The groan must have been taken by the man who was waiting to kill him as a sign that he was no longer capable of putting up a fight, for a moment later there came a scampering sound on the far side of the horse and a brief order shouted in a German patois that Roger did not understand.
Next second, to his horror, the reason for the scampering and the order was made clear: a big wolf hound suddenly came bounding round the buttocks of the dead horse. The brute had been sent by its owner to flush Roger out. He had laid aside his pistol, but was still holding the knife with which he had been trying to slit his boot open.
With a ferocious snarl the beast leapt at him. He was lying at full length. To have scrambled to his knees, so as to be better able to meet the attack would have been fatal, for he had no doubt that his enemy had now come out of the wood and was only waiting for him to raise his head above the level of the horse to put a bullet through it.
The wolfhound's jaws gaped wide. Another moment and his gleaming fangs would have fastened themselves in Roger's throat and torn it out. In a bound the beast was upon him, pinning down his hand that held the knife. There was only one hope of saving himself. Clenching his left fist, he drove it straight into the big dog's mouth. Automatically the jaws snapped to. Roger gasped as the sharp teeth bit into the sides of his forearm, but the sustained force of the beast's spring and the thrust of Roger's fist had carried his hand right through the slobbering mouth and down into the animal's gullet. The yellow eyes distended to their fullest extent, it snorted fiercely in a vain endeavour to draw breath. Choking, it reared up and thrashed wildly with its forepaws on Roger's chest as it strove to wriggle free. Its efforts to draw away released Roger's right hand, in which he still held the knife. Savagely he thrust upward with it into the brute's belly, then turned the weapon in the wound. Next moment a warm mess of blood and guts were pouring out over his arm and body. The great dog jerked spasmodically, tore its mouth free of Roger's left arm, gave a whimpering howl and collapsed upon him.
Roger's heart was pounding fiercely as he lay motionless, the strength temporarily drained from all his limbs. But his mind was working frantically, for he was acutely aware that he was still in deadly peril. To have survived the attack by the savage hound was more than he could have hoped for when he first heard it snarl and saw it come bounding towards him. But he had yet to escape death at the hands of its master, whom he knew must be lurking only a few yards away on the far side of the horse, with his musket at the ready.
Making a great effort he pushed the dead hound half off him, pulled his knife out of the gaping wound and transferred it to his left hand; then, with his right, he groped for and found his pistol.
Now, having got his breath back he was, for a moment, sorely tempted to end matters, one way or another, by taking a gamble with fate. Being a crack shot with a pistol, he felt certain that if he suddenly sat up and his enemy was within fifteen paces, he could kill him. But he had only the one bullet, and no means of reloading. The second he exposed himself the man would bring his musket to bear and, if he was further off, the odds would be in his favour.
On the other hand the man must know that his hound was dead and possibly think that Roger had died in his struggle with it; or at least have been rendered helpless. Within a few moments it was certain that he would come round to find out what had happened. To do so he would have to expose himself and be within easy range. Having considered these alternatives, Roger's native caution decided him to ignore his impulse and lie doggo.
The greatest clanger entailed by his decision was that he had no means of guessing whether his enemy would come round by his horse's head or its tail and, lying at full length as he was, he could not keep his eyes fixed on both simultaneously. All he could do, while glancing first one way then the other, was to strain his ears for sounds of the killer's approach.
He waited in an agony of apprehension. Time seemed to stand still. The suspense was almost unbearable. Again he was seized with the temptation to sit up, but fought it down. He knew that with his right leg useless, his left arm torn and aching from the dog's fierce bite, weakened by loss of blood and lying there on his back, he was no match even for an active, well-grown boy, let alone a cunning and stalwart peasant; yet he longed desperately for an end to this hideous uncertainty.
At last it came, and when it did come took him by surprise. His only warning was the sound of a few swift footfalls on the muddy, rutted road. But his enemy appeared neither round the head nor tail of the dead horse. He ran straight at it, looming suddenly above the saddle, with his musket pointed down at Roger.
