Battlesaurus (27 page)

“Where is the doctor?” the captain asks in English, but Monsieur Lejeune shakes his head.

“Where is the doctor?” the captain asks again, this time in French. His French is rudimentary, but sufficient.

“The doctors are gone,” Monsieur Lejeune says. “Your army has withdrawn.”

The captain nods his understanding.

“You are the one who says he saw monsters?” Monsieur Lejeune asks.

The captain frowns.

“Beasts. Giant saurs,” Monsieur Lejeune prompts.

The captain's face rises briefly in understanding, then sinks into a private hell. “It is neither a dream nor a lie,” he says. “My men ran, but they were not cowards.”

“I believe you,” Monsieur Lejeune says.

“You are the first,” the captain says. “The doctors say I have imagined it. That I am suffering from melancholia.”

“What did you see?” Monsieur Lejeune asks.

Even in his basic, stumbling French, the picture that the captain paints is of such confusion and terror that it is no wonder the doctors thought he was mad.

“You do believe me?” he asks, when he has finished.

“I do,” Monsieur Lejeune says.

“Even I start to doubt my own sanity,” the captain says. “Surely such creatures exist only in fairy tales.”

“I wish that were true,” Monsieur Lejeune says. “But were you not warned about these creatures?”

“We had no warning,” the captain says. “We were taken by complete surprise.”

Monsieur Lejeune excuses himself and hurries away. It is the second time Willem has seen him quizzing soldiers on the battles and he suspects there is more to his questions than just interest.

Willem turns to resume his walk around the makeshift hospital, but the captain stops him with a quiet, “Monsieur.”

“Yes?” Willem asks.

“My ring,” he says.

Willem shakes his head, not understanding.

“They took my arm,” the captain says. He shuts his eyes and swallows a few times.

“Others have lost much more,” Willem says, a little more harshly than he intends. A few moments ago he covered the face of a pretty young woman. The wife of an officer who was at his side during the battle.

“Monsieur,” the captain says. “Please help me.”

“There is little I can do,” Willem says.

“I was not myself when they took my arm,” the captain says. “I am not as resolute as many of the others, to my shame.”

“There is no shame, monsieur,” Willem says quietly.

“On my hand was a ring. It is gold,” the captain says. “It is very important to me. It is important to my family. It is very old.”

And now Willem sees the problem.

“I will ask someone to look for it in the morning,” he says. What he does not say is that he cannot go
there
.

There
is the back of the marketplace. Beside the rear doors. In the street that runs by. It is a place of such horror that Willem does not even allow himself to look in that direction for fear that he will see through the walls to what lies behind. A jumbled pile of limbs. Arms and legs, hands and feet, tossed in a heap, their neatly cut ends and sawed bones a contrast to the mangled flesh of the wounds that caused their removal.

And in his imagination the limbs are not still and silent. Fingers grasp, toes wriggle. The arms and legs writhe and crawl like a nest of maggots.

He opens his mouth to tell the captain that he cannot do this, that he cannot face the horror that lies outside the rear doors. But he does not utter the words. He looks at the void under the thin blanket where the man's right arm should be. Just a few hours ago it was being cut from his body with only a few drops of rum to ease the parting. How can he compare his suffering to that of the captain?

“How will I know it?” he asks.

“It has my family crest on it,” the captain says. “A lion over a crown. I will be forever grateful if you find it.”

His amputation is a high one, just below the shoulder. Forever is not likely to be long for this captain.

*   *   *

Cosette finds Willem in the street at the rear of the marketplace, seated, his back to the wall. She has come to bring water for the men. She rests her bucket and lamp at his feet and sits beside him for a minute.

“You should sleep,” she says. “It is late.”

“I should, but I cannot,” he says.

“To your bed, Willem,” she says. “I will attend the patients for a while.”

“There is something I must do,” he says.

She waits.

“I promised an officer that I would find his ring,” Willem says.

She understands immediately. “And you cannot find it?”

“I cannot look,” he says.

