Emily knew. ‘I’m going to miss you, Mallen. You saved my life more times than I can remember.’
‘The backbone of the company,’ Tubal agreed. ‘Hell, man, at least come visit sometime. I . . . don’t think I could visit you. For a number of reasons.’
‘You’re always welcome in Grammaine.’ Emily wondered what Alice might make of the lean and tattooed Daffed Mallen, and she smiled involuntarily.
Mallen nodded. ‘Maybe.’ He clasped Brocky’s hand, and then Tubal’s. ‘Hope everything’s where you left it when you get back. Hope the peace lasts. God knows, we need it.’ He took Scavian’s hand. ‘Don’t do anything mad.’
The Warlock smiled sadly. ‘They say our days of madness are over. I’ll believe that when I see it.’
The hand of Mallen went out to Emily next, but she was suddenly struck by the realization that she did not need to be a soldier, not any more. She was free to rediscover the threads of her civilian life. Impulsively she hugged herself to Mallen’s chest.
‘You look after yourself,’ she told him. ‘You never know, we might need you to look after us again, sometime.’
*
The train was full of soldiers, packed in shoulder to shoulder. Many of the carriages had been converted from stock cars, by which side Emily did not know. The four of them ended up sitting on a splintery wooden floor, their backs against a wall, in a carriage crammed with other soldiers and their meagre possessions.
There was little conversation at first. Everyone was waiting to see if the Denlanders would change their mind. How easy it would be, arose the thought, for them to stand at the carriage entrance with guns, and shoot us all. She saw the same thought written on other faces. Those practical-minded Denlanders would be capable of just such an act. Without malice, and even with regret, but they would do it if they felt it necessary.
There was an audible sigh of relief as the train started moving, but it was not until several hours had passed, and the first stop had been reached, that people began to loosen up. A handful of men and a woman got out there, with a look in their eyes that Emily would never forget. She saw a kind of blinking, stunned stare. Home, that look said. As they squinted out into the daylight, it was home they saw, and it transformed them.
Emily wondered whether her own face would acquire such a look, or had she been in too deep, and for too long? Had she been spoiled for life’s ordinary happinesses?
After that, a little idle conversation spread about the carriage, in the extra space left by those who had disembarked. Brocky started a card game on the wooden floor and he set about winning some small change, while Tubal closed his eyes and tried to sleep. She was left with Scavian leaning up against her. He had not said a word since they had left Mallen behind, just stared up at the slatted ceiling.
‘Will you manage?’ she asked him.
‘God alone knows,’ he said. ‘However did it come to this, Emily?’
‘It could be worse,’ she replied with some force. ‘You could be dead. I could be dead. They might not have let us surrender at the end. They might have wanted to make an example of us. Ask yourself, what would we ourselves have done, on the brink of victory, with one camp of Denlanders still defying us?’
‘We would have treated them honourably,’ he said stubbornly. ‘We’re not monsters. We’re better than them.’
And Emily held her peace, knowing that to speak her mind truly would be to provoke him. He let the silence sink in and then added reluctantly, ‘But it could have been worse, in truth.’
Just before one stop, a familiar slender figure bustled from the crowd and crouched down before her: Caxton, with the third crown for her master sergeant rank sewn newly onto her jacket. Bear Sejant had needed one, after all, and Tubal had made this his final act as commander of the Levant, before setting out on the cart ride into Locke.
‘Lieutenant,’ the woman addressed Emily.
‘Call me Emily.’ A weak smile. ‘I’m thinking of quitting this soldiering business.’
‘Emily.’ Caxton stumbled over the unfamiliar name. ‘I . . . This is my home town coming up and I just wanted to say thank you. For being there for all of us. You were a . . . a damn fine officer . . . Emily. I don’t think I could have