Chapter Twenty-Two

  Men You Can Trust

  Will stood and leaned against the rail of the great paddle-wheeled steam ship as it pulled into the dock at Kanmak. Jake leaned against the railing beside him, smoking a cigarette with his good hand. The old city with its rising domes and towers spread out before them. It had taken time, but Will had found his legs again as the ship slowly made its way upriver from Bankut through Benna, and finally to Kanmak. It had been a rather dull journey through the sweltering summer heat. Most of their days had been spent sitting on the deck watching the land and sky roll past. Storm clouds had sat on the eastern horizon for weeks as the ship had ploughed its way through the river, but eventually they had vanished, burned away by the late summer sun. They had taken on fresh supplies in Bankut and deposited some wounded. The worst injuries had been disembarked to stay in the hospital on the coast. Others had been left on the boat to journey back to Kanmak. There seemed little rhyme or reason to who was taken from the ship and who stayed, but all the wounded men of the 13th, including Lieutenant Albans, had been kept aboard. Most of the men were somewhat recovered, having had time to heal on the journey. The gangplank was lowered, and slowly, men were carried from the ship or walked under their own power as they were able. Will went carefully; his strength was still returning to him. He had avoided infection or worse, but he had still suffered grave injuries. Of the two wounds he received, the wound to his head had been far greater than the loss of his arm. He still had trouble thinking clearly at times, but that had improved as his strength returned. The stump of his arm itched and ached alternately, too, and there were times he still felt his hand like a spectre of the limb that was no longer whole. Wounded on stretchers were placed into carts, and then they went through the streets of the city. Locals stopped to watch as they passed, lining the streets silently. Will felt as if it were a parade of the damned, a kind of freak show of invalids, men who had lost limbs or worse. A small group of beggar children ran along with the carts, laughing and pointing as they passed. The trip was over quickly, and the city seemed smaller now than it had. Before he knew it, they were rolling through the cantonments towards the fort. A crowd of women and servants had formed, silently greeting them. Women were looking for their men, an equal measure of hope and dread on their faces. Hope that their men had lived and returned. Dread that their men might have come home broken from the war.

  “Mr. Albans!” A woman’s voice suddenly cried out as the carts passed the residency.

  The lieutenant was seated in the cart opposite Will and Jake. Albans sat up a little taller and looked about for the source of the voice.

  “Mr. Albans!” The voice cried again. A woman broke from the crowd. She was stunningly beautiful, with bright red hair, a slender face, and light freckles on her cheeks. She had remained pale, despite the sun of Ayodh. She was almost as young as he was. Will had seen her before, he thought—the Major’s wife.

  “Mrs. Dryden,” Albans replied as she approached the cart, “Ma’am, you ought to…” He began.

  Julia interrupted him, “My husband, what of him?” She demanded.

  “He still lived when last I saw him.”

  “Edward!” A woman cried out and broke from the crowd. She ran to a cart further behind where an infantry officer who was missing an arm was seated. The carts did not stop, but the man hopped from the cart in which he was riding and the two embraced tearfully. There were no more tearful reunions. Few of the women had men who had returned. They were either still fighting or had fallen. There was little news to share.

  Julia followed the cart as it went, “Please, Albans, is there anything you can share?”

  Albans’ face darkened, “It has been many weeks since we parted. The journey is not short. When we left them, the situation was dire, but the regiment was in good fighting shape.”

  “You must know more than that!” Julia cried out.

  “We defended the Brurapura well, but we were outflanked. We were forced into a bad position. Havor traded prisoners for safe passage of the wounded. As I understand it, he intended to go on the offensive and cross into Rhakan. Bold. Dryden is the glue that holds the 13th together, M’am. If the 13th is still fighting, he’s at the centre of it.”

  Julia’s eyes went to his missing leg, and she gave a start, as if perceiving the wound for the first time, “By the gods, sir, your leg!”

  Albans chuckled but frowned slightly, “Indeed, madam, indeed.”

