Guns of the Dawn

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  You must come back to me; remember that. Make a note that you must not die. It would be a mean-spirited world that did not allow you to return to me after all this. I feel that it would be a signal breach of faith between us, an unforgivable lapse of decorum. You are, after all, a well-brought-up young lady. That should count for something even on the battlefield.

  Yours in hope,

  Cristan.

  And the jungle exploded with gunfire.

  A scant moment ago she had heard the shooting: Mallen’s scouts firing into the air or at the enemy, a last desperate chance of warning before the tide swept over them.

  ‘Cover!’ she had cried. ‘Cover!’ But she had no time to take her own advice. Around her, her squad were just starting to react. Then the trees were alive with the zip and zing of shot, the crackle of musket fire. From ahead and from one side came the flash and the smoke of the Denlander guns. From behind and from all around, the shouts, the screams of the wounded and dying.

  ‘Cover! A line behind cover!’ she cried, but her voice was lost in the bedlam, being outshouted by the dead. The man beside her was punched off his feet, and then the woman on the other side was sent reeling back with a shot through her arm. Emily dropped to one knee in the shallow water, gun lifted to her shoulder. A breath’s worth of pause and she fired, seeing a grey shape collapse back into the gloom.

  Cover! But she was right in the open, midway through crossing a pool. Lead balls ploughed into the water or danced past her, like the insects. She staggered to her feet, stumbling backwards while reaching for the vines and leaves she knew were there.

  ‘Firing line! Double firing line!’ The orders were Marie Angelline’s, the only voice to cut clear through the chaos. ‘Double ranks and fire! Second rank, fire!’

  Emily heard the concentrated roar of three score of muskets discharging as one, but saw none of it. She might be the only one left of her entire squad, of her entire company.

  Her hand touched leaves, and she scrabbled at them, pulling herself up the bank. Her empty musket was still directed at the enemy in idiot threat.

  ‘Got you, Sergeant!’ A hand tucked itself under her armpit, lifting her up. She caught a glimpse of a burly man in red, the Bear Sejant on his sleeve. Where the hell are my own men?

  He was halfway through lifting her up when his hand left her and she looked back to see him slumped back, red pooling on his chest.

  She was struck a massive blow to the side of the head, sending her helmet awry, the force of it knocking her over the bank and into cover.

  I’m shot! Shot in the head! Her eyes refused to focus, and her head was ringing from the impact. She lay on her side in the mud, hands wrestling with the helmet. One finger found a long, shallow groove ground into it: some almost-spent musket ball’s last act.

  Too close! And the Denlanders could come over the bank at any moment. She fumbled with her musket, reloading as quickly as she could simply by touch. Her vision swam: sharp and blurred, sharp and blurred.

  Someone hit the ground beside her without warning, and she nearly hit him with the gun before she saw the red uniform. He fired a shot over the bank and ducked back to reload.

  ‘Sergeant,’ he said briefly. Her eyes locked onto the stag emblem on his jacket but she could not place his face.

  ‘What the devil’s happening?’ she gasped.

  He fired a second shot, eyes narrowed. ‘Bastards jumped us, Sergeant.’

  ‘Where’s Tu— the Lieutenant?’

  ‘Don’t know, Sergeant.’

  She had reloaded by then, and if her eyes twitched, it was from pain and not panic. Her head still rang with the shock of impact. She pointed her gun over the bank and looked out to see the Denlanders moving off from their cover: a staggered line of grey-clad executioners coming her way, firing and then dropping behind to reload.

  She pulled the trigger: spitting into the storm. ‘God help us,’ she said. ‘Time to fall back.’

  ‘Right you are, Sergeant,’ the soldier acknowledged, but then they heard Mallen’s whistle above the firing. She counted the blasts desperately, but could not keep her mind on them.

  ‘How . . . ?’ No time to worry about looking a fool. ‘How many? What was that signal, soldier?’

  ‘Attack, Sergeant.’

  Just the two of us? He must have misheard. But there was Marie Angelline’s voice, distant but clear, ‘Forward! Forward! Charge! For the King!’

