Read Chapter 16: The Gunner’s Secret

The cry went up from the eastern flank—a sharp, ragged scream that cut through the crackle of musket fire. Moreau pressed his back against the overturned cart, one hand clamped over the gash in his side. Warm blood seeped between his fingers. Beside him, Pichegru was already swapping out his spent cartridge, his jaw set like stone.

“We can’t hold this line,” the sergeant muttered. “They’ve got us bracketed. English on the right, our own bloody deserters on the left.”

Moreau spat dirt from his mouth. “Then we don’t hold. We move.”

He crawled forward, dragging his carbine through the mud, until he reached the lip of the ditch where a young gunner lay crumpled against a shattered wheel. The boy—no more than nineteen, with a face still soft with youth—was shaking, his powder-blackened hands wrapped around a broken ramrod. His tunic bore the insignia of the 6th Artillery, but his eyes held none of the fire of battle. They were wide. Lost.

“You,” Moreau said, grabbing the boy’s collar. “What unit are you with?”

The gunner’s mouth worked soundlessly. Pichegru appeared at Moreau’s shoulder, bayonet fixed, and the sight of the cold steel seemed to break something in the boy.

“Bastien,” he stammered. “Gunner Bastien, sir. First Company, Fourth Battery.”

“Why are you here, Bastien? This isn’t your position.” Moreau’s voice was iron. “You’re half a mile from your guns.”

The boy’s eyes flicked to the windmill—just visible over the rise, its sails broken, silhouetted against the grey dawn. Moreau followed his gaze and felt a cold hand close around his heart.

“Answer me.”

“I was ordered, sir.” Bastien’s voice cracked. “Three nights ago. A general came to the battery. Told us the gold needed moving before the Prussians got wind of it. Said it was a legitimate field order, part of the Emperor’s contingency.” He swallowed hard. “We loaded the crates onto wagons. Twelve of us. Told us to keep it quiet, that there were spies about.”

“Which general?” Pichegru demanded.

Bastien shook his head. “I didn’t know him. He wore a senior’s uniform, but he wasn’t from our corps. Had a Corsican accent, thick as cheese. He gave the order to my captain, and the captain nodded him through. I just... I just drove the wagon.”

Moreau’s mind raced. A pass from a senior officer—of course. No quartermaster would question a general’s crest. The theft wasn’t a breach of security; it was an inside job wrapped in proper procedure. Every layer of his investigation peeled back to reveal another hand.

“Where did you take it?” he asked.

Bastien pointed toward the windmill. “There’s a cellar beneath the main floor. Stone-lined, big enough to hold a squadron’s remounts. We lowered the crates down, covered them with sacking and feed bags. The general said a supply detail would retrieve them within the week.”

“And then what?”

“Then he shot the captain.” Bastien’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Just... shot him. Walked up behind him while he was checking the harness and put a ball through the back of his skull. Told the rest of us we’d be rewarded for silence. That if we spoke, we’d join the captain in the ditch.”

A volley crashed overhead, and Pichegru ducked, cursing. Moreau pulled Bastien deeper into the cover of the cart.

“You can draw the cellar layout,” Moreau said. It wasn’t a question.

Bastien nodded, his hands still trembling. “I was down there when we stacked the crates. I could draw it with my eyes closed.”

Moreau tore a page from his dispatch book and thrust it, with a burnt pencil, into the boy’s hands. “Draw it now. Every entrance, every beam, every place a man could hide.”

Bastien hunched over the paper, his strokes rough but certain. Moreau watched, his wound burning, the chaos of the ambush fading behind the wall of his attention. The boy finished in under a minute, sketching a square floor plan with a spiral stair in the corner and a low tunnel leading off the eastern wall.

“That tunnel,” Moreau said, tapping the line. “Where does it go?”

Bastien looked up, confusion furrowing his brow. “Nowhere, sir. It’s blocked up. Filled in years ago. The old miller told me it used to connect to the farmhouse before the war.”

“Blocked up to whose knowledge?”

“Everyone’s, I suppose. It’s been stonework for a decade at least.”

Moreau stared at the drawing, and slowly, like a lens bringing a distant object into focus, the shape of the conspiracy rearranged itself in his mind.

“Bloody hell,” he breathed.

Pichegru crouched beside him. “What?”

“The gold was never meant to be stolen.” Moreau’s voice was low, urgent. “Think about it. A patrol this size, waiting for us? They knew exactly when we’d come. The Countess fed me the location because she wanted me to find it—or rather, she wanted the provost to find me there. And the crates? If the Crow wanted gold, he’d have scattered it across Belgium by now. He wouldn’t leave it stacked in a mill cellar with a single patrol guarding it.”

Pichegru’s face darkened. “Then what’s it for?”

“Bait.” Moreau crumpled the paper in his fist, then smoothed it out again. “It’s bait for anyone who gets too close. But the real prize isn’t the gold—it never was. It’s the mutiny. This camp is ready to tear itself apart over those missing wages. The Emperor is about to fight the battle of his life, and his army is primed to turn on itself. Whoever orchestrated this doesn’t want the money. He wants the army to dissolve before a single shot is fired at Waterloo.”

Bastien looked between them, pale. “Sir, I didn’t know. I thought I was following orders. I thought I was doing my duty. I swear it.”

Moreau met the boy’s eyes. “I believe you. And that’s why you’re going to help me end this.”

He folded the map and pressed it into his breast pocket, then tore a strip from his own shirt and bound the wound in his side. A shot whistled past, close enough to stir the hairs on his neck.

“Pichegru, we’re leaving,” he said, rising to a crouch. “We need to get back to camp before this ground turns to a graveyard.”

“Back to camp?” Pichegru’s eyes widened. “The provost is looking to hang you from the nearest tree. Going back is walking into the noose.”

“I’m not going to the provost. I’ve got a letter to steal, remember?” Moreau’s mouth twisted into something that wasn’t quite a smile. “The Countess wants Lefebvre’s sealed orders by nightfall. She was supposed to be my only lead. But now I’ve got a gunner who can testify that the theft was sanctioned by a senior officer—and a drawing showing that this goes a hell of a lot deeper than a few coins in a cellar.”

He hauled Bastien to his feet. “You’re coming with us. You’ll tell your story to the men who need to hear it.”

“But the provost—” the boy began.

“The provost wants a thief,” Moreau cut in, slinging his carbine over his shoulder. “But the army needs a traitor. And I’m going to give them one.”

He turned toward the camp, the windmill rising behind him like a gallows against the dawn. Somewhere below its stone floor, in a cold, dark cellar, the Emperor’s gold sat waiting—not as a prize, but as a trap.

And the man who had set it had been wearing a French uniform when he pulled the trigger on his own captain.