Authors: Adrian Tchaikovsky
‘Home.’ Mallen shrugged. ‘The swamps are home for me. I love them. Nowhere I’d rather be.’
And his woman, his Denlander love, she’ll come looking for him there,
Emily knew. ‘I’m going to miss you, Mallen. You saved my life more times than I can
remember.’
‘The backbone of the company,’ Tubal agreed. ‘Hell, man, at least come visit sometime. I . . . don’t think I could visit you. For a number of reasons.’
‘You’re always welcome in Grammaine.’ Emily wondered what Alice might make of the lean and tattooed Daffed Mallen, and she smiled involuntarily.
Mallen nodded. ‘Maybe.’ He clasped Brocky’s hand, and then Tubal’s. ‘Hope everything’s where you left it when you get back. Hope the peace lasts. God knows, we need
it.’ He took Scavian’s hand. ‘Don’t do anything mad.’
The Warlock smiled sadly. ‘They say our days of madness are over. I’ll believe that when I see it.’
The hand of Mallen went out to Emily next, but she was suddenly struck by the realization that she did not need to be a soldier, not any more. She was free to rediscover the threads of her
civilian life. Impulsively she hugged herself to Mallen’s chest.
‘You look after yourself,’ she told him. ‘You never know, we might need you to look after us again, sometime.’
*
The train was full of soldiers, packed in shoulder to shoulder. Many of the carriages had been converted from stock cars, by which side Emily did not know. The four of them
ended up sitting on a splintery wooden floor, their backs against a wall, in a carriage crammed with other soldiers and their meagre possessions.
There was little conversation at first. Everyone was waiting to see if the Denlanders would change their mind.
How easy it would be
, arose the thought,
for them to stand at the
carriage entrance with guns, and shoot us all.
She saw the same thought written on other faces. Those practical-minded Denlanders would be capable of just such an act. Without malice, and even
with regret, but they would do it if they felt it necessary.
There was an audible sigh of relief as the train started moving, but it was not until several hours had passed, and the first stop had been reached, that people began to loosen up. A handful of
men and a woman got out there, with a look in their eyes that Emily would never forget. She saw a kind of blinking, stunned stare.
Home
, that look said. As they squinted out into the
daylight, it was home they saw, and it transformed them.
Emily wondered whether her own face would acquire such a look, or had she been in too deep, and for too long? Had she been spoiled for life’s ordinary happinesses?
After that, a little idle conversation spread about the carriage, in the extra space left by those who had disembarked. Brocky started a card game on the wooden floor and he set about winning
some small change, while Tubal closed his eyes and tried to sleep. She was left with Scavian leaning up against her. He had not said a word since they had left Mallen behind, just stared up at the
slatted ceiling.
‘Will you manage?’ she asked him.
‘God alone knows,’ he said. ‘However did it come to this, Emily?’
‘It could be worse,’ she replied with some force. ‘You could be dead. I could be dead. They might not have let us surrender at the end. They might have wanted to make an
example of us. Ask yourself, what would we ourselves have done, on the brink of victory, with one camp of Denlanders still defying us?’
‘We would have treated them honourably,’ he said stubbornly. ‘We’re not monsters. We’re better than them.’
And Emily held her peace, knowing that to speak her mind truly would be to provoke him. He let the silence sink in and then added reluctantly, ‘But it could have been worse, in
truth.’
Just before one stop, a familiar slender figure bustled from the crowd and crouched down before her: Caxton, with the third crown for her master sergeant rank sewn newly onto
her jacket. Bear Sejant had needed one, after all, and Tubal had made this his final act as commander of the Levant, before setting out on the cart ride into Locke.
‘Lieutenant,’ the woman addressed Emily.
‘Call me Emily.’ A weak smile. ‘I’m thinking of quitting this soldiering business.’
‘Emily.’ Caxton stumbled over the unfamiliar name. ‘I . . . This is my home town coming up and I just wanted to say thank you. For being there for all of us. You were a . . . a
damn
fine officer . . . Emily. I don’t think I could have lasted without you.’
‘You lasted because you were able to,’ Emily told her, frowning. ‘I only . . . I was nothing special.’
