Read Chapter 7: The Cossack's Bargain

The fire was dying. Marchetti could feel the cold crawling through his greatcoat like a living thing, reaching for his bones. He had been asleep—or somewhere close to it, that half-dead state that passed for rest these days—when the snap of a twig brought him upright.

He was already reaching for his musket when the horseman burst through the tree line.

The Cossack came fast and low, his mount blowing steam into the frozen dark. Behind him came others—Marchetti counted five, then seven, then more shapes moving between the birches, their furlined hats making them look like wolves standing on their hind legs.

"Up!" Marchetti shouted. "Up, all of you! Cossacks!"

The camp erupted. Lefebvre was on his feet first, his own weapon presented before his eyes were fully open. Simon had the girl by the arm, dragging her toward the cabin wall. Jean-Baptiste scrambled backward, empty-handed, his wide face pale as milk.

Captain Aubert made it to one knee and no further. The cough took him, doubling him over, and when he straightened there was fresh blood on his lips, black in the starlight.

Marchetti took one look at the ring of horsemen closing around them—eleven, twelve riders, their lances gleaming—and made a decision.

"Nobody fires," he said. "Nobody moves."

The lead rider walked his horse forward. He was old for a Cossack, with grey shot through his beard and a scar that carved a furrow from his forehead down past his cheekbone. He sat his saddle like he had been born in it, which he probably had.

He looked at Marchetti, then at the muskets the squad held, then at the cabin behind them. His French was rough but serviceable.

"You are the last," he said. "The rest of your army is already dead."

Marchetti heard the girl—Anastasia, she had finally given them her name—make a small animal sound behind him. He kept his eyes on the Cossack chief.

"We're not soldiers of the line," Marchetti said. "We're lost. Looking for food. Looking for a way west."

The chief smiled without warmth. "All French men are soldiers. All of you die here."

"Then why are we still talking?"

A flicker in the chief's eyes. Surprise, maybe, that the prisoner would speak so plainly. He gestured with his chin toward the cabin.

"You have a wounded man. Sick man. Your musket—you have one, maybe two that still fire." He snorted. "You have a woman. A Russian woman."

"We have nothing you want," Marchetti said.

"That is for me to decide."

Behind him, Marchetti heard Aubert struggling to breathe, the wet rasp of it loud in the silence. Simon had his hand on the captain's shoulder, keeping him from falling forward.

The chief dismounted. He was shorter than Marchetti had expected, but thick through the chest, and his eyes never stopped moving. He walked a slow circle around the squad, studying each face in turn.

He stopped in front of Lefebvre.

"You are looking for someone," the chief said. It was not a question.

Lefebvre's jaw tightened. "How do you know that?"

"I know your French officers take prisoners, sometimes. Men who are useful." The chief tilted his head. "I know you French do not take the ones who are not."

"A depot in Krasnoye," Lefebvre said. "A prisoner. My brother."

"Many prisoners in Krasnoye." The chief's eyes glittered. "A few weeks ago, I trade three things. I give you life, you give me payment, and I tell you something you want to know."

Marchetti stepped forward, putting himself between the chief and Lefebvre.

"Payment," he repeated. "You can see what we have. Worn boots. Empty pouches. We smoked our last tobacco three days ago."

The chief didn't look at Marchetti. He looked past him, at Aubert, and then at Anastasia, and then back to Lefebvre—who was wearing, Marchetti realized with a sinking heart, the coat they had stripped from the dead soldier two days back. The one with the deep inner pocket.

Lefebvre followed the chief's gaze. His hand went to the coat's lapel.

"It's nothing," Lefebvre said. "An old coat. Rags."

"Show me."

Lefebvre looked at Marchetti. Marchetti gave him a tiny shake of the head. But the chief was already walking forward, and two of his riders had dismounted, and there were muskets in the squad's hands but they were all empty—powder wet, shot gone, a memory of the Berezina stealing their teeth from them.

