Guns of the Dawn

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘At a good pace, we’ll overhaul them in a half hour, ma’am. No more.’

  Please, God, let her be safe. Stupid, foolish girl, please let her be safe.

  She remembered the Ghyer. Before his infamy had become known, when he had still held on to his double life as a ranger and tracker, the Ghyer had once visited her father. He had been all smiles, a lean and handsome man with long, flowing locks and a neatly pointed goatee. He had spoken with her father of the emerging bandit problem, and Emily and Mary had peeked at him over the tabletop and thought him very good-looking and graceful.

  She summoned the scene back now – or as best she could through the clouding years that stood between. There was the Ghyer leaning back in his chair, with a glass of wine in one hand. There was her father, his stern and regular face nodding carefully, a smoking pipe raised to his lips. It had been a long time, shockingly long, since his living face had intruded into her thoughts.

  She had beaten her demons, she believed, driven them away, but instead they had been waiting inside her, all this while. They had known their time would come.

  They were much deeper into the trees, where the land began to rise up in the undulating curves of the Wolds, when Grant reined in again and tutted at the ground.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The black’s taken a thorn. Bloody fool doesn’t know how to ride a good horse,’ the big man muttered, hurriedly adding, ‘begging your pardon for the language, ma’am.’

  ‘You use whatever language you feel appropriate,’ she assured him. ‘So what does that mean?’

  ‘It means he’ll ruin the horse if he takes her much further.’

  ‘But they’ll go slower, and we’ll catch them up sooner?’

  Grant made a non-committal sound in response, as if that was quite secondary. ‘I’ll take it out of his hide, ma’am, if the black goes lame.’

  ‘If we catch them, you’re quite welcome to. I might take it out of Alice’s hide myself. What can the girl have been thinking?’

  Grant touched his heels to his mount’s flanks and they were moving again. ‘Can’t say, ma’am, but she’s not been happy for a while, that one.’

  ‘I suppose—’ but Emily never got to reveal what she supposed, for a woman’s cry rang out, high and clear, through the trees.

  ‘Alice!’ Emily gasped.

  ‘Easy, ma’am.’ Grant stood up in his stirrups, looking first one way and then another. ‘Came from that way, I reckon.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He nodded. ‘Round here the hillsides echo it all around you, ma’am. What you hears never coming from where you think. I’d stake my job that it’s this way, though.’ He hunched forward over his carefully pacing horse. ‘Lots of little dells and hollows all around here. Any of ’em would make a good camp, ma’am.’

  Emily tried straining her ears, to make out something else from her sister, and it seemed to her that she could. Faint and jumbled, but there were distant words audible through the trees – and it was Alice’s voice, she was sure.

  ‘Grant—’

  ‘I know, ma’am.’ He continued to guide his horse forward, but she noticed he had the blunderbuss resting across the pommel of his saddle now. She tried to get the awkward length of her musket into the same position, but the barrel seemed terribly heavy, dragging itself towards the ground all the time.

  The sound of her sister’s voice continued, in a long, complaining tirade. Evidently she had got tired of Griff, whoever he really was. Emily caught odd words now, and knew that Alice was demanding to go home, was criticizing her companion and her locale in as many shades of invective as she could muster. There was never anyone like Alice for complaining, Emily thought. If Griff had known that, then perhaps he wouldn’t have bothered.

  They were closer now. Alice’s voice bounced through the trees: ‘. . . and you dress like a beggar, for all your pretensions, and you drag me to this misbegotten spot, this horrible dank place, and what I was thinking of, I don’t know—’

  Quite. But then Emily heard a man’s laughter and she went cold when she heard other voices joining it. Three at least – or more. Not just one abductor, but a pack of them.

  And Mr Northway’s warning came back to her.

  ‘Do you . . . remember the Ghyer, Grant?’ she whispered.

  ‘That I do. I went out with your father that one time. That was a rough business, ma’am.’