  ‘For the King!’ Emily cried along with her. No choice. Stupid way to die. She charged forward the moment her musket was reloaded, with the Stag Rampant soldier beside her. She pulled the trigger and the smoke of her gun obscured the Denlanders for a moment before she had pushed onwards, drawing forth her sabre.

  All around her there were men and women in red surging forward. She saw the Denlander line ahead break up and fall away, each man to his own, dashing back under cover and beyond, until they were out of sight and still running.

  Mallen’s whistle came again, and this time she counted ‘Regroup’.

  ‘Come on,’ she told the soldier beside her. He was no longer beside her. Looking back, she could not tell which fallen body was his.

  *

  Two days before, Tubal had hauled her once again to the colonel’s cramped war table. All the usual suspects were there. Stapewood handed out brandy as the colonel talked heartily with Captain Mallarkey about the upcoming festivities. Slender Lieutenant Gallien, Mallarkey’s second, looked as though he would rather be anywhere else. Pordevere smiled his oh-so-very-white smile at Emily while, behind him, Marie Angelline gave Emily a friendly nod. Bear Sejant was still down their lieutenant from the Big Push.

  Justin Lascari and Giles Scavian were at opposite ends of the table, reserving their glowering for each other.

  ‘Now,’ the colonel said, ‘listen here. Got some intelligence that won’t surprise most of you. Had a Denlander scout here, the last night or so. You may have noticed. Anyway, fellow died on us before he gave too much away, but what we got was damned alarming. They’re taking it all back. All that good ground we gained, they intend to contest it, you see?’

  Good ground? A few festering acres of swampland grown lush with the bodies and bones of countless dead men. She remembered the Survivors’ Club: the observation that one could not fight a proper land war here. She wondered if the Denlanders realized that, for surely Colonel Resnic did not.

  ‘Taking ground, sir?’ Tubal asked, his thoughts running alongside hers.

  ‘They’re on the advance, Lieutenant. That’s all you need to worry about,’ the colonel said. ‘Fresh troops coming in alongside the chain lakes. Got to stop them or they’ll have the whole place sewn up, yes?’

  ‘A quick, solid slapping should teach them a lesson, sir,’ Pordevere suggested. ‘You know Denland: no stomach for a real man’s fight.’

  ‘Absolutely right, Captain. I’m mustering all companies. Scare the damned wretches away. Let them know that what we take, we keep, you hear?’

  ‘What’s the order of battle, sir?’ said Mallarkey, his voice nearly steady.

  ‘I’m giving Bear the centre again. You’re still under strength, Captain, so don’t get too far ahead.’

  ‘Tell the others to keep up, then. Your men are getting fat, Mallarkey.’ Pordevere grinned around the table. ‘Speed, gentlemen. A quick strike. Send them reeling. Like a punch to the jaw at the start of a bout. Wins the battle then and there. No sense getting bogged down in it all.’

  Emily caught Angelline’s expression, and it told her succinctly enough that she did not find her commanding officer’s opinions reassuring. Brocky doesn’t need to worry about any competition from that direction!

  ‘How many of them are there, Colonel?’ Scavian asked.

  ‘Well . . .’ The colonel tugged at his moustache. ‘Damned fellow didn’t get that out before he gave up, Mr Scavian. Kept giving different figures. We think perhaps a company – or a company and a half.’

  ‘You think?’ Scavian ask
ed.

  ‘Oh, hush now, Scavian,’ Lascari told him. ‘This is war. Uncertainty is all part of the game. You shouldn’t have accepted the King’s mark if you weren’t ready for it.’

  Scavian scowled at him resentfully, but said nothing.

  ‘What about their guns?’ Emily asked.

  She received a decidedly frosty look from Lascari – from Pordevere and Mallarkey even – but the colonel just shook his head amiably.

  ‘I’m afraid there really aren’t any magic guns, Miss Marshwic.’

  Sergeant Marshwic to you. ‘But, Colonel—’

  ‘We even took a look at one,’ Mallarkey said. ‘We took it apart. Wasted time doing so, Miss Marshwic. They’re no different to our own.’

  That’s not true. She said nothing; what would be the use? She had already made sure that at least all of Stag Rampant knew that the Denlanders had a new trick.

