Chapter 29
Dawn of Battle
He woke suddenly from a place beyond dreams, Tarleton’s excited face an inch from his own.
“Sir! We’ve found them! It’s starting!”
It was. All around him, officers were rolling from their beds, pulling curling papers from their hair, cursing and stumbling barefooted, calling for servants, ale, and chamber pots.
Tom was already there, jerking Grey’s nightshirt unceremoniously off over his head and pulling his shirt over it in almost the same motion.
“Where?” he demanded of Tarleton, his head popping out of the neck. He jerked the garment into place, Tom already stooping with his breeches.
“Behind the dyke thing, the Land-ware.” Tarleton was dancing on his toes with impatience. “We saw them—me and another scout who was in the church spire. The sky started to get light and there they were, creeping along the back of the dyke like skulking cowards!” His face shone under a sprinkling of soft, fair whiskers.
“Well done, Mr. Tarleton.” Grey smiled, tucking his shirt into his breeches. “Go and shave. Then fetch Mr. Brett, see to my horse, and eat something. Both of you eat something. I’ll join you—ouch!” Tom’s hands paused in their hurry to untangle the snag of hair his brush had just encountered. “I’ll join you at the stable. Go!” He made a shooing motion and Tarleton shot out of the room like a flushed hare.
“Speak of shaving, me lord…” Tom’s deft hands set by the hairbrush, and reached for the pot of shaving soap, the badger-bristle brush stirring up the foam with a scent of lavender.
Sitting on the bed as Tom shaved him, briskly plaited his hair, and bound it up, Grey wondered where young Agnes-Maria was. Probably moving hastily behind the English lines with her family. If Clermont’s main body was indeed skulking behind the Landwehr, the French artillery was very likely within range of Hückelsmay—and the French were no respecters of private property.
“Here, me lord.” Tom thrust a pistol into his hands, then bent to fasten his sword belt. “It’s not loaded yet. D’ye want your cartridge box, or will one of your boys take it?”
“I’ll have it. Shot bag, powder…” He touched the items attached to his belt, checking, then thrust his arms back into the leather jerkin Tom was holding for him, the one he wore in lieu of the usual waistcoat on battlefields.
He was aware that some of the English junior officers considered this garment mildly contemptible, but then, relatively few of them had been shot at yet. Grey had, repeatedly. It wouldn’t save him from close fire, but the fact was that most of the French muskets had a very short range, and thus a good many musket balls were near spent by the time they reached a target. You could see them, sometimes, sailing almost lazily through the air, like bumblebees.
Coat, epaulets, gorget, laced hat…roll. Tom, always prepared, had thrust a crusty German roll into his hand, thickly buttered. Grey crammed the last of it into his mouth, shook crumbs from his lapels, and washed it down with coffee—one of the other orderlies had brewed some over a spirit lamp, the smell of it bracing.
Tom was circling him, eyes narrowed in concentration, lest he miss some vital detail of appearance. His round freckled face was anxious, but he said nothing. Grey touched him gently on the shoulder, making him look up.
“Me lord?”
“Thank you, Tom. I’ll go now.” The jumble had almost sorted itself out. Officers were thundering down the wooden staircase, shouting to one another, calling for their ensigns, and the air was filled with the scents of coffee, powder, heel black, hot hair, pipe clay, and a strong odor of fresh piss, both from the chamber pots and from the urine-soaked lumps of stale bread the orderlies used to bring up the shine on gold lace.
Tom swallowed, and stood awkwardly back.
“I’ll have your supper for you, me lord.”
“Thank you,” Grey repeated, and turned to go. He’d reached the door when he heard Tom cry out behind him.
“Me lord! Your dagger!”
He slapped at his waist in reflex, and found the place empty. He whirled on his heel to find Tom there, dagger in hand. He took it with a nod of thanks, and turning, ran down the stairs, tucking the knife into its sheath as he went.
His heart was thumping. In part from the natural atmosphere of excitement that attends a looming battle, in part from the thought that he might have found himself on the field without his dagger. He’d carried it since he was sixteen, and would have felt unarmed without it, pistol and sword notwithstanding.
The fact that he’d forgotten it, he thought, was not a good sign, and he touched the wire-wrapped hilt in an attempt to reassure himself.
Outside, the pigs were still snoring, both river and ditch invisible in a shroud of mist so thick that Grey wondered how the lookouts had ever seen the French troops. The air was fresh, though, with a spattering rain that came and went, and the weather did nothing to allay the spirits of the men.
He rode slowly through the forming columns, Brett and Tarleton foaming with excitement behind him. He felt the same excitement pulse through his own limbs—felt it in waves, coming off the men as they hurtled into position, clanking and cursing.
How does it work? his father had written in his campaign journal, after Sheriffmuir. How do emotions transmit themselves between men, with no gesture, no slightest word spoken? Whether it be confidence and joy, despair, or the fury of attack, there is no evidence of its spread. It is just suddenly there. What can be the mechanism of this instantaneous communication? Grey didn’t know, but he felt it.
“Hoy!” he shouted at the retreating back of a bareheaded soldier. “Hoy, Andrews! Lose something?”
He unhooked the calvary saber he carried and leaned down, neatly catching up the battered tricorn on its point before the hat could be trampled. It clinked; Andrews, like many of the infantry, had crisscrossed the inside of his hat with iron strips, the better to turn a blow.
