Read Chapter 12: The God of War's Eagle

The night before the assault, Moreau dreamed of paper. Receipts, letters, orders—all of them burning, ash spiraling into a sky the color of old blood. He woke with the smell of smoke in his nostrils and found it was only the campfires, low and mean, casting the faces of the penal battalion in orange relief.

They called themselves the Forgotten. Men with brand marks or missing ears, thieves and insubordinates and one genuine assassin who spoke only in proverbs. Moreau had earned his place among them by refusing to sign a confession Charpentier had prepared, a document that would have made him a traitor and a coward in the same stroke. The refusal had cost him his stripes, his name, and nearly his life when a sergeant of the line took exception to a disgraced cavalryman eating at his fire.

Now, on the morning of June 14, 1807, the Forgotten were given a purpose.

Colonel Charpentier himself rode down the line of penal companies, his horse stepping delicately between the men as if afraid of soiling its hooves on their shadows. He stopped in front of Moreau, who stood at attention with the rest, his uniform stripped of all insignia, a blank slate of a soldier.

“Sergeant-Major Moreau,” Charpentier said, drawing the title out like a mockery. “You have been selected for an honor. General Bennigsen’s Russians have anchored their left flank on the river. Our engineers say the position is impregnable. The Marshal requires a demonstration—a sacrifice, if you will—to draw their reserves away from the main crossing.”

Moreau said nothing. Around him, the Forgotten shifted. They knew what a demonstration meant. They had all been part of demonstrations before.

“You will take the first wave,” Charpentier continued, his pale eyes glittering with satisfaction. “Volunteers will be granted a full pardon—posthumously, if necessary. Should any of you survive, your crimes are erased. Your records cleaned. You may even rejoin your regiments, if you still have regiments.”

He paused, letting the weight of the offer settle. Then he leaned down from his saddle, close enough that Moreau could smell the brandy on his breath.

“You especially, Moreau. I would hate for your mother to receive a letter saying you died a deserter’s death. Lead these men well, and perhaps your name will be spoken with some honor before the guns eat it.”

Moreau held his gaze. “And if I refuse?”

Charpentier smiled. “Then you will be shot this afternoon for insubordination, and your name will still be spoken—as an example.” He straightened, raising his voice for the company. “You have one hour to prepare your souls. The Marshal expects nothing less than your best.”

He rode away, and the Forgotten closed around Moreau like a tide.

“We could run,” said a man named Guillot, whose crime was stealing bread for his starving sister. “The Russians won’t chase us. They’ve got their own problems.”

Moreau shook his head. “Run where? We have no papers, no names. We would be hanged by the first patrol that found us—French or Russian, it makes no difference.” He looked at the men, seeing the hopelessness in their faces, the resignation. “But if we charge and live, we are free men again. That is the only chance we have.”

“And if we die?” asked another.

“Then we die with our names restored. It is more than the army has given us in years.”

The hour passed too quickly. Moreau wrote no letter—there was no one to write to—but he checked his belongings one last time. The secret compartment in his saddlebag still held the receipt from Eylau, the letter from Roland, and the original report that had started everything. He had considered leaving them behind, but trust no one in the penal battalion with such a treasure. He tucked them against his chest, wrapped in oilcloth and bound with twine.

Let Lefebvre think the papers died with him. Moreau had already made arrangements for copies.

The assault began at mid-morning, the sun burning off the mist that clung to the river. Marshal Lannes commanded the corps, and from his position Moreau could see the great man himself, telescope raised, watching the Russian lines with the calm of a hunter studying wounded game. The main attack would come at the center, but first the demonstration—the forlorn hope—would test the Russian flank and draw their reserves.

Moreau formed his men into a loose column, three hundred strong. They were armed with whatever the army had seen fit to give them: muskets, bayonets, a few cavalry sabers for those who could swing them. Moreau himself carried a pistol and a sword he had bartered from a quartermaster who owed him a debt.

“Remember,” he shouted, his voice carrying over the muttering of the Forgotten. “The faster we cross that ground, the less time they have to shoot us. Do not stop for the wounded. Do not stop for the dead. You stop when you reach their guns, and then you show them what France sends when it is angry.”

