The soldier twisted one arm behind her back and tightened his hold until the pain crushed her rage, and all the while Doctor Lam merely watched her, his mournful expression ever deepening.
‘Is everything all right in there, sir?’ someone asked from outside, and the doctor assured the questioner that it was.
King Luthrian IV. She saw herself back in Deerlings House, before all this madness. The ball and how wonderful it had felt to dance with him and bask in the glory he shed like sunlight. And now this decrepit creature was telling her that her king was a murderer, a thing of plots and assassins.
‘You lie. Every word of it, you lie!’ she told him.
‘You will believe what you wish,’ said Doctor Lam. ‘As for me, my tale is near complete. We had no king, and our country had been claimed by the man who paid the killer. What could we do but muster what forces we could, just to hold off the armies of Lascanne? If only it were that simple. But we cannot simply work to keep your soldiers off our soil, like a man who shuts his gate against a mad dog and never leaves his garden again. If we are to win this war we will have to win it. To cross into your land and place our soldiers on your soil. What a stupid thing to have to do. What a terrible point to come to, for two nations once such allies.’
With hands almost steady he reset the teacups. ‘It is always worst,’ he said, ‘when brothers fight.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘Our King is a man of honour, a good man.’
‘No doubt you believe so,’ said Doctor Lam. ‘I think we have finished our talk for this evening. I hope you will think, at least, on what I have told you, Sergeant.’
They took her out and back to the cane frame. It took five Denlander soldiers to resecure her there, but they gave the task their customary careful concentration, and wrestled her onto it.
When they were done, four of them returned to other duties, with only the provost who had brought her in left looking at her. In the darkness she could not read his expression.
‘So what now?’ she challenged him.
‘The doctor will decide. Don’t try to escape. There is no way that you can escape here. Not at all, but especially not in your condition.’
‘Provost?’
Her use of his rank obviously startled him, reminding him of their positions.
‘Yes, Sergeant?’
‘Did anyone . . . ?’ There was no way to ask the question other than to ask it. She would have to be soldierly about it, forthright, despite the horror of it. She forced that soldier part of herself into her voice, beat down the great wash of fear that told her not knowing was better than hearing the most likely answer.
‘When I was brought in, was I raped, Provost?’
He stepped in closer, his face still in shadow. ‘You were not,’ he said emphatically, in a tone that seemed to wonder how she could ask.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘You think it’s such an unreasonable question?’
His expression suggested it was, but at last he shrugged. ‘Apparently for you it is not. We cannot get used to fighting women. We cannot begin to see you as a woman. Perhaps that is a good thing, from your point of view. But we would not. I would not.’ He put a hand to the canes beside her head, and she knew he was studying her face in the faint light of the lamps. ‘I wonder what would happen to some woman of Denland, captured by your people,’ he said, and for a moment there was quiet between them, so she could hear his breathing. ‘The same as to a man, I imagine, and then worse.’
‘Provost . . . the Warlocks . . .’
‘What about them?’ He stepped back, all business again, a whipcord of anger running through him. ‘Yes, we know about their way with prisoners.’
The way he said it told her a lot. She knew that the Denlanders killed the King’s wizards whenever they had the chance, and she had assumed it was simply because of their power on the battlefield, or their symbolizing the King’s service. Now she saw a third reason. A Warlock’s fire might not sway a battle as much as she had thought, but they had a way with torture like no other.
Giles would never do that, she reassured herself, with the inevitable companion thought: but Lascari loves it.
‘Did you kill any, in the battle?’ she asked. If Scavian or Lascari had fallen, the Denlanders would know. They would celebrate it.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Please, I must know,’ she said.
‘It’s not my place to answer your questions,’ he told her, and stepped off into the darkness. All around, the Denlanders were shuttering lamps and bedding down. The utter black of the swamps at night washed over her, leaving her alone, utterly alone, amidst a sea of enemies.
Had any of them survived? Every time she closed her eyes for awkward sleep, she saw the bodies: Tubal, Scavian, Marie Angelline, Mallen. Sometimes she saw her own.
Something moved nearby and she opened her eyes uselessly.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked.
There was another slight sound, and she sensed more than one person, very close, very quiet. She even felt the breath of one on her hand.
This is it, now. Now they take their sport. ‘You keep away from me,’ she hissed into the night. ‘Don’t think I’m going to let you . . .’ She strained at the frame, creaking and twisting it. The ropes rubbed her wrists and ankles raw.
Someone said something, quiet and extremely close, and she stopped instantly, straining her ears. She had made no sense of it.
‘You . . . just back off,’ she warned.
The same man, or another, whispered something, and she felt as though she had gone mad, or gone deaf. There were no words, none at all.
‘Listen, you . . . what do you want?’
Another meaningless utterance, but she heard it, suddenly in a different context. Babble from a man’s lips became something else entirely.
Indigenes! What are they doing here?
But of course they provided their little services for the Denlanders as they did for the army of Lascanne. Mallen had said as much.
‘Can you . . . untie me?’ she whispered to them, hoping no Denlander was close enough to eavesdrop. ‘Please, untie me. Bite through the ropes or something.’
