Clash of Empires

by Brian Falkner

  “Who told you this news?” Willem asks, wondering if it could possibly be true.

  “Your friend, who escaped with you through the Ruien,” Lars says.

  There is a sharp intake of breath from Héloïse and a sudden stillness among the others.

  “François?” Willem asks.

  “The same,” Lars says.

  “François is no friend of mine,” Willem says, his mind whirling. “This news is a lie.”

  “But he was with you when you escaped from the French,” Lars says, narrowing his eyes.

  “And then he betrayed us!” Willem cries. “François works for the French. But why would he come to you with this news, if it is even true?”

  Héloïse has been looking around at the forest that surrounds them. Her every sense seems alert.

  “Run!” she screams.

  “It is a trap!” Lars curses loudly in Dutch. “Go, now! Back to the boat.”

  From somewhere unseen in the darkness, perhaps from the other side of the dike, comes a long, low, undulating roar, loud enough to shake dew from the leaves of the trees that surround them and to make horses rear and paw the air with their hooves.

  “Too late,” Frost says.

  * * *

  The unmistakable sound of a roaring battlesaur is followed by the sound of French trumpets.

  Willem backs away toward the shore, unwilling to turn and thus take his eyes off the dark tree line. Frost is next to him with Jack beside him, guiding him as they move swiftly toward the boats.

  Héloïse ignores Lars’s instructions and Willem sees her heading to the side, toward the trees. That is where she will feel safe, he knows.

  “Form a line! Form a line!” Arbuckle shouts, and the British soldiers are quick to form up into two rows, one behind the other, the front row kneeling.

  “Fix bayonets,” Arbuckle shouts.

  McConnell is nowhere to be seen, but a glance behind reveals him already climbing up over the side of the boat, trying to push it off with one foot. It is too heavy for him, too firmly wedged onto the sand. Big Joe joins him, heaving on the front of the boat to dislodge it.

  Whatever is coming is still unseen, hidden behind the high earthen mound of the dike.

  Willem reaches into his satchel and extracts a stubby thundercloud cylinder, then another. He holds them close to his chest as he backs away toward the shore, unwilling to take his eyes off the dike. He hopes the British soldiers remember their training.

  “Keep moving,” Lars says softly, stepping in front of them. He releases the reins of the horses and slaps one of them on the rump. The horse too has heard the roar of the battlesaur and needs no further encouragement. It tosses its head and takes off toward the trees. The other horses quickly follow.

  Lars produces a heavy club from somewhere within his coat and swings it from side to side. Willem thinks a wooden stick will be scant protection against what comes from behind the dike.

  “Hold there,” a voice shouts in French-accented English.

  Now he sees the saur. His first glimpse of a real French battlesaur, not the wooden replicas at Woolwich, nor the gentle herbisaurs that were slaughtered for practice.

  The head of the creature appears above the dike, illuminated by the dawning sky.

  It is not as large as the saur that attacked his village so many months ago, but it seems even more terrifying. Its eyes are deep-set and hooded. Its snout shorter and thicker than that of the crocodile-like creature of Gaillemarde. Its teeth are just as long and its skin is the same ridged hide that the men of the village hacked to pieces to hide the carcass of the beast.

  A row of lights now appears along the top of the dike, like a string of glowing pearls. These are not jewels, however, but flaming torches, gleaming off the shiny armor of a line of French cuirassiers. In front of them appear soldiers on foot, low dark shapes before them, and now comes a sound that has given Willem many nightmares since his escape from Antwerp: the rattling spines and whispering grunts of demonsaurs.

  Willem stops backing away as the French horses begin to move, descending the steep slope of the dike toward the wide clearing that is the boat landing.

  “Get out of here, Willem,” Lars shouts.

  Willem shakes his head.

  At the boat, Big Joe and McConnell wait, McConnell impatiently. Willem suspects he would have taken off by himself if he could have managed the longboat alone. The other saur-slayers have formed a semicircle in front of them, weapons at the ready, defending the boat landing.

