A note from the author: As always, darlings, translations are at the end of the chapter if they're not directly tackled in the text. Also, a tiny warning: there's a rather gory moment at the chapter's near-close. Do enjoy.

September Fare

It was a balmy evening in mid-September that saw Sally and Rose - released from their duties in the presently wondrously quiet triage for a little while lest they both end up stark raving - wandering back from the local village with baskets of wares in hand. The trip wasn't a chance for slacking, much as the ladies laughed and smiled as they chattered on their way to and from the homestead on the edge of the settlement. The soldiers based at their encampment protected the area; kept the war that raged around them as far off as they possibly could. In return for that good grace the villagers donated what food they could spare, and today's offerings were full of promise.

"There's honey in here, Rose!" Sally giggled, pushing the cloth topper of her basket aside to reveal the bounty within. "Honey and apples and fresh bread too!"

"I've the same!" Rose beamed. "Along with four portions of cured meat and-" She tested the basket's weight. "What must be four slabs of butter, going on the heft to this. I could knock a man out if I swing it at his head!"

"Knock a horse out, more like" Sally chortled, adjusting her burden against her hip as they wandered on. The road was straight for a good while yet, the route uncomplex between camp and village. Truth be they were once part of the same settlement; what was now the camp being the farthest-most farmstead the village counted as its own. Not a twenty minute walk each way, the path was cobbled and ran along the edge of a well-tended wheat field that was slowly being relieved of its spring crop. Golden heads, a little like Sally's, bobbed here and there in the gentle breeze; in the beginnings of dusk's low, warm light.

A crackle of distant gunfire turned both women on an English penny. They clasped at each other with their free hands, eyes searching, halfway towards the ditch between the path and the forest that sat snugly against its untended edge before either much realised they'd moved at all. Get low and be quiet when gunfire sounded; that was what they'd been taught back at camp. Get low, be quiet, abandon what you're carrying and make haste for safe ground. Your life is worth more to us here than any wares you might bring back.

Their surrounds crackled again, no closer but no further away either. They were at least twenty minutes out from the camp.

"We need to leave!" Rose whispered, her voice harsh and low; close to her friend's ear. She clung to Sally's hand with all she had, tugged at her but she was rooted where she stood. Fixed on a spot back the way they'd come. Rose tugged her again, rasped her name. "Sally!?"

It was then she saw what her friend did. Perhaps one hundred metres back there strolled a lone cavalryman. The gathering dark did nothing to help them discern his appearance from this distance, but the flag the man might have appeared to fly mattered less than dirt to Rose in that moment. She'd be damned if she was going to let some rogue enemy get the jump on her because she was used to mounted guardsmen getting under foot. Quick as a wink, she dropped her basket and hauled stunned Sally down off the road and into the underbrush. The woman's basket crashed to the floor, her half-squawked protest dying the moment she felt the prickle of dried and desiccated foliage on her palms. They huddled there, tense and still but for their breathing as the realisation that'd moved Rose at such a clip dawned too on Sally, and the cavalryman they'd both seen but neither recognised moved up on them.

Hoof-beats announced him, slow and easy and unsuited to the situation unfolding around them; to the cough and splutter of gunfire that was carried on the wind. He should be panicked, Rose thought, in a rush to escape or to rejoin the battle. But no. Here he was, easing his mount to a halt without a word and leaning, his tack and armour creaking ominously, to inspect the baskets she and Sally had abandoned. Here he was, his sword slowly unsheathed and used to knock the apples they'd carried loose with a nudge; sending a couple rolling, falling down upon the women in the underbrush. Both caught whimpers behind their teeth as the cavalryman lingered, looked over for the lost fruits and, by the grace of God, Rose was sure, God, earth coloured dresses and the dimming light, missed their presence by sight.

He remained for not a minute or two, but to Sally and Rose the time stretched into eternity. Quiet murmurings passed between cavalryman and steed, too low to be made out by their listening ears. Both man and beast were ever wary of traps set by the enemy; of ambushes sprung from treelines and ditches; across fields. But here? Here on this road and through these square miles they and their ilk kept safe? No. There was too great an allied presence for intruders to go unfound for long enough to set up anything so demanding of secrecy. Straightening in the saddle, the cavalryman sheathed his blade and nudged his horse onward.

"Schnell, Gänger" he said.

In the ditch, at those words and the echo of hooved steps, Sally and Rose went wide eyed.

