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

as if mere flesh and bone might provide cover. And the plaintive cries for quarter.

‘Your orders!’ Vytautas again.

Useless to point out these were Polish folk. Vytautas could see that just as well as James.

He cannot remember if he even looked at General of Brigade Vytautas as he bawled one of the parade ground instructions that he’d learned by rote in Polish; bawled it in his best parade ground voice. ‘Three ranks, about face!’ The crunch and stamp of boots until the dragoons were facing the way they had come; away from the trench lip. Then, ‘Forward, march!’

And he remembers marching away with them, in step.

That was when he heard the shout behind him, and then the report of a pistol, very close. In the second that followed, he tensed for the impact of the ball. He was in no doubt who had fired, and that they had fired at him.

But no ball struck. Yet when he turned, there was General of Brigade Vytautas, pistol in hand, the barrel pointing in his direction. Except the barrel was wavering in increasing circles, and when James looked to the man’s face, a gout of blood came spouting from his mouth, and his figure slowly toppled to measure its length on the cold, hard snow.

Behind Vytautas had stood Poinatowski, calmly holstering his own long cavalry pistol.

Poinatowski walked past James to join the marching dragoons. As he did so, he stopped briefly, coming to attention, as if making a report. ‘Only if anyone asks first, shall I speak, and then all I shall say is that in the heat of battle, I saw a soldier pointing a gun at your back, excellency. How could anyone recognise it was the general of brigade, in the dark? If indeed it was. Do you wish to collect his remains or leave him? I personally would leave him, excellency, and let the Russians announce that he died gloriously, surrendering his life before he would accept defeat.’

The tide of its squalor licks everywhere, even almost to my own boots, but it is to my eternal relief I feel able to report to you I remain un-tainted, and hope I speak true, at least for now.  

The scratching of James’ quill is interrupted by a knocking at his door, which is then thrown open before James can reply. It is Poinatowski, breathless. ‘It is the French, excellency,’ he gasps. ‘Their ships are in the offing, off the Westerplatte!’

10

The French Squadron

James had the great masts of the French warships in sight from a distance, towering over the flat landscape in the crisp, grey northern light as he rode at the head of General von Bittinghofen’s delegation. But it was only after he had finally passed through the gates of the Weichselmünde fortress, and mounted its seaward bastion, that he had a full view of their majesty, anchored there in the fairway of the Mottlau river. Two ships; Achille, a two-decker of some sixty guns, a frigate, Gloire, and a clutch of Baltic transports.

From the busy tent lines they had passed outside the fortress, it had been obvious that the troops the French warships carried had already disembarked. Some 2,000 infantry accompanied by three light field guns, he’d been told. When you tallied them up in the ledger of war, it was not much to add to the barely 4,500 regular troops King Stanislas I could already number. Especially since the word from the Polish irregulars out in the country was that another 10,000 Saxons had just added themselves to the Russian order of battle, which itself had been growing steadily over the winter. By James’ reckoning, some 40,000 enemy troops had now massed in the countryside around Danzig in an arc from the east at Fort Sommerschanz on the mouth of the River Vistula proper, to the southern banks of the Sasper See, a lake just south of the Mottlau in the west. All they lacked was a siege train of heavy guns for this battle to commence properly. And according to von Bittinghofen’s aide, it was on its way.

Only one or two boats plied between the French men-o-war and the fortress now, and James could see Achille’s captain’s barge was still alongside the magnificent warship. A council war was scheduled, but it was obvious the French delegation was still aboard their ship. When James turned from the battlements with a grunt of frustration, his eyes were drawn down to a carriage parked by the entry-port to the fortress’ jetty below. Coachmen were lounging about it, passing a flask – local eau de vie, no doubt – so the coach, which he certainly recognised, was obviously empty of its passenger. It was the location that caused his moment’s hesitation in failing to identify it immediately. It was the Duke of Courland’s coach, the one he never used because he was an old man and never travelled beyond the city gates these days.

It was not until late in the evening that French set foot in the fortress, very late for their appointment. The officers’ dining hall had been prepared, except that the candelabras were all now defaced with dripped wax, and their candles low, and the wine warm from a blazing fire, which was now just a collapsed centre of white hot embers. When the French officers walked in, James slipped out. He was not needed for confabs at this level, but mostly he wanted to see who else had come ashore with them. And sure enough, there she was, a figure moving through the shadows, muffled in furs, yet instantly recognisable; about to step into her uncle’s coach. Dorothea, the Gräfin von Kettler.

James stepped forward and gripped her arm to help her board. He felt her stiffen, and then felt the blaze of her eyes on him before recognition tempered her fury, but only a little.

‘It is you, chevalier,’ she said. ‘La,