Honour and the Sword (31 page)

‘Well, Chevalier?’ said d’Estrada.

André mumbled something. D’Estrada bent his head lower, and the kid spoke again, even quieter. D’Estrada brought his head right down, and that was it, Marcel was there in two strides, his musket crashing down hard on the back of the man’s neck.

We got a gag on him fast while he was out, but he still posed something of a problem, since neither Marcel nor André wanted him hurt, and we’d been planning to set off a mine two feet away from where he was lying. Oh yes, we could have carried him to safety, but the dons might just have asked questions if they’d seen us lugging their officer about like a sack of turnips. No, there was only one thing for it, we’d have to set the mine in the pantry.

The clock was striking quarter past already, so Marcel hurried the others on while I stayed to tie d’Estrada to his chair. He came round while I was doing it, so I punched him in the face to quieten him and finished securing his arms round the back. Then I walked round and looked at him.

What you’ve got to remember, M. l’Abbé, is that for two years this man had been our main opposition. Oh, I knew why they didn’t want him killed, I suppose he posed some defence against the worst excesses of Don Francisco, but he was still the enemy, and I found it hard to see why they made such a pet of him. It’s always the same in this world, Abbé, punish the poor sod who actually does the job, but let the man who ordered it go free. So I looked at him tied to his own chair with Marcel’s dirty handkerchief stuffed in his mouth, and yes, I’ll admit it gave me a certain satisfaction.

But the bastard looked back at me, and I’d seen that look before. You get it on the faces of aristocrats if you dawdle in front of their carriages, you get it on the faces of their servants if they think your boots are going to muddy their floor or your breath offend the air their masters breathe. Oh, I’ve seen it, Abbé. I’ve seen it on the face of a sanctimonious officer sentencing a boy of eighteen to run the gauntlet that killed him, all for getting drunk after a day of hell in the trenches at La Mothe.

And here it was again, that old look, with enough moral superiority oozing out of it to paint the Vatican. This animal, he was thinking, this stinking, uncouth animal, who knows no better than to strike a helpless gentleman who’s acting out of the finest dictates of honour. This animal with no feelings and no soul.

I took out my knife.

Jacques Gilbert

It was only a minute’s walk to the pantry. We were getting nearer the big mess rooms and deeper into the heart of the barracks, we must have passed at least a dozen soldiers on the way, but no one stopped us, they just saw the boy and laughed, and some actually clapped Giulio on the back. No one seemed bothered by not recognizing us. I suppose the new arrivals didn’t know many people yet, and the old lot just thought we were new.

The pantry was up a tiny dog-leg corridor and totally private. Marcel posted Giulio and Cristoval to stage a conversation outside the door, then the rest of us shot in and got on with it. The curé’s demonstration could be broken up any minute, and we were running out of time.

It was very squashed inside, because the shelves took up so much space. They jutted out all round the walls, laden with bottles of fruit and vinegar, and jars of honey and shrivelled red berries, and there wasn’t much room on the floor either, we had to pull out two flour barrels so Giles could set the mine against the outside wall to blast out into the courtyard. Marcel poured the gunpowder into two huge pickling jars to make a second explosion by the inner door, while I untied the boy’s hands and gave him the cloak and helmet out of my pack to cover his clothes and hair. He’d been a password to get us in, but people were bound to ask questions if they saw us trying to take him out. He hadn’t got a sword, of course, but we arranged the cloak to cover his hip and thought it would do. No one had looked closely at us so far, and I couldn’t imagine why they would now.

We worked fast, and Giles was just trimming the second length of slow match when Stefan finally sidled in to join us. I wondered what had taken him so long, but he didn’t say, he just smiled rather unpleasantly and asked if we were ready to get the fuck out.

Me and André were to leave first with the Spanish speakers while the others stayed to light the fuses. Marcel said seven men running were bound to attract attention, whereas three could just look like horseplay. It sort of made sense, but I guessed he was just making sure the boy got out safely, and maybe the Spanish speakers too. They weren’t fighters, either of them, they were only helping us out, it wasn’t right to put them in more danger than we could help.

We walked out of the dog-leg, back into the main corridor, past the turning to the lumber room, and ahead of us the corridor was greying into the darkness of the uninhabited part. I pictured the flambeaux outside the back entrance, and Bruno’s team waiting to welcome us, then the horses just thirty seconds away behind the mill. The Dax clock struck half past.

