Armand Cabasson - Wolf Hunt

Margont shifted all the time, trying to find a less painful position. ‘We have to find out as much as possible about these two types of troops. Our man wore a particular uniform.’

‘I noticed that. Infantrymen are issued only with ill-cut grey overcoats with red facings they have to sew on themselves. Some of them don’t even have those and have to use their own coats. That devil of a man you chased after had a magnificent grey regulation coat with impeccable scarlet facings. But that would be the case for most officers of the Landwehr and the Volunteer regiments.’ Margont could not hide his disappointment.

‘So his uniform tells us nothing about him. Which units did we confront?’

‘At least two companies, one was the 3rd Battalion of the Landwehr of Lower Austria, and the other was the 2nd Battalion of the Viennese Volunteer force.’

‘So our man is an officer in one of those two battalions?’ Margont pulled himself up immediately. ‘Unless he was wearing a fake uniform - although that doesn’t seem possible because how would he have justified that to his superiors? - or he was accompanying the battalions but didn’t serve in either of them. He’s so tricky that you would expect him to have covered his tracks yet again. He knows the woods so well that he could have convinced the two companies to take him along as a guide to help them organise the ambush.’

‘While you’re waiting for an orderly to be free to stitch you up, I will go and find out what I can. According to the last estimates, Austria has lined up more than a hundred thousand militia. And to that they have added the Volunteer regiments. So their lieutenants and captains can be counted in their thousands ... The man we’re looking for lives in Vienna or nearby. The militias are organised by region. A priori, he must therefore serve in the Viennese Landwehr, in the Landwehr of Lower Austria or in the Viennese

Volunteer regiment. Let’s begin by finding out about the two battalions that attacked us. That will already be a start.’

Margont racked his brain for an idea, for a new approach.

‘If we succeed in convincing one of the prisoners to give us the names of the officers of the two battalions ...’

‘I don’t think they’ll even know them. The Landwehr was hurriedly thrown together in June 1808. A hundred thousand militiamen had to be organised in under a year. As for the Viennese Volunteers, that’s an old formation that has disappeared and been resurrected regularly since 1797. It’s made up of civilian volunteers who were exempt from serving in the Landwehr. The Viennese Volunteer force hastily re-formed on 1 March while we were marching on Vienna. Most have been soldiers for only three months and they are even more confused about this war than anyone else. Did you notice, several of them didn’t even open fire during the attack, because certain regiments of Austrian hussars also wear green pelisses. They took Relmyer’s hussars for Austrians and they shouted at them to stop fighting; it was a misunderstanding!’

Margont sat up and was overcome by a wave of pain, which jerked him sharply out of his alcoholic haze.

‘So how is it possible? We are relentlessly looking for someone and they turn up in front of us, as if by magic! Where is Relmyer? I want to talk to him - oh, yes! I would be grateful if you would bring him here.’

*

Relmyer had been wearing himself out trying to extract information from the prisoners, but in vain. When he came to see Margont with Lefine, his face cleared.

‘You seem to have recovered already.’

‘Lukas, you must take us for imbeciles!’ retorted Margont. ‘It’s absolutely unthinkable that this was a coincidence! Someone betrayed us by telling our man the route that we were going to take.’ Relmyer blinked at this reception.

‘If it wasn’t a coincidence, well ... there must have been a leak ...

Perhaps one of my hussars mentioned it to someone ...’

‘He’s lying to us,’ Lefinetold Margont.

Margont suddenly made the link between two apparently unrelated events and everything became clear. He pointed furiously at Relmyer.

‘It’s you who betrayed us. This expedition came about in exactly the same way as your duel with Piquebois. Antoine is fiercesome with a sabre, so you knowingly launched a risky attack. Thinking you had made an error, he dodged and launched his own attack. Antoine could not pass up such an opportunity to triumph! His attack obliged him to expose himself in his turn and your riposte hit him. Your first attack, which put you in danger, was solely intended to incite your opponent to act. So, you launch your second attack and the biter is bit; your opponent collapses, skewered. You arranged it so that the man we’re tracking learnt that you were going to lead an expedition into hostile territory. That journey through the forest was your “first attack’’. It led your adversary to show himself in order to try to kill you, which permitted you to counterattack.'

‘It’s true,’ admitted Relmyer. ‘I have been preparing the plan for several weeks, even before I met you. It’s what I call “the tactic of the false weakness”. It worked! We’ve seen him again, I sparred with him!’

Margont flushed with anger. ‘It was a suicidal tactic! We all nearly didn’t make it!’

‘I thought, I hoped, that he would try something, but how could I have guessed that he served in the militia and that he would throw himself on us with a crowd of soldiers?’

‘Is that all that you have to say to justify that carnage?’

‘No, that’s not all I have to say in my defence!’ stormed Relmyer. ‘Certainly there could have been many deaths and it would have been my fault, but I could very well have been the first victim! I was the bait. I thought my hussars and you would be the hook, not a second worm. I gave myself a one in two chance of surviving his shot and that was the reason that I needed you! Had I been killed I would have died knowing that I was bequeathing the investigation to Pagin and to you two.’

Lefine was appalled. This man is insane!’

Relmyer persisted, supporting his discourse with great sweeping gestures, which were not normal for him.

‘It has nothing to do with madness, it’s mathematics! If your opponent is an exceptional horseman, attack him while he’s having lunch at an inn! Everyone has a weak spot and that’s where you have to strike him! The man I’m looking for is a remarkable defensive tactician. He hides his traces, never draws attention to himself... So I harassed him, irritated him with my provocations, more and more. Until his exasperation obliged him to seek a direct confrontation. I acted like a beater who makes so much noise to frighten the prey that he eventually leaves his hiding place. I forced him to attack and reveal himself, which was so different from his normal way of proceeding that he showed himself much less effective than usual. That’s why the ambush was a big setback for him: badly prepared, badly organised and badly executed. On the other hand, as soon as our man returned to his favourite tactic

- hiding in the forest, avoiding head-on confrontation, using treachery - he regained the upper hand. If you abandon me, I won’t hold it against you, of course. Pagin and I will in the end flush this wolf out of the forest!’

‘How did the man find out that you were looking for him? How did he know where to find us when?’

‘I told you: I’ve been preparing my trap for a long time. I have been endlessly planting clues wherever I’ve been so that he understood that I had returned and was searching for him. I put little tin soldiers along approximately the path where he kidnapped me, in the ruined farm and around my old orphanage. Children’s toys in the places that linked us: the message was clear. And then there was the ruckus I made at Lesdorf Orphanage, the official and unofficial complaints by Madame Blanken, the scene with the police and magistrates when I tracked them down in Vienna to complain about their incompetence ... Everyone was talking about my return.’