Clash of Empires (23 page)

Willem stares at the beach intently. Krabbendijke was his suggestion, although he has never been here in his life. It is only a few hours' ride from Waterloo, to the south, where he will try to gain an audience with Field Marshall Blücher. It is less than a day's ride from Calais, to the southwest, where the saur-slayers will find and destroy Napoléon's great battlesaurs. Krabbendijke is also far enough from Antwerp not to attract attention. It seemed like an ideal landing point and the others agreed. He hopes they are right.

A light glows briefly on the beach as a lantern is uncovered and waved back and forth. Then it disappears.

“Lars,” Willem murmurs.

“I hope so,” Arbuckle says.

Frost turns his head toward the beach, but his ears and nose cannot reach that far, Willem thinks.

The little sloop anchors as close as it can to the beach and Arbuckle motions to Willem to remain on board while he and a handful of men, armed with sword and musket, row ashore in the longboat.

All must be in order, for after a brief consultation with the figure on the beach, the longboat returns and Willem, Frost, Jack, and Héloïse climb on board and are rowed ashore.

More longboats start the job of ferrying the rest of the British soldiers and Willem thinks how daring this is. Landing a small army under the very noses of the French.

He climbs out of the longboat in the shallows, stumbling and almost falling, clutching desperately at the side of the boat while his other hand lifts his satchel and its all-important contents as high as he can. The satchel cannot get wet, no matter what.

“Willem!” A big voice sounds in front of him and he looks up to see the huge man, Sofie's son, Lars. Lars has a rope in one hand, looped through the reins of a number of horses. He grabs Willem with his other arm and crushes him in a hug that squeezes all the air from his lungs.

“It is good to see you, Willem,” Lars says. “And good to see someone taking the fight to the French, instead of the other way around.”

“It is a small thing we do,” Willem says.

“But one that could have great consequence,” Lars says.

“These are all the horses you have?” Willem asks. There are clearly not enough for all the men.

Lars laughs. “The rest are on a farm not far from here. I am afraid your men will have to march for an hour or so. But that is of little importance. I have news for you. It is of great consequence, if it is true.”

“What news is this?” Willem asks,

“You should prepare yourself,” Lars says with a great smile.

“I am as prepared as I need to be,” Willem says, eyeing the big man curiously. “What is this news?”

“That your father still lives,” Lars says.

Willem finds himself sitting on the sand. The collapse is unintentional; all energy seems suddenly drained from his body. This cannot be true. He has lived most of his life with the knowledge of his father's death. And yet …

Even the faintest hope that his father could be alive fills him with an excitement that he struggles to control. It cannot be true. And to raise his hopes only to have them destroyed once again would be worse than knowing his father is dead.

“I warned you,” Lars says, extending a hand and pulling Willem back to his feet.

“Who told you this news?” Willem asks, wondering if it could possibly be true.

“Your friend, who escaped with you through the Ruien,” Lars says.

There is a sharp intake of breath from Héloïse and a sudden stillness among the others.

“François?” Willem asks.

“The same,” Lars says.

“François is no friend of mine,” Willem says, his mind whirling. “This news is a lie.”

“But he was with you when you escaped from the French,” Lars says, narrowing his eyes.

“And then he betrayed us!” Willem cries. “François works for the French. But why would he come to you with this news, if it is even true?”

Héloïse has been looking around at the forest that surrounds them. Her every sense seems alert.

“Run!” she screams.

“It is a trap!” Lars curses loudly in Dutch. “Go, now! Back to the boat.”

From somewhere unseen in the darkness, perhaps from the other side of the dike, comes a long, low, undulating roar, loud enough to shake dew from the leaves of the trees that surround them and to make horses rear and paw the air with their hooves.

“Too late,” Frost says.

*   *   *

The unmistakable sound of a roaring battlesaur is followed by the sound of French trumpets.

Willem backs away toward the shore, unwilling to turn and thus take his eyes off the dark tree line. Frost is next to him with Jack beside him, guiding him as they move swiftly toward the boats.

