Gunwitch (12 page)

As she screamed, she struggled against the shackles, but she was on tiptoes already and could not lift them off the peg. She twisted around, and saw three men around the boy. Two of the men held the boy while the other, younger than the other two and wearing a uniform, refastened the shackles in front. Then they lifted the boy and brought him to the carriage and hung him on a peg beside her. Sergeant Morris ripped open the back of Tommie’s shirt.

Rosalind felt again the desperation that had fueled her rescue of Elizabeth, but the cold magic remained out of her reach. The shackles on her wrists grew warm and tightened. She looked up at them and saw that the metal’s aura and the etched runes glowed now, casting a soft light on her hands and into her face.

“Your sorceries will not avail you, witch,” a man said behind her. She remembered the voice. From when she had been captured. She twisted again, trying to see who it was. The young man in an officer’s uniform smiled at her, and brought his hands up where she could see them. He held a whip. “But perhaps a touch of the lash can help you learn to listen.”

Rosalind turned back around and squeezed her eyes shut and bit down on the folded leather. She shivered with the cold and the fear of the whip against her skin.

“You are part of the King’s army now,” the officer said. “Both of you. And subject to the King’s discipline. You will follow orders. Or you will face punishment.”

She heard the man draw a breath, then let it out as the whip whistled. Her muscles clenched and she cried out, but it was Tommie, beside her, that took the blow. He grunted, but did not cry out.

Another breath, the sound of the whip through the air, and this time red hot pain traced a line across her back. Her scream caught in her throat, stopped by her clenched jaw. All she could do was whimper.

They received three lashes each, the whip alternating between them, Tommie then Rosalind. She sobbed and whimpered. Tommie never cried out.

“Now,” the officer said, “let’s see if we can finish the night in peace.”

When Sergeant Morris and other man took Tommie by the arms and let him down, he spit the leather strip into Sergeant Morris’ face. The sergeant made no comment.

Rosalind was still sobbing when the men came for her. She let the leather guard fall out of her mouth into Sergeant Morris’ hand. Then the men let her down, hands on her shoulders and waist, avoiding the burning stripes on her back. They pushed her into the carriage and closed and bolted the door behind her.

She slumped to the floor and lay on her side. When she saw her face was next to Tommie’s, his right eye open and looking at her, she said, “I … I told you … I’m a prisoner too …”

He did not respond.

“I just want to go home,” she said.

He sat up and turned his back to her, then laid back down again. In the dim grayness of the carriage, the three welts that crossed his spine between his shoulder blades showed black against his pale skin.

Chapter 6

Rose

Comite Bayuk

1742 A.D.

Rose helped Chal settle Margaret into a sitting position against a fallen tree trunk. Then Rose propped her rifle beside the girl, and slipped the pack off her shoulders. She let the pack fall to the ground at her feet. She picked up the rifle again, checked it out of habit, and looked back down at Margaret.

The girl’s head lolled to one side, and she slumped against the pack, eyes closed. Margaret’s eyes popped open and she seemed about to scream. Rose reached forward, but the girl recovered herself and visibly swallowed the scream.

Rose gave the girl a curt nod of respect, and thanks. The girl had surprised her several times over the past couple of days. First with the trousers, then with a quiet determination that was very much at odds with the girl’s sister.

“Where are we, Major Haley?” Janett asked behind her. “Does anyone even know? And where is Mr. Thomas?”

Janett had come to, screaming and struggling, several hours before, causing the tired Private Tishman to stumble and fall. And, of course, to drop her. Which had made Janett scream more, indignation edging out panic, a screeching siren in the middle of the bayuk, beckoning their enemies to them. Rose had wanted to throttle her. Major Haley managed to catch Janett before she ran away into the woods, and calm her. That is, once she had stopped screaming about the blood on his face, then weeping over his missing ear. Since Private Tishman had already been almost dead on his feet from carrying the girl, Rose had resisted the urge to have her tied and gagged and carried still further. Neither of the men was up to that task. Not without some rest.

The pace of their forced march, once they had been able to resume it, had kept the older Laxton girl from talking–much–and Rose had pushed them all further than she might otherwise have done just to keep the girl quiet. She had also hoped that maybe tiring Janett out would grant them silence when they did stop.

Fortune had deserted Rose Bainbridge, it seemed. First had been the general’s summons. Then Ducoed, emerging from the shadows of her past to smirk at her again. Then the ambush. Now this.

“How are we supposed to make a camp here? No one brought any of the … the … camping equipment. I am quite literally starving, Major Haley. Why are we even following Miss Bainbridge? You are the ranking officer here.”

Chal took in a deep breath, breathing with both her mouth and her nose, and let it out slowly, as if both tasting and smelling everything the air had to offer. Then she looked at the ground at her feet and at the scrub grass and bushes and trees around them. Rose could feel Chal’s awareness swell around her, past her. It made her skin tingle. More than once she had asked Chal to teach her how to do that. And Chal had tried, each time Rose asked. But Rose might as well have been a pirogue attempting to learn grunzer mechanics from a German engineer. She knew it could be done, but the how had never occurred to her, in spite of Chal’s efforts.

“Three hours,” Chal said. She pointed almost due north.

