I beat at it with my fists, and tried to heave up, but its weight and the agony in my side stopped me – there was a rib gone for sure, if nothing worse. One of the horses was floundering about in the snow, neighing madly, and then I heard East’s voice:
“Flashman! Flashman, are you all right?”
“I’m pinned!” I cried. “The sled – get the damned thing off me! Ah, God, my back’s broken!”
He came blundering through the snow, and knelt beside me. He put his shoulder to the sled, heaving for all he was worth, but he might as well have tried to shift St Paul’s. It didn’t give so much as an inch.
“Get it off!” I groaned. “It’s killing me – oh, Christ! Push, damn you – are you made of jelly?”
“I can’t!” he whispered, straining away. “It won’t … budge. Ah!” And he fell back, panting.
“Rot you, it’s crushing my guts out!” I cried. “Oh, God – I know my spine’s gone – I can feel it! I’m –”
“Silence!” he hissed, and I could see he was listening, staring back towards Arabat. “Oh, no! Flashman – they’re coming! I can hear the horsemen on the snow!” He flung himself at the sled, pushing futilely. “Oh, give me strength, God, please! Please!” He strove, thrusting at the sled, and groaning: “I can’t … I can’t shift it! Oh, God, what shall I do?”
“Push, or dig, or anything, curse you!” I cried. “Get me loose, for God’s sake! What are you doing, man? What is it?” For he was standing up now, staring back over the mouth of the gully towards Arabat; for half a minute he stood motionless, while I babbled and pawed at the wreck, and then he looked down at me, and his voice was steady.
“It’s no go, old fellow. I know I can’t move it. And they’re coming. I can just see them, dimly – but they’re heading this way.” He dropped on one knee. “Flashman – I’m sorry. I’ll have to leave you. I can hide – get away – reach Raglan. Oh, my dear comrade – if I could give my life, I would, but –”
“Rot you!” cries I. “My God, you can’t leave me! Push the bloody thing – help me, man! I’m dying!”
“Oh, God!” he said. “This is agony! First Valla – now you! But I must get the news through – you know I must. You have shown me the way of duty, old chap – depend upon it, I shan’t fail! And I’ll tell them – when I get home! Tell them how you gave … But I must go!”
“Scud,” says I, babbling, “for the love of –”
“Hush,” says he, clapping a hand over my lips, “don’t distress yourself – there’s no time! I’ll get there – one of the horses will serve, and if not – you remember the Big Side run by Brownsover, when we were boys? I finished, you know – I’ll finish again, Flash, for your sake! They shan’t catch me! Trust an old Rugby hare to distance a Russian pack – I will, and I’ll hear you hallooing me on! I’ll do it – for you, and for Valla – for both your sacrifices!”
“Damn Valla and you, too!” I squealed feebly. “You can’t go! You can’t leave me! Anyway, she’s a bloody Russian! I’m British, you swine! Help me, Scud!”
But I don’t think he so much as heard me. He bent forward, and kissed me on the forehead, and I felt one of his manly bloody tears on my brow. “Good-bye, dear old fellow,” says he. “God bless you!”
And then he was ploughing away over the snow, to where the near-side horse was standing; he pulled the traces free of its head, and hurried off, pulling it along into the underbrush, with me bleating after him.
“Scud! For pity’s sake, don’t desert me! You can’t – not your old school-fellow, you callous son-of-a-bitch! Please, stop, come back! I’m dying, damn you! I order you – I’m your superior officer! Scud! Please! Help me!”
But he was gone, and I was pinned, weeping, beneath that appalling weight, with the snow falling on my face, and the cold striking into my vitals. I would die, freezing horribly – unless they found me – oh, God, how would I die then? I struggled feebly, the pain lancing at my side, and then I heard the soft thumping of hooves on the snow, and a shout, and those cursed Russian voices, muffled from the mouth of the gully.
“Paslusha-tyeh! Ah, tam – skorah!”a
The jingle of harness was close now, and the pad of hooves – a horse neighed on the other side of the sled, and I squeezed my eyes shut, moaning. At any moment I expected to feel the agony of a lance-point skewering into my chest; then there was the snorting of a horse almost directly over my face, and I shrieked and opened my eyes. Two horsemen were sitting looking down on me, fur-wrapped figures with those stringy Cossack caps pulled down over their brows; fierce moustached faces peering at me.
“Help!” I croaked. “Pamagityeh, pajalsta!”b
One of them leaned forward. “On syer-yaznuh ranyin,”c says he, and they both laughed, as at a good joke. Then, to my horror, the speaker drew his nagaika from his saddlebow, doubled it back, and leaned down over me.
“Nyeh zashta,”d says he, leering. His hand went up, I tried in vain to jerk my head aside, a searing pain seemed to cleave my skull, and then the dark sky rushed in on me.
a “Listen! Ah there – quickly!”
b “Help, please!”
c “He is badly hurt.”
d “Not at all.”
I suppose my life has been full of poetic justice – an expression customarily used by Holy Joes to cloak the vindictive pleasure they feel when some enterprising fellow fetches himself a cropper. They are the kind who’ll say unctuously that I was properly hoist with my own petard at Arabat, and serve the bastard right. I’m inclined to agree; East would never have abandoned me if I hadn’t heaved Valla out of the sled in the first place. He’d have stuck by me and the Christian old school code, and let his military duty go hang. But my treatment of his beloved made it easy for him to forget the ties of comradeship and brotherly love, and do his duty; all his pious protestations about leaving me were really hypocritical moonshine, spouted out to salve his own conscience.
I know my Easts and Tom Browns, you see. They’re never happy unless their morality is being tried in the furnace, and they can feel they’re doing the right, Christian thing – and never mind the consequences to anyone else. Selfish brutes. Damned unreliable it makes ’em, too. On the other hand, you can always count on me. I’d have got the news through to Raglan out of pure cowardice and self-love, and to hell with East and Valla both; but your pious Scud had to have a grudge to pay off before he’d abandon me. Odd, ain’t it? They’ll do for us yet, with their sentiment and morality.
In the meantime he had done for me, handsomely. If you’re one of the aforementioned who take satisfaction in seeing the wicked go arse over