Gunwitch

by David Michael

  The major took his hand from the door and turned to face her. He stood at attention, Margaret saw, as if he were addressing Da. “You must understand, Margaret, your father, the colonel, did what he thought was right–”

  Chal made the noise in her throat again.

  “–as did Miss Rose,” the major added, ignoring Chal.

  The door behind the major opened. Margaret stared. Miss Rose stood there, with a tall private standing behind her who looked sour. Miss Rose looked dirty and disheveled, as if she had just come out of the bayuk, or had slept in a stable. Or both. Her face was smudged with dirt and the braids of her hair had almost worked themselves loose. Stray strands surrounded her face.

  “And that,” Miss Rose said, “was not the first time the colonel and I disagreed as to what was the right thing to do. Unfortunately, even now, it probably won’t be the last.” She strode into the sitting room. The private started to follow her. “You can wait for me outside, private,” she said, and closed the door in his face.

  She looked at Margaret and the woman’s expression changed in a way that made Margaret want to cry again.

  “Margaret,” Miss Rose said. “I’m so glad–” She started to walk toward Margaret, then stopped, looking uncertain. “I’m so sorry, Margaret,” she went on. “I’m so sorry. I tried–”

  Margaret made the decision for both of them, rushing at the woman, hugging her around the waist. Miss Rose returned the hug after only a second’s hesitation, then was kissing her cheeks and stroking her hair and hugging her. “I’m so glad you’re safe,” Miss Rose said over and over. “I’m so glad you’re safe.” Just as Mum might have done.

  Margaret remembered how she had thought that she had never met a woman like Miss Rose. Even now Miss Rose surprised her.

  When she could speak again, Margaret said, “But I’m not sure we’re that safe, Miss Rose. Mr. Thomas is still out there. He only let me come back with Da because–”

  “I know, Margaret. I know.” After another squeeze, Miss Rose released Margaret. “But Mr. Thomas doesn’t know everything, no matter what he thinks. He doesn’t know you, he doesn’t know the Colonel, and he sure as hell doesn’t know me.” Miss Rose took Margaret’s right hand in her left. “Now, everyone,” she said to the room, “I think it’s time we went to see the colonel to discuss where we go from here.”

  “But Da told us to wait here,” Margaret said. To her surprise, she saw Janett stand. Janett touched her hair and adjusted her skirt, looking for all the world she was going to follow Miss Rose’s example. And disobey Da. Janett met her eye, gave Margaret a tight smile, then looked at Miss Rose.

  “You will need this, I think,” Chal said. She held out Miss Rose’s pistol, butt first.

  As Miss Rose’s fingers touched the pistol, Margaret thought she saw strange letters flash along the barrel. The next instant, though, the letters were gone. Margaret was not sure she had seen anything.

  “Thank you,” Miss Rose said. Margaret watched as Miss Rose checked the load on the pistol, then pushed it into her belt.

  “Janett,” Major Haley said. “Margaret, I really think–”

  “Major Haley,” Miss Rose said, “you can either escort us to the colonel’s briefing room, or you can follow us with the private.”

  Chapter 16

  Rose

  Fort Russell

  1742 A.D.

  “You are a most stubborn woman, Miss Bainbridge,” Colonel Laxton said.

  “Only when you disagree with me, Colonel,” Rose said. She saw Margaret looking at her, and gave the girl a smile. Margaret almost smiled back. Rose’s smile faded and she again made a silent promise to kill Thomas Ducoed. Margaret and Janett sat in the corner on wooden chairs. Neither girl had said anything since they had come into the room with Rose. The colonel had looked sharply at Janett, then at Rose, but had made no attempt to send the girls away. He had only sent the private back to his sitting room to retrieve chairs for the girls.

  “It seems you are determined to do disagree with me at every turn.” Colonel Laxton stood flanked by Majors Eason and Haley, with Captain Keele and two Leftenants that Rose had not been introduced to. The men stood on one side of the long table. Chal and Rose stood on the opposite side. A surveyor’s map of the river, fort and hill lay on the table.

