The Price of Valor (8 page)

“Sir!” Bobby said. She offered a Winter a folded scrap of paper. “From the general. Marching orders for tomorrow.”

Winter broke the seal with her thumb and glanced over the short document. “We're to stay in camp until noon, and follow on after the Sixth and their artillery. Another six miles.”

Compared to the trek across Khandar, moving the Army of the East was a terrifyingly complicated endeavor. With more than ten times as many men, moving in a single column would have left the army hopelessly slow and strung out. Instead, Janus had organized a complicated progress by multiple parallel roads, with a cavalry screen protecting the whole unwieldy mass from enemy ambush. In lesser hands, it easily could have collapsed in a mess of snarls and confusion, but so far delays like that afternoon's had been rare. Winter sensed the hand of Fitz Warus—now commanding the Colonials—in the meticulous allocation of march routes and detailed orders.

“Better to wait here than on the road, I suppose,” Bobby said. She looked tired, Winter thought, with a pang of guilt. Ever since her promotion, she'd pushed a great deal of work onto Bobby's young shoulders. “Shall I pass the word to let the rankers sleep in?”

“No. I want
you
to take a rest, but the regiment should be up and breakfasted as usual. We've got some drilling to do.”

Bobby raised her eyebrows. “The girls aren't much used to drilling, sir.”

“It's about time they had a taste of the real military life.” Winter flashed Bobby a grin she didn't feel. “Just like we did, eh?”

“Yessir!”

Bobby saluted again, and Winter waved a hand. “Go find your tent.”

Marsh would be waiting for her, Winter knew. She hadn't heard any rumors about the two of them yet, but it was only a matter of time.

Not,
Winter thought,
that I have any right to register a complaint.
No sooner had she ducked into her own tent than Jane was kissing her, arms wrapped around her shoulders to pull her close. Winter was stiff with surprise for a moment, then softened in her lover's arms, worming her fingers into the sweaty red tangle of Jane's hair, which now nearly reached her shoulders.

“You really ought to salute first,” Winter said when they finally pulled apart.

“Sorry.” Jane snapped a crisp salute. “Sir! Permission to stick my tongue down your throat,
sir
!”

Winter put a hand over her face to hide a grin. “You want to shout a little louder? I'm not sure the whole camp heard you.”

“I'm pretty sure the whole camp already knows Captain Verity and Colonel Ihernglass are fucking.” Jane lowered her voice. “It's the details of how we go about it that might surprise some of them.”

Jane's hands descended from Winter's shoulders to her hips by way of the small of her back. The feel of her fingers left Winter flushed and breathing fast, but she managed to disengage from Jane's grasp and take a step back.

“Not now,” she said.

“Spoilsport.”

Winter rolled her eyes. “You're incorrigible.”

“I'm sure if I took the time to look up what that meant, I'd be very insulted.”

They stared at each other for a second, straight-faced, then broke down in silent laughter. It was at moments like this that Winter felt her love for Jane most keenly. This was the old Jane, the Jane who'd lived with her at Mrs. Wilmore's and taken the worst the old harridans running the place had to offer with a cocky grin.

Sometimes, though, the surface cracked, and something ugly showed through. Winter remembered the quay back in Vordan City where she'd only just talked Jane out of cold-blooded murder. There was a rage in her, simmering just out of sight, and Winter sometimes wondered if this semblance of the girl she'd known long ago was all an act for her benefit.

Jane, watching Winter's expression, let her smile fade. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing.” Winter sighed. “I need to see Captain Sevran.”

“Uh-oh. Should I be jealous?”

Winter rolled her eyes. “I doubt he's read my new edition of the handbook yet.”

“Are you going to get him to make that idiot Novus stop sending you complaints?”

“I doubt he can,” Winter said. “But I think we need to do some joint drill. My guess is there'll be fighting in less than a week, and the Girls' Own and the Royals are going to have to learn to work together at some point.”

Jane made a disgusted face. “The girls will do what I tell them to. Just make sure the Royals will do the same, and be ready to kick Captain Sevran's ass if he tries to pull what de Ferre did. We'll be fine.”

