The Price of Valor Read online

  As she moved toward the left, she could hear the deeper growl of artillery underneath the musketry. The hedge led to a small hamlet in that direction, no more than a dozen buildings, which was defended by a battalion of volunteers and half a battery of guns. Something was on fire—she could see the glow, even through the smoke—but the noise indicated the men there were still fighting hard.

  On the right side of the line, the hedge took a dogleg forward a hundred yards before ending at a wide dirt path. Jane was waiting on the far side of that angle with another four companies, hunkered down and silent up until now, waiting to execute the trap. Winter didn’t want her troops going toe-to-toe with a battalion of regulars longer than they had to.

  Reaching the center of her line, Winter pressed herself against the hedge between a pair of soldiers and listened. A couple of minutes for Bobby to run to Jane, a couple of minutes to get ready . . .

  A chorus of hoarse battle cries, identifiably feminine even through the rattle and bang musketry, rolled out of the smoke on the right. All along the line, Winter’s soldiers echoed the cheer, which was followed in quick succession by a blaze of new firing. More flashes stabbed through the smoke, at right angles to the Hamveltai position, as Jane led her troops in a charge with fixed bayonets that took the enemy line end-on. As Winter had guessed, that convinced them that their position was untenable, and before another minute had passed there was no more shooting to her front. Along the hedgerow, the women of the Girls’ Own were cheering themselves hoarse.

  “Make sure those muskets are loaded!” Winter shouted, over the celebration. “They’ll be back.”

  * * *

  “You should have seen the looks on their faces,” Jane said. “Bastards were so surprised they didn’t even have a chance to shoot back.”

  “Nicely done,” Winter said. Though rumors of the infamous female regiment had no doubt spread through the enemy camps by now, the League soldiers were always startled when they came to actual face-to-face contact with the Girls’ Own. Winter was happy to use their hesitation to her advantage, if it meant keeping her troops alive. “Any prisoners?”

  “A few dozen,” Jane said. “Plenty of wounded out there, but we didn’t take any that couldn’t walk.”

  They were squatting in the muddy dirt, a few yards back from the hedge. With the lull in the fighting, some of the Girls’ Own were helping the casualty teams, carrying the wounded to a temporary station in the rear and dragging corpses clear of the firing line. Winter had cautioned them not to go too far. It was too easy to get caught up helping a wounded comrade and forget that the battle wasn’t over yet.

  To the left, artillery still growled, but the musketry had died away, indicating that the attack on the hamlet had tapered off while the League cannoneers continued the argument with their Vordanai counterparts at long range. The smoke was beginning to drift apart, torn into scraps by the late-morning breeze. Looking at the sun, Winter thought it was still at least an hour before noon; she already felt as if they’d been there for days. She closed her eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and returned her mind to the matter at hand.

  “See if any of the men you took speak Vordanai. I’d love to know what else they’ve got out there.”

  “You think they’ll try it again?”

  “I think they’ve got to. They want to push through here to take Janus from behind.” It felt odd to her to casually refer to the general of the army—much less a count of Vordan—by his first name, but it had become a universal practice among the troops he commanded, as a demonstration of their affection for their strange commander. “They tried a narrow swing around the hamlet, and ran into us. So what’s next?”

  Jane shrugged. “You’re the soldier.”

  Winter grimaced, but it was true, in a sense. While there were times when she still felt like a fraud—it was hard not to, when everyone but a select few thought she was a man—it was hard to deny that she had more military experience than anyone else in the Girls’ Own, with the possible exception of her ex-corporals Graff and Folsom. For that matter, she had more combat experience than almost anyone in Janus’ Army of the East, which was an awkward conglomeration of old Royal Army troops and scratch battalions of revolutionary volunteers.

  Jane’s experience was of a different sort. They’d been lovers, long ago, at Mrs. Wilmore’s Prison for Young Ladies, before Jane had been dragged away into involuntary marriage to a brutal farmer and Winter had escaped to join the army. While Winter had spent three years in Khandar, lying low, Jane had escaped from servitude, freed the rest of the girls from the Prison, and brought them to Vordan City. There they’d fought criminals, tax farmers, and anyone else who got in their way, forming the core of the Leatherbacks and striving to provide a rough justice to the Docks. When Winter and Jane had been reunited in the chaos of the revolution—with a helping hand, Winter guessed, from Janus bet Vhalnich—Jane’s girls joined the fight to save the city from Orlanko.

