Incognita (Fairchild Book 2) (26 page)

Equilibrium restored, Henry picked up another soldier. With both hands he swept forward, smashing over the wall, laughing as the bricks cascaded into a heap between them. Anna laughed with him, keeping her smile. “Yes, again,” she said, agreeing with him, privately trying to decide if it was good that Henry believed her so absolutely.
 

So much for arriving in good time, Alistair thought. The rate he was going, he’d be lucky to make Burgos before the snows.

He was exaggerating—it was only September—but he was in a foul enough mood to believe his prediction, ever since his guide had wandered ahead and vanished between walls of steep scrub and sliding rock. It was miserable finding his own way through the Sierra Guadaramma, parched and sweating all day, shivering in the dark at night, as brown with dirt as the rabbit he had shot at earlier today—and missed.
 

At least his worthless guide hadn’t stolen more than an extra flask and a haversack of food. Also, Alistair was not yet out of biscuit, though he’d had to share with his horses since they were camped on a bare slope without any forage. No wood for a fire either, so perhaps the rabbit was no great loss. He’d succumbed to necessity and eaten raw meat before—fed it to his horses too—but he didn’t care for it.
 

London was a world away. It did no good to long for hot coffee; he might as well wish for a flying carpet. It didn’t help to think of what one couldn’t have, including Anna Morris. Curling up under his cloak, Alistair settled down to wait until it was light enough to ride again, wondering if, when he returned to Madrid, there might be a letter waiting for him.
 

And what would she have to say? Nothing good, he was sure.
 

Since you left I’ve been to four routs and fifteen parties. I’ve found myself another husband—a little fat, but kind and complacent. Just the man for me! He lives in Northumberland, so I don’t expect we shall ever meet again. My sincere thanks . . . Best wishes . . . Yours Respectfully, Goodbye.
 

Maybe he shouldn’t have asked her to write. If he ever got a letter where she signed herself
Yours Respectfully
, he’d go out and drown himself.
 

One of the horses flicked a tail and took a step sideways, hooves crunching the flaky stone track that passed for a road. Alistair shifted, but the ground didn’t soften; he had. It would take a few weeks before he toughened up again. His legs ached from days in the saddle, and if he wasn’t careful, he’d end up with the cavalryman’s curse—boils on his buttocks or the insides of his legs. He rolled onto his stomach, setting his head on top of his folded arms.
 

No good. If he stayed this way, his healing shoulder would be stiff as frozen leather in the morning. Better move back on his side.
 

Anna would pity him if she could see him now. Oh, maybe she’d tease him for his tanned face and the destruction already begun on his jacket, asking if he was indeed the same fellow who’d squired her about the park. But she’d also take his head and rest it in her lap (if she didn’t think of it, he would ask) and comb her fingers through his salt-crusted hair. Too bad he didn’t approve of ladies straggling along in the tail of the army—not that Anna, who was quite sane, would ever do such a thing. He could conjure her in these mountains with his imagination, and send her back in a twinkling to London, but he could not imagine her jolting after a marching division in the spring wagons, or bringing Henry into danger.
 

Well, dreams weren’t supposed to resemble the workaday world. They wouldn’t be dreams unless they were substantially better, so he may as well make these idle thoughts worth the name. There’d be Anna, in cool white muslin, a mantilla draped over her shoulders, a secret smile curling her lips and tilting up the corners of her eyes. Henry too—one attempt at verisimilitude couldn’t hurt—his hair lightened to a warm chestnut by the sun, his skin as brown as Alistair’s own. Put them in a clean little house in Lisbon, on a hill that caught cool breezes and had a view of the sea. Put him there too, healthy and whole; the war won, or very nearly. He would carry Henry up the hill on his shoulders, leave oranges on Anna’s pillow and make love to her every afternoon.
 

Alistair snorted, laughing at himself, wondering when he’d turned into such a sap skull. Shifting his hip off one stone and onto another, he pulled his cloak tighter and stared into the sky.
 

