Read Chapter 2: The Colonel's Favor

The rain had stopped by the time Moreau found his way to Colonel Lefebvre’s tent, but the mud still sucked at his boots with every step. He had cleaned the map as best he could, pressing it between his saddle blanket through the night so the ink would not run, and now he carried it rolled tight in his fist like a talisman.

Two sentries flanked the tent entrance. They knew him. They let him pass.

Lefebvre sat at a folding table cluttered with papers and a half-empty bottle of brandy that smelled cheaper than the colonel’s rank warranted. He did not look up when Moreau entered. A single lantern swung overhead, throwing long shadows across the canvas.

“Sergeant-Major,” Lefebvre said, still writing. “You have something for me, or are you here to admire the furniture?”

Moreau stepped forward and laid the map flat on the table, smoothing its creases with the heel of his palm. “From the Austrian captain I killed yesterday, sir. It shows their artillery positions and the routes they intend to use for reinforcement.”

Lefebvre’s pen stopped. He set it down slowly and leaned over the map, his eyes tracing the pencil marks and annotations. For a long moment, the only sound was the distant murmur of the camp settling into evening.

“Where did you say you got this?”

“The captain’s dispatch case, sir. He was leading a scouting party that pinned down the 14th Infantry in the ravine. When we broke them, I searched his body.”

Lefebvre’s lip twitched. It might have been amusement or irritation. Hard to tell with a man whose face seemed carved from old oak. He straightened and regarded Moreau with a gaze that held no warmth.

“You’ve done well, Moreau. The action yesterday saved three hundred men and a regimental standard. I’ll see that your name is included in the commendation I send to Marshal Bernadotte’s headquarters.”

Moreau felt his chest tighten. For a moment, he forgot to breathe. *Commendation.* That was the first step. A commendation led to a mention in the regimental record. A mention led to notice. Notice led to a lieutenant’s commission, if the winds blew right.

“Thank you, sir. I—” He hesitated. “I only did my duty.”

Lefebvre picked up his pen again, already dismissed in his mind. “Yes. Your duty. See that you continue to perform it.”

Moreau should have saluted and left. But something caught his eye, glinting in the lantern light. A silver pocket watch sitting beside the inkwell, its case tarnished at the edges, its chain coiled beneath it like a sleeping snake.

He had heard the rumor, of course. Every man in the regiment had. A Prussian officer captured at the skirmish near Ulm had worn a silver watch with a family crest on its face. The man had died in custody, supposedly of a fever, and the watch had found its way into Lefebvre’s possession two days later.

The crest on the watch’s face matched the one on the dispatch case Moreau had stripped from the Austrian captain. The same eagle. The same laurel border.

Moreau opened his mouth. Closed it.

“Something else, Sergeant-Major?”

“No, sir.” Moreau saluted. “Thank you for your time.”

He turned and walked out into the damp evening, the map left behind on the colonel’s table like a child surrendering his best drawing to a teacher who would never hang it on the wall.

The camp was quieting. Cookfires had burned down to embers. Men sat in small clusters, smoking pipes and talking in low voices, the sounds muffled by the wet ground. Moreau made his way toward the cavalry lines, past the picket ropes where horses stamped and nickered in the dark.

He had been walking for several minutes before he realized he was grinding his teeth.

*The watch.*

It meant nothing. Rumors were rumors. Men gossiped like old women at a well, and the truth had never stopped them before. And even if Lefebvre had taken the watch from a prisoner, what was Moreau supposed to do? Confront a colonel over a piece of jewelry with no proof and no witnesses?

He would have to be smarter than that.

“Étienne!”

The voice came from his left, near the supply wagons. Moreau stopped and turned to see a figure detach itself from the shadows, limping slightly on the left leg that had earned him a medical discharge recommendation three months ago.