  ‘I remember . . .’ She had only been aged ten at the time, but she remembered clearly. She had been allowed to stay up well past midnight for her father’s return. He had eventually arrived, flushed with success, leading a troop of eight soldiers behind him (and hadn’t there been twelve when they set out?), and beside him was a Warlock: a wizard of the King. Together they had routed the Ghyer and smashed his little corps of brigands, but the man himself had escaped.

  And now he is back, and he has more men, and he has my sister. A killer let loose in a land of women and children, the Ghyer’s thoughts would be turning to exacting a slow revenge now.

  ‘Reckon it’s him, ma’am?’ Grant asked her.

  ‘I cannot think who else it might be.’ She tried to take strength from the musket, but it seemed a leaden, useless thing to her.

  Grant stopped his horse and nodded to himself. ‘Well, ma’am, it’s for you to say. You want to go on, then I’m your man.’ His glance towards her was nothing but simple sincerity.

  ‘I am very lucky to have you, Grant.’

  He shrugged. ‘Grammaine gave me a home, ma’am, after I was done soldiering. There’s no easy way some debts can be paid.’

  A blur of thoughts, like a flurry of bird wings, passed across her mind. How many men were there? She could not guess. What would they do if they caught her? She could only imagine, and her imagination surely understated the horrors and the cruelty. What did such men always do to the poor women who fell into their clutches? And yet if she turned back now, then they would do it to Alice. Vain and foolish Alice. Simple, trusting Alice.

  I am stronger than she. I could endure such torments, perhaps, but she never could.

  She had no idea in her head of what the next moments might bring, only that she had to act, because knowing she had not would be worse than facing the brigands themselves.

  ‘We go on,’ she decided, and wrestled the musket into a more comfortable position, virtually resting it atop her horse’s head.

  And so it was that the two of them rode into the camp of the Ghyer.

  The brigand had made his resting place in a hollow within the woods, where generations of woodcutting and charcoal-burning from the hill farmers had eaten a great bite into the trees. It was in this bite, ringed on three sides by looming forest, that the Ghyer lurked. On the fourth side, a winding track led up into the woods, and then off towards Chalcaster, taking in a score of farms and shepherds’ cotes on the way.

  There was a flurry of startled movement as Emily and Grant emerged from the trees, but it could have been worse. That was the thought that occurred to Emily only later: It could have been worse. Here was not the army of bad men and villains that the Ghyer had once amassed, that her father and the King’s wizard had destroyed.

  There were seven men encamped in the hollow, slouching around the scattered ash of a dead fire. Beyond them, the two Grammaine horses shared a hobble with a bent-backed farm nag. Emily’s eyes were only for Alice, though, and there she was, in her patriotic red dress.

  Her sister’s face was so racked with emotion when she saw Emily that for a second it was impossible to read. Had she been ravished? What had they done to her? Then Alice gasped loudly, and Emily saw pure and utter relief there, magnified to such a size that it had been briefly unrecognizable. I am in time, she thought. Just in time.

  Alice was not tied, but there were men close on either side of her. A purpled bruise was starting across one of the girl’s cheeks. Emily found that her musket, of its own accord, now pointed in the direction of her sister’s captors.

 
; Only then did she spare the men themselves any attention.

  There was Griff, she saw, on Alice’s right. The others were men of similar stamp: ragged runaways, refugees from the war. A pack of wretched criminals who had nothing to lose and for whom begging was too lowly an occupation.

  Two of them had muskets, now pointed at Grant and herself. Against them, the muzzle of Grant’s blunderbuss seemed broad enough to take in the entire clearing. Knives had sprung into the hands of some of the brigands, and a woodsman’s long-hafted axe to the grip of another. One only had not drawn a weapon, although there was a pistol thrust into his sash.

  ‘Well, now, you have your father’s face, in a certain light, and obviously his bravery, although not his wisdom or his friends. What do you hope to gain?’

  She studied his features, recalling the smooth and charming man her childhood recalled to her memory. He met her eyes a moment, then perhaps he saw himself through them, for suddenly he looked away again.

  He had been the king of the woods, the lord of brigands, notorious outlaw and highwayman. There had been ballads, plays and stories about him. The Ghyer, deadly and delicate as a spider, fierce as a mad wolf, clever as a weasel. But that had been fifteen years ago and more.

