Guns of the Dawn

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Emily remembered reading it all in the newspapers. There had been a cartoon depicting the Denlander Parliament as a convocation of ravening beasts squatting amidst ruined walls. She remembered walking in Chalcaster, with everyone asking everyone else what would happen next. There had been no great patriotic bombast at the start. Nobody had quite believed it, as though an entire newspaper full of regicide and revolution could be laid at the door of a typesetting error or a printer’s poor sense of humour. But eventually the murmur had coalesced into two questions.

  What are we going to do?

  What are they going to do?

  Because word had come creeping in. It was never quite something directly written in the papers, never something tacked up in the market square or announced by the Mayor-Governor, yet everyone became aware of it. Travellers muttered it on their way through town. Royal messengers let it slip as they paid for their inn rooms. Drinkers repeated it to each other over mugs of small beer.

  The Denlanders were not content with remaking their own nation. The Denlanders would not stop until they had reworked the entire world in their own republican image.

  There was a constant flow of news from across the border. Noble families were being disenfranchised or forced to swear allegiance to that hellish parliament of murderers. Every common man of Denland considered himself a king now. They had abandoned all their trades and labour, and were clamouring for more blood and more rebellion. They were joining the army, or else being drafted. Reports were contradictory, frightening, impossible, save that it was all happening just over the border.

  And then everyone knew, almost on the same day, that the Denlanders were coming. Their Parliament, having cast off the God-given guidance of kings, knew that its artificial and tenuous rule could not last so long as Lascanne continued to hold out the example of a benevolent monarchy. For this new, cruel Denland to survive, they must shutter the lanterns of monarchy among their neighbours, lest that light show them the blood on their own hands. So said the papers.

  Lascanne’s only possible response was to meet them at the broken ground of the border, and throw them back.

  And then there had been the day when the army marched through. Emily remembered it well: all those gallant men in their red coats heading north for the border, to meet the rabble of the Denlanders. Who could not have believed that a few clashes would have finished it? Lascanne’s army had never been large, but they were brave, and they had right on their side. Emily could see even now the gleaming helms, the long column of cavalry, horses as proud as the men themselves. She could see the great dark lengths of the cannon, the marching pride of Lascanne’s infantry. Some had been local men, whose families had cheered and waved. Others had simply been youthful and courageous and smiling, and young girls had put garlands around them and embraced them. Alice – Emily’s younger sister and a constant trial to propriety – had even kissed one.

  Emily had remonstrated with her, but not too hard. It was all patriotism, after all. So she had watched, along with her sisters Alice and Mary – and Mary already growing large with child then. She had watched with Mary’s husband Tubal, and with young Rodric who had talked so excitedly about one day himself taking the Gold and the Red: the King’s coin and the King’s uniform.

  And that gallant host had marched away and gone north to win the war. And the papers had reported their brave deeds, the battles and the heroics. They had carried the war deep into Denland, during those early months, and everyone had assumed that would be it. When the wounded came home – when the increasing numbers of wounded came home – they were still predicting it would be over by the end of the year.

  And the year came and went, and the papers grew less specific regarding precisely where the fight had been taken to, and the wounded grew more numerous, until there were new hospitals being built to take them – in isolated places where people wouldn’t have to see. And the following spring the recruiting sergeants were passing from town to town, talking of the joys of a life in the army, and how the war was almost won anyway. They had gone amongst the men of Chalcaster and everywhere else. They had commissions to sell for those with money, and honest soldiers’ uniforms for those without. They were not short of volunteers in those early days, and again the family had turned out to cheer, waving a flag or two for the lads who were bold enough to carry a gun in service of the King.

  Mary had borne her child by then, and she had held little Francis to her breast as they cheered heartily away, secure in the knowledge that none of their family was going.

  But soon enough after that had come a proclamation. It seemed that the patriotic goodwill evidenced in Chalcaster could not have been shared across the nation because, despite the best efforts of the recruiting sergeants, the tally had come up short. The King was deeply sorry to ask more from his beleaguered people, but the war had reached a critical stage. They could not give the world over to the murderers of Denland simply for want of a few more muskets. Regretfully, the King’s writ therefore demanded each household give up one of its menfolk to swell the ranks of the Red.

  That was when the arguments started between Mary and Tubal.

  Emily could barely remember the details now of what had been said. Looking back, all those words seemed just to have been grease on the wheels that had taken Tubal away from them. She had never thought of him as a grand patriot: a religious man, yes, and an industrious worker at his printer’s business in town. A soldier, though? Dark, wry Tubal Salander? Surely some mistake. And indeed, he had not seemed possessed of that fire to sign up that young Rodric had shown, who had tried twice to take the King’s coin despite being a year too young.

  There had been something else eating Tubal right then. He had always been the man who seemed to know what was coming: when the weather would change, when prices would rise and fall. He heard things; he spoke to travellers and had odd sources of information.

  And so Tubal took much of the money he had so diligently saved, and he sank it into a lieutenant’s badge. And he wept when the time came to leave his wife and son, but he marched off anyway. And everyone cheered as the new recruits and their bought-and-sold officers marched away to the training camps. Alice cheered, and Rodric cheered, though he complained bitterly that the war would be over before he was old enough to join up. But Emily and Mary did not cheer, and little Francis cried in Mary’s arms, a thin, high wail that cut across all the jubilation and enthusiasm of the rest.

