Gunwitch (2 page)

On a flat parcel of cleared ground before the fort’s main gate, a line of wargrunzers stood awaiting maintenance, idle, with only thin steams of black smoke leaking from their high-mounted smokestacks. A group of mechanics had removed the arms from the first wargrunzer, and were reboring the cannon arm and recalibrating the loader arm. The torso stood near the mechanics, a temporary double amputee but still standing more than twice as tall as the tallest mechanic. Unlike the other grunzers, who seemed to be inactive, the head of the grunzer being serviced turned back and forth with a clicking of gears, looking first at the mechanics, then at the other side of the field. Once it looked at Rose and Chal, then turned its blank “face” back to more immediate matters.

Across the field from the wargrunzers and the mechanics, sergeants and corporals drilled colonial conscripts and volunteers under the watchful eyes of a leftenant.

“Company
halt!
”

“Left
face!
”

Rose felt her muscles flexing, remembering the responses to the shouted commands.

“Present
arms!
”

On a whim, Rose stopped resisting and brought her rifle around and held it in front of her. She adjusted her step and her pace to match the cadence of the callers. She saw that she had drawn the attention of a few recruits.

“Shoulder
arms!
”

She shouldered her rifle and kept marching. Out of the side of her eye, she saw Chal beside her standing straight, balancing her carbine on her shoulder, parodying Rose’s high marching step. And she could see that even more of the recruits had noticed them. Or noticed Chal, at least. So had the leftenant. He leaned over to the master sergeant and gave instructions.

“Right
face!
” bellowed the sergeant.

In ragged lines the recruits turned their backs on the women. The leftenant scowled at Rose and Chal, then turned his back on them as well.

* * *

Rose, rifle again slung over her shoulder, presented herself to the sergeant on duty. “Rose Bainbridge,” she said. She resisted the urge to give him a salute. “Scout,” she added. She pulled the folded summons out of her blouse and handed it to him. “Here at the request of General Tendring.”

The sergeant took in Rose, her worn cotton and buckskin clothes, and her similarly attired native companion, and managed to express extreme annoyance and displeasure, all without moving a muscle on his lined face. Then his eyes landed on the regimental badge bent into a bracer on Rose’s right arm. The metalwork tracery, once bright red, was now faded with age and soiled with sweat and dried blood, but the badge still plainly showed the crossed musket and lightning bolt of the 101st Pistoleers. The sergeant raised one eyebrow, ever so slightly.

A man who had been standing against the wall behind the sergeant snapped to attention and came over. He saluted the sergeant, then turned to Rose and Chal. “If you will follow me, please, Mum.”

Rose held the sergeant’s gaze for a few seconds more, but she learned nothing from his gray eyes. She indicated to the private to lead on. A witches reunion? The King kept the 101st Pistoleers, what the rest of the army called “the gunwitches” or just “witches”–and sometimes, usually out of earshot, “the bitches crew”–in England, though sometimes the small groups of gunwitches were detached to the Continent. But never to the Colonies. At least, not while they still wore the uniform. Rose put her hand on the butt of her pistol. Beside her, she felt Chal pick up on her new tension.

She and Chal walked side by side behind the private. The private did not look back.

Around them, men in red uniforms went about the duties of the fort. The men noticed the women, of course. Military discipline, and proximity of officers, kept the catcalls at an almost subvocal level. Still, men would nudge their comrades and indicate Rose and Chal with nods of their heads or even outright pointing. Only a few noticed Rose’s regimental badge. But those who did, she knew, spread the word. No catcalls from those men. Just furtive whispers of “gunwitch”. And those who heard the whispers stopped leering. Some turned away, crossing themselves. Some spit into the dirt. But none of the men they passed acted as if they had seen another woman from the 101st.

Rose ignored the insults, just as she ignored the catcalls.

A reunion meant more than one. More than just her. In his summons, though, General Tendring had not mentioned another gunwitch. How many of the 101st had she ever heard had been brought to the New World? Five? Six? Of those, Rose was the only enlisted. And of those, only three had come over in the last nine years.

Who could it be, the other gunwitch? Or gunwitches. It had to be someone like her, who had been dishonorably discharged and transported in lieu of execution. Witches had not been burned at the stake in Jolly Olde England for more than seventy years. But neither a renegade witch, nor an uncooperative–or no longer cooperative–gunwitch of the 101st would be allowed to run free. And it was impossible to hold them in prison. A gunwitch who did not want to be held was very difficult to hold. That did not leave many options. Specifically, it left two. Beheading or transporting.

General Tendring had been a Colonel when he commuted the sentence of Master Sergeant Rosalind Bainbridge. Usually only officers were transported, out of deference to their rank, not mere sergeants. The colonel had spared her from the headsman after her defiance and revolt only because she had saved his life at the Battle of the Seine outside Paris.

Rose tried to relax her grip on her pistol, but her fingers would not cooperate. Not since she had stepped on the deck of the boat that transported her to the Colonies, and then had walked off that boat and into the bayuk had she felt like this. She was scared–but this time scared of what she knew, not the unknown wilds of the Colonies–and the gun was the only comfort available.

Private Donalsonne led them up a narrow external stairway and to a deck that overlooked the interior of the fort. For the first time since he had turned his back on them at the gate, he faced them. His eyes darted to Rose’s hand on her pistol. Rose did not need to look to know that her knuckles showed white. She kept her face blank. It was all she could do not to pull out the pistol, to have it ready.

Ducoed? No. Thomas Ducoed hated the army more than she did. She had heard that he managed to receive a commission and then an honorable discharge. She wondered how he had done that, but knew she would not like to hear the details. He had come to the Colonies four years ago and lived for a while in New Venezia. Rose had avoided the city while she heard he was there. Then he had disappeared into bayuk and bush. She had hoped he had died. She had imagined his gruesome death more than once.

