25th May Coming early

This wouldn't have happened if he'd stayed with his old regiment, Newbury thought absurdly. They were still in the Med, or they were the last he'd known. Somebody was shouting but he couldn't make out the words. It was probably that Portuguese lot, which was streaming down the hill after him.

His knee was afire with agony, but it held up under his weight when he was finally able to scramble upright. Could he run on it? One way to find out. He gripped his rifle and ran, his stride slightly hobbling.

Pye held both rifles watching as Cotton descended towards Newbury, and the Portuguese closed in as well. He slung one rifle and held the other firmly in his hands. How could he give cover when Cotton strictly said not to fire. He tightened his hold on his rifle. He lowered his rifle, then decided that if a Portuguese man would be seen taking aim at the other two riflemen, he would fire, but if they were not he would keep his weapon down and make sure the other won't get filthy.

Newbury was 300 yards away, or so, but he was up and running. No, he wasn't. He was limping, which was no more than Cotton expected, what with his wound and the way he'd gone down.

He saved his breath for running, desperately aware that it wasn't Newbury who was getting away from the Portuguese, but he himself who was getting closer to them. He had to pause to catch his breath, and bent over, dragging cold, damp air into his lungs before standing up and showing his empty hands above his head. "Ingleses!" he yelled again, doing his best to imitate a Sergeant's parade-ground bellow. "Amigos. Don't you dare hurt him, you bastards! Nós somos Ingleses!"

He'd lost his shako. Dammit it all. It had come off his head somewhere between here and his mad scrambling crawl over that first hill. Felt strange, being bare-headed. Newbury didn't like it.

There was Cotton, coming toward him... without his rifle? Of all the - what the devil was he shouting? And when had he learned Portuguese, or Spanish, or whatever that was?

Two more stumbling steps and his knee buckled again. He had plenty of flight in him, if his damned leg would only bear up. Cursing to himself, he pushed off the ground, using his rifle for support. If he could get up and over the next rise, it would be good. Wasn't too far.

Pye watched as Newbury nearly met with Cotton. They were no where near safe, but the wounded rifleman atleast would be be given additional support and aid. Pye looked towards the Portuguese. They didn't seem to react to anything that Cotton appeared to be shouting at them. Or did they? From the distance he could not see any drastic changes at all, and so he raised his rifle again. He could fire a warning shot. Make the men stop. Though it could as well fuel them to kill the two men that were running before them.

"..come on.. stop followin' them." The boy whispered torn. He leveled his rifle again. High enough that he could not have the bullet stray and hit either Cotton or Newbury.

Thirty yards - twenty-five. "Come on, Joe!" He caught his foot and stumbled, managing to catch himself before he went headlong. He paused. Dammit, he did not need to have a stitch right now, damn it all. He pressed his arm to his side. "We're English!" he yelled up at the Portuguese. They looked a rag-tag mob from this close, but he didn't like the look of the farm implements they were wielding. "Don't damn hurt him - we're on your side! Ingleses!"

Finally. He noticed one of them nudge his friends and point at him, seemingly querying that fact he'd come towards them without his rifle - though he still had his sword bayonet, which was still in its sheath.

"You all right, Joe?" he called across the few yards still separating them.

"Oh grand," Newbury answered from where he was sprawled on the ground. "Except I didn't quite find that horse."

Pye waited. He saw them still unharmed and there wasn't yet a man to lift and point their weapon at the pair. He shifted his position barely, not caring if his pant leg had gotten soaked and drenched with mud. There was a sharp edged stone pressing at his leg too, but he ignored it for the attention he gave to the men in the distance.

"So I see," Cotton said dryly. "Found summat else, though, didn't you?" He was careful to keep his hands up where the Portuguese could see them, making sure he didn't put them anyway near the hilt of his sword-bayonet. "Friend. Mi amigo, sim?" He indicated Newbury and himself, and tried his limited Portuguese again. "Nós somos Ingleses - don't shoot. We're bloody English."

Something else indeed. Newbury shook his head slightly and sat himself up with an effort. "Aye. Figured we needed some company."

He left his rifle lying just out of reach, understanding - however belatedly - the importance of appearing un-threatening.