  Another woman came alongside the cart then. She was very pretty, Will thought; her hair was dark, her eyes bright, with soft, pale cheeks. She took Julia’s arm, “Come away, Julia, come away. There is time for this later. You are making a scene, darling.”

  Julia let herself be pulled away from the cart, where she disappeared into the crowd of women and servants. Jake grinned at Will as the cart moved on, “She’s a pretty one, eh, Willy?”

  “Don’t call me Willy,” Was his reply. Jake had begun to grate on him as the weeks aboard the ship had rolled on.

  “Imagine, boyo, all those wives and daughters, just sitting back there without any men to keep ‘em company,” Jake laughed, “Ripe for the plucking…”

  “Shut your clack-box,” Albans growled. He sounded less a lieutenant and more a sergeant. Will knew that the man had come up through the ranks, and at one point he had been a sergeant. By the look on the man’s face, he was ready to throw himself bodily at Jake if he didn’t cease his shit-talking.

  “Only joking, Lieutenant. Having a bit of a laugh, meant no offence,” He chuckled. Thankfully, he did stop, but he occasionally glared at the lieutenant the rest of the ride back to the fort.

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  They passed rows and rows of barracks where once men had been stationed. The vast majority of the soldiers were off at war now, however. Thousands of men had been there. The long, white-painted buildings sat mostly empty. A few lonely groups of soldiers were seated here and there, most of them sepoys, watching as the procession of wounded soldiers passed.

  “So few men here now,” A man commented, “Where are the rest of the wounded?”

  “We’re among the first to return, I think,” Albans replied, then added, “There will be many more before it is over.”

  There was no great welcome for the men. No band played. No comrades patting them on the back or congratulating them on their survival. Only two young officers were playing cards in the shade of a tree. They rose as the wagons drew close. One of them stepped forward to inspect the men as they came in. Albans seemed to know him, but Will had never seen the man before. A few sepoys and Ayodhi servants began unloading wounded men from the carts as they piled into the yard of the fort.

  “Lieutenant Albans!” The officer cried out happily.

  “Fitz, you’ve been made a captain? I’d stand to congratulate you, but you’ll have to forgive me,” Albans said, gesturing to his stump.

  “Indeed, sir, indeed. Never mind that old boy,” Fitz replied smilingly.

  “How came you to Kanmak?” Albans asked.

  “I was reassigned when the army pulled back from Andaban.”

  “Pulled back from Andaban?” Albans said.

  “Indeed, hadn’t you heard?”

  “We’ve just been on campaign and have had no news.”

  “Indeed. Uprising in Ghinai. The garrison there was burned. No survivors. With Vurun gone, and now Ghinai as well, we’re abandoning the north, apparently.” The captain’s voice was high-pitched. Will realised he was quite a young man to be a captain. His moustache was thin and neatly trimmed, his hair slicked back fashionably.

  “By whose order?” Albans asked, shocked.

  “The new governor-general, Mr. Hood.”

  “Gods below.”

  “Speak of the devil,” Fitz nodded back towards the gate. A man in a dark uniform was striding towards them. Several other men dressed in suits struggled to keep up with him.

  Hood had black hair, tan skin, and a piercing gaze that seemed to penetrate from across the whole yard. Will had not met him before.

  “Colonel Hood,” Albans nodded as the man approached. He did not salute, Will noted. The regular army did not salute V.A.C. officers, and vice versa.

  “Not a colonel anymore, hadn’t you heard?”

  “The captain here was just filling me in, sir.”

  “Was he now?” Hood smiled, “I was just coming to debrief you. We’ve had little enough news from the front.”

  “I always knew you for a man who had agents and informants in all corners,” Albans replied.

  Hood frowned, “The fog of war is thick in the east.” The governor glanced down at where Alban’s thigh ended in a stump, “I will send someone to fit you with a wooden leg and a cane, old boy, then come see me. Before I go, tell me, Lieutenant, do you intend to stay in the service?”

  “I don’t know what else I’d do with myself,” Albans answered.

