By My Sword Alone by David Black (ebook reader ink TXT) 📕

as the Russian’s sword hit his, and didn’t waver it an inch, merely bounced off the grip guard as the forward edge, with all of Estelle’s charging weight behind it, sliced right into the Russian’s left rib cage, smashing bone and ripping through lung and heart and then out the back of him.

James charged through, leaving the Russian’s burst corpse, half cut in two, to flop from his saddle; and as he did so, there was only one thought in his head. My first man. By my own hand, my first man.

In a momentary flash he saw all the life the Russian had lived, that had just ended right here, right now, extinguished in a heartbeat by James Lindsay. He felt his own heart beating as he knew his enemy’s did not. And an animal elation, that almost instantly shocked and appalled him.

But no time for that now.

He wheeled Estelle round, ready to charge back into the fight, his heart pounding, his life more real than he’d ever known it. But there was no fight left. All he could see were the backs of a scatter of sky blue uniforms, galloping away, up the rise; with even more riderless horses, resplendent in their sky blue saddle cloths, cantering in circles and making terrible noises. Bodies on the ground, some dead, some not. In a heartbeat he saw none of the dismounted were Dzików, although from the several slashed dark blue coats he could see some of his men were wounded. He left it to Beart to rally them and headed out of the fug of powder smoke, the reek of it strong in his nostrils, so redolent of Glenshiel, and went riding to find his other body of Dzików.

That was when he saw Poinatowski, a huge, beaming smile spread across his face, with his troopers behind him in column order, galloping back to re-join. James silently registered satisfaction; he hadn’t needed to worry about the flashy young Pole after all. He’d kept his troop in order, no charging after their fleeing hussars as cavalry was always wont to do. And from what he could see, his men had seen off the Russian detachment without suffering a casualty, caught them square on their flank and scattered them before they could turn and fight.

James turned back and ordered one of his cornets to tell the bugler to sound the recall, so he could re-form the two squadrons quickly. He wanted away before the Russians sent others to seek their revenge. He was still breathing hard as the Dzików cantered from their tiny battlefield, a tumult of emotions tumbling through his breast.

It was then that the full horror of what he had just done welled up, threatening to smother him, but failing. He’d wanted to feel revulsion but was powerless to – not against these waves of what another might think of as dark joy, but he knew to be something far deeper, far, far more visceral. He became aware of an ache in his face and was surprised to realise it was from a smile he couldn’t suppress.

8

The Retreat from Warsaw

The Gräfin Dorothea pushed her way through the press of people to where James had just appeared between the entrance columns. They were in a high-ceilinged hall on the edges of the city centre that was serving as a spill-over from where the main sejm was in session, in a pavilioned park, the numbers attending being too many to fit into one building.

The din of from all the chatter was too much, so when Dorothea reached him, she ensnared his arm and led him out onto a large patio area with camp tables and chairs set out in random clusters. The area was no less busy, but the noise was bearable.

‘Where have you been?’ she said. ‘Have you heard the news?’

‘I’ve been to report,’ said James. Which was true. He had just spent the past three hours in a confused and bustling ante-room in the Ujazdów Castle, trying to tell someone in command of the encounter his dragoons had just had with a substantial Russian army marching south of the city.

‘You need General von Bittinghofen,’ he’d been told. Where was he? Nobody knew. ‘At the sejm, probably,’ or ‘at the Zamek Królewski’ – the royal palace.

James had eventually sat down and scribbled out a detailed report and handed it over to some aide who obviously had no idea of its importance. As many as 20,000 men, he’d estimated; infantry and cavalry, but he’d seen no evidence of field guns, just a small battery of horse artillery. Then he’d left in disgust, heading into the city to join the throng, to look for a familiar face, to get a drink. All this he told an impatient Dorothea.

‘Stanislas Leszczyński is in the city,’ she said.

Stanislas, the once, and hopefully future, King of Poland. ‘So, he’s decided to turn up,’ James said, and Dorothea ignored him.

‘Why were you not here?’ she said. It was an old refrain in their short acquaintance. She was endlessly asking him that. Why was he never at the debates or the fringe meetings or the routs? How did he expect to learn anything? Why was he not trailing his coat, dispensing little nuggets of his own, to gather bigger ones in return? Information was the only currency here, she’d told him, and you had to gather it. Presumably he was going to want to write something in his letters back to Rome, otherwise why was he here?

‘Who said anything about writing back to Rome?’ James had replied.

‘If you’re anything to do with de Valençay, you’re gathering information,’ she had come back at him twice as fast. ‘And why would your own sovereign manqué have sent you here? Because his queen thought you’d look nice in a Polish uniform?’

‘I’ve been drilling my soldiers,’ was James’ usual answer. This time