He was a tall man with gangling limbs, wearing a worn, rabbit-skin jacket over filthy rags. His hair, a dirty brown streaked with grey, was an untidy mop, standing out in tufts where it had been roughly cut. A straggling beard covered his cheeks and chin. His lips stood out red and thick, his eyes were small, dark, and glaring hatred.
Caught off his guard, Roger had no chance to use his pistol, for to aim it he would have to throw his right arm across his chest. His eyes started from his head as he stared up into the barrel of the musket. The man's finger was upon the trigger and he was just about to fire. The dead dog still lay half sprawled over Roger's body. Inspiration from beyond suddenly came to him, as it had several times before when his life had been in dire peril. Instantly he acted on the thought that he knew had been sent to him unconsciously by Georgina's spirit which was bound so closely to his own. With all the power he had left he jerked up his good leg. It threw the dog up from midway down his body, so that its dead head landed on his face. A fraction of a second earlier the musket had been fired. The bullet ploughed through the wolfhound's head instead of Roger's.
Even as the dog's blood and brains poured over Roger's face he realised that he still had a chance to save his life; but that it would last only the next few moments. He must get the better of his attacker before he had time to reload his musket, otherwise he would be irretrievably lost.
Thrusting aside the horribly shattered carcase of the animal, he shook his head violently to get the filthy muck out of his eyes, then sat up. His right eye was still blinded by a fragment of the dog's flesh, but with his left he could hazily make out the form of the peasant He had the musket between his knees and was in the act of pouring powder from a horn that hung from his belt down the barrel. Roger swivelled his pistol, strove to steady his quivering hand, aimed for the man's chest and pulled the trigger. To his utter dismay, nothing happened.
The reason flashed upon him. The powder had become wet with the dog's blood. By then the peasant had taken a bullet from his pouch, and was about to drop it down the barrel of his musket. In desperation Roger hurled the now useless pistol at him. It caught him sideways on, full in the face. With a howl he let the musket fall, clutched at his broken nose, then staggered and fell.
For Roger to have remained where he was would have been fatal. The injury he had inflicted on his enemy was not sufficient to prevent him from coming to his feet and completing the reloading of his musket. Transferring his knife to his right hand, Roger heaved himself and, dragging his wounded leg behind him, scrambled over the horse's body. The peasant had come to his knees and stretched out a hand to grab his musket. Suddenly both of them went still and remained for a moment as though frozen. Simultaneously they had caught the sound of horses' hooves coming up the road from the direction of Dresden.
In the violence of the struggle neither had heard them in the distance, but now they were loud and coming on at a canter. Evidently the horsemen had been alerted to trouble ahead by the firing of the musket that had shattered the dog's head.
Wiping the blood from his face with the back of his hand, the peasant gave a frightened glance down the road; then, abandoning his musket, turned to make off into the woods. With a lightening glow of elation Roger knew that he was saved, but he was not content to let his would-be murderer go.
When in Spain he had learnt how to throw a knife. Drawing back his hand, he sent the sharp
blade with all the strength he had left whizzing after his enemy. He aimed to strike the man between the shoulder blades, but by then he had become so weak that the force behind the throw was insufficient, even at that short distance, to carry the knife high enough. Yet it scored a hit, slicing into and cutting a tendon at the back of the peasant's left knee.
He let out a scream, staggered and fell. Scrambling to his knees, he attempted to run on, but his left leg had been rendered useless. The moment he put his weight on it he fell again. By then a small party of Chasseurs had rounded the corner and were approaching at the gallop. Clawing at the muddy road, the man made frantic efforts to drag himself up a low bank into the thick undergrowth.
Roger, still gasping for breath, was sprawled across the body of bis dead horse. Although he was covered from head to foot in blood and muck, his uniform was still recognisable as that of a French officer. The leader of the Chasseurs, a young Lieutenant, had grasped the situation in a glance. Drawing his sabre, he rode at the peasant, intending to sever his head from his body at a stroke. But Roger raised a hand and cried in a croaking voice:
'Don't kill him! I want that man alive.'
