Wolf Hunt (13 page)

The sentry came to attention in front of Margont.

‘Go and fetch a doctor. Ask for Medical Officer Brémond.’

‘Ready?’ demanded Piquebois.

‘Always!’

Piquebois attacked with a sweeping stroke to his opponent’s left side. The circular movement of one of his lunges could shatter an opponent’s head like an eggshell. Relmyer dodged. Piquebois launched spiritedly into his favourite repertoire: attacks with arms not extended, beats, false attacks, feints, attempts to disarm, compound attacks, ripostes, parries, feint parries, aggressive sequences, unexpected retreats and many other moves as well, all punctuated by constant changes of rhythm. This staggering multiplicity of moves made him unreadable. Fighting Piquebois you never knew which foot you should be on. You were swamped by the calculated cacophony before submitting to the final blow, which was always completely baffling. His attacks were precise and difficult to parry, which is why Relmyer concentrated harder and harder on dodging nimbly or deflecting Piquebois’s blade. Piquebois displayed a force that no one would ever have imagined from looking at him. When his sabre clashed noisily against Relmyer’s, sparks flew and the Austrian grimaced in pain. The hussars were moving all the time to avoid being struck.

They both rapidly adjusted their techniques. Piquebois attacked less violently because Relmyer was not overwhelmed by his force, and instead became more precise. Relmyer stopped trying to tire Piquebois out, now that he had the measure of the Frenchman’s endurance. The latter fought like a demon without either getting

out of breath or tiring. Piquebois beat Relmyer back towards the corner between the concierge’s lodge and the gate in the wall. With less room, Relmyer could not dodge as well. He tried to land a blow with the point of his sabre on Piquebois’s face. He was aiming at the chin, but his offensive meant he had to reveal himself, and Piquebois parried and lunged in order to launch an immediate attack in the direction of Relmyer’s flank. Relmyer, who had made his move to encourage this reaction from Piquebois, deflected his opponent’s blade, whose trajectory he had anticipated, and his blade - just the point - went into his opponent’s left shoulder. Piquebois blinked. A dark stain spread across his shirt. He looked at the wound with the same astonishment as if he were seeing a field of blue grass beneath a green sky. He collapsed and found himself sitting down with his legs apart and his sabre still in his hand.

Jean-Quenin Brémond hurried to his aid. The music from the ball in the background grew louder as the guests opened the windows to see what was happening. Piquebois ignored the medical officer.

‘You’re mad, Relmyer ... Launching a false attack to make your opponent react is one thing. But launching a real attack for the same reason, knowing your opponent is of a very high standard ...

I almost killed you ...’

Relmyer agreed. He was breathing quickly. He knew that he had diced with death.

‘If I had feinted, you wouldn’t have been taken in. I took a risk, yes. But it’s you who’s on the ground.’

Margont was choking with rage.

‘Great, Antoine, bravo! Happy now?’

‘Yes,’ murmured Piquebois.

And the worst of it was, he really was happy. 

THE next day Margont and Lefine crossed the Graben, the avenue adored by the Viennese built on the filled-in trenches of medieval fortifications. Their eyes were red from lack of sleep, or perhaps they were splashed with Piquebois’s blood. They stopped at the foot of the Pestsäule, the plague column, where they were to meet Relmyer.

‘Can I ask a stupid question, Captain?’

Margont did not answer.

‘Is Relmyer our friend or our future assassin?’

Margont’s fury was evident from his clenched jaw, jerky gestures and pursed lips.

‘That madman stabbed Piquebois!’ he raged suddenly. ‘As for Antoine, it serves him right if he didn’t like being taught a lesson! He’s as much to blame as Relmyer for what happened. Relmyer is like someone trying to climb out of an abyss. By helping him we increase his chances of success, but he might stumble and pull us

into the void with him! We already have the Austrians to confront, and the partisans at our back, and somewhere out there there’s a murderer who’s as elusive as a ghost. And now to top it all off Relmyer has started wounding the people who’re trying to help him!’

‘His sabre is double-edged ...’

‘Did you see the duel?’

‘No. I was too drunk to see anything except the buffet and the girls.’

‘To think that Piquebois has floored I don’t know how many opponents in his time. And against Relmyer, he didn’t hold back, believe me!’

Lefine nodded. ‘When Antoine draws his sword, he loses his head. It’s as if his sabre starts to think for him.’

‘Well, Relmyer dominated throughout the duel.’

