Guns of the Dawn (46 page)

She stared at him blankly, feeling the coarse cloth harsh against her skin.

‘I used to teach at Jarengard University and design locomotives,’ he continued softly. ‘I designed no fewer than twenty-seven different kinds of locomotive, although only two
ever saw regular use. You may even have ridden on one of mine, to transport you here to this war. Isn’t that ironic?’ He gave a little chuckle, and then sighed. ‘Then the war
came, of course, and I felt the need to serve my country, and they decided that I had a good strategic mind. A clear thinker, you see. And they sent me to take over at the Levant, because they
wanted a breakthrough. Something to turn the tide. Something to boost morale. And since that date . . . well, you know as well as I do what the war is like here. A war written in mud and won only
by the scavengers.’

‘Who won?’ she asked. ‘Who won the battle I was captured in?’

He smiled a little. ‘We did, Sergeant. Against odds of two to one, we turned back the more aggressive half of your force and inflicted fearful casualties, whilst sustaining merely
unpleasant casualties ourselves. Meanwhile, your other half was pinned down by a detachment of sharpshooters and never reached the field at all. That will be my report to the Republican Parliament.
You and I know things are not so clear cut.’

Mallarkey and the Leopard
, she thought, identifying that pinned ‘other half.
They never came. Damn Mallarkey and his cowardice!

‘You’ll never win the war,’ she told him. ‘We’ll always come back.’

‘No doubt,’ he agreed sadly.

‘I have seen your people fight,’ she spat. ‘They are cowards, all of them. They break and run when charged. They’re no true soldiers!’

He was nodding slowly. ‘What can I say?’ His voice was almost a whisper. ‘You tell me nothing I did not know about myself, about my men. We are cowards? Yes, we are. You
terrify us, you Lascans. You are huge and savage; you are born warriors. We put up our guns and you charge headlong at them with sword and shot. You have no fear, no care for your own lives. You
are true soldiers, a whole nation of soldiers. Even your women take up the musket and fight. What can we possibly do against that? And yet we must fight. We cannot give up our country to the
governance of such monsters. And so we take up our guns again and we meet you, face to face. But we fear, Sergeant. Always we fear. And so, you see, perhaps the coward is the bravest of all men,
when he goes to war. He must conquer himself even before he goes to meet his enemy. So we are not “true soldiers”, no. We are men who would rather buy and sell, or make, or teach, but
we fight anyway. We have to.’

‘Why?’ she demanded. ‘Why attack us? Why not just stay in damned Denland, where you belong?’ She was aware her raised voice must be audible to scores of soldiers
outside.

‘We defend ourselves, Sergeant. We must defend ourselves. What else would you have us do?’

‘You moved first,’ she told him flatly. ‘Your damned
Parliament
deposed and killed your king, and then you turned on us. You can’t be secure, with a monarchy on
your doorstep. You can’t forget your crime of regicide, with another king on another throne so close.’

‘So, that is what they told you, is it?’ said Doctor Lam.

‘It is the truth.’

The second soldier reappeared then, with a bowl of hot tea and some thin wafers, which he set on the table. Emily had the impression he had been waiting outside for the voices to subside. When
he asked if he should go, Doctor Lam suggested that he should stay.

Here it comes.
Emily watched the soldier kneel down at the doctor’s shoulder. She had no doubt that he could overpower her, in her present state. She imagined herself splayed out
across the table, dissected, raped, burned . . .

‘What?’ she asked savagely. ‘What now?’

‘Now . . .’ Doctor Lam poured two small cups of steaming tea with meticulous care. ‘Now we come to the balancing point.’ He took one cup, sipped gingerly at it. ‘I
do not expect you to believe what I am about to say, but I feel that I must say it nonetheless. Will you not try some tea? And there is hard-tack if you like. At the moment it is all we have for
provisions.’

She took the other cup, sniffed at the acrid liquid, and then drank. It tasted as it smelled.