Corporal Jacques Renaud had been with Moreau since the campaign in Italy. They had shared the same fires, the same rations, the same close calls with lancers who wanted their heads on pikes. Renaud had pulled Moreau out of a ditch at Austerlitz when a shell burst had scattered the squadron and left Moreau bleeding and half-blind. Moreau had carried Renaud’s injured leg for a mile through the snow, cursing him the whole way.

“Jacques.” Moreau clasped his friend’s arm. “You should be resting that leg.”

“Can’t rest. They want to kill me.” Renaud grinned, but the grin didn’t reach his eyes. He was carrying a tin cup of something that smelled like watered wine, and his uniform was missing two buttons from its tunic.

“Who wants to kill you?”

“Quartermaster Sergeant Boucher, for one. And possibly the whole of the 3rd Company, if their sergeant has anything to say about it.”

Moreau sighed. “What did you do?”

“It’s what they say I did.” Renaud’s grin faded. He glanced around, then lowered his voice. “You remember the mule that died of colic last week?”

“The one from the supply train? The grey?”

“That’s the one. Boucher claims I butchered it and sold the meat to the infantry for coin. He says I hid the carcass to cover the theft.”

Moreau stared at him. “Did you?”

“Étienne. I’m a cavalryman. I don’t eat mule.” Renaud’s jaw tightened. “And I don’t steal from our own stores. The mule was dead when I found it. I reported it to Boucher myself. He told me to dispose of the carcass, so I did. Now he’s claiming I sold parts of it and pocketed the money.”

It was a familiar story. Quartermasters skimmed from the supplies, then found scapegoats among the lower ranks to take the blame. Boucher had been with the regiment for fifteen years. He knew the system. He knew who would be believed.

“When is the hearing?”

“Tomorrow, before the colonel.” Renaud’s voice dropped to a rough whisper. “He’s in Boucher’s pocket. Everyone knows it. He’ll take the quartermaster’s word over mine and I’ll be busted to private and sent to the punishment battalion.”

Moreau’s stomach twisted. The punishment battalion was where men went to die slowly—digging latrines under fire, clearing roads in the path of enemy artillery. A man with Renaud’s leg injury wouldn’t last a month.

“You want me to testify,” Moreau said.

“You were with me that morning. We were drilling the new recruits in the field behind the lines. You saw me. If you tell the colonel I was never near the supply wagons, Boucher’s story falls apart.”

Moreau didn’t speak. He remembered that morning. He also remembered the watch on Lefebvre’s desk, the way the colonel had barely looked at him when he offered the map that could change the regiment’s fortune.

*Duty,* Lefebvre had said. *See that you continue to perform it.*

“Will you do it?” Renaud asked. “I know it’s a risk. Boucher has friends. But you’re the only one who can speak for me.”

“You pulled me out of the ditch at Austerlitz,” Moreau said. “You carried me half a mile with a broken leg.”

“That’s not why I’m asking.”

“I know.” Moreau put a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I’ll do it. I’ll speak to Lefebvre myself before the hearing, if I have to.”

Renaud’s shoulders sagged with relief. “Thank you. I won’t forget this, Étienne.”

“Don’t thank me yet. We haven’t won.” Moreau glanced toward the command tent, where the lantern still burned in the darkness. “The colonel is not what I thought he was.”

“What do you mean?”

Moreau shook his head. “Nothing. Go get some rest. We’ll face Boucher together tomorrow.”

Renaud clasped his arm again and limped off into the shadows between the wagons. Moreau watched him go, then turned and walked toward his own tent.

He lay awake for a long time that night, staring at the canvas above his head. The map. The watch. The promise of a commendation that now felt hollow in his chest. And tomorrow, a hearing where he would stand before a man whose tarnished silver watch told Moreau everything he needed to know about where Lefebvre’s true loyalties lay.

*A man who steals from prisoners and lies about it will lie about anything.*

The thought settled in his bones like the damp cold. He closed his eyes, and when he finally slept, he dreamed of officers with silver watches and faces made of mud, smiling as a squadron of horsemen rode into a valley that was not on any map.