Guns of the Dawn

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  She held her breath, because a mad idea had come to her: an idea just as mad as Brocky’s pistol frenzy, though far less likely to succeed.

  But what if . . . ?

  Could she put herself in the mind of a Denlander officer? What would he be thinking that would stay his hand?

  Is there any common ground at all?

  We are dead either way, she decided. They will get reinforcements soon enough. They will have enough men to surround this entire village, and kill everyone and everything in it. Hiding here behind the stones won’t stop us getting shot in the back.

  She let out her breath, for still the Denlanders hesitated.

  ‘God protect me,’ she whispered.

  ‘Sergeant?’

  ‘Caxton, have you got on your person a pocket handkerchief?’

  The ensign made a wretched little laugh. ‘I wouldn’t be much of a tailor else.’

  Under Caxton’s incredulous gaze, Emily knotted the ridiculous little square of cloth about the barrel of her musket.

  ‘We can’t surrender, sir,’ the ensign insisted. ‘You know . . . Doctor Lam, he does terrible things to our soldiers if he can catch them.’

  ‘I’m not surrendering, Caxton. I’m going to parley.’

  ‘They’ll shoot you dead the moment you step out.’

  ‘They may well do,’ she admitted. Either through malice or sheer over-enthusiasm on their part, the Denlanders could end this ploy of hers within seconds of its start.

  She took a deep breath, but her courage failed and she could not bring herself to stand up. ‘If this fails, Caxton . . .’ Then what? Make a run for it? Holdfast? Die in a blaze of musket fire? ‘If this fails, you have command.’ What a pathetic failure, what a dodging of responsibility, she reproached herself. But if I knew what she should do, I would be doing it instead of this.

  She stood up, not allowing herself to think about it further. There was a single shot.

  It took all of three heartbeats to convince her she was still alive, clasping the musket to her chest, with her eyes closed like a child scared of the monster. Above her, the flag drooped limply, such as it was.

  For a second her voice would do nothing but utter a croak, but she finally forced out: ‘Parley! Parley!’

  Her words dropped into the great well of silence that the indigenes had made out of their interlinked gazes. Every one of the damned creatures was looking at her.

  ‘Step forwards,’ came a voice from the greenery above, and she did so, holding her musket at her shoulder, as though she was drilling at Gravenfield for Master Sergeant Bowler again. She stopped a good five paces from the foot of the slope, squinting upwards. She could make out perhaps half a dozen forms amongst the trees, knowing that there were far more on either side.

  ‘Parley!’ she yelled again. ‘Someone come down here to talk. I’m not going up there.’

  All of which assumed they had any interest in talking but, if they hadn’t, then this had been doomed from the start.

  For such a long time, nothing stirred above. She could feel the tension among her soldiers behind her, sighting along their muskets; and the tension of the Denlanders above.

  Most of all, she could sense the indigenes and their communal attention.

  The branches parted above, and a man stepped out. He had a musket in one hand, and looked anything but happy, but nonetheless he made his way down the slope to her. He was the first live Denlander she had had the opportunity to study for more than a handful of seconds.

  He was shorter than she was, a little man of no more than four inches past five foot tall. Short dark hair, she saw, and a pale face, though that could be fear. Now that she had time to examine it, his grey uniform did not look military at all, more like any outdoorsman’s gear: a tough coat down to the knee, with high boots and leather breeches. His collar was turned up against the mist. He had no pistol, no sabre, but there was a short-hafted wood-axe in his belt.

  On his way down, he seemed to be studying her with just as much intensity, until finally he stood before her and she was able to look down at him.

  His round face was set in a grim expression. His every muscle was clearly waiting for the shot from behind her that would end him. She supposed that, for a man in his position with superior forces at his beck and call, it must have taken some courage to meet her here in the open, before the guns.

  ‘Sergeant Emily Marshwic,’ she told him. ‘Stag Rampant company, Royal Army of Lascanne.’

