we have finished our talk for this evening. I hope you will think, at least, on what I have told you, Sergeant.’
They took her out and back to the cane frame. It took five Denlander soldiers to resecure her there, but they gave the task their customary careful concentration, and wrestled her onto it.
When they were done, four of them returned to other duties, with only the provost who had brought her in left looking at her. In the darkness she could not read his expression.
‘So what now?’ she challenged him.
‘The doctor will decide. Don’t try to escape. There is no way that you can escape here. Not at all, but especially not in your condition.’
‘Provost?’
Her use of his rank obviously startled him, reminding him of their positions.
‘Yes, Sergeant?’
‘Did anyone . . . ?’ There was no way to ask the question other than to ask it. She would have to be soldierly about it, forthright, despite the horror of it. She forced that soldier part of herself into her voice, beat down the great wash of fear that told her not knowing was better than hearing the most likely answer.
‘When I was brought in, was I raped, Provost?’
He stepped in closer, his face still in shadow. ‘You were not,’ he said emphatically, in a tone that seemed to wonder how she could ask.
‘What?’ she demanded. ‘You think it’s such an unreasonable question?’
His expression suggested it was, but at last he shrugged. ‘Apparently for you it is not. We cannot get used to fighting women. We cannot begin to see you as a woman. Perhaps that is a good thing, from your point of view. But we would not. I would not.’ He put a hand to the canes beside her head, and she knew he was studying her face in the faint light of the lamps. ‘I wonder what would happen to some woman of Denland, captured by your people,’ he said, and for a moment there was quiet between them, so she could hear his breathing. ‘The same as to a man, I imagine, and then worse.’
‘Provost . . . the Warlocks . . .’
‘What about them?’ He stepped back, all business again, a whipcord of anger running through him. ‘Yes, we know about their way with prisoners.’
The way he said it told her a lot. She knew that the Denlanders killed the King’s wizards whenever they had the chance, and she had assumed it was simply because of their power on the battlefield, or their symbolizing the King’s service. Now she saw a third reason. A Warlock’s fire might not sway a battle as much as she had thought, but they had a way with torture like no other.
Giles would never do that, she reassured herself, with the inevitable companion thought: but Lascari loves it.
‘Did you kill any, in the battle?’ she asked. If Scavian or Lascari had fallen, the Denlanders would know. They would celebrate it.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Please, I must know,’ she said.
‘It’s not my place to answer your questions,’ he told her, and stepped off into the darkness. All around, the Denlanders were shuttering lamps and bedding down. The utter black of the swamps at night washed over her, leaving her alone, utterly alone, amidst a sea of enemies.
Had any of them survived? Every time she closed her eyes for awkward sleep, she saw the bodies: Tubal, Scavian, Marie Angelline, Mallen. Sometimes she saw her own.
Something moved nearby and she opened her eyes uselessly.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked.
There was another slight sound, and she sensed more than one person, very close, very quiet. She even felt the breath of one on her hand.
This is it, now. Now they take their sport. ‘You keep away from me,’ she hissed into the night. ‘Don’t think I’m going to let you . . .’ She strained at the frame, creaking and twisting it. The ropes rubbed her wrists and ankles raw.
Someone said something, quiet and extremely close, and she stopped instantly, straining her ears. She had made no sense of it.
‘You . . . just back off,’ she warned.
The same man, or another, whispered something, and she felt as though she had gone mad, or gone deaf. There were no words, none at all.
‘Listen, you . . . what do you want?’
Another meaningless utterance, but she heard it, suddenly in a different context. Babble from a man’s lips became something else entirely.
Indigenes! What are they doing here?
But of course they provided their little services for the Denlanders as they