  He was still lean, gaunt even. His cheeks were hollow, and his lithe frame was all angles. His face was pocked and dashed with scars, all the baggage of a long life spent amongst rough company. He still had that spike of a beard that, together with his cropped hair, was now white peppered with grey. There were liver spots on the backs of his hands. Were he a respectable citizen, they would not have drafted him for the army.

  The corner of his mouth twitched, and she knew that her thoughts must be plainly visible on her face. His expression was not of anger but of pain.

  ‘Not so very much to look at, am I?’ he said, and his voice sounded as old as he, not the easy lilt remembered from her childhood. It made her wonder what her father would have looked like now, had he lived. Such was her shock that she had no sense of the danger here, of the guns. A fraught, wire-taut stand-off was strung out between them like a tightrope, and she walked it without even thinking.

  The Ghyer made a gesture, almost dismissive, to take in his men and his camp, with just an echo of the grace that she remembered. ‘It’s not the band I had when your father came down on me with his dozen and some, and his wizard’s fire, and put paid to all my little dreams of empire.’

  She said nothing, but her musket was now pointing at him directly. He looked at it and sneered disdainfully. ‘It is enough,’ he said. ‘In a land where all the men have gone to war, my half-dozen is all the army I require.’

  ‘You are despicable. How can you do this to your own country in its time of need?’ she asked. A quiet current of laughter passed through his men.

  ‘Lascanne has never needed me,’ he replied. ‘Now put your toy away before you break it.’

  She tightened her hold on the musket, wondering how it would feel to fire. Grant’s horse stamped nervously, but he kept his own aim steady, his solid face expressionless. The two brigands with firearms shifted unhappily.

  The Ghyer sighed. ‘I thought, when I came to reclaim my kingdom, that I would at least have your father to deal with. Now all I find are silly little girls.’

  Alice spat at him, and Griff raised his hand to slap her again, but obviously thought better of it. Emily was starting to realize how lucky she had been. They had caught the brigands off guard, thinking themselves secure in their tree-walled fortress. Things would go very badly for all concerned, though, when the first trigger was pulled.

  She could see no obvious way out.

  ‘Imagine my surprise,’ said the Ghyer, emphasizing each word deliberately, ‘imagine how I felt, when I found that my old enemy was dead these last twelve years, and by his own hand.’

  Emily felt as though she had been struck. Her hands twitched on the musket and the barrel jerked. The Ghyer flinched and ducked back, and for a moment he was just an old man, tired and frightened.

  There was a long period of silence before he cleared his throat and continued, with a harsh, ragged laugh. ‘I see, in his absence, you’ve grown up into a man.’

  To Emily’s shame, Alice giggled slightly. She put it down to nerves.

  The Ghyer glanced between them, one hand raised peaceably. ‘Just put the gun down. Your man can go, and you and your sister’ll come to no harm. I mean to ransom her, and you’ll get the same. Ransom works best with undamaged goods.’

  ‘Ransom?’ she echoed.

  ‘Of course.’ He smiled, revealing teeth that were uneven and yellow, with gaps. ‘Why not ransom? Two ladies of quality. The authorities will pay a good price for your safe return.’ His eyes glinted, and that gap-toothed smile widened.

  Emily looked him right in the face, a face that had been pared down by the trials of his life until it was too transparent to hide the truth.

  ‘You would never give us back alive,’ she told him. ‘You had Alice kidnapped for revenge. You hate my family too much. I hear it in your every word.’

  His face froze up, except for his eyes, which flicked towards her musket.

  ‘And,’ Grant added, without looking round, ‘if your man there moves another step, I’m firing this thing and that’s the end of it.’

  Emily became aware now that Griff had been inching towards her as soon as her musket had focused on the Ghyer, and that he was abruptly stock-still and scowling.

  The expression on the face of the Ghyer remained calm, but his eyes were as wild as a trapped animal’s. He knows I’m right. Emily could almost hear the echo of the shots resounding back to her from some point in time just moments away.