“A little practice won't hurt.”

“If you say so.” Jane shrugged. “Personally, I'd rather have the extra sleep, but you give the orders around here.”

“I'm going to go track down Sevran. Pick your best company and let them know they'll be on the spot tomorrow.”

“Yes, sir!” Jane accompanied her salute with a lascivious smile. “Hurry back.”

*   *   *

Captain Sevran's men had erected his tent in the middle of the space marked off for the Royals, and teams of them were hard at work putting the rest of the camp together. Their rows were a bit neater than the Girls' Own, and their cook fires were a lot more organized, each “pot” of men gathered around its own cook fire. Outside the captain's tent, a sentry saluted crisply and knocked on the tent pole.

“Sir? It's the colonel.”

Winter's lip quirked. In Khandar, “the colonel” had always been Janus. Hearing the phrase used in reference to herself always made her want to look over her shoulder.

The tent flap opened, and Sevran straightened up, silver stripes on his shoulders gleaming. His salute was as neat as his sentry's.

“Sir!” he said.

“There's a few matters I thought we might discuss,” Winter said. “Do you have a few minutes?”

“Of course, sir.” Sevran held the tent flap open. “After you.”

Sevran's tent was much like her own, with a few well-worn pieces of nonstandard equipment—a trunk, a portable writing desk—marking it as the residence of a long-serving officer. Sevran himself was in his late thirties, his clean-shaven cheeks pockmarked like a crumbling wall from some long-ago illness. He had a long nose and a well-trimmed brown mustache that had yet to show a hint of gray, and he wore his well-tailored uniform with the unconscious comfort of someone who'd spent nearly his whole life in it. Winter fought down a wave of self-consciousness—meeting these old soldiers always made her feel like a fraud, no matter how many promotions Janus had showered on her.

“Welcome, sir,” Sevran said. “What can I do for you?”

“I'm sorry we haven't had time to really get acquainted,” Winter said. “Things have been a bit busy.”

“Of course, sir.”

“How are your men settling in to the new organization?”

His expression flickered, just for a moment. Winter recognized the signs of someone preparing to tell a superior what he wanted to hear.

“As well as could be expected, sir,” Sevran said. Winter, who'd bullshitted her share of officers, smiled inwardly at the neat ambiguity of the phrase.

“I've received a number of . . . requests from your staff lieutenant. He doesn't seem pleased.”

“Novus?” Sevran asked. Winter nodded, and the captain sighed. “I'll speak with him. It's nothing against you personally, sir. Some of my officers aren't happy about being placed alongside the volunteers.”

“Not just volunteers, but
girls
,” Winter said. “I know that must bother some of them.”

“I've made it clear to them that the First Battalion is to be treated like any other body of men—of soldiers,” Sevran said.

Winter guessed that someone higher up—probably Janus himself—had expressed the importance of this point to the captain. She felt a sudden pang of sympathy for him; the situation he'd been thrust into would have been an awkward one for any officer. He had the clear-eyed look of someone determined to do his best under difficult circumstances.

I think I like him,
Winter thought. At the very least, he was not Colonel de Ferre.

“What do the men think about the situation?” Winter said. “The rankers, not the lieutenants.”

Sevran hesitated. “Speaking in confidence, sir?”

“Of course.”

“There's a fair bit of grumbling, of course. A lot of them don't think the First Battalion will fight. I've told them that you were in a pretty serious scrap at Diarach, but I'm not sure they really believe it.” He paused again. “A lot of them also think that you're favoring the First, sir. Because you've . . . served with them longer.”

And because I'm sleeping with the captain.
No doubt that had made the rounds already. “I've tried to be even-handed.”

“Some details
do
seem to fall inordinately on my men,” Sevran said, then hastily added, “Not that it isn't your right to assign duties as you like, of course. But it isn't helping morale.”

“I'm not sure what you mean.”

“Latrine duty, for example.” Sevran spoke with the air of someone inching across a crumbling bridge. Winter wondered if he thought she was testing him. “My men have been assigned to digging the latrine ditches for the last three camps. Cleaning the horse lines, too.”

