Clash of Empires (36 page)

Willem glances back again just in time to see Frost fire at the greatjaw. The sound of the pepper cartridge is unmistakable but Willem curses as the cloud of particles shoots high in the air, above the greatjaw's head.

He is almost thrown from the saddle as the tricorne veers around a corner. Behind him, Frost is hanging on by his fingertips. The tricorne skids on the cobblestones and its hindquarters smash into a house. A wall collapses into a pile of bricks and dust. Still the greatjaw is right behind them, stumbling on the loose bricks that have spilled into the street. As it turns the corner the rider is revealed.

“Now!” Willem shouts.

The pistol kicks in Frost's hand. The rider shudders and slides backward off the saddle.

Willem gives a whoop, but his joy is short-lived. The greatjaw needs neither encouragement nor rider to chase a tricorne. Willem hauls on the reins, trying to regain control of his animal. He closes a blinder, steering the tricorne around another corner onto a small bridge across a river, heading for a church. Here the road curves again, toward the ocean. In the distance Willem can see the retreating masts of the Royal Navy.

He turns again, into a narrow street filled with market stalls. The wooden poles and awnings disappear, shredded to ribbons and matchsticks.

A quick glance confirms that the greatjaw is still right on their tail.

“We must find somewhere to turn around,” Frost shouts, exactly what Willem has been thinking. If they can turn, the tricorne can fight, bringing its three great horns to the battle. But if they slow, the riderless greatjaw will be upon them.

 

VICTORIE

Thibault watches the battle from the crow's nest of the
Impérial,
where he has climbed since receiving reports of a group of tricornes approaching from the east. He slams his one fist into the wood of the mast in frustration and anger, seeing two of his precious saurs lying in the fields beyond the city. How could he have relied on that fool Baston to defend the abbey? He slams his fist again into the mast, drawing blood inside his black leather glove. Within the walls of the city he sees the greatjaw close on the tail of a tricorne.

“They are heading for the fort,” he shouts to the officers below him. “Send the reserve artillery to the courtyard. I want those tricornes dead!” He thinks a moment longer. “Prepare Victorie,” he shouts.

He finds the opening in the floor of the wooden platform and begins to descend. It is difficult with only one arm, but Thibault does not even notice. His mind is on Victorie
,
the one battlesaur he held in reserve. A good name for a battlesaur because today she will be the difference between defeat and victory.

He reaches the deck and runs for the gangplank, not minding that he is being watched by the lower orders of his troops. There is no time to waste.

Victorie is chained between two bollards on the dockside. Thibault leaps for the rope ladder that is unfurled from her side and begins to climb.

 

FINAL CHARGE

A crossroads is in front of him but Willem ignores it, heading for what appears to be a town square. Perhaps here there will be room to turn and fight. A blur of movement catches his eye and he looks sideways to see Cosette on her beast, in full charge, Arbuckle still with her.

A crash comes from behind him and he glances around; the greatjaw has completely disappeared. He reaches the square and turns, heading back the way he came. Cosette's animal blocks the crossroads. The greatjaw is embedded in the side of a house, covered in bricks and dust, impaled on the two longest horns of Cosette's tricorne. The greatjaw struggles in the cavity that has been created in the side of the building, clawing at bricks with its massive hind legs, turning its head and trying to reach the tricorne with those massive teeth. Cosette's tricorne backs away and a rush of blood pours from the two gaping holes in the greatjaw's side. It continues to struggle feebly but makes no effort to get up.

Cosette spurs her tricorne forward, taking the lead with Willem following, toward a small bridge over the river. On the other side of the bridge, the wall of the fort is high and strong, but the gates seem no more sturdy than those of the city wall. Willem finds himself yelling with excitement, as is Frost behind him.

Cosette's saur slams its head into the gap between the two gates, which burst open in a spray of splintered wood.

“Cosette!” Willem screams, but he knows she has seen what he has seen. A row of French cannon lined up facing the gates. She is barely through and into the fort when the cannon roar and Cosette, Arbuckle, and her saur are enveloped in a cloud of smoke. There is a thud as the tricorne hits the ground and slides toward the cannon, smashing into them, sending them flying backward into their own ammunition caissons.

