still from the previous engagement, and she had no idea whether it would fire at all now. She dried it as best she could with her shirt and loaded it anyway. It was a good-quality, robust weapon. If the worst came to the worst it would be worth the hazard, and she could always use it as a cudgel.
And they pushed forward, as the sound of gunfire, volley overlapping volley in a continuous thunder, grew ever louder.
The trees were thinning ahead of them, and she broke into a run.
For her first astounded second, it looked like some corner of a soldier’s vision of hell.
The ground was churned calf-deep in mud, and littered with bodies. It had been the site of a camp, a big one, but there was little enough left of that now. The tents were trampled, and everything that stood over a foot tall provided cover for more soldiers than it could reasonably hide. Across the far side, she saw the Denlanders strung out in a long line behind cases and crates and a few over-turned carts, firing and reloading with fearful determination, half and half, taking it in turns to peer over the barrier and let fly. Closer by, a few hundred yards along her side of the clearing, there was a mass of men, tight-packed in a block of hundreds, ducking behind what cover they had, the front ranks returning fire on the Denlanders. These were Bear Sejant men, she assumed at first, but then she caught a glimpse of Tubal’s dark face in the nearest lot and knew that he must have come to the Bear’s aid and was now as pinned down as they were.
What happens now?
‘Sir, look!’ She followed the pointing finger of the woman who was not Stockton, and saw a detachment of Denlanders, their grey uniforms smeared with mud and blood, making their way around the clearing’s edge, as they tried to get into a position where they could flank the embattled Lascanne forces. Much further and they would secure an unobstructed line of fire into the heart of Tubal’s men.
‘Follow me!’ she ordered without explanation, and charged forward into the trees, following the periphery of the clearing under the canopy. Please, please, don’t let them see us. A ridiculous supposition. Two hundred men and women and more, all in red, with guns gleaming in the weak sunlight, how could they go unnoticed?
But the swamps and the trees, which had been her enemy since she came here, were with her now. Their roots gave her purchase as she charged her soldiers through them. They gave her mist to hide her from the enemy. She passed through the water and the muck and mire like an indigene, like Mallen himself.
She stopped, letting the division form up around her. The Denlanders had almost crept into position. She had their backs. Shooting men in the back: no honour, no valour. The colonel would mutter into his moustache: This is not what war is about.
And she thought: This is absolutely what war is about. The real war.
‘With me!’ She pulled the trigger, kneeling to reload as her comrades’ fire lashed through the flanking party, smashing bones, punching through lungs, killing men in all the ways a swiftly hurtling ball of lead can. She came up to see the enemy survivors under fire from the front as well, and she mercilessly brought her gun to bear on a second target. This time she saw the Denlander die, flung forward even as he was taking aim. She bent again to reload.
What happens now? She had no plan. Each fresh idea came without ancestor or descendant. Every man and woman who had survived the slip-field was still with her, but that would not last for long.
We will do to them what they would do to Tubal, she decided. Why not let the Denlanders advise her on strategy? By all accounts they were good at it.
She managed another hundred yards about the edge of the enemy company before her nerve failed her and she knew they had to go in. The Denlander line was strung out: there would be no great triumphant smashing of it. They had bought themselves one volley of surprise, and no more.
‘When I move,’ she told her soldiers, ‘get into range and take what cover you may, then fire at will.’
‘What then, sir?’ someone asked her.
She could not admit to them she did not know, so she told them nothing.