They cheered—a ragged, desperate sound—and then the order came.

The artillery opened up. French guns hammered the Russian position, sending geysers of earth and smoke into the air. Under that cover, Moreau raised his saber and led the Forgotten forward at a jog, which quickly became a run, which became a sprint as the first Russian volley tore through their ranks.

Men fell left and right. A ball took Guillot through the throat, and he died with his hands reaching for the bread he would never eat. The man beside Moreau stumbled, his leg gone at the knee, and Moreau did not stop. He could not stop.

The Russian guns fired canister, spraying the field with iron that scythed down entire files. The Forgotten screamed and died, but they kept coming, and Moreau saw the miracle take shape: the Russian reserves were shifting, drawn by the threat of the ragged column that somehow refused to die.

“Push!” Moreau roared, his voice raw. “Push for the guns!”

They reached the first redoubt, and suddenly it was close work—bayonet against bayonet, rifle butt against skull. Moreau fired his pistol into a Russian officer’s face, dropped the weapon, and swung his saber in a wide arc that cleared a circle around him. He saw the regimental color—a Russian eagle, gold on a pole, waving above the breastwork—and something old and hungry stirred in his chest.

If he died today, let him die for something. Let him give Lefebvre nothing to mock.

He charged the eagle.

The standard-bearer saw him coming and leveled a bayonet, but Moreau’s momentum carried him past the point, and his saber came down in a brutal chop that severed the man’s arm at the elbow. The eagle tottered, fell, and Moreau was on it, his hands closing around the pole even as a Russian officer lunged at him with a pistol.

The shot went wide—or perhaps it struck the man behind him, the assassin who spoke in proverbs, who had followed Moreau up the breastwork and took the ball meant for his back. The assassin fell without a word, and Moreau did not look at him. He was already turning, already lifting the eagle high, screaming his defiance at the Russian line.

“For France!”

The cry was taken up by the remnants of the Forgotten, and even the regular troops advancing behind them caught it, and suddenly the entire flank was surging, not as a demonstration but as a wave, and the Russian position broke.

Moreau did not remember the rest of the action. He came to himself hours later, sitting against a shattered cart, the eagle still clutched in his hands. His uniform was torn, his left arm bleeding from a cut he did not recall receiving, and around him lay the dead—French and Russian alike, tangled in the final embrace of battle.

A captain in the 14th Line approached him, his face streaked with powder and blood. “You are the man who took the eagle?”

Moreau nodded, too tired to speak.

“The Marshal wants to see you,” the captain said, and there was something like awe in his voice. “You and your trophy.”

The Forgotten who had survived—fewer than forty of them—helped Moreau to his feet. They touched the eagle as he passed, as if it were a relic that could grant them absolution. For the first time in months, Moreau saw hope in their eyes.

“He’ll be a colonel for this,” someone whispered.

“He’ll be a ghost,” said another. “The army eats its heroes.”

But when Moreau limped before Marshal Lannes and laid the eagle at the great commander’s feet, he saw something in the Marshal’s face that he had not expected—respect.

“Name,” Lannes said.

“Sergeant-Major Étienne Moreau, late of the 7th Hussars, presently of the—” He hesitated, unsure how to describe his current station.

“Presently of the army of France,” Lannes completed, his voice carrying to the assembled officers. “Where a man’s deeds matter more than his misfortunes.” He studied Moreau for a long moment. “Your sentence is voided. Your rank is restored. And when the reports of this battle are written, they will speak of a sergeant-major who captured an eagle on foot, against impossible odds.” He gestured to an aide. “See that he has a surgeon. And wine.”

Moreau saluted, and the effort nearly cost him consciousness. As they led him away, he heard the whispers beginning—men repeating his name, passing it from mouth to mouth like a coin they intended to spend.

*Moreau. The one who took the eagle.*

He tightened his grip on the oilcloth beneath his shirt, feeling the papers press against his heart. He had survived. He had his name back. And somewhere, in a headquarters he had never seen, General Lefebvre would be learning that his enemy had risen from the grave.

Let him come. Moreau was ready.