Read Chapter 21: The Siege of the Barn

The barn smelled of rotting hay and frozen horse dung, and the wind pushed through gaps in the planking with a sound like a dying animal. Marchetti had chosen it because the roof was mostly intact and the walls faced south, but now, squatting in the dark beside the broken cart harness, he felt like a man who had climbed into a coffin to wait for the lid.

The Prussian officer—Captain Brandt, he'd finally given his name—had posted two of his men at the doors. Aubert sat against the far wall with his knees drawn up, the picture of a man trying to make himself small. Lefebvre was already asleep, or pretending to be. The peasant girl, Anya, had positioned herself near the single high window, not looking out so much as listening.

Outside, the wind shifted.

Marchetti's hand went to the locket inside his coat, found it warm from his body heat, and pressed his thumb against the painted face of Élise. He could almost hear his mother's voice from a lifetime ago, telling him that a man's heart could not live in two places. His heart was in Lyon now, with a child he had never held. His body was here, in a Russian barn, with a German captain and a French corporal who had tried to sell the Emperor's secret.

He pulled his hand away and stood.

"You're too loud," Brandt said from the door.

"I'm breathing," Marchetti said.

"Then breathe quieter."

The first shot didn't come from the direction of the road. It came from the treeline to the north, a single crack that split the night open. The Prussian sentry at the east door grunted, staggered forward, and collapsed face-down in the snow with a red hole blooming in his back.

"Loyalists!" Brandt shouted, dropping to one knee and leveling his carbine at the darkness. "French skirmishers—I know their fire pattern."

Marchetti heard the second volley before Brandt finished the word. Balls tore through the barn's planking, sending splinters spinning through the dark. Lefebvre was on his feet with his musket already raised, his eyes white in the gloom. Anya had dropped below the window, her hand clamped over her mouth to silence any sound.

"Where's your sergeant now, Marchetti?" Aubert whispered, but there was no venom in it. Just exhaustion.

Marchetti didn't answer. He ran to the west wall, where the gaps between boards were wide enough to see through. Against the pale snow, he counted muzzle flashes. At least a dozen. Maybe fifteen. The loyalists had found them.

"How did they know?" Lefebvre asked, his voice a notch above a breath.

Marchetti looked at Brandt. The Prussian's face was stone. He hadn't moved from his position at the door. His eyes were fixed on something to the south, and Marchetti followed his gaze. A second column of men was emerging from the edge of the forest, fanning out to cut off the only path of escape.

"They didn't track us," Brandt said. "They've been waiting. The barn is the only shelter within a day's march."

"Your information is excellent," Marchetti said.

"My orders are also excellent." Brandt's voice carried the weight of a man who had accepted his role as a piece on a larger board. "Someone knew we would use this barn. Someone has been reporting our position since before we left the crossroads."

Marchetti's mind went to the Prussian rider who had been sent away the previous afternoon, the one Brandt had dispatched before Aubert revealed himself. But that had been a courier, not a traitor. Brandt would not have burned his own position.

Another volley slammed into the barn. One ball passed through Lefebvre's shin with the sound of a hammer hitting wet canvas. He went down without a cry, his jaw clenched so tight that Marchetti heard his teeth grind. Anya crawled to him at once, tearing a strip from the hem of her coat.

"Find something to pack the wound," she said, her voice flat and businesslike. "Now."

"The fire is passing over," Lefebvre said through his teeth. "Keep shooting. I'll bleed."

Marchetti pushed himself to the firing gap and saw the loyalists advancing. They were disciplined, spreading out, moving in short practiced rushes. One of them carried a torch, and behind him another dragged something that glinted like brass.

A small cannon.

"They've brought a three-pounder," Marchetti said.

Brandt moved to his side, looked once, and went pale. "Then the barn is a mausoleum. We have to move before they anchor it."

"Where?" Aubert said. He had crawled to the partition between stalls, his eyes darting from Marchetti to the window and back. "They've sealed the south, blocked the road—"

"We go through the north treeline," Lefebvre said. "It's their spare quarter. They'll think we're mad."

"They'll think we're dead," Brandt said. "Which we will be if the treeline isn't as close as I remember." He turned to Marchetti with a look that was not quite respect, not quite calculation. "My men will lay suppressive fire. Yours—such as they are—will carry the wounded. We keep the girl in the middle. No one gets picked off by a stray if we can help it."

Marchetti looked at Lefebvre. His face was contorting as Anya tied the strip above the wound, her knot tightening until the blood slowed to a seeping. Lefebvre's eyes met Marchetti's, and there was no fear in them. Only a kind of fury that transcended language.

"Can you run?" Marchetti asked.

"I can move," Lefebvre said.

"Good enough."

Brandt opened the east door and fired a single shot into the treeline. The answer was immediate: a scattering of musket fire, still ragged, still distant. Brandt nodded as if confirming a theory.

"They're conserving powder," he said. "They expect a siege. They won't waste balls on a dead barn."

"Then we give them a corpse to look at," Marchetti said.

He tore off his greatcoat, bundled it into the shape of a man, and propped it in the window opening. A ball whistled past, punching through the wool. He pulled away the coat and watched as the loyalists' fire redoubled, aimed at the shape.

"Now," he said.

They went out the back door in a single staggered burst, Brandt's two remaining Prussians firing from the shoulder as they ran. The cold hit Marchetti like a fist. Snow came up to his shins, and his worn boots were already wet. Anya had Lefebvre's arm over her shoulder, and the two of them moved with the desperate efficiency of people who had learned that stopping meant dying.

The loyalists' discipline broke for a moment when they realized the barn was emptying. A shout went up, and then the cannon spoke with a flat coughing roar. The ball went high, clipping the roofline of the barn and sending a shower of shingles and ice into the air.

They had fifty yards to the treeline. It felt like a mile.

Lefebvre stumbled, and Marchetti caught him before he hit the snow. He lifted the soldier over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, feeling the man's blood soak through his coat. Lefebvre cursed once, then fell silent.

Behind them, the loyalists had reformed. Brandt fired twice into their formation, no longer aiming, just buying seconds. One of his Prussians took a ball in the chest and went down without a sound. The other dragged him halfway to the trees before letting go, his face a mask of regret.

They plunged into the pines. The darkness closed over them like water.

Marchetti set Lefebvre down at the base of a pine and crouched in the cover of a fallen log. Behind him, through the gaps in the evergreens, he could see the loyalists gathering around the barn, their torches flickering. They did not pursue. They did not have to. They had sent a message.

Anya was breathing hard. She touched Marchetti's sleeve and pointed to Lefebvre's wound, which was wet through the binding. And then, without preamble, she turned to Aubert.

"You knew this would happen," she said.

Aubert's face went through several expressions before settling on defensiveness. "I knew the loyalists were close—"

"You knew the name before the barn," Anya said quietly. "You knew the price of the trail. The prisoner in the convoy is connected to you, isn't it? The one we've been running from."

Aubert didn't answer. He looked at Marchetti, then away.

Brandt dropped to a crouch beside them, his carbine reloaded and ready. "Whatever debt survives this night is owed to my general," he said. "Not to France, and not to you."

Marchetti looked at Lefebvre, pale and leaking blood onto the pine needles. Then at the loyalists' fires, still burning bright against the snow.

"We're going to Vilna," he said. "Your general will have his debt paid. But first, my friend does not die in these woods."

Brandt's eyes flickered to Lefebvre, and something softened almost imperceptibly in his face. "Then we'd better move while there's still night left."