Nudging Karolus through the throng, Grey deposited the hat neatly on Andrews’s startled head, provoking gales of laughter from the man’s companions. Grey bowed nonchalantly, accepting their salutes, and making no effort to hide his own amusement. It was like wine, the air before a battle, and they were all drunk with anticipation.
They looked well, he thought with approval. Rough, by comparison to the burnished Prussians, but brimming with uncouth spirits and an open desire for the fight.
“Corporal Collet!” he bellowed, and thirty heads snapped round in his direction. The largest—and best—of the companies under his command, he had managed to keep Collet’s company together for more than two years, drilled and brought on with such skill as essentially to act as a single entity. A sight to delight a commander’s heart.
“Sir!” Collet barked, bounding up beside him.
“Take your company to the front, Corporal. Form on the left; you’re the pivot. Wheel on Captain Wilmot’s signal.”
“Sir, yes, sir!” Collet’s seamed face beamed at the honor, and he bounded back to his men, barking orders. The men cheered, and went off at the trot, shoulder to shoulder, like a flock of particularly bloodthirsty sheep.
Noise. Complete confusion, but an orderly confusion. Corporals shouting their companies into order, lieutenants and captains roving to and fro on horseback, minding their divisions. And the hussars who served as messengers, darting swiftly through the throng like minnows through the slow-moving shoals of reddish fish.
A pig burst suddenly out of the shredding mist and galloped in panic through a distant company, causing whoops and shrieks. One of the German officers shot it, and a small band of harpies rushed through the forming ranks to fall upon it with their knives, making the soldiers step round them. Grey sighed, knowing he would at some point be presented with a bill for that pig.
German camp followers. These women—some prostitutes, some wives, and half of them vicious slatterns, regardless of legal status—clung like cockleburs to the army’s arse, following closely even into battle, ready to loot and plunder at the slightest opportunity. God help anyone who fell in their path, Grey thought, watching the butchery.
The sound of bugling cut through the thick air, and Karolus flung back his head with a snort. Grey felt a sudden sharp pang; he would so much have wished to share this with Percy. But there was no time for regret. The army was on the move.
There was no question of stealth. Duke Ferdinand’s combined forces numbered something in excess of thirty-two thousand troops, the French and Austrians forty-seven thousand. It was a straightforward matter, insofar as anything done by an army could be so described, of speed, force, tactics—and will.
A young hussar dashed up to Grey, brimming with excitement and self-importance, delivering a note.
Luck, it said.
Grey smiled and stuffed the note in his pocket. He had sent his own, identical note to Hal a few minutes before. It was their habit, when possible, to wish each other luck before a battle. He valued Hal’s wishing him luck the more, because he knew Hal did not believe in it.
Duke Ferdinand’s plan was novel, and daring: infantry to swing out and encompass the French left flank, the Prussian cavalry to press the advantage, artillery advancing into position to pin the divisions on the right. And the 46th to be in the van of the flanking maneuver.
He chose to carry a cavalry saber, rather than the customary officer’s hanger, both because he liked the weight and because it was more visible. He raised it now and bellowed, “Advance by company! Quick…March!”
Brett and Tarleton took up the cry, which spread to the sergeants and through the lines, and the columns began to move with amazing speed, churning the ground to black mud.
The fog drifted in patches over the marshy ground, but did not clear. In spite of the intermittent rain—repeated bellows of “Keep your powder dry, God damn your eyes!” rang from every quarter of the field in various languages—it was not a cold day, and the men, while damp, were cheerful.
Near the Landwehr, he pulled Karolus a little to the side, watching his men stream by, listening to the noises becoming audible from the French and Austrian lines forming on the other side of the dyke. The Landwehr itself was a formidable barrier—two water-filled ditches, each some ten feet wide, with a massive central bank, fifteen feet in width, between them—but not a very wide one. A thick growth of trees and bushes edged the dyke here; he couldn’t see the enemy through mist and leaves, but he could hear them easily—French, he thought.
Shouts, cheers, the distant creak of caisson wheels as artillery wheeled into position…then these were drowned in the boom of drums, as Ferdinand’s Prussian cavalry came within earshot on Grey’s side of the Landwehr, led by their drum horse. Dragon-Riders, they called themselves, with that typical German inclination for drama. They looked it, though. Tall men all, straight in the saddle and beautiful in their glory, and his heart was stirred, despite himself.
Karolus was stirred, too; he jerked, snorted, and made as though to join them. He had once been a cavalry horse—loved drums and adored parades. Grey reined him in, but the stallion continued to dance and toss his head.
Karolus was stirring up the ensigns’ horses, too, and Grey was not sure that Brett and Tarleton could keep their own mounts under control. Clicking his tongue, he pulled Karolus’s head round, and rode a little way into the trees along the Landwehr, trailed by his ensigns.
He could still hear the cavalry drums, but the horses had quieted a little, with the others out of sight. Brett’s horse bobbed his head, wanting to drink from the ditch, and Grey nodded at Brett to allow it.
“Not too much,” he said automatically, his attention divided between the sounds behind them and those to his left, where the other British regiments were massing to attack the French right flank. The double ditches of the Landwehr were full to the banks, swelled by the recent rains, and the water ran muddy and quick below him, grass trailing in the current.
