting to divert his wrathful, vengeful sister.
“I was climbing the water tower to take out the sniper and then someone tried to kill me!” She lapsed into irate French, shrugged the crossbow off her shoulder and brought it to bear, pointing it in the direction of the retreating soldiers.
“It was one of you, wasn’t it?”
Monsieur Gondrée stepped forward with glasses of champagne on his tray. “Will you drink? To celebrate? “ He blew some dirt off the tray. “I have had this champagne buried in the garden since the Nazis arrived!”
His sister softened to a smile and she nodded. “Merci beaucoup.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” Peter said.
They both took a glass from the tray.
Susan bit her lip and moved closer, putting her head at his shoulder.
“I killed today, Peter. I killed two good men.”
“I killed today, too, Susan. And someone I loved very well died last night during the fighting."
So many men and women had already died. Den Brotheridge had been the first tonight and many more would die before France and the rest of Europe was free. He and Susan had done this before. They had fought, won, lost, mourned the dead, comforted those who remained, and drank the parting cup. As surely as they had been summoned to Narnia, now they were called to do the same here.
There was a comforting familiarity to the old Narnian ritual Susan began as she solemnly raised her glass and her eyes to his, and said, “To our dead who are home.”
Peter spoke the response. "Until we meet again in Aslan's Own Country."
“Do not let our grief keep you from your journey home,” Susan replied, concluding the rite.
But Peter did not drink. “And now to our other home, my sister. V is for Victory. Cheers!”
Susan raised her glass. “Santé, my brother. V is for victory.”
The moment was very sweet. The champagne, thankfully, was not.
--End--
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3 Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6 Part 1 Part 2
Author: rthstewart
Rating: T, for a soldier's salty language
Pairings/characters: Peter Pevensie, Susan Pevensie
Disclaimer: This work of historical fiction is offered respectfully and with deep admiration for the men and women herein depicted as well as C.S. Lewis and the other content owners of the Chronicles of Narnia and its related properties. Any original content in this derivative fiction is in the public domain and may be used freely and without notice to me or attribution.
Possible Spoilers/Warnings: All of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Summary: The High King and the Gentle Queen go to war, again.
Chapter 6, part 2
ooOOoo
“Madame Vion, we must go to the roof. It is the tallest…”
“You may not, Lieutenant Hoeller. This is a hospital. A women’s hospital with newborns. You cannot. I won’t permit it.”
Susan had seen Lieutenant Hoeller at the checkpoints. His French was passable. He was with one of the Panzer Grenadier Regiments quartered in Bénouville. She took her place by Madame Vion. Lieutenant Becker was with him, probably for the language support, and a Sergeant she did not know. Becker kept trying to catch her eye. Susan ignored him. The Sergeant and Becker were both carrying rifles with sniper sights and Susan felt her anger cool to hardness.
“Madame Vion, please, this is very dangerous,” Lieutenant Becker said. “We must survey the area. Our communications have been sabotaged and…”
“Your defence is not my concern,” Madame Vion countered.
“This is the tallest…” Hoeller repeated and Madame cut him off.
“Climb the water tower up the road! You can see from there!”
With a jerk of Hoeller’s head, the Sergeant stepped forward and firmly pushed Madame Vion out of the way. Becker and Hoeller sprinted for the marbled staircase.
“This is outrageous!” Madame Vion spat, and ran after them. Susan followed.
By the time they made it to the roof, Becker and Hoeller were already there, with binoculars, speaking rapidly in German and pointing north in the direction of Bénouville and Le Port.
Madame Vion pushed right by the Sergeant who tried feebly to block her way through the door onto the roof. “Lieutenant! What is it!? Tell me!”
“We cannot get into Bénouville,” Hoeller began.
“The resistance in the streets is too great,” Becker put in more fluently. “We have snipers, but we must get some high ground, set up our batteries…”
“Here?!” Madame Vion shrieked. “You will not. I forbid it.”
