Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Survivors together,’ Mallen said. ‘Made it this far, so why not?’ His glass came up as well. ‘We’ve had some fine times, here. Kept us all together, this
hut, the Club. Why not all of us together, at the last?’
‘You are all lunatics,’ Brocky grumbled. ‘Listen to yourselves. This isn’t some . . . grand adventure.’ He stared at his half-empty glass upon the table. ‘The
last time I did something mad like this, I got shot.’ He caught himself on that last word, and Emily knew he was thinking of Marie Angelline. She thought that it must have been her memory,
what she would have done, that inspired him in the end, for he never was a man of courage. His hand was still shaking as he raised his own glass.
‘To the sights of bloody Locke, be they ever so fine,’ he said. And, as they all raised to drink: ‘You’ve been a bad bloody bunch to fall in with, you bastards, but
I’ll not regret it.’ He blinked rapidly. ‘I couldn’t have asked for better.’
They emptied their glasses as though they had all the time in the world. It was a good vintage Brocky had picked; his best, Emily suspected. Something he had been saving.
‘We’ve come a long way whilst going nowhere, haven’t we?’ Tubal said at last.
‘That we have,’ agreed Mallen.
‘And few enough left on the road with us,’ Scavian added.
‘If this is the end, at least we’ll be in good company,’ said Tubal, agreeing with him. ‘Do you think I’ll get my leg back, after I die?’
‘You’re dying as a soldier, man,’ Brocky reminded him. ‘It’ll depend what they’ve got in stores. You’ll probably get some other bugger’s
leg.’ He laughed, and they all joined in, more for the release of it than for the humour.
So many
, Emily thought, thinking over the roll call of the dead. So many she could not name; so many she could. The colonel, who had died in her arms. Justin Lascari the Warlock, and
Master Sergeant Sharkey, attempted rapists both, and consigned to their unquiet graves. Captain Goss, whose living nightmare was finally over. Her dear friend Elise, dead on their first day into
the swamps, and beautiful Marie Angelline the brave, the inspiring, whom Brocky had loved, and who had loved him in return, despite his vices.
Rodric.
Her brother, still a red-jacketed figure in her mind as he left Grammaine, his death coming as a word from Mr Northway, with no further image and no stone.
And perhaps it would be her turn now and she would die in some Denlander trap. But it would be with her friends and, really, what more could a soldier ask for?
And a cart turned up, from the south, as requested. A cart with a Denlander soldier seated on the driver’s board, but a Lascan military cart for all that.
*
‘God protect us,’ said Tubal, the man of strong churchgoing family. The others kept only a silence between them, just watching and absorbing the enormity of what
they saw when they looked upon Locke.
It was the end. The end of everything.
Doctor Lam had come with them, hiking alongside the cart with a handful of his men. When Emily turned to glance at him, she thought she saw a trace of sadness even as he looked upon the site of
his victory. He caught her eye and smiled, but there was no triumph in it.
‘The march of progress, Lieutenant Marshwic,’ he said. ‘I am a man of progress, a scientist and an engineer, and yet I look upon this and I ask: what has this war made of us
all? My country will never again be the place it was, and no more will yours. Who is the winner, then?’
Locke was bustling. The handful of buildings that had been the original town, first swamped by the military apparatus of Lascanne, was now merely a pinpoint in a field of grey. Ranks of grey
tents stood on every side, as though they had been sown in the spring and only now sprouted. Men in grey uniforms drilled, or sat about fires, or arrived or left. A locomotive stood at the station,
smoking and steaming, and Emily saw files of Denland soldiers waiting to embark, waiting to advance the war into Lascanne. There were thousands of them – perhaps three thousand or more. These
could only be veterans of the Couchant front.
She saw Lascanne soldiers, too, disarmed and under guard: more veterans of the Couchant but on the losing side. She hoped that there were others, more than she could now see. How great had been
the carnage there, at the end?
‘What the devil is
that?
Brocky demanded. Coming in down the Couchant road was a . . . thing. A traction engine, Emily realized belatedly, rumbling and steaming as it rolled into
Locke under its own power. Iron plates were bolted before it, and atop it was a cannon on a swivel mount, and soldiers with their ‘rifles’.
