Read Chapter 20: Blood and Mud

The wound in Moreau’s shoulder burned like a brand as he dropped to one knee in the treeline, the muddy verge of the Brussels road squelching beneath him. Dawn was still an hour off, the sky a bruised purple over the silhouetted rooftops, and somewhere in that maze of stone and shadow, Lacombe was waiting to die.

Renard crouched beside him, breath pluming in the cold air. The man’s sudden alliance still grated, but Moreau had no time for suspicion—only use. “The provost’s men know the road. They’ve sealed the northern gates.”

“Then we go through the sewers,” Moreau said.

Renard’s lip curled. “You’ll drown before you reach the cellar. The spring rains have—”

“The sewer runs under the Rue de la Montagne. It empties into the cellar drains of the Mercier house.” Moreau’s voice was flat, a map unrolled in his mind from a dozen supply runs through the city. He rose, swaying slightly, and pressed a hand to his ribs. The bandage beneath his coat was soaked through. He could feel the slow, hot seep of blood, but he pushed the thought aside. “You’ll create a diversion at the front gate. Fire the stable. Draw the sniper’s attention.”

“And you?”

“I’m going to get my adjutant back.”

He did not wait for Renard’s protest. Moreau slipped down the embankment, boots sinking into the mud of the drainage ditch that fed the city’s sewers. The stench hit him a moment later, a thick sourness that coated his throat. He pulled his scarf over his mouth and waded in.

The tunnel was narrow, barely shoulder-width, and the water rose to his waist. Each step sent a jolt of pain through his shoulder, and his vision greyed at the edges. He gripped the slick stone wall and kept moving, counting his strides. Fifty paces. A fork. He took the left branch, his hand brushing a rusty grate. Beyond it, the faint glow of lantern light fell in a thin line across the water.

He pushed the grate aside and hauled himself up into a low vaulted cellar. Barrels lined the walls, stamped with the Mercier crest. His heart hammered. He crossed to the far door, eased it open, and there she was.

The female sniper stood at the top of a stone stair, her back to him, watching Renard’s fire take hold beyond the front courtyard. Her rifle was slung across her back, and her finger tapped an impatient rhythm against her thigh. Below her, bound to a chair in the center of the room, Lacombe looked up and saw Moreau. His eyes went wide, and he shook his head violently.

Moreau ignored him. He moved on silent feet, closing the distance, one hand reaching for the knife at his belt. The sniper shifted, as if sensing something, and began to turn—Moreau lunged.

The impact sent them both crashing onto the stone floor. She was faster than he expected, twisting in his grip, and her elbow caught him square in the wounded shoulder. White fire exploded through his chest. He bit down on a scream, but his fingers found her wrist and wrenched. The knife clattered away. She drove her knee into his stomach, and he heaved, gasping, the world tilting.

“You’re a fool, Captain,” she hissed, her voice low and familiar in a way that made his skin crawl. “You delivered yourself to me.”

She reached for her rifle, but Lacombe had worked his ropes loose. He lunged from the chair and slammed into her. The rifle skittered across the floor. The three of them thrashed in the mud and the lamplight, a tangle of limbs and curses. Then a gunshot cracked from the courtyard, and the sniper wrenched free, scrambling up the stairs. She paused at the top, blood streaming from a cut above her eye.

“The Emperor is already dead,” she said. “You’re just late to the funeral.”

She vanished into the smoke. Moreau hauled himself up, grabbing Lacombe by the arm. A shout echoed from the courtyard—English voices, close. They were surrounded.

“The drain,” Moreau rasped. “We go back through the drain.”

“You’ll never make it,” Lacombe said, gripping his arm. “Captain, you’re bleeding through your coat.”

“Then find another way out.” Moreau shoved the coded ledger into Lacombe’s hands. It was a thin, oilskin-wrapped book he had pulled from the cellar’s floor safe moments before the sniper had arrived. The gold’s location, scrawled in a cipher he recognized as Vasseur’s personal hand. “Get this to the camp. If I don’t return, give it to Colonel Aubrey. No one else.”

Lacombe stared at him, face tight with desperation. “I won’t leave you.”

“That’s an order, Adjutant.”

The voices were at the cellar door. Moreau raised his pistol and fired at the lock, buying them a heartbeat. Lacombe dove into the drain opening, the ledger clutched to his chest. Moreau turned, drew his saber, and braced himself as the door splintered inward.

He held them at the choke point for six minutes. He could not say how, afterward—only that his arm moved of its own accord, that the blood loss had dulled the pain to a distant thrum. He cut down the first man to come through the doorway, then the second, using the narrow stairs as a funnel. But there were too many. A musket butt caught him across the back of his skull, and the dark swallowed him.

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He woke in the mud of a roadside ditch, gagging on filthy water. The sky was lighter now, grey and cold. A wagon rattled past, and Moreau dragged himself up, every joint screaming. His coat was heavy with water and blood. His pistol was gone. His saber was gone.

He crawled to the road and flagged down a supply wagon heading south—French regulars, returning from a forage run. They stared at him with hollow eyes, but they pulled him aboard. He lay in the straw beside bags of moldy biscuit, staring at the grey sky, and willed himself to stay conscious.

He reached the camp as the drums were beating assembly. Tents were being struck. Cannon limbers were being hitched. The air was thick with smoke from a hundred cookfires and the smell of gun oil and horse sweat. The whole army was on the move.

Moreau stumbled into his quarters and found the ledger waiting on his cot. Lacombe had made it, then. But there was no sign of him—no note, no word. The adjutant was gone.

Moreau flipped through the ledger, grimly satisfied. The cipher was broken now. The gold was not in Brussels at all. It was still on the field—buried beneath the old mill’s foundation, the very place where the ambush had sprung. The theft had never been about stealing the gold. It was about moving it, hiding it in plain sight until the Emperor’s army was paid and disbanded. And the sniper had known. The sniper had been guarding the cellar, but the gold had never been there.

Moreau looked up, soldiers streaming past his tent flap. He knew, suddenly, with a cold certainty that settled into his bones like the rain: the assassination attempt would come at the review, yes, but the gold was the bait. If he did not appear with it, the army would accuse him. If he did appear, he would be leading his own men into a trap laid for the Emperor.

He had one night. No adjutant. No allies he could trust. And a wound that was slowly killing him.

He tucked the ledger inside his coat, and began to walk toward the artillery park, where he could already hear Perrin’s raised voice. Somewhere in the mud and the dark, he would have to make a choice. He had no idea if he would survive it.