Bloodied Dreaming

He rode a dying gelding into the camp, dismounted, and shot the horse through its beating eyes. Men stirred in the early morning light, casting pails of filth into the mud and chuckling amongst themselves as they bartered bread for tobacco. They did not react to the gunshot, instead casting hostile eyes at the epaulettes on the man’s shoulders. The Grande Army of Napoleon Bonaparte were used to the unnecessary cruelties of their officers.

Ivan Anokhin holstered the smoking gun and nodded his greetings at a young man opposite who was shaving; a small fellow, with close-cropped hair and a crooked birthmark above his right eye. The man grinned through the cream caked on his cheeks and gestured to a small nick on his jaw.

“Made me cut myself, Sir.” 

Ivan smiled tightly. 

“There will be more blood than that spilt today.” 

I am sorry. I am so sorry.

The man laughed and offered Ivan a cigarette which he accepted. A match was struck, the cigarette was lit, and Ivan perched on a barrel beside the man. 

“You have a strange accent, friend.” The man remarked, “Tell me, where do you come from?” 

“Vermont.” Ivan said shortly. He paused, and then added; “I was educated in Russia. I have always been told it is noticeable.”

The man nodded and brushed his razor roughly across his neck. 

“What is your name?”

“Christophe.” The man answered, never taking his eyes off a small, dirty mirror. “Private Christophe Brun.” 

“Are you afraid, Christophe?”

The man paused, and then resumed his shaving. 

“We are all afraid, Sir, but I trust in God and more than that, I trust in our Emperor.”

“A fine answer.” Ivan flicked away his cigarette and stood, smoothing his tunic. “You have a steady hand Private Brun, but you wince when you are lying.” 

The man laughed again, this time without humour. 

Ivan smiled sadly and walked away. The camp was in the process of readying itself for war. Horses screamed and stamped as men swore and tugged thin white gloves onto grubby fingers, rummaging for their bayonets. 

Forgotten souls led to their deaths by the devil. I will save them. 

He took out his pistol again and loaded the pretty flintlock. It had been simple to commandeer the officer’s uniform, but how exactly he did it, Ivan could not recall. 

He came to a large crimson tent in the centre of the camp and dallied outside. Nearby, a small table held a mahogany box of duelling pistols and Ivan made his way toward it. He plucked one of them from its silken casing, checked its barrel, and tucked it covertly under his jacket.

It never hurts to have another.

Breathing carefully, Ivan straightened his uniform and raised his eyes toward a gaggle of geese carving the sky. He could hear them honking, a ludicrous sound before battle. 

I’m ready.

Ivan nodded at the guards and entered the tent. Inside, a large table took up most of the space, sporting a grandiose map of the hills of Austerlitz. Two men were already in the tent; a clean-shaven officer with a high forehead was leaning on the table, knocking the soot from his pipe, and another man sat slumped in his chair. The Emperor of France was thin-faced and potbellied, with watery grey eyes that flicked expectantly upward as Ivan entered. 

“What is it?” Napoleon Bonaparte asked.

Ivan smiled, brought out his pistol, and shot the officer in the throat. Blood splattered the map and gushed into the exotic rugs carpeting the tent. 

Napoleon jumped to his feet and Ivan ran at him – sinking a gloved hand into the Frenchman’s nose. He clasped the much shorter man by his neck and pulled out his second pistol. The barrel drilled into Napoleon’s thinning hair. 

A dozen men stormed in, shouting wildly with raised muskets. 

“Halt!” Ivan roared. 

He could feel the small man squirming under his grip and grinned manically.

“I have your Emperor!” 

The guns faltered. 

It is his fault. It is all his fault.

“What do you want, soldier?” Napoleon said haltingly, “You are Russian, yes?”

“Shut your fucking mouth.” Ivan said and battered his gun against the side of the man’s head. 

The muskets were raised again, and Ivan shifted his weight so that Napoleon stood before him and the imperial guard.

“What I want…” Ivan began and then hesitated. He had a speech planned but now found the words juvenile and repulsive. 

“I want nothing but peace between brothers.” He said finally. “I want an end to war and to death and to foolishness.” 

“You beg for peace with a gun?” Napoleon said.

“I don’t beg, I demand.” 

Just do it.

Ivan laughed and squeezed the trigger. He felt the jolt as the man’s life left his body. Warmth splashed across his cheeks and dripped from his ears. He fondled blood and shrapnel upon his tongue. 

Musket rounds chorused into the din; bullet after bullet tearing through the Emperor into Ivan’s stomach and shoulder and heart. 

Ivan laughed and laughed and laughed. 

He could still feel the pain of the bullets digging into his shoulder, yet when he raised his hand to his cheek the blood of Napoleon was missing. 

He opened his eyes. 

The slope of the Pratzen heights had shone like beaten gold hours earlier. Now, shrouded in cannon smoke, the hill had become quagmire and grave. 

The horse was still screaming. 

God, I wish it would die. Please, Lord, strike it down. What I wouldn’t do to kill that damn horse.

It had been a pleasant fantasy he had created. A spiralling daydream, wrung with such ludicrous reality that he could have been asleep. 

To his left, the French soldier was still sprawled. Close-cropped hair, a crooked birthmark, and Ivan’s bayonet buried in his throat.

“Are you really called Christophe?” Ivan said aloud. He couldn’t remember why he had chosen that particular name. 

Brun for his hair, that’s right.

The boy had looked so afraid, so very afraid. Ivan had spent the past hour bleeding out from his shrapnel wound and staring at the Frenchman’s face. His eyes kept on returning to the fleck of shaving cream on the man’s jaw. The human imperfection terrified him. 

He sat this morning, in front of a mirror like my own, with a razor like my own, having a shave like myself.

He shifted his weight and turned away. The small effort almost broke him. 

Ivan remembered the look of shock on Napoleon’s face, felt the catharsis of killing the man once again, and chuckled.

He rolled onto his back and stared at the sky. He thought he could see geese above but it was only the illusions of shadowed cloud. 

Another cannon salvo fired in the distance and a man screamed. 

Ivan coughed and dribbled.

I cannot see the sun.