Seeing Margont’s grimaces of pain, Lefine took pity on him and held out his water bottle.

‘A drop of wine from the Wachau?’

Margont drank almost half of it.

‘That Austrian officer is definitely the murderer we’ve been looking for, Fernand. Not only did Relmyer recognise him, but also he deliberately fired at Relmyer before dashing off without giving any thought to the battle. He only mingled with the soldiers for one purpose: to kill Relmyer. And he would be dead had his horse not raised its head at that moment.’

‘The Wasp was saved by flies ... Yes, you’re right. But I don’t quite understand what was going on ...’

‘Neither do I. Let’s sum up what we know and try to see more clearly. First of all, I don’t think our man is a professional soldier. A professional fighter would have tried to finish me off He was not sure of succeeding even though I was injured on the ground and caught up in my stirrup. By the same token, when he did fire at me I was only a few feet away from him. He could have aimed at me but he preferred to make sure of his shot by wiping out my horse. He’s good with a rifle but not so good with a pistol.’

‘But over half the soldiers in the militia are originally from the regular army. They come directly from the army or, more often, they are veterans or have been invalided out.’

‘He’s too young to be a veteran, called back to service. As for being an invalid, right at this moment that applies to me more than to him ...’

‘Maybe he is a professional soldier but a non-combatant. An officer in charge of supplies, or a penpusher...’

Margont was feeling more and more groggy. The pain, like his

thoughts, was becoming less sharp, more diffuse. Sometimes the pain would come rushing back, making him clench his teeth and clarifying his reasoning, setting off glimmers of clear-sightedness in a fog of blurred thoughts.

‘No. If he had served in the regular army, he would have followed it at the end of 1805, when it was marching against us. But he was definitely in Vienna then because Albert Lietz and Ernst Runkel disappeared at that time, one of them in August, and the other in October. That means that there are several arguments pointing in one direction: our man is a civilian who enrolled in the militia. But he is an officer, either a lieutenant or a captain.’

‘Monarchies are keen on preserving the social hierarchy. Other officers of the Landwehr and the Volunteer force come from Viennese high society; they’re aristocrats, rich bourgeois, high-ranking functionaries ...’

‘We’re progressing! When one is lucky enough to be one of these “important people”, one can easily be tracked down. Perhaps our man is keen on hunting. That would explain his aptitude with a rifle and why he knows the forests round about here so perfectly. Did you interrogate the prisoners?’

They are as mute as carp. We captured fifty of them. Soldiers of the Landwehr of Lower Austria, and Viennese Volunteers.’

Margont shifted all the time, trying to find a less painful position. ‘We have to find out as much as possible about these two types of troops. Our man wore a particular uniform.’

‘I noticed that. Infantrymen are issued only with ill-cut grey overcoats with red facings they have to sew on themselves. Some of them don’t even have those and have to use their own coats. That devil of a man you chased after had a magnificent grey regulation coat with impeccable scarlet facings. But that would be the case for most officers of the Landwehr and the Volunteer regiments.’ Margont could not hide his disappointment.

‘So his uniform tells us nothing about him. Which units did we confront?’

‘At least two companies, one was the 3rd Battalion of the Landwehr of Lower Austria, and the other was the 2nd Battalion of the Viennese Volunteer force.’

‘So our man is an officer in one of those two battalions?’ Margont pulled himself up immediately. ‘Unless he was wearing a fake uniform - although that doesn’t seem possible because how would he have justified that to his superiors? - or he was accompanying the battalions but didn’t serve in either of them. He’s so tricky that you would expect him to have covered his tracks yet again. He knows the woods so well that he could have convinced the two companies to take him along as a guide to help them organise the ambush.’

‘While you’re waiting for an orderly to be free to stitch you up, I will go and find out what I can. According to the last estimates, Austria has lined up more than a hundred thousand militia. And to that they have added the Volunteer regiments. So their lieutenants and captains can be counted in their thousands ... The man we’re looking for lives in Vienna or nearby. The militias are organised by region. A priori, he must therefore serve in the Viennese Landwehr, in the Landwehr of Lower Austria or in the Viennese

Volunteer regiment. Let’s begin by finding out about the two battalions that attacked us. That will already be a start.’

Margont racked his brain for an idea, for a new approach.

‘If we succeed in convincing one of the prisoners to give us the names of the officers of the two battalions ...’

‘I don’t think they’ll even know them. The Landwehr was hurriedly thrown together in June 1808. A hundred thousand militiamen had to be organised in under a year. As for the Viennese Volunteers, that’s an old formation that has disappeared and been resurrected regularly since 1797. It’s made up of civilian volunteers who were exempt from serving in the Landwehr. The Viennese Volunteer force hastily re-formed on 1 March while we were marching on Vienna. Most have been soldiers for only three months and they are even more confused about this war than anyone else. Did you notice, several of them didn’t even open fire during the attack, because certain regiments of Austrian hussars also wear green pelisses. They took Relmyer’s hussars for Austrians and they shouted at them to stop fighting; it was a misunderstanding!’

Margont sat up and was overcome by a wave of pain, which jerked him sharply out of his alcoholic haze.

‘So how is it possible? We are relentlessly looking for someone and they turn up in front of us, as if by magic! Where is Relmyer? I want to talk to him - oh, yes! I would be grateful if you would bring him here.’

*

Relmyer had been wearing himself out trying to extract information from the prisoners, but in vain. When he came to see Margont with Lefine, his face cleared.

‘You seem to have recovered already.’

‘Lukas, you must take us for imbeciles!’ retorted Margont. ‘It’s absolutely unthinkable that this was a coincidence! Someone betrayed us by telling our man the route that we were going to take.’ Relmyer blinked at this reception.

‘If it wasn’t a coincidence, well ... there must have been a leak ...

Perhaps one of my hussars mentioned it to someone ...’

‘He’s lying to us,’ Lefinetold Margont.

Margont suddenly made the link between two apparently unrelated events and everything became clear. He pointed furiously at Relmyer.

‘It’s you who betrayed us. This expedition came about in exactly the same way as your duel with Piquebois. Antoine is fiercesome with a sabre, so you knowingly launched a risky attack. Thinking you had made an error, he dodged and launched his own attack. Antoine could not pass up such an opportunity to triumph! His attack obliged him to expose himself in his turn and your riposte hit him. Your first attack, which put you in danger, was solely intended to incite your opponent to act. So, you launch your second attack and the biter is bit; your opponent collapses, skewered. You arranged it so that the man we’re tracking learnt that you were going to lead an expedition into hostile territory. That journey through the forest was your “first attack’’. It led your adversary to show himself in order to try to kill you, which permitted you to counterattack.'