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De Brissac hauled his horse up. "De Montreval. Where is the Emperor?"

Rodrick nodded toward Louise. "D'Arc here borrowed his wardrobe and took the hounds off his scent. He can take you to the Emperor."

Louise turned on him. "Rodrick—"

Hooves thundered through the trees. Rodrick looked toward the eastern copse. Blue coats broke through the trunks, white Bourbon cockades flashing beneath their shakos. Too many.

"Go," Rodrick ordered the Gascon. "I'll buy you time."

Louise shook her head. "I won't leave without you."

Rodrick met de Brissac's eyes. The Gascon understood at once and closed his mighty hand over Brutus's bridle.

Louise grappled with him for the reins, but de Brissac drove his heels in, and Brutus surged forward. Louise twisted in the saddle, screaming.

Rodrick turned his back on them all.

The pursuing cavalry broke from the trees. The exits presented themselves—the drainage ditch to the left, the lower ground beyond the hedge, Napoleon's horse farther down the slope if the horse still had enough strength to carry another rider. And yet his legs were stuck in the ground. His hands hung useless at his sides, and the space beneath his ribs had gone hollow, emptied of the mechanism that drove him toward the next plan.

Napoleon's coat lay across his arm. Rodrick looked down at it and laughed. The tragic hero had been given one opportunity to command operations and had promptly constructed an entire future out of hope.

This was what came of allowing poetry into strategy.

He pulled the gray coat over his shoulders. It was too tight across the back. Then he held the hat aloft. Let the Royalists believe Rodrick was the man who had drawn their squadron away from Napoleon. Let them believe the deception had been his from the beginning.

Rodrick stood in the open field, gray coat straining across his shoulders, and waited. His pulse remained dull beneath his collar, each beat arriving as if out of habit rather than conviction.

The tragic hero had wanted fate, surrender, sacrifice, and all the other expensive nonsense men mistook for meaning.

He had been indulged.

Rodrick fixed his gaze on the riders coming toward him.

From now on, the bastard was dead.

***

Louise gasped as the Royalist riders moved in an arc, cutting off the road north, then the road south, until only the small circle of trampled field remained. Rodrick stood in the middle of it. He was not running. He looked at her as Brutus carried her farther away. No anger crossed his face, no accusation.

The light of his gaze had gone out, taking from her that bright force that made every moment matter. Her stomach dropped so hard that she nearly folded over the pommel.

De Brissac's hand closed over the reins before she could turn Brutus.

"Let go."

"Parbleu, I will not. There are forty white-cockaded sons of carrion down there, and if you ride at them alone they will shoot you out of the saddle before your saber clears the scabbard."

Louise drove her elbow into his ribs. The Gascon grunted, his body pitching sideways, and she rammed both heels into Brutus. The stallion lunged hard enough to snap her backward in the saddle. For half a stride she thought she had broken free. Then de Brissac caught the reins again.

Louise dragged with both hands. Leather burned through her gloves. Brutus flung his head up, metal ringing between his teeth as they pulled him in opposite directions.

"Let go of my horse!"

"You witless little fire-eater, if you are determined to die, find a respectable cliff and throw yourself from it."

"I can reach him."

"You can reach Saint Peter. Him, you cannot."