There was a little hissing between the two or three indigenes, but nothing that suggested they understood her. Mallen had always spoken to them in their own tongue. She did not even know if any of them spoke a human language.
‘Please . . .’ she said, but it seemed utterly hopeless.
But there had been one word that seemed common to both races, she recalled. One solitary word with a world of meaning.
‘Mallen,’ she said to them. ‘Mallen. You understand me? Go and get Mallen, please. Tell him I’m here. Mallen, Mallen, Mallen.’
They made little noises at each other, but she did not hear the word ‘Mallen or anything close to it, and eventually they moved off. She could not say whether they had any comprehension of what she had tried to communicate.
And she had no knowledge of Mallen’s fate either. Even before she had been taken, it had been some while since she had heard his whistle. The swamps he loved so much could have reclaimed him at last. It would be, she guessed, how he wanted it. No gravestone and church plot for him.
She sagged back against the ropes and tried desperately for some semblance of sleep. Tomorrow would bring its own trials, and she needed all her strength for those. She might break eventually, but she was damned if she would break quickly.
23
Dear Mr Brocky,
I have turned Ms Belchere back as soon as her feet brought your missive to Chalcaster, and I was able to scratch out this reply.
Mr Brocky, you seem to me a reasonable man. I am a wealthy one. My private fortune is large, my access to public funds far larger.
I promise you, if you are able to locate news of Sgt Marshwic, then neither you nor the man who finds that news will be the poorer for it. If I were a hero, I would set off myself. If I were a soldier, I would take up a musket. If I were a
wizard, I would spark fires enough to burn the forests to the ground until I found her. I am not. I am a man of finances. I use the tools at my disposal.
Find her, find my gratitude and largesse.
Yours sincerely,
Mr C. Northway, Mayor-Governor of Chalcaster.
The undersea light penetrating beneath the canopy woke her by degrees, aching and still spreadeagled across the frame. All around her she heard the muted sounds of several hundred Denlanders packing up camp. Few of them spared her a glance, each engrossed in his own tasks.
She saw then that this was a larger proportion of the Levant army of Denland than she had realized. Parties had surely arrived here during the night. Others were already setting off. This was their headquarters, but it was mobile. Every few nights, Doctor Lammegeier must find some new spot for his soldiers to billet in, to make the Lascanne task that much harder. He had learned some lessons from Colonel Resnic’s Big Push.
And what would today hold for herself? One thought stayed with her from Doctor Lam’s lies the previous night. In the midst of his story had been a solitary nugget of truth, but she would take no comfort from it. The assassin’s master, he had said, had been made to tell of his employer. How so? By sitting down at a low table and offering him tea? Emily did not think so. For all their civilized talk, the Denlanders were a people at war. She dreaded to think of that care and attention to detail being applied to the business of forcing knowledge from her. They would not be malicious, perhaps. They might not enjoy the cruelty, as Lascari had done. They would do it, though. They were a practical people. They would not let mere scruples stand between them and the things they needed to know.
The next time they came for her, they would probably not even remove her from the frame.
But they did, half a dozen of them taking her down with practised precision, and she realized the whole camp was on the move. There was nothing, even Doctor Lam’s table, that could not be disassembled, packed up and made ready to move. Squads and detachments of men were already moving out on their own, providing an advance screen against any enemy they might encounter.
The provost she had spoken with before had obviously been given long-term charge over her. He ensured that her hands were tied behind her, and a noose put about her neck, and he held her on a lead, like an animal. She realized she had better watch her footing. One slip and she could hang herself, and these Denlanders seemed to set a fearful pace.
‘What’s the hurry?’ she asked.
‘No questions,’ the provost replied. ‘Just move.’
She fell into step with them as they headed deeper into the swamp. The entire camp had broken into squads, each squad keeping sight of the next, the company of several hundred thus moving like a swarm. Ants, that was what they reminded her of. She remembered Mallen showing her a breed of ant out here in the swamp that lived like this: camping by night, then moving by day in a great loose carpet of insects.
And she recalled her dream: the Denlanders as a devouring swarm.
They kept moving, too, determined and careful, not slowed by pools or high banks. Even when clambering and splashing, they were surprisingly quiet. She had to keep craning around to remind herself how many of them there were.
If I could make a noise, attract someone’s attention, let our people know they’re here . . .
Anyone investigating, however, would get themselves shot or stabbed and, like every other hopeless plan, she needed to wait her moment out. No sense shouting into the wilderness and having them gag her.
She nearly drowned mid-morning, skidding over on a bank and knocking two soldiers down with her into a pool that was far deeper than it seemed. The rope skidded through the provost’s unsuspecting hands, and then he tried to pull her out with it and came close to strangling her before she was righted. When she had been dragged, coughing and choking, to the pool’s side, she kicked out at him as he approached.
‘For God’s sake, give me my hands!’ she snapped. ‘Keep me on a leash if you have to, but I’ve no wish to die because I can’t catch myself.’
He grimaced and then, to her surprise, undid the knots about her wrists. ‘Everyone keep a knife out,’ he told the men around them. ‘Don’t hesitate to use it. Kill her if she tries to escape, or if she goes for you.’
