A King's Commander

by Dewey Lambdin

  There was a puff of smoke from the fence, from the kneeling man.

  “It is him!” Choundas crowed. “The desperate fool!”

  “Far past even the best musket shot,” the dragoon officer cried in derision, and his troopers guffawed at the hopeless gesture.

  “Capitaine Jonville, perhaps . . .” Choundas began to say.

  A raven came soaring up the slope, flaring and riding the thermal off the hillside, climbing, climbing, then beat its wings, beginning to circle—to Guillaume Choundas’s right hand. He raised his right arm in supplication, remembering what the old people had told him . . .

  “. . . couldn’t hit a house, at that . . .”

  A second or two in flight, arcing up, then down, as it lost its momentum, plummeting like a howitzer shell and regaining velocity . . .

  The .65-caliber ball slammed into Guillaume Choundas with the impact of a heavy, hard-swung cudgel, smashing into the flesh and bone of his upraised right arm, just below his armpit! His horse screamed, almost as loud as he did, as he was flung sideways in the saddle, and dragged to the right and down by the force of it! His horse whirled as if to bite its own haunches, rearing and backpedaling for balance and slinging Choundas’s total weight onto that weak left leg caught in the stirrup, shuddery and nerveless from his desperate gallop, caught by the iron brace that stiffened the thick left boot. He flailed to stay in the saddle, but his right foot was free, and he was falling, to land on that right shoulder and arm, and the back of his head, and to get dragged for a few paces in a maddened circle before a trooper sprang down to grab the reins, and another rushed to free his foot.

  “Merde alors!” The dragoon officer breathed in stupefied awe. “Miraculous!”

  “Eatttt thatt, you bassttardd! ” Lewrie screamed as he rose to his feet, his face mottled, and split by a feral, heathen grin. Alan trotted back to the horse Mountjoy held, took the reins, and slung the Ferguson over his back before mounting. “That’s all for him! ”

  “Gott in Himmel!” Leutnant Baron von Losma peeped, turning pale.

  “Good shot, hey?” Lewrie crowed, riding in an impatient circle. There was a sudden sputter of musketry up the valley, among the trees. A platoon firing, at first. Then what sounded like a whole regiment lit off. The flat bangs of a three-gun battery of light artillery joined them . . . followed by another regimental volley.

  “Heraus!” Leutnant von Losma shouted, waving his arm in the air in a signal. “Mach schnell, heraus! Wir zurückziehen . . . zur ruck, jetzt!”

  The French infantry column on the road, still three hundred yards away, lumbered out from column to line, four deep, and began to load for a volley of their own, their skirmishers out in front already firing.

  “Time to scamper, sir,” Mountjoy translated as the lancers with them wheeled away, almost in a headless panic. As the French dragoons came flowing from the trees, down off that far slope’s crest.

  “Lewrie,” Peel breathed, half in awe, but his face hellish-dark with concern. “Just what the bloody hell have you started? ”

  They sawed at the reins and kicked their horses to a gallop, back the way they’d come, whooping to scare them to greater effort, eating a shower of flung clods from the rapidly retreating lancers. The French helped, whooping and keening with blood lust. As they began to climb that bouldery bare ridge, Lewrie looked behind, to see the dragoons in full charge, sword points hungry, and not fifty yards astern!

  They almost flew over that low ridge, down into the broad valley to the crossroads and past the filthy, slow-toppling shrine, whooping with relief to see at least a brigade of Austrian infantry drawn up at the edge of the far woods, another quarter-mile away. The drumming of dragoon hooves didn’t seem to falter, though, thundering loud as gunfire. And, to speak of it, there was rather a lot of gunfire. Waves and volleys of it, full broadsides of musketry.

  They blazed past the infantry brigade’s left flank as trumpets sounded and drums beat to stand the soldiers to attention and begin to load. Lewrie dared look back once more, grateful beyond all expression to see the French dragoons slowing and circling across the face of that stout brigade’s lines, just out of musket shot.

  “Think we’re safe, now,” Peel informed them, checking his horse. The troop of lancers, though, was still rushing pell-mell down the road to Porto Vado. The last they saw of them were the winks of lance points and colorful pennants, the flash of shod hooves as they thundered away.

  The brigade began to volley by ranks, and a sudden fog-bank rose before them. More blaring of bugles could be heard.

