Guns of the Dawn

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  ‘This is terrible. What a thing to happen!’ The colonel was abruptly beside Emily, sounding as though some social gathering had been rained off. Before she could reply, the real fight was on. Lascari lanced a spear of fire at Scavian, who sidestepped it, blasting fistfuls of flame back. The searing heat slid off both men, not even smouldering their clothes. But they were only starting. Emily remembered Scavian on the battlefield, tired and drained by his exertions, and she knew that this battle would be one of stamina, which of them could shoulder aside the other’s attacks for the longest, holding back enough in reserve for the final killer blow.

  She watched as they circled, the flash and roar of their parries and ripostes lighting up the camp, singeing the nearest tents. Lascari was backing up now, running and hopping across the camp, hurling blazing handfuls at Scavian, who pursued ferociously, driving him forward.

  ‘Water! Someone draw some water!’ Emily shouted. ‘Three buckets at least! Caxton, come here!’

  As the new-made sergeant ran up, a wave of heat washed over them, sending them both crouching to the ground. She could hear the colonel calling out something, still trying to reason with two men now beyond it all. In her mind’s eye was, all too clearly, the image of Scavian faltering. Lascari was older, more experienced; all Scavian had was the knowledge that he was in the right. How could that prevail against the skills of a man like Lascari?

  Damn fool Giles! How could he . . . and for me? Am I worth his life, or is it his own honour he’s fighting for, or the King’s?

  ‘Here, Lieutenant.’ Caxton crawled closer to her.

  ‘Get your musket, load and prime it,’ she told her and watched her eyes widen in the leaping, spreading firelight.

  ‘But . . .’

  ‘Damn his honour,’ Emily hissed. Scavian and Lascari were further away now, moving out towards the edge of the camp, still trading bolts and balls of flame that would have roasted any ordinary man in a second. Caxton ran off for her gun and Emily ran to keep the fighting wizards in view. All around her, men and women were staring in fascination or fear, or hurriedly putting out newly started fires. The colonel kept shouting at the pair, but they were beyond hearing him. She caught a glimpse of Scavian’s face, all bemused concentration like a man wrestling with a riddle. Lascari’s was a mask, untenanted save for the eyes. He shrugged off the firestorm Scavian sent against him, shoulders hunched like a man in a high wind. He was shepherding his strength, letting Scavian’s best efforts slough off him. Still, they battered him, though, rocking him on his feet as he retreated and retreated. Scavian fought to press home the advantage he saw, trying to crack Lascari open with the force of his onslaught, beating repeatedly at the older man’s iron resolve. He was overextending just like a fencer, so that Lascari’s counterattacks came in beneath his guard, a succession of near misses to be read in his gritted teeth and wincing eyes.

  She had to do something to separate them. She saw Scavian falter for a second, as another vast sheet of fire enveloped him. His eyes were narrowed now and he gave ground as Lascari stalked forward. The older man kept pushing his attack, conjuring arrows and scythes and great shapeless masses of incandescence to pummel Scavian, over and over, until it seemed there could not be so much burning in all the world, and yet there was always more. Scavian’s counterattacks glanced off his rival’s dark robes, or vanished into them and were extinguished. The younger man lost a step, then half a dozen steps, as Lascari drove him along the perimeter of the camp. It seemed all too obvious to Emily that Scavian was getting the worst of it, and yet his face never lost hope or the belief in his own right.

  He put both hands together and directed them at Lascari with a great yell, bracing himself on feet wide apart. The thrust of fire thundered into the robed man’s defences and rocked him, almost spun him round with the force of it. Fires sprang up and were extinguished across the darkness of the Warlock’s robe. Scavian tried to follow up, to batter him again, but Lascari was lunging closer, sending a great fiery ram into Scavian’s chest that knocked him back and sent him sprawling across the ground, spilling one of the boundary lanterns over to spread a pool of burning oil. He retaliated from the ground, and Lascari caught it awkwardly but kept his feet. His face looked haggard and half dead, but he advanced on Scavian with a gleam of triumph in his eyes.

  Caxton was now at Emily’s side, frantically priming her musket, then ramming the ball home.

