The Price of Valor (3 page)

They were treated gently—orders on that subject had come down from Janus himself. The reasoning was not humanitarian, but brutally practical. The League
commanders had made noises about treating Vordanai volunteers as partisans or bandits rather than soldiers due honorable captivity if captured, and the best defense against any abuses was for the Vordanai army to gather its own stock of prisoners against whom it could threaten retaliation, if necessary. That went double for the Girls' Own, who had no idea what to expect if they fell into enemy hands. Winter knew there was a quiet trend among her soldiers to carry small daggers in the inner pockets of their uniforms, to be used for self-destruction in the last resort. It wasn't something she encouraged, but she couldn't blame them for wanting the reassurance.

A certain amount of looting went along with the gathering of captives. Officially, they were only supposed to scavenge ammunition, food, and other military supplies, but Winter noted quite a few of the search parties returning with insignia, plumes, and other trophies. Another practice to which she felt she had to turn a blind eye. She didn't want her troops turning into ghouls, cutting off fingers to get at the rings, but pride in a hard-fought victory was something to encourage.

An outburst of laughter caught her attention. Over on the left, a knot of young women surrounded the stocky figure of Lieutenant Drake Graff, who was attempting to demonstrate the proper way to level a musket. It was hard to be sure under his thick beard, but Winter thought he was blushing. Another woman in a makeshift lieutenant's uniform was looking on, and Winter walked over to stand beside her.

“Sir,” Cyte said, her salute almost as crisp as Bobby's.

Winter nodded her acknowledgment. “How is it?”

“We missed the worst on this side,” Cyte said. “Anna got nicked by a splinter and bled a fair bit, but she'll be all right. No casualties in our company otherwise.”

No wonder they're in the mood for laughing,
Winter thought, as another round of giggles came from the cluster around Graff. Cyte, following Winter's gaze, heaved a sigh.

“They like to tease him,” she said. “I've tried to get them to stop, but . . .”

Winter shook her head. “Don't bother. You won't be able to.” Soldiers would have their fun, regardless of what their officers wanted. “Just make sure it doesn't get out of hand.”

“What's out of hand?” Cyte said. “Last week a gang of them found out where he was having a bath in the river and jumped in with him. They like to see him blush.”

Winter had to work to stifle a giggle of her own, picturing the gruff,
hard-bitten Graff frantically averting his eyes and muttering through his beard. When Janus had offered her the services of her former corporals to fill out her new regiment, Winter tried to make it clear to them what they were getting into. Folsom had fit right in, his quiet assurance off the battlefield and foulmouthed tirades on it provoking something like awe among his troops. Bobby, of course, had not been a problem. Graff had taken the longest to decide, grumbling about the impropriety of it all before finally agreeing on the grounds that someone had to take care of things. For an old soldier, he was surprisingly straitlaced, a fact that his women had discovered and exploited with gusto.

Cyte was another matter altogether. Winter had been surprised to find the University student among her early volunteers. She'd been among the revolutionaries whom the speeches of Danton Aurenne had mobilized, and she and Winter had fought together to free the prisoners of the Vendre. After the victory of the revolution and the ascent of the Deputies-General to power, Winter had expected Cyte to take up a marginally safer life in politics. Instead she'd turned up not long after the declaration of war, with a copy of the
Regulations and Drill of the Royal Army of Vordan
under one arm and a quiet determination to master the military life that Winter found strangely familiar. Winter had quickly made her a staff lieutenant—recruited as it was mostly from the young women of the South Bank, the Girls' Own was desperately short of people with the basic education to perform an officer's duties.

“Someone's coming,” Cyte said.

She pointed out across the field, where a lone figure was indeed sprinting through the remaining haze of smoke, headed for the hedgerow. Winter recognized Chris, one of Jane's Leatherback leaders, now wearing a sergeant's pips. Chris saw her at the same time, and headed in her direction, coming up hard against the hedge.

“Winter!” she said without even an attempt at a salute. Military niceties were not the strong point of Jane's old cadre. “The yellowjackets are back.”