‘The regicide of King Dietricht of Denland, second of that name, was not at the order of those who would later become the Parliament,’ said Doctor Lam carefully. ‘The deaths of
that mild-mannered and rather simple-minded man, his wife and newborn son were, however, crimes of ambition. I ask you, who could benefit from their demise?’

‘Those who replaced him,’ she replied promptly. ‘Your precious Parliament.’

‘The motive is correct. Shortly after the death of King Dietricht under the assassin’s knife, we received a royal proclamation, whose writer announced that, by right of blood, he had
inherited the throne of Denland to add to the throne of Lascanne. A proclamation, of course, by King Luthrian the Fourth of that nation. He did not know that we had caught the assassin’s
handler, and had from him, before he died, the great secret: the man who employed him.’

She just stared for a heartbeat, as if not quite hearing him. The words trickled into her, until they touched some red-hot core of loyalty she had not known she possessed. Then she exploded.

She went for him across the table, scattering wafers and tea, clawing for the old man’s throat. The soldier intercepted her but even so she raked one nail across Doctor Lam’s face
before she was wrestled away. ‘Liar!’ she screamed at him. ‘Liar!’

The soldier twisted one arm behind her back and tightened his hold until the pain crushed her rage, and all the while Doctor Lam merely watched her, his mournful expression ever deepening.

‘Is everything all right in there, sir?’ someone asked from outside, and the doctor assured the questioner that it was.

King Luthrian IV. She saw herself back in Deerlings House, before all this madness. The ball and how wonderful it had felt to dance with him and bask in the glory he shed like sunlight. And now
this decrepit creature was telling her that her king was a murderer, a thing of plots and assassins.

‘You lie. Every word of it, you lie!’ she told him.

‘You will believe what you wish,’ said Doctor Lam. ‘As for me, my tale is near complete. We had no king, and our country had been claimed by the man who paid the killer. What
could we do but muster what forces we could, just to hold off the armies of Lascanne? If only it were that simple. But we cannot simply work to keep your soldiers off our soil, like a man who shuts
his gate against a mad dog and never leaves his garden again. If we are to win this war we will have to
win
it. To cross into your land and place our soldiers on
your
soil. What a
stupid thing to have to do. What a terrible point to come to, for two nations once such allies.’

With hands almost steady he reset the teacups. ‘It is always worst,’ he said, ‘when brothers fight.’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said. ‘Our King is a man of honour, a good man.’

‘No doubt you believe so,’ said Doctor Lam. ‘I think we have finished our talk for this evening. I hope you will think, at least, on what I have told you, Sergeant.’

They took her out and back to the cane frame. It took five Denlander soldiers to resecure her there, but they gave the task their customary careful concentration, and wrestled
her onto it.

When they were done, four of them returned to other duties, with only the provost who had brought her in left looking at her. In the darkness she could not read his expression.

‘So what now?’ she challenged him.

‘The doctor will decide. Don’t try to escape. There is no way that you can escape here. Not at all, but especially not in your condition.’

‘Provost?’

Her use of his rank obviously startled him, reminding him of their positions.

‘Yes, Sergeant?’

‘Did anyone . . . ?’ There was no way to ask the question other than to ask it. She would have to be soldierly about it, forthright, despite the horror of it. She forced that soldier
part of herself into her voice, beat down the great wash of fear that told her not knowing was better than hearing the most likely answer.

‘When I was brought in, was I raped, Provost?’

He stepped in closer, his face still in shadow. ‘You were not,’ he said emphatically, in a tone that seemed to wonder how she could ask.

‘What?’ she demanded. ‘You think it’s such an unreasonable question?’