  “That stopped ’em, cold!” Mountjoy gasped happily. “Thank God, I say, for the Austrians. Slow or not, they were there when we needed.”

  He was not quite so thankful a moment later when infantrymen in gaudy Austrian uniforms came streaming back from the firing, out of the smoke of their own muskets in a ragged mob, as fast as their legs could carry them. Some mounted officers appeared, a few flailing with their swords to turn their troops, or stop them. Other officers galloped on past, just as intent on escape. They could hear cheering far beyond . . . over the wails of alarm closer to them . . . the drums and tootling of a military band, and harsh voices baying out “La Marseillaise”!

  “What the bloody hell?” Mountjoy yelped, as the straggling mob of fleeing infantry became a positive flood as the brigade broke.

  “Christ, they panicked at their own bloody volleys,” Peel spat; figuratively, and literally. “A brigade, routed by a troop o’ cavalry?”

  “Maybe we should try to ride back to that village where we began,” Lewrie suggested, fingering the brace of long-barreled pistols stuffed in his waistband. He looked down that way, but there seemed to be the plumes and pillars of gun smoke above those woods, too.

  “Doubt it,” Peel groaned. “The Frogs’d have taken the junction above the village before we got there. They need the coast roads most of all. This way, I think.” Peel waved, down the sketchy path to Vado Bay the lancers had used. “And quickly,” he added, seeing the sparkle of bayonets atop the far bare ridge, the blue coats and white trousers of a French brigade deployed in line across the road they’d just ridden.

  “How far do you think it is, sir?” Mountjoy asked nervously. “’Bout three dead Italian horses,” Peel replied, leading them into motion, kicking his already-weary mount to a trot.

  But isn’t anybody goin’ to congratulate me? Lewrie thought. Or will we live long enough for that?

  C H A P T E R 1 1

  From what they could see of it, the finest army in Europe had turned itself into a panic-stricken horde. After all General de Vins’s dithering, it had also gone from what they’d deprecated as the slowest in Europe, to one of the very fastest. Now, going the wrong way, its speed of retreat was breathtaking!

  The few poor roads were strangled by trains of wagons, bullock teams dragging heavy guns. Lighter civilian carriages and coaches were strewn along the sides of the roads, broken down after they’d tried to bypass the tangled messes. Large artillery pieces stood abandoned by the side, left in artillery parks lined up wheel to wheel as if for an inspection, but their gunners and their dray horses were gone, commandeered by the first takers who could get to them.

  There were mounted color bearers clattering along to save their regimental symbols—but without their regiments. Officers dressed in a dizzying assortment of brightly martial uniforms; infantry, artillery, cavalry, Commissariat, medical units . . . dragoon, lancers, grenadiers or fusiliers, light infantry or line, all mixed together, all clopping off toward the sea, or the east, without their troops. There were soldiers in dribs and drabs, here a platoon, there a company, together, shambling away to the rear without officers, and it was rare to see a full battalion that had kept some sense of order.

  Or their weapons. The road and ditches, the fences and fields, were littered with abandoned muskets, pistols, hangers and knapsacks, cartridge boxes and powder flasks, cross-belts, hats, neck-stocks, and belts. Anything and everythi
ng that might slow them down they’d left behind.

  There were camp followers who accompanied every army to a war; wives, children, laundry-women and officers’ servants; fiancées, amours, and whores; mothers and fathers come to see their sons win glory on the fields of honor—all running, riding, or clinging to wagons, or an offside stirrup, to escape the French. From raggedy barefoot peasant girls who slept with the privates to lordly, aristocratic courtesans in court dress, they lined the road, crying and begging for a ride, a seat behind a cavalryman, for water, for a clue as to where to go, or a word of encouragement, or an explanation of what it was they witnessed.

  Hard-hearted, they rode; Peel, Lewrie, and Mountjoy, with pistols in one hand, swords in the other, and reins in their teeth to prevent a swarm of desperate soldiers or civilians from swamping them and taking their horses. Children held up to them had to be denied, no matter how pitiously a young, still-pretty mother might plead. Their mounts were barely able to carry them at the moment, judder-legged and blowing, so slick and foamy with ripe ammoniac sweat that Lewrie’s thighs and boots were damp with it; reeking, too, with the rotting meat stink of saddle sores and girth-galls that had never completely healed, and were now rubbed raw and open, leaving blood and pus stains on the saddle pads to trickle to the corners and drip in the dirt of the road.