  He nodded. ‘Provost Dragan Stedter, army of the Republic of Denland.’ She had no idea whether this made him more important than her, or less so, or even whether ‘Dragan’ was his name or part of his rank.

  ‘I see it’s true,’ he added. His voice had an odd accent, a little like Marie Angelline’s, clipping the consonants and sharpening the vowels. ‘Women fighting for Lascanne.’

  She frowned. ‘And so?’

  ‘So nothing. It was just something I’d heard.’ It was obviously something he had not believed, until now.

  She found herself wondering what this man had done before the war. They couldn’t all be career killers in Denland. Perhaps he was a tailor, too, or a printer. Now that she saw him close up, he certainly did not have the look of a soldier. No doubt he thought the same of her.

  ‘Provost,’ she said uncertainly, ‘we have a problem.’

  To his credit he did not correct her by saying ‘You have a problem.’ Instead he nodded. ‘This is no good.’

  She blinked at him, waiting.

  ‘We have a treaty with the autochthons – the swamp people,’ he explained. ‘This . . . we should not fight here.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But what can we do?’

  ‘Surrender,’ he told her flatly. ‘You have no hope here.’

  She forced herself to keep a brave face. She could not let him know that she knew he was right. ‘Provost, you do not have so many men that your victory is certain, and at any rate we would not go quietly. You must know that.’ She put all of her birth and privilege into her tone. She spoke to him as Alice used to speak to tradesmen and labourers: with all that haughty disdain, that assured arrogance.

  ‘I know,’ he said, quietly, and she deciphered his expression as one of resigned melancholy. He was a soldier with a difficult job, but a job which would have to be done. Her own face must surely have borne that expression more than once.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re hoping for, Sergeant, but we have you here,’ he went on. ‘We cannot let you go now. And I understand you cannot surrender. God knows I would not, in your place. And we neither of us can fight here. It is a puzzle. I’m sorry.’

  His free hand twitched, and she was sure that he had been about to touch her, a little gesture of sympathy, comrade to comrade. In that moment, she and he had more in common with each other than they did with their own men: two people in the same position, with the same problem. And she looked at him and thought, This cannot be a Denlander. This little, worried man in his drab clothes, how can I fear this?

  And Sergeant Demaine’s voice came to haunt her, telling her how anyone – a woman, a cripple – could pull a trigger. Little men won wars these days. Giants were simply bigger targets.

  And still the problem lay between them. She took a chance and glanced back at her soldiers, all still ready to die for her. She had got this far, she had met the enemy face to face, and still there was no way out. Irresistible force, unmovable object. For all their common ground, they remained irrevocably divided.

  ‘I’ve never spoken with a Denlander before,’ she confessed, because she had no solution at all. And what did the gentle-born Emily Marshwic do with an awkward silence but fill it with small talk?

  He shrugged. ‘We are as you, Sergeant. We have two arms, two legs. We are babies first, then children, then we grow up, and learn about adult games like war.’

  She stared at him, and her mouth twitched. Something rose up inside her, from long ago and far away, that made her shake.

>   The provost stared at her, seeming actually concerned. ‘What?’ he demanded, but it was all she could do not to laugh at the thought that had come to her.

  ‘Sergeant . . . ?’

  She gestured him to silence, almost dropping her musket. ‘Provost,’ she said slowly, for fear of giggling. ‘When you were children, you played child’s games?’

  His blank look showed he had not followed her, but she pressed on nonetheless.

  ‘Did you ever play . . .’ and out in a rush, or she would never manage it, ‘. . . hide and seek?’

  The blank look dragged on until she was sure he did not understand her, but then he allowed her a single brittle nod.

  Mad, mad, this is so completely mad. ‘Would you allow us a count of one hundred and fifty, Provost?’

  ‘A count of . . . ?’

  ‘And we will leave this place and go back into the swamp, where we will not have great stones to hide behind. And we will do our best, of course, to escape, and you will pursue us, as before. And when the fight comes, if we do not run far or fast enough, then at least it will not take place here. There will be no diplomatic incident with the indigenes, the . . . whatever you called them.’