Pye lowered his rifle and sat himself down. The danger must've passed. The Portuguese did not shoot, or aim at the pair. They were both showing that they meant no harm. Meant that the other side was listening. Since he had a pair of rifles in possession, he could not approach without appearing threatening.

So instead he just made sure to have the pair out of the mud, Cotton's in one hand, his own in the other.

Finally they seemed to be thinking. Cotton could almost see their thoughts chasing across their minds. The leader - or the one who was furthest in front, anyway - looked at them, frowning, and indicated that Cotton help Newbury up, which he reached to do, though watching the Portuguese carefully in case they made any sudden threatening movement. "We'm goin' to be in so much trouble," he said to his fellow Rifleman. "You all right - you took a proper tumble there."

He didn't even want to think about what sort of trouble they'd be in once they got back to face Captain Vickery.

"Just done in my knee, I think. This ain't no sorta ground for runnin' over," he said, glad for the hand up.

"Your knee, your side and prob'ly damn near everythin' else, judgin' by the way you went over," Cotton said, wondering if they dared risk reaching for Newbury's rifle. The looks on the faces of the men standing above them made him think twice, and he frowned. At least they hadn't tried grabbing him and Newbury yet, he supposed. That was always good.

" 'Bout the size of it," he grunted, putting most of his weight on his uninjured knee as he brushed off the worst of the dirt from his jacket. "Here come the lads."

"Not before time, neither," Cotton said, belatedly wondering how the German lads of the company would react to being described as 'English'.

More greenjackets arriving was putting the band of Portuguese men on edge. They weren't keen on being outnumbered, apparently. Funny how it didn't bother them the other way 'round, Newbury thought sourly.

"Aye. Be s'prised if the cap'n weren't with 'em." Even though he hoped otherwise. Anything to delay the inevitable blowing up.

The riflemen neared from one side and Pye felt that he had enough of waiting for things to happen. This did not mean he would readily fire. He slipped the other rifle over his shoulder. It felt rather unusual to carry two weapons, rifles at one side, give or take any other equipment a man had to wear. He clutched them onto them with one hand, so that although the said hand was now useless to aid him in a different manner, it kept the rifles safe from mud.

For one used to orders, it was hard to make a decision on his own. Even as he did, he doubted himself and why he was suddenly going below. If he'd have stopped take a moment of thought, he probably could not find any good reason. Gracefully though, using his free hand to aid, where the ground got slippery, he moved across the rugged terrain. He did not slip, and had used a branch to ease him in the right direction after the terrain suggested that he would.

He'd chosen a path, which had more trees. It was somewhat further from the two that Cotton and Newbury had taken. It still had it benefits though. Like in the time, when he had been still at home and needed to slip past hunting party, hoping the dogs would be more eager to run after a fox, or the times when a chicken would disappear out of the kitchen, he tried to be quick and silent and just 'not there'.

Closer. His arm was protesting against the weight it had to keep in order. He stopped, waited, looked to the spot where the two riflemen were. Unarmed. The Portuguese still did not let them reach for their rifle, but they were not firing. Closer and silently even when his toe struck against a stone and the pain seemed to take all thought from the lad for the moment.

Cotton risked a glance back, towards where he'd come from, and couldn't help his heart sinking. Yes, those were his comrades, but their appearance over the brow of the hill seemed to be making the Portuguese villagers more nervous. And nervous civilians - especially out here - could spell trouble.

"Franceses," muttered one, darkly, fingering the knife he was carrying in a most unfriendly manner.

"Não," Cotton said. "Ingleses - Rifles."

That just brought blank looks from the Portuguese.

Pye slowed down when he saw the hill become steeper. He didn't want to be heard or noticed, so caution had to be taken even in the wake of loosing precious moments in that way. He glanced up again briefly. Did the men have a leader? If there was a leader, it would be possible for the things to be simpler. If they did not, he felt his throat burn as he tried to ease his breathing, things would be more complicated.

His trousers were mud covered up to their knees, and higher on his left side, where the tails of his coat seemed to have soaked it up a great deal. His arm that was used to steady his going, had the sleeves dark brown, the colour which ran up to the elbow. There were a few cuts from the bushes that refused to be grasped or to allow the young man through.

