Locke was bustling. The handful of buildings that had been the original town, first swamped by the military apparatus of Lascanne, was now merely a pinpoint in a field of grey. Ranks of grey tents stood on every side, as though they had been sown in the spring and only now sprouted. Men in grey uniforms drilled, or sat about fires, or arrived or left. A locomotive stood at the station, smoking and steaming, and Emily saw files of Denland soldiers waiting to embark, waiting to advance the war into Lascanne. There were thousands of them – perhaps three thousand or more. These could only be veterans of the Couchant front.
She saw Lascanne soldiers, too, disarmed and under guard: more veterans of the Couchant but on the losing side. She hoped that there were others, more than she could now see. How great had been the carnage there, at the end?
‘What the devil is that? Brocky demanded. Coming in down the Couchant road was a . . . thing. A traction engine, Emily realized belatedly, rumbling and steaming as it rolled into Locke under its own power. Iron plates were bolted before it, and atop it was a cannon on a swivel mount, and soldiers with their ‘rifles’.
‘Quite the invention, is she not?’ Doctor Lam said. ‘I had a hand in designing them, before I came to the Levant, but it was not until early this year that they saw any proper use. Mobile artillery, our traction-guns. Lord above, but what we have made of the world!’
‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ Scavian decided.
‘That’s the problem with knowledge, young man,’ Doctor Lam told him. ‘You can’t put it away when you’ve no more use for it. We have them now, and who knows to what uses they will be put in the fullness of time.’ He rested a hand on the side of the cart, looking frankly at them all. ‘Now, is there doubt in your minds, any of you, as to the outcome of this war?’
‘What will happen to Lascanne?’ Scavian demanded. ‘What will you do with the King?’
‘We will capture Luthrian of Lascanne and put him on trial. There is no other way,’ Doctor Lam replied simply. Emily tensed as she felt Scavian twitch, and the heat came off him for a second, like a sudden burst of flame. His hands were balled into fists. She reached out to put a hand to his arm, but he caught it first in his own and, as he did, his fingers were cool again, hope draining from his face. He looked down at the assembled might of Denland, all those well-ordered men, those busy minds. Yes, he could kill Doctor Lam. Yes, he could kill a dozen of them, a hundred – but he could not make a difference.
His eyes met hers. For you, I live. She knew that, had he been alone here, then things would have gone differently.
‘I can’t believe it,’ was all he said finally. ‘It shouldn’t happen like this.’
‘What about Lascanne, Doctor?’ asked Tubal. ‘Are we slaves of Denland now? What of our homes, our families?’
A smile somewhat warmer lit up Doctor Lam’s features. ‘We keep no slaves in Denland, Captain – no more than you do in Lascanne. The Parliament will decide ultimately, but I have a voice in it and I know what must be done. The war has all but destroyed us both. So many men dead – and women too! Harvests wasted, skills lost. Any man that will go back to his home in peace and take up where he left off will be free to do so.’
‘Denlander soldiers in the marketplaces, garrisons in all the towns,’ Brocky rumbled.
‘No doubt,’ Doctor Lam agreed. ‘For we must have peace, and you Lascans are such a volatile breed that, left to yourselves, you might find a return to war easier than the effort of rebuilding. There are those, among my countrymen, who say we should just pillage from Lascanne all we need to rebuild Denland, but thus far they are a minority. Those of us with wider vision can see that our nations must rise together, live together – as we always have. To impose an iron fist on Lascanne now is merely to invite strife and rebellion in a generation’s time. This war was madness, however it started. It must never be repeated.’
Tubal glanced around at his fellows there in the cart. ‘I almost believe you, Doctor Lam.’
‘I believe him,’ said Mallen. It was the first time he had spoken since they started out for Locke, and now he had their full attention.
‘I know you keep your promises,’ he told Doctor Lam. ‘I’ve got you to thank that the indigenes weren’t dragged in; that the peace was kept with them. Clever, you Denlanders: you use anything that comes your way, but never the autochthons. I understand you: you keep your promises.’
