Guns of the Dawn (42 page)

Emily recalled Marie Angelline at war: quick to command, ready to lead, easy to follow.
Acting?
Who knew? Perhaps, inside, the girl was as unsure and frightened as the rest.

Brocky opened his mouth to add another innuendo, but a particularly harsh scream of agony broke through to derail him. Scavian stood up and swore under his breath.

‘I wish the poor bastard’d break and get it over with,’ Tubal said. ‘This is the third prisoner we’ve had since I came, and none of the others lasted like this.
What the hell are they doing to him?’

‘Just the usual,’ Scavian said. ‘Lascari is . . . persistent, that is all.’ The usual rules of the Club seemed to have lapsed.

‘Have . . . ?’ Emily glanced about, wondering what their reaction would be. ‘Have any of you known any Denlanders from before?’

Brocky shrugged. ‘One or two in the city, on business. Denlanders get the pox like anyone else.’

Tubal gave a weak cough of a laugh. ‘We used to get all our paper through a Denlander merchant. Hammell, that was his name. It was cheaper to buy in bulk from him than in bits and pieces
from the local mill. That always struck me as mad, but I wasn’t going to question it.’

‘Only . . . I spoke with one . . . when I went out, last.’ In halting tones she recounted her experience in the indigene village. Towards the end of the account Mallen had come back
with full glasses, and he hovered in the doorway, listening mutely.

In the end, Tubal spread his hands. ‘What can we say? It’s a revelation to any soldier, but it’s no less true: they’re people just as we’re people. They believe
they’re right, and so do we. You have to think it would be a saner thing if the King and his privy council just kicked the hell out of this new parliament of Denland, and left the rest of us
out of it. But there you are.’

‘That’s disloyal, Salander,’ Scavian challenged him.

‘You’ll see me leading my men out as usual the next time they send us,’ Tubal replied. ‘But that doesn’t mean I have to think war’s a good idea.’

‘Surely they have to realize they’re wrong, though, in the end. They have to know that we’re in the right, defending our homes,’ Emily insisted.

‘The people up above us love to lie, and people down here love to be lied to,’ Brocky said reflectively. ‘There’s many a way of telling someone he’s doing the right
thing. Lascari surely thinks that he’s doing the King’s will right now, and if the King knew about it, he’d have to agree. Us knowing the enemy’s plans is worth one singed
Denlander, he’d say. And we sit here and listen to the result of that thinking, and we all cringe inside, but what’s right and what’s wrong? And if you can’t make the call
when one man is – let’s face it – torturing the life out of another poor bugger, then how can you do it with wars?’

‘Brocky,’ interrupted Scavian. ‘This is too serious. Club rules, yes?’

He wants so badly to know what he does is right.
Emily caught Scavian’s eye and smiled, but got no smile in return, angry and confused as he was.

‘We all used to be like good friends, until the regicide,’ Brocky grumbled. ‘Then some bastards across the border off a king, and we’re all stuck here fighting a
fool’s war. You’ll grant me that, Scavian?’

‘I suppose I cannot, in truth, deny it,’ Scavian said. ‘My grandfather fought alongside the Denlanders in the Hellic wars, after all. You’re right, there was no need for
this.’

‘A toast,’ said Emily, startled by her own boldness. ‘A toast to the ordinary Denlanders, perhaps. Not to their leaders, but to them.’

After thoughtful hesitation, four glasses were lifted to join hers.

Later on, after three rounds of brandy and a half-dozen hands of cards had failed to quell their unease, Emily excused herself to do the rounds of the sentries again. She was
aware that, in making this choice, she was doing exactly what she had chided Ensign Caxton for doing. Her actions were not the mark of a good officer but of someone with time on her hands.

As the impossibly protracted agonies of the captive Denlander wailed out into the night, and as Justin Lascari did his grim duty for king and country, she went from man to man, from woman to
woman, skirting the camp’s perimeter.

‘You’d think they’d hear,’ said one, with his eyes fixed on the swamp. ‘You’d think they’d come and rescue the poor bastard.’

