Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Nobody’s so much as seen a Denlander for ten days,’ he argued. ‘I just want to show to her that I’m not some goods-in clerk: that I’m actually
there
, winning the war with the rest of you.’
She said nothing. His words had brought back the weight that so often knotted up her stomach. ‘And if we’re the first to find the Denlanders?’ she asked.
‘What are the odds?’
The twisting inside her wound its way through another two turns. ‘Don’t say things like that.’
‘Marshwic, it’s a simple enough request. I could ask anyone, but you’re . . . a woman. I thought you’d understand.’
In the end she agreed. She asked for no payment. She wished more than anything that he had not asked her.
*
‘Master Sergeant Angelline, I’m Ens—
Sergeant
Marshwic, from Stag Rampant.’
Angelline was taller than she was, slender and long-legged, endowed with a presence and a grace that Emily found unsettling and larger than life. The woman had the sort of face that sculptors
coveted for their finest work. Her responding salute was smart, and Emily could tell that the squad behind her had already decided to adore her. She could quite see what had caught the eye of John
Brocky – and why the wretched quartermaster was so outclassed.
She found herself feeling quite jealous, to her surprise. It was a feeling she thought she had left behind years ago.
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Sergeant. Mallen has said a great deal about you.’ Angelline’s voice was slightly accented, revealing just a touch of the foreign.
‘He has?’
Angelline smiled. ‘He’s quite a talkative man when you get him going.’
‘He is?’ It was hardly the way Emily would have described him. She wondered if Mallen, too, had eyes for the beautiful Angelline.
‘He has a list in his head, did you know?’ The master sergeant’s smile virtually shone. ‘Those people he would trust, out in the swamps. You’ll be pleased to know
you’re on it.’
‘Surprised, certainly.’ Perversely flattered, too. So Mallen had a list, did he? She wondered who else had made it. ‘Is your squad ready to go, Master Sergeant?’
‘Ensign?’ Angelline asked, and her second stepped forward, with an over-enthusiastic salute, to confirm that it was. ‘Your own?’
‘Almost.’ Emily glanced around, seeing one man obviously missing. Perhaps his nerve had failed at the last moment. She could not blame him for it. ‘Caxton, would you go and . .
.’ She fell silent, because the storehouse door had opened, and there stood John Brocky attired for war.
He was in uniform, which was a first. The jacket failed to meet at the front, and looked distinctly tight across the shoulders. The belt was in fact two belts tacked together, and its contents
showed that being the store-master offered a few more perks than Emily had realized. There must be eight pistols thrust through it, she decided. She wondered if they were just for show or if Brocky
had actually loaded them. As he strode up to them, he clanked with every step.
‘Mr Brocky will be accompanying us,’ Emily explained with a straight face.
‘Will he, now?’ Angelline cast a discerning eye over Brocky, who was looking everywhere but at her. His pose was trying for the heroic, but managing more the look of the constipated.
The firm set of his jaw was lost between chins.
‘Quite the formidable soldier, Mr Brocky,’ the master sergeant said, dead-pan.
‘We, ah, all have to do our duty,’ Brocky replied, in an unnaturally deep voice.
Emily glanced from him to Angelline, who was smiling a little but trying to hide it. Any longer, she felt, and he would burst, or she would laugh at him. ‘Shall we set out, Master
Sergeant?’
‘I think we had better, Sergeant Marshwic.’
It was, to be frank, less than a joy being on duty with John Brocky.
At first he had taken a place as close to Angelline as he could, striding along with pomp and attempted dignity; stumbling over every root the swamp had to offer; whomping through the pools and
spattering them all with spray; falling to his knees in the mud and having to be helped up. The stifling heat had started to tell after that, and he had fallen halfway back to where Emily was
shepherding the line along. He was breathing heavily by then, sweat sheening his brow, mouth gaping.
‘How are you coping, Brocky?’ she asked, but he had no breath left for a cogent reply. Instead his expression suggested he was already regretting this entire business. As far as
Emily had seen, when mist and vegetation had allowed, Angelline had barely glanced at him.