"German!" Sally hushed excitedly, the bubble of tension that the presence of the unknown man had caused popping like so many spent soap suds. "He's Hessian, Rose! We're alright!" she enthused, scrabbling through the tangled branches and vines Rose had secreted them beneath to reach the path. Her skirts smeared with mud, leaves and twigs everywhere, she'd have looked a right sight to the Hessian rider had he still been close enough to see her. All she saw of him though was a shadowed shape prowling through the gold wide open on the other side of the path. He was moving at a brisk clip due east, off to do only Heaven knew what, and Sally felt herself smiling after him; relieved after so great a scare that they had, in fact, been in no danger. Such remained her opinion even as Thomas' wild tale about the man he'd called the Devil to their enemies came back to her and led her into drawing quiet parallels between the mounted man in the field and the Hessian fiend who was an ally to the English and ostensibly roamed these wilds. It couldn't be him, she told herself. Myths and legends were just those; comforting tales for young men to hear and tell and aspire to. They didn't walk these paths, and certainly didn't amuse themselves by nudging apples about the place with swords.

A sickly cough at her back drew her gaze round to Rose, a thick copper tang hitting her the moment she turned and faced her that sent her mind blank for thoughts of dark Reiters. Rose had clambered from the ditch not seconds after Sally, but was so close behind her on the ascent that she'd had to escape their muddy, leafy hide a few feet further along the path than her friend had. It was only when she stood, almost losing her footing to a new slickness on the cobbles, that she looked down at herself and realised what that slickness was.

Mortified and fighting down the urge to gag herself, Sally ripped the apron she wore off before Rose could speak a word, turned its clean inner side outwards and offered it to her as she approached. Neither woman could rightly claim to be squeamish about blood so far into their work at the camp, but that didn't make its sudden appearance, scent, or the sensation of so much of it on the skin either pleasant or less of a shock.

The doffed apron set to wiping off her hands as best she could, Rose edged away from the half-coagulated pool to free herself of its scent and quell the urge she had to vomit. Sally followed her closely, seeing to the knot on the back of Rose's apron so she could remove the sodden thing the moment she had the focus to. Presently though, she was all hands and words.

"No one could be as calm and methodical as he was if they were bleeding like that" she said, the words tumbling out on a tight breath as she wiped furiously between her fingers with the rough cloth. "No one. That's death's blood. Gouts of it. There's no way- No way on Earth-"

"If it's not his, then where did it come from?" Sally pressed, glancing along the path each way and then back out over the field. She'd lost sight of the horseman now. It was an effort not to worry about him. "The horse?"

"With a gait that steady?" Rose shook her head, finally tugging her apron off and tossing it over the glinting pool. The garment was a lost cause. It may as well be put to its final use deterring flies for as long as possible. "We've seen them go lame at camp from a poorly placed foot. No horse would be up and walking after losing all that, no matter how well trained it is."

The ladies looked at each other for a long moment then, trying to process what they'd come upon and what they could, or should, do about it. Instinct told them to hightail it back to camp as fast as their feet could carry them. The rippling gun fire, Hessian guards wandering the byways or not, was enough to turn them both to stone with fear; never mind mysteriously appearing, unexplainable pools of half dried, slowly thickening, blackening blood. Duty though, their duty to the men their camp housed and their triage cared for, tugged at them each differently. It drew Rose's attention to their fallen baskets, and Sally's to the break in the fence through which the rider had slipped into the wheat field. She was fastening one of her small kerchiefs the post nearest to the break when her friend called to her.

"Help me with these, Sally. I don't want to touch the wares with messed hands, and we need to get back."

"Let me just-" Slender fingers gave the kerchief a final tug into place. "There."

"What's that for?" Rose wondered, welcoming Sally at her side to shore up and repack as much of the baskets' contents as she could. Blessedly none of it had ended up caked in the gore left in the horseman's wake.

"I'm going to tell the guard captain about all this. You know, Brandt?"

The implication of cheek in Sally's tone perked Rose's mood up a hint. She knew Captain Brandt quite well, certainly, though nowhere near as improperly as her counterpart loved to tease her about. "I haven't a clue who you mean" she replied, giggling softly as they hoisted their baskets and got on their way. Messed hands or not, she could heft. "Is that your favour left for him? That slip of cloth on that post?"

Sally spluttered in faux indignance. "Oh my dear, I couldn't usurp you like that" she said, hurrying along to put distance between them and the hellish pool; to distract Rose from what'd happened. "Really though, I want to give him directions back here. There aren't any better markers on the way, so 'where I tied my kerchief to that fence post' will need to do."

A frown creased Rose's brow at that. The woman had more hope in her than was wise, at times. "…I doubt that Hessian will be alive for Brandt to find if I'm wrong and that blood was his. You do know that, Sally..."

