Dru asked Neena to report to company headquarters in the original house she and Hunter had selected. By now they had taken over five other houses to billet the company, and only Dru and Cara Tailor slept in the loft of the first one, while the downstairs was crammed with two writing tables, crates of food, sacks of cloth, two hogsheads of salt pork, spare tools like wood axes and spades, and the company’s small arsenal of spare weapons.
The soldiers had taken to calling Dru Captain, and she was running the company while Hunter and Chekwe were out on their scout. She’d discovered Cara could read and write well, so the Tailor’s daughter was serving as a sort of adjutant. Dru knew Cara better than she knew Neena, but today Dru needed Neena’s particular expertise.
Captain“Neena,” she said wh