  Every rill, every creek or well, was thronged with people eager for a drink, with artillerists or cavalrymen fighting their way through to water their horses before they died on them. Villages had to be avoided, too crammed with the weak or defeatist almost elbow-to-elbow; or sprinkled with potential murderers who’d have killed their children for a horse.

  “Piedmontese,” Peel pointed out, once they’d found a shady spot far off the road, downhill by the side of a small brook. “They were up north, thirty miles or more. And here they are, running to the sea. I think I spotted some Austrian uniforms of regiments garrisoned at Vado, too. Going the other way. That don’t bode well, I tell you.”

  “It looked to be four or five miles to the coast,” Lewrie said, forcing himself to be brutal and jerk his horse’s lips from the water, before it foundered itself. “Last view we had, that last clear hill.”

  “We’ll be on foot long before then, if it’s that far,” Mister Peel said with a fatalistic shrug. “ If the Austrians haven’t abandoned it, yet. God, the French ain’t pursuin’ them . . . they’re herdin’ ’em!”

  “We’ve left the ones streaming down from west-to-east,” Lewrie pointed out as they had to lash with their reins to get their mounts to leave the brook and begin a shaky walk again. “Think we’ll run into a new wave, coming up from Vado?”

  “Fight our way, cross-current, then.” Peel sighed. “Might even be easier, who knows, Lewrie?” He drew up, as his horse began to limp, unable to put weight on its left foreleg. “That’s that, for this’un,” he said, dismounting at last. He stripped off the saddle and pad, the bridle and harness, to discourage anyone else forcing the poor beast any farther, and began to march beside them, leaving it spraddle-legged and head-down in utter exhaustion.

  A mile later, it was Lewrie’s that sank under him, too weak to stand, much less walk anymore. They stripped it, but it could not rise. Just lay in the road, its sides heaving, and whickering in pain. Lewrie drew a pistol and shot it behind the ear. He was an Englishman, adored horses, of course—and had never been forced to be so callous to one, ever. Hoped he never would again, either.

  A mile more, and it was Mountjoy’s that began to favor a fore-foot. They were all three now on “shank’s ponies,” and perhaps a long three miles from the sea, still. It was almost all downhill, and they could see it, winking and glittering so invitingly, now and again, from a vantage point. The traffic was coming up to them, fleeing Porto Vado. They could see a mass migration heading north and east. Perversely, it was easier to work their way across the flow of traffic, cross fields ignored by the retreating army and its train of followers, who desperately clung near the roads.

  “Porto Vado’s out,” Lewrie said, pointing south one hour later. They were within a mile of the sea, with the last strings of stragglers left behind them. Yet the port town swarmed with military activity, a constant coming and going in French uniforms. “Strike the coast over to the east, perhaps. Might find a boat on the beach, a scrap o’ sail? We might have to go as far as Genoa. Fancy a shore supper in Genoa, Mister Mountjoy?”

  “Fancy a horse, sir,” Mountjoy muttered back, waving them to get low. “There’s a French cavalry patrol yonder.”

  Half a dozen riders came up a dirt path from a distant village on the sea, swaying in their saddles and laughing loud enough to be heard from two hundred yards off, waving foraged straw-covered wine bottles.

  “Still have that cockade that Choundas dropped, Mountjoy?” Alan inquired.

  “Yessir, but . . .”

  “You wanted a horse,” Lewrie grunted, taking it and wedging it beneath the gold loop of his hat. “So do I. Come on. Act superior.”

  He stood up and began to walk toward them, rifle slung on his shoulder, loaded and primed to fire, his pistols in his waistband. A march pace, nothing hesitant or suspicious about him.

  “Mes amis!” he shouted loudly to get the cavalrymen’s attention. “Alors, mes amis!” From the corner of his mouth, he asked a question: “Mountjoy, how do you say, ‘come here, you drunken fools’?”

  The cavalrymen straightened up in their saddles, adjusting the undone collars of their shirts and stocks, corking their bottles and trying to hide them in their forage bags.

