Gunwitch (28 page)

Corporal Edwards had them follow the same drill as before, with each member of the squad firing twice in turn.

Rosalind had never seen so much blood, not even when she had gone hunting with her father or when Cook and her parents had butchered a hog or dressed a deer. The bodies of the sheep exploded under the combined impact of lead and magic, showering the sheep yet to be targeted with blood and body parts. Those sheep screeched and pulled against their tethers. They tried to break free and run away.

Rosalind vomited again, this time before it was her turn to shoot. She had to quell the nausea in her stomach as she aimed for the center of the sheep’s torso. She had to ignore the panicked look in its eyes and the pitiful bleating. She had to ignore the blood spread over its skin.

Private Bainbridge squeezed the trigger. Private Bainbridge hit her target. Rosalind hated herself.

They had mutton stew for dinner that night. Rosalind could not make herself eat it. She gave her share to Thomas.

* * *

Rosalind opened her eyes as the guard changed after midnight. It was dark in the tent she shared with Privates Millsom, Gadge, Wad, Carlell, and Rames. She could hear their breathing, especially Private Millsom’s snoring. She waited until the guard detail had passed their tent, then she folded back her blanket, picked up her pistol with her left hand, and stood. She pulled on boots and shrugged into her coat.

Rosalind unbuttoned the front of the tent and slipped through, closing it quickly to let out as little of the accumulated body heat as possible. She heard Millsom turn over again as she buttoned the tent flap closed.

She went to the latrine, nodding to the guard she passed on the way to and back. But she did not go back to her tent. Out of sight of the guard, she slipped into the shadows between tents and made her way to the rear of the pantry tent. She sat on a dry spot. She pulled her legs up to her chest with her arms and rested her head on her knees. She did not know whether Thomas would show tonight. She always came for him, but the reverse was not always true.

When she sat alone, in the dark, in the middle of the encampment, she felt further away from home than ever. Free for a few minutes from the demands of corporals and from the disapproving eyes of the Leftenant and other officers. But still carrying her pistol, with an impenetrable wall of English military and law between her and home. Or what used to be her home. She did not cry, though. Because if Thomas did show, and he saw her tears, he would laugh at her.

Ten minutes later she heard footsteps. She tensed, ready to run away if it was a guard, but she recognized Thomas’ gait, then his silhouette against the lighter color of the tent walls. He saw her and came to her. He sat on her right. He felt warm against her arm and shoulder.

“It’s like there’s all this … this lightning inside me,” Thomas said, the fingers of both his hands coming together in front of him in the shape of a ball. “Just crackling and snapping, wanting to be let out.”

“Not that. How do you pull the trigger?”

Thomas put his hands down. After a second, he asked, “How did you do it? Today?”

Just like Thomas to ask her the question she was trying to avoid. “I … I just obeyed the order.” She swallowed. “When it was target dummies, I told myself I was just obeying the order. And that they were just target dummies. I wasn’t really hurting anyone. Today, though … I almost didn’t do it.”

“Really? I didn’t notice any hesitation. Edwards said ‘fire’, you fired.”

“I didn’t fire,” she said. “I mean, it was … as if I was someone else. Someone who could pull the trigger. But I was just obeying the order. I didn’t
want
to do it. The sheep looked … it looked like a person.”

The words chilled her, and Rosalind wanted to protest that she could not. Then she remembered William and Roger Phillips, and she knew he was right. She did not say anything. She just let out a sigh.

“I imagine the target dummies are someone I want to shoot,” Thomas said after a short silence. “And then pulling the trigger is easy.”

Something in his voice, and the sound of a pistol’s hammer lock being pulled back, made Rosalind look up. Thomas was not looking at her. He had his right hand up, holding his pistol, pointing it into the darkness at something only he could see. His finger tightened on the trigger. The hammer swung forward. The sound of the strike made Rosalind jump, but the pistol was not loaded. The spark struck with the flint seemed as bright as lightning and left a green streak on her vision.

Thomas put the pistol back in his lap. He faced her again, and smiled. “It’s that easy.”

Rosalind shuddered from the cold in the air. And from the chill in his smile.

Thomas sat up and stretched his left arm across her shoulders. He pulled her to him and she realized he was going to kiss her. Surprised, she pulled back.

* * *

Rosalind made her way back to her tent thinking about Thomas, surprised to feel remorse that she had pulled back. That she had stopped Thomas before he kissed her. Surprised to discover that she wanted him to kiss her. She had thought of Thomas as the boy she met on her way to the King’s Coven. Then as her only friend in the 101st. Tonight was the first time she had thought of him as a man. A young man, younger than her by a year, but still a man. But not until she was watching him walk away.

