His shout made the fifteen Austrians flinch.
Relmyer returned at the run. ‘He’s escaping! Pagin, your horse!’
The hussar did not dare protest and got down from his mount. Margont tried to say something, but Relmyer bounced into the saddle and set off, spurring the horse until it bled. Margont followed, abandoning Pagin, who, disdainful of the prisoners, looked for someone to fight. The two horsemen overtook Warrant Officer Cauchoit, who was a terrifying sight. He was covered in blood and had eviscerated everyone who opposed him. He was a veritable angel of death.
Margont found himself in an artificial clearing. Some Austrian horses were stamping and restless, tied to branches. At the other end of the expanse of felled trees, figures were fleeing on horseback.
‘He’s not far ahead of us!’ cried Relmyer.
Margont and Relmyer’s horses dashed along, devouring the distance. They were far superior to the old nags the Austrian army furnished the militia with. Little by little the fleeing man became easier to make out. The officer with the bicorn pointed his weapon in their direction.
‘That’s him!’ shrieked Relmyer.
‘Duck!’ warned Margont.
A detonation sounded but the ball missed its target. The fugitive changed tactics, tugged on his reins and disappeared into the forest. Relmyer was quivering.
‘He’s heading north-east. He wants to get over to the Austrian side but the Danube is blocking his way.’
The two pursuers were engulfed in their turn in the woods. The figure of the Austrian appeared and disappeared intermittently. Margont used shot after shot from his horse pistol, trying to hit the Austrian’s mount, but in vain.
‘We’re miles away from our army!’
‘Where did he go?’ agonised Relmyer.
The man seemed to have been swallowed by the vegetation. Margont slowed his horse and saw him cut off down a path.
‘That way.’
The fugitive had taken a badly maintained path. Margont had just made out his grey uniform through the jumble of thicket. Relmyer, who had almost got lost, had been overtaken by his friend and was hitting the flank of his mare with the flat of his sabre. His horse took off like a whirlwind at twice the speed of Margont’s mount, forcing him off the path. Margont steadied himself and settled back into his galloping rhythm. He felt fear swelling in him. He was now convinced that nothing about the fugitive had anything to do with chance. He and Relmyer saw only a random labyrinth of vegetation whilst their adversary moved as easily as if he were strolling about the streets of his hometown. Margont no longer felt like a hunter tracking a wolf; he felt like a pike throwing itself onto a fish-hook.
He shouted to Relmyer: ‘He knows this forest: it’s he who’s masterminding this chase, not us!’
Relmyer was not listening to him. He was noticing something else. The militiaman’s horse was not up to the tactics of its rider, and was starting to show signs of fatigue. His own, on the other hand, neck stretched out and nostrils quivering, was eroding the distance that separated them. Margont was struggling not to be left behind; he was not experienced in chasing people on horseback. The branches whipped his face, confusing him, while the bushes murdered his legs and the flanks of his horse. Relmyer, paying no heed to these inconveniences, brandished his sabre, promise of devastating retribution.
The terrain was now gently sloping, which meant the horses speeded up. The fugitive manoeuvred his horse between
obstacles. He suddenly cut off to the right, abandoning the path to head into an entanglement of little bushes. The vegetation swallowed him up. It was an astonishing choice of route: on the path beyond there were fewer obstructions and so it was much faster. Relmyer continued on straight. Margont chose to follow the tracks of the runaway to close the trap. In spite of his advantages, the man was slowing down. Relmyer left the path in his turn and gained on him. He came level with him fifteen paces to his left. He was going to overtake him and cut off his route when the militiaman and his horse seemed to subside, as though the ground had given way beneath them. The slope he had been descending had suddenly become much steeper. Relmyer was now looking down on the fugitive, who descended still further. Relmyer’s horse reared. His frightened whinnying terrified the young hussar. Relmyer, clutching his reins, guessed rather than saw the danger. His mind could not interpret the chaos of images it was receiving: sky, trees, a rocky outcrop ... Relmyer lost his balance and crashed into the stony ground. That was what saved his life. When the legs of his horse landed, one of them encountered the void. The beast toppled head first and crashed to the ground fifteen feet below. It rolled over, kicking up dead pine needles, and finished up against a tree trunk, its broken neck forming a right angle.
