Doom's Break by Christopher Rowley

Lieutenant Cump had recovered the signal flags and was right behind. Combliss found a discarded shield and held it up to protect the admiral. It was good that he did so because a shower of small rocks came down almost immediately and banged off the shield.
    About halfway down was the most dangerous stretch. The trail ducked in close beneath a near vertical drop from the top of the cliff. There was absolutely no protection. Even with the shield held above him, Heuze could not get past unscathed. A couple of stones struck him, one on the shoulder and one on the back. The second one almost knocked him over.
    Then a bigger rock hit the shield, overwhelming Combliss and driving the shield down onto Heuze's head. He went down. Other men helped him get up. One of them was struck on the head by another rock and fell backward off the edge of the trail and plummeted down to the beach.
    Horrified, Heuze got his crutch underneath him and drove himself across the next few feet to the relative safety of an overhang just past the turn. Combliss got in behind him.
    "Admiral, are you all right?"
    Heuze thought his heart was going to burst from the exertion, and his head was still ringing from the blow, but he muttered, "Of course," between gasps for breath. He hoped he looked better than Combliss, who'd lost his helmet and had blood trickling steadily down one side of his face. Then Lieutenant Cump joined them, still carrying the bag of flags, with rope coiled over his shoulder. He opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by a shriek as a body flew past from above, bounced off the trail, and went on spinning downward. Far below, the men had abandoned the beach entirely and were bobbing in the waves as far out as they dared to go.
    "Complete, fornicating disaster," muttered Heuze.
    More men were coming down the trail, many of them wounded. The fight at the top had moved down past the overhang, and the retreat accelerated because the men could only fight while under a hail of rocks from above.
    There was no way to stay under the overhang. Hundreds of men had to get past. Heuze got his crutch beneath him and shoved off once more, hurling himself from rock to rock, the crutch slamming up under his arm, his stump burning.
    Bruised, battered, breathing hard, his vision fading to a red haze, the admiral finally reached the beach, where the hard trail gave way to soft sand. On the uppermost dunes the sand was deep and soft, and his peg leg sank in an inch or two with every step.
    A rock the size of his head struck not three feet away, creating a crater in the sand.
    Heuze dug deeper with his crutch and hauled himself over the sand. Stones spattered down around him, but he was still spared. Lieutenant Cump had the bag of flags on top of his head, which saved him when a rock clipped it a few moments later. Cump went down, however, knocked out cold by a fist-size piece of slate.
    Heuze stopped with a weary shake of the head. They were all going to die in this miserable spot, he was certain. But he couldn't leave young Cump lying there. A soldier had leaned over the lieutenant to check his pulse.
    "He lives."
    "Damn," muttered the admiral. "Ah, well, can't be helped."
    Some stones clattered off the beach nearby. Heuze bent over with a wheeze, grabbed Cump's trailing arm, and helped Combliss and the soldier carry the lieutenant toward the waves.
    "Can you swim, Ensign?" asked Heuze.
    "All my life, sir. I come from Gzia Gi."
    "Good man. Then we'll just take him with us, eh?"
    Somehow, Heuze found the strength to get down that soft dune while helping to carry Cump. They had just made the transition onto the softer mud flats when a tree stump about three feet across slammed into a pool a few feet away and covered him with gobs of muddy sand. Mouth full of grit, barely able to see, he kept pushing forward, felt the water splash over his boot, and dug his crutch in one last time.
    The water was up to his waist, and Cump was floating. Heuze