in strength now. While we’re down.’
‘Now?’ Brocky’s voice was suddenly hoarse.
‘Tomorrow, day after. Soon as they can get the men together.’ Mallen shrugged.
‘That will be soon,’ Emily said, and Marie Angelline nodded emphatically.
‘One thing they are, they’re organized,’ she said. ‘We have to get some defences up.’
‘Command meeting first thing tomorrow,’ Tubal decided. ‘Whoever’s left of us, anyway. You’ll tell Huill Pordevere, Angelline?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘No “sirs” round this table,’ Brocky reminded her.
‘Yes, Salander, then.’
‘Emily, you go get Mallarkey soon as the sun’s up. We’ll need all the time we can scrounge.’
‘It’s . . . a strange thing,’ began Scavian softly. His burn-shiny skin was already peeling back from his face in ragged strips, revealing his familiar features underneath as though he were just an actor removing his disguise. ‘To have a man try to shoot you – to shoot you, specifically.’
‘But Scavian, you’re a Warlock. They’ve been trying to kill you ever since you got here,’ Brocky reminded him.
‘I know but . . . in battle it’s less personal. After all, I’m trying to kill them as well. There’s a . . . a what?’
‘A mutual understanding,’ Emily provided for him.
‘Exactly so. But, in truth, it makes one fear that one is . . . marked now.’ He lapsed into silence. ‘I am the last of the King’s wizards here at the Levant. As there have been none to arrive in half a year now, to join me, it seems that none are ever to come. No doubt the King sends them to the Couchant, seeing there his best chance at achieving victory.’
‘You can’t mourn for Lascari,’ Emily protested.
‘I mourn for the man he should have been.’ He stood up from the table, wandering over to the window to look out at the night.
‘There is grey over the sea, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, after a moment’s sad reflection. ‘I fear the dawn has crept up on us as we talked. An hour off, at most.’
‘And tomorrow – today! Today they’ll come for us,’ Brocky predicted.
‘Or the next day,’ Mallen corrected him with equanimity. ‘We knew this day would arrive. We all knew.’
And out there, in the dark behind the treeline, the Denlanders massed and readied their magic guns for the onslaught: this day, or the next . . .
26
My dear Cristan,
I am resolved not to write to you. You see, I am to die soon, or so my heart tells me. I want to let your memory of me cool. I hope you might forget me. I wish my death may not hurt us both.
And yet I have set pen to paper again. And why? It seems to me that I will have no chance to send this letter, so I may write it with impunity. I have grown used to this liberty, of setting out my thoughts on paper. I felt incomplete when a sunset came, and I had no words written down.
I sit here and I scribble, and I am speaking to you, confiding in you. I imagine your cold smile, the way your eyes blink when you are trying to be sincere. I have devised a long catalogue of your faults and vices, Cristan, and I cling to them. They are all I have left of home.
Tubal had not yet mastered the business of walking on crutches. He made a heavy labour of the brief journey between the Stag Rampant headquarters – alias the Survivors’ Club – and the central hut that had once housed the colonel.
Stapewood met him at the door, his eyes red and his face puffy. ‘Captain,’ he said to Tubal, and, ‘Lieutenant,’ to Emily, then he opened the door for them formally, like a steward.
Emily helped Tubal up the few steps and got him ensconced at the great table. No map this time, for the battleground was known to all concerned.
‘I don’t think I could bear the walk back if nobody else comes,’ he said, ashen and sweating.
‘They’ll come.’
‘Will they? I’m a prole and an upstart, Em. My grandfather wasn’t even born in this country. Mallarkey’s of decent family, and Pordevere’s actually a Knight of the King’s Court. Who am I to be summoning them here and there? They’ll ignore me. They’ll be over in Pordevere’s hut, talking about hunting and shooting.’
‘They’ll come,’ she insisted. ‘Mallarkey’s scared to death; you know him. He wants someone else to take command. And Pordevere wants command, of course, and he can’t very well have it while hiding in his hut. They’ll be here.’
Sure enough there were