02 - Keane's Challenge

by Iain Gale

  Contents

  Cover Page

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Historical Note

  First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Heron Books

  An imprint of Quercus Editions Ltd

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  London

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2014 Iain Gale

  The moral right of Iain Gale to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  HB ISBN 978 1 78087 364 0

  TPB ISBN 978 1 78206 092 5

  EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78087 365 7

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures and places, are the product of the author’s imagination.

  You can find this and many other great books at:

  www.quercusbooks.co.uk

  Also by Iain Gale

  James Keane series

  KEANE’S COMPANY

  FOUR DAYS IN JUNE

  A novel of Waterloo

  Jack Steel series

  MAN OF HONOUR

  RULES OF WAR

  BROTHERS IN ARMS

  Peter Lamb series

  THE BLACK JACKALS

  JACKALS’ REVENGE

  ALAMEIN

  For

  Florence, Rosie and Issy

  1

  A dozen men sat low in their saddles amid the tall pines and stared at the road which wound about the hillside down below them. The sun shone through the trees and the air was heavy with the scent of pine, borne on a slight breeze, but otherwise the day was still. One of the men patted the neck of his horse, which had been startled by some movement close by: a snake perhaps. But not one of the horsemen spoke a word, and when a noise came to them at last it was that for which they had been waiting: the sound of iron-shod horses’ hooves on the hard, baked earth of the road. The sound of cavalry. The sound of the French.

  Captain James Keane stood up in his stirrups and rose slightly in the saddle, straining to listen, trying to estimate the numbers of the approaching horsemen. Not enough for a squadron. A troop certainly. A company at most. Sixty men. That would do, he thought.

  They could hear the jingle of harness now and the whinnying of the fast-approaching horses. And with it the occasional word or two of command, called out in French.

  And then they came into view, the sun glinting on the polished brass helmets of the leading troopers: a half-troop of green-coated French dragoons, trotting ahead in skirmish order. From the sweat-flecked flanks of their mounts Keane could see that they had been riding hard and fast for some time, and as he had predicted they would, had slowed down only when they had reached this part of the road where the climb would have made their pace impossible. A trot was the best they could manage now.

  The leading party rode, well spaced out, on either side of the road, their carbines drawn, their eyes sweeping the track from side to side. Keane could sense the fear and apprehension in their minds. They were right to be afraid. Behind the scouts rode the main body of the dragoons and with them a solitary, blue-coated horseman. Anyone might have supposed that with an escort of such a size this man in blue must surely be a general or some dignitary. But closer observation revealed that his rank was that of a mere captain of infantry. Across his horse’s sweating flanks were draped two leather saddlebags and these were the reason for the escort. Keane knew he was a courier, carrying orders and messages from the French high command to officers in the field, and since the French had invaded Portugal the previous year the number of men in any such courier’s escort had grown steadily as the attacks on them had escalated.

  The mountains were teeming with guerrillas, a people’s army of peasants and ex-soldiers that had risen up to drive off the invader, and over the past months their attacks had become bolder and more confident and the guerrillas ever more brutal in their treatment of their captives. Keane had seen the inhuman horror of it at first hand. He was under orders to find and intercept any French courier that he could, in particular before the guerrillas got their hands on them and tortured them to death. Quite apart from such barbaric treatment being meted out to a fellow officer, it was far better for intelligence purposes to retrieve any courier alive than merely be handed the bloodied papers that he had carried. Now he had that rare chance.

  *

  Keane knew that he and his men had not yet been seen and that timing was vital. He nodded to the man on his left, a wiry youth who, putting his hands to his mouth, gave the call of a wild bird. One of the dragoons looked up at the noise but did not see them and thought nothing of it. He looked away and then, perhaps thinking the better of it, glanced again towards where the sound had come from, thinking that he might have seen a flash of sunlight, reflected on steel. But by then it was too late for him to save his life.

  *

  The dragoons rounded the bend in the road and, sensing something wrong, stopped in their tracks. The lead cavalryman shouted something. But it was only half finished before his head exploded, as a well-aimed bullet smashed into his temple. There were other shouts and Keane saw two of the dragoons raise their carbines to fire as the others went to draw their sabres, knowing sensibly that now that would be the only way to save their lives: with sword against sword. Then, from Keane’s left, on the road below, with a great roar, a mass of cavalry swept towards the dragoons. Blue-coated and wearing the distinctive dark brown busby of the hussar, they swung their razor-edged, curved light cavalry sabres above their heads and yelled as they spurred towards the French.

  But their war cry, though familiar to Keane, was not that of Spain or Britain. It was the guttural roar of ‘Gott Mit Uns’ that rose above the trees, as King George’s loyal Hanoverians took death to the French.

  Keane did not wait to watch the fighting but, turning to his right, sought out his sergeant.

  ‘Sarn’t Ross?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Down the hill. With me.’

