by Robyn Bennis
“Thank you,” he said, nearly breathless.
She only nodded, dropped both her pistols, and drew her saber. She pushed forward into the Vin ranks, her crew behind her, pressing into the gap Bernat had created. Farther left, the thin Garnian line crashed into its opposite number. To the right, the grenadiers had already charged home and were making their own gaps, pitting their miniscule force against the might of the Vin column. Bernat pushed onward, wedged shoulder to shoulder between Mistrals and grenadiers.
The fighting had begun to simmer, and was not so brutal now. That first burst of red-hot rage was ebbing away, and both sides were lulled into a strange, hypnotic dance in which bayonets were thrust and repulsed across a narrow no-man’s land between Vin and Garnian soldiers. Bernat felt fear creeping back into him, in direct proportion to his sudden hope of surviving the day. And it was not just him. Trepidation was spreading up and down the Garnian line. They had poured all their fury into this countercharge, and still the Vins stood limitless before them.
He glanced at Josette, who looked back at him. By her eyes, he knew she felt it too. The entire Garnian force was sliding toward a rout. Their energy was spent, their terror swelling, and they might break now at any moment.
And suddenly, Josette grinned at him. She raised her sword above her head, all but inviting a bayonet in the belly, and screamed in a voice honed by years of shouting over engines and airscrews, “Just one more push and they’re ours, boys!” She followed with a triumphant, whooping cry that promised victory.
Bernat raised his sword and joined in. He pushed forward, expecting at any moment to be skewered by a score of bayonets, but there were men to his left and right who were pressing forward with him, and in the face of that sudden onrush of steel, the Vins recoiled.
He slashed at them, his sword cutting notches in musket stocks, swiping across faces, hacking at the shoulders of men who scrambled back before him. Those men stepped back into the men behind them, and for a time the sheer weight of men in the column prevented any retreat.
Cannons went off overhead, spraying canister shot across the lines, killing as many Garnians as Vins. Following Josette’s example, Bernat gave a cheer that belied the effect of the misaimed canister. And though the men nearest the carnage could not be fooled, those farther away, left and right along the Garnian line and toward the back of the Vin column, could only imagine what devastation must have been wrought upon the Vins, to elicit so much Garnian joy.
And through the smoke, Bernat saw the gleaming forest of Vinzhalian bayonets begin to thin, as men in the column’s rear ranks heard and believed those cheers, felt the momentum of the battle shifting away from them, and turned to run.
The thinning ranks encouraged the grenadiers to Bernat’s right, spurring them into renewed cheers and charges, and as they charged, the left flank of the unstoppable Vin column melted like ice in a fire. The grenadiers ran in pursuit, and the men in the column who’d been standing firm suddenly heard Garnian voices to their left.
And they ran. The Garnian fusiliers to the left followed them, along with Josette’s band of airmen. Bernat ran with them for a while, but the Vins were running with the speed of desperation, and what little stomach he had for stabbing men in the back wasn’t enough to keep him going.
As he stood catching his breath, a scar-faced grenadier officer came out of the smoke in front of him, slapped him on the back so hard he nearly fell over, and said, “Ha! You airmen are the craziest sons of bitches in this army.”
Bernat was about to inquire into this strange custom of slapping your comrades around after victory, but the officer had disappeared into the smoke, shouting, “Grenadiers, to me!”
Other infantrymen were coming back now, laughing and hitting each other with giddy excitement. Some were already looking through the pockets of fallen soldiers, ally and enemy alike. The stretcher-bearers trickled forward, seeking out screams in the smoke and carrying the wounded away. To his left, a large and rowdy group went past, clustered around two men with a captured Vin regimental standard stretched between them.
Bernat was turning to go back to the battery, when a massive shape loomed in the smoke ahead of him. It was a horseman, his blade drawn and held at the ready. He looked up and realized it was his Uncle Fieren, and he felt suddenly alone—as alone as he’d been when lost in the smoke after Mistral had set him down. The infantrymen had all gone back to the line or were chasing the Vins, leaving no witnesses here but the dead.