It was not long before he was blundering along right at the back of the line, having to scrabble and scramble to keep up with the moderate pace that Angelline was setting. In a rush of pity,
Emily sent Caxton back to keep an eye on him. She had begun to see why it was a good idea for Brocky to shirk the fighting. He seemed just the type to spring a trap or get bitten by poisonous
spiders. He had been hushed three times so far for cursing at the swamp, the air, the water, the beasts. Now he kept his complaints down to a huffing of breath. He hadn’t enough wind for
anything more.
They stopped, some hours in, for rations and a chance to rest. John Brocky sat apart from the soldiers, a broad, hunched bag of misery. Emily would have gone over to him but she knew that he
would not have appreciated it. He was a swelling boil of self-loathing just then, waiting for someone to burst upon. It seemed an apposite metaphor.
‘Why has he come?’ The soft voice was Angelline’s. Emily glanced at Brocky’s slumped form and judged them out of earshot.
‘He . . .’ But what could she say? ‘He feels he should do his bit.’ It was a creditably neutral offering. Angelline’s look suggested she did not quite believe
it.
‘His place is back at camp. What would we do if we lost our quartermaster?’ she pointed out. Emily could only shrug.
What am I supposed to say? When we started out, he carried a
torch for you, but I suspect the swamps may have doused it.
‘He’s a complicated man,’ she managed.
‘Inner demons,’ Angelline said. ‘I’ve known many such men, driven men.’ Her voice sounded halfway approving. ‘Greatness or madness, I find.’
Emily began to feel awkward with this subject. ‘Tell me, Master Sergeant, your accent?’
‘Am I a Denland spy, you mean?’ Angelline laughed. ‘My grandparents came from across the sea, from the Small Countries. Because of the Hellic wars, you know. What about
you?’
‘Am
I
a spy?’ Emily asked.
‘I hear you are of great nobility, an important family. They say you are a duchess.’
Now it was Emily’s turn to laugh, and as she did the shooting started.
Three of their men fell instantly, even as the echoing crack of the muskets sounded. Angelline leapt back and rolled behind a buttress of roots, shouting, ‘Down, down!’ For a moment,
Emily was caught out in the open, crouching low but without cover. A shot whistled through the air beside her and she hurled herself sideways into a stand of ferns before coming up with her musket
ready.
‘There!’ someone shouted, and she saw in that same moment the movement of grey-clad forms between the trees. She counted up to a dozen, and then lost count. Many, many Denlanders:
two squads at least.
‘Fall back,’ she advised. ‘We’re outmanoeuvred here.’
‘Back! Fall back on me!’ Angelline called out in a voice, loud and clear, that cut through the gunshot and the fog. She fired her musket and began backing off, still shouting. Emily
did the same, discharging her gun towards the movement ahead, and then spotting movement to the side as well. The Denlanders must have moved men round to their left, and were now firing into their
unprotected flank.
‘God almighty! Get to cover, quickly!’ she yelled. Already another two were down, picked off neatly at a range she would have thought impossible in this murk, had she not seen
Captain Goss’s collapse.
Better guns; they have better guns.
‘To me! To me! Into the thick!’ came Angelline’s shout. She had found dense cover in a stand of trees, and the remainder of the two squads tried to join her there, as the
Denlanders took shots at them and advanced, always advanced.
Brocky!
Emily peered about her, for a moment seeing no sign of the quartermaster. Then she had found him: a great ungainly shape trying to negotiate the roots and banks and get himself
into cover.
‘Brocky! Come on, man!’ Another shot whipped past her, and her eyes were dragged to the perfectly circular hole suddenly in the cycad leaf right beside her head. She backed and
backed away, stumbling and clambering, the useless musket clutched close to her. She saw Caxton vault past, her face set and without expression. The next man behind her stumbled and fell, clutching
at his belly. The Denlanders were close now, a staggered line of grey men advancing, firing calmly and then stopping to reload.
How they have outwitted us!
She called out to Brocky again, and he gave her a desperate look full of knowledge of his own foolishness. ‘Marshwic!’ he cried, and in that moment he lurched forward and toppled,
ending up draped over a root five yards away from any cover.
She screamed his name, but the shots were nearer now, and she bolted for the deeper vegetation, to where Angelline and the balance of the soldiers were returning fire at the Denlanders, who all
the while were getting closer.