“But Madame…”
Madame Vion’s furious rebuke died in the making as another shell hurtled into the side of the Château. They all staggered and even so far up and away they could hear from below the women screaming and the piercing wail of infants. Susan grabbed onto Madame’s arm, keeping them both upright.
Madame shook herself off and marched up to Hoeller and Becker. She had to shove her helmet out of her eyes to stare up at them.
“Get off my roof or I’ll push you off. You are endangering my patients and their babies, many of whom, I’ll remind you, are your babies.” She poked Becker in the chest with her finger.
They all flinched as a single shot rang out from somewhere close, followed by the pinging ricochet of the bullet off the Bridge.
“The Allies are shelling us because you are here!” Madame Vion cried. “This is your fault. They think we are shielding snipers! And if you put a battery here, they will level us.” She took a step forward and both men took an alarmed step back. “I will not evacuate my hospital, my patients, and your babies for a war your Führer forced on us.”
Another shell smashing into the corner of the Château decided the matter. The force of it shook them all. She and Madame Vion both fell to their knees, Becker nearly pitched over the edge and the returning sniper fire intensified.
The stalwart Sergeant helped Madame Vion off the roof and Susan found that somehow Becker had managed to both recover his footing and take her arm.
Hoeller rushed back down the flights of stairs, protected by the Sergeant and berated by Madame Vion the whole way. He surely could not understand more than a word in four of Madame’s furious French. Susan tried to hurry after her but now Becker had her arm and at the landing pulled her to a stop.
“A moment, Mademoiselle.”
It did not matter the time, the place, or the language. Susan recognized the situation immediately and felt impatience that this time she was not going to graciously hide.
“Only a moment, Lieutenant.”
He was an attractive young man. So earnest, very well-meaning, certainly not naïve, and wholly committed to the wrong cause.
“Mademoiselle Lambert, Jeanne, please, would you accept our protection? Might you use your influence to convince Madame to do so? I worry that you might be injured.”
How many times had she heard this before? His touch to her arm was gentle, not overbearing at all. It was still most unwelcome. Susan stared at his offending hand on her arm and, with a disapproving quirk of her brow and imperious frown, he quickly removed it.
She straightened. “Thank you, but no, Lieutenant. We will take care of ourselves. We only need protection because your Führer chose to destroy Europe with his insane notions of Aryan purity. The sooner you are gone, the safer we will be.”
Hoeller was calling for Becker and Susan turned and marched down the stairs. He was not the first young man whose unfounded hopes she had dashed and she felt no guilt over it.
Becker followed, looking crestfallen. At the bottom of the stair, he tipped his helmet. “Good bye, Mademoiselle. God keep you safe.”
“I hope that the Allies treat you honourably, Lieutenant.”
Madame Vion was holding the front door open and the Germans waded through the foyer of crying babies, terrified mothers, and bandaged old men.
This misery you have wrought. Aslan save us all from the intelligent, well-meaning men of the enemy.
An armoured car was waiting for them in the drive. The Germans all looked up as a wing of Spitfires roared overhead coming in from the beaches and they could all hear, but not see, strafing in the direction of Caen.
Madame stood in the doorway, putting her body between them and the hospital, just in case they changed their minds. They did not. The two Lieutenants got into the car, the Sergeant took the driver’s seat, and they roared off.
They both sighed in relief. The moment of peace was shattered with another shot from a sniper’s rifle. The sound bounced between the walls of the Château and the trees.
Madame Vion turned on her heels and grabbed Susan’s arms. “There must be a sniper here, in the hospital. It’s why they started shelling us. He might have snuck in during all the chaos of this morning.”
“One of the upper floors, one of the wings we aren’t using?”
“Yes, on the north side facing the Bridge, the east wing. They seemed to have stopped shelling us, I pray to God they have. But Jeanne, you must find him. If the Allies think we are shooting at them we can expect them to shoot back.”
She nodded. “I know. I will find him.”
“Do what you must. Then go to the Bridge. Tell them our situation.”
Madame clasped her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks. “You are a brave girl. Go!”