“What’s that?” he heard Brett say, startled, and looked where his ensign was pointing. Several tall, pointed shapes were dimly visible among the trees on the other side of the dyke. He blinked, and made sense of what he was seeing just as one of the shapes flung back its arm and hurled something in his direction.
“Grenades!” he roared. “Get clear, get clear!”
The first one struck a few feet to his right and exploded, sending pottery shards in all directions. Some struck Karolus, who shied violently, then bucked and reared as more grenades struck the bank between the ditches—bright flashes from the ones that went off, others rolling like fallen apples, smothered and harmless in the dirt, a few with live fuses hissing like snakes.
Grey grappled the reins in one hand, fumbling for his pistol. There was a sudden feeling of warmth down his face, the sting of blood running into one eye. He got the pistol and fired blind. There were bangs nearby and the smell of powder; Brett and Tarleton were firing, too.
A thunder of hooves; Brett’s mount, riderless, fled past Grey. Where…? He glanced round—there. Brett had been thrown, was rising from the ground, smeared with mud.
“Get back!” Grey shouted, pulling Karolus’s head around. The grenadiers were pulling back, too, out of pistol range, but one lucky last throw landed a live one in the grass at Brett’s feet, a blue-clay sphere, fuse sparking.
The boy stared at it, transfixed.
In sheer reflex, Grey spurred the horse and made for Brett, struck him glancing, and knocked him away. No time to think, to swerve—Karolus shifted suddenly, bunching under him, and jumped the ditch. Hit the bank with a jolt that jarred Grey’s teeth, flexed once more and leapt the second ditch, skidding and floundering as he landed in wet grass, flinging his hapless rider up onto his neck.
A hand grabbed Grey’s arm and wrenched him off the horse. He fell, struggling, throwing elbows and knees in all directions, tore loose and rolled, yelling, “Lauf! Lauf!”
A yelp from the man who had grabbed for Karolus’s bridle, then the drumming of hooves as the horse galloped off into the mist. Grey had no time to worry about him; the grenadier who’d pulled him off was crouching, a wary look on his face and a dagger in his hand. Three or four more lurked behind him, wide-eyed with surprise.
“Surrender,” the grenadier said in French. “You are my prisoner.”
Grey hadn’t breath to spare in reply. He’d dropped his saber in the fall, but it lay on the ground, a few feet away. Gasping and swallowing, he gestured briefly to the grenadier for patience, walked over, and picked up the sword. Then he gulped air, swung it two-handed round his head, and, lunging forward, struck at the grenadier’s neck with the fixed intent of removing his head. He halfway succeeded, and the shock of it nearly dislocated every bone in his arms.
The grenadier fell backward, the spurting blood from his neck failing to obscure the look of total astonishment on his face. Grey staggered, barely kept a grip on his sword, but knew that to lose it was to die on the spot.
Two of the grenadiers fell to their knees, trying to aid their stricken comrade. Another was backing away, mouth open beneath his mustache in horrified surprise. And the last, God damn him, was shrieking for help, meanwhile rummaging frantically in his bag. Grey began to back away, bloody saber at the ready.
Grenadiers weren’t schooled in hand-to-hand combat; they didn’t normally need to be. But there were plenty of troops nearby who were, and dozens of them would arrive in seconds. Grey dashed a sleeve across his face, trying to clear the blood from his eye. His scalp was stinging now; a shard from the first grenade must have struck him.
Meanwhile, the grenadier had drawn two more grenades from his bag, clay spheres each the size of an orange, filled with gunpowder. He carried a coil of hissing slow-match in a brass tube at his belt; the smoke from it wreathed his features, and he coughed, but didn’t blink.
Black eyes fixed on Grey, he touched the fuses of the grenades to the slow-match, one and then the other. Sweat and blood were running down Grey’s face, stinging his eyes.
Jesus. At six feet, he could scarcely miss. Grey saw the man’s lips move, counting.
Grey turned and ran for his life. There was a roar of voices behind him, and the loud sharp pop! of an exploding grenade. Small objects pinged hard against his back and thighs, stung his legs but failed to penetrate the leather jerkin.
They were all after him now. He could hear the thump of feet and grunts of effort as they heaved their grenades. Terror lent wings to his feet, and he zigzagged frantically through the trees, the flash-bang of explosions shaking the bushes and driving rooks and blackbirds shrieking into the clouds above.
He skidded to a halt and nearly fell. Oh, Christ.
A company of French infantry turned surprised faces toward him, then, as comprehension dawned, several of them slung the muskets from their shoulders and began hastily to load. No way past them. Beyond them…beyond them lay rank upon rank upon rank of soldiers, a serried mass of blue and white.
A tremendous boom seemed to shake the trees, and a cannonball smashed through the brush on the far side of the dyke, no more than a hundred yards from where he stood. The battle had begun.
Lord John Grey sketched a gesture of salute toward the startled infantry, turned right, and amid a belated hail of musket balls and the occasional grenade, scrambled up the bank, and jumped into the Landwehr.
He couldn’t swim. Not that it mattered. He was wearing more than a stone’s weight of equipment, and he sank like a stone, bubbles gushing up through his clothes. Hit the muddy bottom. Bent his knees in panic and jumped, to rise no more than a foot or so. Sank back and felt his boots sink deep in the silt. He struggled blind in the murky water, tried frantically to shuck his coat, realized finally that he was still gripping his sword, and dropped it. His chest burned, swelling with the vain, irresistible desire to breathe.
