Chapter 6

Outpost Zulu, Scottish Highlands. April 1067

Sergeant Madeline Baker was freezing her arse off just like she had since joining the army and again wondered why she had enlisted. To compound that mistake, she listened to Luke and Alice and learned how to read and write. Now, she was a sergeant in Bravo Company, 2 nd regiment, 3 rd brigade with a squad under her command and stationed in the Scottish Highlands trying to bring the stubborn Scottish clans under control. The brigade was strung out along a series of outposts that guarded a supply route and stopped the clans from moving around. The rest of the 1 st division was stationed over the rest of Scotland in a bid to pacify the region. All this meant to Sergeant Baker was her squad was stuck in a small outpost named Outpost Zulu and exposed to attack. Two things made her feel better: this outpost was manned by a whole company, and they would be rotated out by June. Madeline swore to herself that the next time she saw Alice or Luke, she would give them a piece of her mind before turning in her resignation.

Every member of the company wondered why anyone would want to live in such a hell as the highlands. It was cold and wet, and the soil was too rocky to farm anything but sheep. The Scots were constantly raiding their supply lines, making their lives even more miserable. They never managed to do much damage, but they kept the English troops on alert, thus wearing them down. Week after week, the Scots and English played their deadly game of cat and mouse. The units with the worst job were the cavalry because they were the poor bastards that had to guard the convoys and chase after the Scot raiding parties. At the same time, the infantry was tasked with securing the villages and protecting infrastructure projects.

It was early April, and another storm had hit the area leaving the troops soaked and freezing. Many of the old-school soldiers were really unhappy to be there since, in the old days, they would have been withdrawn to proper winter quarters until the weather turned. All the soldiers in the outpost were nervous because the civilians in the area had been acting strangely. Many of the younger men had vanished over the last few weeks, and nobody seemed to know where they went. All the soldiers knew the civilians living in the area were lying through their teeth but had yet to find concrete evidence. Everything had been reported back to headquarters, but nobody in the 1 st division knew what to make of the current events.

Before dawn on Easter Sunday, Madeline’s squad was on guard duty while the rest of the company rested. None of her troops were happy about missing Easter services but understood war was a 24/7/365 business. They would much rather miss Easter services than be surprised and captured by the Scots. Everyone had seen what happened when the Scots captured a soldier, and none of the company wanted that to happen to them. During one of their patrols, they managed to find a few guards from a supply convoy. The guards had been mutilated so badly that nobody recognized the bodies. The bodies wouldn’t have been identified without the dog tags sewn into the clothing. The one female soldier found was heavily bruised across her lower body and had chunks of wood shoved up her anus and vagina. The male soldiers’ bodies weren’t in any better shape, with their genitals torn off and shoved down their throats and logs up their arses. The soldiers had still been alive when the wood had been shoved into them; there was evidence of blood flowing down the wood.

Suddenly, Madeline thought she heard something strange in the distance, but the fog distorted everything, and she quickly discounted the sound. The highlands often produced strange sounds that defied explanation, and the sounds were amplified when it was foggy.

The first sign that they were under attack was when not five minutes later, one of Madeline’s soldiers crumbled to the ground after receiving an arrow in the gut. Madeline saw her fall and was at her side in an instant. In the next moment, Madeline knew they were all screwed when she felt the breeze of another arrow go past her head. Now she knew they were under attack and started screaming the alarm. The alarm bell started ringing in the compound, and troops poured out of their bunkers; many were only half-dressed. Madeline’s first instinct was to get her squad in position to repel an attack. She wasn’t even thinking about living or dying; everything was on autopilot. This was a first for Madeline; she had never been under an arrow attack before and found it far more frightening than having a gun fired at her. At least with guns, she could see or hear where the shooter was.

The Scots had guns because they raided supply convoys throughout the winter and broke into supply depots to steal supplies. After fighting the English troops for the last six months, they had figured out the best way to fight back. Instead of charging in wild charges, they held back and fired their stolen rifles at the English troops to keep their heads down. While that was happening, other clansmen would slip up to the defenses, and when the firing ceased, they would attack.

