Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Hell, I can’t say I couldn’t have guessed he’d do that. He virtually grew up with them. I can’t blame him. We’ll just have to hope.’
‘Hope?’ Emily echoed, and then Captain Goss was upon them.
‘All accounted for, Lieutenant?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Three divisions. I’ll take far west: point of the pincer. You’re centre. I’ve put Sergeant Shalmer on east, alongside the Bear. We need to make rapid going of it,
Lieutenant. I know Huill intends taking the swamps at a run, punching into the Denlanders before they get the slightest warning. We need to be there to support him.’
‘Yes, sir. What about the Leopard?’
Goss bared his teeth. ‘If we waited for Mallarkey to put in an appearance, who knows what kind of a defence Denland will have had time to put together. No, he can make his own time. But I
spoke with Huill last night. We’re going in fast as we can.’
And already the great plan falls apart.
‘Mallen’s scouts will screen for us, pick up any enemy spotters in our path. Ensign Marshwic?’
She jumped on hearing her name. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘You’re my second, since Salander here vouches for you. Lieutenant, go choose your own.’
Tubal cast a helpless look at Emily. ‘But—’
‘Go, man. We haven’t the time.’ Goss’s fingers clenched about his sabre hilt were white. ‘Ensign, get a third of the company under orders to advance along the
cliff-line.’
Tubal looked ready to argue, to snatch Emily back from Goss’s command. She could see that it would not work: Goss was on broken glass here, dragging himself through it step after
bare-footed step. He would smash down any opposition, because he had no give left in him.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and gave Tubal’s arm a reassuring squeeze she did not fully feel confident in. When she went off to carry out the orders, her mind and his mirrored each
other’s thoughts, she was sure:
Will I ever see him again?
Less than an hour after dawn, all three companies of the Levant army were marching into the swamps. Colonel Resnic, whose idea it all was, watched them go.
Once under the shadow of the cliffs’ overhang, it seemed to Emily that the sun would never penetrate the dark. Between the towering cliffs and the dense trees of the swamp itself, she
might as well have been in a valley. Surely dawn never broke here, just as the sun never set. Certainly, beneath the trees, the best showing day could make was a gloomy twilight. With Captain Goss
forging ahead, she was left with three hundred soldiers to marshal, their neat line broken into unruly clumps as they pushed through the dense undergrowth that somehow thrived in fecund abandon
even here. Goss himself she kept a close eye on. He was locked down tight. He could face his fears rigidly or he could crack, she guessed. His experiences had left him with no leeway, nothing
flexible. He did not even look back to see if anybody was following him.
He carried no musket, she noticed. She had heard he had been shot in the shoulder, and his right arm was held stiffly as he walked. She only hoped he had pistols about him, or that he could
handle a sabre left-handed.
Tubal would be even deeper into the swamps on her right and, beyond that, the mass of Stag Rampant company, straggling amidst the fog, the pools, the treacherous ground. This was no place to
fight a land war. If there was an ambush, they would only know about it by the shots. And she
knew
, by now, how hard it was to locate a sound in this thick, cloudy air.
If the Denlanders know we are coming, they could kill four score of us before we could mount an effective response.
She felt she understood the captain, then. March on, march on, because any other options are gone. March on; or turn and flee, and never look in the mirror again.
‘Keep up. Keep the line together,’ she told the nearest soldiers, trusting them to pass it on. It was a hopeless endeavour. ‘Keep in sight of your neighbours,’ she added.
That was the only means she had found to keep even a small squad together.
Light struck her and for a moment she was blinded. To either side of her was a staggered line of soldiers shading their eyes. They had broken into the first of the slip-fields, a vast open
meadow of grass and briars rising almost up to waist height. The morning light cutting over the canopy of the swamps was fierce and unsparing. Captain Goss was already forging ahead, most of the
division accompanying him, but she stood, stunned for a second. Without the canopy, without the all-consuming heat, how was this different to some overgrown field near Chalcaster? A summer’s
day . . . a different world.
‘Keep up, sir,’ came a muttered aside, as a soldier passed her, and she kicked herself into motion again, pressing forward to catch up with Captain Goss.
