5. Chapter 5

A starving army is actually worse than none.

Food, or lack thereof, was the driving force behind the Third Corps. The French were marching to a city called Italica because of food. In a similar vein, Jacques was leading part of his company to a village called Coda in search of food. It was the second foraging party Jacques joined since entering this world, but it was the first he was leading. In his old company, Sergeant Levett had delegated this vital duty to the likes of Corporal Bonnot, but Jacques was not his old sergeant, and he'd elected to lead by example.

That had sounded good when Jacques's had first volunteered. Now he realized he didn't know what he was doing.

Being in charge was difficult. There were dozens of choices Jacques needed to make, and dozens more ways to mess things up. He had plenty of time to consider these options while they marched down the road to Coda.

The art of convincing local peasants to give up their stockpiles of food was a tricky one. Peasants worked hard to ensure they had enough to provide for their families and pay their taxes, but few ever considered having to fork over food to a nearby army. As a result, locals often were unwilling to simply give the army the fruits of their labor. They had to be coerced.

As far as Jacques could see, there were two real options he could choose from.

The first was simple and straightforward. Violence. Jacques's men were well armed, and they could easily force the peasants to hand over their supplies at gunpoint. This was Corporal Bonnot's favorite method of foraging. However, Jacques was less eager to employ the tactic. It could easily go wrong, and men could get killed by rebellious peasants. Additionally, it almost guaranteed that the locals would grow to despise French soldiers, and if done too often it could lead to rebellion. Violence was useful, but it had to be done sparingly.

Alternatively, Jacques could try to buy food from the peasants. This made the population happier, but it was also less effective than simply forcing them to provide supplies. The locals would only sell what they believed they could spare, and that might not be enough to meet the needs of the Third Corps. It also required Jacques to be able to communicate with the locals. Word that German was apparently a common language with some locals had been spread throughout the corps. Jacques could speak German passably, but there was no guarantee that the villagers they met with could do the same.

Why am I in charge? he wondered for the hundredth time that day. Jacques used to envy his superiors who didn't have to dig latrines or do watch duty and always got what they needed while the regulars had to make do. Now he would've given anything to let someone else be the sergeant.

He would try to buy supplies first, Jacques decided. There wasn't anything to be lost from trying, and he could always fall back on violence if the need arrived. There. The decision is made. Now he just had to find the village.

Jacques's foraging party marched for several more miles. That gave Jacques time to doubt and second guess his decision a few dozen times, and dread formed in his stomach. What if there are soldiers waiting to ambush us? What if they sabotage the supplies? Maybe we should go in with bayonets fixed. Are we walking into a trap? How can-

Jacques took a deep breath. Worrying wouldn't get him anywhere. He just needed to stick to his decision and be done with it. The dread slowly dissipated.

"Sergeant!" Corporal Vidal called to him.

Jacques found that he was happy for a distraction and looked to Vidal. "What is it, corporal?"

Vidal pointed to a spot in the sky. "Smoke, sergeant."

There was indeed smoke where Vidal had pointed to. It was not a white wisp like smoke from a campfire or chimney but rather a plume of black signalling something far worse. Something large was burning.

Whatever was on fire was obscured by a patch of forest in front of it. Jacques pursed his lips. Something bad had happened, and his men needed to be there.

"Come on!" he shouted to his foraging party. "Double time!"

The column of foragers immediately changed pace. Their steady marching tread was replaced by something between a hurried jog and a slow run. Some men swore at the sudden change in pace, but Jacques paid them no mind. They needed to go quick.

At double time, they made it to the patch of forest in a matter of minutes. Jacques was the first one through, and several others were close behind. He expected perhaps a band of soldiers in the middle of an attack, so he had his musket ready to fire. Instead, he saw a sight he thought he'd left behind in Russia.

Coda village was razed to the ground. There was little left to mark it as a village anymore. The foraging party's quick advance died in an instant. They walked in silence, observing the remnants of a village they'd hoped to gather supplies from. Wooden houses with straw roofs had been reduced to ashes, and here and there fitful embers still smoldered, sending up black smoke that drove men into coughing fits.

Most of what could burn had been turned to ash. Jacques barely noticed the first body, charred and deformed by flame, curled into a ball amidst the ruins of what had once been a granary. Only the skull marked it as something that had once been human. The next was a corpse coated in crimson, spared from the fire but gutted by men with spears. Past him was a man with a club in hand, an arrow sticking out of his back. After that they encountered dozens more corpses, some killed by fire and others killed by men.