  “Let me get straight to the point, then. I could use good veterans like you in the government. They’re all bloody fools, you know. They don’t bloody believe that this can all fail. It teeters on the knife’s edge, my old friend—all of it. We had riots in the city a few weeks back, did you know? Riots, here, in bloody Kanmak! All to do with that yali business. You know, they tell me I’m overreacting, but they didn’t see bloody Vurun, eh? They didn’t have twenty thousand Vuruni dogs chasing them over the bloody passes, eh? Hounding us out of our forts and cutting us down by the thousands. I will not be caught out, eh? I need men who’ve seen how thin this bloody line is between order and chaos.”

  “I will remind you, I was not there during the massacre either.”

  “But you helped quell it, Albans. You were in Andaban, you went with Haddock and Dryden and all the rest to burn out the rot, eh? I’ve so few men I can trust who’ve seen the way the world is. All these fools in the colonial government are walking about in a fairy fantasy, as if we’re not conquerors in a foreign land full of men who hate us to the core.”

  “I’ll think…” Albans began to answer.

  “No, the time for consideration has passed. It’s action that’s needed now. I’ve plans, sir, and I mean to enact them. There’s no time to waste. Be my right hand. Say yes, Albans.” The man spoke urgently.

  Albans gave the barest nod, “Very well, sir. I don’t know what good I’ll do, but I’ll try.”

  “Excellent! Best news I’ve had in a month, Lieutenant. Best damned news.” He smiled, quite genuinely, “You’ll need a manservant, someone you trust, eh? The pickings are slim. I’ll send a man to take the measurements for your wood leg this afternoon, eh?”

  “Excellent, sir. Thank you.” Albans said.

  Abruptly, Hood turned and was gone, secretaries sweeping after him, trying to keep up. The men finished unloading the carts, which rumbled off again, this time empty. The wounded were taken into the main barracks, where Will had been housed before the war. Albans was taken with the rest of the injured, even though he was an officer. They were seated near one another.

  “Will,” Albans said after a short time, “Have you ever worked as a batman or servant?”

  Will shook his head, “I worked a farm before this.”

  Albans chuckled, “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to learn.”

  “Surely there’s someone better for the job than me.”

  “I need someone I trust. Most of the men I trust are dead, or fighting with the Bloody 13th.”

  “You don’t know me. Not well, anyhow,” Will protested weakly.

  “I know you fought with us and held the line at Bogat. If I knew nothing else, that would do, eh?”

  That was true enough. He realised he didn’t know Albans well either, but he knew enough, having seen him lead men into battle on the bridge. Will only needed a moment to decide. It felt good to feel needed, useful. He had lost his arm and wondered the whole way back to Kanmak what good he would ever do again. He was done as a soldier, or at least as a cavalryman. Growing up just outside Marrowick, he had seen men wounded in war, walking with peg legs and crutches, sailors and soldiers both, who had sacrificed their bodies for the king. Many of them begged in the streets. He didn’t want to end up like that, sitting on the corner, asking for money in his hat saying, “Sir, I served my country, I just need some coin for food,” and hoping that a passerby took pity on him. It was the kind of degradation he had not considered until it had happened to him. He had known he might die going to war, but he had not thought of the invalids and veterans who came back half of what they were, sipping from bottles of whisky all day long and lying in the street. That prospect was before him now that his arm was gone. Perhaps he could make a better go of it than those others did, but he thought, too, that those men had thought themselves better, too, and had ended up in the gutter all the same. There was no other answer to give but “Of course, sir. I’ll serve any way I can.”

  Later, the woodworker came as promised and took measurements for Albans. The next day, he was fitted for his new wooden leg and a cane, and for the first time, Albans stood on shaky legs. Their uniforms had been mended, pressed, and cleaned by Ayodhi servants. The uniforms looked as if they had never seen war. Will’s sleeve was folded and pinned neatly, and though it couldn’t cover the fact that his arm was gone, it made it look almost tidy and acceptable. With his new leg, though, Albans looked nearly normal, at least until he walked, at which point he struggled to balance and strode with a strange gait.

  “Very good, Will. I think we are ready to report to Hood,” Albans said after a short time, “Let us see what plans he has made.”