‘Who’s in command?’

She just shrugged and waved a lazy arm, this as the first distinctive phut came of a discharged mortar. Habit made Jardine duck low, which got him a look of disdain from those around Florencia; he would find out later they had endured days of this. The shell passed overhead to land with a crump on the road that led to the bridge; hitting the metalled surface the explosion was made more deadly by the lack of absorption in the solid roadway.

The screams that arose were mixed; some from those caught in the blast, others shouting to get into the trees. Several more landed with a small radius behind them and Cal knew instinctively what was coming. The mortar team were isolating those in the front line preparatory to an infantry assault, and overhead they could hear, too, the drones of approaching bombers. Reassuringly the higher pitch of fighter engines soon materialised as they tried to engage the bombers well away from the city centre.

‘Where’s the store of grenades?’ he asked; if that was what she was doing, he would work with her.

‘There are no more, querido. Me and my fellow dinamiteros are wearing the last of our supplies.’

‘Ammunition?’

‘Low,’ she sighed, ‘very low.’

‘Then you should withdraw across the bridge and get behind the machine guns.’

Some of the fire he knew so well resurfaced then, as she spat out, ‘Never.’

The mortar fire had not ceased but the range was steadily dropping, and as it did so he saw some of the men present throw back a canvas cover to reveal lines of dark-green wine bottles, each with a bit of protruding rag.

‘Petrol bombs, Cal,’ murmured Alverson.

Never having seen them used, Jardine was thinking that fuel would have been better used laying a trap for what was coming: a shallow trench into which it could have been poured, then set alight once the enemy was over it. There was no point in that now, for it was obvious these worker fighters were not going to wait to be attacked – they intended to go forward first.

‘Have the Regulares got automatic weapons, Florencia?’

‘A few, not many.’

‘Any spare rifles?’

She called to someone, another young woman, dark-skinned and just as weary, who came towards him with a Mauser and five rounds; even he understood the Spanish for ‘that is all’. Tactical sense made what they were planning to do – not just stand and fight, but attack – utter madness.

It was made worse by there seeming to be no directing brain; the decision to move seemed like one arrived at by some collective osmosis. No order was given, but a mass of fighters, hundreds in number, armed with what weapons they had and many of these unreliable petrol bombs, began to move, not with haste but with a palpable and steely determination, several lit torches flaring in the line, this while Alverson’s camera clicked.

‘Do you come forward, Tyler?’

‘No, Cal, this is as far as I go.’

A lone, young, male voice began to sing the anarchist song ‘A las Barricadas’, which Cal had heard in Barcelona, and it was soon taken up by others, rising to fill the woods through which they moved until it was being bellowed as they moved out into a large clearing, at the opposite side of which was the enemy, who, clearly under orders, fired off a rifle salvo. That it was effective made no difference; with a wild scream the mixed-sex militia just rushed forward.

Those with rifles were firing from the hip and shoulder on the move, those with bottles leaning into a torch-bearer to get lit their cloth fuses. As soon as they were aflame the run was at as much speed as they could muster, one or two crumpling at the knees as they were shot, others behind them picking up their dropped makeshift bombs, which had not broken on the soft uncut grass.

Seeking to stand still and aim, it was difficult for Cal Jardine to pick targets through a throng in front of him, that not made any easier by the dark-green uniforms of those he was seeking to kill, which in the trees made them indistinct. Five rounds did not go far even if they were effective and he had little choice but to go after Florencia, who had a grenade in one hand, with the other ready to pull the pin.

She had to be a target, so dropping the rifle he hauled out his pistol and began to fire at what lay right in front of her, his only hope in emptying it that he would disturb anyone aiming for what had to be one of their most dangerous opponents. At the same time, even if he thought her crazy, he had to admire the sheer fearless brio of her charge, not that she was alone in that, it was common to them all.

His curiosity as to why the bottles remained unthrown till the last possible moment was explained when they began to smash against the trees, the flames immediately spreading to the branches and the tinder-dry grass beneath, several inches long and untidy in clumps; they would not have broken otherwise. Florencia had thrown her first grenade, shouting as she did so to warn her comrades to duck down, immediately breaking the thread on another, and she hugged the ground.

Cal grabbed two off her, pulled the pins and threw them into the rapidly spreading flames of the burning petrol. These were sending up plumes of black smoke, which was working to obscure the anarchist fighters. It was also making life very uncomfortable for a unit whose attack had been forestalled, for with a slight easterly wind, the smoke and flames were being driven into their position. Shouted commands were coming out of the treeline and it was obvious the troopers were retiring.

Staying alongside Florencia, and after she had thrown another grenade, Cal was able to grab her and stop her entering the wood, where she would be isolated and a sitting duck – especially since her comrades’ forward movement had petered out through a lack of both firepower and wine bottles – not that he got much thanks.

It was only when she struggled to get free that Cal realised she was in a state of such exhaustion she must be near to hallucinating; her eyes were like those of a wild animal, her kicking and screaming the act of a mad creature, both of which stopped abruptly when he slapped her hard. She stood stock-still, in shock, staring at him for several seconds, then burst into tears.

With the edge of the wood now ablaze and forming an impenetrable barrier, it was a peaceful withdrawal, for not even the most rabid militia fighter thought they could hold what they had taken. If their enemy did not advance as soon as the fire died down they would move to left or right to take them in flank. The real question was could they hold their original position?

What saved them was not their bravery but the arrival of what Alverson had predicted was needed. Unbeknown to those in the Casa de Campo, as they had been fighting the first troops of the International Brigades had come into the city, marching in disciplined columns up the wide boulevards to the cheers and tears of the populace. They did not stop; one brigade headed for the University area, the other straight for the Segovia Bridge and the Casa de Campo.

They heard the clumping boots first as they crept back to their start point, and that induced a frisson of fear; marching boots meant soldiers and that meant Nationalists. But the singing of the communist anthem, ‘The Internationale’, soon laid that to rest and, with a swaggering fellow at their head, in a cap with his communist red badge very evident, they passed four abreast, staring straight ahead, through the muddled crowd of anarchist fighters. They then began to deploy for battle.

The man at their head, later identified as Manfred Stern, alias General Kléber, stood to one side and began to shout orders to the militias to disperse, to go home and rest. That was when it finally came home to them that these brigades had come to their rescue, and rescue it was, because there was no doubt a Nationalist counter-attack was in preparation, and it was one they could not have withstood.