The thicket ended. A few yards away, in a wide patch of cleared ground, a mound like a small volcano was spewing flame and smoke into the air.
‘Charcoal oven,’ whispered Polly. ‘Just clay plastered on a stack of hazel. Should sit there smouldering for days. The wind probably caught it last night and the fire’s broken out. Won’t make good charcoal now, it’s burning too fast.’
They edged round it, keeping to the bushes. Other clay domes were dotted about the clearing, with faint wisps of steam and smoke coming from their tops. There were a couple of ovens in the process of being built, the fresh clay stacked alongside some bundles of hazel sticks. There was a hut, and the domes, and nothing else but silence, apart from the crackle of the runaway fire.
‘The charcoal-burner is dead, or nearly dead,’ said Polly.
‘He’s dead,’ said Maladict. ‘There’s a smell of death here.’
‘You can smell it above the smoke?’
‘Sure,’ said Maladict. ‘Some things we’re good at smelling. But how did you know?’
‘They watch the burns like hawks,’ said Polly, staring at the hut. ‘He wouldn’t let it go out of control like that if he was alive. Is he in the hut?’
‘They are in the hut,’ said Maladict flatly. He set off across the smoky ground.
Polly ran after him. ‘Man and woman?’ she said. ‘Their wives often live out with—’
‘Can’t tell, not if they’re old.’
The hut was only a temporary thing, made of woven hazel and roofed with tarpaulin; the charcoal-burners moved around a lot, from coppice to coppice. It didn’t have windows, but it did have a doorway, with a rag for a door. The rag had been pulled away; the doorway was dark.
I’ve got to be a man about this, Polly thought.
There was a woman on the bed, and a man lying on the floor. There were other details, which the eye saw but the brain did not focus on. There was a great deal of blood. The couple had been old. They would not grow older.
Back outside, Polly took frantic mouthfuls of air. ‘Do you think those cavalrymen did it?’ she said at last, and then realized that Maladict was shaking. ‘Oh . . . the blood . . .’ she said.
‘I can deal with it! It’s okay! I just have to get my mind right, it’s okay!’ He leaned against the hut, breathing heavily. ‘Okay, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘And I can’t smell horses. Why don’t you use your eyes? Nice soft mud everywhere after the rain, but no hoof-prints. Plenty of footprints, though. We did it.’
‘Don’t be silly, we were—’
The vampire had reached down and pulled something out of the fallen leaves. He rubbed the mud off it with a thumb. In thin pressed brass, it was the Flaming Cheese badge of the Ins-and-Outs.
‘But . . . I thought we were the good guys,’ said Polly weakly. ‘If we were guys, I mean.’
‘I think I need a coffee,’ said the vampire.
‘Deserters,’ said Sergeant Jackrum, ten minutes later. ‘It happens.’ He tossed the badge into the fire.
‘But they were on our side!’ said Shufti.
‘So? Not everyone’s a nice gennelman like you, Private Manickle,’ said Jackrum. ‘Not after a few years of gettin’ shot at and eatin’ rat scubbo. On the retreat from Khrusk I had no water for three days and then fell on my face in a puddle of horse piss, a circumstance which did nothing for my feelin’s of goodwill towards my fellow man or horse. Something the matter, corporal?’
Maladict was on his knees, going through his pack with a distracted air. ‘My coffee’s gone, sarge.’
‘Can’t have packed it properly, then,’ said Jackrum unsympathetically.
‘I did, sarge! I washed out the engine and packed it up with the bean bag after supper last night. I know I did. I don’t take coffee lightly!’
‘If someone else did, they’re going to wish I’d never been born,’ growled Jackrum, looking round at the rest of the squad. ‘Anyone else lost anything?’
‘Er . . . I wasn’t going to say anything, ‘cos I wasn’t sure,’ Shufti volunteered, ‘but my stuff looked as if it had been pulled about when I opened my pack just now . . .’