A moment later the Lieutenant and his four companions pulled up and dismounted. Two of them seized the man and dragged him to his feet, while their officer hurried over to Roger. In a few words he confirmed the fact that he had been ambushed, then added jerkily:
'A sabre slash or a bullet is too swift a death for that... that swine. I want him hanged ... but not with a running noose. Just have a loop of rope put over his head and ... and string him up to the nearest tree. When his friends find him, he'll be an example to them. They'll see from his face that we left him to dance on air till . . . till he slowly strangled, instead of our pulling on his feet to give him a quick end.'
The Lieutenant had already seen from Roger's rank badges that he was a Colonel, so did not demur. One of his men produced a lanyard, tied one end of it to the stout branch of a tree that protruded about seven feet above the road. The struggling peasant was pushed up the bank and the other end knotted round his neck. His legs were then kicked from under him, and he swung out above the road.
His shouts ended abruptly, his little eyes bulged, and his limbs began to jerk like those of a puppet on a string. His neck had not been broken by a drop of several feet and, as the noose was loose, it would not immediately choke him. It could be anything up to a quarter of an hour before the strain of the weight of his body on his neck caused his torture to end in oblivion. Roger was not by nature cruel, but he had suffered such agony, both physical and mental, inflicted on him in this terrible encounter, that he felt fully justified in exacting vengeance.
By tins time the head of a column of wagons had appeared round the bend of the road, and Roger learned that it consisted of supplies being sent up to the Emperor's army. On hearing that the Emperor was on his way back to Dresden, the Lieutenant agreed that it was pointless to proceed further, and ordered his column to turn about. He also called up a sergeant to whom Roger gave the despatch he had been taking to St. Cyr, and ordered him to ride off ahead at full speed with it.
Meanwhile, two of the soldiers had cut Roger's riding boot away and pried his injured leg from it. As the bullet had gone right through his calf, he was spared the probing needed for extraction, but the muscles had been torn to pieces and, although he was nearly fainting with pain as they bound up the pulpy mess with a field dressing, his vanity was piqued by the gloomy thought that never again would fair ladies comment on the perfection of his legs when wearing silk stockings. He had, as he had feared, lost a lot of blood, so was very weak and now unable to stand unless supported. As several of the wagons were-loaded with hay, they were able to make him fairly comfortable in one of them and he was conveyed to a nobleman's palace in Dresden that had been turned into a hospital for officers.
There they gave him opium to dull the pain of his wounds, then stripped him of his filthy clothes and bathed him thoroughly. The thickness of his tunic had prevented the hound's teeth from biting deeply into his left forearm but, after his leg had been properly dressed, he had to submit to the further ordeal of having the bites cauterised.
Next morning he gradually roused from a heavily-drugged sleep to contemplate the extremely worrying situation in which he had landed himself by his hasty decision to set off without an orderly. Failing to take that precaution had led to his coming within an ace of losing his life; but he endeavoured to console himself with the thought that although, had he been accompanied by an armed companion, the peasant would never have dared attempt to finish him off, that could not have prevented the man from shooting him through the leg in the first place.
When the surgeon made his rounds, Roger asked anxiously how soon he would be able to ride again. The reply was not for a month or, at the least, three weeks, and then only for a mile or two at a time at walking pace. That was what he had feared, and his heart sank. If Georgina's visions had been true foresight, young Charles was due to die with the fall of the leaves, and it was already September 13th.
Fate, Roger thought bitterly, had been against him all the time in this nebulous mission, about the success of which he had, from the beginning, considered the odds greatly against him. Georgina had seen Charles in her crystal actually about to be hanged, and for his would-be rescuer to take steps in time to prevent that now seemed most improbable.
Yet for Georgina's sake he had felt it imperative to do his utmost to render her vision false by finding the boy and getting him back to England before the autumn. To do that there should have been ample time; but again and again he had been thwarted, first by Charles having left Spain, next by learning that he was not held prisoner in France, but was somewhere in Davout's command based
on Hamburg, thus necessitating the long ride up to Dresden. And Hamburg lay to the north-east, over two hundred and fifty miles away. How, now that he was crippled, could he possibly hope to cover that distance before every tree in north Germany was bare of leaves?