Willem bursts through the gates to see to his horror another cannon battery to the right.

Another thunder of gunpowder, long fingers of flame stretching out toward him, and Willem's saur shudders under the impact of cannonballs.

The great steed is dead on its feet and falling sideways. Willem rolls away as the beast crashes into the stone floor of the fort. A wave of the most intense pain spreads like lightning from the wound in his chest. The world spins, then turns to black.

*   *   *

“Willem!”

He wakes to find Arbuckle dragging him and an unconcious Frost behind the wall of the fort for safety. A group of cavalry soldiers charge toward them and for a moment Willem is sure he will die, but the uniforms are Prussian; no longer allied with the French, the red plume of the emperor has been stripped from their shakos.

The soldiers dismount, drawing their sabers, and follow Arbuckle into the courtyard of the fort.

It takes every effort that Willem can muster to drag himself back to the doorway and peer around. He sees the bodies of the French artillerymen strewn among their cannon. He sees Cosette lying by her tricorne, her leg trapped under the huge bony flare at the top of its skull. He sees Arbuckle and the Prussian cavalry officers disappearing into the door of the tower.

Then he sees the battlesaur.

It has arrived through a far gate, on the coastal side of the fort. But it is the rider, not the mount, that most terrifies Willem. Thibault.

Pain or no pain Willem drags himself to his feet, leaving Frost propped against a wall. He has no pistol, only his sword. He takes a single faltering step toward Cosette. The world swims but he does not fall, and he takes another step, then another.

The greatjaw steps over the remains of a shattered caisson, a few meters from Cosette. She screams and scrabbles about for a pistol in the saddle behind her.

Willem is still trying to get his legs to work properly, staggering across the courtyard, his head swimming with the pain.

Cosette reaches the pistol, cocks it, and fires it up at Thibault. There is a thud and a metal object flies out of the devil's hands. She has missed, Willem realizes, and hit the battery.

Not that Thibault needs the battery. The saur has its eyes fixed on Cosette, still trapped on the ground in front of it.

It lunges down, its huge jaws widening.

And it stops.

Its eyes are fastened on the flickering light that has appeared in Willem's hands. A sparkle stick. Even as he struck the flint he was suddenly aware of the gunpowder, loose and in kegs, in the crushed caissons around them. A single spark and they will all go up in a sheet of flame. A lit linstock lies perilously close to a dark pool of spilled powder.

Willem holds the stick in his left hand and draws his sword with his right. The pain in his chest is almost overwhelming but he knows he must not lose focus. Without the battery, Thibault cannot jolt the saur out of the mesmerization. Willem moves closer and tries to lift the sword, his eyes fixed on the soft skin under the battlesaur's neck. He can barely raise the sword off the ground. Something is torn in his chest and no amount of strength nor willpower will make his arm go higher.

“Willem!” Cosette calls.

The neck of the beast is right above her, Willem realizes. He drops the sword to the ground, kicking it across to her with his foot, and uses the sparkle stick to bring the snout of the beast down even lower. She waits, ready to thrust upward as soon as the neck is within reach.

But then the animal jerks and breaks free of the mesmerization. Willem looks up to see Thibault with the battery back in his hand.

The head of the beast snaps toward Willem but he is thrust suddenly to the side; someone is there, a tall strong boy, whose shape Willem knows well. The boy holds a canister shot. He grabs the sparkle stick out of Willem's hands and touches it to the fuse of the canister even as the mouth of the beast crunches down.

François's head and torso disappear inside the great mouth.

Willem throws himself to the ground next to the trapped Cosette, shielding her as best he can, and a moment later there is the roar of an explosion and a spray of blood and bone fills the air. A giant tooth clatters off the cobblestones near Willem's face.

When he can look he sees the saur still standing. Its head no longer exists, there are just bloody tatters of flesh at the end of its neck. There is no sign of Thibault.

There is no sign of François either.

The saur slowly topples, blood pouring through its shattered neck.