  Never mind, people had said to the hollow-eyed Mary. The war will be done soon. For all the rumour that the Lascanne army had been pushed back to near the border, these new recruits would tip the balance. How could those opportunistic brigands of Denland stand against the true men of Lascanne?

  In the year after that there was a host of men’s jobs and tasks which went undone unless the women and the boys set to them. There were shortages, because the sea had become a hunting ground of warships, and the merchantmen could not get through. There were panics about spies and revolutionaries. In the capital, men were executed for plotting against the King. At the border itself, the war dug in, with neither side able to break the other’s lines, but both constantly trying.

  And towards the end of summer the notices had gone up in Chalcaster market square, and all across the land. They were couched in many comforting words: yes, the war was being won; yes, victory was on the very horizon, only just out of reach. And, because of that, the King needed more from his loyal subjects. The King reluctantly, and because the Denlanders must be defeated if anyone was to sleep safely, required all men to give themselves into his service. Boys from the age of fifteen, men to the age of fifty, they were all required to present themselves to do the King’s will. Those with valuable skills would work and craft, forge and fit, to furnish materiel for the war. But most would simply march, because the Denlanders fought with the desperation of cornered animals and the weeds of their revolution must be uprooted entirely, lest they sprout anew.

  Rodric had not been fifteen,
not then, although men from amongst Emily’s servants had been taken. Rodric had fretted and kicked his heels and daydreamed of muskets and uniforms for the scant last months of his fourteenth year, while Emily had prayed for the end of the war.

  And then Rodric had turned fifteen, and the sergeants had come again to find those boys whom time had delivered into their hands. And Emily had done all she could to prevent it, but she was just one woman, and the war was vast and fierce and it would not stop for her.

  *

  She was very young in her dream: barely more than a child. It was a false-waking dream, as it always was. She had started from sleep and looked around the bedroom she had shared with Alice back then. A noise had woken her, but only her.

  Memories banished from everyday life were keen and clear in this dream. She remembered the hard, bitter feel around the house that centred on their father. He had spent a long time struggling with the world – born a gentleman with a grand old family name to support, and eaten away at by a succession of gnawing failures. Lost opportunities, lost respect, lost reputation, and the family money dwindling, each doomed venture swallowing it like the sea, and giving nothing in return. He had gone from a kind and loving man to a source only of harsh words and silences. He was desperate. Even so young, Emily had known that. She had understood that her father’s rivalry with just one man had brought him to a pass where he became almost a stranger to his own family.

  And now she crept from her bed, because there had been a noise, a strange noise, like a knock at the door at an hour too late for visitors. And she stole downstairs, bare feet on the chill steps, listening for a repetition of the sound she had only heard as it startled her out of sleep. In all the house she was the only soul awake.

  And there was a strange new smell, as she reached the foot of the stairs. It had been faint there, but her nose wrinkled at it. She followed it through the silent, cavernous rooms of the house – so much grander in dreams than in reality – until she encountered the closed door of her father’s study.

  And by then, her adult mind had caught up with where this dream was taking her, and some part of her was trying to hold her back. Once was enough, but the child in the dream did not know what was about to come. Even though the weight of horror attached to that door was palpable, still her hand reached for the handle.

  ‘Father?’ she heard her own voice, and when the door swung open, that scent flooded her nostrils. It was a harsh, almost sweet smell, a burning smell, but nothing akin to woodsmoke or tobacco. It branded itself in her mind even as it drifted in grey curls from the muzzle of the pistol still clutched in her father’s hand.

  Seeing his face, she woke, and it was not the hole in his temple that jackknifed her up, sweating and shivering, but the final expression he had turned towards her and all the world. Fixed on his face was an unutterable look of betrayal that he was at last brought to bay like this.

  The dream had come upon her as the capstone to a confused turmoil of a night full of wild imaginings. She had been lying awake since long before Poldry ever knocked at the door of her chamber, which came two hours before dawn.

  ‘Ma’am,’ he murmured. ‘It’s time, ma’am.’

  ‘I know.’ Her voice came out just as a croak, and she forced the words out louder before the old man had to repeat himself.

  ‘Shall I send Jenna in to dress you, ma’am?’ came the respectful voice from the other side of the door.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be busy with Alice. I’ll manage, Poldry.’

  As she heard him retreat down the corridor, she forced herself muscle by muscle to get out of bed. A year ago she would have had a girl dress her as a matter of course, but the war had no patience with such excess. Most of the maidservants were working in the factories or the fields now, keeping warm the places of those absent men until they could come back. It was no great hardship that Emily must dress herself.

  She chose a sombre, plain outfit that seemed to suit the occasion, and contorted herself like a fairground acrobat to do up at least some of the hooks at the back. Sloppy, perhaps, but she would have her cloak to wear against the pre-dawn chill, and it hid a multitude of sins.

