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

whacked with sword flats or cowed by abuse screamed into their faces, James’ Dzików break off their scattered melees and gallop to slide into together in a single line, facing down the hill towards the still milling cuirassiers.

One brief glance along his own forming troopers; their line will do. But when James looks back to the cuirassiers all he sees is still a dull, lumpen rabble of peasant soldiers too stupid to order themselves quickly enough, who are being belaboured into some semblance of a formation by their own knout-wielding NCOs.

He turns again to his own troopers. No lumpen mob here. James gives the order.

Ta-da-tada-da-da-da!  ta-da-tada-da-da-da  ta-da-tada-da-da-DAAA!

… the blaring in his ear again.

And the charging Dzików hit the Russian troopers at full gallop, while they are still just a seething mass.

*

The recovery point for James’ dispersed troopers was back in the dead ground north of the road. When he led the tattered remnants of his squadron back into the dip, Poinatowski was already there, the senior Russian officers’ coach and its bored set of four horses accompanying him. But Poinatowski wasn’t paying attention to his prize. He was laughing with Casimir, slapping the lad on the shoulder, and then ostentatiously bowing to a mounted man whose horse’s bridle Casimir was holding.

The figure on horseback was a very grim, hatless, portly little man, his green Russian uniform all bulging epaulettes and smothered in braid, and him still gripping the hilt of his sheathed sword with a tenacious fury.

James trotted up. When he was closer, he could see the man’s face was quite red. James edged Estelle closer still and introduced himself. The man merely gave him a venomous look, then continued staring straight ahead.

‘He says he will only speak to an officer of equal rank,’ said Poinatowski, unable to keep the laughter out of his voice.

‘And what is his rank?’ asked James.

‘Ah. There’s the rub, excellency. He says he’ll only tell an officer of equal rank.’

James’ brow furrowed as he looked back to his seething prisoner, and when he saw his puffed up jowls actually quivering with outrage, James started laughing too. ‘And his sword …?’ he asked.

‘He’ll only surrender it to an …’

‘… an officer of equal rank …’ James interrupted, still laughing, but this time in the puffed up officer’s face.

‘Captain Poinatowski,’ said James in his best colonel’s voice, ‘Form the squadrons in column of march, prisoners in the middle. Time to get our guests home.’

*

Back, safe behind the walls of Danzig.

The clutch of Russians Poinatowski had rounded up with their coach-and-four turned out to be no more than middle ranking staff officers; but the puffed-up, portly Russian Casimir had put in the bag was no less than a major general.

James had stood smiling, to one side, while the young cornet was much feted by General von Bittinghofen, and by his staff officers, who then, regardless of previous enmity, went on to wine and dine the Russian with all due deference to his rank. The Russian staff colonels from the coach were to dine in the officers’ mess, and as they all spoke French, James found them to be a convivial bunch.

‘Alas, our acquaintance is destined to be short lived,’ one of them told James during the second night’s dinner. ‘I saw Major Saratov go into your general’s office this afternoon.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said James. ‘Another Russian officer? Here? How can that be?’

‘By a letter of safe conduct, chevalier,’ said the Russian, equally puzzled that James did not know of such documents. ‘Both our staffs issue them every day. How else would we communicate?’

‘Communicate?’ said James.

‘Or negotiate … or whatever other gentlemanly accommodations our leaders wish to make. We are neither of us animals after all, chevalier, are we? We may fight, but we can still converse.’

James just stared back at him. He had no idea there was a regular traffic between von Bittinghofen and Lacy, the Russian army commander.

‘Saratov is here to negotiate our parole,’ continued the Russian staff officer. ‘A simple process, but a timely one for us. You will understand we do not wish to be here in the city when the bombardment begins.’

‘Parole …?’ James was aware he was endlessly repeating the Russian’s statements but couldn’t help himself.

‘Yes, chevalier,’ the Russian replied, his voice now heavy with impatience at this idiot before him. ‘We sign a bond – in other words give our parole –– not to take up arms again, against you in Danzig. And on that cognisance, we are allowed to go free. It is a time-honoured custom, chevalier, never to be dis-honoured. You must have heard of it?’

James did not wait for the after dinner drinking. Waiting for him when he’d returned from his last patrol had been a letter from David Hume. He’d read it immediately, and it had left him disturbed. So now that he was back again, he wanted to return to his quarters and go through it once more, with greater diligence.

When it came to matters of the mind, David was his compass. He might be a contemporary but James knew that his friend’s penetration of mind and understanding surpassed anything James himself possessed. All through his time in Paris the two had corresponded; James reporting on his conversations with M’sieur Voltaire, and David sharing with James his own groping towards what was shaping to be new and original thought; a path that might one day go beyond that of their mutual hero Francis Hutcheson, whom even Voltaire had held in high esteem.

The letter had started out plainly, and with all the wit James had come to expect from his particular friend.

… and because we do not specifically address the question of the succession at the university, whether in favour of the House of Stuart or of Hanover, they think we do not talk