  “Chal will take the girls,” Rose said. “All she needs is to reach the river.”

  Chal met Rose’s gaze when Rose turned to look at her, but did not respond. Chal only stood there with her arms crossed.

  “She is not English,” the colonel said. “No offense.”

  Chal gave a curt nod.

  “Then send Major Haley with her,” Rose said, looking at him as she said his name. Such a pretty face. And too young to die.

  “Miss Bainbridge, please,” Major Haley said.

  “Please be silent, Major Haley,” the colonel said without looking away from Rose. “Unchapparoned? Really, Miss Bainbridge. I would prefer that you do as I have asked you. Take your … scout, and whatever provisions we still have, and escort Janett and Margaret back to Fort Gunter. We will provide the distraction–”

  “You will provide very little distraction for Ducoed and his allies, whoever–whatever–they are, without me. They will attack you and overrun you as soon as you are clear of the fort, while Ducoed comes for the girls.”

  “Which is why you should be with the girls, Miss Bainbridge. I can think of no one better capable–”

  “Colonel,” Rose said, “I am your element of surprise. Whatever Ducoed has planned for you, he is no longer expecting me to be a part of it. I am your only hope of lasting long enough.”

  Major Eason said, “The English Army is unmatched in the field–”

  “Your little army is surrounded, Major,” Rose said. “And the surrounding force is not interested in letting you leave. Ducoed is playing a game with you. Even he doesn’t expect you to just take him at his word and leave peaceably–and I don’t think even an arrogant bastard like Ducoed believes you believe him. He expects you to try to surprise him with an attack. And he expects the attack to be a ruse, to allow the colonel a chance to send the girls to safety. He expects you to do exactly what you’re planning to do. The only thing he does not expect,” Rose went on, “is me.” She paused, but none of the men contradicted her. A first. “Are we agreed?”

  “Da,” Margaret said. Everyone turned to look. Margaret was standing now. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave you.”

  Janett stood beside her sister, took her hand. “Father, our place is with you.”

  “Your place,” the colonel said. He bowed his head. “I should never have sent for you.”

  “You did not send for us, Father,” Janett said. “We came.”

  The colonel did not respond. He turned back to Rose. “I … disagreed with you before, Miss Bainbridge,” he said, “when you … offered … to go look for Margaret. Now you disagree with me when I ask you to go with Margaret and her sister–”

  “I’m doing this for Margaret, colonel,” Rose said. “And Janett. And you,” she added. “I will help you buy the time they need to get away.”

  “Do we not have a say in this?” Janett asked.

  “Janett, please,” Colonel Laxton said without turning around. He looked down at the map. Then he took a breath, brought his head up, and looked Rose in the eye. “I would ask you as an officer– No, hear me out,” the colonel said before Rose could interrupt. “I would ask you as an officer, Miss Bainbridge, but I know that is … insufficient. So I ask you as a father. Not as a very good father, it could be said, but as a father nonetheless. Please, Miss Bainbridge, save my little girls.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do, Colonel.” Rose looked at Margaret and Janett, then back to the colonel. Their father. “Even now, Ducoed is spreading his forces around the fort, on both sides of the river, and up and down the river. He knows you will attempt to smuggle the girls out of the fort. What he doesn’t know is which direction you
will try.”

  Rose stopped talking as Margaret let go of Janett’s hand and walked up to the table to stand beside her father. Major Haley stepped aside to give the little girl room. Margaret took her father’s hand. She looked up at him, then at Rose.

  “Miss Rose,” Margaret said, “save my Da.”

  Stepping behind her, Janett said, “We will go with Chal, Father.”

  Colonel Laxton looked at his daughters, his lips pressed together. “Well,” he said after a minute, “I guess that’s decided then.”

  * * *

  “You do not know what you will be up against,” Chal said.

