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

the flat of his sabre, one of the drivers who had raised a hay fork in his own defence. Stupid man, he thought of the driver, either hide under a wagon or run! Nobody is interested in you!

The Dzików had all been warned in advance … leave the drivers alone! And if you have to strike out, do it with the flat of your swords, not the edge! Because if all went according to plan, he was going to need the drivers. But then his troopers all knew that by now. This wasn’t their first raid on the Russians’ supply train.

James was gaining on a trailing Russian, whose nag just would not carry him any faster no matter how hard he whipped at it with the barrel of his drawn horse pistol. Poor beast, he could see her ribs. These Russian cavalry mounts were having a hard winter before Danzig, the horse fodder being all eaten up for miles around, and what there was, having to be carted in like this.

Grunting, his breath billowing in clouds with his exertions, pushing Estelle onward, he was within half a bound of slashing at the Russian’s back when the poor wretch, instead of turning and discharging his weapon in James’ face, hurled it away and yanked his horse’s head round, throwing up his hands and begging for quarter.

Still in mid-bound, James edged Estelle to the side with his knees, and as he hurtled past the supplicant enemy dragoon, he put his entire weight into a fierce back-handed swipe, so the flat of his sabre caught his enemy square on the side of his head and sent him cart-wheeling into the snow. And on he rode, after the next one, his eyes fixed on another retreating grey-coated back.

Casimir was at his side, yelling something, as his horse matched Estelle’s tearing pace. James looked up and immediately understood.

It was all over. The disciplined ranks of Russian dragoons that had been heading to drive off his six Dzików were now just a dissipated scatter of fleeing horsemen, galloping along with the score he’d just driven off the convoy of wagons, all of them going in any direction, as long as it was away from the now stirrup-to-stirrup lines of charging Dzików.

‘Have the bugler sound the recall!’ ordered James, as he reined in Estelle, and waved down Poinatowski and his half dozen troopers from the top of the rise. It was time to organise the convoy for its new destination — the clutch of barges waiting for them on the south bank of the Mottlau river, less than three leagues away to their north west – before any of these fleeing Russians raised the alarm, and a far stronger force came out to put matters right.

*

‘I do not know the manners of your wild, barbarian people when they are at home, chevalier,’ said Dorothea, sitting very prim and erect in the wonderfully warm and cosy reception room of her uncle’s townhouse. The steady candle glow in the draughtless air gave her skin a peach-like softness that James found it hard to take his eyes off.

‘But,’ she continued, ‘in civilised society it is not considered gallant to question a young lady. When she says she has been indisposed, that is considered sufficient reply for any gentleman who aspires to the name, sirrah!’

While James had been on his latest raid, Dorothea had sent a note to his lodgings, thanking him for his previous visit and advising him she was at home and receiving. He had, by return of messenger, requested an appointment to call on her. And now, here he was. And all he had said was, ‘I trust your indisposition was not serious … did not confine you to bed, or place you in need of physic.’

He made his apologies, begged forgiveness for the barbarian he so obviously was and promised to do better; all the while thinking he had never seen her look so healthy.

‘You are forgiven, James.’

He liked the way she said his name so much, it quite banished his intellects from his brain.

‘After all, it is always a little beguiling to a young lady to have a hero of such repute inquire after her health,’ she said, with a smile beguiling to any young man. ‘Especially when all one hears is concern for that hero’s own health. From friends one might assume the hero should be in constant contact with. How can this be so, James?’

‘You lose me, Dorothea.’

‘Our mutual correspondent, of course. The Comte de Valençay. He writes to me expressing astonishment at your silence. Deep worry over what affliction might be the cause. Eagerness to hear your news. Especially concerning the matter you talked of in Rome. You never mentioned to me, your confidante, that you had talked of that with him, in Rome. That anyone was talking of that, anywhere.’

And suddenly, all James’ intellects returned to him in rush.

‘The comte talked of many things in Rome, Dorothea. I merely listened. Until I stopped. I was not aware you were still a correspondent? Indeed how can it be, since your first reaction to the news he was known to me, was your assumption he had sent me to kill you.’

‘You are showing your barbarity again, James. How could a gentleman possibly repeat such an allegation … that I would say such a thing? La!’

Here was a woman who was used to trifling with men, and getting away with it. For all her subtlety elsewhere, he was surprised she was signalling it so obviously. Perhaps, he thought, she was in a hurry. She had often told him, in their past conversations, that knowledge was power. Well, let us see, thought James, who as a much younger man had been trifled with by the best. He gazed candidly at her, but the flash of her eyes said she was not so much angry with