Susan ran to her room, pulled out the drawer in the bottom of her dresser and removed its false bottom. She quickly strapped on her knives, put the knuckle duster and garrote wire in her pocket. She didn’t think she would need them, but who knew?
She ducked under her bed and carefully slid her Little Joe Crossbow out from among the slats. She left the hollowed out quarrels - she wouldn’t be loading any explosives in these. A fleeting regret - she wished she had her old quiver, gifted by Father Christmas.
More explosions and the windows rattled again but these were more distant. Perhaps a bombing run or a Panzer column being strafed by Allied fighters. Surely that was part of the plan. The Allies would harry and attack the tank columns by day and keep them from reaching the beaches so that the landing forces could disembark and bring their own heavy equipment ashore.
Susan put the speculation aside. The landing was not her concern. Now she fully understood what Colonel Walker-Smythe had done, and Major al-Masri, and Tebbitt. They had known all along the invasion was coming here. They had all misled her. She understood, bitter though it was. She felt some grudging admiration. They all respected her, Tebbitt loved her, and still they had been the loyal spies, surely an oxymoron, and lied to her.
She was shoving the hard quarrels into a shoulder bag when the burden of the task hit her.
Killing a dumb deer in a pen in Inverness-shire could not begin to prepare someone for this. Susan sat down on her bed, closed her eyes, and tried to shut out the sounds of the crying babies and gunfire and the feel of plaster and dust swirling everywhere.
She hated death yet had been steeped in it: the families killed in the Blitz; the brothers, fathers, and sons who would never return home from Italy, Singapore, Libya, or Dunkirk; the thousands who would surely die today. To protect the Bridges and the men guarding them, to protect the Allied advance to liberate and secure France and then the rest of Europe, to protect the women and children caught in the literal crossfire, she must be prepared to kill.
Aslan? Aslan? Forgive me. I may send brothers to you today. Greet them for me? Comfort their loved ones who will not see them again?
The Lion did not speak to her, not directly. She was not Lucy and it was hard to hear him in a moment like this. But she felt a breeze stir her hair and delicious fragrance very far from the odours of fire, blood, antiseptic, and sour wine.
Thank you.
She was wild with longing: for Peter who knew what it was to kill cleanly and magnificently, certain of his righteous cause; for Edmund who understood just and unjust death and spoke the words of forgiveness in both cases; and for fearless Lucy who loved and cried with her after.
Susan did not fear her death today. She loathed the death war made it necessary for her to dispense. Which of her selves must she call upon? Susan Pevensie who had survived bombs raining down upon London? Queen Susan the Gentle, the greatest bowman in Narnian history who ran with the wolves and had killed, at need, to save herself, her loved ones, her country? Mrs. Caspian, who had bludgeoned a murderer with a pot and would have finished the job with a letter opener? Jeanne Lambert, who was rat and wolf? Today, this moment, she was all of these, the culmination of all her selves.
Father Christmas had been so very, very wrong. Battles were not made any more ugly when women fought in them. Were not the women’s hospital, all of England, and all of France the proof that war was a woman’s business, as much as a man’s? Women fought as surely as the men, for all that they might do it differently. All battles were ugly, no matter who fought in them, for they all died the same way.
Slinging bag and bow over her shoulder, she was going a-hunting.
Susan avoided the crowded foyer and went to one of the back ways that they had used for hiding the Allied fliers, men avoiding conscription, and the weapons. Dust choked the area, broken mirrors dangled from cracked walls. Susan climbed the staircase, picking her way through the debris, listening closely, moving as her Wolf-Guard had taught her, silent and alert. A sniper would be in the northern part of the building, with the best views of the Bridge.
The shelling had stopped, so that made it feel safer and easier to listen. The hospital noise disappeared entirely. In between the thunderous artillery barrages from the beaches there was the occasional crack of a German sniper rifle.
She loaded a quarrel, cocked the bow, brought it up, and carefully climbed the last flight.
At a landing on the upper most floor, she paused, turning her head this way and that, wishing for the pinpoint hearing of a Wolf or an Owl, or the scenting of a Hound who could tell her if someone was near.