Three days later than planned, Alistair finally handed over the dispatches to Wellington’s harassed-looking secretary. “Rough going?” the Military Secretary asked.
 

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” Alistair said, not wanting to make excuses. He was pleased to have recovered one lost day by dint of some hard riding, but it was nothing to boast about. He was still late.
 

“Why’s one of Alten’s carrying messages for the Staff?” the Military Secretary asked, looking skeptically at Alistair’s black uniform.
 

“Just borrowed, my Lord, General Barnard being short a staff officer. I’m to rejoin my brigade unless you have further use for me,” Alistair explained. He hated sieges as much as anyone, but if it was required, he’d take the blow on the chin without complaining.
 

“No, you’re well out of this one,” the Military Secretary said. “Though perhaps you’d like to stay for today’s show. You’re just in time.”
 

“Sir?”
 

“Blowing up the mine today,” explained a nearby adjutant, straightening up from a map held down on the table with a saber and an expensive looking carriage clock. “Planned for yesterday, but of course it wasn’t ready.” He took a sharp glance from his superior and Alistair sent up silent thanks that he hadn’t been ordered to stay. Tempers in this crumbling, low-ceilinged room were as heated as the ones simmering in the trench.
 

The Military Secretary thumbed through the dispatches then thrust them at the adjutant. “Do something with these, will you?” With a sigh, the fellow took them to a corner and cleared a space in the welter of papers on his desk, relieving Alistair’s mind. Stacks of maps, lists and reports covered every surface, with still more papers bulging from the chests lining the walls. If his dispatches were piled with the rest, who knew if they’d ever be read? Already he could feel sympathetically-induced eye strain. The hard-pressed staff were clearly struggling with the usual issues: delayed ordnance, scanty provisions, flagging morale, unsatisfactory reports from the depots, and an ever increasing butcher’s bill. Wearily, the adjutant leaned forward in his chair, kneading his temples as he started reading.
 

“Expect you’ll need to visit the commissary,” the Military Secretary said.
 

“I’m a little hungry,” Alistair admitted. “And I should look after my horses.”
 

“Not much forage, I’m afraid,” clipped out the Secretary. “Only the regulation allotment.” That would feed one of his horses. He’d have to dip into his own funds to look after the other.
 

They directed him to the commissary, instructing him to check with the staff when he was finished. “Maybe they’ll have something for you to do.” Messages maybe. In an action like this, there wasn’t much use for cavalry.
 

It was bad news about the forage allotment; he’d have to see what he could buy in the village they’d taken outside the walled town. Rest would help the horses, but he couldn’t expect both to recover when sharing feed for one. He loped along the lines where the brigades were gathering, trying to ignore the expectant haze thickening around them. Up on the hill, there was movement in the trenches. His pulse quickened.
 

Catching sight of the dilapidated commissary, Alistair quickened his steps, when the roar of an explosion bashed into him. Staggering, tightening his grip on the leads of his sidling horses, he turned halfway round. The ground rumbled and the black gelding reared, dragging him sideways, so he dropped the mare’s lead, though she was prancing fretfully and whickering. Hauling on the black’s lead, he forced the stamping forefeet to earth, cursing the animal in a steady, low voice.
 

“Settle down, you devil. Settle down.” Accepting a soothing hand, the horse stilled, though his eyes showed white and rolled fitfully. The mare had taken herself a few paces away, but was behaving herself better. Alistair groped for her trailing leads. If the gelding couldn’t get used to war’s smoke and thunder, it didn’t bode well for either of them.
 

Horses under control, Alistair gaped at the fortress and the fountain of earth spewing into the air, boulders and masonry rocketing into the sky like weightless nothings until they changed course and came speeding back to earth. Someone started a ragged cheer so he joined in—weakly, because of the icy spiders treading down his spine. Around him, hands patted cartridge pouches and shouldered rifles as preparations accelerated, keeping tempo with his rat-a-tat heart. Recalled to himself by his fidgety mare, Alistair muttered, “Come on, beauty. I’m not taking you into that.” The smoke hadn’t cleared from the breach yet. Alistair looked away, before the maw in the walls started grinding the men running into the rubble.
 