‘I only know that I was scared to death the whole time, and it was you that got me through,’ Caxton said. ‘I’m not the only one. We all think so – all of us in
Rabbit.’
Emily didn’t quite know what to say. ‘Well . . . thank you. I . . . That’s quite something to think about, Caxton.’
‘Ruth, please.’
‘Ruth,’ Emily confirmed. ‘You were a good second. I should tell you that. I knew I could rely on you.’ The train had shuddered to a halt by then, soldiers already lining
up to step out. ‘Back to tailoring, is it?’
‘To whatever needs doing,’ Ruth Caxton said. ‘A lot of things got left unfinished when the draft came through. Someone still has to do them.’
And she left, with Emily concluding that this was a different woman, a wholly different woman, from the pale conscript she had first known.
Five stops along the line, she helped Tubal off onto some tiny station platform, some little village she never knew the name of. Brocky and Scavian were continuing on, but
Tubal and Emily would be catching the Chalcaster train from here.
‘For my part, I’m bloody glad it’s over. I’ll be putting it all behind me. There’ll be work for a skilled dispenser,’ Brocky explained. ‘Damn and bugger
the soldiering lark, I say.’
‘Good luck, Brocky,’ said Tubal.
‘And am I welcome at Grammy, or whatever the place is called? Only everyone else has had an invitation.’
‘Of course you are,’ Emily assured him.
‘Not that I’ll come. Far too busy, you’ll see.’ He shook both of their hands briefly, obviously feeling awkward, and withdrew back into the carriage, leaving Scavian
alone in the doorway. They could hear the train stoking up, ready to move.
‘Be well, Giles,’ she told him. ‘Come visit soon. And don’t worry, I’ll – we’ll be there if you need us.’
Scavian smiled, but it was one of pain. ‘This isn’t over, Emily, I can feel it. There is worse, worse to come.’ He embraced her, hugged her tightly to him, and she put her arms
about him, seeking his strength and warmth. Neither wanted to be the first to let go. It was only when the carriage floor shuddered under his feet that he allowed himself to loosen his grip, and
even when the train moved off they touched hands until he was pulled away.
‘You could do worse,’ Tubal told her, smiling at first, but then he saw her face, and hopped forward to hold her close, crutches bundled awkwardly between them.
They sat there on the platform for what seemed the best part of an afternoon. Emily eventually found someone willing to sell them some hard bread and cheese, but at prices that
did not bode well for the future. Then they sat gnawing reflectively, along with the two hundred or so other soldiers in the same position.
Eventually the next train hauled itself in and they embarked, tired and homesick, and caught between worlds.
*
That night, as Tubal managed an uneasy sleep, Emily went looking for other insomniacs.
How like the journey to the front
, she thought. The nervous energy that kept her
from sleeping then had been fear of the war. What was it now? Fear of the peace? Of what she might find when she got home? She had received no word for a long time. Wars had been won and lost in
the interim.
She found a band of soldiers playing cards and elbowed her way into their circle with a display of rank and assurance. She had wondered if, after Tubal, she held the highest rank on the train,
but one of the men turned a major’s badge towards her along with his broken-toothed smile as he dealt her in.
She told them who she was, and the man’s eyebrows leapt up.
‘God, I’ve heard of
you
!’ he got out, his voice a little slurred through his ruined teeth. ‘You’re the one they couldn’t beat.’
She felt herself blushing for the first time in a long, long while. ‘It wasn’t like that. That’s just . . . the war overtook us, is all.’
‘That’s not what they say,’ the major replied. ‘Damn it, I heard this from the Denlanders themselves. They’ve no reason to build you up.’
I gave them a war that did not end in blood
, she thought, but spared her companions the details, only shrugging and deflecting them with, ‘You’re from the
Couchant?’
‘For the most part. A couple of the support from Locke, but that’s the size of it.’
‘May I ask . . . ?’ She didn’t know how to ask the question. It had hung about her since Doctor Lam had emerged from the trees with his flag of truce, but now it choked her.
The major nodded, though, and clearly understood.
‘You want to know what happened? What went wrong? You’ve a right to ask that, I think.’
