deeper than ever before into the swampland, but made no contact at all with the enemy. The ground they had taken, the expanse of water and mud they had bled for, remained unsullied by any new Denlander feet. Colonel Resnic did his best to push the advantage, sending armed parties deeper in, searching for other camps, but there was nothing. The enemy had fallen far back, or was simply one step ahead, giving ground only to retake it once the troops had gone.
Still trying to fight a land war, Emily thought.
Instead of musket fire, the soldiers of the Levant front were treated to the distant thunder of cannon, but not from on high. Once the echoes had been sifted out of the sound, it could be heard coming from the east – from the sea.
‘It happens,’ Scavian told her. ‘In truth I’m surprised we’ve not heard more. Our fleet is out across the bay and beyond, trying to pin down the Denlander ships, just as we try with their infantry. They’ve obviously found each other at last. Whoever wins the sea battle can put their own men on enemy soil along the coast but, as yet, the admirals have the same problem as our colonel: how to smash an enemy who won’t sit still for it?’
In the unexpected idleness resulting from Colonel Resnic’s bewilderment, they sat together with their backs to the cliff, looking out over the camp, the trees, the distant mist that cloaked the sea from view.
‘What will you do when the war has ended, Giles?’ she asked him, resolutely not looking to see how the question impacted on his expression.
‘I have never thought too much about the future. I was destined to be the family layabout, you know. A spare heir if my brother met with misfortune.’ She felt a change in him at this thought. She knew that his brother’s footsteps, the ones he followed in, had led no further than here. That was another shred of circumstance that bound them.
‘You will be a hero, though, when the war’s done,’ she pointed out. ‘Your father . . .’
‘Will be unimpressed. It would take more than winning a war to raise his eyebrows.’ She heard him snort at his own self-pity. ‘I suppose I shall stay in His Majesty’s service. I hear it is easy enough, in peacetime. Lascari certainly seemed to do well out of it.’
‘I do not like Mr Lascari,’ said Emily, and Scavian nodded in quick agreement. Before he could pass further comment on his fellow Warlock, he stood up, pointing south. ‘Emily, do I see soldiers there, or am I mad?’
‘I see them, too.’ For a moment she was convinced that the Denlanders had somehow circled them, perhaps even landed their troops by sea, as Scavian had suggested. Then the mist gave up the red coats of the newcomers, and she cried out, ‘Reinforcements!’ loud enough to echo from the cliffs behind and roll across the camp.
*
In the letter he’d sent to her, Northway wrote of things going awry back home. It was not news she was glad to receive, yet she would not have wished to do without it. There were rumours of a new draft, though no firm news had reached him, and he confessed he could not imagine how the King’s advisors could possibly intend to scrape away at the barrel’s bottom any more. Worse, a fresh war tax had been levied again on a population bereft of much of its menfolk and many women as well, already denied the means to make a basic living. She detected a familiar smug note in his writing when he explained that the Chalcaster area had yet to suffer any great hardship, ‘owing to the financial acumen of certain public servants therein, but other boroughs were apparently baulking at the fresh taxation. He wrote of some protests, even a riot in Arbormouth. We must win this war soon, she decided. It would not be won on the Levant front, though. That seemed plainer to her than ever, despite the colonel’s ambitions. The swamps of the Levant hosted a dreadful, costly battle of attrition, like two men with hands tight about each other’s throats. The prime troops of Lascanne were funnelled into the level fields of the Couchant, where the nation’s pride – its cavalry – could be put to best use.
There had been two hundred and twenty women in the reinforcing division, and eleven boys just over fifteen. The numbers were less than