He got the coat half off, and churned what breath there was in his lungs up and down the column of his throat, in hopes of extracting the last vestige of air from it. Scrabbled for the buckle of his belt, couldn’t get it loose, went back to yanking at his coat. Could hold his precious breath no longer, and let it go in a blubbering, bubbling cloud of relief and regret.
He was still mindlessly trying to get the damned coat off. It was stuck, wrenched askew over his shoulders, and he thrashed about in suffocating frenzy, fighting the murk, the mud, the weight of the water, the coat, the heavy boots, his straining chest, his goddamn cartridge box, for Christ’s bloody sake, whose strap had got round his neck and was going to strangle him before he drow—bloody hell!
Something struck his hand, hard. Panicked images of sharks, fish teeth, blood—he jerked back.
Idiot, he thought, with what faint vestige of sanity remained in his darkening mind. You’re in a fucking ditch.
And with that, reached out quite calmly and took hold of the thing his hand had struck. A tree root, curving out of the bank. Waved his other hand gently around, found a bloody tangle of roots—mats and strings and woody stems, a fucking plethora of roots. Pulled the cartridge box off over his head, dropped it, took a good grip, pulled one boot from the muck, and began to climb.
His face broke the surface in a rush of air so glorious that he didn’t care whether that breath might be his last.
He clung like a snail for several minutes, limbs trembling and heart pounding from the struggle, just breathing. Then, as his mind cleared, he realized that he had come up beneath an overhanging shelf of grassy earth. If any marksmen lingered on the bank above, it was no matter; he was invisible.
There was a lot of noise near at hand, but none of it directly overhead, and from what he could make out, none of it concerned with him. Orders were being shouted in French; the infantry company above was about to depart. He put his forehead against the cool mud of the bank and closed his eyes, waiting. Breathing.
He regretted the loss of his saber. The pistol was still in his belt, God knew how—but soaked and useless. That left the dagger as his only usable weapon. Though given his position, he reflected, it probably didn’t matter.
He was on the wrong side of the Landwehr, crouched under a bush, sodden and cold, with several thousand enemy soldiers a few dozen yards away. No, it didn’t matter much.
Cautious peeping through the bushes, together with what he could hear, gave him a general notion of the shape of the battle. Most of the artillery was to his left—the French right flank. The cannon were firing sporadically from both sides, still estimating range. A good deal of noise in the distance to his right, and brief clouds of powder smoke rising white as volleys were fired. Not a lot; no real engagement there yet. The ruse had worked, then; Clermont had been taken by surprise. Drums in the distance, a brief tattoo. The cavalry was still moving.
So Ferdinand’s troops were on their way around the left flank, as planned, the French and Austrians caught in confusion, trying to turn to meet the attack. That was where he ought to be, commanding his men, in the thick of it. He glanced above him at the opposite bank in frustration—empty. God knew what was happening. Brett and Tarleton must have rushed off at once to tell someone—who? he wondered. His blood ran cold at the thought of Ewart Symington taking his command. He could only hope that the two ensigns had got to his brother first.
He didn’t bother worrying about what Hal would do to him. If he survived long enough to see his brother again, he’d think about it then.
Three choices: sit here shivering and hope no one stumbled over him; walk out and surrender to the nearest French officer, if he managed to do that without being killed first; or try to make it to the end of the Landwehr, where he could cross the canal and rejoin his own troops.
Right. One choice. He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to discard his sodden red coat, but in the end, kept it. Coatless, he’d likely be shot for a deserter by either side, and it was possible that someone on the English side would spot him and lend aid.
His scalp was tender and still oozing—his fingers came away red when he prodded it—but at least blood wasn’t pouring down his face anymore. With a last reconnaissance, he left the shelter of his bush, crawling through the thin screen of foliage.
He wanted desperately to go right, to find his own men. But they were nearly a mile away by now, and already fighting, if all was well. To the left, it was no more than two hundred yards to the near end of the Landwehr, and from what he could hear, the fighting there was mostly artillery. Much safer for a single man, moving on foot; if he didn’t get close enough to a French gun crew for them to shoot him with their pistols, the odds of being struck by a random cannonball were reasonably low.
All went well, bar minor alarms, until he came in sight of the footbridge that crossed the canal at the end of the Landwehr. A group of women was sitting on it, watching the battle with avid attention.
Camp followers by their dress, and speaking German—but he couldn’t distinguish their accents as Prussian or Austrian, God damn it. If they were Prussian, they likely wouldn’t molest a British officer. Austrian, though—he remembered that pig, and the women’s sharp knives. Only a couple of hours since the pig had died; it seemed much longer.
He tightened his face into a forbidding glower, put a hand on his useless pistol, and walked toward the women. They fell silent, and five pairs of eyes fixed on him, sharp and bright with calculation. One of them smiled and curtsied to him—but her eyes never left him, and he felt the ripple of anticipation run through the others.
“Guten Tag, mein Herr,” she said. “You have been swimming?”
They all cackled, in a show of bad teeth and worse breath.
He nodded coolly to them, but didn’t speak.
