Gunwitch

by David Michael

  She put the sting of the lash out of her mind and thought that at least the hood warmed her face and blunted the cold autumn breeze. At least it was not raining today. Or had not started raining yet. At least the mud she was standing in only covered the soles of her shoes. At least her undergarments were still dry. At least they were not marching in circles around the camp, carrying packs that weighed two stone.

  Three months in His Majesty’s Army had taught Rosalind to count her blessings in the negative. To list out the worst that was not happening at any given moment.

  At least Thomas seemed to have cooperated sufficiently that she no longer expected to be pulled up on the post at sundown.

  She heard Corporal Edwards pass behind her less than a minute later. She heard the woman snap, “Attention!”

  Rosalind stood straighter than she had been, hands at her sides, right hand gripping her pistol, the barrel of her loaded pistol pointed down at the ground.

  “Sir!”

  “Proceed,” said the Leftenant. He sounded bored. He always sounded bored. Rosalind had never heard the Leftenant sound anything but bored. But the man’s eyes, she knew, were attentive, sharp, looking for the least mistake or shortcoming.

  She felt the Leftenant’s eyes on her now. She hoped she had properly loaded her pistol. Otherwise the shot and powder were even now dropping to the wet ground at her feet. She wished she could see.

  Their superiors had started this new drill only the week before. The privates were brought out in squads and lined up facing away from the targets. Then they were hooded and spun to face downrange. Finally, one by one, they had their hoods removed and were ordered to fire at the target in front of them. Then to reload and fire again. The first targets had been the same stuffed-straw target dummies they had been shooting at from their first days in the Coven. Then the targets had put been dressed in the uniforms of the Swedes, or the Germans, or the Italians. Then in the red uniform of His Majesty’s Army. Since the target had been dressed in the uniform of a regular, with white trim instead of the Pistoleer’s black and yellow, Rosalind had hesitated only a second. The next day, the targets had been dressed in the black-and-yellow faced uniform of the Pistoleers. She had surprised herself by hesitating even less.

  The drill came to her slowly, one private at a time. The rustle of cloth and hair as the hood was pulled off. The order, “Aim and fire at the target in front of you, Private.” Sometimes the order was repeated. The boom of the gun discharging. The smell of burned powder and the odor of raw power coming through the hood. The order to “Reload and fire again, Private.” Another boom. Then, “At ease, Private.” And on to the next in line.

  Her ears were ringing from Private Millsom’s two shots when she felt the corporal’s hand grab the bag and pull. She blinked against the gray haze of the overcast made brilliant by her time under the hood. The target dummy was dressed very differently today. Not a uniform.

  “Aim and fire at the target in front of you, Private,” Corporal Edwards said behind her.

  Rosalind brought up her right arm, bringing the pistol into line with the target as she shifted her stance. She braced her right wrist with her left hand and looked down the barrel. She could feel the power build inside her, ready to join with the discharge of her shot. She saw the runes flash and dance along the metal of the single shackle on her left wrist, its inhibiting influence doused by the proximity of the corporal. Her finger tensed, ready to squeeze the trigger and release the power. But she did not fire.

  The target dummy was wearing a summer dress. A ripped dress, poorly patched, that had once been finery. That had once been her dress. Made for her by her mother. She remembered the spring evenings spent together cutting and stitching and talking. Before the day in Squire Phillips’ field. Before the summer solstice festival. Before her betrayal by her family. Before the King’s Coven had come to claim her.

  This time it would not be like shooting an enemy soldier. Or shooting another soldier or a Pistoleer. This would be like shooting a woman. Shooting the woman she used to be. It would be like shooting herself.

  “Aim and fire at the target in front of you, Private,” Corporal Edwards said again.

  Her conscription. Her isolation. Her being stripped and shorn and uniformed. Three months of following orders. Three months of drills and marching and shooting at targets. All of it been leading to this. The understanding that she had no past any longer. That who she had been was gone, except this one last bit of herself. And she would be the one who made it final. She pulled the trigger.

