he shook his head, holding up a hand for quiet, just as if they were in the jungle.
‘Dead,’ he pronounced. ‘No question of it.’
‘Well, that’s got to be for the—’
‘No,’ he warned. ‘They’ve got all they can from him. Understand? Questioning’s over, so what happens next?’
Emily frowned at him. ‘They know about the Denlanders . . . or some of it.’ A familiar clutching weight began to form inside her stomach. ‘An attack? They’ll want an attack.’
Mallen nodded, backing away into the night, leaving her heir to the sudden silence of a war being advanced.
21
My Dear Emily,
I find you alive and in good health. I would beg you to take a greater care of your well-being, and prescribe no further battles. Might you not find some safer way to conduct this diversion of yours?
You must come back to me; remember that. Make a note that you must not die. It would be a mean-spirited world that did not allow you to return to me after all this. I feel that it would be a signal breach of faith between us, an unforgivable lapse of decorum. You are, after all, a well-brought-up young lady. That should count for something even on the battlefield.
Yours in hope,
Cristan.
And the jungle exploded with gunfire.
A scant moment ago she had heard the shooting: Mallen’s scouts firing into the air or at the enemy, a last desperate chance of warning before the tide swept over them.
‘Cover!’ she had cried. ‘Cover!’ But she had no time to take her own advice. Around her, her squad were just starting to react. Then the trees were alive with the zip and zing of shot, the crackle of musket fire. From ahead and from one side came the flash and the smoke of the Denlander guns. From behind and from all around, the shouts, the screams of the wounded and dying.
‘Cover! A line behind cover!’ she cried, but her voice was lost in the bedlam, being outshouted by the dead. The man beside her was punched off his feet, and then the woman on the other side was sent reeling back with a shot through her arm. Emily dropped to one knee in the shallow water, gun lifted to her shoulder. A breath’s worth of pause and she fired, seeing a grey shape collapse back into the gloom.
Cover! But she was right in the open, midway through crossing a pool. Lead balls ploughed into the water or danced past her, like the insects. She staggered to her feet, stumbling backwards while reaching for the vines and leaves she knew were there.
‘Firing line! Double firing line!’ The orders were Marie Angelline’s, the only voice to cut clear through the chaos. ‘Double ranks and fire! Second rank, fire!’
Emily heard the concentrated roar of three score of muskets discharging as one, but saw none of it. She might be the only one left of her entire squad, of her entire company.
Her hand touched leaves, and she scrabbled at them, pulling herself up the bank. Her empty musket was still directed at the enemy in idiot threat.
‘Got you, Sergeant!’ A hand tucked itself under her armpit, lifting her up. She caught a glimpse of a burly man in red, the Bear Sejant on his sleeve. Where the hell are my own men?
He was halfway through lifting her up when his hand left her and she looked back to see him slumped back, red pooling on his chest.
She was struck a massive blow to the side of the head, sending her helmet awry, the force of it knocking her over the bank and into cover.
I’m shot! Shot in the head! Her eyes refused to focus, and her head was ringing from the impact. She lay on her side in the mud, hands wrestling with the helmet. One finger found a long, shallow groove ground into it: some almost-spent musket ball’s last act.
Too close! And the Denlanders could come over the bank at any moment. She fumbled with her musket, reloading as quickly as she could simply by touch. Her vision swam: sharp and blurred, sharp and blurred.
Someone hit the ground beside her without warning, and she nearly hit him with the gun before she saw the red uniform. He fired a shot over the bank and ducked back to reload.
‘Sergeant,’ he said briefly. Her eyes locked onto the stag emblem on his jacket but she could not place his face.
‘What the devil’s happening?’ she gasped.
He fired a second shot, eyes narrowed. ‘Bastards jumped us, Sergeant.’
‘Where’s Tu—