‘I did my best,’ agreed the old man. ‘Who knows, we might have forced them to serve us, but . . . I can find it in me to be glad that our madness has not infected them. I am . . . fond of them in my way. You are the one called Mallen?’
Mallen nodded guardedly.
‘My men are terrified of you. You are the killing ghost that walks abroad on dark nights. If a man is missing, it is Mallen’s doing. But I read some of your writing, when I prepared myself for this task. So perhaps we understand each other.’
‘So do we surrender now?’ Emily asked. Scavian looked away bitterly but merely shrugged. ‘What happens?’
‘Doctor Lammegeier,’ said Tubal. ‘As acting commander of the army of Lascanne in the Levant, I hereby formally offer the surrender of my men and position, on the condition we are treated well and are not harmed.’
29
Emily studied the creased and folded sheets of paper in her hands: her abortive, undelivered words to Cristan Northway.
The thought that in two days, three, she might see him again, made her feel exceedingly strange, more ill at ease than excited. She took the sheets between both hands, ready to tear them up.
But you haven’t seen him yet. She relaxed her pressure, folded them again and slipped them into her inside jacket pocket.
The air was clouded with steam. Alongside the station at Locke, a locomotive was waiting, its carriages filling with dejected and defeated Lascanne soldiers. Still, they were going home. The enemy had provided a deliverance that their own side could not. Some still wore their red jackets, as Emily herself did. Many were down to shirtsleeves, or even civilian clothes looted from Locke. The Denlanders had confiscated all the muskets, but some officers still wore their sabres. Emily still retained her pistol, her metal companion all through this bleak war.
Denlander soldiers watched over them, ready for any kind of resistance from the fiery, violent Lascans, but there was no rebellion in the air, only the steam of the train due to take them home. The fight was gone from them.
Even so, Emily could tell her own Levant men and women from those who had fought at the Couchant. Their heads were held higher; their stance suggested yet a touch of pride. They stood like soldiers, not prisoners, and she was glad for that. They were the undefeated ones. The war had washed past and over them, and they had held firm. They had only ceased the fight when there was nothing left to fight for, after their brothers and sisters at the Couchant had buckled and broken. She was grateful – more grateful than she could say – that Doctor Lam had left them with that much dignity.
There was a scattering of navy men too, put ashore by Denlander ships who had hauled them out of the water. Emily understood that the sea war was still dragging itself out, with the Denlander fleet scouring the seas. The surviving warships of Lascanne had scattered or taken refuge in the ports of foreign lands still ruled by kings.
News of home: she was filled with it today. Doctor Lam himself had sought her out in the impromptu prisoner-of-war camp the Denlanders had set up for their defeated enemies. She had felt strange: was she truly meeting him in peacetime, and with nothing more to fear from him? They had shared a glass of brandy during a few minutes of conversation. He had told her of how the home front was going.
‘They do not fight,’ he explained. ‘Our men push deep into Lascanne, and they are almost unopposed. A few local pockets of resistance, nothing more.’
‘I don’t think there’s anyone left to fight them,’ Emily confessed.
‘No doubt,’ he agreed. ‘But I had feared for the worst: children, women, old men, even bab
es being put under arms by your King.’
‘And what of the King?’ She recalled that golden man at Deerlings House, who had danced with her, and still felt the echo of what had thrilled through her then. Some feelings are hard to forget.
‘He has fled, they say,’ Doctor Lam replied. ‘The capital is taken and the streets were almost bare. The palace is staffed by our men now, but the King has fled along with some few of his supporters. We will find him.’
‘No doubt,’ she had conceded, but was left wondering.
Now the train beckoned her. She would leave Doctor Lam behind and see what might be pieced together of her home and her past. Grammaine. What would it look like, now? Would she recognize it? And her family and the servants? Or would it all seem as strange as a fever dream, after the swamps of the Levant?
‘Tubal,’ she said, ‘do you want a hand up?’
‘I’ll manage.’ He levered himself upright, stubbornly. The other three were a little way further down the platform, and Emily matched Tubal’s pace as they rejoined them. Brocky was the only one who wore a smile. Scavian’s frown had stuck itself on his face the day they surrendered, and had never healed.