Her hand covers his. Her words are soft.

“Describe the ring for me,” she says. “I will find it.”

“No, Cosette,” he says. “The promise is mine.”

“Then come with me,” she says. “The promise is not broken if we search together.”

He rises up with her and her strength becomes his strength.

*   *   *

Cosette wets a rag with water from her bucket and cleans dried blood off the ring before they take it together to the captain.

His eyes fill with tears and he clutches it tightly in his remaining hand.

“Thank you,” he says.

“It was an honor to help you,” Willem says, with an apologetic glance at Cosette.

“If I do not survive this injury,” the captain says, “I beg you to find a way to return this ring to my family.”

“I will try, sir,” Willem says.

Cosette touches the captain gently on the shoulder. “What is your name, sir?” she asks.

“Wenzel-Halls,” he says. “Captain, Coldstream Guards.”

Cosette smooths hair away from his forehead where a loose lock has covered his face.

“Cosette is my name,” she says.

“And Dylan is mine,” the captain says. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“I wish you had not had to,” Cosette says.

*   *   *

Afterward they sit together on the cold wooden bench outside the hospital. Cosette is shuddering, and clearly trying not to cry. Willem puts his arm around her to ease her burden and she turns in to him, and for a while they are one.

There is dried blood on his hands, and the same on hers. She begins to sob, and he realizes that it was no easier for her than it was for him. But she did it all the same. She did it for him. And in that moment Willem wonders, amid the blood and the guts and the gore, if he has discovered what love is.

 

FIRST LIGHT

“Why are we stopping?” Frost asks.

“Don't rightly know which way to go, sir,” Jack says.

“North and east will take us to Gaillemarde,” Frost says.

“Yes, sir, but I am not sure which way east is,” Jack says. “Not till the sun comes up.”

“But we've been traveling east until now, is that not right, Jack?” Frost asks.

“Yes, sir.”

“How have you managed that, without the sun?”

“I could see the forest, sir. I knew that was to the north, so I kept it to my left.”

“Jack, I think you're a lot brighter than you give yourself credit for,” Frost says. “But what is the problem now? Can't you see the forest anymore?”

“No, sir. I mean yes, sir. I mean no, sir.” Jack stops, in a muddle.

“I'm afraid I don't understand,” Frost says.

“I mean we're right in the middle of it, sir,” Jack says.

The forest surrounds them. Tall black trees that reach up to the sky, blotting out the moon and the meager light of the stars.

“Time for a break then, Jack,” Frost says.

“Good idea, sir. Bit of sleep wouldn't hurt. First light we'll be off again,” Jack says.

“Indeed,” Frost says.

But sleep does not come to either of them. The horrors of the previous day are too bright, too vivid, too huge in their memories.

“Lieutenant, sir. Why did you want me to describe the beast?” Jack asks after a while.

“To help identify it,” Frost says.

“How can you identify some'at like that?” Jack asks. “Nobody's ever seen anything like it before. Have they?”

“I doubt it,” Frost says. “But there are men of science who can link it to other, smaller saurs that we do know of. Like a lion is related to a cat. That might help us understand the beast. And we will need to understand it, if we want to learn how to kill it.”

“I like cats,” Jack says.

He thinks for a while on what the lieutenant has said. Then asks, “Do you really think they'll be able to kill those … things?”

“Perhaps,” Frost says. “We killed one already today.”

“Two, I think, sir,” Jack says.

“Two?”

“That one that was on top of me, I don't think it was the one we shot. I been thinking about that and that one would have a bleedin' great hole in its chest. This one didn't.”

“Then what killed this one?” Frost asks.

“When the ammunition cart blew up,” Jack says. “I think that was what killed it.”

“So what happened to the other one?” Frost asks.

“Dunno, sir. Maybe it rolled away down the hill.”

For some reason the image of a dead dinosaur rolling down a hill seems funny, so Jack laughs. Frost laughs with him.

“So they can be killed,” Frost says. “With shot or with powder. This might well be our counter.”

