Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Commander

He bit off the folded end of a premade cartouche, the powder bitter on his tongue. Bullet end up the spout. Crank the breech shut and pull the flint striker's dog's jaws back, checking to see that the flint was firmly seated and didn't slip against the leather under the clamping screw's face. At half cock, he flipped open the frizzen, to bare the pan, and primed it with a measure from the powder flask that held the very finest, talclike igniting powder.

"Er, sir?" Mountjoy bickered. "The Herr Baron von Losma says we should hightail it. Soon, sir. He's found the Frogs, so…"

"A minute." Lewrie sighed. "A minute."

He pulled the Ferguson back to full cock and put it to his eye, resting the barrel on the rocks, settling himself. It looked to be at least 200 yards, maybe more? And there was Choundas, stopping beside a French dragoon officer, pointing back to the valley. Smiling like everything, he suspected. Bragging about his escape, too!

There was the wind to consider; it was blowing from behind the cavalrymen on that far slope, and a little to Lewrie's right. A shot uphill, almost into the wind? He held high, aiming a foot above his nemesis's hat, a touch to the right, maybe a foot beyond Choundas's shoulder.

"Might as well shoot at the moon, sir, the herr leutnant says," Mountjoy interrupted. "With a musket, at this range…?"

"Shut up, Mister Mountjoy!" Lewrie barked. "Not a musket."

There was a raven's caw off to his left, so near his ear that he almost jerked the trigger. Tramp of marching feet, thud of a drum. Another column of infantry emerging far to left of the slope where the cavalry sat and stared. At least a battalion, coming to use the road they were on.

The raven swooshed past, zooming upward, gliding and tilting to gain altitude before beating its wings, again. Flying toward Choundas. Once it was past, the wind faded, the grass tips before Lewrie stilled their slight wavering, and he inched the barrel a bit more left. Took a quarter-inch more elevation.

"My congratulations on your breathtaking escape, Capitaine," the dragoon officer enthused, offering Choundas a silver brandy flask. "Though it is not every day we see our Navy among us. Do you wish me to sweep those Austrian scum who chased you away? Just sitting there, counting heads, the damned fools. Lancers… they're insane!"

"Their infantry is not far behind them," Choundas cautioned as he slurped down a restoring measure of brandy.

"We wait for the rest of the squadron, then," the dragoon said in disappointment. "For the infantry to flank them away." "We march on Vado Bay, at last?" Choundas beamed. "Indeed, Capitaine. Soon, your ships will anchor there." Choundas turned to look at the Austrian troop, and at the men in civilian dress who'd accompanied them, hoping that one of them was his bкte noire, Lewrie. Was that him, kneeling down? So close, at last, so far from his ship, and all aid. With a word, he could urge this cavalryman to gallop down and take him for him. He could have Lewrie in chains in his cellars at Nice by the next evening, to begin the exquisite revenge he'd planned so long. Just a word, and…

There was a puff of smoke from the fence, from the kneeling man. "It is him!" Choundas crowed. "The desperate fool!" "Far past even the best musket shot," the dragoon officer cried in derision, and his troopers guffawed at the hopeless gesture. "Capitaine Jonville, perhaps…" Choundas began to say. A raven came soaring up the slope, flaring and riding the thermal off the hillside, climbing, climbing, then beat its wings, beginning to circle- to Guillaume Choundas's right hand. He raised his right arm in supplication, remembering what the old people had told him…

"… couldn't hit a house, at that…"

A second or two in flight, arcing up, then down, as it lost its momentum, plummeting like a howitzer shell and regaining velocity…

The.65-caliber ball slammed into Guillaume Choundas with the impact of a heavy, hard-swung cudgel, smashing into the flesh and bone of his upraised right arm, just below his armpit! His horse screamed, almost as loud as he did, as he was flung sideways in the saddle, and dragged to the right and down by the force of it! His horse whirled as if to bite its own haunches, rearing and backpedaling for balance and slinging Choundas's total weight onto that weak left leg caught in the stirrup, shuddery and nerveless from his desperate gallop, caught by the iron brace that stiffened the thick left boot. He flailed to stay in the saddle, but his right foot was free, and he was falling, to land on that right shoulder and arm, and the back of his head, get dragged for a few paces in a maddened circle before a trooper sprang down to grab the reins, and another rushed to free his foot.

"Merde alors!" The dragoon officer breathed in stupefied awe. "Miraculous!"

"Eatttt thatt, you bassttardd!" Lewrie screamed as he rose to his feet, his face mottled, and split by a feral, heathen grin. Alan trotted back to the horse Mountjoy held, took the reins, and slung the Ferguson over his back before mounting. "That's all for him!"

"Gott in Himmett" Lt. Baron von Losma peeped, turning pale.

"Good shot, hey?" Lewrie crowed, riding in an impatient circle.

There was a sudden sputter of musketry up the valley, among the trees. A platoon firing, at first. Then what sounded like a whole regiment lit off. The flat bangs of a three-gun battery of light artillery joined them… followed by another regimental volley.

"Heraus!" Lt. von Losma shouted, waving his arm in the air in a signal. "Mach schnell, heraus! Wir zuriickziehen. .. zur ruck, jetzt!"

The French infantry column on the road, still 300 yards away, lumbered out from column to line, four deep, and began to load for a volley of their own, their skirmishers out in front already firing.