Fieren brought his blade up, and Bernat held his own sword tight, for all the good it would do him. He didn’t suppose he could bring it up in time to parry. Fieren wore a savage grin, teeth and blade shining through the smoke. His mustache twitched one way, then the other. The blade came down.
Bernat tensed.
And Fieren’s blade plunged smoothly into its scabbard, safe and out of the way. The general looked into the smoke, then back down. “Hot day, ain’t it, Bernie?”
Bernat swallowed, letting his sword hand hang limp at his side. “I should think so, Uncle.”
The mustache twitched. “Brought my staff forward to see to the battery,” he said coolly. “It doesn’t do for a general to always stay safe at the rear, you know.” He grinned. “I hardly believed it when I heard your voice out here, screaming like a real devil.”
Bernat stood still, unable to speak.
Another horse clomped up. The man atop it saluted the general. “There you are, sir,” Gaston said. “I was worried we lost you.”
“Was just having a word with my nephew,” Fieren said.
Gaston leaned forward against his horse’s neck. “Good God,” he said. “What the hell is he doing here?” He then added a hasty “Sir.”
Fieren bellowed out a laugh. “Fighting Vin guardsmen.” He looked down. “Did you get any, lad?”
It took Bernat a full second to remember whether he had. “Uh, yes,” he said, stammering. “Yes, I did.”
“Good lad!” He laughed again. “That’s the Hinkal blood, Gaston.”
“Indeed, sir.” Gaston waved his sword behind him. “We have them in full retreat, sir. Shall we pursue?”
“Yes, yes, send the cavalry in, before the Vins can organize theirs to cover the retreat. Let our men know they’ll answer to me if they don’t cut down at least five thousand of the bastards.”
“As you say, sir.” Gaston saluted, gave his horse a kick, and disappeared into the smoke.
When he was gone, Fieren leaned over and whispered, as if the smoke might have ears, “I saw the condition of your airship. Is that damn woman dead?”
Bernat held back a smirk. He looked very somberly up at his uncle and said, “Alas, no.”
“I suppose you can’t have everything you want.” Fieren waved Bernat along as he turned his horse. “Come on, lad. Let’s see if we can rouse up a cup of tea.”
18
DAWN FOUND LIEUTENANT Josette Dupre pacing the bulwark she’d defended the day before. The cannons were gone, and would be halfway back to Arle by now, bolstered by two-score guns the army had captured from the Vins. The battlefield was silent now, save for the trickle of the stream and the squabbling of carrion birds.
In the predawn gloom, shadowy figures moved amid the bodies in the field and picked through the still-smoldering carcasses of three Vin airships. They were villagers from Canard, making up for yesterday’s disruption with a bit of early morning looting. Some had stripped so many uniforms from the dead, they could hardly carry them all. Their bulbous, dark outlines lurched and staggered across the field, and she wondered how they remained upright under the weight. As a Garnian officer, it was Josette’s duty to put a stop to it, but she knew what their lives were like, and knew the dead wouldn’t begrudge them their meager finds.
A flight of crows scattered in front of the bastion, and she looked up to see someone moving amid the bodies, only a few yards away. He, for she saw now that it was a man, stopped at the edge of the stream and sat down. She watched in morbid
fascination as he untied his pants and pulled them down, then began the same operation on a dead grenadier.
As much as she sympathized with the villagers, she could not abide the evil debauchery this one was planning. She shouted, “You there! Stop that! Stop that this instant!”
The shadow froze and looked up. “Captain?”
She recognized the voice. “Corporal Lupien?”
Lupien attempted to don the grenadier’s pants and salute at the same time. He failed at both, caught his foot under the dead man’s bare ass, and fell into the stream. He scrambled to his feet, holding the waistband up with one hand and saluting with the other.
Josette, at a loss for what else to do, returned the salute. “Corporal,” she said, “what the hell are you doing?”
