Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Penny . . . ?’ Emily gestured for Belchere to come closer, and the girl needed no second invitation, almost knocking her over with her eagerness. Emily severed the ropes about the
prisoner’s wrists with the edge of her sabre, only drawing the weapon part way from the scabbard so that the Denlander soldiers would not mistake the gesture. Still the girl had said
nothing.
‘Penny talk to me,’ Emily demanded. Then, when nothing came: ‘Soldier-at-Arms Belchere, report. That’s an order.’
Penny Belchere turned a tear-streaked face to her and said, ‘It’s true,’ in a voice so soft that Doctor Lam could hardly have heard.
‘What’s true? Tell me exactly what you saw.’
Penny hugged herself miserably. ‘I was in Locke. I had just got off the train. I was going to . . . I don’t know . . . eat, clean up, see some people, before I came to you . . .
There were soldiers there; they were coming off the high passes. Everyone was shouting. I thought it was just . . . I thought it was just soldiers being soldiers. I didn’t understand. Then
the shooting started. Nobody seemed to know what was going on. There were all sorts of people running about with guns. I could hear fighting . . . people being hurt. Then . . . I looked out onto
the main square, and there were so many soldiers still coming down, and I knew there were never so many soldiers in Locke . . . and I saw that the ones arriving all had grey jackets . . . and I
knew. They were fighting, fighting and shooting at people, everyone who tried to stop them. They were just . . . like a machine, Miss Marshwic. I’d never seen
fighting
before . . .
not real fighting. I was never supposed to be there! I was just a messenger. You and bloody Northway – I’d never have seen it, if not for you two!’ Tears sprang anew from her eyes
as her voice choked off. Emily realized that she had never appreciated how young this girl really was. She felt a hundred years old herself.
‘A compelling story, Doctor,’ she said, her mind racing, ‘but it’s open to interpretation. An attack on Locke doesn’t mean it’s been taken. We had all of
Locke’s spare soldiers sent here twelve days ago. A small force could have overrun the town. We won’t surrender, I’m afraid. You’ll have to come and get us.’ Feeling
full of patriotic duty, she turned to go.
‘Wait!’ Doctor Lam’s face twisted into something that was part anger and part grief. ‘Listen to me and please consider all that I say. I know you Lascans. I know
you
, even. I know how damnably stubborn you are, but even you can’t fly in the face of all reason. The war is lost, and you can never prevail. You have only two choices: to surrender
or to die. Surely you must see that. I am urging you . . .’ He stopped to compose himself, then continued in a calmer tone. ‘I am not urging you, Lieutenant. I am not threatening you. I
do not demand. I am
begging
you to surrender.’ He looked suddenly far older even than Emily felt. ‘If you surrender, then all of you will be able to go home free. You will go
back to your families, what is left of them, and pick up whatever pieces of your lives still remain. You will go down in the history of two nations as the Lascan army that was never defeated. And
I? I will be the man who failed to defeat you. A footnote in the history books, a name for schoolboys to forget and misspell.’
‘And if we do not?’
He managed a single bitter burst of laughter. ‘Then you will face an attack from both north and south, and you will all die, every last one of you.’
‘Your concern for our health touches me,’ she said drily, then took a step back on seeing his change of expression.
‘
Your
health? Lieutenant, I have with me seventeen hundred men, many of who have been fighting you here for years in these godforsaken jungles. You cannot imagine how it is for
them. They have had their comrades killed on every side. They have had their quiet lives destroyed forever. Their trades, their homes, are all as alien now to them as the depths of the sea. They
have been made warriors where once they were tradesmen and labourers and clerks and lawyers. And now it comes to this, and I must ask them once more to attack the Lascans, who have thrown them back
so many times. And do you know what, Lieutenant? When I ask them, they will do it. With fear in their hearts, with cowardice etched on every bone in their bodies, they will advance across this
plain into your guns and your grenades and your swords, and they will
die.
They will die in their hundreds, and in agony, to capture this place. And at the end of it all, when the smoke
has cleared, and I look upon the bodies in red and the bodies in grey, I will know that it was
my
fault, because I could not convince you, here and now, to surrender your guns and go home
to your families.’
Emily saw the bright spark of a tear in his eye, and she felt almost embarrassed for him.
