Read Chapter 17: The Frozen Fortress

The snow had stopped, but the wind had not. It came off the plain in long, mournful howls that pushed the trees into swaying submission, and Marchetti walked at the head of the column with his good arm pressed across his chest, his wounded arm hanging limp and useless at his side, throbbing with every step.

They had been moving northeast for four hours. The horse, a sturdy bay with a Cossack saddle and a harness that creaked with every stride, carried Aubert lashed to its back. The captain's breathing had grown shallow over the last mile, his face the color of old candlewax, and Marchetti knew without asking that they had perhaps a day left before the fever took him entirely.

Lefebvre broke the silence first. He had been ranging ahead, his coat still split at the chest where the Cossack's blade had passed through, and now he stood at the crest of a low rise, half-turned, waiting for them.

"You'll want to see this," he called.

Marchetti climbed the rise with gritted teeth. The wound in his arm had stopped bleeding, but the muscle had gone stiff and cold, and each step sent a dull spike of pain through his shoulder.

From the top of the rise, he saw it.

The fortress stood on a promontory of rock that jutted out over a frozen river bend, walls of gray stone that had once been whitewashed and now bore the mottled scars of weather and war. A tower had collapsed on its eastern side, spilling rubble down the slope like a discarded child's toy. The gates hung open, one of them torn from its hinges and lying in the snow at an awkward angle.

Smoke. Thin, barely visible against the gray sky, rising from somewhere inside the walls.

"They're still burning," Marchetti said.

"Or someone's keeping warm," the peasant girl said from behind him. She had taken to carrying the rifle the Cossack had dropped, and she handled it with the wary respect of someone who had seen what it could do. "There could be men inside."

"Russians," Gerhard said.

"Or French," Lefebvre countered.

Marchetti studied the fortress for a long moment. The smoke was too thin, too sporadic to suggest a large garrison. It rose in fits and starts, suggesting a poorly tended fire. And the gate hanging open, the tower collapsed—this was not a position that had been held by anyone with the strength to defend it.

"We go in," he said. "Carefully."

They moved down the slope in a loose formation, Marchetti in front, Lefebvre on the right flank with the musket he had taken from a dead Cossack's horse, Gerhard and the girl in the middle with the horse and Aubert. The ice crunched beneath their boots, and the wind carried the sound away before it could travel far.

The gate opened onto a courtyard that had once been a parade ground. Now it was a charnel house.

Marchetti had seen battlefields before. He had walked through the aftermath of Borodino, where the dead had lain in such numbers that the living had walked on them, and the ground had squelched with blood so saturated that the frozen earth had kept the boots of soldiers sticking. He had seen things that would follow him to his grave.

This was different.

Forty Russian soldiers lay in the courtyard, their bodies arranged in a rough semicircle facing the gate. They had been shot down, not in melee—their wounds were all to the chest and head, and their muskets were still stacked in neat bundles near the far wall. An execution.

"They're not looted," Lefebvre said, crouching by one of the bodies. "Their belts are intact. Their coins, their medals—all still there."

"Who executes their own men and doesn't take the spoils?" the girl asked.

Marchetti did not answer. He was looking at the far side of the courtyard, where a door stood ajar, the faint orange glow of firelight spilling through the crack.

He walked toward it, leaving the others behind. His boots left prints in the frozen blood, black against the iron-hard snow.

The door opened onto a guard room, with a fireplace that had been recently stoked. A man sat before it, his back to Marchetti, his body swathed in a heavy fur coat. His head was bowed, and his hands rested on his knees, and Marchetti could see the dark stain spreading across the back of his coat, still wet.

"Don't move," Marchetti said, leveling his pistol.

The man laughed. It was a thin, reedy sound, the laugh of someone who had not used the muscles for laughter in a long time.

"I am not in a position to move, Sergeant," the man said in heavily accented French. His voice was dry. "A bullet passed through my gut six hours ago. I am held together by fur and spite."

Marchetti stepped into the room. The others followed, spreading out behind him, their weapons raised.