Intent on the backs of his hands, the flicking ears of his horses, Alistair collected his allotment of oats, dividing it between the mare and the gelding, blunting the whistles, bugle calls, and artillery barrage filling his ears. They must have blasted a reasonable gap. The ground shuddered—just a mumble this time—and Alistair glanced instinctively over his shoulder.
 

The defenders were back at work, pounding shot from the tower batteries. Twenty minutes in, and both sides were already taking a beating. Snagging his ration of biscuit, Alistair left the horses in the care of another officer’s batman and made his way to the command post where he could watch and wait with the junior staff officers.
 

“Beau’s too stubborn,” one of them muttered. “We’ll never take it, not with so few.”
 

Alistair didn’t comment. The breach looked to be a hundred yards wide, but there were few guns in the English batteries. Their sputtering fire was a token effort, no threat to the defenders scrambling along the broken walls.
 

“No proper tools, save those taken from the town, no sappers. The men will dig, but they don’t like it.”
 

Alistair grunted. “Don’t know much about it,” he said, knowing his cavalry uniform would excuse him.
 

“Lose your way?” the other officer asked, glancing at Alistair’s jacket. “I daren’t hope we are to be joined by
the
Division.”
 

“Just myself,” Alistair said, masking his sick stomach with a light tone. “Though we’d crack this nut soon enough if they ordered us here.”
 

“Such humility in the Light Division,” his companion murmured.
 

“It does look like they’ve given you a rough time,” Alistair conceded. “Tell me the lay of it, if you will. I just arrived.”
 

His companion pointed out the companies, enumerating the difficulties of digging communications trenches under fire, of batteries destroyed before guns could be placed, the bivouacs, for they had no permanent shelter. “You must have drawn the short straw if they sent you from Madrid while the rest of your division kicks up their heels.”
 

“Actually, I’m just back again from London.”
 

“Oho!” The officer laughed. “And how are the amusements in Town? And the ladies?”
 

“Only the finest,” Alistair smiled.
 

“Do tell,” he began, but—

“Brown!” the colonel shouted.

“That’s me.” He smiled with a fatalistic lift of his eyebrows. “Looks like I’m off.”
 

“Good luck.” Alistair watched his new acquaintance jog away, then looked up the hill where a floundering mass of red jackets funneled into Burgos’s stone jaws.
 

Chewed up and spit out, Alistair thought, watching another charge falter. The crowd around him thinned.
 

The next squadron made it farther, over the mound of rubble and out of sight, but the company behind them was lagging. Alistair shifted his feet. Without support, the men inside the walls wouldn’t last long.
 

 
“You there!”
 

Alistair looked around, but the frowning colonel was looking at him.
 

“Sir!”
 

“Order Graydon’s company to support the 6th!”
 

“Just there?” he asked, feeling light-headed and foolish, but needing to be sure.
 

Answered by a curt, affirmative nod, Alistair set off, cursing under his breath. Pitched into a battle, not knowing the plan or the troop’s disposition . . . it wasn’t the first time this had happened and unless he got picked off by a stray bullet, it wouldn’t be the last. He scrambled over a silent battery, only glancing at the unlucky wretches draped across the ground or propped against the gun carriages. Grim business, this. Served him right for thinking he could play spectator.
 

It was a relief to hop down into the trench to make his way up the next section of hill. Progress was faster. By the time he caught up with Graydon’s confused men he could feel a slick streak of sweat between his shoulders.
 

“Where’s Captain Graydon?” he demanded of a grimy, hollow-cheeked private. All he got was a shrug.
 

He peered over the man’s head, through a thicket of muddy coats and bayonets. “Where’s your bleeding officer?” he shouted.
 

“Bleeding, sir!” barked out one of them. The sergeant, Alistair realized with relief.
 

“We are to advance to support the 6
th
,” Alistair said. Though he had no ability to recognize them or their officers, he knew where to find them: up.