‘It should be the easiest thing in the world,’ he continued, his voice shaking ever so slightly, ‘to tell someone to put away a weapon, to step out from the shadow of death,
and go home. To turn their back on all of this madness and
go home.
It should be the most natural, most obvious thing, but here you stand, you warrior Lascans. Will you really tell me you
love this war, this death, more than you love your own families?’
For a long, long time Emily said nothing, and she found that meeting his teary, squinting eyes was far more difficult than it had been before he spoke.
‘
If
the Couchant front has fallen . . .’ she started awkwardly.
‘If it has, then,’ he agreed. ‘An academic exercise, no doubt, but it if has, then would you concede that there would be no point, no earthly use, in your dying to the last
man? That you would do better to return to Lascanne and
live
for your country, than to
die
here for it.’ He wiped his eyes, with a wretched smile. ‘Surely Lascanne
needs every man and woman it has left.’
‘If it has, then I could concede something, but . . . You move me, Doctor. I can hear the passion in your words, but I have never counted myself the best judge of people, and I know that
you are a clever man.’
‘Come with me to Locke,’ he told her.
‘I’m sorry?’
His gaze was steady now. ‘Come with me – you and whichever of your comrades you choose – to Locke. See it for yourself, and then return to your men and make your own decision.
You have my absolute guarantee of safe passage.’
Emily looked from him to the downcast Penny Belchere and back. ‘You are a pragmatic people. How much is an oath worth to you?’
‘What other assurance can I give you? Do you want to receive hostages?’
Denlanders inside the camp, and who’s to say what mischief they might do? An
idea came to her, though, on the tail of the last conversation she had shared with this man.
‘Tell me the secret of your guns,’ she said. ‘If the war’s won, where’s the harm, after all? Tell me the secret and let me return to camp with it, and then I will
trust you to take me to Locke.’
She assumed he would refuse. She thought she had exposed his subterfuge at last, and waited for his excuses and his explanations. But no: ‘It is such a simple thing,’ he told her.
‘A matter of how the gun barrel is made, no more. We mill a spiral groove down the inside, you see. So, when the shot comes out, it spins more reliably in flight. The effective range is
thereby improved. Science, you see? The spinning keeps it steadier, so the shot is accurate at a much greater range, though they are slower to reload. The shot must be cased in leather to be snug
within the barrel, you see.’
She stared at him. ‘I still don’t understand.’
‘That is because you are no scholar of mechanics, Lieutenant. Take the idea to one who is: he will throw his hands in the air and curse that he himself did not think of it.’
So much for the magic guns.
‘That’s all. A groove inside the barrel?’
‘We call it “rifling”, and the guns “rifles”. The musket is dead, Lieutenant.’ His smile slipped awkwardly. ‘Along with so much else.’
*
After she returned to her side, she dismissed Caxton and the ten of the Rabbit, but kept Mallen with her.
‘You should hear this,’ she explained. ‘I think Tubal’s going to want your advice.’
‘Tubal? What about you? You’ve got as much command as he has, the way I see it.’
She let that pass. ‘We’ll need Scavian, and . . .’
‘Brocky?’ he suggested. ‘Get the Survivors together?’
How bleak are the times, when a desperate little gentleman’s club, and one lady, have become the command staff of an entire army?
That thought made her laugh. ‘And Brocky.
Why the devil not?’
The men were murmuring as she headed towards the clubhouse. They knew important things had been said, but not what. Their future was being decided, they knew. Something terrible had happened.
For all they knew, they could be dead in their shoes already, right there. A Denlander assault could be on its way to wipe them out, down to the last man. She would have to trust to the sergeants
to keep them all in line. She could not talk openly of what Doctor Lam had said to her: the camp would be torn apart between loyalists and deserters.
She handed Penny Belchere into the care of Doctor Carling’s wife. The messenger girl was still trembling. Emily’s introduction to war had come in steps, at least. Belchere’s
had come in one day and all at once.
Tubal was already there as she came in, talking with Scavian; Mallen brought Brocky in almost on her heels.
‘What’s the score?’ Tubal asked her, but she knew she would have to be as careful in the reporting as Doctor Lam had been in the speaking.