‘How far do we go together?’ Brocky asked.
‘Five stops, I think. Then Em and I have to change for Chalcaster.’
‘Giles?’ Emily said, breaking him from his distracted, unhappy mood for a moment.
‘I . . . you invited me to Grammaine, a long time ago now it seems. If that invitation is still open I will take it . . .’
‘Of course it is. Please—’
‘I have to see my family first. I have to see what’s left,’ he continued. ‘I hope . . . I think they may have fought when the Denlanders came. It would be the proper thing to do. The brave and noble thing to do. The thing my family has always done.’ He clenched his fists. ‘But I hope that, this once, they turned their backs on tradition.’
‘Come soon,’ she urged him.
‘As soon as I can.’
‘Enough time for partings later,’ Brocky insisted. ‘Let’s get ourselves underway. Come on.’
‘Time for partings now,’ Mallen pointed out.
‘You’re not staying here, surely?’ Brocky was genuinely surprised.
Mallen’s expression remained perennially unreadable. ‘This is where I live, Brocky. My home. Where else?’
‘But . . .’ Brocky grinned incredulously. ‘I couldn’t stay another day anywhere near those swamps, and I hardly saw the inside of them, anyway. I mean . . . come on, Mallen.’
‘Home.’ Mallen shrugged. ‘The swamps are home for me. I love them. Nowhere I’d rather be.’
And his woman, his Denlander love, she’ll come looking for him there, Emily knew. ‘I’m going to miss you, Mallen. You saved my life more times than I can remember.’
‘The backbone of the company,’ Tubal agreed. ‘Hell, man, at least come visit sometime. I . . . don’t think I could visit you. For a number of reasons.’
‘You’re always welcome in Grammaine.’ Emily wondered what Alice might make of the lean and tattooed Daffed Mallen, and she smiled involuntarily.
Mallen nodded. ‘Maybe.’ He clasped Brocky’s hand, and then Tubal’s. ‘Hope everything’s where you left it when you get back. Hope the peace lasts. God knows, we need it.’ He took Scavian’s hand. ‘Don’t do anything mad.’
The Warlock smiled sadly. ‘They say our days of madness are over. I’ll believe that when I see it.’
The hand of Mallen went out to Emily next, but she was suddenly struck by the realization that she did not need to be a soldier, not any more. She was free to rediscover the threads of her civilian life. Impulsively she hugged herself to Mallen’s chest.
‘You look after yourself,’ she told him. ‘You never know, we might need you to look after us again, sometime.’
*
The train was full of soldiers, packed in shoulder to shoulder. Many of the carriages had been converted from stock cars, by which side Emily did not know. The four of them ended up sitting on a splintery wooden floor, their backs against a wall, in a carriage crammed with other soldiers and their meagre possessions.
There was little conversation at first. Everyone was waiting to see if the Denlanders would change their mind. How easy it would be, arose the thought, for them to stand at the carriage entrance with guns, and shoot us all. She saw the same thought written on other faces. Those practical-minded Denlanders would be capable of just such an act. Without malice, and even with regret, but they would do it if they felt it necessary.
There was an audible sigh of relief as the train started moving, but it was not until several hours had passed, and the first stop had been reached, that people began to loosen up. A handful of men and a woman got out there, with a look in their eyes that Emily would never forget. She saw a kind of blinking, stunned stare. Home, that look said. As they squinted out into the daylight, it was home they saw, and it transformed them.
Emily wondered whether her own face would acquire such a look, or had she been in too deep, and for too long? Had she been spoiled for life’s ordinary happinesses?
After that, a little idle conversation spread about the carriage, in the extra space left by those who had disembarked. Brocky started a card game on the wooden floor and he set about winning some small change, while Tubal closed his eyes and tried to sleep. She was left with Scavian leaning up against her. He had not said a word since they had left Mallen behind, just stared up at the slatted ceiling.
‘Will you manage?’ she asked him.
‘God alone knows,’ he said. ‘However did it come to this, Emily?’
