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man possessed, lashing out with the Cossack blade and his empty Webley.
    Horror overtook him, for his leader had not seen the approaching danger.
    Gurung screamed a warning at his officer.
    “Sahib! Behind you!”
    Throwing a kukri was an acquired and delicate skill, and CHM Gurung was renowned as an able practitioner and excellent shot.
    The bloodied kukri flew through the air.
    It missed.
    On hearing the warning, Captain Graham had turned, just in time for a bayonet to slam into his solar plexus, punching through gristle and bone, folding him in two with the weight of the thrust.
    The dying officer tried to swing the sabre, but he was robbed of his strength, rolling away to the left as the Cossack twisted his rifle, causing unspeakable agony.
    The rifle spoke once, blasting a larger hole in Graham’s chest, stopping his heart in the briefest of moments.
    Beside himself with rage, partially at the death of the popular British officer , and partially because of his own failure, the maddened Gurung threw himself forward, crashing into the Cossack, and sending both men flying.
    His shoulder wound forgotten, the wiry Gurkha dodged the knife aimed at his body and slipped inside the thrust, knocking the man down again and breaking the Cossack’s wrist when he fell on top of his arm.
    The knife fell away from his useless fingers , and was instantly retrieved by Gurung.
    He stabbed quickly into the man’s side and stomach and was about to finish him off when a sixth sense warned him and he rolled away.
    A sabre cut the air where his head had been the briefest moment before.
    Another blow made contact, slamming into his midriff, but failing to cause him damage, the blade eating into his webbing and pouches and halting at the buckle.
    One of his younger platoon members saw his senior NCO in difficulty and sprang forward, only to receive a deadly blow as his kukri was brushed aside, and the sabre left free to kill.
    The dead man’s kukri dropped invitingly to the ground, but the Cossack understood the situation, and made sure he stayed between it and Gurung.
    Swinging the shashka, he advanced again, his wounded adversary having no choice but to retreat, the knife useless against such a heavy attack.
    A burst of firing , close at hand, marked a momentary separation between some of the combatants, a space that some of the Cossacks exploited, using PPSh’s to slay a number of Gurkhas.
    The firing distracted the cavalryman, only for a split-second, but enough for Gurung to spring.
    Attention back on the fight, the Cossack slashed at the moving shape, nicking an arm as the Gurkha rolled low and right, slipping under the attack, and jamming the knife in the meat of the cavalryman’s thigh.
    It jarred into the bone, causing a horrendous pain that momentarily paralysed the Cossack, until it passed just as quickly and he turned to deal the Gurkha a deadly blow.
    “Ayo Gurkhali!”
    Gurung led with a powerful thrusting straight arm, moving inside the latest sabre cut, the retrieved kukri smashing, point first, straight through the man’s upper teeth, before penetrating the roof of his mouth and into the brain beyond.
     
     
    Regardless of the absence of verification in the Divisional records, Kazakov actually had been awarded the Red Star for valour, back in the days when he was a patriot , prepared to risk his life for the Rodina.
    That had long since passed, and the butchery to which his unit had been subjected, often by orders of doubtful military worth, had left him with only self-preservation of immediate concern.
    Or so he thought.
    Watching from his position, he observed men he had lived with these past four years, comrades and friends, dying and bleeding for the same cause he had forsaken.
    Something clicked inside.
    “Blyad!”
    Substituting his weapon for a discarded SVT rifle with spare magazines, he slipped forward in the half-crouching run that marked out the veterans from the cannon fodder.
    Arriving at the old German