‘Oh-ho!’ said Jackrum. ‘Well, well, well. I’ll say this once, lads. Pinching from yer mates is a hanging offence, understood? Nothing breaks down morale faster’n some sneaky little sod dipping into people’s packs. And if I find out someone’s been at it, I’ll swing on their heels!’ He glared at the squad. ‘I ain’t gonna demand that you all empty out your packs as if you’s criminals,’ he said, ‘but you’d better check that nothing’s missing. O’ course, one of you might have packed something that wasn’t theirs by accident, okay. Packing in a rush, poor light, easy to do. In which case, you sort it out amongst yourselves, understand? Now, I’m off to have a shave. Lieutenant Blouse is having a throw-up behind the shelter after a-viewin’ of the corpses, poor chap.’
Polly rummaged desperately in her pack. She’d thrown things in any old how last night, but what she was frantically searching for was—
—not there. Despite the heat from the charcoal mounds, she shivered.
The ringlets had gone. Feverishly, she tried to remember the events of yesterday evening. They’d just dumped their packs as soon as they were in the barracks, right? And Maladict had made himself some coffee at suppertime. He’d washed and dried the little machine—
There was a thin little wail. Wazzer, the meagre contents of her pack spread around her, held up the coffee engine. It had been stamped almost flat.
‘B-b-b—’ she began.
Polly’s mind worked faster, like a millwheel in a flood. Then everyone took their packs into the back room with all the mattresses, didn’t they? So they’d still be there when the squad fought the troopers—
‘Oh, Wazz,’ said Shufti. ‘Oh, dear . . .’
So who might have sneaked in through the back door? There was no one around except the squad and the cavalrymen. Perhaps someone wanted to watch, and cause a little trouble on the way—
‘Strappi!’ she said aloud. ‘It must have been him! The little weasel ran into the cavalry and then snuck back to watch! He was dar— damn well going through our packs out the back! Oh, come on,’ she added, as they stared at her, ‘can you see Wazzer stealing from anyone? Anyway, when did she have the chance?’
‘Wouldn’t they have taken him prisoner?’ said Tonker, staring at the crushed machine in Wazzer’s shaking hands.
‘If he’d whipped off his shako and jacket he’d just be another stupid civilian, wouldn’t he? Or he could just say he was a deserter. He could make up some story,’ said Polly. ‘You know how he was with Wazzer. He went through my pack, too. Stole . . . something of mine.’
‘What was it?’ said Shufti.
‘Just something, okay? He just wanted to . . . make trouble.’ She watched them thinking.
‘Sounds convincing,’ said Maladict, nodding abruptly. ‘Little weasel. Okay, Wazz, just fish out the beans and I’ll do the best I can—’
‘T-there’s no b-b-b—’
Maladict put a hand over his eyes. ‘No beans?’ he said. ‘Please, has anyone got the beans?’
There was a general rummaging, and a general lack of a result.
‘No beans.’ moaned Maladict. ‘He threw away the beans . . .’
‘Come on, lads, we’ve got to get sentries posted,’ said Jackrum, approaching. ‘Sorted it all out, have you?’
‘Yes, sarge. Ozz thinks—’ Shufti began.
‘It was all a bit of mis-packing, sarge!’ said Polly quickly, anxious to keep away from anything connected with missing ringlets. ‘Nothing to worry about! All sorted, sarge. No problem. Nothing to worry anyone. Not . . . a . . . thing, sarge.’
Jackrum looked from the startled squad to Polly, and back, and back again. She felt his gaze boring into her, daring her to change her expression of mad, tense honesty.
‘Ye-es,’ he said slowly. ‘Right. Sorted out, eh? Well done, Perks. Attention! Officer present!’
‘Yes, yes, sergeant, thank you, but I don’t think we need to be too formal,’ said Blouse, who looked rather pale. ‘A word with you when you have finished, if you please? And I think we should bury the, er, bodies.’
Jackrum saluted. ‘Right you are, sir. Two volunteers to dig a grave for those poor souls! Goom and Tewt— what’s he doing?’
Lofty was over by the blazing charcoal oven. She was holding a burning branch a foot or two from her face and turning it this way and that, watching the flames.
‘I’ll do it, sarge,’ said Tonker, stepping beside Wazzer.
‘What are you, married?’ said Jackrum. ‘You are on guard, Halter. I doubt whoever did it’ll come back, but if they do, you sing out, right? You and Igor come with me, and I’ll show you your stations.’