‘It’s . . . I had a good friend when I first came. Now she’s gone and . . . I’m an ensign and so the soldiers hold me at a distance.’ Her birth worked against her, too. Just as at Gravenfield, she was the only gentlewoman in camp. It seemed all the other houses and families of Lascanne had sent servants to do their dirty work.
Down the line, Stag Rampant troopers were falling into place like game pieces being advanced. Mallen was out there somewhere, invisible, with a whistle to his lips.
‘I bought myself a lieutenancy when they were going cheap for volunteers,’ Tubal recalled. ‘Hell, if I’d known it would put me in the firing line so much, I’d have saved my money.’
‘Tubal . . .’ How unlike a soldier she would sound. She did not want to embarrass herself before Mary’s man, did not want to become just his sister-in-law and not his junior officer, but it hurt her. Each night, each empty day, weighed on her more and more. When the orders arrived, it had been a relief to descend into the boiling purgatory of the swamps, to take up the musket once again. At least there she had a place and a purpose. ‘Tubal . . . I’m lonely.’
When she said the words, they sounded so poor that she wanted to take them back, but Tubal’s expression was nothing but sympathy.
‘You’re right, it is hard,’ he agreed. The last few soldiers were just moving into place now, and Emily felt the almost welcome knot of tension form inside her. Any moment, any moment . . .
‘You know,’ said Tubal, tensing too, ‘if we’re both alive at the end of today, I’ve a mind to invite you to become a member of my club.’
‘Your club?’ As if he was a man of means in Chalcaster again and could spend his evenings as he chose, in the company of his peers.
‘Why not? We never said “no women” when we made the rules. It didn’t come up.’ He flashed her a quick grin, and then Mallen’s whistle sounded and they were both scrambling to their feet, along with tens of other soldiers, to go charging down a root-studded slope into the mist and the trees.
Down the line, Justin Lascari, resplendent in his night-blue robes, thrust forth his hands at the unseen enemy and gave out a harsh shout. Fire leapt from his palms, from his fingertips, in a screaming explosion that seared its way with withering force into the trees and plants before him, shrivelling them and blasting a tract of water into scalding steam. There were screams then, and Denlander soldiers bolted out in all directions, some on fire, some clutching their faces, their eyes. Shots from the advancing Lascanne line picked at them as the ambushers skittered down the slope towards their targets.
In those first few seconds, it was all Emily could do just to keep on her feet. Tubal was skidding and sliding beside her, holding his musket high for balance. A tree sped past between them, and she burst through a spiderweb of vast proportions; then there was movement ahead.
She saw a glimpse of recognizable motion, a human form in drab clothes bolting away, and she tried to bring her musket to bear on it, but the shape was gone too fast into the mist between the trees. Elsewhere, down the line, she heard shots and cries, all muffled in the dank air.
She did not stop to think, not for one moment. Concentration took up the whole of her mind.
At the foot of the slope, with a tree to one side for cover, she swept the barrel of the musket about, looking for targets. Along the line on either side of her there were brief rattling volleys, but she and Tubal seemed to be in an oasis of calm. Mallen’s second whistle came, issuing belated orders to push forward, engage at will. She thrust herself away from the tree and shouldered her way through the dense foliage, the vast overarching ferns, the ankle-deep moss.
Something passed before her face, without being seen, and punched a perfectly round hole through a fern frond beside her. She had a instant’s shock, despite herself, and then she had pulled the trigger, punching her own borehole through the greenery and hitting nothing. Cursing herself, she dropped into the shadow of the plants and reloaded as fast as her shaking hands would permit. Tubal went