There were women too, Jacques realized with a start. Some, transformed into blackened figures by fire, were indistinguishable from the men. Others retained their identities, having been killed by sword and spear.

It went on, and on, and on. Jacques wanted to scream or cry or just hit something, but he remained stalwart. A sergeant is an example for the men, he repeated in his head. A sergeant does not show his inner thoughts.

The others had varied reactions. Corporal Astier, behind him, could have been carved from stone with how little he reacted, but Vidal's eyes were wide as saucers. The boy had hesitated when they found the first body, and with each successive discovery he pressed closer to Jacques's side. He reached out and found Vidal's hand tentatively. The boy squeezed tightly before letting go. Jacques was certain the gesture was not fitting behavior for a sergeant, but he couldn't bring himself to care.

"Sergeant," Vidal whispered.

"Yes?"

"I don't mean to… I mean if… Can I ask you a favor?"

"A favor?"

Vidal pressed closer to him, face suddenly grim. "If I ever get hurt… or you know wounded badly-"

"Don't talk about that," Jacques reprimanded. "Thinking about something like that never does anyone anything good."

"This is important," Vidal insisted. "If it… ever happens, could you promise me something?"

"Maybe."

"Don't take me to a surgeon," Vidal begged. "Take care of me yourself or get someone you trust. Don't let them cut me apart."

"If it's between amputation and death," Jacques began.

"I'd rather die," he said immediately. "Promise me."

Jacques had a moment of uncertainty then nodded. "I promise. But try not to get hurt in the first place."

Vidal nodded and then left Jacques's side.

The foragers continued moving through the village. They found the village square, a small area surrounded by charred houses with a well in the center of it. There were more bodies. The well had been poisoned with a rotting corpse.

This, Jacques eventually registered, is worse than Russia. There, villages had been scorched and fields burned, but the Russian peasants had done that willingly. Anything to deny the French supplies. Russians had abandoned their homes en masse in order to cripple Napoleon's advance. This was not the same. This was not willingly done. These people did not burn their own village like the Russians. These people were murdered.

There was nothing to forage here, and Jacques suspected that was intentional. Emperor Molt couldn't defend this village, so he had decided to destroy it. By doing this, he prevented the Third Corps from foraging for supplies. He was scorching the earth.

Jacques was about to order the party to leave when he heard a low, agonized groan. He initially thought it came from one of his men, but it was followed by muttering in the local language. He stopped and held up a hand to stop the others.

"What is it, sergeant?" one of them asked, who Jacques was fairly certain was named Laurent.

"I heard something," Jacques responded. "Someone's alive here."

"Are you sure?" another questioned.

Astier spoke up, "I heard it too." He pointed. "Over that way."

"Come on," Jacques said. "We should find what we can."

They walked in the direction of the sound, past burnt out houses and the remnants of structures. Corpses lay strewn everywhere, some charred and others bloody. Jacques had to force himself to look around, searching for movement. Laurent shouted a local greeting, some of the men had started picking up scraps of the language, but there was no response.

Then Jacques caught a flicker of movement. He pointed.

"There!"

There was a broken down wagon filled to the brim with books. Someone was lying under it, a diminutive figure with brilliant blue hair. Jacques handed his musket to Astier and then approached, trying to look non threatening.

"Hello?" he asked first in French then a second time in German.

The figure lifted its head ever so slightly, and Jacques could see it was a girl.

"Do you speak German?" Jacques wracked his brain to remember what the locals called it. "Do you speak the language of Elbe?"

"Yes…" Her voice was thin and papery, like that of a ghost. Her eyes briefly met Jacques's then her head fell back to the ground.

Jacque bit his lip. "Vidal, help me get her out from there."

The two of them approached the wagon. It had a broken axle, and the horse for it was nowhere in sight. The girl had probably hidden there when the attack came.

"Be careful here," Jacques said. "She might be injured."

They dragged the girl out from underneath the wagon. Her eyes were closed, but Jacques could hear her faintly breathing. He lifted her into his arms.

"What do we do with her?" Vidal asked.

That brought Jacques up short. He'd normally think to put her with the camp followers, but the Third Corps didn't have any camp followers, not since their retreat from Smolensk.

"We should leave her," Astier grunted. "Give her a bit of food then let her go her own way."

"She has nowhere to go," Vidal protested.

Astier shrugged. "Not our problem."

Vidal was silent.

"We'll take her back to camp," Jacques declared. "She can stay in my tent until we find somewhere for her."

