Read Chapter 34: The Emperor’s Last Wager

The farmhouse shook with the distant thunder of cannon. Moreau lay on a straw pallet, Bastien pressing a folded cloth to his side, the blood a dark bloom against the white linen. Through the broken window, the sky above the ridge glowed an eerie orange—the burning farm of Hougoumont, still smoldering after hours of hell.

"Let me up," Moreau said, his voice a rasp.

Bastien did not move his hands. "You'll bleed out on the floor, and then who leads us?"

"No one leads us. That's the problem." Moreau gritted his teeth and pushed himself to his elbows. The world swam, then steadied. "The Guard. They'll commit them soon. I can feel it."

"You can feel a lot of things from a straw pallet, sir."

Moreau ignored him. He had seen Napoleon's battles long enough to read the shape of them. The English line had bent but not broken. The Prussians were arriving from the east, a flood that would drown them all. There was only one throw left in the Emperor's hand, and it was the Guard—twelve thousand of the finest soldiers in Europe, the reserve that had never failed.

And they would march to glory on empty bellies and empty pockets.

"The gold," Moreau said. "It's still in the mill."

Bastien's hands went still. "You told the Prussian it was scattered in caches. You told me—"

"I told him what he needed to hear." Moreau swung his legs over the edge of the pallet. The wound screamed. He ignored it. "And I told you the truth, because you're the only man I trust to carry it if I can't."

"You can't," Bastien said flatly. "You can barely stand."

"I don't need to stand. I need to drive." Moreau reached for his coat, still damp with blood and mud. "The king's road runs past Plancenoit. If the Guard forms east of the village and the Prussians are pressing from the woods, they'll march straight along it toward the English center." He pulled the coat on, the fabric sticking to his torn flesh. "If we meet them with the gold, if every man sees the wagons full of what they're owed, the mutiny dies. They'll fight for the Emperor with everything they have."

"And if they're past the road already?"

"Then we're too late for everything."

Bastien watched him for a long moment, then nodded. He was a lean, hard man, a former sergeant who had seen too much to argue with a mad plan when the alternative was sitting still and waiting for death.

"The last wagon from the mill is loaded," Bastien said. "We had it half-full when the patrol came through. There's not enough to pay the whole army, but there's enough to convince them it's real."

"Then it is enough." Moreau stumbled toward the door. "The Emperor doesn't need to pay every man today. He needs to pay enough men to stop the others from tearing him apart."

The farmyard was chaos—wounded soldiers, stray horses, a few clerks burning papers. Moreau found the cart where Bastien had hidden it behind a collapsed barn, covered with canvas and straw. Two horses stood in the traces, heads low, too tired to spook at the cannon fire.

"Help me up," Moreau said.

Bastien hoisted him onto the driver's bench, then climbed up beside him and seized the reins. "You'll guide. I'll drive."

"You don't even know the way to the mill."

"I know the way to the road. And I know the sound of Prussian guns." Bastien snapped the reins. "The rest, we'll learn together."

They lurched out of the farmyard and onto the rutted track that led east. The fields around them had become a graveyard—dead horses, broken caissons, the sprawled shapes of men in blue and red. Smoke rolled across the landscape, thick enough to choke on, and the thunder of the guns was a constant drumbeat beneath the world.

Moreau gripped the side of the cart as every jolt sent fire through his side. He could feel the blood soaking through the coat, warm against his skin. He had lost too much already. He would not lose the gold.

Plancenoit appeared ahead, a huddle of stone roofs and burning timbers. The Prussians had taken the village twice, been thrown out twice, and now the houses at the edge were aflame—a barrier of fire between the armies. But the mill stood at the far end, its great wheel still turning in the stream, untouched by the chaos around it.

"Faster," Moreau said.

Bastien lashed the horses. The cart bounced over the corpse of a French corporal, and Moreau clenched his jaw against the scream building in his throat. They were close. They were so close.

Then he saw the rider.

A single horseman, coming from the east, galloping across the open ground toward them. He wore a French cavalry coat, but his seat was too stiff, his bearing too rigid. Even at a distance, Moreau knew the shape of him.

