Read Chapter 5: The False Orders

The column had found its rhythm again—that miserable, shuffling cadence of men who had stopped counting the versts and simply put one foot before the other. Snow hissed under a thousand boots. Somewhere ahead, a mule brayed and was silenced by a crack of a whip.

Marchetti walked at the head of his squad, four men behind him, Lefebvre at his elbow. The corporal’s eyes kept drifting east, toward the white distance where the road to Krasnoye split from this main artery. Marchetti understood the look. He’d seen the same hunger in his own mirror as a boy, staring at the bakery across the street, knowing there was bread inside and nothing in his pockets.

“Easy,” Marchetti murmured.

“I’m easy,” Lefebvre said, not sounding it at all.

The column rounded a bend in the road, where a stand of naked birch trees clawed at the sky. There, planted in the snow like a spike driven into the earth, stood a man on a gray horse. A colonel’s uniform, the blue coat frogged with silver. His face was pinched with cold, but his back was ramrod straight, and he held a pistol across his saddlebow as if it were a scepter.

“Halt!” the colonel shouted. “In the name of the Emperor, halt!”

The order rippled backward through the column like a wave through mud. Men stumbled to a stop. Captain Aubert, riding at the head of their small detachment with Lieutenant Gerhard beside him, reined in. Marchetti could see the captain’s shoulders tense beneath his greatcoat.

Gerhard turned his horse, a flicker of something—interest? satisfaction?—crossing his narrow face. “It seems we have company, Captain.”

“So it seems,” Aubert said. His voice carried the roughness of fever. The wound in his thigh had bled through his bandage twice that morning; Marchetti had seen the dark stain spreading on the wool.

The colonel trotted forward, his horse blowing clouds of steam. He was perhaps fifty, with eyes like river stones and a scar that carved through his left eyebrow. Marchetti had seen men like him before—garrison commanders who had never tasted a winter campaign but wore their authority like armor.

“My name is Colonel Vasseur, Fourth Light Infantry.” He did not offer a salute. “You are out of position, Captain. This road leads nowhere but frozen marsh. The Emperor’s army is regrouping at Maloyaroslavets. You and your men are ordered to rejoin the main column at once.”

Aubert coughed into his glove. It was a wet sound, ugly. Marchetti saw the captain sway slightly in the saddle. “We were separated from the main column at Moscow, Colonel. We’ve been making for Smorgoni, where I have dispatches to deliver.”

“Smorgoni?” Vasseur’s laugh was sharp as broken glass. “There is nothing at Smorgoni but ashes and ghosts. The Emperor left for Paris four days ago. The army has turned west. You’ll freeze on this road, and your dispatches”—he gestured at Aubert’s satchel—“will rot with you.”

Marchetti felt the words land in his gut like stones. Four days. The Emperor had been gone four days, and Aubert had been carrying his black-sealed letter through hell for more than a week. But the colonel’s information aligned with what Aubert had already told him. Did Vasseur know about the secret flight? Or was he simply repeating camp rumor?

“Colonel, with respect,” Aubert said carefully, “my orders come from Marshal Ney’s own hand. I am to deliver this dispatch and return for acknowledgment. If the army has turned west, I must adjust my route accordingly—but I cannot abandon my duty simply because the direction has changed.”

Vasseur’s eyes narrowed. “You question my authority, Captain?”

“I question nothing,” Aubert said. “But you ask me to march my men toward Maloyaroslavets on your word alone. I’ve seen too many men march on words this winter. If you offer me written orders, I will follow them to the mile.”

The colonel’s horse shifted beneath him, and for a moment Marchetti thought Vasseur would simply shoot Aubert where he sat. But instead, the colonel reached into his coat and withdrew a folded paper, sealed with a wax stamp. He held it out, and Aubert leaned from his saddle to take it. His hand shook a little as he broke the seal and read.

Marchetti watched the captain’s face. There was a flicker, there and gone, like a fish surfacing in a dark pond. Then Aubert folded the paper neatly and tucked it inside his coat alongside the black-sealed dispatch.

“Thank you, Colonel,” Aubert said. “We will amend our course immediately.”

Vasseur gave a curt nod. “See that you do. There is a fortified depot at Krasnoye—you’ll find shelter there before crossing the river. The bridge may still stand. I wouldn’t linger on the road with Cossacks about.”

He wheeled his horse and trotted back the way he had come, disappearing beyond the birch stand. For a long moment, the column did not move. Men watched the colonel vanish, then turned back to Aubert, awaiting orders.

Gerhard edged his horse closer. “The colonel’s orders, Captain?”

“Yes,” Aubert said. He was looking down at his hands as if he didn’t quite recognize them. “His orders. To rejoin the army at Maloyaroslavets.” He paused, and Marchetti caught the flicker again—something behind the fever-glazed eyes that was sharp and cold and entirely awake. “But I notice he neglected to mention the condition of the road, or the ice on the river, or the fact that Maloyaroslavets was abandoned three days before the Emperor’s departure.”

