By My Sword Alone David Black (best story books to read txt) 📖

into their muskets. They would be shot to pieces before they could lay a sabre on them.’

‘And cavalry against cavalry?’ asked a pensive James. ‘Our forays against those Russian hussars … against the damn cuirassiers … the charges there performed their functions.’

‘Skirmishes, James,’ said Poinatowski. ‘Where there was space for a gallop to gain momentum … for a squadron to manoeuvre in good order. There is no space on a battlefield. Which is why the manuals dictate that cavalry should fight cavalry in much the same way as infantry fights infantry.’

A glum James pursed his lips. ‘Which explains all the furrowed brows at my new drill regime, and the shambles that followed every time I ordered a charge. Why did no one say?’

‘You were the colonel. We obeyed. And then we saw how effective we became. No-one wanted to say anything after that. Walking your horse up to your foe and then just sitting there exchanging carbine fire is a wretched way for a cavalryman to fight. You made us look like supermen, and the Dzików liked that. Thank you, excellency!’

James gave him a dark look, but let that one pass. ‘Don’t mention it,’ he said.

‘And that is it,’ said Poinatowski, winding up with a stiff gulp from his glass. ‘It is all about fire and movement, by rote. And the first one to break his opponent’s line wins. It is how we fight war in the modern age.’

‘And how does the churning in your guts the night before fit in?’ asked James, who had hardly touched his brandy.

‘Oh, that comes in, in just the same way before your sixth battle as it does before your first,’ said Poinatowski, and he nodded at James’ glass. ‘One more word of advice however, my friend, drink that up … so you can have another.’

*

James’ chest felt full, and his throat tight. Back straight, upright in the saddle as his body swayed to easy rhythm of Estelle’s measured pace. The sun was up, and he was starting to feel its heat. Behind him, well back, he could hear the massed drummers beating time above the sound of marching soldiers; above the hoof-beats of his Dzików dragoons, and the jingling of their bridles. In front of him was a simple road running into the morning haze, across an endless expanse of empty, flat grazing land – with not an animal in sight.

The boy James, a lifetime ago, playing soldiers in the grassy butts of the Kirkspindie estate, had never in his wildest fantasies dreamed that when he became a man, he might be here now, colonel of his own regiment, leading an army of French and Polish soldiers, 12,000-strong, into battle. For in that morning haze, somewhere, was a Russian army, waiting for them.

The churning guts and the cold sweats of the night before had long gone, banished from the moment he swung into the saddle. His written orders, now tucked in the breast of his uniform coat, had said, ‘the Dzików shall form the vanguard’, so he had turned Estelle’s head towards the front of his regiment standing patiently in column of march, the horses’ heads tossing, their tails flicking, eager to be moving, and walked her into position, ahead of the lead troop’s officers, ahead of the colour party, of even the bugler and his aide, the young cornet of horse called Casimir, whose second name he could never pronounce, until he and Estelle were the spear-tip of the entire army. Then, in the unquiet silence of a host before it moves, his voice had boomed loud, but thin, in the echoless morning air, ‘Avant!’

And in the crunching first noises of the thousands of stirring soldiers, crows had risen in a black cloud from the dumps behind the army’s lines. But he did not see them, his eyes were to the front as the Dzików stepped out, and battalion after battalion marched behind them, the French in their grey-white and the Poles resplendent in blue, regimental colours flying and drummers beating the pace.

Several times now, James had stood up in his stirrups and looked back, but the flatness of the terrain meant he could only see an overlapping wall of marching men; that they were in three columns you could only tell by the leading files of drummers and regimental colours. Only the rising dust, rippling into the distance, gave any impression of depth. Even so, James hadn’t seen so many men gathered together and moving with one purpose since the Russian army that had marched on Warsaw.

There was a thrill to it he could not articulate, even to himself.

Somewhere in the mass was the army’s general, this Estaing de Sailland fellow whom James had yet to set eyes on; and the French minister, the Comte de Plélo, who was apparently riding with them too. Command was theirs, but as the army paced forward an unspoken conviction settled upon Colonel James Lindsay, that the actual responsibility for it, right now, was his.

It was he who was leading this army, after all, and whatever destiny was holding for it upon this road, it would be he who would touch it first.

The knowledge settled a terrible quiet on him; as if all the strands of his life were about to come together on this nondescript reach of sand and grass; the sum of him so far, about to be tested.

Battle.

He had listened closely to his friend Pyotr Poinatowski; was conscious now of a deep gratitude to him for what he’d tried to tell him. Much of it he’d guessed, so steeped he was in the stories of Marlborough’s victories in the previous age, when his country had been one under Stuart Queen Anne; the victories of Blenheim, Ramillies, Oudenarde, and the slaughter that had been Malplaquet. Just words on a page, until today, when he too was about to learn what battle really tasted