he’s still alive,’ she whispered.
‘He has not regained consciousness since this latest wound,’ Doctor Carling’s wife told her crisply. ‘He will not die, it seems, nor return to life.’
His courage has failed him at last. It was an unworthy thought but Emily, looking at the captain’s face, could not blame the man. At the edge of the abyss, clinging by his fingernails, what man would want to haul himself up only to be pushed back again?
‘This is the third time I have had him under my care, and I do not think there will be a fourth.’ The old woman’s hands brushed Goss’s brow for his temperature, then folded themselves back at her waist. ‘He’s to go to Locke to recover.’ The strain she placed on that last word revealed all they needed to know of her prognosis.
‘Does this make you captain now?’ Emily asked Tubal, after they had stepped back out into the rain.
‘The colonel says not. The colonel is waiting for our Captain Goss to make his full recovery and rejoin the fray. In the meantime I will act as commander for the Rabbit, again. And you’re my second.’
‘Me? What about Mallen?’
‘Mallen does not command. He won’t. He’s chief scout, not a combat leader. He’s master sergeant just so people will listen to him when he needs them to. Sorry, Em, but I’m going to have to lean on you a little harder.’
‘I can’t lead people, Tubal. I’m just . . . not made for it.’
‘Who is?’ He stopped then, despite the rain. ‘Am I? I’m a printer from Chalcaster, if God’s plan is to be adhered to. As a printer, decent enough; as a father and husband, I begin to feel somewhat neglectful. But a lieutenant? A battlefield tactician? A commander in all but name, for God’s sake, of a company of the Lascanne army? Where was that in God’s book, when he set me on my path? Hell, Em, we none of us had this in mind when we were being schooled.’ He grabbed her by her shoulders, held her still a moment. ‘You’ll serve, Em. Like the rest of us, you’ll serve because you have to. And you’ll serve well because you’re a Marshwic, and the Marshwics, as I know well, always serve when they’re asked. Don’t think I didn’t know the family I was marrying into.’
18
After the Big Push, they wheeled out Father Burnloft once again, to read the roll of the dead.
Apathy greeted him, and yet I would not have it. I went amongst them, at least the men and women of my company – and especially those I had commanded. I told them that, whatever the deficiencies in the human medium, the message itself still commanded our respect. Let the drunken priest slur the names and gabble them; still our dead comrades deserved our presence.
I think the old priest had never seen such a turnout. I think the whole of Bad Rabbit was there to watch him sway and stammer.
It frightens me. I feel myself a fraud, to be exposed at any given minute. How is it that they all do these things when I ask?
And what happens when the thing I ask them to do is wrong?
‘Brocky’s in love!’ Tubal exclaimed delightedly. He had been bursting with the news ever since the members of the Survivors’ Club had convened this mild evening in the first blush of summer. He had held it in whilst the drinks were poured and the pipes lit, the first hand dealt. Now, as Brocky himself made a cunning play at cards, Tubal came out with it. The quartermaster spluttered and spilled his hand across the table, revealing a mediocre flush at best.
‘I am not. Who ever heard of such a thing?’
There was such a defensive tone to him that he found no sympathy.
‘Evidence?’ Mallen required. ‘Instances, come on, Salander.’
‘You say not a word!’ Brocky insisted.
‘Vote?’ Tubal asked. ‘Mr Mallen has tabled a motion. Who’s in favour?’
Every hand bar Brocky’s was up before he finished speaking.
‘Carried,’ he announced. ‘Yes, my good and dear friends, it is my sad duty to inform you of the death of John Brocky’s common sense at the less than tender age of forty years.’
‘Thirty-seven, you bloody bastard,’ Brocky growled, but Tubal paid that no mind.
‘Who’s the lucky lady?’ Emily asked. Brocky glowered at her.
‘Ah well.’ Tubal teetered back on his stool. ‘Propriety suggests that I name no names, and thus preserve the sweet creature’s modesty.’
‘Damn right,’ snarled Brocky.
‘However, we are at war,