Gunwitch (16 page)

“Thank you, Pistoleer,” Corporal Edwards said, and saluted her.

* * *

Once the shock wore off, from the salute and the thanks and the healing and the self-inflicted wound, Rosalind sought Thomas’ eyes again. Most of the other soldiers had gone back to their earlier duties, but Thomas still looked at her. She could not read his expression.

“Did you see that, Thomas?” she said. She rushed to him. Someone might have said, “Stay back, Pistoleer!” but Rosalind ignored them.

When she reached Thomas, he held a pistol too, like hers, but with the hammer back. The gun, his expression, made her hesitate, then she forced herself to touch his face. He caught his breath and clenched his teeth, but he did not pull away. She became aware again of the gun in her right hand, and the bracelet on her arm, and–for the first time–the feel of Thomas’ face. Under her fingertips, the bruises disappeared, and the swelling around his left eye deflated. His face looked even younger now, and she pulled her hand back, suddenly shy.

He raised his arm level with his shoulder, parallel to the ground and sighted along the pistol barrel. Rosalind followed his aim and saw a wood and straw figure posed fifty yards away in front of a tall stack of baled hay.

Thomas squeezed the trigger. The powder exploded and smoke poured out of the pistol. White-hot lightning arced from the muzzle of the pistol, ripped through the air and blasted the target dummy.

The smell of burnt powder and the metallic odor Rosalind had caught from Thomas before seemed to hit her in the face and she coughed, eyes watering. When she could see again, half the target dummy burned, leaning against its now broken stand. The rest … was gone. Behind it, the bales of hay had been pushed backward. Some of bales smoked.

“Bloody hell, Pistoleer!” a man was shouting at Thomas. “You do
not
discharge your weapon in a tent.”

Thomas, his smile still on his freshly restored face, looked at the man but did not respond.

The hand that had pulled Rosalind away from Thomas was still there, she realized, tugging on her arm. “Come along, Pistoleer. You’ve had your fun, you and your boyfriend. I hope you took the chance to tell him good-bye.”

Corporal Edwards took the pistol from Rosalind and led her back to the table where the gray-haired woman sat.

Still in a daze from what Thomas had done–and what she had done; the fingers of her left hand still tingled; she put them to her lips–she hardly heard the corporal. But one part did sink in. “Good-bye? We just got here. Sir.”

“You will be leaving in the morning,” Corporal Edwards said, placing the pistol back on the table. “The 102nd trains at different camp.”

“I’ll never see Thomas again?”

The corporal just looked at her.

“The 102nd are healers,” the woman behind the table said, pulling Rosalind’s attention to her. As she talked, her hands moved the pistol so it again pointed north, and arranged the knife beside it, perpendicular. “You have a gift, Pistoleer, but you have no idea of what you are capable, of what you could do with the proper–”

“But I don’t want to leave–” Rosalind bit her lip, fearing the response from interrupting, then continued when the woman only gave her a patient look, not a reprimand. “He’s the only person I know here. Sir.”

“The 101st is only interested in power,” the woman said. “The raw might of the universe unleashed to crush and destroy. Brute force, if you will.” She paused and smiled at Corporal Edwards. “No offense.” The corporal’s face showed amusement, but she only nodded. “The 102nd is about finesse, elegance. We seek to understand what is we do, and to build on that knowledge.”

“If I can shoot that target,” Rosalind said, “or what’s left of it, can I stay?”

The woman’s patience showed the first signs of wearing thin. “Healing is a rare talent, Pistoleer. It should not be wasted–”

Rosalind stepped forward and picked up the pistol again. It became ice cold in her hand. The woman’s gray eyes locked on Rosalind’s, and she felt something stirring, building behind those eyes. She did not look away as she pulled back the hammer.

She raised the gun as she turned around, nearly clubbing Corporal Edwards across the jaw as she did. The corporal dodged out of the way, shouting at her to put the gun down. Rosalind ignored her.

Father had taken her shooting a few times, until she had showed an aptitude for firearms that he and Mum considered unladylike.

She closed her left eye so she could aim with her right and looked down her arm and along the barrel, lining up the muzzle with the still-smoking remains of the target dummy. The painful cold built up inside her. She drew a breath and squeezed the trigger at the same time.

The hammer slammed into place, the flint sparked, and there were shouts of surprise and fear and anger, but there was no explosion.

The gun was not loaded. Corporal Edwards had told her that.

Rosalind gasped as the cold bloomed inside her and wrapped itself around her heart and lungs. Her breath came out a heavy mist, and she felt beads of sweat freezing on her forehead.

Then the cold shot out of her, through the gun, creating frost crystals along the barrel and running back over her hand and wrist as a thin line of fog roiled to the target dummy and engulfed it.

The chill held her muscles rigid for a second longer, then it dissipated with the fog around the target dummy. Unlike the now-frozen target dummy, though, she had no wooden stake to hold her up, and she collapsed to her knees as if melting. Her right arm was numb from her fingertips to her elbow. She tried to drop the gun, but her hand had been frozen to the stock, her finger still squeezing the trigger.

Corporal Edwards grabbed Rosalind’s shoulder to pull her back to her feet, but let go immediately. The corporal held her hand–the hand Rosalind had healed only minutes before–in front of her, looking at it in shock, her fingers leaving little streamers of fog in the air. The corporal’s mouth was moving, but Rosalind heard only a roaring in her ears.