“What are you doing here, English pig?” another asked in German, smiling so hard that her cheeks bunched. “You are a coward, that you run from the fight?”
He stared blankly at her, nodded again. Two of them moved suddenly, as though to give him room to pass. Their hands were out of sight, buried in their skirts, and he could feel the excitement shivering in the air between them, a sort of fever that passed among them.
He smiled pleasantly at one as he passed, then took his hand off the pistol, bunched his fist, and punched her just under the jaw. The women all shrieked, save the one he’d hit, who simply fell backward over the low wall of the bridge. He ran, seeing from the corner of his eye the woman’s skirt, belled like a flower, floating in the water.
Something went thunk! behind him, and he glanced back over his shoulder. A large piece of ordnance had struck the bridge dead center—half the bridge was gone, and so were most of the women. One was left, staring at him from the far side, the water rushing past beneath her feet, her eyes and mouth round with shock.
He ran for the gun that had destroyed the bridge, trusting that his uniform would keep him from being shot. His lungs were laboring, the wet clothes weighing him down, but at least he was near his own lines.
It was a small battery, three cannon, one of the gun crews English—he saw the distinctive blue of the uniforms. No one was shooting at him, but active guns on the French side were keeping them busy; a cannonball hurtled past him, low and deadly, before crashing through a small tree, leaving the butchered stump quivering.
He was stumbling, barely able to breathe, but near enough. Near enough. He staggered to a halt and bent over, hands on his knees as he gasped for air. Men were shouting nearby, the rhythmic bark of a Prussian commander punctuated by an English voice, shrill with passion, screaming. He wasn’t sure whether the screams were directed at the enemy or the English gun crew, and looked to see.
The crew. Something had happened to demoralize them—a heavy ball dropped within ten feet of him, sinking into the earth, and his flesh shook with the impact. Their lieutenant was shrieking at them, trying to rally them…. Grey wiped a sleeve across his face, and turned to look back across the river. The woman on the shattered bridge was gone.
A voice spoke suddenly behind him in a tone of absolute amazement, and he turned toward the lieutenant who had been screaming an instant before.
A cannonball came skipping across the ground like a stone across a pond, struck a buried rock, hopped high, and smashed through the lieutenant’s head, removing it.
Blood fountained from the still-standing body, spraying several feet into the air. Ropes of blood lashed Grey’s face and chest, blinding him, shocking hot through his wet clothes. Gasping, he dashed a sleeve across his eyes, clearing them in time to see the lieutenant’s body fall, arms thrown wide in boneless grace. The sword he had been holding rolled from his grasp, silver in the grass.
Grey seized it in reflex, and whirled on the gun crew, who had begun to edge away from the smoking cannon. The bombardier with the linstock was nearest; Grey fetched the man a blow across the side of the head with the flat of his blade that sent him reeling back across the gun’s barrel, then bounded at the rammer, who stared at him as though seeing Satan sprung from hell, eyes white and terrified in a sooty face.
“Pick it up!” Grey roared, stabbing the sword at the ramrod that lay fallen on the grass. “Do it, damn your eyes! You—back to your duty, God damn you—go back, I say!” One of the loaders had tried to slip past him. The man stopped, frozen, eyes rolling to and fro in panic, seeking escape.
Grey grabbed the man by the shoulder, pushed him half round, and kneed him in the buttocks, shouting. There was blood in his mouth; he choked and spat, kicked at the loader, who was fumbling halfheartedly at the pile of cartridges beneath a canvas sheet. The sponger had already fled; he could see the man’s blue coat bobbing up and down as he ran.
Grey lunged in that direction by instinct, but realized that he could not pursue the deserter and turned instead ferociously on the remnant crew.
“Load!” he barked, and snatched the linstock from the bombardier, motioning the soldier to replace the man who had fled. Sponger and rammer fell to their work at once, with no more than a hasty glance at Grey, blood-soaked and vicious. The erstwhile bombardier was clumsy, but willing. Grey barked them through the maneuver, once, again, forcing them, guiding them, and then felt them begin to drop back into the accustomed rhythm of the work and pick up speed, gradually losing their terror in the encompassing labor of serving the gun.
His throat was raw. The wind whipped away half his words and what was left was barely intelligible—but he saw the crew respond to the lash of his voice, and kept shouting.
Cannon were firing close at hand but he couldn’t tell whether they were friend or foe; clouds of black powder smoke rolled over them, obscuring everything.
His soaked clothes had gone cold again, and it was raining. He had taken the coil of smoking slow-match from the bombardier and tied it in its bag to his own belt. His fingers were stiff, clumsy; he had difficulty forcing the lighted fuse into the linstock, but forced himself to keep the rhythm, shouting orders in a voice that cracked like broken iron. Sponge. Vent. Load cartridge. Ram. Load wadding. Ram. Check vent. Powder. Fall back! And the hissing small flame at the end of the linstock coming down toward the touchhole, sure and graceful, with no sense at all that his own hand guided it.
That moment of suspended animation and the crash and buck of the gun. The first one left him deafened; he knew he was still shouting only because his throat hurt. He snatched a lump of damp wadding from the ground and hastily crammed some of it into his ears. It didn’t help much.
The rain grew momentarily heavier, cutting through the smoke and taste of blood with a freshness that eased his aching chest. The powder, was it covered? Yes, yes, the powder monkey was still at his post, a scorched-looking boy wide-eyed with fright but holding the canvas tight over the powder kegs, against the pull of the wind.