  Pulling hard against the reins to turn his mount’s head, Keane spurred his horse, pacing, down the slope and, sabre in hand, led his men out of the trees. Most of the dragoons had ridden to the front, to face the oncoming German attack, and only a skeleton guard now remained with the courier. Now Keane and his men came down hard upon them, yelling like the banshee. Keane careered into a green-coated cavalryman, knocking him back as his horse, used to the fury of battle and as keen as her master, kicked and butted hard into the other man’s mount. The dragoon was pushed off balance and struggled to stay in the saddle then, swinging wildly, he drove his long, straight Klingenthal blade towards Keane. It missed him entirely and, without bothering to parry, Keane cut to the left with his own weapon and connected with the man’s arm, nearly severing it close to the shoulder. The dragoon screamed and at last fell from his horse, which reared and scrambled down the hill, trampling the body of h
is dying master.

  Keane carried on. All around him his men were engaged with the enemy now, but their surprise had been total and the advantage was theirs. He hacked at a green-coated back, left the man for dead, then for an instant caught himself wondering how the Germans were faring on their left. Seconds later he found himself facing a tall dragoon sergeant who smiled at him knowingly through yellow teeth before lunging at his chest. Keane parried with a stroke to the right which deflected the blade, but in doing so felt the full force of the man’s cut: strong and powerful against his blade.

  Recovering, he made his own attack at the man’s neck and was parried in turn with a skill that caught him off guard. This man was good, better than most French troopers he had met in combat, marrying a real finesse at swordplay with formidable strength. He was a veteran, Keane guessed, who must have fought through the revolutionary wars and earned his stripes in the blood of battle. The dragoon came at him again, with a stroke to the left, and Keane met it just in time. His riposte was clumsy but perhaps on that account it hit home and the man winced as Keane’s sabre caught him in the ribs, cutting clean through the green serge tunic.

  The man stopped for a moment and glanced down at his stomach, seeing the blood beginning to seep through the cloth. Then he looked up again at Keane and with a snarl attacked again, with fury born of pain. The blade swung towards Keane but he was ready for it now and, anticipating the force, parried it high and forced the man’s hand down before sliding his own, deeply curved Arabian blade along the enemy sword, to connect with his chest. Keane’s sabre slid in, helped by the force of the man’s own stroke, and pierced the dragoon’s body close to the heart. The man stared at Keane with wide eyes that quickly glazed over. Keane withdrew the bloodied blade and the dragoon slumped over his horse.

  Looking to his left, Keane could see the hussars in the thick of a desperate melee with the dragoons. But now his prize was in sight. At last he was on the courier. At close quarters, the captain seemed to him no more than a boy of perhaps twenty at most. He glared at Keane and raised his slim infantry sword in a feeble defence. It would have been the work of an instant to kill him, but Keane did not cut at the officer. Instead, using the pommel of his sword hilt, he dealt the boy such a blow on the head that it knocked him senseless. Before he could fall from the saddle, though, Keane had grabbed him. He called out to one of his men, ‘Martin, take this boy up the hill. We need him alive.’

  Will Martin, Keane’s fellow countryman, a farmer’s boy from County Down, rode up fast and, grabbing hold of the courier, together with the reins of his horse, managed somehow to manoeuvre both of them with him slowly up into the cover of the pines.

  Turning back to rejoin the rest of his men, Keane saw that, while two of them were busy dispatching two of the dragoons, the others had disengaged. From the direction of the hussars, the French were streaming past them now, apparently oblivious to their presence in their flight, eager only to escape from the deadly men in blue who had accounted for so many of their comrades.

  Some two dozen of the cavalry fled along the road, pursued by a few of the hussars, their blood up. Others had gone already and the ground lay littered with the bodies of the rest. Perhaps a dozen of the Germans lay on the road while others sat in their saddles, clutching at their wounds. But it was clear who had had the best of the fight.

  He scanned the dead for signs of the chocolate-brown, black fur-trimmed coat, which was the unique uniform of his own men, and thanked God that he could see none. Then, raising his hand in command, he shouted towards those closest to him, ‘Guides, to me. Follow me.’

  He led the way uphill, towards where they had begun, in the cover of the pines on the hillside. The French officer had regained consciousness and was sitting with his back to a tree, his head in his hands, watched over by Martin. Keane looked around him, eager to see that all his men had returned safely. He turned to Ross. ‘Sarn’t Ross, what’s our state?’

  ‘Good, sir. No losses. Heredia’s taken a cut to his arm and Garland one to his back, but nothing worse.’

  He looked at them as they dismounted and watched them loosen their tack and pat their horses. Heredia, the tall Portuguese cavalryman, inspected the cut on his forearm as he tied it up with a strip of torn muslin. Gilpin, the wily thief, short in stature but quick as lightning in a fight as he was in his previous profession, seemed unhurt and was laughing at his good fortune. Martin, still with an eye on the Frenchman, was wiping the blood from his sabre on a clump of grass, and Garland, the big ex-prizefighter, was removing his shirt so that another of their party could see how deep the Frenchman’s sword had cut.