‘Someone get us some wine out, will you?’ she asked. ‘Let’s do this properly.’
‘Wine? And cards?’ asked Brocky.
‘Just wine.’
‘That bad, is it?’ Brocky, having just descended into his precious chair, levered himself out of it again. ‘My shout, I think.’
‘Em . . .’ Tubal started, but she upheld a hand for quiet.
‘When the wine comes. This isn’t going to be easy, Tubal. It’s big, really big. None of us had any idea, if it’s true.’
Brocky came out with the glasses, laying them out as ceremoniously as a waiter, before slumping back into his chair.
And after just a sip to fortify her, she told them. She gave them Doctor Lam’s words and his offer, as accurately as her memory could provide. The fate of Locke and the fate of Lascanne;
the perilous position they were all now in. If it was true – always if it was true.
God, dear God, let it be a trick. Even if that means we are trapped, and fall, let it still be a trick. Oh, my poor country.
After she had finished, a dead silence reigned for a long time, stilling each tongue with a chill hand. She glanced from one face to the next, and all of them looked stunned by it. It had ripped
out the heart of them. Even Mallen’s tattoos could not hide the scale of his feelings.
‘It’s a lie.’ Scavian was the first to speak. ‘I can’t believe it. Lose the Couchant? It’s impossible.’
‘Little enough’s impossible,’ Mallen said, staring at his hands.
‘But the
Couchant front
!’ insisted Scavian. ‘The passes and the plains – everyone knows our cavalry is superior. The only reason we’ve been bogged down
here is because you can’t use cavalry in a swamp. I refuse to believe a word of it.’
‘Mallen? How about you? Have your scouts picked up anything?’ said Tubal.
‘What scouts?’ Mallen asked. ‘Few enough left. Can’t get out, these days. Denlander sharpshooters all over. Could be true, for all I’d know.’
Tubal gritted his teeth and looked to Emily. ‘You spoke with the man.’
‘I don’t claim to be an expert in telling truth from falsehood, but he sounded . . . convincing. He wants the war to end, and not to lose any more of his men. It could be true. It
could be false.’
‘So we’re left with his deal,’ Brocky summarized. ‘Let’s all go on holiday to Locke to see what the Denlanders have done with the place. If it’s true. If
it’s not just an ambush.’
‘What would they gain from an ambush? A handful less of us to fight. There must be more to it than that,’ she told them. ‘But what?’
‘And you agreed to go and have a look,’ Tubal noted.
‘I’ll go alone, if you want me to, but . . .’
‘But?’
‘I asked for them to send a cart here from Locke.’ She looked him in the eye. ‘It’ll be more proof, in a way, but mainly it’s so you can go, if you wanted to see
for yourself. See if it’s true.’
‘It isn’t true!’ Scavian insisted.
‘Giles, please.’ She touched his hand across the table. He was flushed, angry. His skin felt feverishly hot. ‘If it is true, then Tubal will be the one to make the final
decision. He has rank.’
‘I don’t want it,’ Tubal said wretchedly. ‘I never wanted command. I just wanted not to have to dig latrines. What damned fate put me in charge? Who’d ever have me
as an officer?’
‘You’re the first I’ve had that I liked,’ Mallen told him, and Tubal flashed him a painful smile.
‘I will not make this decision on my own,’ he declared, nonetheless. An odd look came into his eyes. ‘Today has gone mad – can we agree on that? What’s normal for
any time and place has been suspended. Motley reigns supreme right now. We have an invitation that must be a trap, we have a story about ending the war, only now we don’t want it to end. The
world is mad, and us with it. I have a toast, gentlemen.’
‘Toast your toast,’ Brocky invited.
‘To the sights of Locke. Who’ll drink with me?’
‘You’re not seriously considering putting yourself in such danger?’ Scavian demanded.
‘Oh, I am, Scavvers. I won’t let Emily carry this burden on her own, as she has so often before. I intend to review the troops like a good commanding officer. What matter if they be
enemy troops?’
‘Well, then.’ Scavian raised his glass. ‘In that case you can have no objection to my coming along with the two of you. If your life is cheap as coloured glass, then why the
devil not mine?’ His eyes sought Emily’s across the table. ‘What better company could a man ask for?’