No one mentioned the boat. No one spoke at all. The thing was... the thing was, Polly realized, that they were no longer marching alone. They shared the Secret. That was a huge relief, and right now they didn't need to talk about it. Nevertheless, it was probably a good idea to keep up a regular output of farts, belches, nose-pickings and groin-scratchings, just in case.
Polly didn't know whether to be proud that they'd taken her for a boy. I mean, she thought, I'd worked hard to get it right, I mastered the walk, except I suppose what I really did was mistress the walk, haha, I invented the fake shaving routine and the others didn't even think of that, I haven't cleaned my fingernails for days and I pride myself I can belch with the best of them. So, I mean, I was trying. It was just slightly annoying to find that she'd succeeded so well.
After a few hours of this, when true dawn was breaking, they smelled smoke. There was a faint pall of it amongst the trees. Lieutenant Blouse raised a hand for them to halt, and Jackrum joined him in whispered conversation.
Polly stepped forward. "Permission to whisper too, sarge? I think I know what this is."
Jackrum and Blouse stared at her. Then the sergeant said: "All right, Perks. Go and find out if you're right, then."
That was an aspect that hadn't occurred to Polly, but she'd left herself open. Jackrum relented when he saw her expression, nodded to Maladict, and said, "Go with him, corporal."
They left the squad behind and walked forward carefully, over the beds of new-fallen leaves. The smoke was heavy and fragrant and, above all, reminiscent. Polly headed to where thicker undergrowth was taking advantage of the extra light of a clearing, and pushed through into an airy thicket of hazel trees. The smoke was denser here, and barely moving.
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?"