Read Chapter 19: The Saint-Michel Cross

The snow had stopped, but the cold had teeth. René moved along the ridge road with the hood of his borrowed cloak pulled low, the forged parchment wrapped in oilcloth against his chest, the fragment of the original letter sewn into the lining of his boot. Brother Anselm's work was good—better than good, it was art—but art could only carry a man so far when the road was watched.

The Saint-Michel Cross rose from the treeline like a stone finger pointing at God. It marked the pass into Swiss territory, a weathered crucifix planted at the border of two Catholic cantons, and beside it stood a guard post that had no business being manned in this weather. Yet there a man stood, wrapped in a bearskin, a halberd leaning against the wall beside him.

René considered turning back. The snow was too deep for a detour. The man had already seen him.

"Halt. Papers."

René produced the forged travel pass from Brother Anselm's workshop, the ink still carrying the faint smell of lampblack. He handed it over with the easy smile of a man with nothing to hide.

The guard took it, read it, then looked at René's face. Then at the iron cross hanging at his neck—the one he'd taken off the dead mercenary, who'd taken it off a Swede, who'd taken it off a Bavarian. René had worn it for warmth of a sort, a piece of scrap metal that might pass him for a pilgrim.

"You're a long way from the war," the guard said. His accent was thick, mountain Swiss.

"I've had enough of it."

The guard turned the pass over. Then he looked at the cross again. His jaw tightened.

"Where did you get that?"

René felt the shift before he saw it—the guard's hand dropping from the halberd to the pistol at his belt. "A gift."

"Liar." The guard spat. "That cross belonged to Sergeant Theobald Vogel. He wore it for twenty years. His widow gave it to him before he died at Lützen, and the man who took it from his corpse was a French courier who burned a village on the way to Basel. That's you. I'd know that cross anywhere—I grew up one valley over from Theobald."

René's hand drifted toward the knife at his hip, but there were men in the guard post now, two more shapes moving in the window. "You've mistaken me for someone else."

"Then take it off. Show me the maker's mark inside."

The mark. He'd never looked. The dead man hadn't mentioned it.

The guard drew his pistol. "Take it off, or I'll shoot you where you stand and let the wolves sort you out."

René weighed his options. Three men in the post. A pistol at twenty paces. Snow up to his knees on either side of the road. He slowly reached up and unclasped the chain, holding the cross out in his palm.

The guard stepped closer, reaching for it.

"I believe you're right," René said, dropping the cross into the man's hand. "It's not mine. I bought it off a deserter in Basel. Didn't ask where he got it. Here—take it. I want no trouble."

The guard examined the cross, turned it over, stared at the maker's mark. "This is Theobald's. I'd stake my soul on it."

"Then it's yours. I want no part of anything stolen from the dead."

The guard's pistol didn't lower. "You speak like a coward, but you've got the hands of a swordsman." He pointed at René's gloves—the reinforced leather, worn at the knuckles. "I saw a French courier at Breisach. A man who rode through the Swedish lines with the surrender of a fortress in his mouth. They said he was a devil with a blade. That you?"

"I'm a horse dealer."

"You're a liar, and I'm sick of liars." The guard tossed his pistol to the man behind him, drew his sword, and threw René's travel pass into the snow. "Draw. If you're honest, you'll die honest. If you're a liar, you'll die a liar. Either way, I get to sleep better."

"Three against one is poor odds for a duel."

"No one else fights. This is between you and me." The guard's eyes were full of the simple certainty of a man who had lost too many friends and found a face to blame.

René drew his blade. The iron cross lay in the snow between them, glinting like a small accusation.

The guard attacked fast, a downhill thrust meant to catch René's guard high and drive through his ribs. René sidestepped, parried, felt the shock run up his arm. The man was strong but unpracticed—a garrison soldier, not a duelist. René let him press forward, gave ground, watched the snow churn around their boots.

The second exchange was faster. The guard feinted low, came over the top, and René caught the blade on his crossguard, twisted, and disengaged. He could have taken the man's arm off with a riposte. He didn't.

"You're not as good as they say," the guard said, breathing hard.

"No one is."

The third attack was sloppy, desperate. The guard overextended by a step, and René saw the opening—a clean thrust that would end it. But at the last instant, a second soldier from the post shouted a warning, and the guard's eyes flickered to the side.

René didn't take the throat.

The other soldier already had his musket up. The shot cracked across the narrow pass, and the guard crumpled forward, the back of his skull opening like a dark flower. The bearskin absorbed the sound of the body hitting snow.

The soldier lowered the smoking musket and looked at René with flat, tired eyes. "He was my sergeant," the man said, "and he was a fool. But that cross is a church relic, and the monks at Saint-Michel will want it back. You'll come with me."

The third soldier had appeared behind René, a loaded pistol at his back. René sheathed his blade.

"Blessed enough," he said, "to be worth escorting rather than shooting."

"You're worth something," the soldier said. "I just haven't decided what."

They marched him up the ridge path, and within an hour the stone walls of the monastery of Saint-Michel rose before them, dark and hulking against the fading winter light. The soldier handed the cross to the abbot at the gate, spoke in fast Swiss German, and left René standing in the courtyard with a roof over his head and the body of a dead man lying where he'd fallen in the pass.

The abbot looked at the cross, then at René. "You wear no uniform. You carry no papers."

"Mine were lost."

"Then you are a guest," the abbot said, "until God decides otherwise."

The gate swung shut, and René was inside the walls, colder now than he'd been in the snow.