"Show me," the chief said again, "or I cut you open and see what the coat hides."

Lefebvre's hand moved slowly. He reached into the inner pocket, his fingers working against the frozen wool, and brought out the box.

Marchetti recognized it immediately. The dead officer's watch, gold and engraved, that Lefebvre had lifted while Marchetti pretended not to see. They had agreed it could buy food later, or horses, or mercy.

The chief took the box. He opened it. The watch inside caught the firelight, its face unbroken, its hands frozen at some hour they no longer kept.

He studied it for a long moment. Then he looked up at Marchetti, and there was something new in his expression—not greed, but calculation.

"This is officer's watch," he said. "Not yours. Some dead man's." He turned it over, thumb tracing an inscription Marchetti had never read closely. "English writing. Yes. He was not even French."

The chief pocketed the watch. His riders shifted behind him, waiting for a signal.

"I tell you about Krasnoye," the chief said. "It is ruin. Your army burned it. The prisoners there—" He made a gesture with his hand, flat and cutting. "Gone. Dead. Scattered. The ones who live, they are taken to Vyazma by wagon, because your generals want to question them about your Emperor."

Lefebvre let out a breath Marchetti felt through the ground between them. "Gustave—"

"If your brother is clever, he is alive. If he is not, he is not." The chief shrugged. "This is my answer. It is enough."

He swung back onto his horse with a smoothness that betrayed his age. For a moment, he looked down at the whole party of them—the sick captain, the shivering girl, the boy trying to hide behind a musket he clearly didn't know how to use.

"I remember faces," the chief said. His eyes found Marchetti's and held them. "You are the one who gave me this watch. You talk like you have value. Like you are more than a mule in a blue coat."

Marchetti said nothing.

"When I see a French soldier again," the chief said, "I will think of you. And if you are still wearing that coat, if you are still with these people, I will know you are the same man."

He turned his horse. The rest of the patrol closed around him like a living curtain.

Then they were gone, and there was only the sound of hooves fading into snow, and the terrible silence of twelve men who knew they had been spared by luck they had not earned.

The girl broke first. She sat down hard in the snow, her hands wrapped around her knees, and she began to laugh—a thin, broken sound that was closer to weeping.

Lefebvre was at her side in two strides. He crouched, his hand on her shoulder, and she turned into him, muffling the sound against his coat.

"She heard what they said," Lefebvre said quietly. "She knows her father's run out of road."

Marchetti watched them for a moment, then went to Aubert. The captain had found a place against the cabin wall. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow, his lips stained with blood.

"Vyazma," Aubert said without opening his eyes. "If the prisoners are moved there, that's the direction we were going anyway."

"If they're not already dead in a ditch," Marchetti said.

Aubert's eyes opened. They were bright with fever, but lucid.

"They're alive," Aubert said. "The Cossack doesn't take a watch for information he doesn't trust. He gave us the truth. They're alive, and they're going to Vyazma."

Marchetti thought of the chief's parting words. *I will remember you.*

"The real army's headed for Vilna," he said. "If we go to Vyazma, we go against the current. Toward the Cossacks, toward the Russians."

"I know," Aubert said.

"This isn't your mission. The prisoners aren't your problem."

Aubert smiled, a thin ruin of a thing against his pale lips. "Nothing about this journey has been my mission, Sergeant. The Emperor abandoned us at Smorgoni. The officers meant to collect secrets are forging orders and collecting deserters. My message probably isn't even worth the paper it's written on." He coughed, and this time the red flecks on his hand seemed more numerous. "But a girl's father. A corporal's brother. That's something I can still do."

Marchetti looked across the clearing. Lefebvre had gotten the girl to her feet. She was no longer laughing, but her face was wet, and Lefebvre was speaking to her in a low voice, and she was nodding, and something in Marchetti's chest turned over at the sight of it.

"Vyazma, then," Marchetti said. "We go at first light."

The snow began to fall again, thick and silent, erasing as it came.