  Scavian tried another attack but it only rolled over Lascari, whose robes were scorched now in a dozen places. The older man smote down on him, and Emily saw sparks in the younger wizard’s hair before he hid his face with his hands. Time stood still as Lascari paused for breath, the future strung between him and Scavian, between Emily and Caxton with her ramrod.

  Lascari gave a great, mad cry, the shriek of a bird as it stoops on its prey, then raised his arms to heaven and made fire boil from the air between them.

  He screamed some word or insult that was so hate-twisted and tortured by fatigue that Emily could not hear what it was. His voice seemed to join with hers as she screamed at him to stop, joining the colonel’s futile pleadings.

  He sent the fire against Scavian, and a shot rang out. Lascari lurched and went down on one knee with the force of it. Emily could see a dark mark on his temple, where the ball had gone in. She looked round for Caxton, instinctively assuming the sergeant had done it, but Caxton held the now-loaded musket in her hands and just stared.

  And, besides, the shot had come from the wrong direction. It had come from outside the camp.

  Even as Lascari’s last fires guttered and died, and he pitched over onto his side in a tangle of robe and limbs, she was shouting at the other soldiers, ‘Get to cover! Fetch your guns! Move! Move!’

  The shooting took up then, isolated musket flashes from the darkness. Men and women lit bright by the remaining fires were being shot off their feet, falling in astonished death across their fellows. The others scattered frantically, behind tents, behind the Leopard Passant command hut, or sheltering in dips in the ground. Some were shot as they ran for their weapons, and some as they stood staring in utter bewilderment.

  Emily, crouching alongside Caxton behind a tent, was trying to count the enemy, but they remained utterly invisible in the darkness, announcing themselves only by flashes of fire. She heard Caxton’s gun discharge as the sergeant tried to sight on one muzzle-flash, and the colonel was shouting something, somewhere.

  Damn me, there can’t be more than a squad of them out there!

  A few more guns were now firing from the Lascanne emplacements, and more being brought up, but the colonel was bellowing to every soldier within earshot, ‘Attack, you cowards! Get up and drive them off. Don’t just lie there getting shot at, you fools!’ He had found a sabre from somewhere and whirled it about his head, before directing it at the darkness. ‘That’s an order!’ he bellowed. ‘Attack, damn you!’

  ‘Sir!’ Emily shouted at him, but he had already taken a half-dozen steps out towards the enemy, obviously in the belief that he was being followed. The shot that took him ripped into his groin and he somersaulted forward and fell onto his side, where a second bullet passed through his chest with a little spurt of blood and fragments of his shirt. She heard him cry out, ‘Oh God! Oh God! I’m shot!’ and then he choked and, even across the ground between them, she heard his wretched, racking whimpers.

  The firing had stopped. No more came from the darkness. All the defending soldiers were now behind cover, and the end of the Denland shooting meant the Lascanne gunners were also deprived of their targets. In the matter of a few seconds the only sound was the cries of the wounded, amidst them the colonel’s wheezing, trembling voice as he curled round his wound.

  ‘Someone go and get him, for heaven’s sake,’ Doctor Carling’s wife said. ‘Someone go pull him back.’

  Nobody was volunteering, though. The colonel cried out as he tried to move, clawing at the earth. He was out there in full view of any Denlander sniper, under the g
uns of the enemy.

  It does not have to be me. I’m damned if it’s me again that takes the risk. The thoughts came too late. She was already ducking out from behind the tent and scurrying towards the wounded officer at a crouch. She heard Caxton call after her, and then a voice call, ‘Emily, don’t go!’ In the moments before the anticipated bullet a bizarre spark of happiness kindled within her, because Giles must still be alive to worry about her.

  And then she was on the ground beside the colonel, still miraculously not hit. He forced himself to look up at her, and she tried to get her arms underneath him to haul him away. Every wrenching movement forced another scream from him, the firelight catching a mist of blood from his lips. She paused, waiting; waiting for the final shot.

  ‘Sir . . .’

  ‘Marshwic . . .’ he got out. ‘Don’t want to . . . leave . . .’

  ‘Sir, I’ve got to—’

  ‘Good stock, the Marshwics . . .’ He reached out, clawing at her shoulder. ‘Help . . . Carry me . . .’