Héloïse ignores Lars's instructions and Willem sees her heading to the side, toward the trees. That is where she will feel safe, he knows.

“Form a line! Form a line!” Arbuckle shouts, and the British soldiers are quick to form up into two rows, one behind the other, the front row kneeling.

“Fix bayonets,” Arbuckle shouts.

McConnell is nowhere to be seen, but a glance behind reveals him already climbing up over the side of the boat, trying to push it off with one foot. It is too heavy for him, too firmly wedged onto the sand. Big Joe joins him, heaving on the front of the boat to dislodge it.

Whatever is coming is still unseen, hidden behind the high earthen mound of the dike.

Willem reaches into his satchel and extracts a stubby thundercloud cylinder, then another. He holds them close to his chest as he backs away toward the shore, unwilling to take his eyes off the dike. He hopes the British soldiers remember their training.

“Keep moving,” Lars says softly, stepping in front of them. He releases the reins of the horses and slaps one of them on the rump. The horse too has heard the roar of the battlesaur and needs no further encouragement. It tosses its head and takes off toward the trees. The other horses quickly follow.

Lars produces a heavy club from somewhere within his coat and swings it from side to side. Willem thinks a wooden stick will be scant protection against what comes from behind the dike.

“Hold there,” a voice shouts in French-accented English.

Now he sees the saur. His first glimpse of a real French battlesaur, not the wooden replicas at Woolwich, nor the gentle herbisaurs that were slaughtered for practice.

The head of the creature appears above the dike, illuminated by the dawning sky.

It is not as large as the saur that attacked his village so many months ago, but it seems even more terrifying. Its eyes are deep-set and hooded. Its snout shorter and thicker than that of the crocodile-like creature of Gaillemarde. Its teeth are just as long and its skin is the same ridged hide that the men of the village hacked to pieces to hide the carcass of the beast.

A row of lights now appears along the top of the dike, like a string of glowing pearls. These are not jewels, however, but flaming torches, gleaming off the shiny armor of a line of French cuirassiers. In front of them appear soldiers on foot, low dark shapes before them, and now comes a sound that has given Willem many nightmares since his escape from Antwerp: the rattling spines and whispering grunts of demonsaurs.

Willem stops backing away as the French horses begin to move, descending the steep slope of the dike toward the wide clearing that is the boat landing.

“Get out of here, Willem,” Lars shouts.

Willem shakes his head.

At the boat, Big Joe and McConnell wait, McConnell impatiently. Willem suspects he would have taken off by himself if he could have managed the longboat alone. The other saur-slayers have formed a semicircle in front of them, weapons at the ready, defending the boat landing.

“Hold!” the French voice shouts.

The cavalry wait at the foot of the dike. The battlesaur descends behind them. The French horses are well trained, Willem thinks, not to panic and flee. The flames of the torches now glint off the blades of sabers.

The French are within range of the British muskets, yet Arbuckle does not give the order to fire. Instead he says, “Protect the boy. All of you. With your life.”

It takes Willem a moment to realize that “the boy” is him, and that all of these men have just been ordered to give up their lives, if necessary, for his. It is an uncomfortable feeling, yet there is nothing he can say or do. That is the order.

“Remember the magic,” he calls out to Arbuckle, who nods.

He has not finished speaking when the French cuirassiers begin their charge, silhouetted in the glow of the flaming torches of the riders behind them.

In front of them, unleashed, race the evil, chilling shapes of the demonsaurs.

Willem twists the end of one of his cylinders, hearing the strike of the flint inside. He shuts his eyes and aims it high in the air, over the heads of the line of British troops. There is a sharp crack inside as a small gunpowder charge explodes and suddenly the air in front of them is filled with a fine-grained powder, finer than the finest flour. He drops the cylinder, now hot to the touch, and does the same with the second one, intensifying the soft, billowing cloud in front of the charging demonsaurs and cavalry.

“Now!” he shouts.

The British soldiers raise one arm, covering their eyes with their forearms. Willem is so busy watching that he forgets to do the same. Just in time he shuts his eyes as tightly as he can.

