June 17th, afternoon: Food that dead men eat

Francois knew the drill by now for crossing water obstacles such as this, keep your musket and powder dry. He raised the weapon above his head then waded on across with the rest of the men. Luckily the water did not reach where he kept his paper cartridges, he'd have wet trouser legs and shoes but it wouldn't be the first time.

Damn these Ports! Couldn't they be like civilized armies and march on roads and fight battles in the open to decide things? Instead of lurking like wolf packs in the worst of terrain. How he hated them.

Bastien grinned.

"Good. Would have been rather inconvenient. Nice save with the musket. Carry on that way!"

With a last approving squeeze, he let go of Kerjean's elbow and tramped towards dry land. There he pointed to the mouth of a flat valley.

"That's where we are going, gentlemen. Keep your eyes peeled."

Paul Kerjean, Saint-Hilaire remembered as he saw the man up on his feet again, also one of the men. Those men. He approached Bastien and Kerjean, at a slower pace as the first, certainly more careful as he did not intend to slip and cause further injury to his already unsteady self. The pace also allowed for the body to adjust itself more comfortably to movement, though it was still rather tense.

"Musket dry, cartridges too,.. good job, Soldat Kerjean." Bastien spoke and rejoined the lieutenant at his side. "..a bit quieter would not hurt, lieutenant." He said half in jest. "They might be listening."

Paol's face flushed hot with embarrassment, but he remembered himself enough to mumble a quiet thanks. Then, grimacing as he let the injured knee take his weight, he struggled up the bank after the sous-lieutenant, and joined the others.

Francois delayed and waited for Paol to slosh on out of there and approach, offering his fellow soldier a smile.

"What were you planning? Drowning? You should have let yourself be impressed into the Navy if that was your plan?" he quipped.

He was actually glad some of the other 86th soldiers were going along besides him on this latest jaunt.

Paol returned the lad's smile gratefully.

"Or get caught with a sacré coeur," he added in a rueful undertone.

Francois paused for a moment to assess his remark then it came to him and he nodded.

"Ah yes, the Vendee. My uncle fought there with the Republic and he told us it was more awful than any campaign he has been on with the Emperor."

Now that he thought about it the Ports were much like the Vendeans, hitting from ambush, picking off stragglers, torturing, killing. He hated this, it was not what he thought it would be like.

Paol's face grew grave. "Aye," he replied carefully, "We heard that as well."

As usual, Grenville and Hugo had taken point and worked their way up to the indicated valley. Neither had seen anything French or Portuguese, but a few tracks indicated where their comerads had more slithered then climbed down to the river.

It turned out that they had covered quite some ground, though. It was nearly an hour before Hugo suddenly stopped.

"Horse tracks. No older than a day. Others beneath."

Grenville nodded.

"Must have been a patrol. Seems as if they had been turning back here. Seems to be their usual way."

He turned and signalled caution, then checked his musket before proceeding cautiously.

Hugo shrugged and followed.

"English. Better than Portuguese."

Grenville grimaced.

"But on horses!"

Francois halted then as the scouts had signaled they found something. He was only a simple soldat so it was up to the officers to decide what they would do next. He struggled with his canteen strap then took a long swig from the canteen while they waited for whatever was to happen next. Most of these patrols were just a lot of walking up and down hills and crossing streams but little seemed to be ever accomplished. He hated Portugal.

Paol adjusted his grip on his musket, the passive alertness which had become almost habitual heightened by the scout's signal. "What do you reckon?" he asked the younger soldier in an undertone. "British or Portuguese?"

Rechenauld had spoken of British soldiers, but the partisans were everywhere.

Grenville was the first to spot the crows. Several of them, clustered around a dark shape on the ground. A bit further back, there were others.

His mouth twisted unhappily. There was a chance that it was only a few dead sheep, but ... He signalled for the lieutenant with his spyglass.

"I haven't fought against the English yet, but I have heard they are even tougher opponents than the Russians," Francois shrugged, "But at least they are civilized. These Ports are savages. I hate them."

The scout was making a fuss now. The young soldat had to wonder what was being spotted.

"You know, it could be our men too." Hopefully alive and well, but Francois doubted it.

"No one is civilized here," replied Paol, simply. All the same, he thought, as his glance passed again over their surroundings, if it came to a fight in this terrain, he would rather the English.

From the direction the scout had indicated came the cry of a carrion bird, eerily punctuating Sevière's last remark. Paol crossed himself. It could mean nothing, but that hope held little conviction.

"I beg to disagree, mon ami," Francois countered, "We take the English prisoners and they do the same for us. The only time the Spanish or Ports take a prisoner is for torture."