  Keane watched as Gabriella, the common-law wife of another of the company, took a canteen of water to the young Frenchman.

  Horatio Silver had been a sailor, or so he said, serving at Trafalgar under Lord Nelson. But then he had turned thief, his sentence commuted to service with the colours in the 69th foot. Once a thief, though, thought Keane, always a thief. And so Silver had been plucked by them from the jails of Lisbon the previous year, the first recruit to Keane’s newly formed unit. Gabriella had come with him and, more than able to fight her corner, had been quickly accepted as one of the men.

  The Frenchman took the canteen gratefully and Keane walked across to where he sat. He looked down at his captive. ‘Parlezvous anglais?’

  The man nodded. ‘A little, yes.’

  ‘You are carrying letters.’ He pointed to the saddlebags, which lay on the ground some distance from them. ‘Who sent them?’

  The Frenchman looked at him and shook his head. ‘I cannot tell you that.’

  Keane nodded. He had come to have a respect for the French who carried these letters. They knew they had the most dangerous job in the Peninsula, that their life expectancy must be very low, and yet they continued to try. Most of them were young officers such as this, eager for promotion, keen to accept the danger if it meant reward. And most of them he knew would never see France again, but would die horribly and in agony, those that fell into the wrong hands, at least. This boy was one of the lucky ones and Keane would soon let him know it.

  ‘Captain Keane.’ The voice came from behind him.

  Keane straightened up and turned and watched as the commander of the German hussars dismounted.

  Captain Wilhelm von Krokenburgh was a tall man, of about the same height as Keane, with the aquiline looks of his country’s aristocracy and a thin mouth, above which grew an abundant moustache. He walked across to Keane, smiling broadly. ‘Good sport, Keane, eh?’

  ‘Yes, von Krokenburgh, your men certainly had a field day.’

  The German laughed. ‘Did you see ’em run, Keane? The green lizards. Could have had a good deal more of them, given time.’

  It was curious how the man spoke in almost an exaggeration of an English idiom, even though his accent was distinctly Teutonic. It was almost as if he needed to prove his rank and station. It betrayed, thought Keane, a certain insecurity. But then, he granted, who would not be insecure when your homeland had been overrun by the enemy and you were forced to live in exile in a foreign country?

  The German hussars, or, to give them their correct title, 1st Hussars, the King’s German Legion, had been attached to Keane’s troop for a fortnight now, a necessity as the cavalry escorts to the French couriers had grown in number. They came from Hanover, formed by the exiled subjects of King George in his role as Elector of that state. The king had made them welcome in Britain, with their headquarters in Sussex, and over the seven years since their formation they had integrated with the local population, some even taking English wives. They were renowned as good fighters, ordered by a strict discipline and strengthened by a genuine hatred for the French who had taken their home. So, while von Krokenburgh might have irritated him from time to time with all his airs and graces, Keane was genuinely glad to have him and his men fighting at his side.

  He knew too, even before he spoke, what the German’s reaction would now be to seeing
the captive who sat before them.

  ‘This sprat’s of no use to us, Keane. Better he’d have been killed, eh?’

  ‘Not so, von Krokenburgh. You know as well as I do that he is of value to us. That is why we took him alive.’

  ‘Surely all we need is in those bags. Why bother with the messenger?’

  ‘Because the “messenger”, as you call him, is often of more value than the papers he carries, and sometimes even the papers are themselves worthless.’

  Von Krokenburgh shrugged. ‘Have you looked at them yet?’

  ‘All in good time, von Krokenburgh.’

  The German cursed. ‘As you will, Keane. But I would rather he was dead. With every dead Frenchman we grow another step closer to the liberation of my country. I wish you luck with him. Now I must see to my men. Is your woman about? We have a few wounded.’

  Keane nodded. ‘I’m sure that Gabriella – our woman, as you call her – will be happy to help when she has finished with our own wounded.’

  Von Krokenburgh grunted and shrugged, then walked away towards his men.

  Keane turned to the Frenchman, who was staring into the mid distance. ‘You’re a very lucky man, you know.’

  The captain nodded his head. ‘Yes, I know that. Thank you. Thank God it was you and not those savages who took us. Did we lose many?’

  ‘It’s hard to say. Perhaps a dozen killed. More wounded. My sergeant will make a count. Most of your escort seemed happier to run away and leave you to us.’

  ‘They’re no fools. They think my journey is a waste of time. They don’t want to be in these mountains. No one does. Only fools would stay here to be slaughtered.’

  ‘Your emperor seems to want you to stay here.’

  ‘He has his reasons.’

  ‘And you. What is your reason for being here?’

  ‘I volunteered. I need promotion.’

  ‘You’re a captain. Like me. Isn’t that sufficient? You seem young enough.’

  He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand, captain. In our army there are generals who are hardly older than me. In the army of the emperor there is the chance for any man to become a marshal of France. That is my dream.’