Past Corporal Edwards she could see the other soldiers, all of them moving slowly for two long heartbeats, Thomas in their midst, looking at her, smiling at her, just before movement and motion returned. Men and women rushed at her, impossibly fast. She tried to breathed, but it felt like a mountain pressed on her chest and she could only gasp.

Another hand on her shoulder, but this one was warm and stayed in place, a gentle pressure. The warmth from that hand spread into her flesh and around her bones and organs. She gasped as air burned into her lungs again.

She looked up and saw the gray-haired woman kneeling over her– When had she fallen? She could not remember, but she lay on her back now, looking up at the woman.

The woman smiled a sad smile. “A pity, Pistoleer,” she said. “You could have been …” Her voice drifted off before she told Rosalind what could have been. She moved both her hands to Rosalind’s right hand, which still held the frozen pistol. “But I see you have made your choice.”

Chapter 8

Rose

Comite River Cataracts

1742 A.D.

Rose felt arms holding her. She thought they were Major Haley’s arms, and she smiled, but when she looked up to see his face, she saw Ducoed laughing down at her. She tried to push him away, but he held on. His embrace became a constriction, squeezing her close, smashing her body against his. She could hardly breathe, as he laughed and squeezed harder. She woke with a gasp, left arm flinging off her blanket, her right hand gripping her pistol, Ducoed’s laughter fading into the roar of the waterfalls.

Chal sat next to her, eyes open. Rose saw Major Haley seated against the wall across the fire from her, sleeping, with Janett also asleep, her head on his left shoulder. Rose suppressed both the memory of her own cheek against that shoulder and a flicker of jealousy. Margaret was on the major’s other side, curled up with her head on his leg. Blankets had been stretched across the cave’s two openings, and a small fire had been lit. The sound of the waterfalls remained, but was much lower than it had been when they first arrived.

As if reading her mind, Chal smiled. “I grew tired of shouting,” she said.

Rose sat up, still tense from the dream and the memory of Ducoed’s laughter. “Was that safe?”

“In this place?” Chal asked. “With the waters all around me? I–we–could not be safer.” She sighed. “The waters … call to me, though. And they bring me news.”

“Where’s Private Tishman?” Rose asked.

Chal pointed to the entrance of the cave. Rose looked and saw the man’s back. “He insisted on keeping watch after the Major finally went to sleep.”

“They passed us by just after you … helped … the handsome major and fell asleep. Since then, there have been parties with torches going up and down the riverbank. Once, someone came to the island.”

Rose sat up. “You should have wakened me.”

“There was no need. They saw nothing, and continued to the other side.” Chal paused. “Many have passed through the river, fording upstream from here. I am certain that they have established two camps now, one on each side of the river.”

“Natural,” Chal said. “They are
wrong
,” she added. “And their wrongness makes them stand out to my senses, but also makes my senses recoil. Even the waters of the river protested at their touch and wanted to wash them away.” She paused and Rose half expected her to spit. “I also sensed grunzers.”

“Grunzers? In the bayuk?”

“At least one stomped through the river. Even this, though, felt … wrong. Not like the grunzers we have seen at forts along the river.”

“Bad news all around,” Rose said, remembering again the dream of Ducoed.

Chal nodded. “Very bad. Very very bad.”

* * *

“We’re going to have to cross the river one at a time,” Rose said. “There will be rocks to make the crossing easier. Stay on those. I will go first, and Chal will come last, to get rid of our trail.”

“How will we leave a trail on rocks across moving water?” Major Haley asked.

“There is more than one type of trail, Major.”

They put out the fire, pushing the coals into the back of the waterfall to be swept away, and Chal retrieved the blankets. They crouched in the darkness of the cave, the sounds of the waterfalls again roaring at full volume.

Rose leaned close so she was speaking into Major Haley’s newly restored ear. “Count thirty,” she said, “then send Janett after me. Then count thirty again and send Margaret. Then you and the private. Thirty-second intervals,” she added. “Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” he said. “I mean, yes.”

“It’s been a while since a soldier called me ‘sir’,” Rose said. “And he wasn’t an officer.” She felt more than saw his lips pulled into a smile. Resisting the urge to kiss him on the cheek, she turned her back on him.

She crawled through the opening and looked to both the east and west banks of the river. A waxing gibbous moon cast gray light over everything. Not as bright as a full moon, but still more illumination than she preferred for making a run with little or no cover. She saw no movement or sign of torches, though. Private Tishman had reported that an hour had passed since his last glimpse of either, so maybe their pursuers had settled in for the night.

She considered the possibility that the enemy was even now waiting for her and the girls to make a move. She was sure that their pursuers did not know about the cave, or they would have already searched it. But they had to know she was somewhere nearby. She had known the trick with the disappearing trail would not fool them for long. And it had not. That they had crossed the river here was proof of that. But she could not sit still, not with enemies surrounding her. Tomorrow, there would be a more thorough search, and they had run out of food.

Pushing out of the bush that covered the entrance to the cave, she saw the rocks Chal had caused to rise. The rocks only just broke the surface of the water, so they were visible more as silver-lined darker spots in the stream than rocks. The rocks would be completely dry, of course. Chal thought of everything.

She crouched as she ran, holding her rifle in both hands in front of her, stepping from stone to stone, her moccasined feet making no sounds and leaving no marks on the rocks. On the bank, she knelt beside a bush and looked around again. The night remained still.

Rose waited. Thirty seconds became a minute, and there was still no sign of Janett. Two minutes.