‘Perhaps they will, so keep your eyes sharp.’ Emily passed on down the line, holding out no hope that any such thing would happen.

‘I once knew Denlanders,’ came a voice from behind her. ‘Spoke with them. Knew them well.’

‘Mallen,’ she acknowledged, turning to see his spare frame looming out of the dark.

‘Before the war,’ he continued. ‘Back when no one came here. None from Lascanne, anyway: just me. Only other people studying here were Denlanders. We got to know each other.
All on the same side, back then.’

‘It must have been easier,’ she observed.

‘Than war?’ He snorted.

‘And your friends, they have fought?’

‘Some.’ He pinched an insect out of the air as it whirred past his face, looked it over and let it go. ‘Hunted them down myself. Had to. They were near as good as
me.’

‘I’m sorry, Mallen.’

He shrugged. ‘They understood.’ When he looked at her again, his eyes caught the lamplight briefly and shone. ‘Good job, Marshwic.’

A pause, then she understood. ‘The indigenes? I thought you might be angry. I should have told you before.’

He gave a brief bark of a laugh. ‘You?
They
told me, day after you left them.’ He shuffled, and she realized she had never seen him awkward before, or anything less than
self-assured. ‘I owe you,’ he said shortly.

‘Really? For . . . the swamp people? The indigenes? I can’t say I understand . . .’

His hand had gripped her wrist hard, before she saw it move. He pulled her close, and she was uncomfortably aware of the alien cast of his face, with those tattoos breaking up the betraying
human lines and angles.

‘My people, Marshwic – more than you; more than Lascanne. I can’t ever be one of them, can’t live like they do, see the world as they do. Been trying all my life to
understand them, though. You did well. Good job.’

He released her just as quickly, stepping back a pace but unwilling just to go.

‘You don’t need to owe me anything,’ she told him.

‘Always pay my debts, understand?’ he said and, thinking of the indigenes and the lengths he went to in order to protect them, she had to admit that he did.

He suddenly tensed all over, looking about him. A heartbeat later she realized why. The screaming had stopped.

‘Perhaps Lascari needs a rest himself,’ she said, but he shook his head, holding up a hand for quiet, just as if they were in the jungle.

‘Dead,’ he pronounced. ‘No question of it.’

‘Well, that’s got to be for the—’

‘No,’ he warned. ‘They’ve got all they can from him. Understand? Questioning’s over, so what happens next?’

Emily frowned at him. ‘They know about the Denlanders . . . or some of it.’ A familiar clutching weight began to form inside her stomach. ‘An attack? They’ll want an
attack.’

Mallen nodded, backing away into the night, leaving her heir to the sudden silence of a war being advanced.

And the jungle exploded with gunfire.

A scant moment ago she had heard the shooting: Mallen’s scouts firing into the air or at the enemy, a last desperate chance of warning before the tide swept over them.

‘Cover!’ she had cried. ‘Cover!’ But she had no time to take her own advice. Around her, her squad were just starting to react. Then the trees were alive with the zip and
zing of shot, the crackle of musket fire. From ahead and from one side came the flash and the smoke of the Denlander guns. From behind and from all around, the shouts, the screams of the wounded
and dying.

‘Cover! A line behind cover!’ she cried, but her voice was lost in the bedlam, being outshouted by the dead. The man beside her was punched off his feet, and then the woman on the
other side was sent reeling back with a shot through her arm. Emily dropped to one knee in the shallow water, gun lifted to her shoulder. A breath’s worth of pause and she fired, seeing a
grey shape collapse back into the gloom.

Cover!
But she was right in the open, midway through crossing a pool. Lead balls ploughed into the water or danced past her, like the insects. She staggered to her feet, stumbling
backwards while reaching for the vines and leaves she knew were there.

‘Firing line! Double firing line!’ The orders were Marie Angelline’s, the only voice to cut clear through the chaos. ‘Double ranks and fire! Second rank, fire!’

Emily heard the concentrated roar of three score of muskets discharging as one, but saw none of it. She might be the only one left of her entire squad, of her entire company.

Her hand touched leaves, and she scrabbled at them, pulling herself up the bank. Her empty musket was still directed at the enemy in idiot threat.