Rose nodded. Her own estimates had predicted about the same. “Any sign of pursuit?”

Chal closed her eyes and hummed in her throat. The tingling on Rose’s skin changed timbre to match the girl’s hum. After several minutes, Chal stopped humming and opened her eyes. “Maybe two hours behind us. I could feel the stirrings of their passing, but it was … different.”

“Different, yes.” Rose suppressed a shudder. “Have you seen anything like them before?”

Chal bowed her head, then said, “Not in such a way.” She looked up again, met Rose’s eyes. “They were once men. They are not men any longer.”

“Could be either of those,” Rose agreed, rubbing her hands over her face, trying to wipe away the fatigue. She failed. “Or worse. All that matters is we’re still alive, and still able to move forward.” She paused. “Did you sense any sign of Ducoed?”

“No,” Chal said. “I cast back along our route, and I found no sign of him.”

Rose considered her emotions and came to no conclusion. She set aside thoughts of Ducoed and looked up at what parts of the sky could be seen through the branches overhead. It was nearly noon. Three hours to get there, and maybe as much as an hour to muddy their trail a bit. They would be cutting it close. She wanted to press on immediately, but the girls needed to eat, and the major and the private needed to rest.

“You need to rest too,” Chal said.

Rose realized she was still standing, and still holding her rifle. She sat down on the trunk beside Margaret, leaning her rifle against her leg.

“We all need rest,” Rose said. “But there’s just no time for it.” She pulled her pack over and opened it, taking out a smaller pouch. “Eat this,” she said, offering a strip of jerked venison from the pouch to Margaret. “Or chew it, anyway,” she added as she saw the girl’s teeth clamp down, trying to tear off a chunk.

Chal sat down on the trunk on the other side of Margaret, but facing the opposite direction. Rose handed Chal a strip of the jerky as well.

Janett seemed to materialize in front of Rose. “I have been starving for hours, Miss Bainbridge,” she said. “We all have been, I’m certain, since there was no breakfast. Margaret! Get that revolting thing out of your mouth.”

Janett sniffed, but made no reply. Still holding the jerky in front of her, she turned away. “Major Haley,” she said, “can you tell me how one … eats … this?”

Rose looked down and caught Margaret looking up at her. She winked at the girl and gave her a quick smile. She removed a piece for herself and threw the rest to Private Tishman. “Eat up, Private. It might not be the King’s salted pork, but it’ll keep you going. And don’t forget to share with the major,” she added. She saw Major Haley remove his red overcoat and spread it on the ground for Janett to sit on. “Maybe give him an extra ration for onerous duty.”

Janett lowered herself to the major’s jacket, spreading her skirts as she did, the picture of the English lady on a picnic.

Major Haley noticed Rose’s attention, and she saw a flush come to his cheeks. “I thought it more fitting,” he said. “Her being a lady …” His voice drifted off as he took in Margaret sitting on the ground against the log where Rose and Chal sat. “I did not mean to imply …”

“Carry on, Major,” Rose said.

“What if Mr. Thomas is hurt?” Margaret asked, pulling Rose’s attention from Major Haley. “Will he be able to catch up to us? We’ve been walking for hours. If he was hurt …”

“Do you not also hope Mr. Thomas is well, Miss Bainbridge?” Janett asked. Rose looked at the girl and met her eyes, but still said nothing. “He promised Margaret and I that he would see us safely to our father,” Janett continued. “I cannot believe he would go back on his word.”

She never knew how to argue with women, especially young women. Girls like Margaret she thought she understood. She could remember being a girl. But she had never been a young woman–certainly nothing like Janett. The 101st Pistoleers was mostly women, but they had all been trained by the King’s Army to be military
men
. Femininity, like the ability to bear children, was not considered a useful quality in a gunwitch.

You ever seen a pregnant gunwitch?
Rose clenched her jaw, but was too tired now to stop the memories. She remembered the day the King’s Policy had been writ on her womb. She remembered the night when she had finally realized what that meant. More bitter dregs to swallow from her years in the King’s Coven, these only discovered in her first years in the bayuk. Poor Nicholas. He had so wanted children.

She had only been married to Nicholas a year. Nicholas had seemed to appreciate her blunt approach to life, so much like his own. He had loved her, and stayed with her, even after the wisewoman removed her wrinkled hands from Rose’s belly and told them that they would have no offspring, and no future past twelve moons. The other married women of the bayuk village, who had begun to grudgingly accept her, the outsider, now treated her as an object of pity, someone who could never be one of them. She had no longer been able to bear their pity after Nicholas died. And none of them seemed unhappy when she left.

“Stop it, Janett,” Margaret said. “You’re being awful.”

Rose kept her eyes on the trees around them, refusing to look at Janett again, letting the conversation die. Letting the memories fade into the humid air. She thought she saw Major Haley looking at her, but she kept her gaze away from him too.

Ten minutes later, she got everyone up. Tishman had gone to sleep with the jerky in his mouth, his jaws idle but clamped tightly on the bit of food. He resumed chewing when she woke him, as if he had never stopped. Rose almost chuckled. English infantry regulars could sleep anywhere, and they never wasted food. She had been like that herself for–