So far, this was the first outpost they had made a full-scale assault on. Many other outposts had been harassed before this. The outpost Madeline was assigned to was the last one in a line of outposts and was the smallest.

Madeline couldn’t make out the Scots in the predawn light due to the terrain, so she requested flares be fired so the defenders could see where to shoot. It took a minute for the mortars to start firing, but when they did, Madeline’s blood ran cold. Looking out, it looked like the side of the hill was alive, and it took a second before Madeline realized what she was looking at was the backs of the men attacking them. To her, it looked like thousands of Scots were attacking, which was accurate.

By the Scottish leaders’ count, they had nearly six thousand warriors at their disposal. Most were armed with swords, spears, bows, and arrows, but almost five hundred had rifles. From their intelligence, they knew Outpost Zulu only had one hundred soldiers stationed there, and a third were women. Everyone from the highest clan leader to the youngest warrior was confident of their success. Many were already planning how to torture the captured women and were looking forward to repaying the arrogant English invaders. Most of the Scottish forces had lost loved ones or possessions to the English troops and were looking for payback.

Their attack began with archers taking out the guards on the English wall, but that had been less successful than the leaders had hoped because they had only knocked off two guards before the alarm was raised in the outpost. Things started to go south when the English fired flares over the attacking Scots, which messed with their night vision because none had ever seen such a thing and had looked at the flares in awe.

Madeline had her soldiers in position when the second flare burst over the attacking Scots:

“FIRE AT WILL!” Madeline shouted, and her troops started firing as fast as they could, worked their bolts, and shoved another round in the chamber. Madeline also added her rifle to the firing while keeping an eye on her battle area. Slowly more troops came up to reinforce her position, and the firing increased. Below their position, she could hear some men screaming in pain and others cursing. Suddenly Madeline looked up and noticed where the main body of the Scottish attack was. The outpost commander had been with Marion since the beginning and was used to using tricks on the battlefield. He had ordered claymore mines placed around the perimeter in two concentric belts. The attackers were at the first of those belts when Madeline reached for the detonator.

A deafening roar followed as the claymores in her section went off. She watched with glee as hundreds of men were wiped right off the hill, and the attack paused. Madeline had heard of the mine’s destructive power but had never witnessed it firsthand. The steel balls in the mines killed or maimed everything in their path. Very few of the troops even knew the mines were there, which was on purpose, so if captured, they couldn’t reveal them to the Scots. Madeline heard more claymores going off from the other side of the compound, and all the English realized they were surrounded. This made them only more determined to fight to the death. They couldn’t retreat, and surrender meant a slow, painful death.

Soon the order came for everyone to withdraw to the inner ring of defenses, and not a moment too soon for Madeline because her soldiers were out of ammo. She and her squad scrambled out of the trench they were in, and two more soldiers bought the farm when they were shot dead by the Scots. Madeline was hit in the leg but didn’t realize it. Once they were safely behind the inner ring of the outpost’s fortifications, Madeline ordered her soldiers to grab as much ammo as possible. One of them saw she was injured and told her to hold still while he wrapped her leg with a pressure bandage.

While she was being attended to, Madeline looked up into the lookout tower built in the center of the compound and could see the commander directing the battle. She saw his hand drop, and all around the outpost, more claymore mines detonated, bringing a pause to the attack. Many of the Scottish assault troops had been killed, so they had to regroup. During the lull, Madeline got orders to join the commander, so she climbed the ladder to reach his position. When he first saw her, he didn’t recognize her because her face was now black from soot and a bloody bandage on her leg.

“You ok, sergeant?”

“Yes, sir.”

They both knew Madeline was lying. Her leg throbbed, and her eyes burned, but she had to continue to fight. Surrender wasn’t an option.