  She felt her chest go cold as the lightning and fire that had been building up inside her shot out of her. White and red power sparked and streaked through the air at the speed of the bullet, all three hitting the target dummy. The bullet punched through. The fire burned. The lightning ripped. The crudely patch top of the dress that had once been hers fell away, exposing the scorched upper torso of the target dummy.

  “Reload and fire again, Private.” Rosalind could barely hear the corporal over the roar in her ears. And in her mind.

  She reloaded her pistol with a mechanical precision that surprised her. A quick swab to clear the barrel. Rip the pouch. Dump the powder. Drop the ball. Ram the wadding. Prime the pan. Pull back the hammer. Take aim.

  She, Rosalind Bainbridge, did not do these things. Someone else, someone not Rosalind Bainbridge. Rosalind Bainbridge could not do these things. Private Bainbridge, though, did them all perfectly, precisely.

  This time, she did not use the lightning and the fire she had been taught while at the Coven. If she was going to kill herself–who she used to be–then she should use what she had brought with her. The corporal might protest. Or she might not. The order had not been specific. Reload and fire again, Private. The cold in Rosalind’s chest became a void that pulled the heat out of the air around her. She felt the mud she stood in become rigid. She let out a breath that fogged in the wind. She focused the cold into her hand, the gun, the bullet. White fog dripped off her fingers and the barrel of the gun. She squeezed the trigger.

  The sound of this second shot was muffled. Unlike the lightning and the fire, which made the shots even louder and added a crackle and hiss that normal bullets did not have, the cold dampened the noise. The cold was just as damaging. Though in a different way.

  The target dummy shattered. The remains of her dress fell to the ground amid a heavy, white fog that rolled along the ground like syrup.

  “At ease, Private.” If Corporal Edwards was surprised or annoyed, there was no sound of it in her voice. The corporal moved down the line.

  Rosalind pulled her boots free of the frozen mud and stood at ease. She watched the other target dummies dressed in the former lives of the other privates disintegrate one after the other. Rosalind noticed that Corporal Edwards did not have to repeat herself when she gave the order to Thomas. If there had been any hesitation between the order and the act, Rosalind did not notice it. Thomas’ first shot was enough to destroy the target dummy that had been dressed in Thomas’ old clothes. The second shot was only a matter of form.

  * * *

  Thomas was cheerful as they ate lunch. He was always in a better mood after magic-fire exercises. Today, though, he was almost jolly.

  Rosalind and Thomas ate with their squad, but on the edges of the group. Like the rest, they squatted as they ate, resting on their heels, their pistols cleaned but unloaded, hanging from straps around their necks. They took their pistols with them everywhere. All the Pistoleers did. When they drilled with infantry rifles, they had their pistols with them. When they visited the latrine in the middle of the night, they had their pistols with them. They were Pistoleers. Pistoleers were, the corporals told them repeatedly, inseparable from their pistols.

  “Without your pistol,” Corporal Edwards had told them on their first day in the Coven, “you are not a Pistoleer. And if you are not a Pistoleer, then you are witch. And if you are witch, you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, de
ad. Because witchcraft is a crime.” There were a few weak chuckles at this and a comment that Rosalind did not hear. “No,” the corporal said, responding to whoever had spoken, “you will not be burned at the stake. Because we are Englishmen and not ignorant barbarians like the Italians. But because we are smart Englishmen, who prefer to be safe rather than sorry, once you are dead, dead, dead, your corpse will be burned and the ashes scattered. And so, as a Pistoleer of the One Hundred and First, you will go everywhere with your pistol. You will sleep with your pistol. When you wake up in the morning, you will have your hand on your pistol. This will be a new experience for you women, but should prove no great challenge for the men.” More laughter. “You will eat with your pistol. You will shit with your pistol. You will do everything we tell you to do, and you will do it with your pistol.”

