when the indigenes leave? No. But if they do? We come here to die, Marshwic. This is their place to live, and they have no other. I will not betray them.’
‘Tubal . . .’
‘Will understand.’ And he was off again, leaving her to catch up. By the time she had found her place in line, Mallen had his two score scouts away from the main force, giving them their briefing.
She spilled out to Tubal all her worries, even as Captain Goss approached down the line. There was a grimace on the face of the lieutenant, but in the end he merely shrugged.
‘Hell, I can’t say I couldn’t have guessed he’d do that. He virtually grew up with them. I can’t blame him. We’ll just have to hope.’
‘Hope?’ Emily echoed, and then Captain Goss was upon them.
‘All accounted for, Lieutenant?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Three divisions. I’ll take far west: point of the pincer. You’re centre. I’ve put Sergeant Shalmer on east, alongside the Bear. We need to make rapid going of it, Lieutenant. I know Huill intends taking the swamps at a run, punching into the Denlanders before they get the slightest warning. We need to be there to support him.’
‘Yes, sir. What about the Leopard?’
Goss bared his teeth. ‘If we waited for Mallarkey to put in an appearance, who knows what kind of a defence Denland will have had time to put together. No, he can make his own time. But I spoke with Huill last night. We’re going in fast as we can.’
And already the great plan falls apart.
‘Mallen’s scouts will screen for us, pick up any enemy spotters in our path. Ensign Marshwic?’
She jumped on hearing her name. ‘Yes, sir?’
‘You’re my second, since Salander here vouches for you. Lieutenant, go choose your own.’
Tubal cast a helpless look at Emily. ‘But—’
‘Go, man. We haven’t the time.’ Goss’s fingers clenched about his sabre hilt were white. ‘Ensign, get a third of the company under orders to advance along the cliff-line.’
Tubal looked ready to argue, to snatch Emily back from Goss’s command. She could see that it would not work: Goss was on broken glass here, dragging himself through it step after bare-footed step. He would smash down any opposition, because he had no give left in him.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said, and gave Tubal’s arm a reassuring squeeze she did not fully feel confident in. When she went off to carry out the orders, her mind and his mirrored each other’s thoughts, she was sure: Will I ever see him again?
Less than an hour after dawn, all three companies of the Levant army were marching into the swamps. Colonel Resnic, whose idea it all was, watched them go.
Once under the shadow of the cliffs’ overhang, it seemed to Emily that the sun would never penetrate the dark. Between the towering cliffs and the dense trees of the swamp itself, she might as well have been in a valley. Surely dawn never broke here, just as the sun never set. Certainly, beneath the trees, the best showing day could make was a gloomy twilight. With Captain Goss forging ahead, she was left with three hundred soldiers to marshal, their neat line broken into unruly clumps as they pushed through the dense undergrowth that somehow thrived in fecund abandon even here. Goss himself she kept a close eye on. He was locked down tight. He could face his fears rigidly or he could crack, she guessed. His experiences had left him with no leeway, nothing flexible. He did not even look back to see if anybody was following him.
He carried no musket, she noticed. She had heard he had been shot in the shoulder, and his right arm was held stiffly as he walked. She only hoped he had pistols about him, or that he could handle a sabre left-handed.
Tubal would be even deeper into the swamps on her right and, beyond that, the mass of Stag Rampant company, straggling amidst the fog, the pools, the treacherous ground. This was no place to fight a land war. If there was an ambush, they would only know about it by the shots. And she knew, by now, how hard it was to locate a sound in this thick, cloudy air.
If the Denlanders know we are coming, they could kill four score of us before we could mount an effective response.
She felt she understood the captain, then. March on, march on, because any other options are gone. March on; or turn and flee, and never look in the