June 17th, afternoon: Food that dead men eat

Marching in the Iberian sun was exhausting. They had to do it the whole day, with only a few short breaks, and only one of those had been next to a small brook that allowed for the refilling of their canteens. Even the ever-cheerful lieutenant was rather silent and manfully tried to hide his ever-increasing limp.

He had thrown out scouts to the front and both sides, and it fell to them to first notice the two shapes in blue and brown that were laying half-hidden under a clump of bushes.

Paol stopped short, reaching for his companion's arm in a gesture of silent warning. He nodded towards the patches of color in the nearby brush.

The patches didn't move. They seemed to be the blue of slightly faded uniform coats, mottled with dried specks of blood or mud, and the shapes resolved themselves into two men, sprawled out in the shade. Neither of them was moving, and their heads were down.

Motioning for the other soldier to wait, Paol crept closer. Dry leaves from the year before still carpeted much of the forest floor and announced every footstep, but still the forms -- for he could see more distinctly now that there were two of them -- did not move. With a sickening sense of dread, Paol hurried forward, the caution of moments before forgotten. However much he might have wished it to be otherwise, there was no mistaking the color of the coats that covered the two figures.

Thrusting away the overhanging branches, Paol ducked into the brush and dropped to his knees beside the prone forms. They were Line infantry, sure enough. Gingerly he reached out and, taking hold of one of the men's shoulders, turned him over.

The man was dead - even a quick glance at the waxen colour of his face and the stiffness of his jaws told that quite clearly. The rest of the body could still be moved easily, and when Kerjean turned him,his left arm flopped over and revealed the deep, festering, only roughly bandaged cut in that shoulder.

The man had been part of their own regiment once, a simple private from the 4th company. He still had most of his gear, although his musket, having been underneath him, was thickly coated with blood over a layer of gunpowder residue.

Wide-eyed with dread, Foucheaux took a quick glance over Kerjean's shoulder. "That's Big Lauture," he whispered, crossing himself awkwardly while he held his musket ready. He tore his gaze away from the man's mottled face to look nervously about the area.

Paol started violently at the unexpected voice behind him. "Jesus, Foucheaux," he exclaimed softly, "Thought I told you to stay back?"

"I am back," Foucheaux countered. "Who's the other one?"

Paol didn't argue. Taking a breath to steady himself, he shifted closer to the second figure, his heart still thudding alarmingly, and very gently eased the man over onto his back.

Blood slowly leaked from a wound in the man's thigh, and his face was pale and drawn under day-old stubbles. The man's eyes were closed but ... It was barely noticable, but his chest still slightly moved.

---

The other scouts had noticed and stopped, too, to keep in touch. Bastien held a hand up in a signal to the main body of men to stop, leaving it to Fernet to do the actual ordering. After the other scouts had pointed out the cuase of their delay, the young lieutenant lightly sprinted towards Kerjean and Foucheaux. Asking "Trouble?" in a mildly curious voice, even before he was fully there.

Foucheaux saluted and stepped away to give the man space, feeling somewhat relieved to have an officer present, even if it was a 17e officer. "Two of ours, sir."

"I think..." Paol trailed off, bending forward and putting a hand to the figure's face. He straightened up sharply. He was no physician, but he was fairly certain that corpses did not sweat. "This one's alive," he announced, tearing off his pack and digging through it in search of anything that could serve as bandages. "Foucheaux, see if you can get some water into him."

Prayon looked a bit surprised at that, but certainly happy. With his usual disregard for his clothing, he pulled off his cravat and handed it to Kerjean. Turning around, he ordered:

"Fernet! Secure and search the area, there might be more. But careful, everybody! Those bullets didn't come from nowhere!"

While his sergeant made the arrangements, the lieutenant turned back to the wounded. His fingers sought out the pulse at the throat, then rested on the man's forehead for a moment. After the short examination, his face was positively grim.

"I don't think he will last long. His heart is fluttering like a sparrow. See if you can wake him up - he still might be lucid enough to tell us what happend.", he quietly said to Kerjean, then looked at Foucheaux to include him.

