30 July, Une maison renfoncée

"Right." Vickery realised that somebody needed to take charge - there were unarmed men in the barn, and whatever was causing them to start screaming, it was not going to be solved by anyone blindly firing at nothing.

"You can stop firing right now," he said, which would hopefully stop any more idiocy.

Now, whatever was causing the screaming was inside the building - and he strongly doubted it was rats. So there had to be something else going on.

He turned to the nearest soldier. "I want you to turn the guard out, but no shouting, no firing, no fuss."

After all, the best way to solve the query was by getting the prisoners out - and if they were to do that, they would need guarding.

Stop firing, was it? When there were prisoners trying to escape? The grasshopper was out of his mind. But it was undoubtedly an order and Hewet knew better than to challenge an order.

"Yes sir," he replied blandly, but finished reloading his musket anyway before addressing the idiot who'd been screaming earlier. "You then. Go on and rouse the guard. No screaming either or you and me'll have words later. Move!"

The wide-eyed fool was gone in an instant, amazingly managing to avoid tripping over his own feet in his haste to get away. Right. That was one problem dealt with. Now only about a hundred others left.

Private Chester, the lad with the lantern, stood close by and Hewet turned to him next. "Inside. The Frogs need shutting up." He was already moving toward the barn door himself, musket and fixed bayonet ready.

"I think the best thing would be to get them out of there," Vickery said pleasantly, though there was an undercurrent of steel in his tone. "Whatever is going on, it does not sound anything like an escape attempt."

Which the corporal would probably have realised himself, given a moment to think about it logically.

The pale glow of a lantern was visible through the barn door. It was like a beacon signalling safety. Moving toward it would mean escaping this chaotic, terrible hell. Bright lurched to his feet and, heedless of the others around him, staggered toward the light.

"Help! Get us out of here!" He cried in French, a second before tripping over something or someone he had not seen and falling headlong to the barn floor.

~

The grasshopper wanted them to do what? Hewet stared for a second. Yes, of course. Because herding the prisoners outside would end so well.

"Might do to wait till the guard comes, sir," the corporal pointed out.

"Which is precisely why they have been sent for," Vickery pointed out. "You have your muskets, and from the sounds of it, whatever has been going on in there has got them in such a state I think there will be very little to fear from them."

It was likely to be a moot point anyway; Vickery thought he could hear the guard approaching now. How very prompt.

"When they get here, I want the prisoners out with as little fuss and shouting as may be - and yes, I am aware that they do not speak English."

"Yes sir," said Hewet. At least it didn't seem like they'd have long to wait. Maybe there was a scrap of redeeming worth in that boy, whatever his name was.

"Corporal!" It was Feathers, one of his Grenadiers. "Got one of the Frogs over here. Looks dead."

Hewet was at the towering man's side in an instant, all else temporarily forgotten. The report was accurate. In the shadows, not far from the barn, lay a crumpled form. It was a boy. Not a Frog though. The clothes were too ragged even for a Frenchman.

"The hell is going on here?" The corporal wondered aloud. "Stand fast here. Something daft's happening." So saying, Hewet returned to the front of the barn, where by now the guard, headed by a sergeant, had finally arrived.

"We're to turn the Frogs out, Sergeant," Hewet reported. "No fuss or shouting, like. Seems they've all took a bloody great fright over something."

The sergeant glanced toward the grasshopper officer, then shrugged. "Get on with it, then. You lads will help," he added, looking pointedly at his men. "No windin' the Frogs up, or I'll know the reasons for it!"

"What's going on?" Charcot asked insistently, trying to cling to Kerjean's arm and huddling close to him. He could hear foreign voices with the tone of giving orders, probably their English guards. "What do they want? Are they attacking? Why's everyone screaming?" He could not shake the fog in his tired mind, and even his own words sounded sluggish and far away. He was not entirely sure that this wasn't just a dream.

There was a light now, coming from the door, and as much as everything in him wanted to shrink from it, it helped to focus his scattered attention. He could hear Bright's voice again, somewhere above his head. But that didn't make any sense. He'd have to be – Hell. What was Bright doing up?

Up. He needed to get up. He needed to make sure Bright and Roux were alright. But he couldn't move, and Charcot was grabbing his arm, asking him questions he didn't have the answers to, and the light was getting closer, and with it gruff, foreign voices, muskets. Some of the prisoners were already on their feet. He had to get up.

"They're movin' us again." He could not stop shaking; he couldn't even keep it out of his voice. "That's all. It'll be alright." Mother of God, what was wrong with him? Get up.

