Inferno

Chapter 77

In the morning the rain had stopped. Following the Koge success, the officers and soldiers of the 52nd and other detachments were ordered to return to their unit. For Maynard and his men it would now be back to bivouac or tents at best, their billeting in comfort a fond memory.

The line of march to the Swan Mill encampment circled around Copenhagen at a respectable distance, but the mutter and grumble of artillery exchanges could be heard, and in the heavy air a pall of dirty smoke hung over the besieged city, like a portent of doom.

Nearer, a distant swell of noise grew and intensified. Somewhere out there on their right the Danes were making a sortie, by the sound of it in numbers and determined.

They marched on but it didn’t die away, and Maynard realised uneasily that it was coming from more or less the direction of their camp. Imagination supplied the rest: the only other traverse across the fosse was at the Citadel – which directly faced them. Almost certainly this was a sudden thrust into the British lines, and if they used a substantial force, it was a real threat.

A tell-tale haze of powder-smoke hung over their positions – or did it? It seemed to be well short of their breastwork.

In the last mile the sound of the affray slackened and stopped.

They halted while scouts were sent ahead, then marched on into a battlefield. The camp was untouched. There were no signs of an assault but under guard a group of prisoners sat on the ground, each with the exhausted, vacant features of the defeated.

‘So, you missed our little entertainment,’ said the adjutant, looking pleased with himself.

‘What happened?’

‘Danskers made a sally from the Citadel. Odd thing, they didn’t go for our lines. Instead set to chopping down trees.’

‘Trees?’

‘Well, we have it from the prisoners they wanted to level ’em to get a clear field of fire on the only place over the fosse. Didn’t get very far before our chaps disputed with them. Want to have a look?’

Ironically, a pretty grove of woodland and park had been the scene of so much bloodshed.

‘A garden belonging to a chap called Classens. I doubt he’d recognise it now.’

The ornamental parades, shady nooks and flowerbeds were torn and ravaged, trees hacked and gouged by shot.

Maynard’s gaze was drawn to the pitiable sight of the dead in rows next to a pond. They lay face up with the glassy stare of death but what wrenched at him was their youth. With fair hair in fashionable ringlets, some could have been no more than sixteen.

‘Students.’

‘Of the …?’

‘Not military. These are university students who banded together and called themselves Lifeguards of the King. Wouldn’t retreat.’

Their death wound in almost every case was a bayonet thrust to the front. They’d not run when the 52nd had come on and stood no chance against professionals trained in the savage parry and thrust of close-quarter combat.

A lump rose in Maynard’s throat and he turned away, eyes pricking. That it had come to this! What had Denmark done that she’d paid with these young lives?