‘Quite the invention, is she not?’ Doctor Lam said. ‘I had a hand in designing them, before I came to the Levant, but it was not until early this year that they saw any proper
use. Mobile artillery, our traction-guns. Lord above, but what we have made of the world!’
‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ Scavian decided.
‘That’s the problem with knowledge, young man,’ Doctor Lam told him. ‘You can’t put it away when you’ve no more use for it. We have them now, and who knows to
what uses they will be put in the fullness of time.’ He rested a hand on the side of the cart, looking frankly at them all. ‘Now, is there doubt in your minds, any of you, as to the
outcome of this war?’
‘What will happen to Lascanne?’ Scavian demanded. ‘What will you do with the King?’
‘We will capture Luthrian of Lascanne and put him on trial. There is no other way,’ Doctor Lam replied simply. Emily tensed as she felt Scavian twitch, and the heat came off him for
a second, like a sudden burst of flame. His hands were balled into fists. She reached out to put a hand to his arm, but he caught it first in his own and, as he did, his fingers were cool again,
hope draining from his face. He looked down at the assembled might of Denland, all those well-ordered men, those busy minds. Yes, he could kill Doctor Lam. Yes, he could kill a dozen of them, a
hundred – but he could not make a difference.
His eyes met hers.
For you, I live.
She knew that, had he been alone here, then things would have gone differently.
‘I can’t believe it,’ was all he said finally. ‘It shouldn’t happen like this.’
‘What about Lascanne, Doctor?’ asked Tubal. ‘Are we slaves of Denland now? What of our homes, our families?’
A smile somewhat warmer lit up Doctor Lam’s features. ‘We keep no slaves in Denland, Captain – no more than you do in Lascanne. The Parliament will decide ultimately, but I
have a voice in it and I know what must be done. The war has all but destroyed us both. So many men dead – and women too! Harvests wasted, skills lost. Any man that will go back to his home
in peace and take up where he left off will be free to do so.’
‘Denlander soldiers in the marketplaces, garrisons in all the towns,’ Brocky rumbled.
‘No doubt,’ Doctor Lam agreed. ‘For we must have peace, and you Lascans are such a volatile breed that, left to yourselves, you might find a return to war easier than the
effort of rebuilding. There are those, among my countrymen, who say we should just pillage from Lascanne all we need to rebuild Denland, but thus far they are a minority. Those of us with wider
vision can see that our nations must rise together, live together – as we always have. To impose an iron fist on Lascanne now is merely to invite strife and rebellion in a generation’s
time. This war was madness, however it started. It must never be repeated.’
Tubal glanced around at his fellows there in the cart. ‘I almost believe you, Doctor Lam.’
‘I believe him,’ said Mallen. It was the first time he had spoken since they started out for Locke, and now he had their full attention.
‘I know you keep your promises,’ he told Doctor Lam. ‘I’ve got you to thank that the indigenes weren’t dragged in; that the peace was kept with them. Clever, you
Denlanders: you use anything that comes your way, but never the autochthons. I understand you: you keep your promises.’
‘I did my best,’ agreed the old man. ‘Who knows, we might have forced them to serve us, but . . . I can find it in me to be glad that our madness has not infected them. I am .
. . fond of them in my way. You are the one called Mallen?’
Mallen nodded guardedly.
‘My men are terrified of you. You are the killing ghost that walks abroad on dark nights. If a man is missing, it is Mallen’s doing. But I read some of your writing, when I prepared
myself for this task. So perhaps we understand each other.’
‘So do we surrender now?’ Emily asked. Scavian looked away bitterly but merely shrugged. ‘What happens?’
‘Doctor Lammegeier,’ said Tubal. ‘As acting commander of the army of Lascanne in the Levant, I hereby formally offer the surrender of my men and position, on the condition we
are treated well and are not harmed.’
Emily studied the creased and folded sheets of paper in her hands: her abortive, undelivered words to Cristan Northway.
The thought that in two days, three, she might see him again, made her feel exceedingly strange, more ill at ease than excited. She took the sheets between both hands, ready to tear them up.
But you haven’t seen him yet.
She relaxed her pressure, folded them again and slipped them into her inside jacket pocket.