“Sponge piece!” he shouted, and heard the word muffled inside his skull as though it came from some vast distance, far away. “Load piece! Ram!”
He spared a moment to look before touching off the next shot—so far, he had been firing with not the slightest thought for attitude or effect—and forced himself not to blink as the gun went off with a jump like a live thing and the thunder that made you feel as though the ground shook, though in fact it was your own flesh shaking.
The shot soared high, came down a dozen yards short of a patch of French artillery—smoke sucked suddenly away by the wind, he saw the red of their uniforms and the belch of black smoke from the French gun’s barrel. The shot came wide of his own position and he made a hasty calculation of wind, already shouting orders to adjust the trunnions, lower the barrel…one degree? Two?
Now he saw the milling blur of white, green, and blue, infantry massing behind the French cannon.
Dare he try for that interesting maneuver whereby a cannonball was fired deliberately low, with the intent of bouncing repeatedly through an enemy phalanx? There was a seething mass of French and Austrian uniforms beyond the gun, perfect…. He would think the ground too soft with damp, save that he’d just seen the same technique employed successfully upon it. He gritted his teeth, but could not help but glance at the fallen lieutenant, noticing only now that the body had fallen at the foot of one of the stones marking the Stations of the Cross. “IX,” it said, but he had no time to try to make out the picture on it.
“Five!” he shouted, an eye on the moving French line, “and one degree west!” The rammer at once jammed his rod in the barrel and the powder monkey ran to lend his strength, as the loaders jerked out the trunnions and put them in again, then threw themselves against the cannon’s limber, turning the barrel just enough…
“Load!”
The rain came and went in gusty squalls; it had stopped for a moment and he wiped his face again on his sleeve, feeling some liquid—water, sweat, blood—drip down inside his coat from his queued hair.
“Fire!”
By God, it worked, and a cheer went up from his crew as they saw the ball hop murderously across the field, knocking Frenchmen down like ninepins as it went.
“Again, again!” he bellowed, striking his fist on the breech. The sponger was sponging like a maniac, not waiting for the order, and the loaders were already passing the next cartridge to the mouth.
“Down!” he shouted, and fell flat along with the crew as a shot in reply thudded into the ground six feet away. They rose up again, yelling like demons and shaking their fists. The French gun crew was hopping up and down like fleas, gleeful at the effect of their shot. Grey was obliged to bellow and slap one man across the back with the flat of his sword again to bring his own crew to their senses.
“Swivel! Swivel to bear on them! Hurry, damn you!”
Suddenly realizing their precarious position of opportunity and peril, his crew fell to like fiends, swinging the barrel to bear directly upon the French cannon. The French abruptly stopped cheering and began hastily to serve their own gun.
The French had the range already, were sure to beat them—Grey snatched the useless pistol from his belt and charged the French position, shrieking like a madman and waving both pistol and sword. The ground seemed to pitch and sway beneath his feet, a blur of grass and mud.
It was perhaps two hundred yards between the English and the French cannons. He was close enough to see the Frenchmen’s mouths hanging open when their officer suddenly realized what Grey was about and groped madly for his own pistol. Grey promptly turned and ran like a hare back toward his own crew, leaping low bushes and zigzagging, seeking cover in the drifting rags of powder smoke. He couldn’t tell whether the Frenchman was firing at him or no; the air cracked with random fire and the sound of bugles. Goddamned cavalry, he thought. Always in the bloody way—
“Duck!” came a faint cry, and he threw himself headlong in the sopping grass just as his own gun spoke near at hand. Without looking to see the possible effect of the shot, he scrambled up into a crouch and scuttled the rest of the way, arriving winded and wheezing to the cheers of his men.
“Once more,” he panted. “Give it them again!”
The men were already at it; the linstock was thrust into his hand and he fumbled for the fuse, but his hand was shaking too badly to manage. The powder monkey seized the wobbling end of the slow-match and thrust it through the hole, slashing off the bit of fuse so hastily that the knife tip scratched Grey’s hand, though he didn’t feel it.
“Fall back!” he gasped, and lowered the hissing match to the touchhole.
There was an instant of breathless expectancy, and then the world disappeared in a blast of fire and darkness.
He woke to a sensation of drowning and gasped for air, then froze, gripped by a pain so intense that he actually saw it, as a physical entity separate from himself. A red thing, shot with black, pulsing and whirling like a pinwheel. Sharp—he felt his lungs bursting and had to breathe, would have screamed if he’d had any breath, the knife edge of the spinning thing slicing through his flesh like butter. It cut straight through his chest and pressed him to the ground with a crushing weight.
“Major! Major!”
Someone touched him, and he flung out a hand, blind, grappling for help, God, help, he couldn’t breathe…
Something smaller than the pain pushed him, hard, and he was suddenly on his side, doubled up, coughing, jerking in agony with each involuntary cough, but had to, couldn’t not, couldn’t stop, and spikes of air stabbed his chest coming in, as though he’d breathed in a mass of drawing pins, went out in a blinding sheet of white-hot pain and black smoke.
“Major!”
“Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit!” someone said nearby.