We were coming up to that dormitory we’d passed on the way in, the last obstacle before the gate and freedom. I kept my eyes turned away, it had worked before and would work again now. Then there were footsteps ahead of us, and I looked up to see soldiers coming out, five of them, dressed for business and heading into the barracks like it was their turn for duty. It didn’t matter, we’d passed loads already, we’d pass these too.

‘Can’t go out that way,’ said a voice. ‘You’re new, aren’t you? No way out that way.’

I looked up and my heart seemed to kick me in the chest. I knew him, I didn’t need the bandage on his hand to recognize him, it was that sodding escort from yesterday, the one who caused all the trouble. Behind me Giulio said in his best cabo’s voice ‘There is for me, soldier,’ and the escort’s eyes lifted towards him, then he saw the boy.

It was so bloody unlucky. Loads of soldiers had seen André yesterday, they’d seen a boy with long black hair in a torn white shirt, but this one had seen him close up, he’d looked right in his face. His eyes widened at once, and I saw him reaching for his sword. I hadn’t time to think, I punched him with my left hand and scrabbled out my sword with my right. I was the only swordsman, it was up to me, I threw myself at the next and lunged before he’d even had time to draw, I just stabbed him and yelled to the others ‘Get out, get out!’

But they couldn’t, could they, the bastard soldiers were between us and the way out. I pulled out fast, but that bloody escort was back up to me again, I hadn’t hit hard enough, and the other three were pressing forward, drawing as they came, there were four of them, four, I couldn’t hold. I fumbled my sword back into position and clashed it hard against the escort’s, but he twisted his blade and threw mine aside. He shouldn’t have been able to do that, he was a foot soldier, he was nobody, but he was big and strong and somehow knew how to use a sword, I only just recovered in time for the parry. The others were coming, there was a big gap to my right for them to push through, and behind it was the boy, unarmed and helpless, I think I screamed in rage. I was hitting out,
battement
,
battement
, get out of my face, you bastards, and then the gap beside me closed, there was another body there with a sword in his hand. It was Cristoval, the other Spanish speaker, he’d never fought in his life, but he’d drawn his sword and was standing beside me.

Just his being there steadied me. I feinted at the escort, turned and parried the next man, twist and flip his blade up, back to the escort, but he was lunging, I only just got the parry across in time. Behind me the boy was screaming at Giulio ‘The sword, give me your sword!’ and a fierce hope sprang up in me, André with a sword would see us all through. Cristoval was struggling, he was up against a big bastard, he couldn’t do it, he’d never do it, and the fifth man was yelling for help, and someone was going to hear him, someone was going to hear and come at us from behind.

I wasn’t good enough, I’d got to be better. I slashed out at the escort and engaged again with the other, but Cristoval was falling back beside me, he was giving ground, sword dropping, arms going up to ward off the blows, and then his man pushed him right behind me, I couldn’t see him any more, there was only this awful grunt and the sound of his fall. His man was through, and I couldn’t turn, I was still fighting two, I couldn’t get a thrust in either of them, I was having to turn too quickly between them. There’s a clash of blades behind me, and it’s a good, decisive sound,
coup sec
, that’s got to be the boy. Relief sluiced over me like sweat. I walloped the escort’s sword down, nothing pretty, I just bashed it out of the way, ducked low in the spin and thrust my other man clean in the guts.

But for a second I’m vulnerable, I’ve not allowed time to pull out, the escort’s thrusting, then there’s a blade slicing in between us, and there’s André, finished with Cristoval’s man already and taking on the escort, I’m free to pull out and go for the fifth man. He was young and unbearded, he looked scared as shit, but he was the last one left and behind him the way out. I went straight at him, jump and lunge, but my right foot shot suddenly away from me, my whole weight pitched forward, there’s blood on the marble and I’m slipping, stamping my left foot down hard to stop myself splitting in two. The soldier leaps at me, suddenly confident, but I’m falling as he lunges and he only scratches my shoulder, I’m on the floor, sick and dizzy, and he’s coming at me again to finish the job. Then somehow, impossibly, André’s there. He’s still fencing the escort but he’s spun out towards us, his blade flicking my man’s up and away, he’s got them both. A dark shape appears in the doorway they all came out of, someone’s asking sleepily what the hell is going on, and I feel stupid, stupid, I can’t think why I assumed there weren’t more, but there are, there’s a sixth man.