The man turned his head slowly, wincing with the effort. He was in his forties, with a thin gray beard and eyes that had the deep-set, exhausted look of a man who had been marching for months. His uniform was Russian infantry, a major's insignia on his collar, faded and torn.

"You are French," the major said. It was not a question.

"We are," Marchetti said.

"Then we are in an interesting position." The major gestured weakly at the fireplace. "I am the last survivor of a garrison that was ordered to hold this position against your army. The order was absurd. We were forty men against an army that had burned Moscow. My men knew we were going to die. When a rumor spread that the Emperor had abandoned the campaign and was fleeing west with his treasure, my regiment mutinied."

"The men in the courtyard," the girl said.

"Those who did not join the mutiny were executed to prove the officers' loyalty. Then the mutineers marched east, and I was left here to die slowly, because the officer who shot me wanted me to have time to reflect on my obedience." The major smiled, revealing cracked, yellowed teeth. "He was a philosophical man."

Marchetti lowered his pistol. "You speak French well."

"I studied at Petersburg. Before this war, I was a professor of languages. Now I am a dead man keeping a fire lit." The major's eyes moved to Aubert, slung unconscious over the horse's back. "Your captain is wounded. I have seen such wounds before. He does not have long."

"We know," Gerhard said.

"Vyazma is two days away on foot. With him in that condition, you will not make it."

Marchetti felt the familiar weight of hopelessness settle across his shoulders. "We go anyway."

The major nodded slowly, his chin dipping toward his chest. "You have a choice to make, Sergeant. You can remain here, where it is warm, and wait for death with me. Or you can go east, and find that the road you seek is closed." He paused. "I overheard your men talking as you entered. You believe you are heading toward a fortress, perhaps a supply depot. You are not the first to pass this way seeking it."

"Who else passed this way?" Lefebvre asked.

The major lifted his hand and pointed toward the door. "A column of your gendarmes, three days ago. They passed through this fortress, questioned my dying men, and departed on the road to Vyazma. They carried crates with them, marked with the Imperial Eagle."

Marchetti felt his blood run cold.

"They knew about you," the major continued, his voice dropping to a rasping whisper. "They spoke of a rogue sergeant leading a small band of deserters. They were hunting you. They asked about a girl." His eyes flicked to the peasant girl. "Though I suspect they did not know she was Russian."

The girl tightened her grip on the rifle. "They will not find us."

"They will find your tracks," the major said. "A Cossack found you, did he not? Left alone a child could track you across this snow." He coughed, a wet sound, and blood flecked his lips. "Your gendarmes will reach Vyazma before you. They will be waiting. They will have orders to kill you on sight, and they will have fresh horses and full bellies. You are walking into a trap."

Marchetti stared at the dying man. The fire crackled and popped. Somewhere beyond the walls, the wind picked up again, a low, mournful sound that seemed to echo off the stone.

"You could help us," the girl said. "You know the land. You could show us another route."

The major's eyes met hers. Something passed between them, a flicker of recognition.

"I could," he said slowly. "For a price."

Marchetti took a step forward. "Name it."

The major shifted, wincing, and reached into the folds of his coat. His hand emerged holding a folded paper, yellowed with age, sealed with wax the color of dried blood. He held it out toward Marchetti.

"Your Emperor did not abandon Moscow with an empty treasury," he said. "He sent his most trusted agents east, to secure what he could not carry. Items of great value. Items that his enemies would kill to possess." The major's eyes glittered in the firelight. "I was ordered to intercept one such convoy. I failed. But I know where it was going. And I will tell you—if you swear upon the life of your captain, upon whatever god you believe in, that you will use that information against him. Against the Emperor."

Marchetti felt the weight of the moment pressing down on him. He thought of Élise, of the child in the locket. He thought of the road behind them, soaked in blood and frozen hope.

"I swear it," he said.

The major's hand trembled as he pressed the paper into Marchetti's palm. The wax cracked, and Marchetti saw the edge of a map, drawn in precise, deliberate strokes.

A handwritten notation at the top read: Destination: Vyazma. Contents: True identity of the Imperial double.

And beneath it, in smaller letters, a name that Marchetti recognized.

Jean-Baptiste Dargonne.