The air was clouded with steam. Alongside the station at Locke, a locomotive was waiting, its carriages filling with dejected and defeated Lascanne soldiers. Still, they were going home. The
enemy had provided a deliverance that their own side could not. Some still wore their red jackets, as Emily herself did. Many were down to shirtsleeves, or even civilian clothes looted from Locke.
The Denlanders had confiscated all the muskets, but some officers still wore their sabres. Emily still retained her pistol, her metal companion all through this bleak war.
Denlander soldiers watched over them, ready for any kind of resistance from the fiery, violent Lascans, but there was no rebellion in the air, only the steam of the train due to take them home.
The fight was gone from them.
Even so, Emily could tell her own Levant men and women from those who had fought at the Couchant. Their heads were held higher; their stance suggested yet a touch of pride. They stood like
soldiers, not prisoners, and she was glad for that. They were the undefeated ones. The war had washed past and over them, and they had held firm. They had only ceased the fight when there was
nothing left to fight for, after their brothers and sisters at the Couchant had buckled and broken. She was grateful – more grateful than she could say – that Doctor Lam had left them
with that much dignity.
There was a scattering of navy men too, put ashore by Denlander ships who had hauled them out of the water. Emily understood that the sea war was still dragging itself out, with the Denlander
fleet scouring the seas. The surviving warships of Lascanne had scattered or taken refuge in the ports of foreign lands still ruled by kings.
News of home: she was filled with it today. Doctor Lam himself had sought her out in the impromptu prisoner-of-war camp the Denlanders had set up for their defeated enemies. She had felt
strange: was she truly meeting him in peacetime, and with nothing more to fear from him? They had shared a glass of brandy during a few minutes of conversation. He had told her of how the home
front was going.
‘They do not fight,’ he explained. ‘Our men push deep into Lascanne, and they are almost unopposed. A few local pockets of resistance, nothing more.’
‘I don’t think there’s anyone left to fight them,’ Emily confessed.
‘No doubt,’ he agreed. ‘But I had feared for the worst: children, women, old men, even babes being put under arms by your King.’
‘And what of the King?’ She recalled that golden man at Deerlings House, who had danced with her, and still felt the echo of what had thrilled through her then. Some feelings are
hard to forget.
‘He has fled, they say,’ Doctor Lam replied. ‘The capital is taken and the streets were almost bare. The palace is staffed by our men now, but the King has fled along with some
few of his supporters. We will find him.’
‘No doubt,’ she had conceded, but was left wondering.
Now the train beckoned her. She would leave Doctor Lam behind and see what might be pieced together of her home and her past.
Grammaine.
What would it look like, now? Would she
recognize it? And her family and the servants? Or would it all seem as strange as a fever dream, after the swamps of the Levant?
‘Tubal,’ she said, ‘do you want a hand up?’
‘I’ll manage.’ He levered himself upright, stubbornly. The other three were a little way further down the platform, and Emily matched Tubal’s pace as they rejoined them. Brocky
was the only one who wore a smile. Scavian’s frown had stuck itself on his face the day they surrendered, and had never healed.
‘How far do we go together?’ Brocky asked.
‘Five stops, I think. Then Em and I have to change for Chalcaster.’
‘Giles?’ Emily said, breaking him from his distracted, unhappy mood for a moment.
‘I . . . you invited me to Grammaine, a long time ago now it seems. If that invitation is still open I will take it . . .’
‘Of course it is. Please—’
‘I have to see my family first. I have to see what’s left,’ he continued. ‘I hope . . . I think they may have fought when the Denlanders came. It would be the proper
thing to do. The brave and noble thing to do. The thing my family has always done.’ He clenched his fists. ‘But I hope that, this once, they turned their backs on tradition.’
‘Come soon,’ she urged him.
‘As soon as I can.’
‘Enough time for partings later,’ Brocky insisted. ‘Let’s get ourselves underway. Come on.’
‘Time for partings now,’ Mallen pointed out.
‘You’re not staying here, surely?’ Brocky was genuinely surprised.
Mallen’s expression remained perennially unreadable. ‘This is where I live, Brocky. My home. Where else?’
‘But . . .’ Brocky grinned incredulously. ‘I couldn’t stay another day anywhere near those swamps, and I hardly saw the inside of them, anyway. I mean . . . come on,
Mallen.’