  Now they made up almost half the Girls’ Own, and Jane herself had accepted an officer’s rank, but she didn’t pretend to know anything much about tactics. Winter scratched a rough line in the earth with the toe of her boot. “If I were them, I’d feel us out to the right. If they’ve got another couple of battalions, they could throw one against us here and push another one down the road to get behind us.”

  “And if we run for it, they can surround the town,” Jane said. She looked to the south, where only the occasional hedge broke the endless, open country. A lone wood-topped hill, miles distant, loomed like a distant gray monolith. “If they get us with horsemen in the open . . .”

  Winter nodded. Jane might not have had a military education, but she had good instincts. The Girls’ Own were brave, dedicated troops, but they didn’t have the training to form square and stand off cavalry in the open. The volunteers who made up most of the rest of the force Janus had left to blunt the League advance were the same. They had only one regiment of “Royals”—professional soldiers of the old Royal Army—and a retreat under those circumstances could easily become a rout.

  “I’ll send Bobby to Colonel de Ferre,” Winter said. “If he brings up the reserve before they get here, we can give them another nasty surprise. They’ve got to get sick of banging their heads against this wall eventually.”

  Jane nodded and got to her feet. “I’ll get some of the girls out past the smoke to give us a bit of warning.”

  Winter stood a bit more slowly, her legs already aching. Her throat felt suddenly thick, in a way that had nothing to do with having spent the morning shouting at the top of her lungs.

  “Be careful,” she said.

  Jane smiled, her familiar, mischievous smile, and gave a slapdash salute. Winter fought a sudden impulse to wrap her arms around her. Instead she nodded, stiffly, and watched Jane stride back toward the front line.

  A passionate embrace between the commander of a battalion and his chief subordinate might have been a bit unorthodox, by old army standards, but Winter wasn’t sure it would have made a difference if she’d given in to the temptation. Caution was an old, ingrained habit, though, and she tried to impress the importance of it on Jane. They lived in a weird fog of half-truths and lies—the fact that Captain Ihernglass was sleeping with Lieutenant “Mad Jane” Verity was an open secret, at least among the Girls’ Own, who gossiped as badly as the old Colonials had. But only a small cadre among them, Jane’s former Leatherback girls, knew the secret of Winter’s gender. So far, they’d kept her confidence—Jane’s girls were nothing if not loyal—but having that knowledge so widely spread made Winter intensely nervous.

  Bobby hurried over and snapped a crisp salute. One of her sleeves was red with blood.

  “Jane said you wanted to see me, sir?” she said.

  “Are you all right?” A foolish question, Winter thought. Bobby was the one soldier on the field who was virtually guaranteed to live throug
h the day’s fighting, thanks to the ongoing legacy of her experience in Khandar.

  “What?” Bobby caught sight of the blood and shook her head. “Oh, it’s nothing. I was helping with the wounded.”

  Winter nodded. “I need you to ride to Colonel de Ferre. Tell him we need reinforcements here, at least a battalion, to extend the line on the right. We haven’t got the strength to stretch that far, and if they get around us this whole position could come unstuck.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Bobby saluted again and hurried rearward. There was a small aid post there, where the battalion cutters did what they could for the casualties until they could be taken for proper care. Beside it was a string of horses, kept ready for couriers and other emergencies. Winter watched her mount up, then turned back to the front.

  The corpses of the fallen had been removed from the line, and the injured helped to the rear. Now small parties vaulted the hedgerow, cautiously, and searched among the dissipating smoke for enemy wounded. Any who seemed likely to survive were taken prisoner and sent through the line for treatment.

  The enemy were Hamveltai regulars, called yellowjackets for their lemon-colored coats, striped with black and worn over black trousers. They wore tall black shakos with gold devices on the front and long red plumes fluttering from the peak, the very image of professional soldiers. The contrast with the Vordanai, whose only uniform was a loose blue jacket worn over whatever each soldier had brought along, could not have been greater. But neat uniforms did not seem to provide any special protection from musket balls.

  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.