Moment of Truth (9 page)

One tall youngster put up his hand and Aubrey had to admire his pluck. ‘When will we see service, sir?' he asked in a voice that didn't quaver too much.

Craddock looked down for a moment. When he looked up, he said, ‘Before you know it.'

Aubrey was one of the few close enough to hear what Craddock added under his breath. ‘And before you're ready, most likely.'

One month. Four weeks. Thirty days. Seven hundred and twenty hours. Lying on his bunk in the dormitory, Aubrey thought he had an aching muscle or a bruise for every one of those hours.

He had been looking forward to the training because he thought it could give him another chance to investigate the copy of the Rashid Stone. Or perhaps he'd have an opportunity to work with magical suppression, or to inspect the golem-making machine he'd captured and sent back from Holmland.

Instead, with the other Department recruits, he became accustomed to being ferried most days via motorbus to a Directorate facility an hour away. On the edge of the city to the east, near where the Harwell River came down through the hills, in essence, it was a combination parade ground, firing range and hell on earth.

Soon, Aubrey felt as if he'd been sent back to his cadet training at Stonelea School – or perhaps the school's notorious Physical Education classes. Except that instead of mildly sadistic masters propelling him over vaulting horses, he had instructors made of some bulletproof material whose main delight, in all weather, was shouting.

So much shouting. Shouting while he ran over broken ground. Shouting while he scrambled under barbed wire. Shouting while he swung from ropes. Shouting while he crawled through mud. Shouting while he assembled and disassembled a variety of firearms and then used them to blast away at targets that were eye-strainingly far-off and – sometimes – startlingly close.

Hand-to-hand combat produced the most bruises and, unsurprisingly, as he was flung through the air again by another shouting instructor, it reminded him of Caroline. Her skills in unarmed combat came from early instruction with a variety of oriental masters, friends of her father. When Aubrey picked himself up from the mats, time after time, he knew that a handful of sessions wasn't going to bring him up to Caroline's standard, but he was willing to do his best. He had a new appreciation for her, as if he needed any extra grounds for such a thing.

The shouting, thankfully, disappeared during explosives training. The instructors here were just as intense – older men, often with a disturbing number of missing fingers – and somehow managed to make their whispers just as effective as the bellowing of the others.

He was thankful that his explosives training was brief, a mere introduction to the discipline, and was sorry for the recruits who showed aptitude for this sort of work. They were whisked off for more intensive training, the prospect of which made Aubrey shudder.

Another relatively quiet session came from a mildfaced, older man who was the instructor in disguises. When he explained how to change appearances subtly and with a minimum of artifice, Aubrey was embarrassed at his own earlier efforts. With a deft application of tiny strokes around the eyes and some tightening wax inside the cheeks, an effect was created that would have taken Aubrey hours and laborious amounts of makeup. In hindsight, his Tommy Sparks alter-ego was embarrassingly crude.

Aubrey excelled in the communications training. He picked up the telegraphic code easily, tapping away with alacrity, never confusing T and P. His earlier experimenting with ciphers held him in good stead. While other recruits around him spent much time on head-scratching, he knew the theory and practice of one-time pads and was able to encipher and decipher at a rate that impressed the instructors. They whisked him off for advanced training and introduced him to the encoding machine, a recent advance that sped up the process and, if intercepted, made messages even harder to crack. After some familiarisation, Aubrey was able to punch keys and substitute the geared wheels with relentless speed.

Magical training was organised with clinical efficiency. Grim-faced operatives circulated through rooms full of recruits sitting at desks, trying to perform a basic light spell given to them on slips of light green paper. When Aubrey conjured up a shining globe within seconds, one that rotated slowly on its axis thanks to a minor embellishment he'd added, he was herded into a smaller room, with others who had passed through this coarse sieve. A handful were astonished, never having suspected that they had magical talent, and Aubrey wondered where they'd end up. What part of a military service entering a war needed untrained magic users? Could the Department spare the personnel to train them?

One frail youth winced throughout the spell-casting efforts. Even though he stumbled through them, he was treated with some respect by the instructors, and after he'd fumbled a straightforward, if lengthy, Patterning spell, he was taken aside and then escorted elsewhere.

Aubrey wasn't consciously eavesdropping. He simply found the spell undemanding and when the instructors were speaking softly with the frail youth, he couldn't help overhearing one fascinating phrase: remote sensing.

Aubrey knew that the Department had a long-established cohort of remote sensers, sensitive magicians whose job was to monitor for magical disturbances. The best could detect major magic being undertaken thousands of miles away.

The remote sensing team operated constantly, day and night, and it was always looking to build its numbers of operatives.

It looked as if it now had one more to add to its ranks.

After a day of successfully transforming, heating, inverting, manipulating, translating, concealing and amplifying, Aubrey had begun to get bored. The grim-faced operatives weren't chatty and they wouldn't let him read the notes they were taking. They refused to be impressed by Aubrey's enhancements, and he wondered if showing initiative in this area was a good thing or a bad thing...

The handful of other talented recruits had dwindled as the day went on, winnowed out by the increasingly difficult spells set for them. Having reached a level of competence, they were directed to intensive training in their speciality.

Aubrey caught up with all of them over the subsequent few days, though, for at the end of the first day of magical training – Aubrey having performed all tasks with ease – the grim faces consulted, threw their hands up in the air, and directed Aubrey to participate in each of the specialised intensive magical training sessions.