"Time to scamper, sir," Mountjoy translated as the lancers with them wheeled away, almost in a headless panic. As the French dragoons came flowing from the trees, down off that far slope's crest.

"Lewrie," Peel breathed, half in awe, but his face hellish-dark with concern. "Just what the bloody hell have you started?"

They sawed at the reins and kicked their horses to a gallop, back the way they'd come, whooping to scare them to greater effort, eating a shower of flung clods from the rapidly retreating lancers. The French helped, whooping and keening with blood lust. As they began to climb that bouldery bare ridge, Lewrie looked behind, to see the dragoons in full charge, sword points hungry, and not fifty yards astern!

They almost flew over that low ridge, down into the broad valley to the crossroads and past the filthy, slow-toppling shrine, whooping with relief to see at least a brigade of Austrian infantry drawn up at the edge of the far woods, another quarter-mile away. The drumming of dragoon hooves didn't seem to falter, though, thundering loud as gunfire. And, to speak of it, there was rather a lot of gunfire. Waves and volleys of it, full broadsides of musketry.

They blazed past the infantry brigade's left flank as trumpets sounded and drums beat to stand the soldiers to attention and begin to load. Lewrie dared look back once more, grateful beyond all expression to see the French dragoons slowing and circling across the face of that stout brigade's lines, just out of musket shot.

"Think we're safe, now," Peel informed them, checking his horse. The troop of lancers, though, was still rushing pell-mell down the road to Porto Vado. The last they saw of them were the winks of lance points and colorful pennants, the flash of shod hooves as they thundered away.

The brigade began to volley by ranks, and a sudden fog-bank rose before them. More blaring of bugles could be heard.

"That stopped 'em, cold!" Mountjoy gasped happily. "Thank God, I say, for the Austrians. Slow or not, they were there when we needed." He was not quite so thankful a moment later when infantrymen in gaudy Austrian uniforms came streaming back from the firing, out of the smoke of their own muskets in a ragged mob, as fast as their legs could carry them. Some mounted officers appeared, a few flailing with their swords to turn their troops, or stop them. Other officers galloped on past, just as intent on escape. They could hear cheering far beyond… over the wails of alarm closer to them… the drums and tootling of a military band, and harsh voices baying out "La Marseillais"!

"What the bloody hell?" Mountjoy yelped, as the straggling mob of fleeing infantry became a positive flood as the brigade broke.

"Christ, they panicked at their own bloody volleys," Peel spat; figuratively, and literally. "A brigade, routed by a troop o' cavalry?"

"Maybe we should try to ride back to that village where we began," Lewrie suggested, fingering the brace of long-barreled pistols stuffed in his waistband. He looked down that way, but there seemed to be the plumes and pillars of gun smoke above those woods, too.

"Doubt it," Peel groaned. "The Frogs'd have taken the junction above the village before we got there. They need the coast roads most of all. This way, I think." Peel waved, down the sketchy path to Vado Bay the lancers had used. "And quickly," he added, seeing the sparkle of bayonets atop the far bare ridge, the blue coats and white trousers of a French brigade deployed in line across the road they'd just ridden.

"How far do you think it is, sir?" Mountjoy asked nervously.

" 'Bout three dead Italian horses," Peel replied, leading them into motion, kicking his already-weary mount to a trot.

But isn't anybody goin' to congratulate me? Lewrie thought. Or will we live long enough for that?

From what they could see of it, the finest army in Europe had turned itself into a panic-stricken horde. After all General de Vins's dithering, it had also gone from what they'd deprecated as the slowest in Europe, to one of the very fastest. Now, going the wrong way, its speed of retreat was breathtaking!

The few poor roads were strangled by trains of wagons, bullock teams dragging heavy guns. Lighter civilian carriages and coaches were strewn along the sides of the roads, broken down after they'd tried to bypass the tangled messes. Large artillery pieces stood abandoned by the side, left in artillery parks lined up wheel to wheel as ii for an inspection, but their gunners and their dray horses were gone, commandeered by the first takers who could get to them.

There were mounted color bearers clattering along to save their regimental symbols-but without their regiments. Officers dressed in a dizzying assortment of brightly martial uniforms; infantry, artillery, cavalry, Commissariat, medical units… dragoon, lancers, grenadiers or fusiliers, light infantry or line, all mixed together, all clopping off toward the sea, or the east, without their troops. There were soldiers in dribs and drabs, here a platoon, there a company, together, shambling away to the rear without officers, and it was rare to see a full battalion that had kept some sense of order.

Or their weapons. The road and ditches, the fences and fields, were littered with abandoned muskets, pistols, hangers and knapsacks, cartridge boxes and powder flasks, cross-belts, hats, neck-stocks, and belts. Anything and everything that might slow them down they'd left behind.

There were camp followers who accompanied every army to a war; wives, children, laundry-women and officers' servants, fiancйes, amours, and whores, mothers and fathers come to see their sons win glory on the fields of honor-all running, riding, or clinging to wagons, or an offside stirrup, to escape the French. From raggedy barefoot peasant girls who slept with the privates to lordly, aristocratic courtesans in court dress, they lined the road, crying and begging for a ride, a seat behind a cavalryman, for water, for a clue as to where to go, or a word of encouragement, or an explanation of what it was they witnessed.