“Lieutenant Cytomandiclea draws up those orders,” Winter said, frowning. “I'll speak with her. That does seem unfair.”

“Thank you, sir,” Sevran said. “That will help a great deal.”

“I'd also like to try some joint drill between the battalions tomorrow morning,” Winter said. “I have some tactical ideas that will need some practice. Can you pick your best company and bring them out to meet me?”

“Of course, sir. I think that's an excellent idea.”

“Good. Then I'll see you in the morning, Captain.”

Winter accepted his salute with a nod and ducked out of the tent.
That wasn't so hard.
Sevran looked as though he was willing to work with her, and he could help her keep the lieutenants in line. As long as the rankers didn't cause trouble, a few blue-blooded officers weren't much of a concern.
This might actually work.

*   *   *

This,
Winter thought,
is never going to work.

Weak sunlight shone down through a layer of clouds on the square of packed, furrowed earth designated as a drill field.

“All right,” she said. “Let's try again.”

“Close
up
!” Folsom bellowed. Winter had borrowed the leather-lunged lieutenant for his volume. “Skirmish line,
forward
! Main line,
loading drill
!”

One company of the Royals was drawn up in a three-deep line, about forty yards from end to end. At Folsom's command, echoed by Lieutenant sur Gothin and his two sergeants, the men began going through the manual of arms, lowering their muskets from their shoulder to the ground, opening an imaginary cartridge, and sliding the ramrod in and out of the barrel. When they'd brought their weapons back to the ready position, sur Gothin shouted, “Fire!” and a hundred empty locks clicked closed. Then they began the pantomime again.

In the meantime, a company from the Girls' Own, led by Abby Giforte, was going through a very different drill. They'd spread out in pairs, each ten yards or more from the next, raggedly spaced and a hundred yards up from where the Royals had formed their tight formation. There they pretended to fire by turns, one woman loading—much easier outside the shoulder-to-shoulder press of the line—while the other aimed, pulled the trigger, then switched off.

So far, so good.
The loose skirmish line that Janus had improvised at the Battle of Midvale had confounded the regulars by depriving them of a solid target, and in the weeks since Winter and the other commanders had expanded the idea into a workable set of tactics. The problem was that while their loose formation protected them from massed infantry volleys and artillery, the skirmishers could
never stand up to a determined bayonet charge, and without any way to form square they were vulnerable to being ridden down by enemy cavalry.

That was, in theory, where the Royals came in. Winter's hope was that the two halves of her regiment might complement each other; the Girls' Own could disperse to fight in its own style, and fall back behind the solid wall of the regulars' line when danger pressed too close. It was this second part, the falling back, that had proven to be the problem.

“Go ahead,” Winter said to Folsom.

“Skirmish line,
fall back
!” he bellowed. “Main line, prepare to pass skirmishers!”

The women of Abby's company stopped what they were doing and ran back toward where the Royals were waiting. The Royals were supposed to open their formation slightly by turning sideways so the skirmishers could filter through it, then close up again. Twice already it hadn't worked that way—somehow an extended arm or leg always found its way into a running woman's path, sending a whole section of the line sprawling to the ground and throwing the whole formation into confusion. Some of the women were getting frustrated, too, and had taken to running full tilt, slamming bodily into whatever was in their way.

This time, Winter could see, was not going to be any different. A few of the fleetest-footed girls made it through before the main press arrived, but then a grinning, redheaded ranker in the center of the Royals' line stuck a foot out in the path of a sprinting woman and sent her sprawling to the turf. Her companion, outraged, slammed into him shoulder first, carrying both of them into the man behind him. From that point it was half collision, half brawl.

And we really ought to be doing it with fixed bayonets, if we expect to stand off cavalry.
Winter shook her head. In the center of the line, things had devolved into actual fisticuffs, with a heavyset woman in a loose blue jacket giving a gangly young ranker a pounding. Sergeants on both sides waded in to break it up while other rankers shouted encouragement.