“Hell,” Winter said, looking over her shoulder. No sign yet of Bobby, much less of troops marching to their relief. “How many?”

“Looks like two groups,” Chris said. “They're lining up just that way, on the other side of that little rise.”

Two battalions, Winter translated, deploying into line for the attack. “One of them out by the road?”

Chris nodded, gulping air.

Winter grimaced. “Where's Jane?”

Chris pointed, and Winter hurried back along the line. Jane was helping hoist the returning scouts over the hedgerow, and Winter grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled her aside.

“You've heard?” Jane said.

Winter nodded. “Bobby's not back yet. De Ferre must be balking.”

“Bastard.” Jane smacked a fist against her palm. “Want me to go talk some sense into him?”

“I'll send Folsom,” Winter said. “I need you here.”

“You want to try and hold them off?”

Winter gritted her teeth.
If we fall back, the whole line could come unstuck.
But to stand and fight, against these odds, would mean serious losses even if the line held.
And if it breaks, they might run us all down.

“I don't think we have a choice,” she said.

Jane looked at her, an odd light in her green eyes. “You're in charge here,” she said. “What's the plan?”

*   *   *

A few minutes later, the four companies Jane had led out of the angle onto the Hamveltai flank were forming up across the dirt road, a double line two hundred yards long. Jane and the other officers were still pushing the formation into shape—like most of the volunteer soldiers, the Girls' Own was more used to skirmishing than stand-up fighting. But someone had to block the yellowjackets' advance up the road, and until de Ferre brought up regulars from the reserve, these four companies were all Winter had.

Lieutenant James Folsom was tall and heavily muscled, with a long brown mustache and a quiet disposition that became animated only in the heat of battle. He listened carefully to Winter's orders, and shook his head.

“I should be here,” he said in a quiet voice. “With my company.”

“I know.” The idea of leaving one's soldiers right as they were going into combat would grate on any officer. “But this is important. We can't hold this position if de Ferre doesn't bring up fresh troops. You're Royal Army. That'll carry some weight.”
And you're a man,
she added silently. The tall, intimidating Folsom was more likely to impress an old aristocrat like de Ferre.

“What if he won't do it?”

“If he stalls, don't wait around for an answer. Come right back here and let me know, and we'll do our best to pull out.” That would be quite a trick, with the enemy already on top of them, but Winter tried not to think about it.

Folsom nodded dolefully. “I'll be back soon, then.” He turned and loped toward the aid station in the rear with long, easy strides.

With the line approximately formed, Winter took her place behind the center. On her right, Jane and Abby waited with their respective companies. The two left-hand companies were commanded by Chris and another of Jane's old Leatherback leaders, a short, pale girl named Becca with an alarming fondness for knives. She had one out now, tossing it to whirl dangerously through the air before catching it smoothly in her off hand.

The women in the ranks were steady, Winter was pleased to see. They jostled and bumped each other somewhat while they loaded their weapons, but that was inevitable. Here and there, a ranker looked back over her shoulder, making sure the road behind them was open, but Winter didn't think they'd really run.
Not right away, at least.
Every band of soldiers, however brave, had a breaking point; there was only so much that flesh and blood could stand. She hoped very much that today wasn't the day she found out hers.

“Here they come!” someone shouted.

With the ground wet, there was no dust cloud to mark the advance, only a yellow line coming over the hill, sunlight flashing here and there on polished steel or silver. A moment later, the sound of the yellowjackets' drums reached them, the steady beat of the march pace. They were already deployed into their line, extending for some distance to either side of the road.

Time stretched like taffy. The Hamveltai troops seemed at once impossibly close and enormously distant, as though they were both right on top of Winter and her men and so far away they would never arrive. Each beat of the drum, accompanied by the synchronized tramp of a thousand boots, closed the gap further. When it was close enough, some of the women standing in front of Winter were going to die. Some of the men over there were, too. Winter wondered if they felt the same horrible anticipation—

The range closed to a hundred yards, and the yellowjackets showed no signs of stopping to fire. Winter raised her voice.