“Counter, sir?”

“If we cannot match these new weapons,” Frost says, “then we will have to learn to counter them.”

“That's why you wanted me to describe the dead one,” Jack says.

“Exactly. I suspect few if any British soldiers have seen what we have seen, and lived to tell the tale,” Frost says. “We must somehow return to England and tell them everything we can about this beast.”

*   *   *

Jack stands abruptly. He has fallen asleep despite everything and the sun has already risen.

The movement wakes Frost, who is curled on a bed of soft leaves like a child. There are dragonrat tracks around them both. Jack is just happy that nothing larger came across them during the night.

“What is it?” Frost asks in a hushed voice. He sits up and his hand goes automatically to touch the bandages that cover his eyes.

Sleep has been a respite from the horrors that surround them, but as consciousness rushes back, so does reality, and Jack can see the weight of it on the lieutenant's face.

“Sun's up, sir,” Jack says.

“Then let us be on our way,” Frost says.

Gaillemarde is close, they find out. Much closer than they had realized. The eastern road takes them through a short stretch of the forest, then along a riverbank path. Ahead Jack sees a stone bridge and a saur-fence on the other side of the river.

If Lieutenant Frost had his eyes, he might have realized sooner, but he does not. Jack is exhausted, trudging along with his eyes on the path in front of him. Which is why he does not see until they are at the saur-gate itself.

There are guards inside the gate.

But their uniforms are not the red coats of the British.

They are the blue and white of the French.

 

Book Three

THE HUNTING

June 19–June 25, 1815

 

THIBAULT

Thibault is already dressed when his wife wakes.

He stands at the window, staring out at the darkened roofs of Brussels and the fortified wall beyond. He breathes in deeply, savoring the smell of smoke, the sweet perfume of victory, that still drifts this way from the fields near Waterloo.

“Marc?” A soft voice from the bed.

It is still dark but his movement must have disturbed her for she sits up as if taking a fright.

“Rest, Nicole,” he says. “It is not yet light.”

“You are leaving?” his wife asks. “And so early?”

She turns and lights the candles on her nightstand. A warm smell of paraffin quickly fills the room. Like the rest of the apartment, it is small and sparsely decorated. A house suited to a colonel or a major perhaps, but not to a general of France. That will change.

“The emperor himself commands me to run an errand. A trifling thing and a waste of my time, particularly when there is so much else to do. But it was the emperor who gave the order and I must obey.”

“You are now a general of the Imperial Guard, not a manservant,” she says.

“Not for long,” Thibault says.

There is a pause, then Nicole says, “I do not follow your meaning, my love.”

Thibault turns, leaning across her and brushing loose hair back from her face with his hand.

“Bonaparte is a conqueror, not a ruler,” he says. “He has neither the nature nor the temperament for it. He is an attack dog. The states of Europe will quickly fall under him. But then the new empire will need a leader. A peacetime leader. Perhaps someone like myself.”

“You think you can overthrow the emperor of France?” she asks. The idea excites her and she catches his hand with hers and gently kisses his palm.

“I do not think it, I know it,” Thibault says. “I know it without question. As of yesterday, I am the source of Napol
é
on's power. And there are greater things to come. There are secrets deep in the caves of the Sonian Forest that even the emperor does not know about.”

“Does that not make you the most powerful man in all of Europe?” she asks.

“In fact, if not in title.”

“And when do the two combine?” she asks.

“That day is coming,” he says. “But for now I need his brilliance. Let him conquer Europe. He need not know that he conquers it for me.”

“If you imprison him, the people will rally to his cause,” she says.

“Without question.” Thibault nods. “But Napol
é
on is a relic. An emperor who strides the battlefield with his army like the great conquerors of old. And a battlefield is a dangerous place. A musket shot or a cannonball does not discriminate based on rank or uniform. If Napol
é
on were to die—heroically—on the battlefield, France would have a martyr, and a legacy that will resound through the centuries.”