Dewey Lambdin - A King`s Commander

"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.

Hard-hearted, they rode; Peel, Lewrie, and Mountjoy, with pistols in one hand, swords in the other, and reins in their teeth to prevent a swarm of desperate soldiers or civilians from swamping them and taking their horses. Children held up to them had to be denied, no matter how pi-tiously a young, still-pretty mother might plead. Their mounts were barely able to carry them at the moment, judder-legged and blowing, so slick and foamy with ripe ammoniac sweat that Lewrie's thighs and boots were damp with it; reeking, too, with the rotting meat stink of saddle sores and girth-galls that had never completely healed, and were now rubbed raw and open, leaving blood and pus stains on the saddle pads to trickle to the corners and drip in the dirt of the road.