  “Hold!” the French voice shouts.

  The cavalry wait at the foot of the dike. The battlesaur descends behind them. The French horses are well trained, Willem thinks, not to panic and flee. The flames of the torches now glint off the blades of sabers.

  The French are within range of the British muskets, yet Arbuckle does not give the order to fire. Instead he says, “Protect the boy. All of you. With your life.”

  It takes Willem a moment to realize that “the boy” is him, and that all of these men have just been ordered to give up their lives, if necessary, for his. It is an uncomfortable feeling, yet there is nothing he can say or do. That is the order.

  “Remember the magic,” he calls out to Arbuckle, who nods.

  He has not finished speaking when the French cuirassiers begin their charge, silhouetted in the glow of the flaming torches of the riders behind them.

  In front of them, unleashed, race the evil, chilling shapes of the demonsaurs.

  Willem twists the end of one of his cylinders, hearing the strike of the flint inside. He shuts his eyes and aims it high in the air, over the heads of the line of British troops. There is a sharp crack inside as a small gunpowder charge explodes and suddenly the air in front of them is filled with a fine-grained powder, finer than the finest flour. He drops the cylinder, now hot to the touch, and does the same with the second one, intensifying the soft, billowing cloud in front of the charging demonsaurs and cavalry.

  “Now!” he shouts.

  The British soldiers raise one arm, covering their eyes with their forearms. Willem is so busy watching that he forgets to do the same. Just in time he shuts his eyes as tightly as he can.

  The first of the burning torches touches the edge of the cloud of drifting powder and as it does the sky explodes.

  A bright flash, intense enough to make the insides of his eyelids glow bright red is followed by the sound of horses shying, rearing, and colliding.

  He has closed his eyes only for a second but when he reopens them the air is on fire, terrifying the French horses and battlesaurs alike. A thick pall of pungent, white smoke is spreading, filling the clearing and filtering into the trees of the surrounding forest, hemmed in by the wall of the dike behind.

  All is smoke and flames and confusion.

  Now the muskets of the British soldiers sound and he hears the screams of horses and the shrieks of demonsaurs. It is the only volley. There is no time for the soldiers to reload. Instead he sees them present their bayonets at the men, horses, and demonic beasts that still tear through the thick smoke toward them.

  As the smoke curls around him he drops to his hands and knees and scrambles on all fours like a dragonrat. The smoke is thinner at ground level, and he can see the legs of men and horses, their bodies ghostly shapes above.

  A horse thunders toward him, but he senses its presence by the sound and sees its legs in time to dodge out of its way. The rider sees him at the last moment and stabs at him, but misses.

  Above him now, towering over the men and horses, is the battlesaur. There is no time to try to mesmerize it. No time to thrust his hand into the small sack of pepper he carries. Time only to die, and yet he does not. The beast is distracted by a British soldier backing away from a cuirassier. Its head dips and for a moment the smoke turns red.

  Willem runs past the battlesaur, out of its sight. He hears pistol shots, and more sounds of men and horses colliding. The darkness and smoke have turned the clearing into a chao
tic circus. There are grunts, shouts, and screams. The constant rattle of demonsaur spines. It is a maelstrom of moving bodies and swirling smoke and in the midst of it somewhere is the huge dinosaur.

  Through a momentary gap in the white curtain Willem sees Lars swinging his heavy club the way a woodsman swings his ax. A thwack is followed by the thud of a soldier hitting the ground, the clang of his armor. Then comes another thwack and Willem knows there is one less French soldier to worry about.

  More pistol shots are followed by the scream of an injured horse. In the darkness, smoke, and confusion Willem thinks the soldiers are as much danger to themselves as to others. Always he hears the thwack, thwack, thwack of Lars’s wooden club.

  He thinks he sees a gap in the smoke in the direction of the trees and scrambles toward it only to find himself rolling over the ground, barely registering the sudden jarring pain in his right side, and above him is a French cuirassier, high in his saddle, pistol raised, aimed directly at Willem’s chest. There is no time even to crawl backward and Willem can see, or thinks he sees, the man’s finger move slightly on the trigger, then comes the flash of the muzzle, but the shot is wild, the pistol tumbling through the air as the man flies sideways off his horse and a dim shape moves over him.

