The butt, slamming back into her hip, felt as though she had shot herself. The pistol ball punched a bloody hole in Sharkey’s groin, and he somersaulted forward and tumbled into the waters of the lake.
Her legs gave way and she sat down heavily. The image in her mind was of Grant forcing the same pistol on her. He always did look after me.
Sharkey would have killed me anyway, she realized only afterwards. The simple act of rape was enough to get him shot. He would have throttled me, snapped my neck. He would have done it to others. Perhaps he has. Who would inform on a master sergeant?
Still, it was some minutes before she could muster the strength to stand up, to go and look for her company, to see who yet lived and who had died.
What will Brocky think? was the thought that occurred to her, imagining his incredulous mirth at her going to stores for replacement musket, sabre and a belt. What will he think?
17
I have told no one of this. I cannot speak to Mallen, nor even to Tubal, my own brother-in-law. They would not understand.
To you alone can I communicate these events. I believe you will understand, whereas they may not. Your world has plenty of shades between the colours. In this world we cannot but compromise.
She left the lakeside behind her, hoping to retrace her own or Sharkey’s tracks, some path to take her home.
The impenetrable, unmastered jungle confronted her: the tangle of greens, the shifting footing. She was out of sync with it once more. That golden moment where she and it had moved as one was now over.
What a figure she made: a lone soldier with but a pistol to defend herself, a cannibalized baldric holding her britches up. A joke, a clown soldier, a badly cast mummer.
She put one foot in front of the other and set off under the forest canopy, because what else was there to do? She had no idea where she was. The lake at her back was to be found on no map she had seen, or else she was miles adrift. Perhaps she would come up against the sea, perhaps she would even set foot on Denland soil.
Perhaps she would wander, lost and maddened, until the swamps claimed her.
She did not call out for assistance. Dying in the swamps was one thing. It was a death she had almost made her peace with. Being captured by the Denlanders, being taken before their diabolical Doctor Lam, was another matter entirely. She knew little enough, but no doubt the Denlanders would find it a worthwhile story when they had cut and prised it from her.
She tried to use Mallen’s trick of finding east by noting the gradual movement of the water, but she could discern no such movement. It was standing, brackish, undisturbed by all but the amphibians. She crouched over pool after pool, plagued by insects, and saw in the mire not even her own reflection.
It took an hour of roaming, of oppressive heat and slimy water, before she spotted the indigene.
She saw it only when it moved. It was crouching in the fork of a tree, staring down at her with its vast, blank eyes. They caught all the dim light that penetrated through the overreaching canopy; they almost seemed to glow with it. It had a bundle of long, slender javelins in one hand, tipped with bone, and Emily nervously put a hand to her pistol butt.
‘Well now, hello there,’ she said to it carefully, wondering how many friends it had nearby that she could not see.
With a sinuous motion, the hairy creature dropped onto the roots below and bared its narrow teeth at her with a brief chattering and jabbering. As alien to her as her own tongue surely was to it, she let the sounds wash over her.
‘I don’t understand,’ she tried, as loud and clear as she dared. ‘Sorry. Not understand you. No good.’
‘Mar’n,’ it said emphatically, jabbing its weapons at her chest.
I must be somewhere they don’t want me to be, she thought. Well, I’ve no great wish to be here either. Feeling tired and frustrated, she sat down on the nearest tree root, which seemed to agitate the indigene even more.
‘Mar’n!’ it said. ‘Mar’n!’ Then kept saying it, hopping from foot to foot. She just stared blankly at the creature until finally it lunged at her, swift as blinking, taking her utterly by surprise.