"What then?"

"Then…" Jacques breathed out. "Then I'll figure something out."

"Burned?" Ney's breath hitched. "All of them?"

Ney was sitting in his command tent looking over a map of the continent he now knew was called Falmart. It had been two days since they began their march to Italica, and the corps had made camp for the night. He'd sent out foragers to secure more supplies from the locals.

"Yes, sir," Courbet affirmed with a sigh. "Our foraging parties are reporting that the enemy has elected to burn their fields and villages rather than let us have them. As far as I can tell, it was done by some of the men who managed to escape after our battle with Legatus Tiberius."

"And by doing this they rob us of supplies."

"Yes, sir." Courbet responded before quickly adding, "We still have enough food to supply us for four days. Eight days if we ration it well. More if we don't feed our prisoners."

Ney glanced at the map. They were one hundred and fifty miles from Italica. If they kept their current pace of fifteen miles a day then they'd run out of food and be starving when they arrived to besiege it. He couldn't not feed the prisoners either. They were a bargaining chip, a tool to negotiate with once Italica had been taken. Mistreating them would only make their situation worse. His hands tightened into fists.

"General Courbet," Ney said while still staring at the map. "In the case by your feet there's a small bottle. Would you be so kind as to hand it to me?"

Courbet bent down and plucked out the bottle. It was elegantly made with fine glasswork containing crystal clear liquid. Ney accepted it, pried off the cork, and took a deep breath.

"This is from the Tsar's palace in Moscow," he explained. "A fine vodka I'm told. I was going to bring it home as a present for my wife." He brought the bottle to his lips, drank a bit, and winced. "I've never had a taste for this sort of thing, but I thought it'd make a fine souvenir."

Then, fast as a snake, Ney turned and hurled the bottle out the tent. It hit something hard, creating a satisfying crunch and spraying fragments of glass into the air.

Ney's eyes burned. His lips curled back in a snarl.

"Damn it all to hell!" he spat. "I should have seen it coming! I should have learned from Russia! Fucking whorefaced bastard!"

"Sir…" Courbet said cautiously.

"It's exactly what happened in Russia. Stupid, stupid, how could I have been so stupid?! I didn't learn a damned thing!"

"Sir!" Courbet snapped.

Ney blinked. The red rage that had come over him faded and was replaced by a sense of surprise. Surprise in turn faded and was replaced by unease.

"We have eight days, sir. How do you want to use them?"

He sighed and instantly regretted his outburst. Pouting wouldn't get him anywhere. His mind went to work, coming up with the beginning of a plan. "We can do a forced march from here to Italica. Twenty-five miles a day is the most we can go, anymore and we'll suffer too many losses from desertion and exhaustion. That would make it six days to arrive."

Courbet nodded. "Then we have two days to take Italica."

"We can spend a day bombarding the walls and resting the men," Ney mused, his unease melting away. "Italica will have medieval walls, meant to defend against at best a catapult. They will be thin and unable to stand up to cannons. We'll only need the day to punch a breach through the walls. We may even get lucky and get two breaches."

"And then?"

"Then," Ney took a deep breath, "We assault through the breach and pray to God we win."

"That will cost lives," Courbet stated.

Ney knew that, but he had no other options. They needed to take the city quickly, and that was the only way to do it. His men would starve otherwise. Italica would have all the supplies they needed, they just had to seize it.

"Write out our new marching orders and begin rationing supplies. We have six days of hard marching to get through."

Twenty-five miles a day.

Captain Courbis had said that number so easily when he'd informed Jacques. Orders came directly from Marshal Ney that the corps was to increase its marching rate from fifteen miles a day to twenty-five. Of course, Jacques thought bitterly, that was easy for Courbis and Ney to say. They were officers. They could ride horses. They weren't the ones marching.

For the regular soldiers, the new marching pace was a hellish experience. It wasn't even the fact that they were going a longer distance each day. Before the battles, they'd marched twenty miles a day, and that hadn't been too bad. The real problem was that they were marching twenty-five miles a day with half rations.

It didn't seem so bad just reading the orders, but after five days of marching, Jacques could safely say he had grown to despise it with every inch of his body. Marshal Ney in his infinite wisdom had simultaneously increased their daily march by ten miles while also cutting their daily meals in half. It was hell. This was what hell was.

God damn all the officers who smiled and nodded when the Marshal made this plan.

God damn them all.

