Conflagration by Mick Farren Page B

check out women even with a battle raging less than a thousand yards away.
    Before she had taken up with Argo, Raphael had hoped that Jesamine would invite him to her bed. As two outsiders, he reasoned, they were the ideal comfort for each other. But it was not to be, and, for a while, he despaired of ever finding himself a girl and a relationship. He had gloomily wondered if, in Albany, he was too much of an outsider, until an RNV nurse called Hyacinth Musgrave had made it clear, in word and very explicit deed, that an outsider could also be considered exotic. Their affair, though, had been a well kept secret. Hyacinth Musgrave had feared any gossip linking her with such an outlandish young man would ruin her reputation and embarrass her father, the same Musgrave who commanded Dunbar’s artillery. She was particularly anxious that Cordelia knew nothing about them. The memory caused a slightly cynical smile to cross Raphael’s face. The outsider was exotic enough to shag, but too exotic to take home to Daddy, or be introduced to her friends. Hyacinth would doubtless be highly put out if she knew he had a whole folder of nude drawings of her in his portfolio.
    “What are you smiling at?”
    Raphael blinked. Jesamine had caught him remembering. “Nothing. Just a random thought.”
    “You spend too much time on your own, Raphael Vega.”
    “Perhaps.” An explosion caused everyone to duck. Raphael’s lips were suddenly dry. “Sometimes I feel it’s not enough time, if this is what having company takes.”
    Jesamine pointed to the ticker. As reports came through from the airship, a relay of young captains tore off the tapes, scanned them, and then hurried the news to Dunbar if there was something new. “It prints the reports being sent by wireless from the airship?”
    Raphael nodded. “That’s right.”
    Jesamine looked impressed. “No shit?”
    In a field to the rear, an Odin biplane came in to land. The observer scrambled from the duel cockpit and ran towards the grassy knoll, while the pilot cut the engine, but stayed where he was as a refueling crew went to work. The observer, still in vulcanized goggles and leather flying helmet, and his face black with oil, breathlessly delivered a verbal report as Dunbar listened intently. Jesamine watched it all with precise interest. “It’s all down to communication, isn’t it? I mean, this beats waving flags and blowing bugles.”
    Raphael nodded down the valley. “Communications are for the commanders safely in the rear. Out there it’s some poor fucker getting himself blown all over the map. It’s about fixed bayonets and death, girl.”
    Dunbar dismissed the Odin’s observer who stepped away, pulling off his helmet and goggles, and lighting a cigarette. Dunbar faced his aides. “Gentlemen…”
    That one word had everyone’s attention.
    “The reports from the air lead me to believe that we must ready the second wave. The 19th, the 3rd Foot, Englund’s Irregulars, and the 2nd Armored should all make ready.” With the orders issued, a number of officers hurried away, while others attempted to use the still malfunctioning field telephones. Dunbar looked at his watch. “I want my cavalry commanders here in five minutes.”
    Having done what he needed to do, Dunbar dropped into a folding chair and his batman poured his first whiskey of the day into a cut-glass tumbler. Jesamine moved a little closer to Raphael. “Have you sensed anything, anything at all?”
    “You mean from the Other Place?”
    “Like where else?”
    “No.”
    “And Cordelia looked and saw nothing, right?”
    “Right. And Cordelia knows her looking.”
    “On the Potomac they carried the Dark Things with them, and kept them out on the perimeter of the camp, in these huge pens with high steel fences that glowed in the night. The bodies of the dead were thrown into the damned things, and sometimes the bodies of the living. No one wanted to go near them, and even the Zhaithan fucking loathed