  What on earth have I done? I’ve killed Grant, and probably Alice. And me, too, but that’s no great matter.

  She saw the Ghyer’s hand begin to reach for the pistol in his sash. ‘Just drop the gun,’ he was saying, his tone losing its nonchalance. ‘Drop it, Miss Marshwic. I’ll give you my word.’

  And what would that be worth? She raised the musket to her shoulder and, as she did so, saw a movement behind him, further up the trail. She froze, and enough of the brigands noticed that even the Ghyer turned to look.

  Three riders had appeared over the rise, and two of them were wearing the King’s red.

  Relief washed through her, and she said, ‘I’d advise you to surrender now. Perhaps they’ll show you some leniency, in light of your age.’ But then she sensed the mood of the bandits. They had not tensed or lost hope. They had relaxed.

  ‘I’d take another look, Miss Marshwic,’ said the Ghyer, and his face shone with such triumph that it almost restored his youth. ‘They’re no friends of yours.’

  Two of the riders did indeed wear the uniform of the King’s army, but the third was in drab undertaker’s black, and she saw that it was Mr Northway, which betrayed the other two as his henchmen from the town hall, with muskets held sloping over their saddles.

  ‘Put the gun away, Miss Marshwic,’ the Ghyer advised her. ‘Hoi, Northway, look who we’ve had come a-visiting! Some unfinished business of yours, no?’

  Northway reined his horse in and studied the little knot of people before him: the Ghyer, the brigands, the Marshwic girls and Grant. A look crossed his face that signified sheer frustration, that of a man whose hand had been forced. He spoke several words to his men out of tightened lips, and kicked at his horse.

  ‘What have you done?’ he demanded of the Ghyer, as he and his men came trotting down towards the camp. ‘What is this?’

  ‘Oh, don’t pretend this isn’t music to you!’ the Ghyer remonstrated, and Emily felt her musket sag in her grasp. One of the brigands started forward to take it from her.

  ‘Now,’ said Northway, and both his men fired in unison, the roar of their guns echoing across the width of the clearing. The man reaching for Emily’s musket was slammed against her leg, bouncing from the side of her horse to crumple to the ground. Her mount reared frantically and lunged
away, but the tangle of trees deflected it and it rounded back on the camp. Across the clearing, a second man was down, yelling and bloody, and then Grant fired the blunderbuss, and the bandit musketeer still standing loosed his own weapon, and the camp exploded into gunshot and smoke. Emily screamed at the thunderous noise of it, and felt her musket kick in her hands, discharging its load at the sky. Northway had dropped awkwardly to the ground, drawing a brace of pistols from a saddle holster. One of the red-coated soldiers was unhorsed, clutching at a raw wound in his arm. Grant had forced his mount between Alice and the rest, and his load of birdshot lashed across the remaining bandits, scattering them. Some were fleeing, some were down.

  ‘Alice! Come to me!’ Emily could not even hear her own voice.

  Through the reeking smoke, which smelt to her of her father on his last night, she saw the Ghyer drag the gun from his sash. There were tears on the old man’s face, knowing that it had come to this. Betrayed, doomed by his own hand, he turned the gun on Emily. His mouth opened to spit out some invective lost in the roar of battle.

  Something drove him to his knees, snapping his head back and throwing his arms wide like those of a crucified man. She saw him dragging the weight of his pistol back towards her, and still she could not react, could not take her eyes away.

  The second shot hit him so hard, from a low angle, that it almost threw him up onto his feet again, but he collapsed instantly, his back a blasted ruin.

  There were no further gunshots. The only sound was the echo and re-echo of the guns, fading and vanishing amongst the trees, and the wretched moaning sounds of the wounded.

  Emily found that she could finally draw breath again, but the air she inhaled was choked with cordite and memory. Her hands holding the reins were trembling, and she felt the horse’s terror through the muscles of her legs.

  Mr Northway stood up from where he had dropped to one knee to take his final shot into the Ghyer. The two pistols in his hands were smoking like pipes. His expression displayed only mild unhappiness, as the wounded soldier was helped up by his comrade.