  Only one member of their squad, Private Carlell, made the mistake of leaving her pistol behind in her cot when she made a late night visit to the latrine. The whole squad, men and women, had then been rousted out and, one after the other, bound to the post and given two lashes. A second reminder had not been required.

  Thomas dipped the corner of the hard, black bread into his bowl of thin stew. “I felt the chill from your second shot,” he said as he waited for the bread to soak up the broth. “One last bit of cold hatred for your old life?”

  Rosalind shook her head. “I didn’t hate my old life,” she said. “I miss my family. My father. My mum. Even my sister, Elizabeth. And now they’re gone.”

  “No,” Thomas said. “Your family was already gone. They sent you here and then set about forgetting you–”

  “No, Thomas. Don’t say that. They didn’t. They couldn’t.”

  “They did,” Thomas said. He ignored her still shaking head. “You might be surprised what a family is capable of. Even if you shouldn’t be. Not now.” He paused to take a bite. Then, while still chewing, he said, “Wasn’t it cold enough, though, don’t you think? Did you have to go and make it colder?”

  “I noticed you didn’t use any fire on yours, Private Ducoed,” Private Millsom said from behind Rosalind. “All very cold, white lightning is what I saw. No fire mixed in at all. One last bit of cold hatred for your old life?”

  “Oh, no, Private Millsom,” Thomas said, looking past Rosalind. His voice was flat. A little breeze whirled around him. Rosalind saw the runes on his shackle flash and fade an instant before she smelled the metallic odor of Thomas’ suppressed magic. “There’s still a lot more where that came from.”

  Rosalind heard Private Millsom shift behind her, moving further away. Private Millsom did not respond.

  “Besides,” Thomas went on, “adding fire to lightning is like putting cold on ice. Or cold on damp,” he added, and flashed a smile at Rosalind.

  She smiled back at him. She wished Thomas would smile more. It changed his face, warmed up his eyes. She also wished he would not antagonize their squad mates so much. She was the only one he would talk to in a friendly manner.

  In the first weeks of their training, Thomas had spoken even less, and only to her. She had had to beg him, after his second time under the lash, to answer the corporals and the Leftenant and the other superior officers when they spoke to him, and to do as they told him. He had listened to her, finally, but had then refused to speak to her for a more than a fortnight. Not until they had moved from simple load-fire-clean-reload drills with their pistols and had begun the first magic-fire exercises.

  Thomas had excelled at the magic-fire drills and would have done nothing else if the corporals had not kept his magic under control with his shackle. Thomas was the only soldier in their squad, and one of only a few in the entire training company, that had been able to summon lightning before he arrived at the Coven. So he had been set to teaching Rosalind and the rest of the squad, as well as another squad. He had enjoyed that, then had been upset again when he had had to be taught with the rest of them how to summon the fire. Rosalind had tried to appease him by teaching him how she summoned the cold, but he had been uninterested. He wanted the fire. What he hated was having to learn it from someone he despised, which was everyone but Rosalind.

  Thomas would also stop talking to her after those days when she was pulled out of marches or latrine duty or other tasks around the encampment and sent to train with the 102nd. The healers of the 102nd treated her like an outsider, an invader trying to steal their secrets. Then when she got back to the tent she shared with her squad, her squad mates treated her the same way, especially Thomas. She had offered to teach Thomas what she learned, but he never had the patience for the techniques. Maybe it was because their shackles made the exercise purely mental. They could not practice the techniques for real. The times Thomas, or the whole squad, her included, were disciplined, she wanted to heal the stripes, but could not. She could have healed them easily, except the rune-carved shackle on her left wrist prevented her. Thomas had laughed when she told him that.

  * * *

  The hooded magic-fire exercises continued through the rest of the week. The target dummies were dressed in a variety of roles: merchants, farmers, fullers, and more. Sometimes the dummies wore hats, sometimes they wore bonnets.

