The spear soon lodged between an enemy's ribs in a fierce thrust and could not be pulled free. Without hesitation, he let go, bent down to pick up a chipped machete beside a corpse, and continued his slaughter.
The blade struck Chain Mail in a spray of sparks, sliced into flesh through leather armor, and brought dull cracks of breaking bone when it hit limbs.
There was only one simple, blazing thought left in his mind: revenge.
For the company commander, for all the comrades who had fallen—comrades he had tried to encourage but lacked the strength to save—and for his former self, trembling amid blood and fire, on the verge of collapse.
Most of the forward positions had already been breached by the Sauron soldiers. The surviving Carnford soldiers, like iron filings drawn to a magnet, began gathering of their own accord and in silence beneath the Fir Flag that still stood tall, riddled with bullet holes and smeared with blood.
Their clothes were tattered, every one of them wounded, with the same blood-red numbness in their eyes as they prepared for one final, hopeless resistance. At this moment, any command was superfluous. Only their last scraps of instinct and the faint glimmer gathered beneath that flag held them together.
Tommy brandished his machete and staggered through the thinning cloud of smoke from the explosion.
Behind the smoke were more Sauron soldiers, dazed senseless by the blast wave, swaying on their feet, as though they no longer even had the strength to flee.
Like a tiger charging into a flock of sheep, he hacked wildly at those disoriented enemies. When the blade curled, he smashed with its spine, kicked with his feet, and rammed with his head.
He did not know how many he had struck or how many