Lefine drummed his fingers lightly on his palm in applause and this questionable joke irritated Margont even more.

‘He’ll live,’ he went on, but Lefine paled, suddenly realising that

his friend really could have died, that it wasn’t just a macabre piece of foolishness resulting from his irrepressible personality. ‘I went to see Jean-Quenin early this morning. He went on about a damaged scapulohumeral joint and severed tendons or something or other... Why can doctors never just give you a straight answer?’ ‘What else do you expect from people who study Latin?’

‘Let’s not exaggerate, only part of their books and anatomy treatises are in Latin. Although that’s already too much for my taste. Anyway, I didn’t understand what he said about the wound except that it’s not fatal and Antoine will soon regain the use of his arm.’ ‘Great! More duels in prospect,’ said Lefine with bitter sarcasm. ‘That’s out of the question!’

Relmyer had still not arrived. To take his mind off things Margont began to study the Pestsäule, several feet of High Baroque. In 1679 the plague had decimated Vienna; there had been a hundred thousand victims. When it was over Emperor Leopold I had had the column built to thank God for eradicating the epidemic. The Holy Trinity in gold metal sat atop a cascade of angels and humans.

Leopold knelt praying, and beneath him a woman holding a cross symbolised Faith triumphing over the plague, embodied by an old woman naked on the ground, her skin loose and wrinkled. Mar-gont thought of the column of the Grande Armée in Place Vendome, which was not yet finished. How ironic in this time of war to have these two works celebrating the triumph of life (the Grande Armée column was made with the bronze of one thousand two hundred cannon captured at Austerlitz and in Vienna in 1805, because it was thought that the peace would endure).

Lefine let his gaze slide over the edifice, looking at each face in turn.

After the great battle with the Austrians, they’ll build a column like that,’ he declared to Margont. ‘But much, much higher and with even more people. It will be a huge pile of corpses that will touch the sky. At the top the Emperor will sit in splendour, pointing to Moscow or London, the site of the next column.’

Margont was getting more and more perplexed.

‘Each war, instead of bringing peace, sets off new ones ... We’ve

gone astray somewhere and well never find our equilibrium again.’

Relmyer arrived. His rolling gait, his assurance and his dazzling uniform attracted glances from passing women and jealousy from husbands. His boots echoed on the paving stones just in case there were some who had not yet noticed him. He came to a halt in front of the two men and extended his hand. Margont shook it briefly and immediately launched into what he had to say.

‘Do I really have to go on helping you? I don’t want to find that by associating with you, I end up with your blade through my stomach.’

That would never happen!’ Relmyer spoke with the utmost sincerity. But was that sufficient guarantee? ‘I swear that I would not have killed your friend,’ he added.

He had that arrogance of masters of arms who believe they can wield their blade with the precision of a surgeon manipulating his scalpel. Margont spoke in clipped tones. ‘If you take your sabre out again - even once! - on a whim, I will end our co-operation for ever. Well investigate separately and too bad if that slows us down and plays into the hands of the man we’re hunting.’

This threat plunged Relmyer into gloom.

Ashen-faced, he solemnly declared: ‘I swear on my honour that I will never initiate any other duel until this business is resolved. However, I don’t think you understand exactly what that fight represented for me. As soon as I hear people extolling the merits of a swordsman, I am riven with worry. I do my best not to think about it, to concentrate on my work, but I can’t get it out of my mind and the fear grows. Only fighting a duel and winning brings me any relief. Well, relative relief, at least. I want to be sure - no, I need to be sure - that no one will ever be able to defeat me. I have to become invincible, more than invincible. I have to become untouchable!’

Relmyer looked strained. He had revealed the very core of his being: ‘to become untouchable’.

‘If you continue down that route,’ Margont replied, ‘perhaps you will be safe but you will also be alone, because everyone will be

frightened of you. You will become untouchable in more ways than one.’

Relmyer did not respond. Margont was obviously still irritated.

‘And another thing: do you expect me to believe that you want to deliver the murderer up to justice when you would happily run a stranger through? Do you take me for an idiot?’

‘Of course not. I really do want to take him alive. Because it’s not only him I want vengeance on, it’s society’s silence too. If I capture him there will be a trial, statements, witnesses, everything will be recorded. Finally people will take notice! We will finally be able to challenge that silence, justifiably ...’

After a brief hesitation, he gestured towards the avenue. ‘So are you coming with me?’

