need to step up my campaign. I’ve sent gifts. I’ve made my first moves. Now I need to try something a little more . . . high profile, if you see what I mean.’
‘And this is where I come in?’
‘Yes. Right, look, I happen to know your lot are backing the Bear next. Three days’ time, you’re heading out with them.’
Emily nodded. With the Bear Sejant’s strength still down, its squads were pairing with Leopard and Stag soldiers when their turn came to sweep the swamp for Denlanders.
‘She’ll be on your shift,’ Brocky explained.
‘You know that for certain?’
‘I got a look at the colonel’s rota. In fact I had some influence in how it fell out. Let’s just say that old Stapewood owes me a few favours. I just know it, all right. You and Miss . . . Sergeant Angelline will be on patrol together.’
‘Do you want me to put in a good word for you?’ Emily asked him, but he was already shaking his head hastily.
‘No, no, don’t say a damned thing to her, you hear? I don’t need any pander wooing for me. No, I want to come with you.’
She let her silence hang for far too long, as his expression soured, before she replied. ‘Brocky . . . is that really wise?’
‘Wisdom doesn’t win women,’ he stated. ‘I want to come with you. I want to show her that I can do the soldiering thing. How hard can it be?’
‘Can you . . . have you ever fought?’
‘I did the basic training, same as everyone.’
Same as Elise. ‘Listen, Brocky, I’m really not sure of this. I . . . don’t want to see you get hurt.’
He gave her a smile on hearing that, breaking out from the clouds of his usual expression. ‘Emotionally or physically?’
‘I don’t want to see you get shot, Brocky,’ she said flatly.
‘Nobody’s so much as seen a Denlander for ten days,’ he argued. ‘I just want to show to her that I’m not some goods-in clerk: that I’m actually there, winning the war with the rest of you.’
She said nothing. His words had brought back the weight that so often knotted up her stomach. ‘And if we’re the first to find the Denlanders?’ she asked.
‘What are the odds?’
The twisting inside her wound its way through another two turns. ‘Don’t say things like that.’
‘Marshwic, it’s a simple enough request. I could ask anyone, but you’re . . . a woman. I thought you’d understand.’
In the end she agreed. She asked for no payment. She wished more than anything that he had not asked her.
*
‘Master Sergeant Angelline, I’m Ens— Sergeant Marshwic, from Stag Rampant.’
Angelline was taller than she was, slender and long-legged, endowed with a presence and a grace that Emily found unsettling and larger than life. The woman had the sort of face that sculptors coveted for their finest work. Her responding salute was smart, and Emily could tell that the squad behind her had already decided to adore her. She could quite see what had caught the eye of John Brocky – and why the wretched quartermaster was so outclassed.
She found herself feeling quite jealous, to her surprise. It was a feeling she thought she had left behind years ago.
‘I’m pleased to meet you, Sergeant. Mallen has said a great deal about you.’ Angelline’s voice was slightly accented, revealing just a touch of the foreign.
‘He has?’
Angelline smiled. ‘He’s quite a talkative man when you get him going.’
‘He is?’ It was hardly the way Emily would have described him. She wondered if Mallen, too, had eyes for the beautiful Angelline.
‘He has a list in his head, did you know?’ The master sergeant’s smile virtually shone. ‘Those people he would trust, out in the swamps. You’ll be pleased to know you’re on it.’
‘Surprised, certainly.’ Perversely flattered, too. So Mallen had a list, did he? She wondered who else had made it. ‘Is your squad ready to go, Master Sergeant?’
‘Ensign?’ Angelline asked, and her second stepped forward, with an over-enthusiastic salute, to confirm that it was. ‘Your own?’
‘Almost.’ Emily glanced around, seeing one man obviously missing. Perhaps his nerve had failed at the last moment. She could not blame him for it. ‘Caxton, would you go and . . .’ She fell silent, because the storehouse door had opened, and there stood John Brocky attired for war.
He was in uniform, which was a first. The jacket failed to meet at the front, and looked distinctly tight across the shoulders. The belt was in fact two