said. ‘A vivisector. Is that it? Is that what’s to become of me?’
He sighed, and the tent flapped open behind him, the soldier reappearing with a grey bundle.
‘Clothes, sir.’
Doctor Lam nodded towards her, and the soldier threw her what turned out to be a Denlander uniform of jacket and long britches.
‘You may go,’ said Doctor Lam, and dismissed first the man’s protestations and then the man himself. He watched silently as she dressed herself, as she paused to hiss in pain over each wrenched joint and bruise. There was nothing but a faint sadness evident on his face.
The jacket was too broad across the shoulders, too short in the sleeves. She felt like a child playing dress-up games, a ridiculous but oddly familiar feeling. She recalled it as she turned to him again: trying on the King’s uniform for the first time, in Gravenfield.
‘You give me a great and personal reason to win this war for Denland, Sergeant,’ Doctor Lam told her, and for a moment she thought it was an observation on her recent near-nakedness. He had been taken up with his own thoughts, though, for he went on: ‘If we lose, that is how history will know me. Doctor Lam, the terror of the Levant, torturer of innocents and eater of children. The truth is I’m not even a doctor of medicine. I’m an engineer.’
She stared at him blankly, feeling the coarse cloth harsh against her skin.
‘I used to teach at Jarengard University and design locomotives,’ he continued softly. ‘I designed no fewer than twenty-seven different kinds of locomotive, although only two ever saw regular use. You may even have ridden on one of mine, to transport you here to this war. Isn’t that ironic?’ He gave a little chuckle, and then sighed. ‘Then the war came, of course, and I felt the need to serve my country, and they decided that I had a good strategic mind. A clear thinker, you see. And they sent me to take over at the Levant, because they wanted a breakthrough. Something to turn the tide. Something to boost morale. And since that date . . . well, you know as well as I do what the war is like here. A war written in mud and won only by the scavengers.’
‘Who won?’ she asked. ‘Who won the battle I was captured in?’
He smiled a little. ‘We did, Sergeant. Against odds of two to one, we turned back the more aggressive half of your force and inflicted fearful casualties, whilst sustaining merely unpleasant casualties ourselves. Meanwhile, your other half was pinned down by a detachment of sharpshooters and never reached the field at all. That will be my report to the Republican Parliament. You and I know things are not so clear cut.’
Mallarkey and the Leopard, she thought, identifying that pinned ‘other half. They never came. Damn Mallarkey and his cowardice!
‘You’ll never win the war,’ she told him. ‘We’ll always come back.’
‘No doubt,’ he agreed sadly.
‘I have seen your people fight,’ she spat. ‘They are cowards, all of them. They break and run when charged. They’re no true soldiers!’
He was nodding slowly. ‘What can I say?’ His voice was almost a whisper. ‘You tell me nothing I did not know about myself, about my men. We are cowards? Yes, we are. You terrify us, you Lascans. You are huge and savage; you are born warriors. We put up our guns and you charge headlong at them with sword and shot. You have no fear, no care for your own lives. You are true soldiers, a whole nation of soldiers. Even your women take up the musket and fight. What can we possibly do against that? And yet we must fight. We cannot give up our country to the governance of such monsters. And so we take up our guns again and we meet you, face to face. But we fear, Sergeant. Always we fear. And so, you see, perhaps the coward is the bravest of all men, when he goes to war. He must conquer himself even before he goes to meet his enemy. So we are not “true soldiers”, no. We are men who would rather buy and sell, or make, or teach, but we fight anyway. We have to.’
‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why attack us? Why not just stay in damned Denland, where you belong?’ She was aware her raised voice must be audible to scores of soldiers outside.
‘We defend ourselves, Sergeant. We must defend ourselves. What else would you