She had thought about following him, but decided that was unwise. Not only because Thomas would still be angry with her, and he could be very unpleasant when he was angry, but because she had been away from her tent too long already. She hoped Millsom had gone back to sleep and forgotten her leaving.

Once at her tent, she hung her pistol strap around her neck so she could reach down and unbutton the front flap. She heard footsteps and looked up, wondering if Thomas had followed her.

A soldier rushed at her from the left. Not Thomas. A regular, in a white-trimmed red coat and tricorner hat on his head. He had no weapon in his hands, but he had his arms spread wide, hands ready to grab her. She did not see the other soldier that came from the right, behind her once she had turned to face the first soldier, and pulled her arms behind her and lifted her up.

She cried out at the pain in her shoulders. She remembered Robert Phillips grabbing her and tried to kick. The first soldier, though, seemed to have been waiting for that. She managed one solid kick before her legs were pinned and she was suspended between the two soldiers.

Only then did it occur to her to yell for help. Her shouts died on her lips, though, as Corporal Edwards, in full uniform, her pistol ready in her right hand, came out of the tent, followed by Private Millsom. Millsom was also in uniform, but much less tidy. She was smiling.

“That will be all, Private Millsom,” Corporal Edwards said. She spoke to Millsom, but her eyes never left Rosalind.

The smile on Private Millsom’s faltered. The woman looked confused.

“That will be all, Private Millsom,” Corporal Edwards said again when the private did not move. “You are dismissed. Be grateful, Private,” the corporal went on, “that the punishment for this first offense will not be shared by the full squad.”

Private Millsom ducked back into the tent and buttoned the flap closed.

“What is this about?” Rosalind asked. Her shoulders burned, but she could not budge either her arms or her legs. The two men held her securely. “I was just going to the privy. The latrine.”

“The private will speak when spoken to,” Corporal Edwards said. “And when the private does speak, she would be advised to tell the truth.” Only then did the corporal look away from Rosalind. To the soldiers, the corporal said, “Bring her along.” Then she turned and walked away.

* * *

In the black tent that served as the stockade, Rosalind had her hands cuffed behind her back and was made to stand at attention to await the review of her commanding officer. They left her pistol hanging around her neck.

“Fraternizing with the other privates, the men,” Corporal Edwards told her, “is a very serious offense.”

“We were just talking–”

Corporal Edwards held up a hand, interrupting Rosalind. “You have not been asked a question, Private Bainbridge. Do not compound your punishment by continuing to speak out of turn. The Leftenant will be very unhappy to hear about this infraction. He will insist that an example be set to deter any other violations of this sort.”

An example be set.
Rosalind remembered the example made of Private Carlell and shuddered.

Corporal Edwards had then spun on her heel and left the stockade.

Rosalind heard the commotion before she saw the four men-at-arms carrying the struggling form of Thomas. “Get your hands off me, you bastards!” Thomas was shouting, and worse. The soldiers brought Thomas into the stockade and dropped him on the ground. All four men were required to hold him to get the cuffs on him.

Rosalind noticed that the cuffs were simple iron shackles, not the kind she and Thomas had worn on their trip to the King’s Coven. The single shackle around her left wrist, though, still kept her from reaching the magic inside her.

Thomas continued to struggle and shout even with the cuffs on. He kicked at the soldiers and butted them with his head when they told him to stand at attention. Rosalind cried out for the men to stop, but they ignored her as they battered Thomas down to the ground with their fists and elbows, then kicked him until his curses were only moans. When it seemed all the fight had gone out of him, they picked him up again, put him on his feet near Rosalind and told him to stand at attention.

* * *

Morning dawned, the guards outside the stockade changed, but no one came for the two of them. The guard looked in on them every fifteen minutes. When Rosalind asked the new guard when the Leftenant or Corporal Edwards would come for them, the guard had only told her, “The prisoners will remain silent.”

The weight of the gun around her neck, and the hours spent standing, pulled against Rosalind. Her legs threatened to give out, and once she fell to her knees. She managed to get back to her feet, though, before the guard looked in on them. Thomas seemed dead on his feet, but he never moved nor said anything.

They could hear the normal noises of a day in the King’s Coven through the canvas walls of the stockade tent. Rosalind heard the unmistakable sound of a combined magic-fire exercise, all of a squad, or several squads, firing at once. The sound she had thought thunder or cannon when she was first brought to the camp.

The temperature inside the stockade went up as the morning wore on, though the amount of light was never more than a dim gray. More than once Rosalind jerked awake and wondered if she had been sleeping on her feet.

Sometimes she thought she heard voices she recognized pass the tent, but when she would look to the door of the tent, no one ever came in. With the heat and the fatigue and the darkness, the voices and the firing exercises all blurred into a buzz.