Author: J. Scott King

“Can he continue?” A familiar voice, distant, urgent.

And nearer, “The Seconds are conferring, Captain.” Then, more urgently, “Come no closer, sir! Resseaux, control your man!”

A gruff, mumbled reply I can’t make out.

“I’ll have him done!” That first fellow again… Captain Eddings. Right. Yes, that’s the one. Never liked the man.

My eyes open to falling snow, grand white flakes drifting down in the cold, still early morning air.
Two people, a man I recognize but can’t quite place and a woman I recall meeting briefly but a short while ago, huddle alongside me. The woman, a physician, I think… yes, a healer, has unbuttoned my vest and is cutting away my shirt with a palm knife.

I crane my head forward. Is that my blood?

The shirt falls away, and… goodness, shot! Near-center chest, just below the sternum. Red-black blood oozes from a single hole, steaming in the morning chill.

I raise my right arm from the ground. A flintlock wavers unsteadily in my hand, a wisp of smoke curling from the barrel like the Captain’s wife at play. I let it fall to the snow. My arm follows and my head drops back to the ground.

Damn.

Dawn cannon fire erupts in the distance. A long way off but I can feel the play of it in the earth. The dead fall by the thousands every day, but still they come.

“Did I… hit him?” I ask, breathless.

“You did not, sir,” says the vaguely familiar man. “Be still, and let Helene see to your wound.”

I close my eyes, take a deep, painless breath. The air is alive with gunpowder and bergamot, with the memory of desultory words said in jest over polite tea.

A barrage of angry footfalls concusses through the snow, halting abruptly at my side.

“Get him up! I demand satisfaction!”

Eddings again. I don’t have the strength to face him.

“He’s finished, Captain,” that familiar voice again, admonishing. Lieutenant… Bertrand. That’s it. Claude. A good man.

“We best have his head before he turns,” Bertand says in a hushed tone. “It won’t be long now.”

Ah, yes… That. I suppose it wouldn’t do to switch sides.

“Leave him in the snow to rot!” Eddings barks. “I’ll put another ball in the fool when next our paths cross.”

Lieutenant Bertrand sighs. “As you say, Captain.”

As my killer marches off, arrogance in every step he takes, I manage a blood and bile grin and whisper my last breath.

“Not if I find you first…”