Most were straightforward and almost painfully practical, at least for people who may have to perform magic in battle situations – covert lighting, sound deadening, distraction techniques, spells both offensive and defensive. A few were wrinkles on techniques Aubrey knew well, variations interesting enough to fascinate him and leave him disappointed when he had to move on to the next. Some were completely new applications, profoundly practical again, like the panoply of spells useful for securing a perimeter from intrusion, both physical and magical. Aubrey was intrigued and wanted to spend more time investigating what he suspected was a connection between these spells and the magical neutralising spells he'd been working with.

These sessions were a relief in many ways. A relief from the mud, a relief from the burning pain of tired muscles, but most of all, a relief from the shouting.

The best set of lungs belonged to Sergeant Wallace, the non-commissioned officer in charge of Aubrey's platoon of twenty recruits. Sergeant Wallace was the NCO who roused them in the morning – Aubrey only had to have his bed tipped over once before he understood that now meant
now
– and who chivvied them about from parade ground to classroom to mess hall. Aubrey thought that the sergeant must have some sort of magically enhanced voice box, with the amount of roaring he did, only relaxing when he handed over to someone who took the platoon on specialised instruction, accompanied by more shouting.

Aubrey had never thought it possible to be shouted to sleep, but when Sergeant Wallace's nightly ‘Lights off in one, two, three, NOW!' rang from the rafters, he was out like a light.

Right now, however, he had about two seconds to drag himself out of bed before Sergeant Wallace exercised his bed-tipping muscles.

Once the platoon was de-bedded and dressed, they stood in front of their bunks, quivering.

‘Right!' Sergeant Wallace bellowed in a conversational manner. ‘Although you are far from ready for anything apart from patrolling lonely stretches of coastline, you are apparently going to be let loose on the enemy. God help them. And us.' Hands clasped behind his back, he shook his head in pity. ‘You have endured four weeks unlike any you've ever had before, and I want you to remember one thing: don't disgrace yourself. That's all. Don't disgrace yourself. Now, mess hall in ten minutes. Move it!'

In the clatter and bustle of the mess hall, Aubrey found a corner. While he stoked himself with porridge, he considered Sergeant Wallace's announcement.

His training had been hard, no doubt about that. Underneath the aches and pains, his muscles were hardening and he was sure that if he kept up a modicum of exercise he'd enjoy the fitness and it would do him good in the long run.

The other seats at the table began to fill. Aubrey exchanged nods and greetings, but everyone appeared to share the same sombre, thoughtful mood. The end of training meant, as Sergeant Wallace put it, being let loose. And being let loose in a war situation was enough to give anyone pause over their porridge.

Craddock's earlier mentioning of special units had been vague and imprecise. Working behind enemy lines? What exactly did that mean? After the training, Aubrey was starting to have some idea. With the emphasis on such dangerous skills as explosives and firearms, he was heading into dangerous territory.

Aubrey was prepared to admit that he favoured not dying over dying. But he also hoped that he was brave enough not to shy away from danger when he was needed to do the right thing. He couldn't shirk. He would put himself in harm's way, if it meant helping bring the war to a speedy end.

Being the sort of person he was, he reminded himself to minimise risks wherever he could.
Be cautious,
he told himself,
think things through, look for the unexpected, be prepared, stay alert.

He wished George and Caroline were here. Together, they covered all of those things. Apart, he felt lessened – and more exposed.

He poked at his porridge and was wistful. He missed his friends. He was sure George would be all right, as he had the happy knack of falling on his feet in most circumstances. He was probably neatly ensconced in a propaganda unit, churning out story after story about the cheerful recruits bravely preparing to defend king and country.

And Caroline? Here Aubrey's wistfulness was mixed with guilt. He would have to do something about his interrupted mission. Sooner, rather than later.

A tray plonked on the table, right opposite Aubrey. Woodberry, familiar to Aubrey from the irregulars tour, looked surprisingly cheerful and well rested. ‘Morning, Fitzwilliam. Exciting, isn't it?'

Aubrey pushed his porridge bowl aside. ‘That's one way of putting it. “Exhausting” is another, and probably more accurate. Then there's “painful”, which is also remarkably apposite.'

Woodberry was a scrambled eggs man. He showered them with salt before plunging in. ‘Painful for some. The most painful thing for me was this nasty paper cut.' He held up his forefinger, wrapped in a neat, white bandage.

‘Mind it doesn't get infected,' Aubrey said. ‘I knew a professor who lost an arm because of an infected paper cut.'

Woodberry's eyes widened. ‘Really?'

‘Certainly.' Aubrey enjoyed the harmless ragging, but Woodberry's comments only emphasised to him that Craddock had different things in mind for different people. Woodberry was bound for a job in Darnleigh House, Aubrey was sure. Not a field operative, not someone for the special units. One session on the firing range was enough to convince Aubrey of that. Woodberry's skills were firmly in areas other than pointing and shooting dangerous things like rifles. While he didn't actually hit anyone, it was only due to the instructor's quick reactions in dropping to the ground and to the fortuitous log that happened to be between the instructor and Woodberry's wild round.

Woodberry frowned, glanced at his finger, then pointed his fork at Aubrey. ‘Have you heard? They're bombing Trinovant.'