Willem lies back as Prussian soldiers flood into the courtyard. The tall shape of the tower is spinning in circles above him, and a moment later so is a streak of light and an explosion, and a red star burns hot in the cool blue sky.

*   *   *

The red glow of the flare illuminates the smoke of the battle as Jack and Marengo gallop into the courtyard of the fort, skidding to a halt on the paving stones.

Willem and Cosette, bathed in blood, lie in a butcher's yard of dinosaur flesh. Thibault lies nearby, his grotesque face lifeless, his head all but removed from his body.

“Mr. Willem!” Jack cries, jumping down and crouching beside him.

To his amazement, Willem's eyes open. “Cosette?” he croaks in a harsh whisper.

It only takes a moment for Jack to ascertain that Cosette also lives, and although unconscious, seems unharmed. The blood is that of the dinosaur.

“She's alive, Mr. Willem! So is Lieutenant Frost.”

Only now does Willem relax. His eyes close and he rests.

A voice comes from behind Jack, shouting in a language he does not understand, though he thinks it is French. He spins around to see Field Marshal Blücher.

“It is a bad business,” the Prussian commander says. “Are they dead?”

“No, sir!” Jack cries.

“Then I will call for the medical cart immediately,” the field marshal says, and speaks rapidly in German to his aides.

“Blücher, late as always!”

Jack looks up to see Captain Arbuckle running out of the tower, sword in hand, the blade dripping red.

“I would not be here at all if not for you and those horned dinosaurs of yours,” Blücher says.

“Nor would any of us, if not for Willem,” Arbuckle says, kneeling beside Willem and checking his pulse, before moving to Cosette. He stands. “Get your best gunners onto the cannon of the fort, and do it quickly. The French ships are trapped between us and the Royal Navy, which even now returns to Calais. Napoléon is dead; Thibault is dead; the French coalition will be in disarray. This battle is already won.”

Again Blücher rattles off orders in German and aides run to see them carried out.

Jack stays with Willem and Cosette, even when the hospital wagon arrives. He wipes blood from their faces and presses damp cloths to their lips.

He hears a cheer, and even without seeing it, he knows that the French ships have struck their colors.

In the sky above, a yellow rocket soars and fizzles, followed by a red one, then a green one. The drifting colors combine and make rainbow patterns on the gradually clearing smoke.

 

EPILOGUE

March 3, 1816

 

THE MAGICIANS

The hospital is a quiet place where white-frocked nurses hurry down long corridors with jugs of water or clean bedding in their hands. Set among green English gardens, it is as different as it is possible to imagine from the blood-soaked field hospital set up in Gaillemarde after the battle of Waterloo.

The orderly assigned to take Willem and Cosette to see their friend is a large, cheerful fellow of many smiles but few words. He stops at a room and ushers them inside, but does not enter himself.

A heavy curtain has been drawn across the doorway and they must push through it to enter.

“Willem! Cosette!” The voice is Jack's as he rises from a chair in the corner of the room, beaming. He grabs Willem's hand and shakes it, and then, unsure of the proper greeting for Cosette, takes her hand and shakes it too, as if she were a man.

She does not mind and laughs, a delightful sound that has become one of the everyday joys in Willem's life.

“Mr. and Mrs. Geerts,” Frost says. He is lying in the hospital bed, his eyes heavily bandaged.

Willem smiles with a shy glance at Cosette. “How was the operation?” he asks.

“Exceedingly painful,” Frost replies. “And yet I still live and breathe.”

“And your eyes?” Cosette asks.

“That remains to be seen,” Frost says. “My surgeon was the king's own, and there is none better. But the procedure is still experimental. In a week I hope to finally gaze on this wife of yours, Willem, and if she is as pretty as you say, I may have to steal her for myself.”

“It's all right, ma'am,” Jack whispers to Cosette. “He's only joking.”

“I hear your opening night was the toast of London,” Frost says. “A husband-and-wife magic show, with electricity! Such a thing has never been seen before. And Jack tells me you made a dinosaur disappear right from the stage. Such an illusion! Or was it in fact real magic after all? I would not be surprised, with you two.”