  ‘Autochthons,’ he supplied, and then, ‘A count of one hundred fifty?’

  ‘A hundred and fifty would be fair, would it not?’ And, seeing him waver, ‘Or just one hundred, if you insist.’

  He looked away, back towards his men, as she had done at hers. Perhaps he was wondering how he would explain this to them. When he looked back at her, something had cleared from his face: a weight of worry had lifted.

  ‘Thank you for finding a way out of this,’ he said. ‘We have those who would be very displeased if we hurt the native folk.’

  ‘We have some just the same.’

  ‘I think a count of one hundred fifty will be fair.’ He put his hand out, just as Angelline had. ‘I wish you good luck, Sergeant.’

  His hand was surprisingly small and delicate as she took it.

  20

  I shall never know if we actually outdistanced them in our mad, headlong plunge through the swamp, or if they let us go.

  I have spoken to the enemy, Cristan. I have had them hold a mirror up and show me my own face. Soldiers are the same everywhere, I think: weary, dutiful and unhappy.

  ‘How is he, Doctor?’

  ‘I’m not a doctor.’ Doctor Carling’s wife didn’t even turn round. ‘You can ask him yourself. By my book, that means he’ll pull through.’

  She knelt by Brocky’s bed and he levered himself up onto one elbow. He looked pale and greyish, but with sufficient ill temper in his face to reassure her.

  ‘You’ve got to get me out of here, Marshwic,’ he insisted. ‘I can’t live here a moment longer. That sarcastic witch over there will be the death of me.’

  ‘Now, Brocky, you exaggerate.’ Emily glanced back at Doctor Carling’s wife, who was studiously ignoring them.

  ‘She said – listen to this – she said I was the only person she’d ever seen who’d been shot entirely through the fat!’ Brocky hissed. Emily controlled her expression instantly because it would have been unfair to snigger at him.

  ‘And I told her that fat was obviously good for something,’ Brocky continued urgently ‘and do you know what she said? A thinner man wouldn’t have been shot at all! Do you call that sympathy? I don’t!’

  ‘I am not in the business of giving sympathy Mr Brocky,’ came the stern voice of the doctor’s wife. ‘And you may leave tomorrow. There will be plenty of time by then to see if you’re going to fester.’

  ‘Fester? I’ll say I’m going to fester, cooped up in here!’ Brocky declared.

  ‘I’m just glad to see you well, Brocky,’ Emily told him. ‘You did pick the right expedition to join, I must say.’

  ‘That I did.’ He chuckled, winced. ‘Ow, bastard! We got back before you, though.’

  Emily nodded. A whole day before, in fact. Once clear of the Denlanders, somehow it had taken her that long to navigate back to the camp. Marie Angelline had been one of the first to greet her, and for a moment the two women had embraced each other, a sisterhood of two. Between them they had left thirteen men and women dead in the swamp, once all the stragglers were accounted for, but they had brought back a warning of the Denlander advance. The colonel, apparently, was delighted.

  Delighted? Another opportunity for Father Burnloft to slobber through a list of dead names, and the colonel was delighted.

  ‘And Master Sergeant Angelline?’ she prompted Brocky. ‘I’m sure she was struck by your heroism.’

  ‘Heroism? Bloody madness, more like. I’d like to see Huill Pordevere match it, though. The whole bloody camp is expecting me to defeat Denland single-handed, as soon as I get up off my deathbed.’

  ‘And will you?’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll not go playing the soldier any more is what I’ll do. I don’t take to this being shot at lark, at all. It’ll never catch on.’ His expression shifted to a crafty leer. ‘Besides, if you perform a trick well enough the first time, you don’t ever need an encore, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Assume I don’t.’

  ‘Who do you think was the very first to come and wish me well, eh? None other than Master Sergeant Marie Angelline, kneeling right where you are now. “Are you well, Mr Brocky? Can I get you anything, Mr Brocky? The men are all talking about you, Mr Brocky.” They say a man must needs risk something to gain something.’

