ONE

      The tall young officer stood a few yards out in front of the company of redcoats and stared up at the fort that towered above them on the hill. For two hours now he had been awaiting the order to advance and with every passing moment the enemy position looked more forbidding. Like almost every man in the army, he had the greatest admiration and respect for his Commander-in-Chief. But at this precise moment he had begun to wonder whether, truly, this entire enterprise might not be doomed to failure. He tried to banish the thought. To maintain some degree of sang-froid before his men. But as he did so, the first cannonball fell in front of the three ranks of red-coated infantry, bounced up from the springy turf with grisly precision, and carried away four of them in a welter of blood and brains.

      ‘Feeling the heat, Mister Steel?’

      The Lieutenant looked up. Silhouetted against the sun a tall figure in a full-bottomed wig peered down at him from horseback.

      ‘A trifle, Sir James.’

      ‘A trifle, eh? I’d have thought that you’d have been used to it after, how many years a soldier?’

      ‘Nigh on a dozen, Colonel.’

      ‘But of course. How could I forget? You earned your spurs in the Northern wars, did you not? Fighting the Rooshians. A little colder there I dare say.’

      ‘A little, Colonel.’

      ‘Can’t imagine why you should have wanted to go there at all. Narva, Riga? What sort of battles were those, eh?’

      The question was not intended to have a reply.

      ‘Well, Steel, what think you of our chances today? Shall we do it?’

      ‘I believe that we can, Sir. Though it will not be easily done.’

      ‘No, indeed. Yet we must take this town. It is the key to the Danube and the gateway to Bavaria. And to do that we needs must take the fort. And we must do it by frontal assault. There is no other way. You would say, Steel, that the rules of war dictate we must do it by siege. And you would be right. But we have no siege guns and thus our Commander-in-Chief, His Grace the Duke of Marlborough, dictates that this is the way it shall be done. And so it shall. We will attack up that hill into the face of their guns.’

      He paused and shook his head. ‘Our casualties will be heavy. God knows, Steel, this is not the proper way to win a battle. It will not be like any of the battles you saw with the Swedes, I’ll warrant. Eh? Rooshians and Swedes, Steel. Indeed I can’t fathom what you saw in it. No Rooshians today, Steel. Only the French and their Bavarian friends to beat. Still. Hot work, eh? Good day to you.’

      Colonel Sir James Farquharson laughed, touched his hat to the young Lieutenant and trotted away down the line of the battalion, his voice echoing above the rising cannonfire as he shouted greetings to the other company commanders of the advance storming party:

      ‘Good afternoon, Charles. Good day to you, Henry. We dine in Donauwörth this evening, I believe.’

      Steel shook his head and smiled. Yes, he thought. He could see why Sir James would not understand the reasons why he should have wished to fight with the Swedes. That it would never occur to his Colonel to take yourself off to find a war. Soldiering for Sir James Farquharson was a gentlemanly affair. A thing of parades and banners. But if there was one thing that Jack Steel had learnt in the last twelve years it was that there was nothing gentlemanly about war. Nothing whatsoever.

      He turned his head towards his men. Saw the lines being redressed by the sergeants and the corporals, the bloody gaps filled up from the rear with fresh troops. The dismembered bodies being dragged away.

      ‘The Colonel seems happy, Sir. Do you suppose he thinks we’re going to win?’

      The surprisingly mellifluous voice belonged to Steel’s Sergeant, Jacob Slaughter. Six foot two of Geordie and the only man in the company broader and taller than Steel himself. Gap-toothed, loose-limbed Sergeant Slaughter, who had run away to join the colours to avoid being sent to work in the new coal mines of County Durham. Towering Sergeant Slaughter who was so terrified of small spaces, who couldn’t abide the dark and was unutterably clumsy in all manner of things. But who, on the field of battle was a man transformed, as skilled and calculating a killer as Steel had ever encountered. A man