“Ready!”

Muskets came off shoulders, rattling up and down the line.

“Level!”

Four hundred barrels swung up into line. Winter gave them a heartbeat to steady.

“Fire!”

The volley crashed out with a roar. At a distance of perhaps eighty yards, it
wasn't the most effective shooting—it was easy to over- or undershoot a target at that distance, even without the inherent inaccuracy of a smoothbore musket—but the smoke that puffed out over the Girls' Own was what Winter really wanted. They couldn't afford to let the Hamveltai get a really good look at what was in front of them; if they realized they outnumbered the defenders by better than two to one, they might charge at once, and Winter didn't think her troops would hold in the face of a thousand bayonets. Baiting the yellowjackets into a firefight would buy time.

Men dropped, all along the advancing line, and were swallowed by the formation as it closed up. The Hamveltai continued their march while the Girls' Own frantically reloaded, each woman ripping the top off a paper cartridge with her teeth and pouring the premeasured powder down her barrel, then spitting the ball in after. The fastest of them were just firing their second shot when the drums beat a new command, and the yellowjackets halted. Their first two ranks raised their weapons. Winter stared at the line of muskets, standing out like quills on a porcupine, and fought the instinct to curl into the fetal position. She was close enough to hear the officers on the other side scream in Hamveltai.

“Envir!”

The Hamveltai line lit up like a flash of lightning, swallowed immediately by a roil of smoke. Once again, Winter was surrounded by the
whir
of balls passing overhead and the
pock
of impacts on the dirt, accompanied by the wetter-sounding
thwack
of lead meeting flesh. Women toppled forward, or sagged against their neighbors, or stumbled back out of the line with screams and curses.

“Close up!” Winter shouted. She had to gasp for air; she'd been holding her breath. “Close up! Hold the line!”

Jane, Abby, and the other lieutenants took up the call, and the sergeants—chosen from volunteers Winter had hoped wouldn't panic under pressure—echoed them. The line contracted, rankers shuffling sideways to fill in gaps, pushing the fallen aside or stepping over them. More muskets banged, with the irregular rhythm of rain drumming on a window, each soldier firing as soon as she was ready. The second Hamveltai volley, when it came, was nearly as neat as the first, and another chorus of screams was added to the familiar sound of battle.

It was what Winter had wanted—a firefight, instead of a charge—but it was worse than she'd imagined. The yellowjackets were good troops, well trained, and their volleys were as regular as the tolling of a clock. At every blast, more soldiers fell, the survivors pushing into the gaps, or being hit in their turn and collapsing atop dead or dying comrades. The banging of their own musketry
started to sound pathetic by comparison, ragged and useless against the unwavering will of the Hamveltai elites.

“Close up!” Jane shouted on the right. “Hold the line!”

“Close up, you shit-stinking daughters of fucking goats!” Becca screamed, voice hoarse with excitement or terror. “Hold the
fucking
line!”

“Close u—” Chris said, then cut off. Winter glanced to her left, squinting against the smoke, and saw that a ball had gone right through her throat, producing a spectacular arterial spray. The big woman slapped a hand against the wound, bright red pulsing through her fingers, then crumpled in place.

They're going to break.
They had to; there was no other way out. Stubborn pride and the unwillingness to show fear in front of their fellow soldiers would keep the rankers in the patently unequal firefight for a while, but it could have only one outcome. The Hamveltai certainly weren't going to give up, not with the return fire visibly slackening. When it had faded enough, they would fix bayonets and charge.

We have to fall back.
But that would be as bad as a rout.
Maybe if we run for the village, some of us will make it.
They could barricade a building, hold out for a while.
Until de Ferre gets his head out of his ass.
Unless, of course, the colonel decided the day was lost and ordered a retreat. Then, cut off and surrounded, they would have no option but to surrender or fight to the death. Winter wasn't sure she was capable of giving either order. She felt paralyzed, watching her soldiers cut down by measured volleys, like the ticks of a funereal clock, unable to do
anything
to get them out of it—