belts tacked together, and its contents showed that being the store-master offered a few more perks than Emily had realized. There must be eight pistols thrust through it, she decided. She wondered if they were just for show or if Brocky had actually loaded them. As he strode up to them, he clanked with every step.
‘Mr Brocky will be accompanying us,’ Emily explained with a straight face.
‘Will he, now?’ Angelline cast a discerning eye over Brocky, who was looking everywhere but at her. His pose was trying for the heroic, but managing more the look of the constipated. The firm set of his jaw was lost between chins.
‘Quite the formidable soldier, Mr Brocky,’ the master sergeant said, dead-pan.
‘We, ah, all have to do our duty,’ Brocky replied, in an unnaturally deep voice.
Emily glanced from him to Angelline, who was smiling a little but trying to hide it. Any longer, she felt, and he would burst, or she would laugh at him. ‘Shall we set out, Master Sergeant?’
‘I think we had better, Sergeant Marshwic.’
It was, to be frank, less than a joy being on duty with John Brocky.
At first he had taken a place as close to Angelline as he could, striding along with pomp and attempted dignity; stumbling over every root the swamp had to offer; whomping through the pools and spattering them all with spray; falling to his knees in the mud and having to be helped up. The stifling heat had started to tell after that, and he had fallen halfway back to where Emily was shepherding the line along. He was breathing heavily by then, sweat sheening his brow, mouth gaping.
‘How are you coping, Brocky?’ she asked, but he had no breath left for a cogent reply. Instead his expression suggested he was already regretting this entire business. As far as Emily had seen, when mist and vegetation had allowed, Angelline had barely glanced at him.
It was not long before he was blundering along right at the back of the line, having to scrabble and scramble to keep up with the moderate pace that Angelline was setting. In a rush of pity, Emily sent Caxton back to keep an eye on him. She had begun to see why it was a good idea for Brocky to shirk the fighting. He seemed just the type to spring a trap or get bitten by poisonous spiders. He had been hushed three times so far for cursing at the swamp, the air, the water, the beasts. Now he kept his complaints down to a huffing of breath. He hadn’t enough wind for anything more.
They stopped, some hours in, for rations and a chance to rest. John Brocky sat apart from the soldiers, a broad, hunched bag of misery. Emily would have gone over to him but she knew that he would not have appreciated it. He was a swelling boil of self-loathing just then, waiting for someone to burst upon. It seemed an apposite metaphor.
‘Why has he come?’ The soft voice was Angelline’s. Emily glanced at Brocky’s slumped form and judged them out of earshot.
‘He . . .’ But what could she say? ‘He feels he should do his bit.’ It was a creditably neutral offering. Angelline’s look suggested she did not quite believe it.
‘His place is back at camp. What would we do if we lost our quartermaster?’ she pointed out. Emily could only shrug. What am I supposed to say? When we started out, he carried a torch for you, but I suspect the swamps may have doused it.
‘He’s a complicated man,’ she managed.
‘Inner demons,’ Angelline said. ‘I’ve known many such men, driven men.’ Her voice sounded halfway approving. ‘Greatness or madness, I find.’
Emily began to feel awkward with this subject. ‘Tell me, Master Sergeant, your accent?’
‘Am I a Denland spy, you mean?’ Angelline laughed. ‘My grandparents came from across the sea, from the Small Countries. Because of the Hellic wars, you know. What about you?’
‘Am I a spy?’ Emily asked.
‘I hear you are of great nobility, an important family. They say you are a duchess.’
Now it was Emily’s turn to laugh, and as she did the shooting started.
Three of their men fell instantly, even as the echoing crack of the muskets sounded. Angelline leapt back and rolled behind a buttress of roots, shouting, ‘Down, down!’ For a moment, Emily was caught out in the open, crouching low but without cover. A shot whistled through the air beside her and she hurled herself sideways into a stand of