The Plains of Pluto
Copyright© 2025 by Lumpy
Chapter 22
Greece
Gundomar pressed against the muddy trench wall as another shell screamed overhead. Thirty yards behind their position, it detonated, hurling dirt and metal fragments in all directions. It was as though Nastrond, the shore of corpses, had been brought from the underworld into this place. They had endured eighteen or maybe even twenty hours under constant fire. He’d lost count by this point as, minute after minute, shells exploded around them, shaking the ground and his nerves alike.
“Down!”
Another shell landed closer. The impact struck ten yards right, percussion hammering his chest as dirt rained down. A young legionary huddled against the opposite wall, hands over his ears, mouth opened in the way that they’d all learned helped equalize the pressure. The young man’s eyes, however, told the tale. Vacant, wide things that stared into nothing.
The men were starting to break, enduring things he’d never thought possible until now.
“The tribune said they would pull us from the line soon,” a man huddling near Gundomar said, one of the veterans who’d arrived when the Consul repositioned them from Germania to this place.
Blood trickled from a cut above the man’s eye.
“The tribune says things. It doesn’t matter. Either they’ll come or they won’t.”
The man shrugged in response.
For a moment, the shells began to fall a little further away, pounding a section of the trench to their left. It didn’t help his nerves, since he knew they would swing back in his direction, but for now, he used the reprieve to check on his men. He crouched, still staying low to keep from being surprised, scuttling through ankle-deep mud, checking their trench section. Around a corner, he found a partially collapsed wall and three men injured by a very close hit.
One would be gone in the next few minutes, a massive hole torn through his chest. The other two ... perhaps. A few years ago, he would say all three would die, but the Britannians had been doing impressive things with medicine these days.
“You four,” Gundomar said, pointing at some men who looked mostly together. “Drag them to the aid station, then return to your positions.”
As the men moved to obey, another shell landed close by. Close enough that, for a moment, Gundomar thought he would be going with the injured men. But no explosion followed. Looking up at the edge of the trench, he could see something metallic protruding from the packed soil. The shell hadn’t exploded. It just ... sat there. The men around him, who he’d ordered to pull the injured away, just stood there, all of them staring at the thing, probably wondering if it was going to go off.
“Ignore it and do as you were ordered!” Gundomar said, startling the soldiers out of their fixation and getting them moving, taking the wounded to the rear.
Gundomar turned to see a wild-eyed soldier climbing the trench wall, clawing at the dirt, screaming, “Have to get out! Have to get out!”
Three men dragged him back as another explosion showered them with dirt. The man collapsed sobbing, curled against the trench wall.
Gundomar just shook his head and moved on, both to continue his inspection and to get away from the unexploded shell. He wasn’t sure how much longer they could sustain this.
He continued down the trench, stepping over, and sometimes on, men packed into the narrow confines. Some prayed, others stared ahead. Veterans reloaded rifles or just hunkered down, trying to stay sane.
They were in an important section of the miles of trenches dug into a long, zigzagging line. This section held a curve that bent toward a set of low hills, standing out and exposed as one of the furthest east points in the line.
Not a great place to be.
Another impact, followed by the rumbling of a wall collapsing. Screams could be heard coming from down the line. And then suddenly ... silence. It hadn’t tapered off or slowed. It had simply stopped.
The men around him looked momentarily relieved, but Gundomar knew what the sudden, complete silence meant.
“Firing positions! Check rifles! Fix bayonets!” He began yelling; pulling men out of the places they’d been hiding and pushing them into position.
Veterans needed no explanation. Coordinated artillery silence like this meant an infantry attack. Men rushed to the firing steps, sticking their weapons above the edge of the trench.
“Movement,” someone called from down the way.
Gundomar climbed up on a firing step, peering through a sandbag gap. As a breeze shifted the smoke, he felt his stomach drop.
The horizon had transformed into a moving mass of men. Eastern troops with their pale skin like ripe wheat, Greeks with their olive complexion and wiry hair, Egyptians with their almost bronzed hue were all part of the first wave, advancing in large masses that stretched beyond sight in both directions.
“Gods of my fathers,” Gundomar whispered.
He’d been on this end of many charges against the trenches in Germania. None had rivaled this.
A shot cracked and a man standing beside Gundomar jerked backward, blood spurting from his throat. Gundomar grabbed him, dragging him down as crimson spray patterned their uniforms. The man’s eyes rolled back, his final breath gurgling through his neck wound.
“Fire!” he screamed as his men just watched the oncoming horde.
The Britannian line erupted as the enemy closed in. Gundomar sighted an officer leading the first wave, squeezed the trigger, and watched him crumple. Front ranks fell, but the waves of men coming behind pushed forward over fallen comrades without pause.
Where one man fell, three more appeared, with weapons lowered toward the trench. The waves created an illusion of the dead rising again, an endless tide flowing toward their position.
Britannian artillery responded from behind their position. Shells burst among the advancing troops, throwing bodies skyward. One blast opened a twenty-foot gap in the enemy formation, but it closed within seconds as men flowed around the crater.
It was like they had a never-ending supply of bodies to throw at them.
Gundomar dropped below the parapet to reload, measuring powder, ramming the ball down the barrel. Along the line, men fired in a staggered sequence, maintaining pressure while their comrades reloaded.
“They’re at the wire!” someone shouted.
Gundomar returned to his position. True enough, the enemy vanguard had reached the barbed obstacles two hundred and fifty paces in front of the trench line. Eastern soldiers pushed sections down with poles, others threw mats over the barbs. Some simply pushed forward, or rather were pushed forward, their falling bodies becoming bridges for those coming behind.
