Yet before he had taken ten steps, just as he passed the edge of a shell crater, a tremendous force suddenly slammed into his back from behind and to the side!
"Clang!" A dull metallic impact rang out! Caught completely off guard, Tommy was knocked sprawling forward, and the powder keg slipped from his grasp and rolled away.
Dazed and disoriented, he rolled over to see a figure drenched in blood—almost more blood than man—lying atop the spot where he had just stood. A heavy Sauron arrow that had been meant for his back quivered where it had buried itself in the man's shoulder blade! It was the Mountain Company commander!
The crisscrossing wounds and bloodstains on the commander's face made him nearly unrecognizable, but his eyes blazed with a terrifying brightness as they locked onto Tommy. He coughed up a mouthful of bloody froth. His voice was hoarse as a broken bellows, yet it carried an unquestionable command:
"Instructor... leave the dying to me. You... cough, cough... you still have to live... command the troops..."
Before he had even finished speaking, the commander suddenly exerted himself and sprang up from the ground, as though the arrow through his shoulder did not exist.
He seized the powder keg, clamped it tightly beneath one arm, and picked up a broken spear of unknown ownership with his other hand. Gathering the last of his strength, he roared at Tommy:
"Take whoever's left... fall back into the fort! Tell Roderick... the Mountain Company... didn't disgrace him!!"
Having shouted those words, he did not look at Tommy again. He turned, erupting with the final light and heat of his life, and charged wildly toward the rear of the position—the most dangerous breach of all—with the seized powder keg in his arms, like a madman