Gladiator - Philip Wylie (readnow .TXT) 📗

and walked toward the recruiting-tent. A poilu in steely blue looked at them and saw that they were good. He proffered papers. They signed. That night they marched for the first time. A week later they were sweating and swearing over the French manual of arms. Hugo had offered his services to the commanding officer at the camp and been summarily denied an audience or a chance to exhibit his abilities. When they reached the lines⁠—that would be time enough. Well, he could wait until those lines were reached. XII

Just as the eastern horizon became light with something more steady than the flare of the guns, the command came. Hugo bit his lip till it bled darkly. He would show them⁠—now. They might command him to wait⁠—he could restrain himself no longer. The men had been standing there tense and calm, their needle-like bayonets pointing straight up. “En avant!”

His heart gave a tremendous surge. It made his hands falter as he reached for the ladder rung. “Here we go, Hugo.”

“Luck, Tom.”

He saw Shayne go over. He followed slowly. He looked at no man’s land. They had come up in the night and he had never seen it. The scene of holocaust resembled nothing more than the municipal ash dump at Indian Creek. It startled him. The grey earth in irregular heaps, the litter of metal and equipment. He realized that he was walking forward with the other men. The ground under his feet was mushy, like ashes. Then he saw part of a human body. It changed his thoughts.

The man on Hugo’s right emitted a noise like a squeak and jumped up in the air. He had been hit. Out of the corner of his eye Hugo saw him fall, get up quickly, and fall again very slowly. His foot kicked after he lay down. The rumbling in the sky grew louder and blotted out all other sound.

They walked on and on. It was like some eternal journey through the dun, vacant realms of Hades. Not much light, one single sound, and ghostly companions who faced always forward. The air in front of him was suddenly dyed orange and he felt the concussion of a shell. His ears rang. He was still walking. He walked what he thought was a number of miles.

His great strength seemed to have left him, and in its place was a complete enervation. With a deliberate effort he tested himself, kicking his foot into the earth. It sank out of sight. He squared his shoulders. A man came near him, yelling something. It was Shayne. Hugo shook his head. Then he heard the voice, a feeble shrill note. “Soon be there.”

“Yeah?”

“Over that hill.”

Shayne turned away and became part of the ghost escort of Hugo and his peculiarly lucid thoughts. He believed that he was more conscious of himself and things then than ever before in his life. But he did not notice one-tenth of the expression and action about himself. The top of the rise was near. He saw an officer silhouetted against it for an instant. The officer moved down the other side. He could see over the rise, then.

Across the grey ashes was a long hole. In front of it a maze of wire. In it⁠—mushrooms. German helmets. Hugo gaped at them. All that training, all that restraint, had been expended for this. They were small and without meaning. He felt a sharp sting above his collar bone. He looked there. A row of little holes had appeared in his shirt.

“Good God,” he whispered, “a machine gun.”

But there was no blood. He sat down. He presumed, as a casualty, he was justified in sitting down. He opened his shirt by ripping it down. On his dark-tanned skin there were four red marks. The bullets had not penetrated him. Too tough! He stared numbly at the walking men. They had passed him. The magnitude of his realization held him fixed for a full minute. He was invulnerable! He should have known it⁠—otherwise he would have torn himself apart by his own strength. Suddenly he roared and leaped to his feet. He snatched his rifle, cracking the stock in his fervour. He vaulted toward the helmets in the trench.

He dropped from the parapet and was confronted by a long knife on a gun. His lips parted, his eyes shut to slits, he drew back his own weapon. There was an instant’s pause as they faced each other⁠—two men, both knowing that in a few seconds one would be dead. Then Hugo, out of his scarlet fury, had one glimpse of his antagonist’s face and person. The glimpse was but a flash. It was finished in quick motions. He was a little man⁠—a foot shorter than Hugo. His eyes looked out from under his helmet with a sort of pathetic earnestness. And he was worried, horribly worried, standing there with his rifle lifted and trying to remember the precise technique of what would follow even while he fought back the realization that it was hopeless. In that split second Hugo felt a human, amazing urge to tell him that it was all right, and that he ought to hold his bayonet a little higher and come forward a bit faster. The image faded back to an enemy. Hugo acted mechanically from the rituals of drill. His own knife flashed. He saw the man’s clothes part smoothly from his bowels, where the point had been inserted, up to the gray-green collar. The seam reddened, gushed blood, and a length of intestine slipped out of it. The man’s eyes looked at Hugo. He shook his head twice. The look became faraway. He fell forward.

Hugo stepped over him. He was trembling and nauseated. A more formidable man approached warily. The bellow of battle returned to Hugo’s ears. He pushed back the threatening rifle easily and caught the neck in one hand, crushing it to a wet, sticky handful. So he walked through the trench,