Read Chapter 32: The Afternoon Tide

The cold woke him first—that and the jolt of a cart wheel striking something soft that gave with a wet, sickening crunch. Moreau’s eyes snapped open. Overhead, a grey sky churned with smoke, and the air tasted of powder and blood and burnt horsehair. He was lying in the bed of a supply wagon, his tunic stiff with dried blood, his hands bound loose enough to let him grip the rail but no more.

Von Amsberg rode beside the wagon, his back straight, his eyes scanning the road ahead. He noticed Moreau’s movement and reined in closer.

“You live,” the Prussian said. “Good. I would rather deliver a prisoner than a corpse.”

Moreau tried to speak. His throat felt like gravel. “Where—?”

“Two kilometres from your lines. You did not lie about the caches, it seems—we found another marker two hundred paces from where we captured you. A small fortune, for a decoy.” Von Amsberg’s mouth twitched. “You are either a very honest thief or a very good liar. I have not decided which.”

Moreau closed his eyes. Bastien. He twisted, searching the wagon bed. Empty. His adjutant was nowhere in sight.

“The boy,” Moreau rasped. “Where is he?”

“In the second wagon. He fought well—I gave him water. You should be more concerned with yourself. You have lost a great deal of blood.”

Moreau forced himself to sit up. The world tilted and swam, and he gripped the rail until his knuckles went white. Ahead, the road curled through a patch of beechwood, and beyond it, the landscape opened into a rolling plain. Even from here, he could see it: the smoke columns rising in staggered lines, the dull red glow of fires, the distant crackle of musketry stitching the air. The battle was not a single fight. It was a hundred fights, all of them bleeding together.

“The English,” Moreau said. “They’ve taken the ridge.”

Von Amsberg followed his gaze. “Wellington holds the high ground. Your Emperor is throwing his men against it like waves against a cliff.” A pause. “They say he will break through by evening. Or they say he will not. The truth will be decided soon either way.”

Moreau felt a cold stone settle in his stomach. He had to get back. Not for the gold—that was gone, in Prussian hands or bleeding into the mud. But Napoleon. The warning. Duval’s network, the assassination plot that Moreau had uncovered hours too late and leagues too far. If the Emperor rode into the wrong formation, if a single man with a rifle knew his face—

The wagon lurched. Moreau’s head cracked against the rail, and for a moment, the world went grey at the edges.

Von Amsberg was speaking, but his voice came from very far away. “—hold you at Hougoumont until nightfall. After that, you will be moved to—Captain? Captain Moreau.”

Moreau blinked. Hougoumont. The name snapped him back. The farmhouse on the right of the British line, the one that had been burning since noon. The Prussians were taking him to Hougoumont.

“No,” Moreau said.

Von Amsberg raised an eyebrow. “No?”

“You cannot reach Hougoumont. The road is cut off—the French attacked it in force. If you ride toward it now, you will ride into the killing ground.” He gestured weakly at the smoke columns to the east. “Listen. Do you hear that? That is not skirmishing. That is a push. Your men are being pushed.”

Von Amsberg’s jaw tightened. He was a professional, Moreau could see that. He did not want to believe a Frenchman, but he was also too smart to ignore him.

“You would have me turn away from the fight to save yourself,” von Amsberg said. “A prisoner’s trick.”

“I would have you live to report the gold to your General,” Moreau said. “If you die in a farmhouse fire, your capture dies with you. And that—that is worth more than any cask of gold.”

Von Amsberg stared at him for a long moment. Then he turned in his saddle and shouted an order in German. The wagons slowed, wheeled, and cut across a field of torn wheat toward a narrow lane that ran south of the fighting. Moreau let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

The road grew worse. Shells began to fall around them—not aimed, but stray, the rubbish of a battle drifting wide. One landed twenty paces ahead, throwing up a great gush of black earth and stones. The horses screamed. Von Amsberg shouted again, and the column pressed on.

Moreau watched the battlefield drift past like a terrible painting. To his left, a cluster of French infantry lay in a hollow square, the ones still standing crouched behind a wall of dead comrades. Beyond them, a battery of English guns fired in rhythm, the gunners working like clockwork, their coats red as fresh blood. He saw a French cuirassier lying in the mud, his horse standing over him, refusing to move. He saw a young drummer boy weeping beside an overturned caisson, his drum split in two.

He had marched through a dozen campaigns. He had never seen anything like this. This was not a battle. This was a butcher’s yard.