I’m aware of everything. The sixth man grabbing for his sword, the wall cold against my back as I slide myself up trying to clear my head, Giulio groping on the floor, to take a sword from one of the dead men, footsteps running towards us down the corridor. And André, fighting two of them and suddenly fighting three.

I’d seen him fence, but I knew now I’d never seen him fight. His sword was whipping about like a streak of light in the dark corridor. He was scoring down the escort’s face, turning and stabbing at my young soldier, twisting his body away from a thrust from the newcomer he can’t have even seen, darting his blade under the incoming sword, thrust in, twist out, back to the young one and a good clean lunge in the chest, parry the escort, and now it’s just the two of them, André and this man who slapped his face while others held his arms, and I know he isn’t going to want any help killing this one, he’ll stop me if I even try. I’m steady again, my sword’s in my hand, I turn to face the men who’ve run down the corridor, but the one in the lead is Giles, and behind him are Stefan and Marcel.

There was still the ring of swords behind me, and I turned to see André finish the escort. I knew he was good, he was much bigger and stronger, and the boy already stiff with bruises, but I wasn’t worried. The escort was using his weight to bear down hard on the boy’s sword, driving him down on one knee, but André’s left foot was already bending for leverage, and as the man disengaged and lunged down, the boy’s left leg was kicking straight, propelling him forward and up straight in the lunge. The escort’s sword thrust into empty air and there was suddenly a blade sticking out a foot the other side of his back. André pulled out and stood back while the body crashed heavily to the floor.

Nobody moved. Gradually I became aware of other things, Cristoval on his back, his dead eyes open, Giulio’s ragged breathing growing softer and slower as he realized it was over, Giles’s voice whispering ‘Fucking hell.’ Marcel was looking at the boy with glowing eyes. Stefan’s face didn’t seem to have changed expression, but his mouth was open all the same. They’d never seen this before. They’d seen the boy kill, but that was ambush, stab and run, they’d never seen him like this, fighting man to man and sword to sword, which is what he was trained for and maybe what he was even born for. No one had ever seen it except me.

Behind us in the barracks came an extraordinary deep whooshing noise, the darkness seemed to flash with pale light, then there was a tremendous rumbling boom. Stefan scooped up Cristoval, and we ran like bloody hell for the exit.

Colin Lefebvre

Couldn’t see much myself, what with the crowd in the way, all I knew was this bloody great bang, then a huge cloud of grey smoke shooting up from behind the courtyard gate and coming down in a fog of choking dust. Looked to me like they’d blown right through the wall.

Couldn’t complain about it as a signal, certainly no missing it, so we were up and out and legging it for the gibbet, that Pinhead all elbows through wanting to get there first. Horses coming too, down to my left, and there was the Gate team right on time, everything going as planned.

Jean-Marie Mercier

The Gate Guards hardly even turned to look at us. They were all staring up towards the barracks, and Robert brought his sabre down on the first one’s neck while he was still facing the other way. The guards on the firing step both collapsed and fell in the same moment to crossbow bolts, and ahead of me I heard the foot party running for the gibbet.

I was trying to turn my horse to join them when there was a sudden yellow flash ahead of me, and a shot cracked out from Market Street. Georges cried out and slumped in his saddle, then fell with a thud to the ground. More shots banged and whizzed around us, and now I could see movement in the dark. There were men hidden behind the Gate cannon shooting at us, my horse reared in panic and I started to slide off. I managed to fire my pistol, and I do think I got one, but I was slipping, and next moment I hit the ground hard and my horse was bolting away back to the Dax-Verdâme Road.

Soldiers were running towards us, and I turned to Robert, but his own horse screamed and fell, then Robert was down too. I tried to stand, but my legs were shaky, and I had to crawl to one of the fallen musketeers to take his gun. Robert was on his feet and coming to help me, but then he whirled round and fell to his knees, and I knew he’d been hit. The gibbet party were under attack too, I saw Colin slashing out wildly, with his back to the post. Bettremieu was supporting Vincent so he could cut down the bodies, but even as I looked, Vincent crumpled to a bullet and fell to the ground. We were meant to be covering them, but there were more and more soldiers coming at us, they weren’t losing time on a reload, they were charging us with swords and pike, we were totally overwhelmed.