Margont acquiesced and fell into step beside him. They melted into the crowd of strollers, street-traders and prostitutes, ‘the nymphs of Graben’.

‘I’ve organised Pagin and Telet, another of my hussars, to find out about all the boys “killed in action”,’ Relmyer told him. ‘They’re going to go to all the orphanages, except Lesdorf, of course. I’m not going to get involved personally with that part of the investigation because I fear we will not get very far with it. The man we’re hunting is too good at concealing his tracks. On the other hand, I can’t stop thinking about the military records! We’ll have to track them down so that we can find out who fills them in and therefore who could have allowed them to be altered.’

‘Unfortunately I fear that we won’t be able to,’ declared Margont. ‘Unless the Austrians have lost their minds. You would never let exact details of your troops fall into enemy hands: the size of your regiments, battalion by battalion, the identity of your officers and which regiments ... Maybe the records have been removed by the Austrian army, or maybe well find what’s left of them in a fireplace.’

Margont’s arguments made absolute sense. But not to Relmyer. The young hussar swept them aside with an expansive gesture.

At the moment that’s all we have. I can only see one way of going about this. We’ll have to go to the War Ministry and see if we can

find, despite everything, a register or document that might help us/

Lefine’s eyes widened. He could imagine mounds of files, reports, letters ... With the endless procession of wars, army numbers were growing all the time because of mass conscription and the integration of foreign contingents. Now France, Austria or Russia could easily boast hundreds of thousands of soldiers and militiamen. Bureaucracy had ballooned alongside this vertiginous growth in numbers. The bureaucrats maintained complete control and their innumerable verifications translated into millions of pieces of paper. The effectives had to be counted and recounted to establish how many active soldiers each battalion had, how many deserters there had been and what their names were, to check that each combatant did actually exist and that there were no ‘phantom soldiers’ whose pay could be appropriated by profiteers, to make sure the logistics (pay, provisions, uniforms, weapons and munitions, and billets) were correct ... This last had to be especially closely monitored because there were so many crooked suppliers and corrupt officials swarming over everything.

Relmyer was annoyed at his companions’ lack of enthusiasm.

‘No one is forcing you! But we know how slow-moving and nitpicking bureaucracy is. What’s more, the Austrian Empire is enormous: it includes Hungary, Bohemia, Moravia, Galicia, Slovenia, Croatia, Slavonia, Transylvania ... Perhaps in the middle of all these papers there will be a copy of a report or the translation of a letter that has escaped the notice of the people charged with taking away or destroying all confidential documents. Don’t forget the Austrian army did not reckon on being driven back by Napoleon. Vienna was evacuated in chaos and when everything is done in haste, people make mistakes.’

Margont looked sceptical. ‘Well, such things do undoubtedly exist ... But it would take months—’

‘Well, I’ll spend months,’ persisted Relmyer. ‘If necessary I’ll find translators for Hungarian, Croatian, Czech, Slovenian, Polish, Romanian and the dozens of other languages and dialects spoken in this monstrous empire.’

Margont responded soberly to calm Relmyer down. The French have already searched the registers. Don’t you think the Emperor has had the Austrian archives examined? Last night I asked one of my acquaintances—
'

‘One of 
my
 acquaintances!’ corrected Lefine.

‘Indeed, Fernand, and I thank you once again, even if I did have to pay you both. According to this aide-de-camp to the general staff, no interesting documents relating to the Austrian army were found. So I propose another way of going about things, and if it fails, then, all right, we’ll go and drown ourselves in the Viennese archives.’

‘Another way of going about things?’ repeated Relmyer, emphasising ‘other’. He stood stock-still in the middle of the Stephansplatz. The Stephansdom, St Stephen’s Cathedral, was endowed with a single spire because the silver and the energy needed for a second one had been used to shore up the fortifications before the first Turkish siege in 1529. Behind Relmyer this gothic steeple rose up, its disturbing patchwork of stone seeming to be the incarnation of the questions and worries of the young hussar. ‘Let’s speak to one of the people who fill in the records,’ explained Margont. ‘Indirectly, of course. We’re going to have to convince someone sympathetic to the Austrian cause still living in Vienna to ask the partisans about it. Some partisans regularly cross the front line and could try to find the information we need. After all, we don’t care about the actual registers, what we’re interested in is the list of people who write them up. Now these bureaucrats must have followed the Austrian army in order to avoid being arrested and interrogated on the subject of enemy effectives. If these people understand why we are looking for this information, perhaps they will give it to us.’