  “I have some idea,” Rose said. “After being chased in the bayuk, and feeling the magics in use this morning.”

  They had retired to the small bunkroom Chal had been assigned while Rose was in the stockade. Rose had stripped to the waist and begun washing herself with the cold water in the earthenware bowl on the room’s only table. Chal sat crosslegged on the bed, watching her.

  “You have not been in a battle for a long time, Sergeant Bainbridge,” Chal said.

  Rose smiled. “And you have never been in a battle, my friend.”

  “It would be better, I think,” Chal said, ignoring Rose’s words, “if you took the girls and I faced the …” She paused.

  “The what?” Rose asked. “You know what those things are?”

  “The word I have is not the word for what it is out there.” Chal paused again.

  Rose looked at Chal, then continued rubbing at her skin with the rough washcloth, trying to remove the smell of the stockade. She doubted there was enough clean water in the fort to accomplish that. But she would try. It was more than just the stench of stale straw and urine and worse that made her scrub at her skin until it was a pale rose color. For fifteen years in the 101st Pistoleers, before and after every battle, she had scrubbed herself the same way. Before the battle because she might die in the next hours, and if she were going to die, she wanted to die clean. Not that there was really any such thing as clean on a battlefield. But at least she would die with only the mud and blood of the battle on her. Then after the battle to try to feel … human … again. Maybe even like a woman again.

  “They are an evil that my people have seen before,” Chal said after a minute. “A new evil, perhaps, but created from an old evil. An evil my people once fought. An evil my people once created.”

  “You mean the magic that lets Ducoed have an army or corpses?”

  “Yes. And what powers his grunzers.”

  “You mean it’s not coal or charcoal?”

  “No,” Chal said, softly.

  Rose looked at Chal, but Chal was staring at the wall, past the wall. “So … what?”

  Chal just shook her head.

  “You’re taking the girls,” Rose said, tugging the braids out of her hair. She wondered if she should take the time to wash her hair. “And Major Haley and however many men he decides on. All you need is a boat and a push. Once you’re on the water, there’s nothing Ducoed can do to stop you, or catch you.” She held a lock of her hair to her face and smelled it. “Ugh,” she said. “Do you think the private would bring me another bucket of water?”

  “Once I am on the water,” Chal said, her voice almost a whisper now.

  Rose paused, holding a turtleshell comb in her hand. “Are you alright, Chal?” she asked.

  “The waters,” Chal said. “The river. His songs are changing. My song … I can no longer hear …” Her voice drifted off. Then she sat up straight, her eyes focused on Rose, her expression tense. “The Seeker draws near,” she said.

  “Here?” Rose said.

  “Of course. This is where I am. I felt him touch the waters. He was letting me know that he is near. That I should be ready.”

  “Then there is no more question,” Rose said. “You are going with the girls. You will be able to outrun the Seeker too, once you’re on … the boat. The river will carry you to New Venezia. If I survive, I will find you there.”

  There was a knock on the door, and Chal’s face relaxed as suddenly as it had tensed. She smiled. “The river will carry me, and carry you, Rose Bainbridge, where it wills.” Chal uncrossed her legs and stood. “I will give you some privacy.”

  “Privacy? Just tell the private to put the uniform on the bed. And tell him to fetch me more water.”

  Chal moved to the door. Rose turned so her back was to the door. Fifteen years in the 101st with mixed male and female squads had desensitized her to her own nudity, though not to the same degree as Chal, who seemed just as comfortable naked as clothed in any circumstance, but Rose did not want to embarrass the poor private.

  Rose heard Chal open the door. “Put the uniform on the bed,” Chal said. Footsteps, a man’s intake of breath, probably from seeing Rose’s naked back, then Chal said, “I am going to see to young Janett’s change of wardrobe.”

  “But–” A man’s voice.

  The door closed. Rose smiled and shook her head. Another bit of propriety Chal was more relaxed about than Rose.

  “This is … highly irregular,” Major Haley said behind her. Rose almost heard him swallow.