  “Come here! I have need of you!” Lewrie shouted sternly, this time by himself, in what he hoped passed for decent French. “I am Capitaine Choundas . . . Navy! Come here!” Softer; “Pistols, lads.”

  They rode up to them, a sergeant and five privates, cutty-eyed and abashed at being caught drunk, cringing at the harsh tone from the officer with the cockade on his hat. They didn’t recognize the uniform, but he had an epaulet, and his coat was blue, the same as theirs.

  Quite close, within fifteen feet.

  “Mes amis . . .” Lewrie began to smile, holding out his arms to admonish them. “Now!”

  Peel shot first, and the sergeant went backward off his horse, a bullet in his chest. Lewrie drew a pistol, pulled it to full cock, and fired at the next-nearest man, who was just reaching for his musketoon. He went down to be dragged, whimpering, and bounding behind his terrified horse. Mountjoy dropped another who’d drawn a saber, dashed in and snatched the reins as the man toppled into the dirt. Peel shot his second, a private who was trying to control his rearing mount. A shot in return that went wide, Lewrie missing with his second pistol, but Mountjoy, now mounted, popping off at another who swayed in the saddle, left arm useless. The last wheeled to gallop away, but Peel had the .54-caliber musketoon to his shoulder and snapped off a shot that took the fellow in the kidneys, spilling him onto the stubbly grain field he’d tried to cross.

  They managed to snare the reins of two more mounts, swung up in the saddles, and lashed away from their hastily improvised ambush before the rest of the cavalry unit the patrol had come from were alerted.

  “East!” Peel shouted, lashing with the reins. “Far as we can! Whoo!” he exulted for all of them; to have killed without a scratch. And to be astride strong, fresh horses . . . still alive and free.

  Ten more quick miles, going cross-country above the coast roads, any pursuit left behind, it looked like, and beyond the reach of French soldiers, still encountering streams of Austrians headed away as fast as they could hobble on foot, mostly going inland and nor’east, running from nothing. Running away from the sea. Going almost as far as Savona, and hoping it was still in Genoese hands, daring to dip down to the coastal road, finally where the traffic was blessedly both sparse and civilian again.

  They drew up on a low, shingly bluff, at last, just one hundred yards from the surf. There were ships out there, not a mile off, which had fled Vado Bay themselves. Lewrie recognized Austrian
colors, and Genoese under Red Ensigns, in sign of their captures.

  “No boats,” Mountjoy groaned, as spent as his stolen horse, by then. “No way off.”

  “Yes, there is,” Lewrie said, stripping off his coat and hat. “There, sir! There!” he insisted, wigwagging his coat over his head. “Come on, you blind son of a bitch! See me! Be a little curious!”

  Around the next point came a rowboat under two lugsails and jib, not a half mile off the beach. Lewrie began to shout, and urged them all to wave their coats, to fire off their weapons and scream.

  The boat turned in, began to slant shoreward, close-reaching on a sea wind that had at last come up from the sou’east. The boat stood in cautiously, until almost level with them, as they dashed down to the surf line, still yelling and waving. The sails were lowered, and oars appeared to stroke her in. Within a cable, Lewrie could make out the dark red hull, the neat gilt trim of Agamemnon ’s borrowed barge. And the incredulous face of Midshipman Hyde in her stern sheets, surrendering the helm to a more experienced able seaman who’d beach her proper, without risk.

  They waded out to meet her, the last few yards, splashing up to their thighs as some oarsmen stroked her sideways, to turn her bows to the sea, while others jumped over to push her around quickly to take the surf from forrud, not abeam, and to help them scramble over the side to the safety of a solid oak thwart.

  “’Bout given you up, sir!” Hyde yelped. “Been up and down this coast for hours, looking for you, Captain! Mister Knolles told me to wait till dusk, if you didn’t . . .”

  “Thankee, Mister Hyde.” Lewrie sighed, glad for a sip of brackish ship’s water, and a hard biscuit to rap, then gnaw dry. “And for Mister Knolles’s perseverance. Thank him in person, soon’s I meet him, and be damned glad of the doing.”

  “You get the bastard that stole the gold, sir?” Hyde asked, as the oarsmen strained to the helmsman’s shouts of “Give way, together!” and “Put yer backs in it!” to keep the barge moving forward, up, over the dangerous breaking surf to calmer water beyond the breakers.