Prisoners.

"I dunno. We'd better, though, that's about the size of it. An' about your hand, too." He'd kick up a fuss if they didn't, he knew that much.

"Hold on a minute, Joe, while we switch around." He glanced at the traitor in his blue coat out of the corner of his eye. If he dared point his musket in their direction, Cotton was damn sure he'd lay him out cold.

"Mind the bloody crutch," Newbury said again, irritated by their shuffling about. He'd almost been doing better on his own, it seemed.

Pye could protest, but he wanted to be able to fire again one day, so a surgeon would be a welcome guest. He shook his head briefly. "Don't need t' change, Gabe. Really. ..it's a'right." Newbury did not need even more shift and shuffle around him. His knee needed even less of that!

He wished they had been able to keep a canteen filled with water, which would do all of them all the good in the world. "..ey.. Gabe." He dropped his voice. "you perchance got any...grain at all on ye fer later?"

After a while a ripple of shouts went through the company that guarded the prisoners, and the men were ordered to stop. Which included the trio of riflemen hard at work in keeping up.

One of the French guards approached them and studied Newbury's leg for a moment, made to tap the knee with the butt of his musket and then turned about with a slight shrug. He sat down on a larger bit of boulder that would keep his coat tails away from the ground, muddy as the latter was, and his bum possibly dry. He observed the trio while emptying the contents of his canteen, though none of the water was offered to the grasshoppers.

"Hey! You can't go doin' that!" Cotton protested. Any sort of poke was likely to hurt Newbury, after all. And if those damned provosts hadn't beaten him up the way they had, he'd nearly be back to fighting fit again.

He wanted a drink, but who knew when they would be able to fill their canteens again? Much better to hoard their water for as long as they could. He deliberately turned his back on the Frenchmen, who were gulping down their own water as if there was no tomorrow.

The Frenchman shrugged and laughed. He probably understood that Cotton made a protest, but not his exact words. Did not matter really. " That one doesn't look like a grasshopper to me." Spoke his friend easily. "Saw his leg. If anything he certainly does not hop." The pair chuckled and appeared amused.

A third joined them, emptying abit of his cantine into his mouth. He reached into his knapsack and from it brought a piece of dried meat. That came to the notice of young Pye, whose belly answered in like. He sighed. He watched the man tear of a bite and chew. The lad licked his lips and felt his belly's discomfort even more. Always hungry, hungrier with someone wavig food infront of his face.

The sound alerted the Frenchman who looked mildly entertained by that look that could easily have been on a face of a tail-wagging pup. "Careful with that one." He spoke lightly, in French. "Might have us for dinner." He smiled and tore of a small piece holding it towards Pye.

The boy stared at it first, then at the man who was gesturing him to take it. He glanced towards Cotton and Newbury. Quietly he reached forward and expected the Frenchman to yank his hand back. But he did not. Allowing the young grasshopper to take the bit of meat, he nodded.

Pye looked bemused but grateful. He rested his injured hand in his lap while taking a tiny bite of the small chunk. "Thank....you." He said slowly as if it made it easier for the Frenchman to understand. The man smiled. "Merci." Pye hesitated. "Thank you.. mersee?"

"Oui." Just so.

The antics of his companions was something that irritated Jérémie. He wasn't wholly sure why, but it seemed improper to taunt and torment their captives. It was one thing to chivvy them along so they did not lag too far behind the others. It was quite another to knock them around - especially the one who was obviously wounded.

He said nothing of his distaste, however, and settled down onto the ground. The damp didn't trouble him much. With his pack off his back, Jérémie felt a little more comfortable. There was some weight to the pack now, given by the rations he'd helped himself to out of a wagon recovered by the dragoons. Perhaps he should have volunteered to help guard the women they'd captured. Certainly they were easier to look after than these unfortunate greenjackets.

The blow to his knee, while inexplicably a light one, was enough to put Newbury off his balance. Were it not for the support from the other two and the stave in his hand, he would probably have fallen. As it was, the renewed stabs of pain in the damaged joint made it more difficult to walk.

It was, therefore, just as well that a general halt was ordered. Newbury was only too glad to let himself be all but dropped to the dirt. The show of kindness from one Frog in sharing his meal with Pye, however, served to heighten his irritation. How bloody ironic was that, really?

Newbury used his stave to lever himself a little more comfortably up on a slight rise in the earth. He was hungry too but pride kept him from being so pathetic as to beg for scraps from their captors.

"Come over here, Jéremie. No use sitting all by your lonesome self." Jacques, as was named the second of the two men, waved to Blanchard. It was Alveré who offered part of his meal to the boy, and he observed the other two riflemen with mild curiosity.

"Think he can walk some more?" He motioned towards Newbury. This was a momentary halt, the camp would be made further up the road, a few kilometres from where they were now. It was Clément who shrugged and then, after a prolonged study of the angle at which Newbury held his leg and the manner in which he was seen sitting down, decided for a skeptical: "..Doubt it. He'd be better riding in with the wagons. For our sakes as well as his."

Something would have to be arranged for Newbury. But in the meanwhile, it was Alveré again that approached Pye. The lad looked up, curious, apprehensive: "Give this to the other two, oui?" He asked all in French and pointed at both men before holding another bit of 'dinner' towards Pye. The lad nodded, thinking he understood , and took the small amount of food which he timidly offered to Cotton and Newbury.

Food. He wasn't so stupid as to turn down the offer of food, no matter who was giving it to him. He wasn't so quick to accept the offer as Pye was, though... and it looked as though Newbury might not accept it at all.

He nudged his injured friend, carefully in case he caught a tender spot by accident. "You ain't goin' to get your strength back if you don't eat," he said, taking the offered food from Pye. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing at all.