And, as they played hand after hand of cards with no real tally of gains or losses, she heard about the fall of the Couchant front and how the Denlanders had won the war. The major recounted how
the Lascanne army had thrust into the heart of Denland during the first month of the conflict, only to overextend and meet furious resistance on all sides. She heard how the Denlanders had simply
not fought as soldiers were supposed to, using all sorts of dishonourable measures to slow the advance, and then turn it back. Then the war had separated into its two fronts. On the Couchant the
army of Lascanne had regrouped and gone on the offensive once again. Superior in numbers, they had advanced at a snail’s pace, being ambushed at every canyon, beset by sharpshooters, mines
and traps, so that by the end of two years of fighting they had still not quite regained the Denland border.
And then the war had changed, for the Denlanders had brought in their new inventions. They had hauled in more artillery, of improved design. They had brought in their rifles, too: that simple
idea that had revolutionized the war for them. From a grudging retreat they began to retake ground. The Lascanne soldiers were cut down at range, before they could even get close enough to fire,
and when the Denlanders melted away before their charge, it was only leading to an ambush of more riflemen.
And it became clear to Emily that in the Levant they had been blessed. The swamps, the cloudy air and tangled trees, those were no gunner’s ideal ground. Instead, there had always been the
close engagements, when the Denlanders had broken and run rather than stand. The open spaces of the Couchant front were a gift for the cavalry charge that Lascanne was so proud of, but they were an
even greater gift for a steady rifleman. The Couchant army of Lascanne, the great hope of the nation, had been steadily cut away by a Denlander force one-third of its size.
In the end, the Lascanne soldiers had been ordered to take on the Denlanders in one final great battle, rather than lose man after man to the nipping teeth of the Denland rifles. They had come
together in one great host – in numbers that made the whole Levant front seem trivial: a huge hammer intent on cracking the far smaller nut that was the Denlander army of the Couchant.
The major himself told her about what the Denlanders were calling the ‘Golden Minute’. It had taken place on what had been, for all purposes, the last day of the war. The Lascanne
forces had spread themselves out on a plain of the Couchant, advancing forward into the Denlander artillery, into the thunder of their fixed guns and their horse-drawn guns, and the terrible,
rumbling traction-artillery that ground their way about the field like monstrous beetles, musket balls springing uselessly off their armoured plates. The Lascanne advance had begun to falter, and
it had been Lord Deerling himself who had ordered the Lascanne cavalry, every mounted man available, to break up the Denland firing line and charge their big guns.
It had been a glorious sight, the major recounted, with a tear in his eye. Nigh on a thousand men on horse, every last steed saddled and ridden, and they had arrayed themselves in perfect order
before the infantry. Lord Deerling, on the lead mount, had given the order and they had set off at a leisurely canter, to start with. How fearsome they must have seemed to the Denlanders, all
flashing cuirasses and helms, lances and sabres and horse-pistols. With the dignity of princes, they had advanced towards the enemy lines.
The major said that, through his glass, he had personally seen Lord Deerling’s sabre raised to signal the charge. Then the old man was shot from his saddle, at a range quite incredible.
The cavalry had taken that cue to pick up speed, though – to build momentum and thunder down upon the Denlanders, till the dust had risen high and the ground had trembled. The Denlanders,
from all accounts, had bunched themselves close, and they had looked frightened and ready to break.
But they had not broken. They fired and fired again, twin lines kneeling and standing, then letting the next pair of lines advance into place ahead of them. The hammer of rifle shot into the
charging horsemen was almost continuous, whilst here and there, across the mass of galloping riders, the plumes of cannon shell burst and scattered the carcasses of men and horses alike.
The major could not tell for sure if the charge had slowed, or if it was just that the front ranks of riders were being scorched away so fast that it merely seemed so. For the Denlanders had
held firm, and just fired and reloaded, fired and reloaded. They had gone on slaughtering men and slaughtering their mounts until dust was all that moved in the air, and not one man, not one mount
of all the cream of the Lascanne army was left standing.
And through it all, the Denlanders had not paused in their advance, rank after rank, nor did they pause even when the riders had fallen, but still moved forward as inexorably as a press or a
mill, as steadily as the rumbling traction-guns that crushed dead and wounded beneath their massive wheels while they lurched towards the soldiers of Lascanne.