Crouching low, his leg muscles tortured with the pain of cramp, he returned to the encampment.
'Wake up,' he hissed, shaking Castenada and Quilhampton. 'There are troops in a village not a mile away. Wake up!'
Drinkwater slung the satchel over Quilhampton's good shoulder and helped him to his feet. Then he and Castenada gathered up their coverings and the three of them hurried towards the punt. Stowing their belongings Drinkwater bent to the task.
'James, I want you to walk very slowly, testing the ice, ahead of us. Doctor, lift that damned bow ... the boat, man, the boat ...'
They broke the punt out of its bed of ice and began to slide it over the ice, negotiating the frozen reeds and finding the going easier as they moved away from the bank. They were within half a mile of open water when Quilhampton, tottering uncertainly, looked back. Drinkwater saw his jaw fall as he stared over their struggling shoulders. He turned his head, almost losing his footing on the ice.
'God's bones!'
'Dios!' Castenada crossed himself, an unconscious, instinctive gesture.
The cavalryman sat on his mount just below the village and watched them. Their suddenly increased exertion confirmed his suspicions. He wheeled his horse and cantered up the snow-covered incline, jerking the animal's head round again as he broke the skyline. Turning in his saddle, one hand on the rump of his horse, he appeared to be shouting to someone behind him, then he was facing them, and kicking his horse forward.
As he spurred towards them they saw the sunlight glint on the curved blade of his sabre.
CHAPTER 18
The Scharhorn
'James! Can you help?'
Quilhampton, pale from the effort of walking, nodded and took the painter in his right hand. Drinkwater motioned Castenada to the stern and fiddled with the toggled beckets that retained the quant pole alongside the coaming of the punt. Hefting it at its centre he pulled it clear and swung clumsily round, wheeling it as Castenada and Quilhampton ducked.
'Get moving!' he ordered, turning to face the horseman. In the wake of his struggling companions he backed along the scored ice with the painful slowness of retreat. The cavalryman was urging his nervous horse on to the ice. Somewhere behind him the shrill rapid notes of the alert cut through the bitter morning air. Letting one end of the long quant drop on to the ice, Drinkwater drew the pistol from his waistband, throwing his cloak back over his shoulders to leave his arms free.
The cavalryman had succeeded in getting his horse on to the ice and it skittered nervously, throwing up its reined-in head so that flecks of bloody foam flew from its mouth. Drinkwater waited, the advancing man clearly visible, the scarlet pelisse hooked to the neck, the overalls and the tall-plumed busby marking him as an officer of the horse chasseurs of the Imperial Guard. Drinkwater knew in his gut that it was Lieutenant Dieudonne.
At fifty paces Drinkwater lifted his pistol. The misfire clicked impotently in the clear air and he thrust the weapon back in his belt.
'Pox!'
He gripped the quant and lifted it across his body like a quarterstaff. The uneven weight of the thing made him unsteady on the ice and he slithered, recovering his balance with difficulty. He looked back. Quilhampton and Castenada seemed a long way away from him, but so did the water. With a dry mouth he confronted Dieudonne.
'Ah! Capitaine Boire l'eau, eh?' The man was grinning beneath the fierce moustaches as he kicked his reluctant mount forwards. The horse was angled in his approach, apprehensively rolling its eyes. Dieudonne's left hand held both reins tight and the poor beast's neck was arched by the restraint. Drinkwater saw Dieudonne was trying to pull the animal's head round in order to clear his sword arm for the line of attack.
Cautiously Drinkwater slid his feet forward. He knew he had one chance, and one only, for his weapon was too cumbersome to retrieve after a first thrust.
Dieudonne succeeded in getting the horse's head swung long before Drinkwater's improvised lance was within striking distance, but his cautious advance had closed the distance a little more than the Frenchman had reckoned on.
The charger, mouth foaming and teeth bared as it fretted on the bit, loomed over him. Drinkwater foreshortened his weapon and allowing himself to be carried by the inertia of its swing, flung himself forward, thrusting the lance not at Dieudonne, but at the animal's legs. At the same time Dieudonne leaned forward, cutting down over the crupper, the sabre whistling past Drinkwater's head as he slipped and fell headlong. The charger reared with a screeching neigh, lifting its front hooves clear of the ice.
For a moment it pawed the air in a furious attempt to keep its balance but its weight, bearing now on its hind legs, was too much for the ice. The sudden and ominous crack provided Drinkwater with the stimulus he needed to galvanize his aching muscles. As he rolled clear of the horse it reared still further. Caught off balance Dieudonne slipped sideways, lost his left stirrup and lurched towards Drinkwater. He attempted to recover his sword, which dangled from its martingale, but Drinkwater seized his wrist and pulled back with all his weight. With a crash, the ice gave way beneath the horse and it was plunging up and down, neighing frantically and tossing its head as the cold water struck its loins. The turmoil broke the ice further. Dieudonne floundered half in the water, desperately trying to keep in the saddle and recover the sword that had slipped from his wrist. Drinkwater retreated on to firm ice, then saw the chasseur's sabre lying between them, on the edge of the hole the plunging horse was enlarging every second in its terror. Drinkwater edged forward; with the toe of a hessian boot he caught the sabre and drew it from Dieudonne's reach.
'Sir! Sir!'
As he bent to pick up the gilt-mounted sabre, Quilhampton's voice impinged on his consciousness. He looked round. Castenada and Quilhampton had the punt poised on the ice-edge. Quilhampton was waving frantically for him to follow. Beyond Dieudonne's desperately struggling mount more men, on foot and carrying carbines or muskets, were advancing across the frozen salt marsh.
He looked again at Dieudonne. The man was up to his breast in water. The terrible shock of the cold was plain on his face.
'M'aider! M'aider, M'sieur, j'implore …!'
Drinkwater thrust the long quant pole across the hole. ' Votre amis attendez-vous,' he managed in his best French and turned away.
The ice grew dangerously thin at the water's edge, but Quilhampton and Castenada, by luck or foresight, had found a ridge of gravel and launched the punt from its farther limit.
'Get in!' Drinkwater gasped as he slipped and slithered towards them.
Quilhampton lay in the stern as he reached them. 'Give the Doctor your pistol!' he called and Drinkwater did as he was bid, tumbling into the punt and collapsing breathlessly on the single, centre thwart. He felt the punt lurch and roll as Castenada clambered in, the big horse pistol in one hand, the powder flask in the other. A musket ball buzzed past them, then another, and they heard the sharp cracks bite the still air.
'You have to row, sir,' Quilhampton was saying, rousing him. 'Neither I nor the Doctor can do it, sir! You have to row!'
Still gasping, Drinkwater realized that he had stupidly considered himself safe once he reached the boat, so great had been his concentration in dismounting Dieudonne.
He shipped the oars and spun the boat round. What he saw when he was facing the shore spurred him to sudden, back-breaking effort. Twenty or thirty dismounted hussars, some kneeling, some standing, were aiming their carbines at the retreating boat and he could see the innocent puffs of smoke as they fired, and then the skilful manipulation of cartridge and ramrod. Little spurts of water jumped up all round the boat and a section of the coaming disintegrated in a shower of splinters, one of which struck Castenada in the face. He let out a yelp and the punt was struck again while several balls leapfrogged across the river's surface like stones thrown by boys playing ducks and drakes.