The first of the burning torches touches the edge of the cloud of drifting powder and as it does the sky explodes.

A bright flash, intense enough to make the insides of his eyelids glow bright red is followed by the sound of horses shying, rearing, and colliding.

He has closed his eyes only for a second but when he reopens them the air is on fire, terrifying the French horses and battlesaurs alike. A thick pall of pungent, white smoke is spreading, filling the clearing and filtering into the trees of the surrounding forest, hemmed in by the wall of the dike behind.

All is smoke and flames and confusion.

Now the muskets of the British soldiers sound and he hears the screams of horses and the shrieks of demonsaurs. It is the only volley. There is no time for the soldiers to reload. Instead he sees them present their bayonets at the men, horses, and demonic beasts that still tear through the thick smoke toward them.

As the smoke curls around him he drops to his hands and knees and scrambles on all fours like a dragonrat. The smoke is thinner at ground level, and he can see the legs of men and horses, their bodies ghostly shapes above.

A horse thunders toward him, but he senses its presence by the sound and sees its legs in time to dodge out of its way. The rider sees him at the last moment and stabs at him, but misses.

Above him now, towering over the men and horses, is the battlesaur. There is no time to try to mesmerize it. No time to thrust his hand into the small sack of pepper he carries. Time only to die, and yet he does not. The beast is distracted by a British soldier backing away from a cuirassier. Its head dips and for a moment the smoke turns red.

Willem runs past the battlesaur, out of its sight. He hears pistol shots, and more sounds of men and horses colliding. The darkness and smoke have turned the clearing into a chaotic circus. There are grunts, shouts, and screams. The constant rattle of demonsaur spines. It is a maelstrom of moving bodies and swirling smoke and in the midst of it somewhere is the huge dinosaur.

Through a momentary gap in the white curtain Willem sees Lars swinging his heavy club the way a woodsman swings his ax. A
thwack
is followed by the thud of a soldier hitting the ground, the clang of his armor. Then comes another
thwack
and Willem knows there is one less French soldier to worry about.

More pistol shots are followed by the scream of an injured horse. In the darkness, smoke, and confusion Willem thinks the soldiers are as much danger to themselves as to others. Always he hears the
thwack
,
thwack
,
thwack
of Lars's wooden club.

He thinks he sees a gap in the smoke in the direction of the trees and scrambles toward it only to find himself rolling over the ground, barely registering the sudden jarring pain in his right side, and above him is a French cuirassier, high in his saddle, pistol raised, aimed directly at Willem's chest. There is no time even to crawl backward and Willem can see, or thinks he sees, the man's finger move slightly on the trigger, then comes the flash of the muzzle, but the shot is wild, the pistol tumbling through the air as the man flies sideways off his horse and a dim shape moves over him.

The Frenchman convulses, then lies still, and the dim shape turns, becoming Arbuckle, a dark-dripping dagger in his hand. He hauls Willem back to his feet without a word, crouching low, pulling him along with him, and a second or so later they are moving swiftly along the base of the dike.

A harsh whisper comes from a clump of low bushes beside them. “Willem!”

They stop and Frost emerges, a French pistol in his hand. Willem cannot imagine how he got it, then remembers that in the absence of sight, Frost sees more clearly than most men.

Shouts, shots, and the cries of horses continue behind them as the three stumble as quietly as they can up the side of the dike. The earth of the dike is hard, claylike, and only soft grass grows on it. It is steep, but they are up and over it quickly.

On this side Willem can see the thatched roofs of a small hamlet, Krabbendijke. A windmill lies beyond that, its arms still and silent in the cool morning air.

“What about the others?” Willem gasps as they slither down the far side of the dike. Big Joe, Gilbert, McConnell, Smythe, Weiner, and Patrick. His precious saur-slayers. Alive or dead? And what about Jack?

Héloïse does not concern him. He saw her reach the trees and in the forest she is a match for anyone.

“Those that can will find their own way to the rendezvous point,” Arbuckle says. “There is nothing we can do for them.”