An ambush now . . . ?
But Mallen’s scouts were ahead of them, ready to fall back and cry a warning if the enemy were near.
If Mallen can be trusted.
But she baulked at
the thought.
Of course he can be trusted. He is one of us. But he is of the swamp, too. You cannot blame him for wanting to save the creatures he has made his friends . . .
Animals. Sub-human things.
How could he weigh them against his comrades? But he saw them differently: he must do. She would not blame him.
Ahead, Captain Goss re-entered the shadow of the forest canopy without a tremor, and she made sure she was one of the next to go in. She had to set an example. The rotting heat struck her like a
hammer after the mere warmth of the slip-field. The atmosphere of air and light became fetid and insect-clogged. Instantly she was splashing through a pool, watching a great reptile flick lazily
away from the crashing boots of her soldiers. No shots yet; no whistles.
They forced their way through ever-thicker undergrowth, man-high ferns and cycads, vines strung like nets, great uneven moss mounds bulging knee-high. She stumbled, steadying herself with her
musket butt, then hauled another soldier to his feet when he went down. Captain Goss had his sabre out, hacking fiercely at the foliage, carving out his anger on it. She remembered his ‘
I
am not afraid.
’ He
was
afraid, but he made it push him forward, not hold him back.
Not too far ahead, please, sir.
She increased her pace again, slipping and skidding on the poor footing. Gnats alighted on her, lanced her with their little daggers, and fled away when
vast-winged dragonflies gave chase. Banded serpents eyed her from above, and water-scorpions fled from beneath her feet. Around her, the line became ever more ragged, and she gave a frantic signal
for them all to keep up. She had no idea how many could even see her.
Oh, for a whistle like Mallen’s!
The light blazed forth as before, but she was ready for it now: the second slip-field. All around her, Stag Rampant company were breaking out from the bog, picking up their pace. Goss looked
back then at last, waving angrily to her. Or, at least, she registered his taut expression as anger. Any number of emotions could be sheltering under that mask.
‘Sir, look!’ She followed one soldier’s pointing arm and her stomach clenched. It was Mallen, with a half-dozen scouts, running back towards them at a full charge.
‘Captain! Scouts!’ she called out, but said no more, for there was movement beyond the fleeing Mallen. A line of grey coats was pushing out of the treeline at the far end of the
slip-field. At this distance she could see no details, pick out no single target, but Mallen was still fleeing at top speed. The Denlanders made a movement almost in unison, half of them falling to
one knee, and all of them bringing their muskets to their shoulders.
‘Get down!’ Mallen’s voice came to them. ‘Everybody, down! Down!’ Then he took his own advice, hurling himself into the long grass, and Emily dropped to her knees,
aiming her useless weapon towards the distant enemy.
Goss grimaced madly, his empty fists clenched. ‘Get up!’ he roared, glaring around at his company. ‘Get up, you fools! They can’t touch us at this—’
First she saw the smoke, an almost solid curtain of white that flowered before that grey firing line, and Captain Goss and two dozen others simply collapsed as though their strings had been
cut.
She heard the shots immediately afterwards, the insignificant rattle of gunfire far off, as if in another place entirely. Aside from that, the world seemed to have lost all depth for her, all
sound.
‘Up! Up!’ a voice was shouting. ‘Up and charge them before they reload!’
Preposterous! They have time enough twice over.
But she was on her feet and running
forward, heedless of the rest, and only then did she realize that the voice had been her own.
Mallen rose up before her without warning, spun on his heel and ran alongside her with easy loping strides. Ahead, the Denlanders were reloading, as she knew they would, with careful, practised
motions. She could see details now: small men with dark hair or wearing leather caps, their grey clothes not quite uniform. They were noticeably ragged, bringing their muskets up. The onrush of
their enemy had thrown them. When they fired, it was piecemeal, while the Lascanne line was now scattered and straggling, so that there was plenty of open space to swallow stray Denlander shot.
Emily heard cries and screams behind her from plenty of those less fortunate, but she still kept pounding forward for God and the King, with Mallen beside her.