That became his mantra, repeated with every step along the road and every time his belly grumbled. God damn them all. His legs burned from marching. His stomach wanted food. His arms wanted to drop his musket.

There were moments when Jacques wondered if he had died. Perhaps they hadn't won the battle. Maybe he'd been killed and went to hell for his sins. This was a fitting punishment, he thought. All the men he'd killed. The men he'd failed to save. The girl in Moscow. Those moments were few and far between, though, and most of his time his eyes were glued to the ground directly in front of him. Each rock on the road could twist an ankle; every irregularity could send him face first onto the ground.

The first day had been bad. Men dropped like flies, unable to handle marching so long with so little food. Those with injuries were put onto supply wagons, but those without were forced to keep marching by sergeants. Jacques had to threaten men with lashes if they didn't keep moving.

The second day was worse. They were all sore, and the effects of half rations had weakened everyone significantly. Each mile had felt like ten, so by the end of the day Jacques's legs were completely numb. Men fell with every step.

By the third day, only the strong could keep going. Of the seventy-six men in Jacques's company, thirty of them had dropped out from exhaustion. They didn't get much reprieve. Instead, they were allowed to rest by the road then forced to march through the night in order to catch up with the rest of the corps.

On the fourth day, there was open talk of desertion among pretty much everyone. He didn't have the spirit to make any inspiring speeches like he'd done in the past, so Jacques had tried to clamp down on it with threats of punishment. That soon proved impossible. How was he supposed to punish the entire company? He couldn't, so the threats fell upon deaf ears.

On the fifth day, they began the morning with an execution. Five men had attempted to desert the corps in the night but were caught by Colonel Feraud's cavalry. Marshal Ney wanted to make an example, and a request for a trial by court martial was denied. The men were executed by firing squad in front of the whole corps. When they began marching again, talk of desertion had died out.

Now it was the sixth day, and Jacques was beginning to figure that death probably wasn't all that bad. He was sapped of strength. It was all he could do to trudge along the road step by step. He had to make a conscious effort to not drop his musket. God damn them all, he repeated over and over again in his head. God damn them all.

At least the girl would be fine. The girl they'd rescued from Coda was still in a deep sleep, so Jacques had given her to the quartermaster for the march. The man had eyed him disapprovingly when he'd dropped her off, but he accepted Jacques's bribe readily and agreed to keep her safe. She was probably tucked away in the supply wagons amidst a jumble of wounded men.

She wasn't suffering what he was.

Jacques fought to keep his eyes open. It was difficult, as though they had weights attached. His senses battled within him. Hunger insisted he should look for food, but exhaustion demanded sleep immediately. Both picked away at his willpower like rats eating a loaf of bread. The thought of bread made him hungrier. God damn them all.

He stumbled, and his eyes shot open. Jacques hadn't even realized they'd been closed. The men around him, his men, weren't faring any better. He was tempted to call a halt. Give them a break. A moment to rest. He couldn't do it of course; that would be violating Marshal Ney's specific orders. Doing it could get him demoted. That doesn't seem so bad. It could also get him executed. Death just seems like a chance to rest.

His body protested when he forced it to keep moving. God damn them all.

The day dragged on as if it would never end. It was hot. Heat made marching worse. At least it had been cold when they were retreating from Moscow. The cold had kept his mind off of food and just how tired he was. Heat didn't do that. It just made those problems even more evident.

There was a ridge that the marching column had to climb. It wasn't very big. Jacques had run up and down hills like this when he was a child. But climbing it in these conditions was hell. No. Worse than hell. Is there such a thing? If there was, Jacques was certain this was it.

He placed one foot in front of the other and repeated God damn them all in his head. Officers were full of shit. Courbis, Messier, Courbet, Ney, all of them. They gave orders and pretended to be sympathetic, but at the end of the day they weren't the ones slogging through the heat on half rations. Officers probably didn't even get half rations. They probably stole away food so that they could have a full fucking feast at the end of their day.

That was unfair, and Jacques knew it. The officers were suffering half rations just the same as the regulars. That fact didn't help any of the bitterness in Jacques. God damn them all.

Then, he made it over the ridge. The landscape immediately opened up, and from his vantage point he could see a large walled city in the distance. Jacques was awake at once. He blinked away the fog in his head and stared. This had to be it. This was their destination. They'd made it.

Jacques began to laugh.

The situation in Italica was not good for Princess Pina Co Lada.