  Around and below her, Grammaine was coming alive. The old house – the Marshwic house for five generations – creaked as the fires began to warm it. She heard the feet of servants, the clatter of the kitchen. It all seemed so normal.

  She went to her window and stared at the shutters a long time before she threw them back. That cured her of any idea of normality. The moon was down by now but the sun had not even begun to touch on the east, and the world outside her window was as dark as she had ever seen it. Across hills invisible in the blackness, she saw the sparkle of Chalcaster – the lamps and torches of a scatter of early risers and late-nighters, nightwatchmen and thieves. In the unrelieved dark that surrounded it, she could have plucked it from its setting and worn it as a tiara.

  Distantly, echoing from hill to hill, she heard the sound of the locomotive as it pulled away from the Chalcaster platform and began its long progress to Allsmere, thirty miles away. An owl took up the call and carried it on soundless wings over the house.

  There were lamps being lit in the rooms below now, and shutters being thrown back. The fire’s heat spilled out into a leaching fog that stole its warmth and light away at once. Emily was abruptly aware of the chill seeping into her room, touching her skin through the dress.

  I am not ready for this. She did not want to go down and face what must happen but, if not her, then why would anyone else? She was about to turn away from the window when she saw, deep in the night fog’s haze, a scatter of lamps approaching along the Chalcaster road. She strained her ears but heard no sound of horse or man. Still, who else could it be? They were coming at last.

  She closed the shutters carefully, as though prudence could put off the inevitable.

  She paused with her hand on the door handle. The world with its cares and woes was waiting for her.

  In the kitchen, Alice was scolding over how the maid had arranged her hair, a vexation welcome for its familiarity. There was the smell of the porridge oats over the fire, and she heard the rough, throaty voice of the miller’s wife murmuring about money. The stout, callused woman was at the door as Emily descended, coin in her hand and three loaves on the table drowning the cooking porridge with the scent of fresh bread.

  ‘Thank you!’ Emily called after her, but the woman was already bustling off into the night towards her cart and her other customers. It had been hard on her when her husband took the Gold and Red, but like all of them she managed.

  ‘Will you look at what this clumsy girl has done with my hair!’ Alice demanded. She had their father’s golden locks, while both her sisters had their mother’s darkly shining red, and she was altogether too aware of her striking looks. The war to Alice was merely an inconvenient rationing of suitors, as though the Parliament of Denland had set out purposefully to keep her from making a decent match.

  ‘Alice, leave the poor girl alone,’ Emily said.

  Alice scowled at her. ‘Well, just look at me.’ She eyed her sister speculatively. ‘Better than you, though. At least my gown suits the occasion.’

  ‘Red? It’s not very tasteful,’ Emily said.

  Alice stuck her tongue out. ‘Well, I think it’s patriotic, thank you very much. I want to impress the soldiers. When are they coming, anyway? They’d better not be late.’

  ‘They’re not coming because of you,’ Emily pointed out. ‘And they must be almost here. I saw their lights from upstairs. Cook, are you ready?’

  ‘I don’t know as I’ll ever be,’ replied their long-suffering cook, who did the work of three these days. ‘Which means, I s’pose, I’m ready as I’ll get.’

  ‘Where’s Mary?’

  Cook indicated the front door with a jerk of her head.

  ‘In this cold, with the baby? She must be touched in the head.’ Emily went to the door and opened it a crack, feeling the chill course past he
r ankles. Sure enough, the eldest Marshwic sister was out by the stables, a tall, shrouded shape caught by the light cast from the house.

  ‘Mary come in at once. You’ll catch your death!’ Emily shouted to her. She saw a pale flash as Mary turned her face towards the house. Beyond her, the lanterns of the approaching men were weaving hazily through the mist.

  ‘Mary come on. Neither waiting nor watching will help them come any sooner.’ Or later, Emily added to herself. If it would, we’d both be standing out there.

  She saw her sister turn and walk slowly back to the door, her face solemn. The baby clutched at her cloak with both tiny hands, its little red face screwed up against the cold.

  Emily cast a glance about Grammaine’s spacious kitchen, seeing her whole life arrayed around it. Her sisters, Mary withdrawn and Alice fussing; Cook at the hearth and Jenna working at the imagined slight to Alice’s hair. There was Poldry, too, coming down the stairs in his shabby coat that he would never change until it fell apart altogether; while outside, she knew that Grant would be feeding a horse and getting it ready to travel.

  Just one missing.

  ‘They’re at the gate, ma’am,’ said Poldry. He had stopped three steps from the bottom, his customary little pulpit from which he ordered the other servants. The station gave him a curiously sombre look, like a minister conducting a funeral. Emily and Mary exchanged a look of shared strength.

  There was a knock on the door, and Emily knew that nobody else would open it. The task was left to her.

  And there they were as she opened the door to them. Behind them, horses steamed and stamped in the cold and dark and, when the glow of the lanterns from the kitchen fell across them, it was as though they had not seen warmth or light for a long time. Here were a dozen serious-faced men on the move before the sun was, with pack-straps cinching their cloaks, and their crested helms tipped back. In that light, with only the night behind them, they could have been of any age, or from any time. They were soldiers only, with everything else stripped from them.