Expecting praise for his rapid progress and recent victory, Laporta was infuriated by the tone of complaint in the response of the titular commander. The list of towns and villages from which the enemy had been ejected was, it seemed, not just insignificant, the whole strategy of the column was mistaken, racing ahead with no thought to their flanks or the taking and securing of territory for the Republic.

Not a witness to this exchange – he would not have understood it anyway – Cal Jardine had got his wounded boy into the home of the local doctor who, if he had fled, being no supporter of Republicanism, had at least left in his surgery the means to deal with a bullet wound.

There were many other casualties and a row of sheet-covered bodies by the bridge, evidence that taking it had extracted a high price in blood. Those of the enemy dead, and there were no wounded, were thrown into the canal to float south as a warning to other places tempted to support the generals.

Florencia, interrogating the jubilant survivors of Albatàrrec – it had suffered death and torture as had everywhere else and its inhabitants were now busy feeding and fêting their saviours – had found a woman who used to act as the doctor’s nurse and she was fetched into the surgery to take charge. Competent, she knew how to stem the flow of blood as well as cleanse the wound, though it was soon apparent the bullet was still lodged in the left shoulder and would need to be removed, an operation better carried out back in the city. The lad, named Stanley, would be sent to Barcelona with the anarchist wounded.

As soon as he was sure Stanley was in good hands he left to make sure that the rest of his boys were being cared for – the rearguard having been fetched in from their foxholes – that they had food and drink as well as the means to clean both themselves and their equipment, both adequately dealt with by Vince Castellano, now sorting them out a billet so they could get some much sought-after sleep. He also felt the need to give them a lecture and, of course, to praise them.

‘I couldn’t have asked for more. For men who are raw you performed splendidly.’ Though these youngsters were pleased and knew they had every right to be, the rearguard less than the others, Cal could sense a residual layer of resentment, exemplified by the looks on their faces when Broxburn Jock spoke, his face tired and pinched, his voice cracked.

‘How’s wee Stan farin’?’

‘He’s in good hands, Jock, comfortable and asleep. The wound is clean and he will be evacuated to a proper hospital for an operation to remove a bullet.’ The pause was brief, the tone Cal employed turning quite hard. ‘I know you are not chuffed with the order I gave to leave Stan when he took his wound, but we were in the middle of a fight.’

One or two nodded, others did not. Tempted, as he was, to admit he had failed to designate anyone to deal with casualties, Cal felt it would come across as false. He had to be hard of heart and that was something they needed to learn, and he glanced at Vince, who had returned from his search and was looking at him, unseen by the lads, with an amused expression on his face as if to imply he knew what was coming.

‘That’s the way it is, and you’d best get used to it. In a battle, the effectives come before everyone else, and most important, you lot forgot to reload, which should be automatic. How would that have played out if one of those trucks full of Civil Guards had decided to stop and make a fight of it and you with empty weapons? It would not just be wee Stan in the surgery. You’re all volunteers, so if you don’t like it you can ship out anytime and I won’t seek to keep you, but know this. If I’m here and Vince is here, we tell you what to do and you do it without question. It has to be that way to keep you alive.’

They were not all abashed by his tone; the best of them held their cold stares and Cal would not have had it any other way. While he could not abide the way the anarchists behaved, neither did he want to lead men who were incapable of individual thoughts or were too frightened to express them. The best soldiers had a combination of both, as well as the initiative to act without orders.

‘Now, for the future, if any of you know first aid, give your names to Vince, and I will see about getting the kind of kit you need to be effective as medics.’

‘Right, you lot,’ Vince called. ‘I got us a billet in the schoolhouse, so let’s get some rest.’

Crossing the main square, now full of the column’s trucks, as well as the now-upright cannon and an abandoned fuel bowser, Cal and Florencia passed the communists, as before in a separate section by the steps to the church, their equipment neatly arranged and looking as smart as they had the first time he had seen them. Florencia took pleasure in telling Cal, in a voice loud enough for them to overhear, that ‘the cowards took no part in the battle, but stayed to the rear where they were safe’.

The only reaction she got was from one of the squad leaders, who looked at her with the same level of hate as she was displaying, then snapped his upraised thumb through his teeth, which meant Cal had to drag his woman away from what would have been a futile dispute.

‘Come on, let’s find out what your leader has in mind.’

They found Juan Luis in the office of the town mayor, sitting behind his desk: he, a left socialist, had been found hanging from the wide archway of the door that led to the courtyard of his house, with a notice saying he was a traitor pinned to his chest. Inside, his family – a wife and two daughters – had been raped and mutilated, then finished off with gunshots to the head.

In total, the insurgents had murdered some thirty-four of the town’s inhabitants before fleeing, taking with them those sympathisers who had not already fled to safety, the locals who supported their aims and had helped their ‘cleansing’. It had to be hoped that in raking those fleeing vehicles, some of those who had betrayed their fellow citizens to the Falange had been killed along with the blueshirts.

Having not long come off the phone to Villabova, Laporta was in a mood of quiet fury, and in reacting to Cal Jardine he showed scant gratitude for the fact that his bacon had been saved by the actions of the Olympians. A question as to the removal of the wounded got a very brusque response, almost a dismissive wave of the hand. About to remonstrate with him, Florencia beat Cal to it; she launched into a furious burst of Spanish invective, halfway through which Laporta started to laugh, his shoulders shaking.

‘My friend, she has just told me I am an ingrate.’ Then his hand went up to protect his face as Florencia, still yelling at him in Spanish, picked up the late mayor’s ashtray and made to throw it at his head; he was saved by Cal grabbing it out of her hand. ‘If she is like this in bed I wonder you have the energy to fight.’

‘I think you owe my boys a vote of thanks,’ Cal said, not in the least amused, now actually restraining Florencia with one arm round her waist, seeking to avoid her kicking legs and now suffering an equal number of insults as the man behind the desk.

The look on Laporta’s face changed immediately, and the laughter ceased. ‘Which I will do in person, my friend, but right now I am suffering from being told by Villabova, our little Cortez, that everything we have done is an error.’

‘What?’ Cal enquired, before snapping at Florencia to calm down, which she did as Laporta talked; his tone was enough to tell her that the matter was serious.

‘He has told me we need to secure the whole region through which we have passed, not just the road to Saragossa, and he listed a whole number of places I have never heard of that we have failed to occupy and cleanse of fascists. Clearly he had a map which tells him this, but one fact is obvious: he has been so busy taking other areas he has not yet reached Lérida, this while our friends are being executed by the hundred further west.’