shot reached her ears. Then she saw the gaps already evident in the lit perimeter, like missing teeth.
‘Oh, clever,’ she acknowledged. The Denlander snipers were well outside of the defenders’ range. There was nothing for it but to wait and watch each light being snuffed violently out by well-placed gunfire.
‘So much for that idea,’ she murmured to herself, and then, at the top of her lungs, ‘Everyone into positions: trench and wall! Stay in cover as much as you can but make sure you can see to fire!’ All around her, men and women squatted down behind the barricade, resting their muskets atop it or poking them through holes between its sections. Before the barricade, the trench party would similarly be hunkering down, taking aim. They had drawn the short straw: the first to take the brunt when the Denlanders finally plucked up the courage to attack.
‘What’ll it be?’ Mallen sloped up beside her. ‘Volleys at their range, or will they try and sneak up as close as they can?’
‘Or both. They’re probably asking themselves the same question.’ She glanced at him. ‘Your night vision must be good; your scouts’ too?’
‘Indeed.’
‘Get your people spread along the line. The sun’s almost down past the cliffs, and once it’s dark we’ll need all eyes to tell us when the enemy’s coming.’
Out there, the Denlanders were moving out from the swamps and forming into companies. She wondered how they had spent today, what oaths had been sworn, what hands clasped in friendship and farewell.
The front lines, their ranks as broad as the entire camp, began moving forward in the gathering gloom, but stopping well out of range of the Lascanne guns. Emily strained her eyes, trying to make out individual figures in that mass of shadowy grey.
‘Are they into two ranks?’ she asked and then, before Mallen could reply, yelled, ‘Brace! Brace for a volley!’
She ducked back behind the barricade, and the double rank of Denland guns opened up, almost in a single thunderclap of sound. She felt the wood of the barricade twitch under the impact, saw splinters and dust showering up and all around. There were one or two screams, shots punching through the wood into the flesh, but even with their magic guns the Denlanders could not destroy the barricade with just one round of fire – nor, Emily hoped, with many.
‘Stay down,’ she called. ‘They may try another.’ She peered out at the enemy again, despite her own best advice, and could barely distinguish them. Their uniforms blended in with the all-pervading dusk, the gunsmoke and the wood dust, until she could barely make out even the great mass of them.
Beside her, Mallen let out a long breath. ‘Moving,’ he told her. ‘Moving in.’
Emily nodded. ‘Caxton, send a runner to Pordevere and Mallarkey. Let’s get two rounds at them as they come in. Let Mallen’s scouts call the first round, as close to long range as they can.’
‘Yes, Lieutenant.’
Emily sat down, her back to the barricade. ‘Your call, Mallen.’
The master scout leant on the crate in front of him, shielding his eyes from the lantern light behind him. ‘Taking it slow. They want us to fire too soon.’
‘Then don’t let us fire too soon,’ she told him. She imagined the great mass of Denlanders inching forward, the men at the front sweating and terrified, waiting for an eruption of firing from the fortifications. ‘How many, do you think?’ she asked.
‘Still coming out of the woods.’
‘Still?’
She felt Mallen tense beside her, put his musket butt to his shoulder. She scrambled up. The sun was fully eclipsed by the cliffs now, and she could see virtually nothing of the enemy. She could only trust that Mallen’s better eyes were good enough.
‘Ready,’ the scout said softly, more to himself than her, then took his whistle between his teeth. He peered into the falling night. ‘Ready . . .’
She put her own musket up to the barricade, finger poised on the trigger, letting her entire being wait on Mallen’s signal.
Which came, with a high, clear blast and, an instant later, all down the line his scouts were giving the call to fire. Her finger twitched on the trigger; aiming was immaterial. The entire north wall of the barricade became a fireworks display of musket fire, lighting up in a blaze of gunpowder and reeking smoke, as the soldiers of Lascanne riddled the night with lead balls.
And hit. Invisible in the night came the screams of injured and dying Denlanders, and Emily could only