The private returned a minute later and held the door. “The General will see you now.”

Before Rose could move to the door, though, an officer stepped out and looked at both Rose and Chal. A young man, hardly older than Chal, but a major by his insignia. He walked to Rose and extended his hand. “Sergeant Bainbridge,” he said. “It is indeed a pleasure to meet you.”

Unsure how to respond, Rose took her hand off her gun and held it out in front of her. He shook her hand, his grip firm and warm.

“I have heard so much about you,” he went on, the corners of his mouth tugged slightly by a smile that also shone in his green eyes. “I could scarcely believe when the General told me you had been summoned. Forgive me,” he added. “I am Major Ian Haley of His Majesty’s Army.” His grip shifted and he gave her an elaborate bow, then kissed her hand.

Rose felt her face growing warm under his attention, and noticed that he still held her hand. She took the hand back and said, “Please, Major, just Rose. I was stripped–” Her tongue twisted after she said the word, both from the remembered humiliation of the day, and from the intensity in his face as he looked her. If she had been suddenly stripped for real, disrobed in front of this handsome young man, she could not have been more flustered. “Just Rose,” she repeated, shortly. Only a bit more shortly than she intended. She turned slightly, to deflect his attention. “And this is Chal. My friend and companion. She is a native from across the Gulf.”

If he heard her tone, the Major’s face did not show it. He gave Chal a short bow, then turned back to Rose. “A pleasure to meet you both,” he said. “Rose. And Chal.” He gestured toward the door where Private Donalsonne still stood at attention. “If you will precede me, the General is waiting. And so are some other people who are most eager to meet you.”

The room she stepped into seemed dark after the bright morning sun, despite the windows and the fire in the hearth. The others in the room were silhouettes standing around a table in the center of the room.

One of the silhouettes, tall, a man, with unruly curls turned to face her. She did not need to see him clearly to recognize him. In the gloom, his blue eyes were dark gray, his brown hair almost black. But his lips, pulled into a smirking grin, showed a smile she had never been able to forget.

She had her pistol out of her belt and level, hammer back, pointing at his heart in less than a breath.

“Rosalind,” Ducoed said. Behind him, across the table, Rose heard surprised intakes of breath and a girlish whimper. Behind her she thought she heard the major grunt in surprise.

Rose bared her teeth. “Don’t say my name.” Her voice, like her gun, rock steady.

“Then what should I call you?”

“What is the meaning of this?” The General’s voice cut off her reply. The General stepped forward, to Ducoed’s left. “Sergeant Bainbridge, if you have a grievance with your former comrade-at-arms, I would appreciate it if you settled it outside my quarters. And,” he added, looking past Rose, over her shoulder, “whatever that complaint might be, I can not imagine that it involves my newest officer.”

Ducoed shifted to his left, toward the General, trying to use her momentary distraction. But Rose followed him, grabbing his shirt with her free hand, pulling him to her, pressing the gun against his chest. Ducoed opened his mouth.

Rose’s fingers tightened on the trigger.

“Sergeant Bainbridge,” the General said, his voice sharp, commanding, but not loud. “I must insist that you put your gun away. And tell your companion to stop threatening Major Haley.”

Rose looked into Ducoed’s eyes, and he looked back, closing his mouth. The smirk faded from his lips until his face was a mask of indifference. His eyes told her nothing. She tried to look deeper, into whatever was left of Ducoed’s soul, looking for whatever might be left of her friend. She looked for something, anything, and he gave her nothing. She could not penetrate below the surface of the man her friend had become. Then she felt foolish for even trying. Her friend had been gone for twenty-five years. That was why Ducoed angered her so much. He owed her so much, yet never acknowledged even the tiniest debt. He only caused pain. He never felt it.

She wanted to kill him, where he stood, so close that she would feel him die. Let hot lead and cold magic rip him to pieces. Maybe he would feel that. Maybe then he would feel her pain. She could do it. She had done worse.

But not since she had left the army. Here she was, though, standing inside a fort again, gun ready, ready to kill with officers looking on.

“Sergeant Bainbridge?” The general’s voice was almost gentle.

Movement behind Ducoed caught Rose’s eye, and she saw two girls holding each other and looking at her with terror. The sight of those pale, young faces, so out of place in the fort, so afraid of what she might do, achieved what the general could not. Had she looked like these girls twenty-five years ago? Was she fulfilling the role for them that the army and Ducoed had assumed for her? Whatever else she might do, whatever else she might be capable of, she would not do that.

She let go of Ducoed, pushing him away as she stepped back. She did not want to–she would not–kill him in front of the girls. For one last instant, though, she hoped he would make a move, any move, even the twitch of a hand. But he only stood there, and looked at her.

She released the hammer on the pistol and settled it back in place. Then she pushed the gun into her belt again. Behind her, she heard the major’s heels come down on the floor and Chal appeared beside her.

“My apologies, general,” Rose said.

* * *

The general had chairs brought so everyone could sit down, then had a private serve tea.

“I’m not accustomed to such displays in my briefing room,” he said, looking over his cup of tea at Rose. Rose met his gaze, but said nothing. “Though perhaps,” he went on, “there is a lesson to be learned. Wouldn’t you say so, Major Haley?”

General Tendring turned to look at the oldest of the girls. “Isn’t that right, Janett?” The girl looked pleased. “I am not accustomed to such displays of emotion. However, as I have now lived through several of them, two just today, perhaps it is my expectations that should change.” Now the girl’s face flushed. “There is no excuse, though, for my own lapses. I have been remiss. Sergeant Bainbridge, may I introduce to you Janett and Margaret Laxton. You have already met their young protector, Major Haley. And of course you know Leftenant Ducoed.”