Read Chapter 11: The Betrayal

The fire had burned down to embers when Marchetti woke. Not from cold, not from sound—from the absence of something he couldn't name. The cabin's shadows had shifted. He counted breath-fogs in the dark. Lefebvre, coughing in his sleep. Natalia, curled in the corner. Captain Aubert, propped against the wall, chest rising shallow and uneven. Robert and Petit, sharing one blanket.

Four bodies. The fifth—gone.

Marchetti was on his feet before his mind caught up, blanket falling. He crossed to the corner where Jean-Baptiste had lain, and the space was cold. Not slept-in-cold. Been-hours-gone cold. The boy's pack remained. His rifle remained. But his coat was gone.

*Ah, Jean-Baptiste.*

The door stood slightly ajar, and the wind had combed thin needles of snow through the gap. Marchetti pressed his eye to the crack. Outside, only white and gray. False dawn, the sky the color of old iron.

"Wake them," he said. Quiet, but Lefebvre heard it. The lieutenant's hand went to his pistol before his eyes were open.

"What—"

"The boy's gone. Hush. Robert, Petit—arms." Marchetti moved back to Aubert, crouching low. The captain's eyes had opened, though it took them a moment to find focus. "Your wound," Marchetti said, checking the bindings. Still tight. No fresh blood. Good.

"He sold us, didn't he," Lefebvre said. Not a question. His jaw was set hard enough to crack.

"We don't know that." Marchetti's mouth said it. His gut already knew.

"Then why is he gone? He wanted to stop. He wanted to hide, to wait out the winter—and I told him we'd go on. To Vyazma—" Lefebvre stopped himself, swore under his breath, and the rest of the squad scattered to gather what they had. Natalia rose wordlessly, helping Robert stuff biscuit and dried meat into packs without being asked. Petit stood watch at the door, raw-knuckled around his musket.

"East," Marchetti said. They moved as one, boots already laced. The cold bit through the cabin's open doorway like teeth. The prisoner column was dead ahead—twenty thousand men walking the same road, trapped in Vyazma. If Jean-Baptiste had walked into the gendarme camp with a story, they had no lead. None save speed.

They didn't make fifty yards.

The first shot tore through Petit's shoulder, spinning him into the snow before the report rolled over them. Then the air itself came apart. Gunfire from both flanks, a pincer biting shut around the treeline. Cries. Muffled gray shapes advancing through the blowing snow—imperial gendarmes, white-crossed coats dark with pipe-clay and soot.

"Left!" Marchetti bellowed, grabbing Aubert by the arm, dragging the captain behind the cover of a fallen pine. Lefebvre fired twice, dropped one man, swung to reload. Robert hauled Petit behind the same log, snow smoking red beneath his friend's back.

Then Marchetti saw him.

Jean-Baptiste. Thirty yards off. Coat wrapped tight, shivering, standing beside a gendarme corporal who gripped the boy's elbow like a leash. The boy's face was crumpled—not triumphant, not defiant. Just lost.

Marchetti looked at him. Jean-Baptiste looked back, and his mouth moved. A word. The wind swallowed it, but the shape was *sorry*.

Then the corporal raised his arm, and a line of gendarmes leveled their muskets.

"Down!" Marchetti shoved Aubert flat. The volley tore splinters from the pine, punched through the air where they'd stood. Aubert let out a sound that was more animal than man—a grunt, a gasp—and when Marchetti rolled him over, the captain's hand came away from his ribs slick and black.

"No—" Marchetti pressed both palms to the wound. His own blood was cold on his hands. The captain's was warm. "No, no. Keep your eyes on me. *Capitaine.*"

Aubert's pupils had gone wide, breath ragged. "Marchetti," he said, and there was no weight to the word, no command. Just the man, barely holding on.

"Another volley!" Lefebvre shouted. The gendarmes were reloading, their corporal shouting orders. Petit was still alive but couldn't hold a musket. Robert was crying silently as he returned fire, each shot counting, making every ball tell.

Marchetti lifted Aubert over his shoulder in one motion, something tearing inside him at the captain's wheeze. "Run. The ravine, east—don't stop."

They ran.

Snow to the knees, then to the hips. Marchetti's lungs burned ice, Aubert a dead weight going heavier with every step. Behind them, cries of pursuit. Musket fire snapping sleepers from trees. The ground fell away beneath them—ravine lip, and they went over it together, rolling, tumbling into a drift that swallowed them both.

One by one, the others came over the edge. Lefebvre, dragging Petit. Robert, hauling Natalia by the arm. They landed in a tangle of limbs, breathing in great ragged sobs. Snow slid and buried them deeper.

Above, the ridge line blackened with silhouettes. The gendarmes stopped at the lip, scrabbling at the loose packed slope. The corporal's voice drifted down: "Their powder's soaked. No need to chase. They're dead in a day."

A long silence. Then boots retreating. The sound of men walking away from corpses they didn't need to kill.

Marchetti couldn't feel his fingers. Aubert lay in his arms, eyes half-shut, the wound a dark rose staining through its bindings.

Robert turned to him, his face the color of ash. "He—" The boy couldn't finish. His jaw worked. "He was one of us. *He was one of us.*"

Marchetti had no answer. He looked up at the ravine walls, at the white sky above, at what remained of his squad. Under his hands, Aubert's breathing was a thread unraveling.

Behind them, somewhere in the morning, another volley cracked. The gendarmes were disposing of the cabin. Making sure their betrayal was thorough.

Jean-Baptiste's face hung in Marchetti's mind, mouth shaped around a word he couldn't hear. But he could guess it now. *Sorry* hadn't been an apology.

It had been a farewell.