He fired, reloaded, fired again. After his third shot, the enemy closed to one hundred paces or so. Individual faces became visible. Determined, afraid, some shouting unintelligible war cries through the battle noise.
At fifty paces, both sides fired with frantic urgency. No-man’s land became a hellscape of cratered mud, discarded weapons, and dismembered bodies. Blood and black powder stench filled the air.
“Grenades!”
All along the line, men grabbed the fin-shaped weapons from belts or small stashes, pulled the priming cords, and heaved them onto the ground above. A ripple of explosions blasted out as they landed, killing men by the dozens. And still, on they came.
“Through on the left!”
Egyptian forces, by the look of them, poured into a section where the defenders had been thinned. Men fired at point-blank range, then fought with bayonets.
An Eastern soldier appeared above Gundomar’s position, sliding down the wall with rifle extended. Gundomar lunged, driving his bayonet into the man’s chest. Dark eyes widened in shock, then glazed over as Gundomar wrenched the bayonet free.
More followed. Gundomar fired at the next man, the shot taking him in the face. Three more dropped in before he could reload.
“Stand fast!” Gundomar shouted as he swung his rifle like a club.
The wooden stock connected with an attacker’s head, sending him sprawling. Single shots, clashing metal, and screams filled the air. The trench became a slaughterhouse. Britannians thrust bayonets, dropping enemy soldiers while others fought hand-to-hand.
A few even pulled swords that they kept on them, returning to the old ways of fighting.
One of the men he’d sent earlier to carry the wounded was a few steps away, grappling with a Greek soldier, locked in a deadly embrace until drawing a knife and plunging it into his opponent’s ribs. Blood spurted, coating both men as they fell. His man rose while the Greek remained on the ground.
Hand-to-hand fighting engulfed the entire trench system as the firing line was overwhelmed. Gundomar faced an Egyptian officer who slashed at him with a curved sword, missing his throat by inches. Gundomar countered with his bayonet; the Egyptian parried skillfully.
Gundomar was saved from the man’s counter when a grenade landed amidst the handful of Egyptians that had come with the officer and exploded, tearing their bodies apart.
The victory was short-lived as another man tackled him from behind, slamming him into the trench wall. Hands closed around his throat, cutting off his air. Gundomar twisted, trying to turn over, clawing at his attacker’s face, fingers finding an eye socket and pressing with desperate strength. The man screamed, releasing his grip.
Few men reloaded rifles now. The fighting was too close for the slow process of powder and ball. They fought with bayonets, knives, entrenching tools, and bare hands.
Bodies littered the trench floor, creating macabre barricades used by both sides. Gundomar grabbed a fallen rifle and vaulted over intertwined corpses to engage an Eastern officer who had killed two Britannians.
The officer thrust his blade toward Gundomar’s midsection. Gundomar twisted aside, feeling the blade tear his uniform without touching flesh. Gundomar brought his rifle butt down on the officer’s arms, breaking his weapon grip. A follow-up strike dropped the man to his knees, where a Britannian finished him with a bayonet thrust.
The enemy was everywhere and quickly surrounding them.
“Front line collapsing! Fall back! Fall back to the secondary trench.”
That was all the men needed to turn and run as if their lives depended on it.
Which they did.
Gundomar led the retreat down a narrow zigzagging trench toward the rear positions. They met Eastern soldiers who had broken through elsewhere, engaging them in short, violent clashes in the confined space.
Men around him fell as the enemy fired into their backs.
Those with loaded rifles provided cover fire, each shot followed by desperate bayonet defense during reloading. Gundomar had managed to load the last round he had on him and fired at an enemy blocking their path, then rushed forward to finish him with his bayonet.
As he started forward again, a young legionary near him stumbled, blood pouring from a thigh wound. Gundomar dropped his rifle and pulled the sword he kept at his side, something most of the men still did. Grabbing the injured man’s collar, he dragged him toward the secondary line while fending off attackers. Thankfully, the men who’d been there, mostly recuperating from the daylong shelling, had formed a line at the communication trench and fired over their heads at the pursuers.
Ahead, someone yelled, “Hold fire! Friendlies coming!”
Hands pulled them into the secondary trench and relative safety. Gundomar counted eight men from his original section, plus the wounded soldier. The rest were lost in the attack.
The secondary trench was better constructed, deeper, with comprehensive overhead cover and reinforced firing positions, built for this contingency.
Desperate fighting continued as front-line survivors joined the fallback defenders. Gundomar found himself alongside troops from three different units, all fighting to prevent the enemy from overrunning this final line.
He’d found a rifle someone had dropped and some ammo from a reserve box, putting himself back into the fight. They had a small reprieve when the enemy attack briefly slowed. They still pushed at them, but with less intensity than before.
He knew it was only a reprieve, though. They were reorganizing, reinforcing, and getting ready to go again, and Gundomar didn’t have enough men to counterattack and take back the lost stretch of trench, and what men he did have were injured and out of ammo.
Gundomar positioned his remaining men along the thirty yards near the communication trench and waited. Men distributed ammunition and water from the dead to the living. A medical orderly applied hasty bandages to wounds that allowed the men to keep fighting.
The reprieve didn’t last long. Within a few minutes, the Easterners and their allies got themselves sorted out and the attack was renewed, just as vigorous as before.
Gundomar fired at the first man he saw, an enemy officer advancing through the zigzag of connecting trenches, dropping him as he came around a corner. But he wasn’t alone.
Before Gundomar could reach for another paper cartridge, three Eastern soldiers rounded the same corner, leaping over the dead man. Gundomar thrust with his bayonet, driving the lead man back against his comrades in the narrow passage while Britannian soldiers to either side dealt with his friends.
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