Lupien yanked the trousers up with both hands and tied them off. He looked up and, even in the gloom, Josette could see his teeth shining through an abashed grin. “Hard to find good trousers on a corporal’s pay, sir.”
She sighed and said, “Carry on, then.”
She went on pacing until she grew tired of it, then sat on the shattered bulwark and watched the shadows retreat across the field as the sun rose. When it was above the horizon, Bernat approached, put his legs awkwardly over the bulwark, and planted himself next to her. “Mind if I sit?” he asked, after he already had.
She nodded. “I’m afraid I won’t make very good company. I’ve always experienced the strangest melancholy after a big victory. I don’t know why.”
Bernat arched an eyebrow. “Mayhap it’s the thousands upon thousands of dead, rotting in the fields?”
That was the obvious answer, but she didn’t think it was the right one. Still, she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Perhaps.”
“Or mayhap it’s because you stay up all night and don’t eat,” he said. Something crinkled in his hands, and he handed her a sausage wrapped in paper. “I apologize that it isn’t warm. Lieutenant Martel won’t let anyone start a fire.”
She dearly hoped not. Mistral and Lapwing had lost so much luftgas from their uncountable leaks that they could not be made buoyant. They would have to be refloated with inflammable air, which, unlike luftgas, could be manufactured in the field using generators hauled from Arle. It was a hell of a way to fly, but they only had to make it back to the signal base.
Bernat, who had been holding the sausage up while she reflected on this, finally said, “If you find the shape of your breakfast too intimidating, I will happily carve a smiling face on it with my pen knife.”
She took it from him and bit off the end.
He smiled. “Ah, I see that you find the shape not intimidating, but on the contrary, quite stimulating.”
She swallowed and shook her head. “You’re a cad. No, not just a cad, but a cad among cads.”
He gave a shallow but humble bow. He had his own sausage, and they ate together in silence until Josette finally said, “They’re likely to give Nic his own ship.”
Bernat swallowed a bite of sausage. “And you?”
She only shrugged. “They’re letting me keep Mistral. That’s all that matters.”
Bernat seemed unimpressed. “No medals, promotions, honors? I thought they might even throw tradition to the wind and give you a knighthood.”
“What do I need a knighthood for? Besides, there isn’t room in the ship for a horse and all that armor.”
“I’m … not sure those particular accouterments are strictly necessary, these days.”
She said nothing.
Bernat fidgeted with his last stub of sausage, adjusting it in its wrapping. After a few false starts, he said, “I, uh … I had some time to speak to my uncle … yesterday.” He fidgeted some more, then finally tossed paper and sausage alike into the mud. “He’s had several reports from Durum, from refugees who escaped after the city fell. One of them was a militiaman who’s now joined the army. I was able to find him before his regiment marched.”
Josette braced herself, as if for an incoming canister shot.
Bernat hesitated, but pushed on, avoiding her eyes and looking out at the distant fens. “Your mother—she’s been entirely impoverished,” he said. “The soldiers looted everything she had, and the new Vin kadi gave the house to one of his underlings.”
Having expected the worst, it took Josette a moment to grasp hold of the news. She ran the words over and over in her mind, checking to make sure she heard them right. “So … she’s alive?”
Bernat jumped. “Oh,” he said, suddenly apologetic. “Yes—yes, of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to imply…” He hit himself on the forehead with a closed fist. “God, what a fool I am. Yes, she’s alive and unsullied.”
“Thank God,” Josette said. She let out a long sigh. “Finally, I can go back to hating her.”
Bernat tilted his head.
“You have no idea how much of a strain it’s been, to think well of her these past few days.” Josette gradually released the wound-up tension from her body. “Although I must correct you on one point.”
Bernat looked up, finally making eye contact.
“My mother,” Josette said, “has never, to my knowledge, been unsullied.”
His shoulders rose and fell with a chuckle. “Well,” he said, “let us say that she’s no more sullied than she was under Garnian rule.”