  ‘Well, good luck,’ she told him, privately believing none of it.

  *

  The night watch was doubled after the news, and junior officers were obliged to stand their turn just like the men. Emily hated drawing watch duty. It kept her away from the firelight and the cheer inside the headquarters of the Survivors’ Club. It kept her from her friends and from lively company. It placed her out here, staring at a darkness in which anything could hide, waiting for an enemy that could be gathering all around. The few lamps and candles yet alight did nothing but draw vast swarms of milling insects that whirled and whipped about them. The winged multitudes dizzied themselves stupid, and then fell to rest on anything nearby, including Emily. She felt sometimes as though the entire swamp had emptied of flying things. Moths the size of books, great whirring beetles as solid as stones, huge blundering lacewings, roaches, even thunderous nocturnal bees that rattled through the air like locomotives. Every vile buzzing thing that God had made – and made extra large – came out from under the forest canopy to pester her.

  Tubal had slipped her a flask of brandy earlier on, but she left it untouched. The warmth of the swamp radiated outwards, doubled and redoubled now that summer was upon them. Despite the clear sky above, there was no hint of cold.

  She hated these night watches because they forced her to think, and she had become all too uncomfortable with thinking recently.

  Thinking about Mr Northway, for example. His last letter had been concise, abrupt almost. He had enquired about her health, her continued survival. She had read his mockery in it all; that stand-offish, superior attitude which she was starting to recognize as his armour against the world. What gave more food for thought was Penny Belchere’s account of him. A glass of port had seen the messenger girl sniggering over how Northway had slammed all the doors closed and kept to himself for four days after Emily’s last brief missive. Belchere had described how the bureaucracy of Chalcaster had been left to rot while he brooded; how Northway had looked when he finally summoned her in again. There had been the dark rings of sleepless nights about his eyes, and a look of fire in them.

  ‘Go,’ he had instructed, ‘as fast as you can!’ And Belchere had gone, picking her way from station to station in search of a train still going north and carrying passengers.

  Emily crumpled his letter – his cool and distant letter – in her hands, and through it she thought she felt the heat of all the things he did not allow himself to say.

  How did I come to matter so
much to a man such as Cristan Northway?

  But power makes for a lonely man, and who else would dare intrude on him, day or night, whenever she had a complaint to raise?

  She searched within herself now, in those small and thoughtful hours of the night, and tried to find there what she felt about him. The hatred had long drained away; the load of grief her father had left her with, the bitter rivalry one generation dead, it was all gone, but what had replaced it?

  She summoned his image to mind, shrouded in black and smiling that damnable smile. His dealings with the world had been so cursed and venal that he had put up barrier after barrier, just to shield himself from it. And yet she smiled to think of him. He brought a feeling to her that warmed her more than the swamp ever could, and yet she would not name it – not yet. No more would he, she knew.

  And then there was Giles Scavian, wizard and nobleman, kind and gentle. Another man who had not found the right terms to describe his emotions, but he would have a dictionary full of them before Mr Northway found any. There was nothing closed or hidden about Mr Scavian.

  And, as she thought it, she heard a step behind her, and turned to see a figure, cloaked and robed against the night, coming close by her.

  ‘Mr Scavian?’ she asked tentatively.

  ‘Again you ask for Scavian. A man might become suspicious.’ The voice betrayed his identity, more than the vague shadow in the darkness. Lascari was the wrong wizard for her thoughts.

  ‘How can I help you, Mr Lascari?’

  ‘Many ways, no doubt.’ He was heavy with sarcasm tonight. He bundled himself too close to her, almost touching. Lamplight struck sparks from the flints of his eyes. ‘One always wonders what a woman thinks of, alone at night.’

  ‘Does one?’ she riposted, too quickly. He never failed to unnerve her, did Lascari. The King’s wizards could not read minds, but he had a way of seeing into hers and laying out its contents like an autopsy.

  ‘Distant sweethearts, perhaps?’ He endowed the words with a wealth of distaste. ‘This war must be hard on you to be away from your home, your family.’