Gerhard’s face went still. “Captain?”

“That paper is a forgery,” Aubert said softly, so only the two of them and Marchetti, who had edged closer, could hear. “I know Vasseur’s seal. I served under him at Borodino. His stamp features the army eagle with wings spread.” He tapped his coat where the false orders now rested. “This seal has the eagle’s wings folded. It’s a clerk’s stamp, not a colonel’s.”

Gerhard’s eyes narrowed. “Then why did you take it? Why agree to follow him?”

“Because refusing out loud would have made me a target,” Aubert rasped. “You think that colonel rode alone through bandit country to redirect a stray captain? He’s a vulture, Gerhard. He’s collecting scattered units to march them to Slonim, where the army’s supply trains are gathering. And the men he collects”—Aubert’s voice dropped even lower—“the officers are being mustered into separate camps. Separate companies. I’ve heard rumors of what happens to officers who know too much about the Emperor’s flight.”

Marchetti felt his pulse tick faster. “He’s making certain no one talks about where he went.”

Aubert looked at him. The fever had reddened his cheeks, and his eyes glowed pale and fierce in the failing light. “And we are the ones who are carrying the proof of what he did. This dispatch”—he tapped the satchel again—“this is not a routine order. And now there is a colonel who has seen my face and my name and watched me reading his false orders. If we are truly meant to reach Smorgoni, we cannot afford to be catalogued.”

Lefebvre spoke up quietly. “We could follow his orders. Rejoin the army. Lose ourselves in the column.”

“And deliver the Emperor’s letter to the commander of Slonim?” Aubert shook his head. “I would sooner feed it to the wolves.”

Gerhard’s jaw worked. “What do you propose, then?”

Aubert straightened in the saddle, and Marchetti saw him grit his teeth against the pain of the wound. “We will appear to comply. We march toward Maloyaroslavets until we are out of sight of any watchers. Then we cut north at the old logging trail and make for the river crossing at Studenka. It’s a longer route, but it avoids the depot at Krasnoye.”

Marchetti stiffened. Krasnoye. The depot where Lefebvre believed his brother was held. He felt the corporal go rigid beside him, but Lefebvre said nothing. His hand tightened on his musket.

“And if Colonel Vasseur is waiting to see which way we go?” Gerhard asked.

“Then we appear to be following his orders.” Aubert coughed again, and this time blood spotted his glove. “Until we aren’t.”

He glanced at Marchetti, and there was something in the captain’s eyes—a measuring look, as if he were weighing a stone in his hand and deciding whether to throw it. “Sergeant. You know the logging trail I mean?”

“I know it,” Marchetti said. He had traced the map a dozen times in his head, memorizing the terrain the way he’d once learned his letters in the printer’s shop, letter by letter until they became words and then sentences and then a story he could read in the dark.

“Then you’ll guide us when the time comes.” Aubert swayed. “Not yet. But soon.”

“Captain,” Marchetti said, pitching his voice low, “the corporal and I had planned to scout ahead at first light. A depot near Krasnoye. If we’re cutting north to Studenka, that may be out of our way now.”

Aubert’s gaze flicked to Lefebvre, then back to Marchetti. The fever was eating at him; Marchetti could see it in the way his pupils fought to focus. “A depot?”

“It may hold prisoners,” Marchetti said. “Lefebvre’s brother.”

Aubert was silent for a long moment. Snow began to fall again, soft flakes drifting down like ash from a distant fire. When he spoke, his voice was barely audible.

“There may be prisoners at Krasnoye,” he said. “There may also be a telegraph office that can send word to Slonim that a wounded captain with a black-sealed dispatch passed through. If that report reaches the wrong hands, every mile we’ve marched becomes a death sentence.”

He met Marchetti’s eyes. “You go to Krasnoye, and you carry this mission with you. If you are captured, or delayed, or turned—I cannot vouch for what happens to the men behind you.”

Behind Marchetti, Jean-Baptiste shuffled his feet, blowing into his cupped hands. The boy’s face was pale and young and hopeless. Lefebvre stood frozen, still saying nothing.

“Your choice, Sergeant,” Aubert said. “But choose now. We leave soon, and once we do, there may be no road back to Krasnoye.”

Marchetti felt the weight of it settle on his shoulders like a pack filled with stones. The boy he’d saved from the burning building. The locket in his coat. The dead officer’s face he couldn’t stop seeing. Lefebvre’s brother, somewhere in that church depot, warm or frozen, alive or not.

And behind all of it, the cold and perfect knowledge that he had lied to these men from the beginning.

“We go to Krasnoye,” Marchetti said. “Tonight. Before the column moves.”

Aubert nodded slowly, as if he had expected the answer. “Then do not die,” the captain said. “I may still have need of you.”