“Did Fieren give you any notion of how far he was willing to pursue the Vins?”
“You mean, will we chase them until every one of those goddamn Vin bastards either retreats to his lands or lies dead upon ours?”
She shook her head. “I mean, will we retake Durum?”
“Ah,” he said. He cast about for words, and bit his lower lip.
And she knew the answer. “Ah,” she replied, taking a deep breath. “I suppose the general doesn’t think Durum worth the effort of recapture.”
Bernat’s dour expression confirmed her conclusion.
“Oh well,” she said. “I’ve always thought of her as more Vin than Garnian, anyway. And she does love dumplings.”
Bernat shot her a smile that left her confused. He said, quite firmly, “She’ll be fine. Women in your family have an uncanny knack for survival.”
She looked again at the wreckage of the three Vin airships, rising like hillocks on the field. “That does seem to be true,” she said.
Beside her, Bernat looked from ship to ship. In the light of the morning, thin wisps of smoke could be seen rising from two of them. “So?” he asked.
She looked at him. “So what?”
He shook his head, as if his meaning were obvious. “So,” he said, indicating the field with a sweep of his hand, “is it personal?”
She looked out at it—at the blood, at the bloated bodies of Vin soldiers, at the crows feasting on eyes and entrails, at the once-majestic Vinzhalian airships whose few unburnt girders would soon join Canard’s store of winter firewood. She lowered her eyes, taking no pleasure in any of it. “I don’t suppose it is,” she said very softly.
“So why do you do it?” he asked, his voice warbling, as if he regretted the question before he’d even asked it.
She spoke without hesitation, for she’d asked the same question of herself a hundred times through the night. “If I didn’t, someone else would have to.” She took a bite of sausage. “And they’d probably just muck it up.”
He laughed softly. “I’ve just realized why I enjoy your company,” he said.
She looked at him, eyes questioning.
He looked back and smiled. “It’s because I find kinship in our shared humility.”
They began to laugh, longer and louder than could be justified by the meager humor of the comment. The laughter went on until the sound of it attracted Ensign Kember. “Captain, there you are,” she said, coming to a halt inside the empty battery. “I’ve been trying to find you everywhere.”
Josette let her laughter trail off into a contented sigh, turned her head, and said, “Yes, Ensign?”
“Mr. Martel sends
his compliments, sir, and we’re ready to launch.”
“Already?” Josette glanced at the sun, thinking that more time had passed than she thought. But no, it was barely above the horizon. “Mr. Martel’s efficiency is laudable,” she said, as she rose from the bulwark. She stuffed the last bit of sausage into her mouth and tossed the paper into a trench on her way out.
Mistral, riding a jury-rigged mast just beyond the village, looked like an old quilt. Her outer skin was patched with fabric from a dozen sources, including the army’s old tents, blankets, and cloaks. Even so, there were still gaping holes amidships and on the bow, through which the gasbags could be seen.
Despite the ship’s half-wrecked condition, a dozen children from Canard had gathered to gape at it. Well, that wasn’t quite true. Some were staring up at the superstructure, while closer to the ship—close enough that they’d have to be dispersed before Mistral could take off—a trio of the smallest were watching something on the hurricane deck. Josette followed their eyes, to where Sergeant Jutes was inspecting an extra line rigged to shore up the martingales. She couldn’t work out what they were so fascinated by, until Bernat smirked and said, “I believe this is the first time they’ve seen someone of Sergeant Jutes’s rather, ah, northern complexion. Not very cosmopolitan out here, are they?”
As they drew nearer the ship, the smallest child, a little girl of perhaps five years, tugged on Bernat’s sleeve to get his attention. She pointed at Sergeant Jutes and asked, “Is he a frost monster?”
“Yes,” Josette answered, before Bernat could say anything. “And if you don’t leave now, he’ll turn your blood to ice.”
Fortuitously, at that moment Jutes happened to look down from his work to see what the fuss was about. As soon as his gray eyes were on them, the three children bolted for the village, screaming all the way.