Down one hallway, she could see, through a haze of smoke, a gaping hole in the wall and rubble. It was possible the shelling had taken out the sniper, if he had even been here. It was a predator’s instinct, but Susan didn’t think that had happened. He was here and was still here. She waited, listening so hard she could sense the dust settling.
There was another rifle shot. The noise reverberated inside the hall, stirred the air, and echoed on cracked black and white marble. Location revealed, Susan stalked her quarry, as surely as she had targeted the deer in the pen, and hunted with the Wolves of Narnia. She heard noises she knew well, a body shifting and a small cough, a gun scraping on wood, a casing rolling on tile, fingers manipulating bullets, and the mechanical snaps of a rifle being loaded.
A room facing north and the Canal was just ahead, its door ajar. Susan crept forward, eased to the doorway, hefted her crossbow, and waited until it sounded as if the sniper was settling again at his post, his attention not here, but on the Bridge and her countrymen.
As she slipped into the room, the door creaked, ever so slightly. Her mind registered the back of a German uniform and the butt of a German rifle. The man started, spun about, trying to bring his rifle to bear. Her training held, first in Narnia, then honed to a finer edge in the SOE. She reacted, without thought or hesitation, before the gun was even clear of the window. Susan fired, felt the surge as the quarrel left the bow and knew her shot was true, straight through his vulnerable neck.
His body snapped with the force of the quarrel’s blow and the momentum pitched him backwards, out the window. He didn’t even cry out but she heard the hard crack of a helmet hitting the ground and the clatter of the rifle. Susan ran to the window, reloading as she went, though her hit was surely fatal. She looked down.
Feldwebel Müller, the kindly checkpoint Sergeant who had shown her pictures of his wife and three children, who had slipped sausage and batteries into her wooden box, would not see his family again.
She pulled away from the window, shaking and heart sick.
Thank you, Aslan. Thank you for making this so terrible.
Susan never wanted death to be easy. Killing the bad, the evil, and the cruel could be justified and excused. Killing the good man doing his duty to your enemy was something Susan wished never to become accustomed to.
She stepped back into the hall. The wolf patrolled the corridor, checking all the empty, dusty rooms on the floor, but it was all empty. Satisfied, she ran back down the stairs and out the back door of the Château. The wolf would now hunt a sniper in the water tower.
ooOOoo
In the pillbox, they all hunched and winced at the sound. “For God’s sake, I wish they’d shut up those Moaning Minnies,” Gardner muttered.
The Minnies were a rocket launcher attached to the front of the German light armour that had mobilized in Bénouville and Le Port west of the Canal Bridge. The things made the most god-awful racket and were deadly accurate. The mortars were making life hell for D Company at the Bridge and the paras battling house by house in Le Port.
They were all feeling the pressure. If relief didn’t come up from the beaches soon, it would be too late.
“Parr’s right,” Gray said, staring up at the water tower. “There’s someone up there and he’s spotting for the Minnies.”
“That maniac just wants to shoot the gun again,” Bailey griped. “I never did get a cuppa, thanks to him.”
Peter looked out from the pillbox and he was sure he could see someone climbing the water tower. “They might be on the Château roof, too. Or maybe after we shelled it, they moved to the water tower.”
There was another rifle shot and Parr came running across the road and darted into the pillbox.
“Major says we can try the water tower.”
Bailey was right, though. Parr looked like a fiend, an especially gleeful fiend.
“Now, we’re going to do this proper, hear me, chaps?”
“Sure thing, boss,” Peter said. Who was he to get between a madman and his 75 mm anti-tank gun?
“NUMBER ONE GUN!” Parr roared so loudly in his broad Cockney accent he was nearly as deafening as the gun itself. “LOAD ONE ROUND.”
Rolling his eyes, Bailey opened the breech and they loaded the shell in with mutters of “Yes, sir, right away, sir.”
“NUMBER ONE GUN, LEFT 5 DEGREES!”
