A slight ‘clink’ came from the raider. In his hands, he held a cylinder a few feet long, blackened but showing a tiny gleam of metal. He pushed it ahead of him as he crawled.
After making the noise, the raider didn’t move for some time. Aubrey applauded his discretion. At night, sentries on both sides used hearing as much as sight.
The raider was moving again, but he wasn’t getting any closer to the Allied lines. Aubrey risked taking out his field glasses and saw that the raider was unscrewing the cylinder, working with both hands.
Another ‘clink’ and the end of the cylinder popped off, but before anyone from either trench could commence firing, a torrent of ghostly figures poured from the cylinder as if it were a Roman Candle. In an instant, the figures had assumed solidity, colour and shape, milling about uncertainly until the last had emerged, then they arranged themselves in a line. A cavalry charge, complete with regimental colours and a bugler, thundered toward the Albion trenches.
The raider quickly reversed and began scrambling back to Holmland territory. A wild fusillade of shots rang out from the Albionite lines where someone wasn’t willing to bet that the cavalry charge was another illusion. Aubrey pulled his head in, aiming to make himself the smallest target possible.
By the way the shots died out quickly, Albion officers had summed up the situation and declared the cavalry as unreal. He lost sight of the horses as they crested a barbed wire barrier and plunged in the direction of the trenches, and he’d also lost interest in them because of something much more urgent.
Someone was nearby.
He cursed himself, internally. He’d taken his eye off the Holmland raider, lost him in the shadows – and someone else had crept up on him.
He caught his breath. That fall of earth over there couldn’t be natural, especially since it had followed a scraping sound; the two together were enough to make his gaze dart about, trying to sort harmless shadow from Holmland raider. The difficulty was, in this frame of mind everything looked like a Holmland raider – and a battle-hardened one at that. That broken wagon, for instance. That tangle of barbed wire. And that smashed ammunition box could be two Holmland raiders at least.
He sought for some magic, something silent but disabling, but his mind was too full of the transference spell to accommodate anything else. Fragments eluded his grasp as he clutched for them.
He felt the tip of the blade touch him just behind the ear, just before he heard the voice – very soft, very deadly. ‘It would be a very bad idea to move, except to take your hand away from your pistol. Turn slowly.’
For once, Aubrey followed orders, to the letter, to see Caroline on the ground next to him. He could have kissed her, so he did.
53
They had to nestle very close to each other to fit into the tiny shell hole Aubrey had found. It had a bank thrown up toward the Holmland direction, which was useful, but it was open to the Albion side, so they had to – perforce – come even closer to whisper in each other’s ear. To communicate, share intelligence, status reports, that sort of thing.
‘You were appalling,’ Caroline said and her breath on his ear nearly made him swoon. She, too, had used the burnt cork on her face and looked exotically adorable. ‘You may as well have worn a sandwich board saying, “I’m about to sneak off and risk my life to try to save you all.”’
He was moderately crestfallen; he found it hard to be entirely crestfallen with Caroline in his arms. ‘It was that obvious?’
‘Not to someone who doesn’t know you. Colonel Stanley probably assumes you’re following the orders he thinks he gave you.’
‘You noticed that too?’
‘Between the three of us, we have most things covered.’
‘I feel like I’m up on stage for you all to laugh at.’
‘No you don’t. You feel surrounded by loyal and concerned friends.’
‘One of whom followed me out here.’
‘Captain Robinson was kind enough to tell me where you’d gone. He’s a lovely man.’
‘I’m sure he is. And I’m sure he fell over himself to help you.’
‘Something like that. Or it may have been Sophie. We both questioned him.’
Aubrey spared a moment to feel sorry for the captain. The poor man hadn’t stood a chance. ‘But that doesn’t explain what you’re doing out here. This is magic. I know what I’m doing.’
‘That’s as may be, but the three of us agreed that someone had to be with you to take care of what you’d forgotten.’
‘Forgotten? What have I forgotten?’
She looked sternly at him. ‘We’re just taking it on past experience that you’ve forgotten something.’
Aubrey should have been offended, but couldn’t be. He was surrounded by faithful and concerned friends. ‘You know, this is the strangest conversation I’ve ever had in the middle of a battlefield.’
‘I want you to remember it, Aubrey. For a long time.’
‘I shall.’ Realising he was taking his life into his hands in a way he hadn’t been anticipating, he gazed into Caroline’s eyes and said: ‘I want you to go back.’
‘Go back? To our trenches?’
‘That’s right. I can’t take you into danger like this.’
Through a tilting of a shoulder and an abrupt shift of her hips, they were suddenly as far apart as they could be in a shell hole a few feet across. She crossed her arms and fixed on him. ‘And what makes you think that you have any say in my actions?’
Aubrey instantly decided it was a poor time to bring up small things like his being her commanding officer. ‘Now, I understand that you’re angry, having come all this way…’
‘Angry? If you think this is angry -’
‘Irritated, then. Annoyed. Miffed.’
‘Miffed? Miffed? ’
‘I didn’t mean miffed. What’s that word that sounds like miffed but describes exactly how you’re feeling right now?’
Aubrey could hear the slow breath Caroline took as she tried to control herself. ‘Aubrey, my being here is my decision to make, not yours. You simply have to overcome this desire to move people about to suit your own ends.’
‘It’s not that.’ For an instant, Aubrey felt as if he were balanced at the top of the world’s highest skiing slope, then he plunged. ‘It’s just that I couldn’t bear it if anything happened to you.’
Caroline was silent for a moment. She touched her cheek with a hand, then went on: ‘If I got in the way of whatever it is you’re planning, you mean.’
Aubrey realised that matters were well and truly running away from him, but in this unlikeliest of places he had a moment of insight, a moment of apprehension where he understood something that had been frustrating him for ages. ‘It’s your decision to make,’ he said slowly, ‘not mine.’
She speared him with a look. ‘What did you say?’
He grinned. ‘This is why some people back in Albion are so afraid of women’s suffrage, you know. They don’t realise that we all have the right to self-determination.’
‘Aubrey, you’re going off at a tangent.’
‘Not really. Thousands of men, oldsters mostly, take it for granted that they can tell women what to do. The idea that women should be in charge of their own lives is completely alien to them. It may as well be a foreign language.’
‘Ah. You’ve seen our problem.’
‘Independence. Freedom. Liberty.’
‘Well worth fighting for, I would think.’
He took her hand. He was pleased – and relieved – when she didn’t resist. ‘I’m sorry, Caroline. I shouldn’t order you about like that. I accept your decision, whatever it may be, but -’
‘I don’t know if I like buts.’
‘But please – can you accept that I feel protective toward you?’
She studied him. ‘I can.’ She paused and she touched her lips. ‘Probably because I feel the same way about you.’
Aubrey had never been punched so hard that it made him smile, but he imagined it was something like the sensation he had now. ‘You do?’
‘All in all, Aubrey, I’d rather be near you when you’re in danger than not. Especially since that might mean I could do something about it.’