  ‘I’m trying, sir . . .’

  ‘God!’

  He dragged her to the ground, fingers biting savagely into her shoulder. For a moment she was face to face with his tormented, bloody features.

  He was dead.

  She hunched over the body. Now that she was here, she did not want to head back in case she tempted the enemy guns still further. It was only after a long count of a hundred that she finally realized that the Denlanders must have fled back into the swamps.

  They had lost only four soldiers, she discovered, with several others wounded. She guessed the Denlanders had been firing at some considerable range in poor light.

  And, of course, they had lost Justin Lascari and the colonel.

  Brocky came out to help her retrieve the colonel’s body and, that done, she watched as the soldiers tried to restore order to their camp, re-erecting tents and helping carry the wounded away.

  ‘What a bloody mess,’ the quartermaster remarked. ‘What are we going to do now?’

  ‘Keep better watch,’ she replied shortly.

  ‘Emily.’ She turned to see a white-shirted figure getting up from the ground, where he had been lying since Lascari’s last vicious attack.

  ‘Giles! My God, how are you?’

  The face that he turned to her was pink and shiny with burn tissue. Across his front his shirt was charred to ash and one arm was ridged skewbald with blistered skin.

  ‘Oh, Giles . . .’ She felt herself recoil as he held out his burnt hand, and hated herself for it. ‘Oh, God, no . . .’

  ‘It’s all right,’ he said, against all the evidence. ‘Don’t fear for me.’

  ‘But . . . you’re . . .’ You’re ruined, was what she nearly said.

  ‘There is only one burn that ever lasts, on a wizard’s hide,’ he replied lightly. ‘Give me two days, and I shall have shed this like a snake loses his skin. So long as I live, I cannot stay burnt for long.’

  She looked to Brocky for confirmation, and the big man nodded. ‘Won ten pounds off me when he first arrived. Extinguished my pipe with his little finger, bloody fool. All true, though.’

  ‘I’ve been shot,’ said Scavian, in mild surprise. She turned to see him fingering a hole in one sleeve. He rolled his shirt up to the shoulder to reveal a shallow graze across one shoulder. ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Call that being shot?’ Brocky scoffed. ‘You want me to show you what shot is, Scavian, old lad?’ He began tugging his shirt out of his trousers until Emily stopped him with a gesture.

  ‘So what happens now?’ she asked.

  *

  Tubal looked so unchanged, sitting there at the table in the Survivors’ Club clubhouse. She could barely believe he had one foot less beneath it. It was late, gone midnight and long past, but there they all were: the entire Club plus Marie Angelline. Nobody in the Lascanne camp was sleeping much tonight.

  ‘Scouts,’ Brocky decided. ‘Opportunistic buggers, but just a squad of scouts.’

  ‘Hell, they’ve probably been studying us for nights now,’ Tubal agreed.

  Mallen was shaking his head. ‘Assassins,’ he said, ‘sent to take out the top men. You and Lascari.’ He pointed to Scavian. ‘If you hadn’t already been on the ground, you’d be dead now, I wager. The colonel, he was shouting orders, made himself a target. Makes sense, if you’ve got their guns.’

  ‘Then they’ll be back,’ Emily said, ‘with more snipers.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Mallen drained his glass. ‘Or maybe not. How long’ll it take, getting a new commander appointed? They don’t know. If I were them . . . attack in strength now. While we’re down.’

  ‘Now?’ Brocky’s voice was suddenly hoarse.

  ‘Tomorrow, day after. Soon as they can get the men together.’ Mallen shrugged.

  ‘That will be soon,’ Emily said, and Marie Angelline nodded emphatically.

  ‘One thing they are, they’re organized,’ she said. ‘We have to get some defences up.’

  ‘Command meeting first thing tomorrow,’ Tubal decided. ‘Whoever’s left of us, anyway. You’ll tell Huill Pordevere, Angelline?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘No “sirs” round this table,’ Brocky reminded her.

  ‘Yes, Salander, then.’

  ‘Emily, you go get Mallarkey soon as the sun’s up. We’ll need all the time we can scrounge.’