"C'mon." It felt sickeningly unnatural to uncurl himself, but he managed to get onto his knees, and from there to his feet, pulling Charcot with him. "Alain? Michel?"

Before now, Bright would never have thought it possible that knowing two languages should be a bad thing. Yet he was rapidly discovering it was just that, as he listened to the orders being snapped among the redcoats and then caught snatches of frightened, confused conversation from his fellow prisoners. The clash of tongues was clogging up his brain, overpowering even his fear. Which way should he go?

Hearing his name being called from somewhere behind him served, strangely, to decide the matter. Bright shivered, hesitated, then fumbled to get to his feet. Whatever temptation he might have had to call out to the redcoats in English and thereby ensure himself a swift removal from this purgatory was quite gone. There was more safety in remaining French, at least as far as the redcoats knew.

"Come on," Bright called in French, finding that his feet were not completely steady under him. He would not, could not, go further into the barn than he was right then, but he could stand and direct the others to him. "They're clearin' us out."

It surprised him how steady he sounded, when he was shaking so badly and feeling on the verge of being violently sick.

"See? They're just moving us." If anyone knew, he thought, it would be Bright.

He made his way towards the voice, soon catching sight of the familiar outline, but if Bright's words were reassuring, the sight of him was anything but. "Michel? Jesus--" Paol reached automatically for Bright's arm. Beneath the blood, the Englishman's face was ashen and he looked near to collapse. "Here -- Dominic? Hang onto my shirt for a minute, a'right?" he coaxed, carefully extricating his good arm and pulling Bright's across his shoulders, letting his left arm settle, protesting angrily, around the other man's waist."You alright to walk?"

Schwol had obtained another lantern, and he held it high as he skirted around the Frenchmen inside the barn, herding them towards the door. "Come on, out, out," he said in German. Some of the prisoners seemed to be newly bloodied. Had they been fighting among themselves? Or was it all a ruse to get their captors to let them outside? But his suspicions lessened as he looked at their faces. They looked genuinely frightened, and groggy with sleep.

God-damned Germans, thought Hewet scathingly. He had little use for Riflemen in general and none at all for German Riflemen. But they had been part of the guard and he was thus obliged to put up with their presence. At least he was not obliged to like it.

"Shift them along, boys," the grenadier corporal directed, as he made his way briskly toward the back of the barn to be sure no Frogs were hiding in the shadows. "Take a count as they go outside. A couple of them might have got away."

~



The appearance of Kerjean beside him, helping to steady him, helped Bright rally his senses. He could walk, he thought, as long as it was walking forward and out of here.

"Let's just get out of here," he said, managing to force a note of resolve into his voice. He couldn't let on that he was glad for Kerjean's sturdy shoulder under his own. Even with the urgen desire to get out of the barn, he was not sure his legs had enough strength in them to make it that far.

Ugh, they'd be here all night if he waited for the injured ones to help each other. The big fellow was bloody himself and was helping two other men. "Come on," Schwol muttered, trying to take the more injured of his charges, reaching out to support him with one arm while holding onto the lantern with the other.

Paol balked as the Greenjacket grabbed for Bright. What was going on? Had they found out Bright was English? "Gerroff!" he growled, pulling back and trying to move around the rifleman.

A grasshopper. A grasshopper shoving Kerjean aside to grab Bright's arm instead. The words the man uttered were beyond Bright's understanding, since they were in German, and he could only think the worst. At least he was not the only one; Kerjean was attempting to push back in.

"I can walk, I can walk," Bright sputtered in French, managing to sound indignant and bewildered at the same time. He could indeed mostly walk, but he wasn't going anywhere this Rifleman wanted him to go. Many of the other prisoners were outside by now and Bright was perfectly happy to follow them instead.

He mustered up some strength, successfully ignoring the growing feeling of tingling numbness in his limbs, and tugged his arm free. Good thing it wasn't his left arm. All he could feel underneath that arm was pain and the warm, heavy ooze of blood.

Schwol sighed in mild exasperation and went to find someone else to hurry along.

What? No. Damnit—

"Like hell you can walk," Paol muttered, reaching again for Bright's arm. For all the good it would do; pain seemed to have sapped most of the strength from his left arm. At least the rifleman had gone off. That was some small relief, as was the glimpse of red hair disappearing through the doorway ahead of them.

He had not thought beyond getting to the door, getting out, but the transition seemed only to bring them from one evil into the arms of another. Lantern light reflected off buttons and musket locks, and even where it did not reach, the pale X of crossbelts and white trousers were visible. There were a lot of soldiers – at least it seemed so -- far more than had been used to bring them to the barn, enough, he could not help thinking, to kill them all with reasonable efficiency.