  The Frenchman convulses, then lies still, and the dim shape turns, becoming Arbuckle, a dark-dripping dagger in his hand. He hauls Willem back to his feet without a word, crouching low, pulling him along with him, and a second or so later they are moving swiftly along the base of the dike.

  A harsh whisper comes from a clump of low bushes beside them. “Willem!”

  They stop and Frost emerges, a French pistol in his hand. Willem cannot imagine how he got it, then remembers that in the absence of sight, Frost sees more clearly than most men.

  Shouts, shots, and the cries of horses continue behind them as the three stumble as quietly as they can up the side of the dike. The earth of the dike is hard, claylike, and only soft grass grows on it. It is steep, but they are up and over it quickly.

  On this side Willem can see the thatched roofs of a small hamlet, Krabbendijke. A windmill lies beyond that, its arms still and silent in the cool morning air.

  “What about the others?” Willem gasps as they slither down the far side of the dike. Big Joe, Gilbert, McConnell, Smythe, Weiner, and Patrick. His precious saur-slayers. Alive or dead? And what about Jack?

  Héloïse does not concern him. He saw her reach the trees and in the forest she is a match for anyone.

  “Those that can will find their own way to the rendezvous point,” Arbuckle says. “There is nothing we can do for them.”

  “He is right,” Frost says. “We will be lucky to get out of here ourselves. We must not stop. Not for anything. We must—”

  He looks quickly back at the earthen mound of the dike.

  “Take cover!” he cries, but it is too late. Willem hears the whinny of a horse and a moment later four cuirassiers charge up and over the dike, encircling them.

  “Run!” Arbuckle shouts, drawing his dagger.

  Willem grabs Frost’s arm and darts for a hedge-lined lane that leads to the hamlet.

  One of the soldiers spurs his horse toward Arbuckle while the others move to cut Willem off.

  What happens next happens so fast that Willem is barely aware of it. The horseman raises his saber high and strikes down at Arbuckle, but the thin metal blade slices open only the air. Arbuckle has shifted like a breath of wind out of the path of the blade. He grasps hold of the man’s sword arm and pulls himself up. The next thing, he is seated on the horse behind the soldier and there is a spray of blood before the Frenchman topples sideways, his saber now in Arbuckle’s hand.

  The other three cuirassiers wheel their horses around to face this new threat.

  Willem grips Frost’s collar and runs into the lane. They reach a crossroads and Willem glances back to see Arbuckle trapped in the center of a whirl of blades, then they round the corner and Frost and Willem are on their own.

  The smooth dirt of the lane makes for fast going and the hedgerows on either side are high enough to conceal them from the battle behind. They run, turning often, into a maze of narrow lanes. To stay on an eastern heading Willem keeps an eye on the windmill, the brooding shape of which is ever-present above the hedges.

  They hear the sound of hooves in a nearby lane and press themselves into the hedge, but the horseman passes them without detecting their presence.

  “Slowly,” Frost says. “Slowly and silently from now on. They will only find us from our sounds.”

  He perks his ears up again, listening intently.

  Willem does too, and somewhere in the lanes around them he hears the rattle of a demonsaur. It is close.

  “This way,” Frost whispers, leading Willem to the left. “We must put as much distance between us and that … thing … as we can.”

  They have just reached a lane that leads directly to the windmill when from behind them they hear the rattle of spines.

  How it has found them, Willem does not know. It paces slowly toward them, making its harsh, whispered growl.

  Willem grabs Frost’s arm to guide him and they sprint away from the demonsaur, toward the bulk of the windmill.

  “There’s a windmill,” Willem says, remembering that Frost cannot see it.

  “Where is the door?” Frost asks.

  “I can’t see—yes!” Willem cries as a heavy wooden door comes into view at the base of the mill. If it is locked, they are lost. He risks a glance behind to see the demonsaur almost upon them.