17
The Battle of the Nations
That afternoon the Emperor sent to enquire after Roger. From time to time, his friends on the Staff came to visit him and he learned something from them of the progress of the war, although it had again become a most complicated picture.
The three armies opposed to the French now greatly outnumbered them, but the weakness of the Allies was that their forces, which roughly formed a semi-circle east of the Elbe, were widely separated. One army covered Berlin, while the others were in Silesia and Bohemia. Napoleon, in accordance with his habitual strategy, aimed to concentrate his army and defeat each in turn before they could join forces against him; but his plans were seriously bedevilled by the fact that since he was operating in hostile country he could secure no reliable information about the whereabouts of his enemies.
His strongest card was that, owing to his unique reputation as a General, all the Allied Commanders were frightened of him. Bernadotte had been one of the ablest Marshals, yet he had no confidence at all in his own ability to defeat his old master, so kept his Swedes well to the rear of the battle zone. Schwarzenberg, who was technically Commander-in-Chief of all the Allied forces, was an able diplomat but a craven soldier, and became scared out of his wits every time he heard that Napoleon was approaching. Barclay de Tolly had, again and again, perhaps wisely, scurried off with his army rather than stand and fight during the French advance to Moscow in the previous year; and the other Russian Generals were equally cagey about taking on the redoubtable Corsican. Old Blucher and his Prussians alone showed a determination to lose no opportunity of attacking the enemy, but the veteran was too shrewd to take die offensive with his limited forces unless he could be assured of die support of the Russians and Austrians.
This fear of Napoleon by the majority of the Allied Generals did not prove altogether to his advantage, since although it enabled him to move the bulk of his army wherever he wished, every time he advanced agai
nst one of the enemy armies it withdrew. The result was that he was constantly exhausting his troops by long marches in most evil weather, without being able to bring any of his opponents to engage in a pitched battle. For the - remainder of September, during which there was hardly a day upon which it did not rain, he forced the pace in desperate efforts to catch up with and defeat one of the Allied forces, only to hear that another was again threatening Dresden, so was forced to break off the pursuit and change direction in order to protect his base.
By the end of the month Roger was able to get about on crutches, but for him to have ridden any distance would have been certain to re-open his wound, so he began to - contemplate the possibility of hiring a coach and leaving the city clandestinely one night. But once more his plans were frustrated. The Emperor's Chief-of-Staff, Marshal Berthier, Prince de Neufchatel, happened to hear that he was able to get about again, so sent for him.
As Roger was that comparatively rare product, a beau sabreur who also had brains, during periods when Napoleon had not been engaged in active operations he had of tent lent him for a while to Berthier; so he was well acquainted with the Chief-of-Staff, and the complicated work for which he was responsible.
The Prince, an ugly little man with an enormous head that held a card index brain; he was most unpopular and ill-tempered but, recognising Roger's capabilities, had always been polite to him, and he now explained that he was in the devil of a mess.
The constant changes of direction by the Emperor and the other widely scattered French forces, were making it near-impossible to carry out his task of re-routing supply columns and keeping a record of units available, together with their whereabouts; so Roger's help would prove invaluable. His request, as the senior Marshal in the Emperor's army, was tantamount to an order so, for the ten days that followed, Roger had to labour for hours on end, working out statistics from maps and schedules.
Meanwhile, Blucher, inspired by Gneisenau and encouraged by both his King and the Czar, had determined on a flank march which would enable him to join up with Schwarzenberg's Austrians, south of Leipzig. A few days later the Emperor, hearing that the Prussians had crossed the Elbe, charged Murat with the defence of Leipzig and St. Cyr once more with that of Dresden, then hurried north-west, hoping to crush his most inveterate enemy while on the march and encumbered by his baggage. Having sent Ney forward to fall on the rear of Blucher's army, Napoleon waited further news for four days in the dank, fogbound castie of Duben. When it came he learned that Blucher had turned westward, thus disclosing his intention of joining Schwarzenberg.
The Irish Witch rb-11 Page 23