He was in complete agreement with this, but couldn’t say so. He was still coughing, but not as much; saliva was running from his mouth, making runnels in the soot, and he seemed to be making a whimpering noise with each jerked breath.
Hands on him, he felt them, frantic thumps and grabs, pulling at his coat, his limbs. He made a frenzied noise of protest and felt bone ends grate—Christ, he heard them grate—and a mass of green and brown and blue and red spun past, and he realized dimly that his eyes were open.
He blinked, tears streaming, saw the black spikes of his clotted lashes and cold gray stone by his face.
Jesus Falls the Third Time, he thought. Poor bastard.
Someone was bellowing overhead, meaningless sounds. Cannon was thumping somewhere near; he felt the ground shake, felt his heart stop with each crash, and wished it would stop once and for all, it hurt so when it started again….
“Jesus! Look at the blood of him! He’ll never last!”
“His arm, let me bind his arm—”
“No use, no use, it’s blown clean off!”
“It’s not, I saw his fingers move, back off—back off, I said, God damn your eyes!”
The voices seemed to come through a fog of noise, something rushing, like a waterfall that filled his ears. He still felt the thump of the guns, but that, too, had faded somehow, seemed safely distant. The pain had drawn in upon itself, and sat sullen in his chest, glowing like a lump of metal flung from a blacksmith’s forge, molten and heavy.
He hoped his heart would not come too close to it. He could see his heart, too, a pulsing dark-red thing, almost black by contrast with the brilliant crimson of the pain.
They were saying something now about the gun—were they fighting the gun?—but he couldn’t focus on the words; they all rushed past, part of a waterfall, loud in his ears. Water…warm water. It was rushing over him, his clothes felt sodden, he could feel the trickle of it down his neck, over his ribs, the feel of wet cloth stuck to his belly.
“Oh, Jesus,” said a voice above, despairing. “So much blood.”
He was in a room somewhere, filled with light. Wounded, he’d been wounded. By reflex, he grabbed for his balls. Their reassuring presence compensated in some measure for the rending pain that shot through his body with the movement, but it was still enough to make him gasp.
Something moved across the light, and someone bent over him.
“Me lord!” Tom Byrd’s voice came loud in his ear, halfway between fright and hope. “Quick, quick! Get the earl—he’s awake!”
“Earl?” Grey croaked. “What…Hal?”
“Your brother, aye. He’ll be right here, me lord, don’t you trouble yourself. D’ye want water, me lord?”
He wanted water somewhat more than heaven, earth, or the riches of the fabled East. He was dimly aware of someone arguing about whether he should be allowed to have any, but his precious Tom snarled like a badger and elbowed whoever it was away.
Cool pottery touched his mouth, and he gulped, half choking.
“Slow, me lord,” Tom said, moving the cup away, and put a hand behind his head to steady him. “Slow as does it. That’s it, now. Lap it like a dog, now, just a bit at a time.”
He lapped, urgent for more, trying to will the water into the parched tissues of his mouth and throat, tasting the faint silver of blood from a cracked lip. For a brief period of ecstasy, nothing existed save the bliss of drinking water. The cup was drawn away, though, and Tom lowered his head gently to the pillow, leaving him blinking at the ceiling, panting shallowly.
He’d ignored the pain in his chest and arm for the sake of water, but now realized that he could not draw a full breath. The left side of his body seemed encased in something solid, and he recalled quite suddenly hearing someone say that his arm had been blown off.
He jerked, trying to raise his head to look, and reached across his body with his right hand.
“Oh, Jesus!” Colored lights danced before his eyes and a cold sweat broke out on his body—but his left arm was there, thank God. It was still attached, though plainly not in good shape. He tried wiggling the fingers, which proved a mistake.
“Don’t move, me lord!” Tom sounded alarmed. “You mustn’t. Doctor says as it could kill you, if you move!”
He didn’t doubt it. The pain was back, grimly sitting on his chest, driving the breath out of him, trying patiently to stop his heart.
He lay still, eyes closed and teeth gritted, breathing in sips of air. He could smell pigs, ripe and near at hand. It must be one of the farmhouses near the may.
“Tom. What…happened?”
“They said the gun blew up, me lord. But the battle’s won,” he added, though Grey didn’t really care at the moment. “Mr. Brett nearly drowned in the dyke, but Mr. Tarleton fished him out.”
There were other people in the room now, he didn’t know how many. Voices, murmuring gravely. Tom was babbling nonsense in his ear, in a patent attempt to keep him from hearing what was being said. He raised his right hand, but let it fall, too exhausted to try to shush Tom. Besides, he thought he didn’t really want to hear what they were saying.
The voices stopped and went away. Tom fell silent, but stayed by him, dabbing sweat from his face and neck, now and then wetting his lips with water from the cup.
He could feel the fever starting. It was a sly thing, barely noticeable by contrast with the pain, but he was aware of it. He felt that he should fight, concentrate his mind to drive it back, but felt too tired to do anything but go on breathing, one short, shallow gasp at a time.
Perhaps he fell asleep, perhaps his attention only wandered. He was aware all at once that the voices were back, and Hal with them.
“All right, John?” Hal’s hand took hold of his sound right arm, squeezing.
“No.”
The hand squeezed harder.