The lane curved through a copse of elms, and suddenly the farmland gave way to orchard ground—twisted apple trees, their branches broken, their trunks scarred by grapeshot. And ahead, through the smoke, he saw it. Hougoumont. The farmhouse was still standing, barely, but it was a ruin: the walls blackened, the roof gone in places, the great gate shattered. Redcoats moved along the walls, firing down at something Moreau could not see. On the far side, smoke poured from a burning haystack, and even from here, he could hear the screams of men caught in the flames.

Von Amsberg pulled up, his face grim. “The road is open to the south,” he said. “We will skirt the farm and take shelter in the woods beyond. I will not risk my prisoners for a—“

A shell screamed overhead. Moreau did not hear it explode. He only felt the ground buck, and then the wagon was on its side, and he was thrown free, rolling through mud and broken twigs until he slammed against the trunk of a fallen apple tree.

The world rang. Voices shouted in German and French, and someone was firing a pistol close by. Moreau tried to move, but his legs would not obey. He lay there, staring up at the sky, watching smoke curl in patterns that looked like faces.

Then someone grabbed him by the collar. A Prussian soldier, young, wild-eyed, hauled him upright and dragged him across the ground toward a ditch. Moreau’s heels scraped through the mud, and he caught a glimpse of von Amsberg on horseback, sabre drawn, shouting at his men to form a line.

“—the next shell!” von Amsberg was shouting. “Take cover, take cover!”

Moreau was dumped into the ditch. The Prussian soldier landed on top of him, and then the world went dark with soil and smoke and the sound of everything coming apart.

When Moreau opened his eyes again, it was quiet. The ringing in his ears had faded to a low hum. He was alone in the ditch. The Prussian soldier was gone—perhaps gone forward, perhaps dead. Overhead, the smoke had thinned, and he could see a patch of pale blue sky.

He pushed himself up. His hands were still bound, but the rope had loosened with the wet, and he worked a wrist free with a grimace. His wound had reopened; there was fresh blood spreading through his tunic, warm and sticky against his skin.

He dragged himself to the edge of the ditch and looked out. The wagons were scattered across the field. One was burning. The others were empty—horses cut loose, men driven off. He saw no sign of von Amsberg. And no sign of the gold.

They were gone. All of it. The gold, the wagons, the capture. It had all come apart in a single shellburst.

Moreau laughed. It came out as a ragged croak. He had been so close to being a prisoner, and now he was free, standing in the middle of a battlefield with no weapons, no men, no way back to Napoleon’s line.

He turned, orienting himself by the firing. To the north, the sound of musketry had grown louder, a deep rolling thunder of shots that never stopped. To the west, the ground rose toward a ridge where red-coated infantry were forming. To the east—he stopped.

There was a farmhouse there, low and white, partially hidden behind a stand of trees. It looked untouched, a little island of sanity in the chaos. Smoke rose from its chimney. Someone was alive inside.

Moreau began to walk. Each step cost him something, but he kept moving, one foot in front of the other, past the fallen and the dying, past the horses, past the abandoned guns. He reached the edge of the farmyard, and a voice called out from the shadow of the barn.

“Stop right there.”

Moreau stopped. He raised his hands.

A figure limped out of the barn, a musket in his hands, his coat torn and bloody, his face pale beneath a layer of grime. He stared at Moreau for a long moment, and then the musket lowered.

“Captain,” Bastien said. “You’re alive.”

Moreau swayed. He reached for the fence post and missed, and Bastien caught him before he could fall.

“The gold,” Moreau managed.

Bastien shook his head. “Gone. The Prussians—” he stopped, looking at the blood soaking Moreau’s tunic. “We need to get you inside.”

“Bastien,” Moreau gripped his arm. Hard. “The Emperor. He needs to know. Duval—the assassination—“

“I know,” Bastien said. “I heard it, before the fight. All of it.” He looked away. “But you can’t warn the Emperor if you’re dead, Captain. And right now, you look closer to dead than anyone I’ve ever carried.”

Moreau let his head fall forward. Bastien was right. He knew he was right. But the warning sat in his chest like a hot coal, burning a hole through him.

A sound came from inside the farmhouse. Footsteps. Slow, careful. A figure appeared in the doorway—a man in civilian clothes, thin, with a forger’s ink-stained fingers and eyes that darted like a cornered rat.

Moreau straightened. He knew that face.

“Desmoulins,” he said.