He'd come closer again and stopped to observe which of the men seemed to have others listening. He took a few deep gulps of breath to steady his breathing then moved up the slope. It was easier in a way, as he could lean against the ground, but it meant, that the rifles were just so much more in the way. He was off to the right of them. Closer. The bayonet clunked at his side and he pressed on it quickly. Perhaps fortunate, the sound which seemed to him so loud, was rather quiet and there was no wind to carry it far.

A bugle sounded the 'halt' and Cotton glanced back up the hill, in time to see Captain Vickery draw his sword and pass it over to one of the other Riflemen - Cotton thought it was Roper, but couldn't be sure. There was a pause, and then Cavender unfastened his waist-belt and handed it over to another Rifleman, together with the sword-bayonet suspended from it, before taking something from the man.

Cotton's heart was in his mouth as he watched the two unarmed greenjackets, one an officer and the other a young lad, approach across the open ground between the two groups, under what he realised was supposed to be a flag of truce. It looked like a shirt, or a piece of shirt, tied to a ramrod. Cavender, who was carrying it, looked understandably nervous, but Vickery just looked grim.

They were going to be in so much trouble...

Pye stopped. He had gotten far enough. Leaning against a tree, he breathed heavily into the sleeve of his left arm. It silenced the sound for the most part though it made him smell the moist that was collected there. He climbed a bit higher as he found a much clearer view of the happenings and of the group standing at the top of the hill, while he could nestle himself against a pair of trees, of which one had its roots curving outwards from the ground in part.

A clear view, meant a clear shot. He was muddy enough not to be easily told apart from his surroundings, while his earlier breathing into the arm, left traces of mud smeared over his cheeks and the lower part of his face. Just so, his shako now lay propped on the root. With the corner of his eye he was able to catch another figure descending from the hill atop which they've seen poor Newbury, before Cotton broke of into a run without a rifle.

Someone?..No, it was, the captain! He looked up. Better make a move for a clearer shot, if ever there was needed one. They seemed to negotiate upon the fact that the riflemen were riflemen and not French. But if things got bad... He snatched his shako, and seeing a more desirable spot - in his mind - he made the last ascend towards it. As earlier he seated himself. One rifle was propped against the tree trunk, with its leather sling tucked so that even if one snuck up, to steal it, they'd have been yanking on it first. The other was placed and ready.

Captain Vickery was coming toward them. Great. They were going to get reprimanded in front of a group of bloodythirsty Portuguese. Could it get any better? Newbury gazed longingly at his rifle, still lying in the mud, and wished he could safely retrieve it for use as a crutch of sorts.

"Reckon that'll be it for me," he said quietly. "He'll send me off with this lot, for certain."

"He won't, then," Cotton said. "Or, well, if he does, he''ll be sendin' me along of you an' all." He braced himself to take as much of Newbury's weight as he could; the other man's side must be agony, and he hadn't done his knee any favours, either.

"Wait here," Vickery said to Cavender, who tightened his grip on the ramrod with its makeshift white flag, letting the officer walk forward alone over the thirty or so yards separating him from his two Riflemen, and the group of Portuguese who seemed a little hesitant now, though they turned towards him with a show of their old bravado.

"Put your weapons down," Vickery said in Portuguese, showing that he was unarmed. "We are English soldiers, Riflemen, with the English army. We have fought the French at Oporto and we are busy making sure they are leaving. Some of them have taken one of our officers prisoner and we are trying to get him back." He hoped his Portuguese made sense, anyway.

The leading villager still looked wary, but lowered his pitchfork a fraction. "You are not wearing the red uniforms the English wear. How do we know you are telling the truth?"

"Our weapons are different and we skirmish." He had to use the English word and hastened to explain. "We fight in twos, working together, not in a long line, and we use the trees and bushes to hide." He indicated Cotton and Newbury. "I am sorry my men disturbed you. They meant no harm."

He noticed that Newbury's rifle was lying on the ground and Cotton seemed to be completely unarmed. And Pye was nowhere to be seen, although he knew the new lad had accompanied the two miscreants. "Where's Pye got to?" he asked, switching into English.

Cotton bit his lip and shrugged apologetically. "Left me rifle with him, sir, back up there. Didn't see him after I come runnin' down here to try to help J... Newbury, sir."