Gray got that job. He swiveled the telescopic sight and aimed the gun, dead to center, on the water tower. “Yep, you can see ‘em. There are at least two up there. One’s on the tower and there’s another one climbing the ladder on the far side.”
“NUMBER ONE GUN, PREPARE TO FIRE!”
They all moved out of the way so that Parr could do the honours. There was a curious, quiet lull. It seemed that even the shelling and street fighting had stopped to observe the bloody lunatic of a London Cockney shoot the NUMBER ONE GUN. Peter was sure everyone could hear Parr’s booming voice from the River Orne Bridge all the way to Le Port.
Peter clapped his hands over his ears.
“NUMBER ONE GUN, FIRE!”
Parr pushed the button. The gun roared and the shell hurtled off. It hit the water tower straight on, beautiful shot.
They all hollered and cheered. Men on both sides of the Canal threw their helmets into the air, then scrambled to get them back on because of the snipers.
“What the fuck?” Gray said. “It didn’t blow?”
“The water tower is just leaking. It didn’t explode.”
The shell had gone in one side of the water tower and out the other. Peter supposed the sniper might be drowned or forced off by the water spouting out the sides.
Parr swore under his breath. “It might be the shell. It’s armour-piercing.” He shrugged. “Nothing for it. Let’s do another.”
“NUMBER ONE GUN! LOAD ONE ROUND.”
Parr shot hole after hole through the thing and all he did was drain water from the tank. And maybe wash the snipers off the tower in a cascade.
The whole bridge was shaking with the pounding of the anti-tank gun. The snipers kept it up so Parr started aiming at the trees on the west bank, figuring the gunmen might be hiding there.
Between the roaring of both Parr and the NUMBER ONE GUN, Peter didn’t think he’d ever hear normally again.
In a pause, they heard Major Howard yell out from his command post in the trench, “'For Christ's sake, Parr, will you shut up! I can’t think! Keep that bloody gun quiet!”
“But sir!” Parr yelled back. “They’re snipers in the…”
“Only fire when necessary, and that doesn't mean at imaginary snipers. Keep quiet!”
Parr was visibly deflated. “Nobody told me it was going to be a quiet war.”
It wasn’t a quiet war, but it was quieter, broken by the sounds of the fighting on the west side, the fighting going on at the River Orne Bridge, and the crack of sniper shots. Peter wondered if maybe they should try again with a cup of tea. A lot of the men were sagging under the fatigue. He knew from long Narnian campaigns that he still had plenty in reserve. He’d been saving the ration chocolate and biscuits, which were disgusting but would keep him going.
Gray, who had been dozing, standing up, stirred and cocked his head. “What’s that noise?”
Peter listened. With all the ringing in his ears, it was hard to hear anything but this was…
“Does Jerry play bagpipes?” Bailey asked, looking out of the pillbox, shielding his eyes, and looking west across the Bridge.
“I don’t think so,” Peter replied.
“Bagpipes? What are you talking about? You must be bloody nuts.”
Except that Bailey was right. It was bagpipes, coming from the west. They piled out of the pillbox and tore across the Bridge toward the sound, and even the snipers were too shocked to put up much resistance.
A bagpiper, in a kilt, marched along the tow path, playing Blue Bonnets Over the Border. A bugler stood up from a trench along the Bridge and sounded a call.
Behind the madman piper marched a tall man, the commander, in green beret and a white sweater, carrying a walking stick. Behind him, a long column of commandos, all marching smartly. And in case anyone might think they were merely on a brisk exercise in Scotland, behind the soldiers was a Sherman tank.
At 1330, contact had been made between the invasion force at the beaches and the paras of the 6th and D Company at the Bridges. Their relief had arrived - Lord Lovat, his green berets of the 1st Special Service Brigade, bagpiper, tank, and a draft horse pulling a cart with the men’s gear. The effect seemed oddly Narnian, in a way, though Peter had never seen or heard bagpipes in battle before.
It all became even more oddly Narnian when a man hurried from the Gondrée Café with a tray, glasses and a bottle of champagne.
It was too much for Parr.
