"Covering fire! Hurry!" Roderick shouted anxiously from the rear.
The flintlock riflemen fired desperately, suppressing the defenders atop the wall. At last, after suffering more than twenty casualties among the auxiliary troops, three thick planks were barely laid across the trench, swaying unsteadily and smeared with blood.
"Flintlock Rifle Company! Cross the trench! Seize the earthen wall!" Roderick seized this fleeting opportunity.
"Kill!"
The bravest soldiers were the first to charge across the slick, wobbling planks toward the other side. Webber gritted his teeth and followed close behind. The planks groaned beneath their feet, unable to bear the weight, while the wounded howled in the trench below amid a horrifying spectacle of corpses.
He practically scrambled across the planks, his legs giving way as he tumbled into the mud on the far side of the trench. Ignoring his bedraggled state, he immediately scrambled to his feet and lunged at the earthen wall just ahead with his bayonet leveled.
This stretch of earthen wall had been badly damaged by artillery fire and volleys, leaving a breach several meters wide. The defenders had also been temporarily suppressed. Dozens of Carnford soldiers successfully poured through, only to engage in brutal close-quarters combat with the Sauron defenders surging madly in from both sides of the breach and from the rear!
"For Carnford!"
"For the Great Chieftain!"
Roars and screams intertwined as bayonets clashed with scimitars, sending blood and flesh flying.
Webber had just driven his bayonet through a Sauron soldier's belly when a Battle Axe came chopping in from the side. He barely twisted aside to evade it, then swung his rifle butt across, smashing it into the man's face. With a backhand thrust, he finished the enemy.
Figures locked in savage combat filled the battlefield. The mud had been dyed a dark red