‘Got you, Sergeant!’ A hand tucked itself under her armpit, lifting her up. She caught a glimpse of a burly man in red, the Bear Sejant on his sleeve.
Where the hell are my own
men?

He was halfway through lifting her up when his hand left her and she looked back to see him slumped back, red pooling on his chest.

She was struck a massive blow to the side of the head, sending her helmet awry, the force of it knocking her over the bank and into cover.

I’m shot! Shot in the head!
Her eyes refused to focus, and her head was ringing from the impact. She lay on her side in the mud, hands wrestling with the helmet. One finger found
a long, shallow groove ground into it: some almost-spent musket ball’s last act.

Too close! And
the Denlanders could come over the bank at any moment. She fumbled with her musket, reloading as quickly as she could simply by touch. Her vision swam: sharp and blurred,
sharp and blurred.

Someone hit the ground beside her without warning, and she nearly hit him with the gun before she saw the red uniform. He fired a shot over the bank and ducked back to reload.

‘Sergeant,’ he said briefly. Her eyes locked onto the stag emblem on his jacket but she could not place his face.

‘What the devil’s happening?’ she gasped.

He fired a second shot, eyes narrowed. ‘Bastards jumped us, Sergeant.’

‘Where’s Tu— the Lieutenant?’

‘Don’t know, Sergeant.’

She had reloaded by then, and if her eyes twitched, it was from pain and not panic. Her head still rang with the shock of impact. She pointed her gun over the bank and looked out to see the
Denlanders moving off from their cover: a staggered line of grey-clad executioners coming her way, firing and then dropping behind to reload.

She pulled the trigger: spitting into the storm. ‘God help us,’ she said. ‘Time to fall back.’

‘Right you are, Sergeant,’ the soldier acknowledged, but then they heard Mallen’s whistle above the firing. She counted the blasts desperately, but could not keep her mind on
them.

‘How . . . ?’ No time to worry about looking a fool. ‘How many? What was that signal, soldier?’

‘Attack, Sergeant.’

Just the two of us?
He must have misheard. But there was Marie Angelline’s voice, distant but clear, ‘Forward! Forward! Charge! For the King!’

‘For the King!’ Emily cried along with her.
No choice. Stupid way to die.
She charged forward the moment her musket was reloaded, with the Stag Rampant soldier beside her.
She pulled the trigger and the smoke of her gun obscured the Denlanders for a moment before she had pushed onwards, drawing forth her sabre.

All around her there were men and women in red surging forward. She saw the Denlander line ahead break up and fall away, each man to his own, dashing back under cover and beyond, until they were
out of sight and still running.

Mallen’s whistle came again, and this time she counted ‘Regroup’.

‘Come on,’ she told the soldier beside her. He was no longer beside her. Looking back, she could not tell which fallen body was his.

*

Two days before, Tubal had hauled her once again to the colonel’s cramped war table. All the usual suspects were there. Stapewood handed out brandy as the colonel talked
heartily with Captain Mallarkey about the upcoming festivities. Slender Lieutenant Gallien, Mallarkey’s second, looked as though he would rather be anywhere else. Pordevere smiled his
oh-so-very-white smile at Emily while, behind him, Marie Angelline gave Emily a friendly nod. Bear Sejant was still down their lieutenant from the Big Push.

Justin Lascari and Giles Scavian were at opposite ends of the table, reserving their glowering for each other.

‘Now,’ the colonel said, ‘listen here. Got some intelligence that won’t surprise most of you. Had a Denlander scout here, the last night or so. You may have noticed.
Anyway, fellow died on us before he gave too much away, but what we got was damned alarming. They’re taking it all back. All that good ground we gained, they intend to contest it, you
see?’

Good ground? A
few festering acres of swampland grown lush with the bodies and bones of countless dead men. She remembered the Survivors’ Club: the observation that one could not
fight a proper land war here. She wondered if the Denlanders realized that, for surely Colonel Resnic did not.

‘Taking ground, sir?’ Tubal asked, his thoughts running alongside hers.