  ‘Well, now, Captain Mallarkey,’ the colonel said. ‘As Leopard is the largest company, I’m using you as the other pincer of the . . . the other half of the pincer. Move in on the west; keep a little behind the others. Once they engage, I want you to swing round like this . . .’

  *

  She found Tubal crouching low in a stand of reeds with some twenty or thirty soldiers about him. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me.’ The crackle and bang of muskets sounded all around like green logs on a fire. ‘I’ve lost sight of Fat Squirrel altogether.’ He looked around, biting at his lower lip. ‘I’m . . . going to need some scouts. We need to rejoin the others.’

  A circle of grave faces met him. Nobody was volunteering.

  Oh, damn it. ‘I’ll go,’ said Emily.

  ‘No—’

  ‘Then who, Tubal? I want one more with me.’

  A soldier she vaguely recognized put her hand up then, shamed into it perhaps.

  ‘Then let’s go.’

  As she stood up, the firing started, shot whipping past her and into the reed stand.

  ‘Back! Fall back!’ Tubal raised his gun and fired almost at random, and led them all in a retreat towards more solid cover. Even as they put tree trunks between them and the source of the shooting, another four or five squads of Lascanne redjackets – almost a hundred in total – came into sight, pausing to aim and fire. Five or six dropped instantly, but the rest discharged their guns, shredding the foliage and the ferns before them, then crouching to reload. Without hesitation Tubal led his band to join up with them.

  ‘Who’s got command?’ he shouted, as he recharged his gun.

  ‘Me, sir, but you’re welcome to it.’ A Bear Sejant ensign hopped down next to him. ‘I don’t know where the captain is. My whole division got separated. The Denlanders are everywhere, sir.’

  ‘Hell, someone tell me which way’s east.’

  There was a brief consensus, and directions were given.

  ‘We’ll head forward but slant eastaways, try to get ourselves back with the pack,’ Tubal announced. ‘Everyone loaded and ready?’

  Nobody said otherwise, so they made their break: jogging through the swamp, the mud and water, keeping their guns trained on the Denlanders’ last position.

  They had another brief skirmish with a small band of Denlanders who fired and retreated before them, three rounds of musketry before they were driven away. Then they were out in a clearing, where a battle was in full sway.

  Must be the bulk of the Bear. All Emily caught was the idea of a solid body of men that was punched full of holes, with individual squads in their own cover, firing defiantly into the trees. She thought she heard the voice of Marie Angelline, but the woman’s words escaped her.

  ‘Sir, behind us!’ the Bear ensign called out.

  ‘They’re trying to flank. Every man take a firing position. We’ve run far enough.’ Tubal knelt and readied his gun. ‘Where the hell is the Leopard?’

  A moment later the Denlanders were coming out of the trees and, for once, it was them walking into the ambush, as nearly two hundred guns of the army of Lascanne roared out simultaneously and scythed through them, casting them down and strewing their bodies about in the pools, over the banks and the mounded roots.

  ‘Reload!’ Tubal ordered, but Emily heard the command of Captain Pordevere from behind them, exhorting his men to charge.

  ‘We’re about to lose our back,’ she warned. There were shots punching past them now, as the Denlander flanking party pulled itself back together. In the clearing there was a fearful noise. She would never forget it: the sound of three hundred men and women running forward into the swift, accurate guns of Denland.

  Oh, Marie. Be safe, Marie.

  Her own division fired again, but their targets were now hidden and well spaced.

  ‘Ensign,’ Tubal ordered, ‘take your division. You’re going to have to clear them out. There can’t be more than forty still on their feet.’

  The Bear Sejant ensign nodded. There was a stunned look on his face: the look of a man who had walked his way into hell and couldn’t find the way out.

  ‘Come on, Em.’ Tubal finished reloading and stood up in a half-crouch. ‘Pordevere needs support. He’ll wipe out the whole company if he has the chance.’

  The Bear ensign visibly counted to three, and his squads ran forward to new firing positions. Three men were picked off even as they moved.

  ‘Now,’ decided Tubal. ‘Let’s spend as little time in the clearing as we can.’

  And then he was up and running, and they all ran with him, even as new Denlander snipers started on them, shots whizzing out of the foliage without warning.