His expression suggested it was, but at last he shrugged. ‘Apparently for you it is not. We cannot get used to fighting women. We cannot begin to see you as a woman. Perhaps that is a good
thing, from your point of view. But we would not. I would not.’ He put a hand to the canes beside her head, and she knew he was studying her face in the faint light of the lamps. ‘I
wonder what would happen to some woman of Denland, captured by your people,’ he said, and for a moment there was quiet between them, so she could hear his breathing. ‘The same as to a
man, I imagine, and then worse.’

‘Provost . . . the Warlocks . . .’

‘What about them?’ He stepped back, all business again, a whipcord of anger running through him. ‘Yes, we know about their way with prisoners.’

The way he said it told her a lot. She knew that the Denlanders killed the King’s wizards whenever they had the chance, and she had assumed it was simply because of their power on the
battlefield, or their symbolizing the King’s service. Now she saw a third reason. A Warlock’s fire might not sway a battle as much as she had thought, but they had a way with torture
like no other.

Giles would never do that
, she reassured herself, with the inevitable companion thought:
but Lascari loves it.

‘Did you kill any, in the battle?’ she asked. If Scavian or Lascari had fallen, the Denlanders would know. They would celebrate it.

‘Why?’ he asked.

‘Please, I must know,’ she said.

‘It’s not my place to answer your questions,’ he told her, and stepped off into the darkness. All around, the Denlanders were shuttering lamps and bedding down. The utter black
of the swamps at night washed over her, leaving her alone, utterly alone, amidst a sea of enemies.

Had any of them survived? Every time she closed her eyes for awkward sleep, she saw the bodies: Tubal, Scavian, Marie Angelline, Mallen. Sometimes she saw her own.

Something moved nearby and she opened her eyes uselessly.

‘Who’s there?’ she asked.

There was another slight sound, and she sensed more than one person, very close, very quiet. She even felt the breath of one on her hand.

This is it, now. Now they take their sport.
‘You keep away from me,’ she hissed into the night. ‘Don’t think I’m going to let you . . .’ She strained
at the frame, creaking and twisting it. The ropes rubbed her wrists and ankles raw.

Someone said something, quiet and extremely close, and she stopped instantly, straining her ears. She had made no sense of it.

‘You . . . just back off,’ she warned.

The same man, or another, whispered something, and she felt as though she had gone mad, or gone deaf. There were no words, none at all.

‘Listen, you . . . what do you want?’

Another meaningless utterance, but she heard it, suddenly in a different context. Babble from a man’s lips became something else entirely.

Indigenes! What are they doing here?

But of course they provided their little services for the Denlanders as they did for the army of Lascanne. Mallen had said as much.

‘Can you . . . untie me?’ she whispered to them, hoping no Denlander was close enough to eavesdrop. ‘Please, untie me. Bite through the ropes or something.’

There was a little hissing between the two or three indigenes, but nothing that suggested they understood her. Mallen had always spoken to them in their own tongue. She did not even know if any
of them spoke a human language.

‘Please . . .’ she said, but it seemed utterly hopeless.

But there had been one word that seemed common to both races, she recalled. One solitary word with a world of meaning.

‘Mallen,’ she said to them. ‘Mallen. You understand me? Go and get Mallen, please. Tell him I’m here. Mallen, Mallen, Mallen.’

They made little noises at each other, but she did not hear the word ‘Mallen or anything close to it, and eventually they moved off. She could not say whether they had any comprehension of
what she had tried to communicate.

And she had no knowledge of Mallen’s fate either. Even before she had been taken, it had been some while since she had heard his whistle. The swamps he loved so much could have reclaimed
him at last. It would be, she guessed, how he wanted it. No gravestone and church plot for him.

She sagged back against the ropes and tried desperately for some semblance of sleep. Tomorrow would bring its own trials, and she needed all her strength for those. She might break eventually,
but she was damned if she would break quickly.

The undersea light penetrating beneath the canopy woke her by degrees, aching and still spreadeagled across the frame. All around her she heard the muted sounds of several
hundred Denlanders packing up camp. Few of them spared her a glance, each engrossed in his own tasks.