He repeated the brief examination with the other man, although his expression said quite clearly that he had no hope there. When he was finished, he briefly went through the man's things, but nothing caught his interest. Then he quietly cursed and stood up.

"He has departed this plane of sorrow. Take his musket and everything else of his accoutrements that is salvagable, and dig a grave for him. Do you know who he is? And the other one, for that matter?"

Foucheaux lifted the man's head as carefully as he could with one arm and held the canteen to his lips with the other. "Here, man, have a bit of a drink. Wake up. Can you hear me? You're safe now. We've got you." He felt rather helpless with the man not seeming to respond, but he poured some water into his mouth anyway. Most of it seemed to run out again.

The officer was asking questions. "I don't know this one, sir, but the other one we call Big Lauture."

Taking the cravat from the officer with a murmured acknowledgment, Paol bent closely over the man's injured leg. He tugged at the sodden fabric, enlarging the existing tear where the musket ball had entered to get a look at the wound. It was an ugly sight, even after he had cleaned it as best he could. There would be infection, no doubt; the man had certainly felt feverish, and God only knew how much blood he had lost already.

"Anythin'?" he asked Foucheaux, tying off the binding on the man's leg. He knew it was foolish to hope -- and he did not doubt the Lieutenant's assessment of the fellow's chances -- but it was rather too late to correct that particular mistake.

Retrieving the hatchet from his own gear, Paol looked around for Gauvin or anyone else who might have a spade or pick or anything to make digging easier.

The pain of the tourinquet seemed to pierce through the feverish haze, and the man gave a painful groan and weakly groped with one hand. His eyes opened slightly, but they didn't focus.

From a short distance away, Francois, now back on his feet, leaned upon his musket planted on the ground and watched the men huddled over a couple of bodies, one dead and one in rather poor shape. More deadly work from the Portuguese no doubt, how the boy hated them.

"You there, boy!"

The sergeant pointed to Sevière.

"Get up there and help those two! Those were your comerads. Dig them a decent grave!"

He proceeded to detail some other soldiers from the 86th for the same task, leaving the searching of the area to the 17th - accidentally something he thought them the better suited for anyway.

"Yes sergeant," Francois nodded then hurried over to help. He had no idea how he was supposed to bury a corpse without some sort of shovel to dig the grave. He certainly did not have one in his backpack. Normally the battalion supply wagons would carry such tools. But they were on the march without such vehicles, which would slow down progress.

Some other men were also detailed and grumbling commenced, why should light troopers, the experts in skirmishing and ranging ahead of line, have to do this unpleasant task while the 17th got to scout. Still, there was some logic to it, the dead man was one they knew.

"Easy there, man," Foucheaux murmured as the man awoke. He poured a little more water into his mouth, and this time the man swallowed it. "It's all right. We're from the 86e, like you and Big Lauture. What's your name?"

The man tried to speak, but broke of with a painful cough. It took several more sips of water and some coaxing, but after some coughing and ununderstandable mumbling, the man suddenly asked quite clearly:

"Where is Lauture? A hussar got him with his sabre! Where ...?"

He broke off with another cough.
---

Digging a grave in the parched earth was heavy work, especially if bayonets, wood or mess tins were the only tools available.

"Couldn't we just ... kind of make it shallow and then cover them up with stones?", a young, heavily sweating soldier only known as Poupin suggested.

"He's all right," Foucheaux said quickly. "He's resting. Our surgeon's lookin' after him." He exchanged glances with Kerjean. What a stupid thing to say. "Now what's your name? What happened to everyone else?"

Cover them up with stones? Gauvin scowled at the assumption and aimed a swift kick at the light infantryman. "Shut it."

"This here's Marcel," Paol told the man, shifting to block as best as he could the fellow's view of Lauture and the grave detail. "An' I'm Paol." To Foucheaux he added quietly, "See if you can sit him up a bit, easy like."

Bending closer, he gently lifted aside the facings of the man's coat to see if there was some additional injury to the chest that they had missed.

"Look in his pockets," Foucheaux suggested. "Maybe he's got a letter or note or somethin'."