Food. Right. Not today, anyway. Newbury shook his head.

"Ain't hungry," he said petulantly and turned his gaze toward a pair of birds fluttering about just off the road.

"Would you think differently if I offered you summat out o' me bread-bag?" Cotton asked, frustrated at Newbury's deliberate disregard. He did still have his bread-bag, and his canteen, but he wanted to hoard their contents for as long as he could, if possible.

For an instant, he nearly caved. At least if it came from Cotton, it was safe. Then Newbury shrugged. "I'm a'right," he demurred.

The others were entreating him to join them. They who had been so recently amusing themselves at the expense of their prisoners. No. Jérémie shook his head and ignored them. He didn't care to be noticed by the likes of them. In truth, he didn't care to be noticed by anybody if he could help it - at least if 'anybody' had rank, that was.

He pulled some dried pork - or at least he guessed it was pork - from his pack and sniffed it cautiously. One could never be sure about food if it came from the English.

"You bleedin' ain't," Cotton retorted. "Reckon you'm touched in the head, not wantin' a good bit o' scran." He lowered his voice enough so that the turncoat of earlier wouldn't overhear him, although he'd moved away by now, which could only be good. "What good are you goin' to be to anyone, supposin' we can get away from this lot to try gettin' back to the Army?"

Cotton must be the one touched in his head, Newbury thought.

"An' what? D'you think I'm gonna go too far with one sound leg?"

"Starvin' yourself ain't goin' to fix that leg o' yourn any damn quicker, is it?" Cotton fished in his bread-bag and came up with a bit of broken biscuit and some dried beef. "Here, you'm welcome to have this here."

"You're daft.. Joe. Denyin' yeself food, which's prolly how yer be healin'." Pye mouthed, eating his share, but keeping Newbury's bit still in hand in case he would have changed his mind.

"..You'um tellin' me I'm daft..but atleast I'd try ter do m' all t' get 'way." He muttered mumbling like and lowered his gaze.

If Newbury persisted they'd never get away. No, he'd grow weaker, and thus slower. Daft thing. French could not benefit from poisoning them and thus having to drag them along at an even slower pace. Stood to reason.The rest was a risk they had to take. And perhaps he would take a greater risk, all be damned. He frowned. "Gabe.." He began to say something but then shook his head and was silent.

Newbury shook his head again. He was hungry, in truth, but not enough to take a meal of any sort. "You go an' do that," he said in a low voice. "Ain't 'xactly like I'm gonna be keepin' up with you lot when you do your runner, is it?"

"...Well's a problem 'ere. Joe. You's one o' t' rifles... ain't something to abandon, is there." He huffed. "You're longer with them. Ought to know it better n' me."

A brief conversation with a couple of his mates ended when one of them pointed toward the greenjackets he had recently left. So they were truly thick as thieves, it seemed. Not that Bright was surprised. The reality of their situation wouldn't have set in just yet. But it would.

"Mind that one, with the round face," Bright said in French, glancing at one of the guards closer to the trio. "He might have a rabbit in his sack for our fires!"

There was a scattered round of chuckles.

Alvére shook his head. They had made certain enough that anything sharp was not kept by their prisoners, and in the process of that, they had indeed check the prisoners fairly well. There was no danger - sadly - that there would have been a rabbit in his or among any of the riflemen's meager possessions.

Jacques ignored Jérémie's lack of response. If he wanted to be a primadona, so let him. Instead he thought it a favour to comment on Alvére's sharing of food. Marking is as a silly thing, and a waste of resources which would certainly prove well sought for, as time progresses. He had not forgotten to add that their accompanying the prisoners, meant not only that they were not to be out there picking the spoils of what they could find, but would be indeed wearing thin, what their army was hard to get in this hostile environment.

"They're slow as anything." He muttered and Clément gave a shrug to that. "If you hadn't gone and poked his knee till it'd go funny..." And allowed it to remain at that.

" 'ey.. Rosbif." Jacques called to Bright. "Tell your friends they're to hurry their arses if they want their friend to have a fair comfortable place to sleep on. Mind telling them what a grand choice you've made too."

"Pye's in the right of it, Joe. I dunno what I'm goin' to have to do, to knock some sense into you." He scowled in the direction of the French, talking away in their peculiar-sounding foreign tongue.

Whatever they were saying was about them, from the looks they were getting, and it was probably all uncomplimentary, too.

He sighed, and started chewing on the bits of food he'd been given.

"These's um good." Although it would not surprise if some of the food they would get in the coming days or even weeks, was actually snatched off their own fires and out of their own kettles or packs. Some would possibly have belonged to the French, plundered or foraged for wherever they had a chance and the courage.

"...Gabe.." He wanted to say that the French weren't as monstrous as they were first told, but decided against it. Not unless this was a useful thing to say, and it was not. "'least they won't starve us." Could be worse, a lot worse. He wondered what they would do to the civilians caught. Keep them? Keep the women? Or would they intend to return them because of how much food they wasted? The children would probably return as well. No use, in children. Not unless they are old enough, able bodied and easily swayed. But if they were children, they were exempt.

"Starve..." Cotton repeated, bitterly. No, they wouldn't starve, but how many greenjackets had the French captured, and how many had they killed and... and without the baggage, how would the rest of the Army cope tonight, and for the next few days, or even weeks?

He hadn't seen Maggie with the group of women and children under guard, and he hoped that meant that she'd got away safely.

He suddenly found he couldn't eat any more, and that what he had eaten was sitting like a solid lump in his belly. He automatically stowed the rest away in his bread-bag. There was no sense wasting it, after all.