“I want you to take your squad and the 2 nd squad to form a fast response unit. Anytime there’s a breakthrough threatened, it will be your troops I will use to relieve the pressure. Any questions?”

“No, sir.”

“Then good luck, Sergeant.”

Madeline saluted and scrambled back down the ladder. She had to get her soldiers organized quickly. It only took about five minutes to get her two squads ready, and she positioned them near the tower to make it easier to receive commands. This also gave her a minute to take in the battle. She watched as the two cooks crawled along the lines handing out ammunition to the troops. They would crawl up behind a soldier and tap them on the leg. When the soldier looked, the cooks would hand them a couple of handfuls of ammo, and the soldier would quickly pocket them before going back to shooting.

The eastern sky was starting to lighten up as Madeline’s unit was first called to action. The western wall threatened to collapse under Scottish pressure, but she saw this and had her unit in action before the orders came down. As she came up, the Scots began to pour over the wall, and her unit had to resort to hand-to-hand combat almost immediately. She shot the round in her rifle before diving into the mass of attacking troops. As she plunged into the mass of attacking Scots, she yelled orders to her unit to “HOLD THE LINE!” Her small size was to her advantage because she could easily duck under strikes and attack from under her attacker’s armor. Sometimes she would grab an attacker’s spear and use it to spear another Scot before killing the first one. Her one constant friend was her rifle. One end had the bayonet, and the other made a handy club. Slowly, she and her troops pushed the Scots back over the wall. Once at the wall, Madeline reloaded her rifle and began firing at the retreating Scots, killing several more. When she saw some of her soldiers trying to cross over the wall, she started shouting, “HOLD THE LINE! HOLD THE LINE!” Madeline didn’t want her soldiers following the retreating Scots. The remaining soldiers that had been pushed off the wall retook their positions so Madeline could withdraw her troops after the wounded were evacuated.

Her troops barely returned to their positions before heading to the southern wall to repeal another assault. Again, Madeline demonstrated extreme bravery as she waded into the Scottish wave, ducking sword thrusts and swipes. By this time, her squad would follow her to hell, and the other troops rapidly came to the same opinion. She had shown her bravery and intelligence many times in the past. Now she had to use every bit of experience, and bravely she had to survive. As the southern assault was driven back, Madeline’s rifle broke over the head of a Scottish soldier. Without missing a beat, Madeline drew her knives and continued to help push them back over the wall.

After the assault had been driven back, there was a lull, and Madeline picked up a rifle dropped by a dead Scot. She checked it and shoved a round into the chamber before recalling her squads. By now, she only had seven soldiers left out of the seventeen she had at the beginning. Getting back to her holding position, she noticed a body hanging from the tower. Looking at it, one of her soldiers realized it was the post commander. All the other officers had already been killed, so Madeline was in command of the post. Quickly, she ordered everyone to reload with ammo and for the cooks to bring water to the soldiers. A cook put a strap over his shoulders with a bucket and a couple of ladles on each end. Slowly he walked the lines, and the soldiers paused what they were doing to get a quick drink.

Madeline was the last to get a drink and ordered the cook back to handing out ammo. The Scots were still hanging back, so Madeline climbed into the tower. She almost couldn’t get in because a body was over the trapdoor, but she gave a mighty shove, and the door moved enough for her to get through. Once inside, she moved the body off the door to make it easier to get through. Looking over the outpost, there must have been almost a thousand dead enemy soldiers littering the ground, and for the first time since the attack started, Madeline had some hope they might make it. She heard a horse and looked to the stable, where she saw the commander’s horse. Madeline knew the horse was fast and thought before calling one of the smallest soldiers into the tower. Private Herman wasn’t much taller than she was and was an accomplished horseman.

“Herman, I need you to take Captain Smith’s horse and get us some help.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He barked before turning to head back down.

“Herman?”

“Yes, sergeant.”

“Good luck because if you don’t make it, we won’t either. I have no intention of surrendering this post.”