The master sergeant had found a good place to make a stand. One great tree had split near its base, and a dozen divided trunks fought upwards, and gave shelter to the besieged soldiers. Emily
reloaded feverishly, hearing the crack and snap of musket fire all around.
‘How many are there?’ she called over the din.
‘I count twenty left at least,’ Angelline said. ‘A little fewer than us, perhaps, but they have us pinned down.’
‘Can we charge?’
‘We’d be running straight into their fire.’
‘They might break.’
God help us if they don’t break.
Angelline ground her teeth. ‘I don’t want to risk it.’ A shot hammered splinters from the trunk by her face, and she barely flinched. ‘Though we may have to,’ she
allowed.
‘I can lead some men out to flank them.’ Emily sighted along her musket at the Denlanders. They were advancing from cover to cover, making use of everything the swamp could give
them. Their greyness bled into the mist, where they shifted and flowed. She cursed, and fired anyway, ducking back to reload without seeing if she had hit home.
‘You’d not make it,’ Angelline warned her. ‘They’ve got too good a view of us. I’m sorry I brought us to this, Sergeant.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘My command, my fault . . .’ Angelline’s voice cut off so abruptly that Emily thought she had been shot. Instead she was staring out at the enemy, her mouth open.
‘Is that . . . ?’ she said, speechless for once.
Emily risked a glimpse out, and her finger twitched on the trigger, sending a wild and unaimed shot over the enemy’s heads.
John Brocky was up.
He had pulled himself to his feet, with a pistol in each hand. The Denlanders had been in a hurry to press forward and surround their stubborn foes, which left the quartermaster now
behind
the enemy. She could not see what kind of mad expression might be discovered on a man in his situation.
‘Everyone reload and be ready to move,’ Angelline said.
Even as her hands went through that familiar task, Emily could not but watch the resurrected John Brocky. For a moment he just stood there, knees bent and hunched forward for balance in the
shifting mud. Then he seemed to come to a decision within himself, and his hands exploded with smoke and fire as the pistols discharged in unison, directly into the backs of the Denlanders.
The weapons fell from his hands instantly and he reached for the next pair. His mouth was open and he was yelling something – probably something obscene. The Denlanders were turning even
as he fired again, and they must have believed an entire squad of Lascanne soldiers had come up behind them.
And then Angelline bellowed, ‘Charge!’ in a voice like thunder, and her surviving soldiers boiled out of cover with their muskets firing, with their knives and sabres bared.
Brocky stood still and fired his third set of pistols. His face was a study in panic, a man who has opened a door onto something he had never wanted to see. At a range of no more than five feet,
he had not missed a shot.
Angelline and Emily, leading the charge, met the Denlanders head on. Emily’s sabre flashed and missed, but the Denlanders were falling back. She saw a man try to bring his musket to bear
on Brocky, far too close for such elegant shooting. Brocky’s final pistols flashed, one firing, one not. The Denlander was punched from his feet, falling backwards over the bodies of his
comrades.
And there was quiet for just a little while, as some twenty-three natives of Lascanne crouched amongst twice that many corpses of both nationalities.
‘Brocky,’ Emily challenged him, ‘you were faking! You pretended you’d been shot to fool them.’
He turned world-weary eyes on her. ‘Oh, I wish,’ he replied. He used one pistol butt to hook aside his jacket, and she saw a small patch of red across his shirt that in any other
circumstances she would have taken for wine.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘There’s a stupid question.’
‘Sergeant, there are more of them out there,’ Caxton reported to her urgently. ‘Must be at least two more squads, judging from all the movement. What the hell are we going to
do?’
‘The colonel must be told,’ Angelline stated flatly. ‘He must know that they’re back.’
‘Can you manage, Brocky?’ Emily asked him.
‘Going to have to.’ From inside his jacket he had pulled a metal flask, and was now opening it with his teeth. With a hiss of pain, he half-emptied it over the wound, pouring the
rest down his throat.
‘Can you walk?’
‘Going to have to.’ He sat down beside her heavily. ‘Did I do all right?’
‘It was perhaps the most stupid thing I’ve yet seen someone do out here, if that’s what you mean,’ she said.