“More bones, too, I think. I didn’t stop to look.” The boy swallowed. He had simply run, too panicked to think. When he stopped at last, completely out of breath and with legs like jelly, he had sat down to rest and think what to do.

“They couldn’t beat me more than once for being gone,” he said, with the ghost of a smile. “So I thought I would be gone a little longer.”

This decision was enhanced by the discovery of a grove of walnut trees, and Franz had made his way up into the hills, gathering both nuts and wild blackberries—his lips were still stained purple with the juice, Grey saw.

He had been interrupted in this peaceful pursuit by the sound of gunfire. Throwing himself flat on the ground, he had then crept forward, until he could see over the edge of a little rocky escarpment. Below, in a hollow, he saw a small group of English soldiers, engaged in mortal combat with Austrians.

“Austrians? You are sure?” Grey asked, astonished.

“I know what Austrians look like,” the boy assured him, a little tartly. Knowing what Austrians were capable of, too, he had promptly backed up, risen to his feet, and run as fast as he could in the opposite direction—only to fall into the badger’s sett.

“You were lucky the badger wasn’t at home,” Grey remarked, teeth beginning to chatter. He had reclaimed the remnants of his shirt, but this was insufficient shelter against dropping temperature and probing wind. “But you said dead Englishmen.”

“I think they were all dead,” the boy said. “I didn’t go see.”

Grey, however, must. Leaving the boy covered with his coat and a mound of dead leaves, he untied the horse and turned his head in the direction Franz had indicated.

Proceeding with care and caution in case of lurking Austrians, it was nearly sunset before he found the hollow.

It was Dundas and his survey party; he recognized the uniforms at once. Cursing under his breath, he flung himself off his horse and scrabbled hurriedly from one body to the next, hoping against hope as he pressed shaking fingers against cooling cheeks and flaccid breasts.

Two were still alive: Dundas and a corporal. The corporal was badly wounded and unconscious; Dundas had taken a gun butt to the head and a bayonet through the chest, but the wound had fortunately sealed itself. The lieutenant was disabled and in pain, but not yet on the verge of death.

“Hundreds of the buggers,” he croaked breathlessly, gripping Grey’s arm. “Saw…whole battalion…guns. Going to…the French. Lloyd—followed them. Spying. Heard. Fucking succ—succ—” He coughed hard, spraying a little blood with the saliva, but it seemed to ease his breath temporarily.

“It was a plan. Got women—agents. Slept with men, gave them o-opium. Dreams. Panic, aye?” He was half sitting up, straining to make words, make Grey understand.

Grey understood, only too well. He had been given opium once, by a doctor, and remembered vividly the weirdly erotic dreams that had ensued. Do the same to men who had likely never heard of opium, let alone experienced it, and at the same time, start rumors of a demoness who preyed upon men in their dreams? Particularly with a flesh-and-blood avatar, who could leave such marks as would convince a man he had been so victimized?

Only too effective, and one of the cleverest notions he had ever come across for demoralizing an enemy before attack. It was that alone that gave him some hope, as he comforted Dundas, piling him with coats taken from the dead, dragging the corporal to lie near the lieutenant for the sake of shared warmth, digging through a discarded rucksack for water to give him.

If the combined force of French and Austrians was huge, there would be no need for such subtleties—the enemy would simply roll over the English and their German allies. But if the numbers were closer to equal, and it was still necessary to funnel them across those two narrow bridges…then, yes, it was desirable to face an enemy who had not slept for several nights, whose men were tired and jumpy, whose officers were not paying attention to possible threat, being too occupied with the difficulties close at hand.

He could see it clearly: Ruysdale was busy watching the French, who were sitting happily on the cliffs, moving just enough to keep attention diverted from the Austrian advance. The Austrians would come down on the bridge—likely at night—and then the French on their heels.

Dundas was shivering, eyes closed, teeth set hard in his lower lip against the pain of the movement.

“Christopher, can you hear me? Christopher!” Grey shook him, as gently as possible. “Where’s Lloyd?” He didn’t know the members of Dundas’s party; if Lloyd had been taken captive, or—But Dundas was shaking his head, gesturing feebly toward one of the corpses, lying with his head smashed open.

“Go on,” Dundas whispered. His face was gray, and not only from the waning light. “Warn Sir Peter.” He put his arm about the unconscious corporal, and nodded to Grey. “We’ll…wait.”

Chapter 8

The Witch

Grey had been staring with great absorption at his valet’s face for some moments, before he realized even what he was looking at, let alone why.

“Uh?” he said.

“I said,” Tom repeated, with some emphasis, “you best drink this, me lord, or you’re going to fall flat on your face, and that won’t do, will it?”

“It won’t? Oh. No. Of course not.” He took the cup, adding a belated “Thank you, Tom. What is it?”

“I told you twice, I’m not going to try and say the name of it again. Ilse says it’ll keep you on your feet, though.” He leaned forward and sniffed approvingly at the liquid, which appeared to be brown and foamy, indicating the presence in it of eggs, Grey thought.

He followed Tom’s lead and sniffed, too, recoiling only slightly at the eye-watering reek. Hartshorn, perhaps? It had quite a lot of brandy, no matter what else was in it. And he did need to stay on his feet. With no more than a precautionary clenching of his belly muscles, he put back his head and drained it.

He had been awake for nearly forty-eight hours, and the world around him had a tendency to pass in and out of focus, like the scene in a spyglass. He had also a proclivity to go intermittently deaf, not hearing what was said to him—and Tom was correct, that wouldn’t do.

He had taken time, the night before, to fetch Franz, put him on the horse—with a certain amount of squealing, it must be admitted, as Franz had never been on a horse before—and take him to the spot where Dundas lay, feeling that they would be better together. He had pressed his dagger into Franz’s hands, and left him guarding the corporal and the lieutenant, who by then was passing in and out of consciousness.

Grey had then donned his coat and come back to raise the alarm, riding a flagging horse at the gallop over pitch-black ground, by the light of a waning moon. He’d fallen twice, when Hognose stumbled, but luckily escaped injury either time.

He had alerted the artillery crew at the bridge, ridden on to Ruysdale’s encampment, roused everyone, seen the colonel in spite of all attempts to prevent him waking the man, gathered a rescue party, and ridden back to retrieve Dundas and the others, arriving in the hollow near dawn to find the corporal dead and Dundas nearly so, with his head in Franz’s lap.

Captain Hiltern had of course sent someone with word to Sir Peter at the Schloss, but it was necessary for Grey to report personally to Sir Peter and von Namtzen when he returned at midday with the rescue party. After which, officers and men had flapped out of the place like a swarm of bats, the whole military apparatus moving like the armature of some great engine, creaking, groaning, but coming to life with amazing speed.