Though it was bringing up something he was still embarrassed about he decided to, "When those riflemen we had held escaped, after overpowering me....they could have killed me. I think one of them wanted to but they did not. I was merely tied up. As angry as I am at the one Englishman who fooled me, I am grateful to him he did not in fact kill me."

He then noted Paol crossing himself, he too must figure the scouts had not found anything good.

It took a few minutes until all men were up the hill and the area properly secured. Prayon had given his orders mechanically while his eyes searched the ground.

When he spoke next, it was with a mixture of hope and reluctance.

"Two bodies are missing. They might have gotten away."

[OOC: One would be the Sous Pye and Freddie captured. The other I can edit, if you don't want to go hunting for him, or he can just end up dead behind the next bush.]

OOC: Sorry but I got a question. How many bodies do they see when they get there?

[OOC: If I count correctly, there were 8 Frenchmen, a Sergeant and a Sous-Lieutenant. Two are on the other side of the river, one and the sous are missing, should make 6 bodies.]

[OOC: If this needs to be moved (or changed), I'll be happy to do so. Also, re: missing guy, I'm fine with either course of action. Whatever works best.]

It was a place of death. He could smell it before he came within sight of the first corpse. Several of the big, black birds took to the air in alarm, settling in the treetops to scream balefully at the small pack of men below. One of them, more greedy than fearful lingered, worrying the face of one of the corpses. Paol swatted it away.

He knelt beside the body. These men had been spared the ravages of the Portuguese but the scavengers -- winged and four-footed alike -- had not been more merciful. Some of the dead were missing limbs. Their faces, without even the dubious protection of wool or canvas to dissuade the less aggressive scavengers, were unrecognizable; blood blackened skull showing through in places, trimmed by grisly scraps of flesh.

The man beside Paol had no nose, and empty, crow pecked sockets gaped where his eyes had been. One cheek had been torn away and the throat eaten straight down to the spine. Something oozed from beneath the collapsed breast of his uniform where some animal had been fighting to get at what lay beneath.

"Permission to bury the dead, sir?" Paol asked quietly.

Francois wanted to be sick at his first glimpse of the dead soldiers, he'd seen enough corpses already in this damned war but usually not this far gone. It smelled of death also assaulting that sense too. He tried not to think about it that one of these rotting bodies could have been him had he been part of that unit. And even more so, this could be in his own future someday. So much death and suffering. Somehow he thought war would be more....glorious. It was not.

He was hot, tired, sickened but if the officer agreed to bury the dead, he would gladly do it. They owed their comrades that much. If it happened to him someday, he would like it if someone would bury him.

He waited for the officers' reply.

"Yes, if you please."

Prayon answered quietly, his eyes on the empty socket where once an eye had been.

"My own men will help ..."

He turned away to give the orders, quietly muttering under his breath about letting people - even the enemy - out here to rot and be eaten.

Slipping his small axe from his pack, Paol set to work, hacking, scraping, clawing at the dry, rocky soil. From time to time he looked over with concern at Sevière. It would be harder on the boy than it was on the rest of them, and God knew it wasn't easy on them. "Breathe through your mouth, not your nose," he told him softly, after a while. Though the smell hung so thick in the sweltering, June air that there was no real chance of avoiding it. It felt like a stupid thing to say, once it was out, but it was all he could think of.

Francois stacked his musket with a few others then dropped his pack before removing his blue outer garment. He'd dig in his shirt sleeves. It was hot and they were already tired from tramping up and down this damned country. Plus it smelled something fierce.

Paol gave him a tip to try and make it more endurable. Francois glanced the veteran's direction and nodded, "Merci."

He did as suggested and while it did not take away the odor completely by any means, it seemed to be a bit weaker. Of course they were only digging at the moment, they'd still have to handle the corpses to place them in the graves.

With a grim twist around his mouth and an unusal paleness under his tan, Bastien moved from body to body, looking at each carefully and recording the way these men had died. Often he would straighten out a limb or close open eyes, or simply straighten the uniform a bit. When somebody could tell him a name, he would note it down, but a few of the men would go to their grave without being reckognized for the last time.

Hugo came over, helping another soldier to carry one of the bodies to the grave. He was chewing fiercly on something. After they had set down the body next to the opening that slowly got larger, he pulled a small pouch out of his pocket.

"Tobacco. Chew and concentrate on the taste."

He offered the preccious content to Francois.

Prising loose a stone, Paol hefted it clear of the small trench, and finished scraping out the loose dirt. He glanced up as Hugo and the other man deposited the body, wiping the sweat from his eyes and leaving a muddy streak across his face. "Reckon that's deep enough," he said, climbing out of the hole.

Easing his battered knee into a less painful position, he half knelt at the dead man's shoulders, waiting as Hugo offered the boy some of his chew. It was a kind offer and Paol, recalling his own dwindling supply of tobacco, could well appreciate how generous it was.