  ‘It’s . . . a strange thing,’ began Scavian softly. His burn-shiny skin was already peeling back from his face in ragged strips, revealing his familiar features underneath as though he were just an actor removing his disguise. ‘To have a man try to shoot you – to shoot you, specifically.’

  ‘But Scavian, you’re a Warlock. They’ve been trying to kill you ever since you got here,’ Brocky reminded him.

  ‘I know but . . . in battle it’s less personal. After all, I’m trying to kill them as well. There’s a . . . a what?’

  ‘A mutual understanding,’ Emily provided for him.

  ‘Exactly so. But, in truth, it makes one fear that one is . . . marked now.’ He lapsed into silence. ‘I am the last of the King’s wizards here at the Levant. As there have been none to arrive in half a year now, to join me, it seems that none are ever to come. No doubt the King sends them to the Couchant, seeing there his best chance at achieving victory.’

  ‘You can’t mourn for Lascari,’ Emily protested.

  ‘I mourn for the man he should have been.’ He stood up from the table, wandering over to the window to look out at the night.

  ‘There is grey over the sea, ladies and gentlemen,’ he said, after a moment’s sad reflection. ‘I fear the dawn has crept up on us as we talked. An hour off, at most.’

  ‘And tomorrow – today! Today they’ll come for us,’ Brocky predicted.

  ‘Or the next day,’ Mallen corrected him with equanimity. ‘We knew this day would arrive. We all knew.’

  And out there, in the dark behind the treeline, the Denlanders massed and readied their magic guns for the onslaught: this day, or the next . . .

  26

  My dear Cristan,

  I am resolved not to write to you. You see, I am to die soon, or so my heart tells me. I want to let your memory of me cool. I hope you might forget me. I wish my death may not hurt us both.

  And yet I have set pen to paper again. And why? It seems to me that I will have no chance to send this letter, so I may write it with impunity. I have grown used to this liberty, of setting out my thoughts on paper. I felt incomplete when a sunset came, and I had no words written down.

  I sit here and I scribble, and I am speaking to you, confiding in you. I imagine your cold smile, the way your eyes blink when you are trying to be sincere. I have devised a long catalogue of your faults and vices, Cristan, and I cling to them. They are all I have left of home.

  Tubal had not yet mastered the business of walking on crutches. He made a heavy labour of the brief journey between the Stag Rampant headquarters – alias the Survivors’ Club – and the
central hut that had once housed the colonel.

  Stapewood met him at the door, his eyes red and his face puffy. ‘Captain,’ he said to Tubal, and, ‘Lieutenant,’ to Emily, then he opened the door for them formally, like a steward.

  Emily helped Tubal up the few steps and got him ensconced at the great table. No map this time, for the battleground was known to all concerned.

  ‘I don’t think I could bear the walk back if nobody else comes,’ he said, ashen and sweating.

  ‘They’ll come.’

  ‘Will they? I’m a prole and an upstart, Em. My grandfather wasn’t even born in this country. Mallarkey’s of decent family, and Pordevere’s actually a Knight of the King’s Court. Who am I to be summoning them here and there? They’ll ignore me. They’ll be over in Pordevere’s hut, talking about hunting and shooting.’

  ‘They’ll come,’ she insisted. ‘Mallarkey’s scared to death; you know him. He wants someone else to take command. And Pordevere wants command, of course, and he can’t very well have it while hiding in his hut. They’ll be here.’

  Sure enough there were footsteps outside, and Stapewood opened the door for Captain Sir Huillam Pordevere, with Marie Angelline following in his wake.

  ‘Salander,’ he said, taking a seat at the table. There was no sign of condescension there, just the will to get down to business. ‘Mallarkey’s close behind me. Let’s get everything done double time, shall we?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Tubal agreed, biting off the ‘sir’ that almost edged in after the word. Mallarkey did indeed arrive just then, with Lieutenant Gallien come to second him.

  They gathered around the bare table and an awkward pause extended, before Stapewood filled some glasses and miserably passed them round.

  ‘Well, then,’ Pordevere said. ‘What the devil comes next?’

  ‘I’ve sent a messenger to Locke to let them know what’s happened,’ Tubal explained. ‘I assume that we’ll be sent a new commander as soon as the war effort permits.’