singing men’s songs on their way to war.
*
The soldiers of the Levant front had heard them coming, and sent scouts out to investigate, who had run back with the news. Consequently, the new recruits came in sight of the camp to see a whole wall of incredulous men staring at them. That was to be their first impression of the front: not the swamps; not the ranks of tents on pole frames, raised off the ground to keep them dry; not the towering cliffs that formed the western extent of their sodden world; but a wall of gawping men, an expanse of staring eyes.
Some were shocked, and could not take it in. Others were angry: there were frowns and clenched fists at these girls playing at soldiering, making a mockery of the uniform. There were a few who searched each newcomer for the sight of a familiar face: a wife, a daughter, a sweetheart. News from home had been scarce.
Many were grinning openly. Women, they thought. No doubt they had heard news of the Women’s Draft along the way. They had surely had time to concoct their own little imaginings. Now here was the proof: several hundred of Lascanne’s female finest marching into their camp, two hours before sunset. They passed comments to their fellows, eyeing up particularly choice specimens, and grinned like dogs.
‘Set down!’ the master sergeant called, and the exhausted recruits let their burdens fall. Some, testing their luck, sat down on the grass or on the crates, and when the master sergeant made no comment, they all did, finding a dryish patch where they could take the weight off their aching feet.
‘Someone get me an officer,’ the master sergeant called out and, when nobody moved, she singled a man out. ‘You, baboon, go get me an officer, or you’re on a charge.’
In this case, the military overruled the masculine, and the chastened soldier pushed off through his fellows, whom the master sergeant rounded on sternly. ‘As for the rest of you, if this is your war effort I’m amazed Denland isn’t in the capital by now. Haven’t you got something better to be doing with your time than drooling?’
Some of the male ensigns and sergeants began to round their charges up and move them on, to cooking, to cleaning, to sentry duty. There was a fair crowd still goggling at the women when the colonel arrived.
He was close to Lord Deerling’s age, she judged, but shorter and broader, with a small moustache and beard seemingly tacked to a round face. His hair was little more than a white fringe above his ears, giving him the look of everyone’s favourite uncle. His uniform was well decorated, though, with mementos of the Hellic wars, and the soldiers instantly made way for him, lining up to see what he would do.
He surveyed the newcomers, and Emily thought she detected in his eyes a certain weariness at it all. He had been given an unwanted gift, however much needed. Like Master Sergeant Bowler at Gravenfield, he did not know what to do with a company of women soldiers.
‘Master Sergeant,’ he called, ‘before you return to Locke, do me the favour of sending them to join their companies.’
‘Sir? I was informed that they would remain under their own officers,’ the master sergeant replied.
‘No, no, no. We have three understrength companies here already. There’s no sense shipping in another one that’s all comprised of women, by God. No, we’ll sort out the divisions later, then. Where’s Captain Mallarkey?’
A clean-shaven man not much younger than the colonel made himself known.
‘Get them billets, Captain. Get their gear stowed. Then get everyone lined up first thing tomorrow morning. I need to have a word. And, in the interim, give every officer the word that I’ll have no unsoldierly business, despite this . . . this. And make it understood.’
They had their tents allotted them, while men hefted the burdens they had carried so far. They were allowed to put down the packs that had travelled with them from all the way up the rail track, and before that from their homes. Outside, the sky was a deepening blue, resolving itself to black in the east. There were no sunsets in the Levant. The sun swept behind the monolithic cliffs to light that other war that was being fought up there, in the canyons and the valleys and the great open wastes of the plateaus. The nights were sudden here, in the Levant, and the sunrises drawn-out