his men, as she had done at hers. Perhaps he was wondering how he would explain this to them. When he looked back at her, something had cleared from his face: a weight of worry had lifted.
‘Thank you for finding a way out of this,’ he said. ‘We have those who would be very displeased if we hurt the native folk.’
‘We have some just the same.’
‘I think a count of one hundred fifty will be fair.’ He put his hand out, just as Angelline had. ‘I wish you good luck, Sergeant.’
His hand was surprisingly small and delicate as she took it.
20
I shall never know if we actually outdistanced them in our mad, headlong plunge through the swamp, or if they let us go.
I have spoken to the enemy, Cristan. I have had them hold a mirror up and show me my own face. Soldiers are the same everywhere, I think: weary, dutiful and unhappy.
‘How is he, Doctor?’
‘I’m not a doctor.’ Doctor Carling’s wife didn’t even turn round. ‘You can ask him yourself. By my book, that means he’ll pull through.’
She knelt by Brocky’s bed and he levered himself up onto one elbow. He looked pale and greyish, but with sufficient ill temper in his face to reassure her.
‘You’ve got to get me out of here, Marshwic,’ he insisted. ‘I can’t live here a moment longer. That sarcastic witch over there will be the death of me.’
‘Now, Brocky, you exaggerate.’ Emily glanced back at Doctor Carling’s wife, who was studiously ignoring them.
‘She said – listen to this – she said I was the only person she’d ever seen who’d been shot entirely through the fat!’ Brocky hissed. Emily controlled her expression instantly because it would have been unfair to snigger at him.
‘And I told her that fat was obviously good for something,’ Brocky continued urgently ‘and do you know what she said? A thinner man wouldn’t have been shot at all! Do you call that sympathy? I don’t!’
‘I am not in the business of giving sympathy Mr Brocky,’ came the stern voice of the doctor’s wife. ‘And you may leave tomorrow. There will be plenty of time by then to see if you’re going to fester.’
‘Fester? I’ll say I’m going to fester, cooped up in here!’ Brocky declared.
‘I’m just glad to see you well, Brocky,’ Emily told him. ‘You did pick the right expedition to join, I must say.’
‘That I did.’ He chuckled, winced. ‘Ow, bastard! We got back before you, though.’
Emily nodded. A whole day before, in fact. Once clear of the Denlanders, somehow it had taken her that long to navigate back to the camp. Marie Angelline had been one of the first to greet her, and for a moment the two women had embraced each other, a sisterhood of two. Between them they had left thirteen men and women dead in the swamp, once all the stragglers were accounted for, but they had brought back a warning of the Denlander advance. The colonel, apparently, was delighted.
Delighted? Another opportunity for Father Burnloft to slobber through a list of dead names, and the colonel was delighted.
‘And Master Sergeant Angelline?’ she prompted Brocky. ‘I’m sure she was struck by your heroism.’
‘Heroism? Bloody madness, more like. I’d like to see Huill Pordevere match it, though. The whole bloody camp is expecting me to defeat Denland single-handed, as soon as I get up off my deathbed.’
‘And will you?’
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll not go playing the soldier any more is what I’ll do. I don’t take to this being shot at lark, at all. It’ll never catch on.’ His expression shifted to a crafty leer. ‘Besides, if you perform a trick well enough the first time, you don’t ever need an encore, if you know what I mean.’
‘Assume I don’t.’
‘Who do you think was the very first to come and wish me well, eh? None other than Master Sergeant Marie Angelline, kneeling right where you are now. “Are you well, Mr Brocky? Can I get you anything, Mr Brocky? The men are all talking about you, Mr Brocky.” They say a man must needs risk something to gain something.’
‘Well, good luck,’ she told him, privately believing none of it.
*
The night watch was doubled after the news, and junior officers were obliged to stand their turn just like the men. Emily hated drawing watch duty. It kept her away from the firelight and the cheer inside the headquarters of the Survivors’ Club. It kept her from her friends and from lively company.