Margont’s attention had been deflected. When he looked again at the man he was pursuing, he barely had time to duck. The man had stopped and, turned towards Margont, was aiming his pistol at him. He had chosen his moment to perfection, proof that everything had gone as he had planned. Margont tugged frantically on his reins. The ball struck his horse in the neck and it went sprawling on its side. Shaken by his fall, Margont was drowning in pain. He freed his sword and tried to get up, but collapsed, caught by one of his stirrups. His mount, in agony, vainly tried to get to its feet, trapping Margont on the ground, his right foot crushed by the struggling animal. He tried to free himself while brandishing his sword. He was not going to be taken like this! He thrashed about like a wild thing. The militiaman looked at him, hesitating. Had he had another pistol he could have finished off the wriggling worm. He had taken hold of his sabre, but worried that the captain might wound him with his sword.
The Austrian decided not to linger. There might be others following him as well. The man spurred on his horse. A stone ricocheted off a tree trunk nearby. Standing on top of the rocky outcrop, Relmyer was throwing stones at him, hoping to knock him out. Stones! Pathetic ... Margont finally freed himself but a red-hot pain invaded his side. His wound had opened up.
CHAPTER 20
MARGONT was resting stretched out on some straw, his side in flames. Lefine came to sit down beside him. Margont watched him woozily. In preparation for being sewn up again he had been made to drink brandy and a concoction of laudanum, opium, cinnamon, cloves, wine and saffron. He was in a field hospital set up in a large farm in the village of Ebersdorf. All the wounded from Essling finished up here, either to recuperate or to die. The walls and the beams were impregnated with the odour of gangrene and blood. Even months later, the place would smell of death, haunted by those who had perished there.
Margont tapped his friend’s knee.
Thank you! Without you I’d still be there waiting for help.’
That would have been what you deserved! You galloped off like furies; several times I nearly lost you. Happily your route was not difficult to follow with all those broken branches and trampled bushes.’
‘We really almost got him.’
‘No, he almost got you! Croups of militia were circling the front line from north to south. They were crossing the Danube in boats or by ford or by the bridges that are still standing, to come and support the partisans who were already at our backs. Everyone knew that, but no! Relmyer and you, you’re always deaf to such things. A fine result, in truth!’
Seeing Margont’s grimaces of pain, Lefine took pity on him and held out his water bottle.
‘A drop of wine from the Wachau?’
Margont drank almost half of it.
‘That Austrian officer is definitely the murderer we’ve been looking for, Fernand. Not only did Relmyer recognise him, but also he deliberately fired at Relmyer before dashing off without giving any thought to the battle. He only mingled with the soldiers for one purpose: to kill Relmyer. And he would be dead had his horse not raised its head at that moment.’
‘The Wasp was saved by flies ... Yes, you’re right. But I don’t quite understand what was going on ...’
‘Neither do I. Let’s sum up what we know and try to see more c
learly. First of all, I don’t think our man is a professional soldier. A professional fighter would have tried to finish me off He was not sure of succeeding even though I was injured on the ground and caught up in my stirrup. By the same token, when he did fire at me I was only a few feet away from him. He could have aimed at me but he preferred to make sure of his shot by wiping out my horse. He’s good with a rifle but not so good with a pistol.’
‘But over half the soldiers in the militia are originally from the regular army. They come directly from the army or, more often, they are veterans or have been invalided out.’
‘He’s too young to be a veteran, called back to service. As for being an invalid, right at this moment that applies to me more than to him ...’
‘Maybe he is a professional soldier but a non-combatant. An officer in charge of supplies, or a penpusher...’
