Read Chapter 5: The Weizenfeld Masquerade

Weizenfeld stank of woodsmoke and unwashed wool, and René was grateful for it. A town that smelled this strongly of men and burning had no time to inspect a stranger's papers too closely.

The market square was a churn of carts and shouted prices. Farmers hawking turnips that looked like they'd been harvested with a gravedigger's care. A smith's boy leading a swaybacked mare that had one eye and a bad cough. The Imperials had been through here twice already, judging by the empty stalls and the sullen faces of the women who stood guard over what little remained.

René moved through the crowd with a deserter's limp—the real Josef Brenner's knee had apparently been stiff, and the lie was in the details. His hands were filthy. Not the careful dirt of a man who had scrubbed and then smeared, but honest grime that had settled into the lines of his palms over days of travel. The iron cross hung at his throat, a weight that felt heavier each time a soldier glanced his way.

He saw the horse before he saw the man selling it.

A chestnut stallion, sixteen hands if it was an inch, with a blaze like a split flame down its nose. It stood apart from the other mounts, head high, ears pricked forward with the alertness of an animal that knew it was worth something. The kind of horse a man only sold when he had no choice—or when the price was high enough to outweigh the sin.

René stepped around a barrel of salted fish to get a better look. The stallion's owner was a lean man in a merchant's coat gone shiny at the elbows, his face a map of worry lines. He was arguing with a pair of Imperial troopers, their armor dull with road dust, their hands resting on sword hilts with the lazy threat of men who knew they'd win any argument they started.

"A fair price," the merchant said, his voice cracking. "A Christian price. I'm not asking for—"

"You're asking for what you'll get." The older trooper had a scar that pulled his mouth into a permanent sneer. "The war effort takes what it needs. You'll be compensated in paper, same as everyone."

Compensated in paper. René knew that phrase. It meant the merchant would receive a receipt for his animal, and that receipt would be worth less than the paper it was printed on by the time winter came. The merchant knew it too. His shoulders were already collapsing, his hand stroking the stallion's neck with the desperate tenderness of a man saying goodbye.

The younger trooper was already reaching for the reins.

René stepped forward.

"Gentlemen." He pitched his voice low, the Saxon accent he'd practiced on the river crossing still rough on his tongue but passable. "Perhaps we can come to an arrangement that doesn't require anyone to feel poorly about their afternoon."

The troopers turned. The older one squinted at René, taking in the peasant's smock, the iron cross, the posture that didn't quite match the clothes. "And who are you, friend?"

"Josef Brenner. Late of the Schellenberg household." René touched the cross at his throat, letting the movement draw their eyes to it. "Quartermaster's business. My master sent me ahead to secure remounts."

The name landed. He saw it in the way the older trooper's sneer softened by a degree, the way his hand drifted away from his sword. The Schellenbergs were nobody's fools—landed gentry with enough coin and enough connections to make trouble for a man who crossed them. The iron cross was doing exactly what the dead man had carried it for.

"Remounts," the trooper repeated.

"Two horses. Perhaps my master would look kindly on any man who helped me secure them without unnecessary delay." René let the implication hang. A bribe without offering one. The kind of language men in this line of work understood.

The trooper glanced at his younger companion, then at the stallion. "This one's promised to the quartermaster at Weizenfeld. Marcus doesn't like being kept waiting."

René's blood went cold, but he kept his face pleasant. Marcus. The man who'd known Josef Brenner, who would expect a familiar face and a familiar story. He'd walked into a trap dressed as a favor.

"I know Marcus," René said, testing the words. "He'll understand about the horses. He and I go back."

The trooper studied him for a long moment. Then he shrugged, a motion that said he'd seen enough trouble in this war to know when to walk away from more. "Take the beast. But tell Marcus you had my leave, and that Konrad sends his regards for the gambling debt."

"Konrad's a fool who doesn't pay his bills," René said, hoping it was true. The trooper laughed—the thin, bitter laugh of a man who'd known too many winters in the field.

"That's the truth of it. He's been owing me three thalers since March." The trooper clapped his companion's shoulder and steered him away, muttering something about the war effort and who it really served.

The merchant exhaled like a man who'd been holding his breath for an hour. "I don't know who you are or why you did that, but—"

"The horse," René said. "How much?"

"Five thalers. He's worth twice that, but the Imperials have squeezed everything else out of me, and I need to feed my daughters."

René counted the coins from his pouch. The dead deserter had carried a modest purse, enhanced by the contents of the officer René had killed at the ravine. It was enough. He pressed the coins into the merchant's hand and took the stallion's reins before the man could change his mind.

"You'll want to be gone before those troopers make a report," René said quietly. "And you'll want to make sure you don't remember my face."

The merchant nodded, too grateful to be suspicious. René led the stallion through the market's edge, heart hammering a steady rhythm that he kept from showing in his step. The horse was good—better than good. It had the deep chest and strong legs of an animal bred for distance, for the kind of riding that would take him through the Black Forest and beyond.

He was four stalls clear of the horse merchant when the voice came.

"Josef Brenner."

René stopped. Not because he wanted to, but because the voice had the weight of command behind it, and a man who ran from a stranger in a war zone drew more attention than one who turned to face the trouble.

He turned.

The man approaching was built like a bear that had learned to wear clothes—broad shoulders, a thick neck, arms that strained the seams of his officer's coat. His face was round and red, the face of a man who enjoyed his wine, but his eyes were sharp and calculating. The eyes of a man who noticed things.

"You're not Josef Brenner," the man said.

The stallion shifted under René's hand. The market noise seemed to fade to a distant hum.

"I've seen Josef take a bullet at Lützen and shrug it off like a mosquito bite," the man continued. "I've watched him drink three men under the table and still walk straight enough to salute. And I know that Josef Brenner died two weeks ago in a ditch outside a burned farmhouse, shot by the same bastards who killed his whole squad."

René's hand drifted toward the knife at his belt.

"No need for that." The man held up a meaty palm. "I don't care who you are, or what you did to get his cross. Josef was a good man, and the world's a better place for him being gone from it, if you'll forgive my honesty. He owed me money, and I'm not the type to collect from corpses."

Marcus. Quartermaster Marcus, who'd known Josef Brenner. Who was staring at René with the flat, patient gaze of a man who'd seen every kind of liar the war had produced.

"Now," Marcus said, stepping closer, "you're going to tell me what you're really doing in my town, and you're going to make it worth my while not to have you strung up as a spy. Because the alternative is that I take that fine horse you just bought and add you to the list of things that disappear in the night."

René met his gaze. The stallion stamped a hoof, impatient. Somewhere in the distance, a church bell began to toll—a funeral, or an execution. In this part of the world, it was often hard to tell the difference.

"I have a letter," René said. "A letter that could end this war or burn it hotter. I need a horse, a road, and a reason to trust that I'm doing the right thing by carrying it at all."

Marcus tilted his head, considering. Then he laughed, a low rumble that seemed to shake the ground between them.

"Then you've come to the wrong town, friend. Because I've got a letter of my own—one that says the Cardinal of France is dead, and there's a price on the head of the man who carries his final words."

The stallion whinnied. The church bells kept tolling. And René felt the ground shift beneath his feet, the careful path he'd been walking suddenly going dark.