She had arrived in Italica only days ago, sent by her father as a scout to discover what she could about the otherworldly army. Pina had departed with a tiny retinue of her knights, the rest of her order still gathering a few days behind, and had attempted to find the enemy army. The otherworlders, the Bluecoats, she thought with a grimace, had instead found her first.

Pina had gone to Italica simply to restock on provisions and listen to any rumors, but only hours after her arrival the Bluecoats had marched on the city and laid siege to it. They'd moved far more rapidly than expected, and Italica was not ready for a siege.

There were only five hundred professional soldiers in the city, remnants of Legatus Tiberius's legion. Tiberius himself was dead or missing, and the man who'd taken charge of the remnants had engaged in mass brutality across the countryside, burning and slaughtering villages to deny the Bluecoats resources. That man was now in Italica's dungeon at Pina's orders, but the damage had been done.

Arresting that man placed Pina in an awkward situation. By doing that, she'd established herself as the city's leader while under siege. Clan Formal, the traditional ruling family of the city, was reduced to an eleven year old girl, and by removing the only military leader, Pina had unwittingly placed the weight of leadership on her own shoulders.

This was her first time in command, real command, not some minor skirmish with bandits or organizing a parade. She intended to do well.

Five hundred legionaries was not enough to hold the city, so a ragtag militia had been hastily assembled. They had makeshift spears, old crossbows, and only a day of training. That didn't matter, she'd believed. The enemy would not dare attempt to climb the walls of Italica without siege towers, and those would take many more days to build. By then, Pina's Rose-Order of Knights would have arrived to reinforce the city, and they could beat back any assaults.

She was right; the enemy had not attempted to climb Italica's walls. They chose to obliterate them.

The entire city was awakened when the Bluecoats' magic began turning portions of the wall into rubble. They used iron and bronze tubes that breathed out fire and smoke to tear through the stones protecting Italica. What would have taken weeks for a catapult was done in a day by their magic.

Now, Italica's walls had two massive holes in them, and Pina's motley garrison was open to attack by an army outnumbering them six to one.

Their magic scared Pina, she was willing to admit that. Such powerful sorcery was something she'd never encountered. But the situation was not entirely hopeless. The Rose-Order of Knights at most a week away. They were her personal order of elite female knights, and they could turn the tide of battle. She could sneak them into the city, and then Italica would be able to stave off the attackers until her father could arrange a legion to relieve them.

They just needed to hold for a week.

The holes that the Bluecoats blew in the walls created natural chokepoints. She would concentrate her militia there and keep the professional soldiers in reserve. If one area seemed close to breaking, she could lead the reserve to stabilize it. But if that wasn't enough…

"Princess," the voice of Grey Co Aldo interrupted her thoughts. "You should rest before battle."

She shook her head. "There's too much to do. I need to supervise the-"

"Rest," he ordered. "Exhausting yourself before the battle begins will not help anyone."

Pina hesitated then conceded. "Wake me if anything happens," she demanded.

"Of course, princess."

Pina left to catch a few hours of sleep. It was approaching night, so she doubted anything would happen while she rested. Tomorrow the real battle would begin.

Hold for one week.

A very short chapter this time, and that is mainly because this was originally part of what is now going to be chapter 6. I decided to split that into two because the total word count would have reached over 10,000, and I'm not certain people have the patience to read through that all at once. Also, the two chapters didn't really have much in common with each other besides the fact that I wrote them both together, so having them as separate chapters is probably for the best. What this allows me to do is post this chapter today then finish editing and reviewing chapter 6 for tomorrow. So stay tuned, there'll be another chapter tomorrow. On a similar note, do you all like longer 6-8k word long chapters like chapter 3 or shorter 4-5k word long chapters? Obviously it depends on the contents of the chapter, but I'd like to know your thoughts regardless.

In this chapter we get to see the effects of scorched earth tactics on Ney's corps. Obviously in the main series this is essentially meaningless due to modern logistics, but here it is very significant. Napoleon's Russia Campaign was crippled due to scorched earth tactics done by the Russians, and here Ney doesn't even have a supply line to fall back on so he's forced to put the men through a difficult situation. I hoped to also illustrate the divide between officers and enlisted. Ney decides to conduct a forced march on half rations in three sentences, but Jacques is the one who has to suffer through that forced march.

Again, no new Napoleonic terms used here, so no glossary. Thank you for reading the story. I do appreciate feedback, but keep in mind I am a very inexperienced writer who has no idea what I am doing. Unlike before I can definitively tell you all that the next chapter will be out tomorrow (maybe the day after if encounter problems during editing).