Now there was feverish activity all along the Denlander line, as they tried to ready a third volley that would butcher their enemies at close range. Their legendary efficiency seemed to be
lacking, however.
Surely we would have given three rounds of fire before now?
And she was closer and closer, and she could not say whether they would manage it. She heard the shouts of
their officers; some of the greycoats were already beginning to lift their guns.
In the teeth of the enemy, the only thing she could think to say to Mallen was, ‘Is anybody following us?’
And still the bulk of the enemy were feverishly recharging their muskets – their officers calling shrilly for a massed volley and not individual shots – and she saw more than a few
pale faces looking up in alarm as she neared. ‘Firing line here!’ she called out, because it suddenly came to her that her own people were still loaded and ready to shoot.
Suddenly there was a massive crowd of Bad Rabbit soldiers on either side of her, and she put the musket to her shoulder – even as the Denlanders were starting to bring their pieces up
– and yelled, ‘Fire!’
The air was briefly choked with smoke as a good seventy guns on either side of her spoke in unison with hers. With no idea if she had hit anything, she let the musket fall away and dragged out
her father’s pistol with her left hand, unsheathing her stubborn sabre with her right. Denlander guns were going off all down the line in individual flashes of fire, but not the devastating
mass of gunfire she had feared. A voice, high and shrill, was crying out in threat or fear, and it was hers.
Then she was out of the smoke, just a short distance from the Denlander line, and her voice was magnified a hundredfold as the soldiers of Lascanne took up her shout. It had words now: a battle
cry to shake the hearts of the mighty. ‘Stag Rampant! Stag Rampant! Stag Rampant!’ Or perhaps it was ‘Bad Rabbit!’ It was impossible to tell.
The Denlander line broke.
Some were still reloading, desperate to take another shot, but she saw a tide of fear flash across the faces of them all. Terror sparked through them like a fuse as the soldiers of the Stag
Rampant bore down on them. Even though a complete volley this close would have shattered their enemies, the Denlanders began falling back. Some retreated in good order; others scattered in panic.
Directly in front of Emily, one of the braver souls had charged his musket, and was dragging the muzzle up towards her. The movement seemed strangely sluggish and dreamlike. Locked in the silence
inside her head, she thrust the pistol towards him, watched the arc-lock spin, and a jet of smoke gout from the muzzle. The gun kicked in her hand, and the Denlander arched backwards, his musket
discharging in his grasp. His shot – or another shot – whipped past her ear like the buzz of an insect. Then she had reached their lines, swinging the heavy blade of her sabre down to
bite into the upraised arm of a man; still dragging madly on her pistol’s trigger, empty as it was. A soldier in grey went scrambling back before her, musket forgotten, and she lunged for him
with her blade, ripping it out of its first victim. Even as she overextended, she saw a patch of grey cloth explode into red over his breast, so that what she fell over was a dead man. Beside her,
Mallen leapt atop the man with the wounded arm and buried a knife beside his collarbone, before looking up and about him.
‘Into the trees!’ he bellowed. ‘Don’t stop at the treeline! Get into the trees! Into cover!’
Emily staggered up and onto her feet, her body obeying his order automatically. The sledgehammer of the heat, she now hardly noticed. Instead she was looking for more Denlanders to menace with
her blade.
Moments later she was crouching alongside a jumbled assortment of Stag Rampant soldiers, the mist showing her perhaps a hundred of them. Of the Denlanders there was no sign, and she could only
hope that they were still in flight. There were a few staggered shots, she could not judge from where, and then the only sounds around them were from the swamp, its eternal round of animal life and
death.
She watched a thumb-length fly settle on her arm and pad the jacket sleeve with its feet. Looking up, she saw the wide frightened stares of her comrades-in-arms.
What happens now?
‘Is there a sergeant here?’ she asked.
‘Here.’ The answering voice sounded hoarse and rusty. When she scrambled over the roots and men and women to reach him, she found a man with his right sleeve dark with blood, another
soldier tying an inexpert bandage about it.
‘Sergeant . . .’
What happens now?
‘Are you . . . can you go on?’
He looked up at her with a faced creased in pain. ‘Don’t think so. Sorry, Ensign. Where’s the captain?’