She stood, clenching and unclenching her fists, and saw them back off a little. Cowards. She remembered all that Doctor Lam had said. They were frightened of her. She was taller than most, even broader at the shoulder than some, and she was a savage Lascanne warrior woman. They had no idea what to do with her.
Only the provost looked unimpressed. He had his hatchet in his hand, and she guessed he would have no qualms about using it. Give me an opportunity and I will take that from you, she vowed. ‘Thank you, Provost,’ she said instead.
‘Move on,’ he told her, and then to his men: ‘Come on, catch up! We’ve wasted enough time.’
For an hour and more he was right behind her, but just out of reach, and he was weathering this forced march better than she was. He had not been beaten half to death and strapped to a frame all night, after all. She was sure her moment would come, but not so far.
‘So,’ she asked him, ‘am I a special enemy of yours, or is it just because I’m a Lascan that you hate me?’
‘I don’t hate,’ he said. ‘I don’t hate Lascans or you. You’re enemies, that’s all.’
She had not been expecting an answer at all, and she was thrown for a moment. ‘You seem to have some grievance, Provost. More than you did last night, even. You were almost civilized last night.’
‘Civilized,’ he said. ‘Last night I was living in hope, Sergeant. I had a brother fighting in the battle. We were hoping he’d come in with the stragglers. I have not had that luck.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Emily. He picked up his pace a little until he was alongside her; until she could see the anger on his face, as painful as the bruises on hers.
‘What do you have to be sorry about? One less Denlander to worry about, isn’t it?’
‘I had a brother, Provost,’ she said simply. ‘He died here before I even arrived. I had a brother-in-law who may be dead now, for all I know. Do you think that only Denlanders have families?’
She saw her words strike home, freezing his features. After a moment he spat into the waters.
‘Brother-in-law,’ he said. ‘God and Heaven. What sort of a country lets its women fight? What sort of a woman wants to?’
She bit back the words that came first to her. They do not know about the draft. She had suspected as much previously. The Denlanders thought the women soldiers of Lascanne were volunteers.
‘Are we not allowed to defend what is ours?’ she asked.
He cursed wearily. ‘It’s going to be a long war,’ he said, and she knew he was thinking of some hypothetical future when the Levant and Couchant fronts were broken, and the armies of Denland went on to take Lascanne itself. A future where they were opposed by every man, woman and child left in that country, all fighting like maniacs to the very last. The weight of it, the thought of that fight, lay heavy on him. So much the better. Let them think it is so. She had no sympathy. It was her home that they wanted to invade, and she knew that if either front broke, then Denland would find no opposition beyond.
There was an all-too-brief pause for a mouthful of hard biscuit and a few swallows of water, and it heartened her, it strengthened her to see that they were reduced to that. Supplies must be hard to come by, she supposed, if they moved about so much.
Time was a slippery thing to judge, here under the canopy, but she guessed it was two hours after noon when they stopped for good and made camp again. Surrounded by her ring of armed guards, she watched as bands of Denlanders melted in and out of the shadows. The actual camp was a loose network of squads that must extend for some distance all around. She seemed to be in the very centre.
They reassembled the frame in front of her, not out of cruelty but practicality leaning it up against
a knotted tree broad enough to support it.
‘Is there no other option?’ she asked the provost.
‘If we left you a muscle to move, would you not use it to escape?’ he asked.
‘I can’t fly. I can’t work miracles. I’m surrounded by your soldiers.’
‘And all Lascans are mad, blood-mad. Who is to say that you would not free yourself and kill Doctor Lammegeier, or spoil our provisions? I cannot trust you in anything. You are my enemy. You are duty bound to escape and to oppose us, just as I would be if I were your prisoner.’
She had no answer to that, and there were enough of them laying hands on her that she did not struggle when they roped her back into the frame. She felt as though she was getting to know the ropes that they knotted and unknotted. They waste nothing. It means they have little. But they use it well.
‘How are things back home, Provost?’ she asked.
‘War drains a country,’ he said. ‘Three years so far, and I’m sure both our nations run short. Food, materials, people.’ He shrugged.
‘Well said, Provost.’ She recognized Doctor Lam’s genial tones as the old man stepped up alongside. To her surprise, he had kept up with them through all the swamp-slogging. They had not carried him, or even helped him along. The old man was clearly tougher than she had guessed.
Perhaps I could not have managed to kill him, had I even got my hands on him.
She looked into his slightly smiling, slightly melancholy face and asked herself if she would kill him, given the chance. He was the enemy, after all. He was the infamous Doctor Lam, but he was an old man, a philosophical, humorous creature full of odd talk. Someone’s father, someone’s grandfather even.
Let him torture me, then I shall have no qualms.
With that thought, she shrank back as he approached.
‘What now?’ she asked him. ‘Will the doctor operate?’
‘As I explained to you, Sergeant, I am an engineer, not a physician, but if it becomes necessary, then I have those who will make the cut on my behalf.’ There was only sadness in his voice as he spoke, no threat at all. It was all the more intimidating for that. ‘Perhaps we should speak a little first. Perhaps you will tell me what little you can.’
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