Margont was feeling more and more groggy. The pain, like his
thoughts, was becoming less sharp, more diffuse. Sometimes the pain would come rushing back, making him clench his teeth and clarifying his reasoning, setting off glimmers of clear-sightedness in a fog of blurred thoughts.
‘No. If he had served in the regular army, he would have followed it at the end of 1805, when it was marching against us. But he was definitely in Vienna then because Albert Lietz and Ernst Runkel disappeared at that time, one of them in August, and the other in October. That means that there are several arguments pointing in one direction: our man is a civilian who enrolled in the militia. But he is an officer, either a lieutenant or a captain.’
‘Monarchies are keen on preserving the social hierarchy. Other officers of the Landwehr and the Volunteer force come from Viennese high society; they’re aristocrats, rich bourgeois, high-ranking functionaries ...’
‘We’re progressing! When one is lucky enough to be one of these “important people”, one can easily be tracked down. Perhaps our man is keen on hunting. That would explain his aptitude with a rifle and why he knows the forests round about here so perfectly. Did you interrogate the prisoners?’
They are as mute as carp. We captured fifty of them. Soldiers of the Landwehr of Lower Austria, and Viennese Volunteers.’
Margont shifted all the time, trying to find a less painful position. ‘We have to find out as much as possible about these two types of troops. Our man wore a particular uniform.’
‘I noticed that. Infantrymen are issued only with ill-cut grey overcoats with red facings they have to sew on themselves. Some of them don’t even have those and have to use their own coats. That devil of a man you chased after had a magnificent grey regulation coat with impeccable scarlet facings. But that would be the case for most officers of the Landwehr and the Volunteer regiments.’ Margont could not hide his disappointment.
‘So his uniform tells us nothing about him. Which units did we confront?’
‘At least two companies, one was the 3rd Battalion of the Landwehr of Lower Austria, and the other was the 2nd Battalion of the Viennese Volunteer force.’
‘So our man is an officer in one of those two battalions?’ Margont pulled himself up immediately. ‘Unless he was wearing a fake uniform - although that doesn’t seem possible because how would he have justified that to his superiors? - or he was accompanying the battalions but didn’t serve in either of them. He’s so tricky that you would expect him to have covered his tracks yet again. He knows the woods so well that he could have convinced the two companies to take him along as a guide to help them organise the ambush.’
‘While you’re waiting for an orderly to be free to stitch you up, I will go and find out what I can. According to the last estimates, Austria has lined up more than a hundred thousand militia. And to that they have added the Volunteer regiments. So their lieutenants and captains can be counted in their thousands ... The man we’re looking for lives in Vienna or nearby. The militias are organised by region. A priori, he must therefore serve in the Viennese Landwehr, in the Landwehr of Lower Austria or in the Viennese
Volunteer regiment. Let’s begin by finding out about the two battalions that attacked us. That will already be a start.’
Margont racked his brain for an idea, for a new approach.
‘If we succeed in convincing one of the prisoners to give us the names of the officers of the two battalions ...’
‘I don’t think they’ll even know them. The Landwehr was hurriedly thrown together in June 1808. A hundred thousand militiamen had to be organised in under a year. As for the Viennese Volunteers, that’s an old formation that has disappeared and been resurrected regularly since 1797. It’s made up of civilian volunteers who were exempt from serving in the Landwehr. The Viennese Volunteer force hastily re-formed on 1 March while we were marching on Vienna. Most have been soldiers for only three months and they are even more confused about this war than anyone else. Did you notice, several of them didn’t even open fire during the attack, because certain regiments of Austrian hussars also wear green pelisses. They took Relmyer’s hussars for Austrians and they shouted at them to stop fighting; it was a misunderstanding!’
Margont sat up and was overcome by a wave of pain, which jerked him sharply out of his alcoholic haze.
‘So how is it possible? We are relentlessly looking for someone and they turn up in front of us, as if by magic! Where is Relmyer? I want to talk to him - oh, yes! I would be grateful if you would bring him here.’