‘It could be worse,’ she replied with some force. ‘You could be dead. I could be dead. They might not have let us surrender at the end. They might have wanted to make an example of us. Ask yourself, what would we ourselves have done, on the brink of victory, with one camp of Denlanders still defying us?’
‘We would have treated them honourably,’ he said stubbornly. ‘We’re not monsters. We’re better than them.’
And Emily held her peace, knowing that to speak her mind truly would be to provoke him. He let the silence sink in and then added reluctantly, ‘But it could have been worse, in truth.’
Just before one stop, a familiar slender figure bustled from the crowd and crouched down before her: Caxton, with the third crown for her master sergeant rank sewn newly onto her jacket. Bear Sejant had needed one, after all, and Tubal had made this his final act as commander of the Levant, before setting out on the cart ride into Locke.
‘Lieutenant,’ the woman addressed Emily.
‘Call me Emily.’ A weak smile. ‘I’m thinking of quitting this soldiering business.’
‘Emily.’ Caxton stumbled over the unfamiliar name. ‘I . . . This is my home town coming up and I just wanted to say thank you. For being there for all of us. You were a . . . a damn fine officer . . . Emily. I don’t think I could have lasted without you.’
‘You lasted because you were able to,’ Emily told her, frowning. ‘I only . . . I was nothing special.’
‘I only know that I was scared to death the whole time, and it was you that got me through,’ Caxton said. ‘I’m not the only one. We all think so – all of us in Rabbit.’
Emily didn’t quite know what to say. ‘Well . . . thank you. I . . . That’s quite something to think about, Caxton.’
‘Ruth, please.’
‘Ruth,’ Emily confirmed. ‘You were a good second. I should tell you that. I knew I could rely on you.’ The train had shuddered to a halt by then, soldiers already lining up to step out. ‘Back to tailoring, is it?’
‘To whatever needs doing,’ Ruth Caxton said. ‘A lot of things got left unfinished when the draft came through. Someone still has to do them.’
And she left, with Emily concluding that this was a different woman, a wholly different woman, from the pale conscript she had first known.
Five stops along the line, she helped Tubal off onto some
tiny station platform, some little village she never knew the name of. Brocky and Scavian were continuing on, but Tubal and Emily would be catching the Chalcaster train from here.
‘For my part, I’m bloody glad it’s over. I’ll be putting it all behind me. There’ll be work for a skilled dispenser,’ Brocky explained. ‘Damn and bugger the soldiering lark, I say.’
‘Good luck, Brocky,’ said Tubal.
‘And am I welcome at Grammy, or whatever the place is called? Only everyone else has had an invitation.’
‘Of course you are,’ Emily assured him.
‘Not that I’ll come. Far too busy, you’ll see.’ He shook both of their hands briefly, obviously feeling awkward, and withdrew back into the carriage, leaving Scavian alone in the doorway. They could hear the train stoking up, ready to move.
‘Be well, Giles,’ she told him. ‘Come visit soon. And don’t worry, I’ll – we’ll be there if you need us.’
Scavian smiled, but it was one of pain. ‘This isn’t over, Emily, I can feel it. There is worse, worse to come.’ He embraced her, hugged her tightly to him, and she put her arms about him, seeking his strength and warmth. Neither wanted to be the first to let go. It was only when the carriage floor shuddered under his feet that he allowed himself to loosen his grip, and even when the train moved off they touched hands until he was pulled away.
‘You could do worse,’ Tubal told her, smiling at first, but then he saw her face, and hopped forward to hold her close, crutches bundled awkwardly between them.
They sat there on the platform for what seemed the best part of an afternoon. Emily eventually found someone willing to sell them some hard bread and cheese, but at prices that did not bode well for the future. Then they sat gnawing reflectively, along with the two hundred or so other soldiers in the same position.
Eventually the next train hauled itself in and they embarked, tired and homesick, and caught between worlds.
*
That night, as Tubal managed an uneasy sleep, Emily went looking for other insomniacs. How like the journey to the front, she thought. The nervous energy that kept her from sleeping then had been fear of the war. What was it now? Fear of the peace? Of what she might find when she got home? She had received no word for a long time. Wars had been won and lost in the interim.
Guns of the Dawn Page 46