“Blimey, I could use some of that!” Parr ran up to the man, who must be Monsieur Gondrée, and shouted, “Oui! Oui!”
Peter was very glad to see Monsieur Gondrée alive - he’d wondered if Lieutenant Smith had killed the man by mistake last night.
A woman burst out of the Café. She was covered in sooty black all over her face, arms, and clothes. Her state was explained when she threw her arms around Parr before he could even get his glass. Madame Gondrée was expressing her joy at being the first home liberated in France by kissing all of the Allied soldiers. Since they were all still wearing their camouflage paint from the night before, the black soot was rubbing off on her.
With the champagne corks popping, Peter decided he should take a glass, too.
He had to shift the Sten from one side to another and push his helmet out of his eyes. He got a very nice hug and a kiss from Madame Gondrée; tears were leaving muddy trails down her face.
She was babbling in French and Monsieur Gondrée was thanking him in English.
He was just reaching for his glass when a voice shrieked, “Where is that lunatic with the gun! I’m going to kill him!”
Wait. Peter knew that very harsh, very angry, and very feminine tone. It had been directed at him before. He spun around.
“SUSAN?!”
“PETER!”
His sister ran to him and threw her arms around him. Everything got fouled in his gun and grenade pouch and smock, both their helmets, and her … crossbow?
Peter picked Susan up and hugged her. She was so thin, so light. And sopping wet.
“I don’t believe it,” he whispered.
“I don’t either. Praise the Lion.”
“Were you the Rat who signed the reports? I saw the drawings. I didn’t dare even hope, but…”
She nodded against his neck. “I wrote them. Some of them. I wondered, when I saw the gliders last night… I can’t believe it.”
Susan choked on a dry sob.
He set her down. “I’m getting black camo all over you. Why are you wet?”
She regained her feet and said something over his shoulder to the Gondrées in French.
Monsieur Gondrée replied and Madame Gondrée said something, gesturing to her blackened clothing and the three of them laughed.
Then his sister turned back to him with a look that made a man who had pranged from a glider, been shot by soldiers, tanks, and rocket launchers, and taken and held a bridge for the last 13 hours in enemy territory shake in his boots.
“Where. Is. The. Lunatic. With. The. Gun?”
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Parr slowly edge away, glass in hand.
“Were you under the water tower?” Peter asked, wanting to divert his wrathful, vengeful sister.
“I was climbing the water tower to take out the sniper and then someone tried to kill me!” She lapsed into irate French, shrugged the crossbow off her shoulder and brought it to bear, pointing it in the direction of the retreating soldiers.
“It was one of you, wasn’t it?”
Monsieur Gondrée stepped forward with glasses of champagne on his tray. “Will you drink? To celebrate? “ He blew some dirt off the tray. “I have had this champagne buried in the garden since the Nazis arrived!”
His sister softened to a smile and she nodded. “Merci beaucoup.”
“Thank you, Monsieur,” Peter said.
They both took a glass from the tray.
Susan bit her lip and moved closer, putting her head at his shoulder.
“I killed today, Peter. I killed two good men.”
“I killed today, too, Susan. And someone I loved very well died last night during the fighting."
So many men and women had already died. Den Brotheridge had been the first tonight and many more would die before France and the rest of Europe was free. He and Susan had done this before. They had fought, won, lost, mourned the dead, comforted those who remained, and drank the parting cup. As surely as they had been summoned to Narnia, now they were called to do the same here.
There was a comforting familiarity to the old Narnian ritual Susan began as she solemnly raised her glass and her eyes to his, and said, “To our dead who are home.”
Peter spoke the response. "Until we meet again in Aslan's Own Country."
“Do not let our grief keep you from your journey home,” Susan replied, concluding the rite.
But Peter did not drink. “And now to our other home, my sister. V is for Victory. Cheers!”
Susan raised her glass. “Santé, my brother. V is for victory.”
The moment was very sweet. The champagne, thankfully, was not.
--End--
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3 Part 1 Part 2
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6 Part 1 Part 2