“You see, my lord?” Another voice came from his other side. He cracked one eye open, far enough to see an earnest cove with a long face and a stern mouth, this downturned in displeasure at Grey’s state—or perhaps his existence. The name popped into his mind, sudden as if the face had acquired a label—Longstreet. Mr. Longstreet, army surgeon.
“Shit,” he said, and closed his eyes. Hal squeezed him again, evidently thinking this remark a response to the pain.
Another of the voices loomed up at the foot of the bed, this one speaking German. Burly sort in a green uniform, jabbing his finger at Grey in a definite sort of way.
“…must amputate, as I said.”
He was barely lucid enough to hear this, and flapped the uninjured arm in a feeble attempt at defense.
“…rather die.” Hoarse and cracked, it didn’t sound like his voice, and for a moment, he wondered who’d said that. Hal was scowling at him, though, attention momentarily diverted from the doctor.
The lining of his mouth stuck to his teeth, and he worked his tongue in a frantic effort to generate enough saliva to speak. His body convulsed in the effort and he reared up from the bed, fire roaring up the left side of his body.
“Don’t…let ’em,” he said to his brother’s swimming face, and fell back into darkness, hearing cries of alarm.
The next time he came round, it was to find himself bound to a bedstead. He checked hastily, but his left arm was still amongst those present. It had been splinted and wrapped in bandages and it hurt amazingly, much worse than the last time he’d been awake, but he wasn’t inclined to complain.
He was mildly surprised to hear that the surgeons were all still arguing—in German, this time. One of them was insisting to Hal that it was futile, as “he”—Grey himself, he supposed—was undoubtedly going to die. Another—Longstreet, he thought, though he also spoke in German—was insisting that Hal must leave the surgeons to their work.
“I’m not leaving,” Hal said, close by. “And he isn’t dying. Are you?” he inquired, seeing that Grey was awake.
“No.” Some kind soul had wetted his lips again; the word came out in a whisper, but it was audible.
“Good. Don’t,” Hal advised him, then looked up. “Byrd, go and guard the door. No one is to come in here until I say so. Do you understand?”
“Yes, me lord!” The hand on Grey’s shoulder lifted and he heard Tom Byrd’s boots hurrying across the floor, the opening and closing of the door.
It occurred to Grey, with complete calm and utter clarity, that it would be extremely convenient for a number of people—not least himself—if he were to die as a result of his injuries.
Percy? He felt no more than a dim ache at thought of Percy, but retained that odd clarity of thought. Most of all to Percy. Custis was dead. If he were to die, as well, there would be no one to testify at the court-martial, and such a charge could not be pressed without witnesses.
Would they let Percy go on that account? Probably so. His career would be finished, of course. But the army would vastly prefer to dismiss him quietly than to have the ballyhoo and scandal of a trial for sodomy.
“Do you suppose it was my fault, as he said?” he asked his father, who was standing beside the bed, looking down at him.
“I shouldn’t think so.” His father rubbed an index finger beneath his nose, as he generally did when thinking. “You didn’t force him to do it.”
“But was he right, do you think? Did he only do it because I couldn’t give him what he needed?”
The duke’s brows drew together, baffled.
“No,” he said, shaking his head in reproof. “Not logical. Every man chooses his own way. No one else can be responsible.”
“What’s not logical?”
Grey blinked, to find Hal frowning down at him.
“What’s not logical?” his brother repeated.
Grey tried to reply, but found the effort of speaking so great that he only closed his eyes.
“Right,” Hal went on. “There are fragments of metal in your chest; they’re going to remove them.” He hesitated, then his fingers closed gently over Grey’s.
“I’m sorry, Johnny,” he said, low-voiced. “I don’t dare let them give you opium. It’s going to hurt a lot.”
“Are…you under th-the im…pression that this is…news to me?”
The effort of speaking made his head swim and gave him a nearly irresistible urge to cough, but it lightened Hal’s expression a bit, so was worth it.
“Good lad,” Hal whispered, and squeezed his hand briefly, letting go then in order to fumble something out of his pocket. This proved, when Grey could fix his wavering gaze on it, to be a limp bit of leather, looking as though the rats had been at it.
“It was Father’s,” Hal said, tenderly inserting it between Grey’s teeth. “I found it amongst his old campaign things. Ancestral teeth marks and all,” he added, making an unconvincing attempt at a reassuring grin. “Don’t know for sure whose teeth they were, though.”
Grey munched the leather gingerly, just as pleased that its presence saved him the effort of further reply. The taste of it was oddly pleasant, and he had a brief memory of Gustav the dachshund, gnawing contentedly at his bit of beef hide.
The picture reminded him of other things, though—the last time he had seen von Namtzen and the bitter smell of the chrysanthemums, the still more bitter smell of Percy’s sweat and the night-soil bucket—he turned his head violently, away from everything. And then there was a looming presence over him, and he shivered suddenly as the sheet was lifted away.
His attention was distracted by a snicking sound. He turned his head and saw Hal checking the priming on the pistol he had just cocked. Hal sat down on a stool, set the pistol on his knee, and gave Longstreet a look of cold boredom.
“Get on, then,” he said.
There was a sudden chill as the dressing on Grey’s chest was lifted, and he heard the sharp-edged hiss of metal and the surgeon’s deep, impatient sigh. Hal’s fingers tightened, grasping his.
“Just hold on, Johnny,” Hal said in a steady voice. “I won’t let go.”