  She turned to face him. She felt him watching her as she turned around. She no longer had a maiden’s body, she knew, or even a young woman’s, but she had never had children, so her breasts had not sagged fully and her waist and hips were as slender as they had ever been. She suffered a moment’s self-consciousness when she thought of her accumulated scars, especially the flogging scars on her back, but decided she did not care.

  The major was not wearing his uniform, which lay on Chal’s bed. He had on an old woolen shirt, undyed and sweatstained, and a pair of buckskin trousers. His black boots looked out of place. Except for the boots, and his youth, he reminded her of Nicholas. His eyes met hers.

  “I should go–”

  “No, Ian,” she said. “You should stay.”

  “I brought my uniform,” he said. He looked her in the eye as he spoke, but she knew he was seeing her naked breasts. He gestured to toward the bed to indicate the uniform, then realized what he had done, combined with how she was undressed, and his face flushed. Nicholas had been just as shy, at first, and just as easy to make blush. Nicholas had not been her first, as she had been his. But Nicholas had been the last. Nearly five years ago. Five years suddenly seemed a long, long time. “I should go,” the major managed to say.

  “It’s been nine years since I wore a uniform, Major Haley,” Rose said as she stepped closer to him. “And I’ve never worn an officer’s uniform.” She reached out and touched his chest with her hands. His muscles beneath the fabric were warm and firm. Her touch made him catch his breath. She looked up into his green eyes. “I think you will need to help me.”

  “Maybe … maybe if I put it on again for you?” he suggested.

  “Yes, that would be a great help,” Rose said. Her fingers slid down his chest to his stomach, then to his waist. She slipped her fingers into his waist band, and tugged. “First, though, take these off for me.”

  * * *

  Fewer than a hundred men remained in Fort Russell, and a third of those were wounded. None of them, hale or hurt, slept that night. Every barrel of powder was opened and divided between the soldiers. What could not be carried was packed into the walls and men too wounded to travel were given strikers and told to light the powder at the first sign of the enemy. Likewise, all the crates and barrels and bags of potatoes and cured meat and flour were divided into packs for the men to carry. What could not be carried was left for the rats.

  Rose wore Major Haley’s uniform with her 101st Pistoleers regimental badge bent and wrapped tied to her right arm. She had wanted to remove the gold knots of his rank from the epaulets, but the major–Ian, she corrected herself, because she liked his name as much as she liked his face–Ian had insisted the knots were part of the disguise. He had frowned at her when she put the badge on her arm, but had not said anything. His uniform was too big for her,
but it smelled like him, so she did not mind. Every time one of the enlisted men saluted her, though, she was tempted to take the whole thing off.

  With Captain Keele’s assistance, she interviewed the older veterans and found ten men, nearly a whole squad, who had served with members of the 101st Pistoleers on past campaigns. None of them seemed eager to do so again, but she took that as a necessary survival instinct of veterans. She assembled the men in a dark corner of the fort. She dismissed Captain Keele, who snapped a salute to her as if she really were a major and not just wearing a major’s uniform, then walked away.

  “Sergeant Tabart,” she said, addressing the most senior of the ten men.

  “Sir.” Tabart was a wrinkled veteran, maybe ten years older than her, with a pronounced limp.

  “Captain Keele tells me you served with the 43rd in Brittany.”

  “Yes, sir. I left a bit of me leg there, sir.”

  “You don’t have to address me as ‘sir’, Sergeant.”

  “Force of habit, sir. I see the uniform, I say ‘sir’. Sir.”

  Rose sighed. “Did you serve with any of the 101st?”

  “No, sir. I was with Leftenant Kilburn on the northern flank, sir.”

  Rose did not remember Leftenant Kilburn, but a lot of men and officers she did not know had died in Brittany. “What about any of your men?”

  “Jickell has mentioned it before, sir.”

  “Corporal Jickell,” Rose said, “you’re with me.”

  “Sir,” said the corporal, then spit.