"Bastien, to the mill. Now."

The rider closed the distance with alarming speed. He drew a pistol as he came, and Moreau saw the face beneath the shako—Captain Fournier, the major's man, the one who had tried to have him killed in Brussels. But Fournier was supposed to be dead, shot by Prussian skirmishers in the chaos of the ambush.

Fournier raised the pistol and fired.

The ball screamed past Moreau's ear and punched through the canvas behind him. The horses reared, but Bastien held them, cursing, sawing the reins to keep the cart from overturning in the mud.

Fournier was reloading, his horse stumbling over broken ground. He was close now, close enough that Moreau could see the fury in his face.

"He's coming for the gold," Moreau said.

"He can have it," Bastien said, drawing a knife from his belt. "Catch."

Bastien hurled the knife in a flat, killing arc. Fournier's horse swerved at the last instant, and the blade took the animal in the shoulder instead of the man. The horse screamed and went down, pitching Fournier into the mud.

But there was more movement behind them. Moreau twisted on the bench and saw a second horseman emerging from the treeline, slower, unhurried, a pistol resting across his saddle.

Major von Amsberg.

Bound and under guard, they said. Taken to the rear in chains. Someone had let him go. Or he had freed himself. It didn't matter now. He was here, and he was between Moreau and the mill.

"Drive," Moreau said. "Drive through him."

Bastien whipped the horses. The cart surged forward, straight toward the seated major. Von Amsberg raised a hand, not a pistol, not a sword—just his palm, as if to stop a runaway horse.

The cart thundered toward him. Ten yards. Five. Von Amsberg didn't move. His eyes locked on Moreau, calm and cold, and he spoke—words lost in the noise, but Moreau read them on his lips.

*Your mill burns.*

Moreau looked past the major. Toward Plancenoit. Toward the mill with its turning wheel and its hidden treasure.

Smoke was rising from the roof.

Not cannon smoke. Fire. The mill was burning.

Von Amsberg wheeled his horse aside at the last possible moment, and the cart rattled past him, through the gap, toward the blazing village and its incinerating gold. Moreau's plan—his last gambit—was dying in front of him, and the man who had killed it was riding calmly behind, watching him race toward ash.

"Bastien," Moreau said, his voice barely a whisper. "The gold."

"I know."

"If it's gone—"

"Then we've got nothing left to offer the Guard." Bastien's jaw was a knot of iron. "And nothing left to offer anyone but a bullet."

The cart clattered across the mill bridge. The wheel had stopped turning. The roof had collapsed inward, and flames licked out of every window. There was no retrieving anything from that inferno.

Moreau stared at the fire, the heat washing over his face, and tried to feel something other than the hollow emptiness where his plan had been.

Then he heard the music.

Faint, rising above the cannon: drums and fifes, the unmistakable shrill of the Grenadier's March. Napoleon was committing the Guard. They were forming east of Plancenoit, marching toward the English ridge—toward glory and death.

Toward nothing Moreau could give them.

He turned to watch them go. And behind the marching columns, a lone rider broke from the French lines and galloped toward the burning mill—an officer in the blue and gold of the Imperial staff, waving a dispatch above his head.

Moreau's heart stopped.

The rider reined in beside the cart, his horse lathered with foam. "Captain Moreau? I bear a message from the Emperor himself."

"He's marching the Guard," Moreau said.

"Yes, sir. He is." The rider held out the dispatch, his hand shaking. "And he has asked for you. Personally. He wants you at the head of the column with the regiment's pay."

Moreau looked at the dispatch, then at the burning mill, then at the column of white-and-blue marching toward the sound of English guns.

"The gold," he said. "The gold is gone."

The rider's face went pale. "Then what do I tell him, sir?"

Moreau did not answer. He was watching von Amsberg turn his horse and ride east, away from the fire, away from the battle, toward the Prussian line and safety.

The major had won. The gold was dust. The army would march unpaid, and when the Guard broke, the mutiny would consume whatever was left of France.

But the Emperor had asked for Étienne Moreau. And a man who had nothing left could still choose what to do with his last hours.

"Take me to him," Moreau said.