Walk or crawl, Bright was getting out of this barn. Ideally before anything else foul and unspeakable came raining down on them. "Out," he said, doing his best to make his feet keep moving.

~

A lantern-carrying grenadier was searching each stall in the barn, making the best use of the dim light as he could. What he was seeing made him feel increasingly ill.

"Corporal?" He called in a carefully-lowered voice. He had stepped in something that made an ominous squelching noise and, even beneath his shoe, felt slick and damp. "Corporal!"

Hewet moved toward him, irritated by what he assumed to be a stupid interruption. "What?" He looked down where the grenadier wordlessly pointed and his face paled almost instantly. Sweet Mother of God. It took a mighty effort to keep from retching on the spot.

He grabbed the lantern from the grenadier and shone it around them, and saw other, similar, things scattered around the barn's floor. As if they had fallen from above. Hewet's stomach clenched abruptly when his gaze fell on two severed fingers lying near where he had just come from.

"Outside, lad," he ordered, managing somehow not to sound alarmed. "Fetch that greenjacket officer in here. He'll... need to see this."

The grenadier was gone in an instant.

Passing several of the guards, they reached where the rest of the prisoners had begun to crowd together. "Sit," he told Bright, adding for Charcot, "You as well. C'mon."

They were no longer moving, and it felt as if they were in a jumbled crowd outside now. Charcot had developed some very loud hiccups. "Paol, where are they - where are they taking us? It's still - is it still - night?" He hiccuped again and announced "I want to go back to sleep."

He didn't sit down so much as he sagged down, grateful that there was hard, clean earth beneath him. If he didn't move again for the next two days, Bright decided he didn't care. He drew his knees in to his chest and tried to wrap his arms around them, but this was only possible with his right arm. A sharp stab of pain and a fresh feeling of warmth under his left arm quickly ended any attempts to move that limb.

Maybe, he thought wearily, he ought to lie down instead. So he did. Sleep, as Charcot said. Sleep sounded very good. If it was even possible to sleep after the rude wakening they'd just had.

"Aye, it's still night." He dropped to the ground beside Bright, gently pulling Charcot with him. "You can sleep here." Bright seemed of a similar mind which was just as well. Maybe. Wasn't it? Paol frowned into the darkness. Was he missing something terribly obvious and important? Absently he reached a hand up to tug through his hair only to jerk it away with a barely suppressed cry, scrubbing it against his trouser leg with a sudden, desperate ferocity. His thin veneer of calm disintegrated and he found himself on the verge of laughter with assuredly nothing to laugh about.

All Martin could do was stare in open-mouthed horror as the French prisoners all but fled the barn, hardly needing prompting or herding from the guard. Nearly all of them were splattered with blood and darker, less pleasant things, and to a man, they were all white-faced and frightened.

"W-W-What... i-i-is t-that?" Martin found it possible to speak only with an effort. His gaze was fixed on one well-built Frenchman who was trying to wipe his hand clean on his trouser leg.

The sergeant who'd come with the guard looked impassive. "Spanish done it. They ain't fond of the Frogs any." He grunted, as if to suggest the incident was nothing to him. "Reckon they caught somebody and had their way with him. Happens."

Martin blinked, trying to process this. It defied belief to him. "S-Shouldn't w-w-we..." he trailed off, not sure what he had been about to suggest. Certainly the sergeant was not one to ask anyway. He gripped his musket, suddenly remembering he was still holding it. Then, acting completely on an impulse, he moved toward the three Frenchmen he had been staring at.

"H-H-Here," he managed, fumbling to get his canteen unslung so he could hold it out to them. It was the only suitable action he could think of.

All at once Paol was aware of the redcoat's presence, of the movement of his hand and he flinched away from the expected blow. But none fell. Bewildered and frightened he looked up, expecting the worst and finding instead a boy who couldn't have been any older than Charcot, looking nervous and holding a canteen.

Paol blinked at him, unable at first to grasp that he was actually offering it to them, but after a moment he reached out a tentative hand and took it. "Merci, he said unsteadily and fumbling it open with shaking fingers, he offered it to Bright.

"Right, I want the barn surrounded and whoever did this caught, if possible," Vickery said to the Sergeant. "They're probably long gone, but let us at least try."

He turned to the nearest Frenchman, and, thankful for school lessons and a natural affinity for languages, said, "Perdonnez-moi, savez-vous qui l'a fait?" He fully expected a negative answer, of course, but there was no harm in asking.

(OOC - if you didn't work it out, he said, "Excuse me, do you know who did it?")