*
Relmyer had been wearing himself out trying to extract information from the prisoners, but in vain. When he came to see Margont with Lefine, his face cleared.
‘You seem to have recovered already.’
‘Lukas, you must take us for imbeciles!’ retorted Margont. ‘It’s absolutely unthinkable that this was a coincidence! Someone betrayed us by telling our man the route that we were going to take.’ Relmyer blinked at this reception.
‘If it wasn’t a coincidence, well ... there must have been a leak ...
Perhaps one of my hussars mentioned it to someone ...’
‘He’s lying to us,’ Lefinetold Margont.
Margont suddenly made the link between two apparently unrelated events and everything became clear. He pointed furiously at Relmyer.
‘It’s you who betrayed us. This expedition came about in exactly the same way as your duel with Piquebois. Antoine is fiercesome with a sabre, so you knowingly launched a risky attack. Thinking you had made an error, he dodged and launched his own attack. Antoine could not pass up such an opportunity to triumph! His attack obliged him to expose himself in his turn and your riposte hit him. Your first attack, which put you in danger, was solely intended to incite your opponent to act. So, you launch your second attack and the biter is bit; your opponent collapses, skewered. You arranged it so that the man we’re tracking learnt that you were going to lead an expedition into hostile territory. That journey through the forest was your “first attack’’. It led your adversary to show himself in order to try to kill you, which permitted you to counterattack.'
‘It’s true,’ admitted Relmyer. ‘I have been preparing the plan for several weeks, even before I met you. It’s what I call “the tactic of the false weakness”. It worked! We’ve seen him again, I sparred with him!’
Margont flushed with anger. ‘It was a suicidal tactic! We all nearly didn’t make it!’
‘I thought, I hoped, that he would try something, but how could I have guessed that he served in the militia and that he would throw himself on us with a crowd of soldiers?’
‘Is that all that you have to say to justify that carnage?’
‘No, that’s not all I have to say in my defence!’ stormed Relmyer. ‘Certainly there could have been many deaths and it would have been my fault, but I could very well have been the first victim! I was the bait. I thought my hussars and you would be the hook, not a second worm. I gave myself a one in two chance of surviving his shot and that was the reason that I needed you! Had I been killed I would have died knowing that I was bequeathing the inves
tigation to Pagin and to you two.’
Lefine was appalled. This man is insane!’
Relmyer persisted, supporting his discourse with great sweeping gestures, which were not normal for him.
‘It has nothing to do with madness, it’s mathematics! If your opponent is an exceptional horseman, attack him while he’s having lunch at an inn! Everyone has a weak spot and that’s where you have to strike him! The man I’m looking for is a remarkable defensive tactician. He hides his traces, never draws attention to himself... So I harassed him, irritated him with my provocations, more and more. Until his exasperation obliged him to seek a direct confrontation. I acted like a beater who makes so much noise to frighten the prey that he eventually leaves his hiding place. I forced him to attack and reveal himself, which was so different from his normal way of proceeding that he showed himself much less effective than usual. That’s why the ambush was a big setback for him: badly prepared, badly organised and badly executed. On the other hand, as soon as our man returned to his favourite tactic
- hiding in the forest, avoiding head-on confrontation, using treachery - he regained the upper hand. If you abandon me, I won’t hold it against you, of course. Pagin and I will in the end flush this wolf out of the forest!’
‘How did the man find out that you were looking for him? How did he know where to find us when?’
‘I told you: I’ve been preparing my trap for a long time. I have been endlessly planting clues wherever I’ve been so that he understood that I had returned and was searching for him. I put little tin soldiers along approximately the path where he kidnapped me, in the ruined farm and around my old orphanage. Children’s toys in the places that linked us: the message was clear. And then there was the ruckus I made at Lesdorf Orphanage, the official and unofficial complaints by Madame Blanken, the scene with the police and magistrates when I tracked them down in Vienna to complain about their incompetence ... Everyone was talking about my return.’
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