Read Chapter 27: A Bloody Detour

The church bell tower was a black finger against the orange smear of dawn, and the rattle of musket fire rolled across the fields like a drumbeat that would not stop. Moreau pressed his back against the lychgate, sucking air through his teeth as the wound in his side screamed its protest. Bastien crouched beside him, eyes wide and white in the half-light, a stolen cavalry carbine clutched in his grimy fists.

“You look like a dead man walking,” Bastien whispered. “You sure this gold is worth dying for twice in one morning?”

Moreau did not answer. He pushed off the gate and moved through the churchyard, stepping over a fallen headstone and into the mossy shadow of the yew trees. The church door was ajar, a sliver of candlelight spilling from within like a wound in the dark. Behind them, the camp fire had become a towering pyre, black smoke coiling into the sky like a curse laid upon the Emperor’s review.

“In,” Moreau said. “Quiet as a grave.”

They slipped through the door. The nave was cold and empty, the pews stripped of their cushions, the altar cloth gone. A single candle burned on the flagstones before the crypt stairs, its flame bending toward the draft from below. The air smelled of damp stone and something metallic—old iron, or newer coin.

Bastien let out a low whistle. “There. Under the altar.”

Moreau saw it. A square of flagstone, freshly cut, the mortar still grey and crumbling. He knelt, wincing as his shoulder throbbed, and pried at the edge with his fingers. The stone shifted, then slid aside with a scrape that echoed through the empty church like a confession.

Below, the crypt yawned. And in the flickering candlelight, Moreau saw the gold.

It was stacked in wooden crates, their lids half-pried open, coins spilling across the stone floor in rivers of yellow. Forty thousand francs, maybe more. Enough to buy a regiment, enough to crown a king, enough to drown a man’s conscience in the weight of it.

“God,” Bastien breathed. “It’s real.”

Moreau grabbed a crate and hauled it toward the stairs. “Take the other end. We move fast, we—“

The church door slammed shut.

Moreau spun. Three figures stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the pale dawn, muskets leveled at chest height. Behind them, a fourth man stepped forward, his boots crunching on the broken stone. He was tall, his face a ruin of scar tissue that pulled his mouth into a permanent sneer, and he smiled like a man who had already won.

“Captain Moreau,” Major Duval said. “I did so hope you would come.”

Bastien dropped the crate. Coins clattered across the flagstones. Moreau’s hand went to his pistol, but Duval raised a finger and one of his men cocked his musket with a click that said *try it*.

“I thought you were dead,” Moreau said. His voice came out steadier than he felt. The blood from his side was soaking through his coat now, warm and insistent.

“A common mistake,” Duval said. He walked forward, unhurried, past his men, past the pews, until he stood at the edge of the crypt. He looked down at the gold, then back at Moreau. “You killed a man in my quarters this morning. A loyal soldier who had the misfortune of being my height and my build. I let him take the bullet meant for me.” He touched the scar on his cheek. “I have survived worse than you, quartermaster.”

“You won’t survive this,” Moreau said.

Duval laughed. It was a dry, rasping sound, like a saw biting into bone. “The guns are already sounding at Waterloo. The Emperor is marching to his doom, and your precious review is burning behind us. You have no army, no evidence, and no time. The only thing you have—the only thing you ever had—is this gold.” He gestured at the crates. “And it belongs to me.”

Bastien moved. Fast, desperate, the way a cornered rat moves. He lunged for the crate he’d dropped, grabbed a handful of coins, and hurled them at Duval’s face. The major flinched, and in that half-second of distraction, Moreau drew his pistol and fired.

The shot cracked through the nave like a thunderclap. Duval’s shoulder snapped back, a bloom of red spreading across his coat, but he did not fall. He staggered, caught himself on a pew, and screamed a word that was more command than human language.

“Kill them!”

The musket fire came in a ragged volley. Moreau dove for the crypt stairs, pulling Bastien with him as lead whined off the stone above their heads. They hit the bottom of the stairs hard, landing in a heap of scattered coin and splintered wood, and the gold bit into Moreau’s palms like teeth.

Above them, boots thundered across the flagstones. The soldiers were coming down.

Moreau scrambled to his feet, dragging Bastien deeper into the crypt. The space was small, no more than a dozen paces across, lined with stone shelves and the remains of old coffins. There was no other exit. They were trapped.

“We’re dead,” Bastien hissed. “You’ve killed us.”

Moreau’s eyes swept the crypt. His pistol was empty. His sword was gone. He had nothing but his hands and the gold at his feet. The first soldier appeared at the top of the stairs, a dark shape against the candlelight, his musket swinging down to bear.

Moreau grabbed a handful of gold and threw it. The coins flew like a scatter of bees, pinging off the soldier’s face and chest, and the man flinched, cursing, his aim gone wide. The shot blasted into the wall beside Moreau’s head, spraying stone chips across his cheek.

Bastien surged forward, using the moment, and drove his shoulder into the soldier’s knees. The man went down with a grunt, his musket clattering away, and Bastien was on him in an instant, fists and knees and teeth, a feral tangle of violence in the cramped dark.

Moreau didn’t wait. He climbed over the writhing bodies, clawing up the stairs, and burst into the nave just as the second soldier raised his weapon. Moreau closed the distance in three steps, catching the man’s musket barrel and shoving it aside. The shot rang out, taking out a stained-glass window, and they went down together in a heap of thrashing limbs.

The world became noise and pain. Moreau’s side was on fire, his shoulder screaming, his vision swimming red at the edges. He got his hands around the soldier’s throat and squeezed, and the man’s struggles grew weaker, weaker, until they stopped.

Then Duval was there, looming over him, his good hand drawing a long cavalry saber from his belt. The blade caught the dawn light as it came free, and Duval smiled down at Moreau with all the warmth of a winter grave.

“I’ll make this quick, quartermaster,” Duval said. “You’ve earned that much.”

He raised the saber.

And behind him, the church door exploded inward.

A dozen men came through it in a tide of grey coats and bayonets—French soldiers, their faces blackened with powder and smoke, their officers shouting orders Moreau could not parse. At their head strode a man Moreau knew, a big-boned sergeant with a scar across his jaw, the same man who had helped him move the wounded from the burning tents an hour ago.

“Captain Moreau!” the sergeant bellowed. “The camp’s burning! We saw the smoke, we thought—“

The sergeant’s words died as he saw the gold. Saw Duval. Saw the blood on Moreau’s hands.

Duval spun, saber flashing, but the soldiers had him before he could complete the arc. They drove him to his knees, prying the blade from his fingers, and Duval laughed even as they bound his wrists behind his back.

“You think this changes anything?” he snarled, his scarred face twisted toward Moreau. “The sniper is in position. The review is burning. Your Emperor is marching to his grave at Waterloo, and you are bleeding out on a church floor over coins that will never buy you hope.”

Moreau pulled himself to his feet, swaying. He looked down at the gold, glittering in the morning light, and then at the soldiers who had come for him.

“The review,” he said hoarsely. “Napoleon. Is he still alive?”

The sergeant shook his head. “We don’t know, sir. The fire took the staging grounds. The Emperor was due to ride out at dawn.”

Moreau’s chest tightened. He looked at Duval, bound and bleeding at his feet, and for a moment he thought about finishing the job. One bullet. One more second of pressure on the trigger.

But Duval was grinning, blood on his teeth.

“You’re too late, Moreau,” he whispered. “You were always too late.”