  They are in luck: the door is slightly ajar. He hits it with his shoulder and it is like hitting a rock wall, but the door opens and he stumbles through, sprawling across the dirt floor inside.

  The door! He spins around, scrambling back to his feet to see that Frost has already thrown his weight against the bulky door. It is almost shut when there is a crash and Frost flies backward, but now Willem is there, putting all his weight against the door.

  Frost recovers and they have the door nearly shut when a skeletal black hand reaches around, clawing at Willem’s side. It snags on the cloth of his tunic, tearing it as he pulls away.

  “Again!” Frost cries, and they both throw their weight once more against the door. The heavy door slams onto the wrist of the creature and there is a shriek of pain from outside. Again they slam it shut and there is a crack from the wrist but the creature does not withdraw its hand. Slowly the door starts to open despite all their efforts.

  For a moment it seems as though they are winning, but it is just the creature drawing back. It slams into the door with all its weight and the door shoots open, sending Willem and Frost flying. Willem lands on a length of wood and picks it up, knowing how pathetic and useless it will be against the demonsaur.

  Now it is inside, a snarl turning its mouth into an almost-human smirk. Willem backs away again and the creature follows, crouching back, then springing forward.

  As it leaps there is the sound of a gunshot and the beast convulses in midair. Willem falls backward and rolls to one side as it lands right where he was standing. It reaches out its claws toward him, but feebly, and there is a spreading pool of black blood beneath it.

  A French soldier stands in the doorway. A smoking pistol in one hand, a saber in the other.

  “Come this way,” he says. “And quickly.”

  Willem looks around desperately for a way to escape but the mill is a trap. He and Frost have nowhere farther to run.

  “Come this way,” the Frenchman says, only his accent is of the Netherlands, not of France. “If you want to live.”

  LIFE AND DEATH IN A MEAT CART

  The boy lies in the reeds under the bridge, one eye closed, the other open, one leg in the water, moving back and forth in the current as though toe-fishing. Jack is tempted to try to close the other eye, but does not want to touch the body. Not because the boy is dead, but because it was Jack who killed him.

  The boy was tall and strong
, a little like Jack. Were it not for a different uniform and language it might have been Jack. Was this boy also a good lad? Jack weeps silently in the shadow of the bridge as the boots of the French soldiers march past on the road above.

  The clank of chains comes from the road, then a curse, in English. It is McConnell’s voice. Jack risks a look, parting the long reeds at the base of the bridge.

  He sees prisoners in a caged wagon being led down the road by French officers on horseback. He looks to see if Frost or Willem is among them, but cannot tell.

  A cart follows, on it a number of bodies in French uniforms.

  Jack sits. He thinks. What should he do? The situation is confusing and his brain is as foggy as the night. What would Willem do? He would know what to do, but Jack is not as clever as Willem. He thinks of the time when they escaped from the village on the hospital wagon, Willem wearing the uniform of a nurse. That was the sort of thing that Willem would think of.

  And that gives him his answer.

  With whispered apologies to the dead boy, Jack strips him of his uniform. He undresses and folds his clothes, leaving them in a neat pile near the bridge support. He dons the French soldier’s uniform, which, although small, fits closely enough.

  He stares for a moment at the body, clad only in underclothes. It is undignified, he thinks.

  He drags the young Frenchman up out of the water and dresses him in his own clothes, before laying him flat on the bank beneath the bridge, folding his arms across his chest.

  He bids a silent farewell to the young dead man and slips quietly out from under the bridge, staying off the road, in the dark embrace of the ditch.

  He moves quickly, but even so it is not until the column stops for a while at a crossroads that he is able to catch up with the cart. The soldiers are making cooking fires, probably their first meal of the day. They are relaxed and do not see Jack as he creeps up out of the ditch and crawls across the dark ground toward the cart.

  When he is confident that no soldiers are looking in his direction, he clambers quickly up onto the cart. He is immediately immersed in a warm fug of urine, feces, and blood.