  The harsh sun of the clearing dazzled her. Her feet pounded through the mud, vaulting the gnarled roots of the swamp giant whose rotting death had made this place, and vaulting the fallen redjackets too. She kept moving, refused to look at them in case she recognized the faces.

  The man ahead stumbled, a flower of darker red suddenly in the centre of his back. She jumped that body too, knowing that to hesitate would see her lost.

  Then she was into the dense air, the blessed gloom and cover of the treeline. There were Bear Sejant soldiers ahead of them. She could hear Angelline giving the order to fire, hear the massed discharge of the guns. And to her left there was a flare, a sudden flash of light and heat that must be from one of the Warlocks: Lascari or Scavian. No time to tell which.

  In a brief moment she took it in: a retreating line of Denlanders stopping to fire, falling back, then stopping again to reload. More crouched in the trees: sharpshooters pot-shotting at the advancing red.

  If we’re advancing, does that mean we’re winning?

  She had not heard Mallen’s whistle in a long time.

  No sign of Mallarkey or the Leopard, either.

  ‘Forward!’ Captain Pordevere’s triumphant cry. ‘They’re on the run, men! Forward! For the King! For the King!’

  And her legs responded, her hands too busy with the gun, her mind too numbed. Forward she went with the others of the Stag and the Bear. Ahead, the Denlanders began to retreat faster, no longer firing. They were breaking, she realized. Breaking! At last! She picked up her pace, as the others did.

  She saw a Denlander stop and fall, clutching his stomach, trying to keep up over the ragged ground. The insistent thought nagged her like a fly: I’ve seen them break before and it was not like this. There was still order to the Denland line as it fell back into thicker cover. Tubal was ahead of her, sword catching stray light as he drew it from its scabbard. The air rang to Pordevere’s insistent ‘For the King! For the King!’

  Not breaking. Pulling us in.

  ‘Ambush!’ she shouted, wishing for all the world for a voice like Angelline’s. ‘Slow down! Pull back! Ambush!’

  A few of the soldiers nearest looked her way, started to drop back. Tubal was still ahead of her and she desperately increased her stride, all the while yelling ludicrously, ‘Pull back! Slow down!’

  He glanced back, and she pointed past him. ‘Ambush,
Tubal! God’s sake! Ambush!’

  Realization dawned on his face, a look of utter horror. He skidded in the mud, trying to stop.

  She saw the Denlander line ahead stop running, turn and kneel. Behind them, more guns glinted in the shadows between the trees.

  ‘Down!’ she shouted, and at last let herself fall forward, knocking her knee on a root but bringing her gun up to fire.

  She must have pulled her trigger at the exact same time as the Denlanders, because they fired together, she and they. Of her shot, she could not say, but their combined fire was blow enough to stop the Lascanne advance dead, ripping through flesh and bone, hurling soldiers back, doubling them over, casting them to the ground.

  She saw Tubal hit, his legs swept from under him, the musket flying from his hands.

  *

  That morning before the attack, she was watching the troops assemble in their companies, fewer now than for the Big Push of recent memory. There she was, watching the redcoats muster, searching for her courage and finding little enough of it.

  The day had been a bright one, the summer sun no more than a shadow of the heat under the trees, but a healthy heat, a dry heat. Bear and Stag were all assembled, with Leopard still falling into place. She had seen Captain Mallarkey and his lieutenant come out from the colonel’s headquarters, with Mallarkey looking worried and unhappy, a peacetime career officer caught out by the war.

  Mallarkey stopped for a few words with Pordevere, the younger man making some jest, laughing out loud. Beside him, Marie Angelline cast a look over Emily’s way, saluting wryly.

  ‘Morning, Em.’ Tubal had greeted her with a smile on his face. ‘Ready to face the music?’

  ‘I should be,’ she said to him. ‘I’ve done this before. Why do I feel like this still, Tubal? Shouldn’t I be . . . numb to it by now?’

  His shrug. ‘Useless bloody business, really. Hell, it all still makes me want to wet myself, Em, every time. Morning, Mallen!’

  The master sergeant loped over towards them through the camp, with two dozen or so following in his wake: his picked men. ‘Don’t like this, Salander. Denlander scouts are getting good. Better woodsmen than this lot. Going to be a heavy day.’