  “You are His Majesty’s 101st Pistoleers,” Corporal Edwards told them over and over. “You are cannon who need no crew. You are field pieces with the ability to aim themselves. Smarter than grunzers–most of you–but you are artillery, plain and simple. And as artillery, you will fire upon whatever and whoever your superior officers designates as a target. You will reign down lightning and destruction on the enemies of His Majesty, whether they be soldiers or civilians, men or women, adults or children.”

  On the last day of the week, as the hood came off, Rosalind found herself lining up her pistol to shoot a smaller target dummy than any she had seen before. The target stood only waist high, and was dressed in simple clothes.

  “Aim and fire at the target in front of you, Private,” Corporal Edwards said behind her.

  Rosalind squeezed the trigger and the target dummy exploded in a cloud of straw and strips of cloth. It was only a target dummy, not really a child, but she could not stop the nausea. She doubled over and threw up her breakfast.

  When she had composed herself again and stood at attention, Corporal Edwards said, “At ease, Private.” Then moved on to her left.

  You are cannon. You are artillery. The words echoed in Rosalind’s head. Rosalind had been a girl needing a husband. Private Bainbridge was becoming a mode of transport for a pistol.

  * * *

  The next magic-fire exercises there were no hoods, and no target dummies. Instead of target dummies, shorn sheep had been tethered to posts, one per private. The sheep bleated or munched on the sparse grass of the firing range, oblivious, until the slaughter started.

  Corporal Edwards had them follow the same drill as before, with each member of the squad firing twice in turn.

  Rosalind had never seen so much blood, not even when she had gone hunting with her father or when Cook and her parents had butchered a hog or dressed a deer. The bodies of the sheep exploded under the combined impact of lead and magic, showering the sheep yet to be targeted with blood and body parts. Those sheep screeched and pulled against their tethers. They tried to break free and run away.

  Rosalind vomited again, this time before it was her turn to shoot. She had to quell the nausea in her stomach as she aimed for the center of the sheep’s torso. She had to ignore the panicked look in its eyes and the pitiful bleating. She had to ignore the blood spread over its skin.

  Private Bainbridge squeezed the trigger. Private Bainbridge hit her target. Rosalind hated herself.

  They had mutton stew for dinner that night. Rosalind could not make herself eat it. She gave her share to Thomas.

  * * *

  Rosalind opened her eyes as the guard changed after midnight. It was dark in the tent she shared with Privates Millsom, Gadge, Wad, Carlell, and Rames. She could hear their breathing, especially Private Mill
som’s snoring. She waited until the guard detail had passed their tent, then she folded back her blanket, picked up her pistol with her left hand, and stood. She pulled on boots and shrugged into her coat.

  “Another midnight latrine visit, Private Bainbridge?”

  Rosalind started at Millsom’s whisper. She put a finger to her mouth. “Shh. You’ll wake the others.”

  “Like you wake me every night?”

  “I’m sorry,” Rosalind said.

  Millsom did not respond. She turned over, putting her back to Rosalind.

  Rosalind unbuttoned the front of the tent and slipped through, closing it quickly to let out as little of the accumulated body heat as possible. She heard Millsom turn over again as she buttoned the tent flap closed.

  She went to the latrine, nodding to the guard she passed on the way to and back. But she did not go back to her tent. Out of sight of the guard, she slipped into the shadows between tents and made her way to the rear of the pantry tent. She sat on a dry spot. She pulled her legs up to her chest with her arms and rested her head on her knees. She did not know whether Thomas would show tonight. She always came for him, but the reverse was not always true.

  When she sat alone, in the dark, in the middle of the encampment, she felt further away from home than ever. Free for a few minutes from the demands of corporals and from the disapproving eyes of the Leftenant and other officers. But still carrying her pistol, with an impenetrable wall of English military and law between her and home. Or what used to be her home. She did not cry, though. Because if Thomas did show, and he saw her tears, he would laugh at her.