"I do" Sally nodded, solemn again after their jestful moment. "But I know as well that I didn't recognise him; not by voice or sight or steed. Brandt might, if he finds him. If he really was bleeding that badly and-" Her expression pinched in distaste. "Expires, in that field. It'll put his family's minds at ease to know he died fighting; to not just have to wait and wait and wait, never knowing what became of him."

The lanterns were lit by the time Sally and Rose returned to camp. Their state drew offers of aid as quickly as their baskets of provisions did greedy fingers; Ms Taymar, Dr Hall and none other than Captain Brandt gathering round first to hear their story - once the cloud of concerned faces milled back to their evening business - and to then whisk them into the triage for a wash before lights out. What they shared of their experience was nothing new to Brandt, much as he didn't let on as much in front of such delicate company. It wasn't for them to hear about what men like the one they saw today got up to in warzones; to hear that he himself, cordial and friendly to them, always willing to speak and listen, routinely cleaved enemies in twain when battle was joined without second thought or waver.

They knew already, but didn't know.

He wouldn't be the one to destroy that innocence. He would however ride out and cast eyes around, during his night time patrol, for the Hessian cavalryman Sally and Rose swore they'd seen. The man sounded like a mercenary from their vague descriptions; the absence of uniform colours giving him away as either the puppet of some German princeling or a once-soldier with a taste for killing. Neither sort sat highly on Brandt's confidence or trust scale, but he wouldn't turn his nose up right off if the man was working in ways that benefited him and his men.

It was midnight when the small corps Brandt selected from the sum of the Home guard's membership rode out, lanterns at their fore and aft, onto the cobbled road beyond the camp. September lent a coolness to the evenings that'd been missing for too long, and it gave the lads an air of jollity as they kept up their guard. There were four of them but for the captain; Hessians, Thomas and Eduard, and Englishmen, Peter and Michael. Brandt himself hailed from Saxony, but split his time and his tongue between his countrymen and the gents from the isles more or less equally. Favouritism only had one place in his company - the card table. Otherwise, "Wir sind alle gleich."

We are all the same.

They came upon the wheat field, the cotton slip tied to a post near a break in the fence intact still, like the piled aprons and the blood, now dry, on the floor. Three of the four men were to wait where they stood while one and the captain trod the path the horseman had earlier. It was Thomas who won the toss; though he was unsure, looking back at his comrades as he and his mare Astrid followed Brandt's lantern through the dim, whether that was good luck on his part or bad. The same wild tales that had sprung to Sally's mind when she'd watched the dark rider disappear into the field all clamoured in his head now; the exploits of the infamous Horseman feeling just a little too...close to him for comfort while he was out in the open, wheat stalks brushing his knees, instead of on the balcony wrapped up in his storytelling sheet.

The young man was so lost in his thoughts that the scent of copper on the air didn't register as real until Brandt's iron hand locked on his reins and stilled his mount. There, in a clearing roughly hewn by sword strikes near the edge of the field, stood what from the back, to Thomas, looked like a raggedy scarecrow. He looked to Brandt, confused.

"Was geht?" he asked. What's going on?

The captain shook his head, swallowed thickly, then moved to dismount. "Nicht bewegen" he ordered. Do not move. Not one inch, he added in his mind as he edged closer to the spectacle before him. The scarecrow-looking-thing was lit up by a small fire near its base - made and tended for a while before being abandoned. The flames licked up at the cool air, casting light and forming shadows over it and its immediate surrounds. A hint of uniform caught Brandt's eye as he neared - not English or Hessian - shallow breaths and beads of sweat brought from the heat and the smell, less panic at what he saw. Looking up as rounded the tableau, his breath caught; nausea hitting him square in the gut.

This was no scarecrow by any man or God's definition. This was a man recently gutted, his viscera hanging low near his knees. A dagger had taken his throat back to the spine; the corners of his mouth back to his ears. His head was arched back, tied there with twine. Already, the crows had taken his eyes.

"Was geht?!" Thomas called again, concerned and mounted still. He moved to approach, to guide his horse closer, but Brandt had him figured before he could.

"VERLASSEN THOMAS!" he roared. "LAUF JUNGE! ZURÜCK ZU CAMP! HILFE BEKOMMEN! LAUF!"

Thomas didn't need any more telling. He spun his horse and spurred it like hell was on his heels the entire journey back to camp. It would take captain Brandt, the remainder of his corps and the help that Thomas returned with two hours to cut the butchered man down. The ladies at the triage weren't told then that he was the source of the blood, nor were they given any cause to believe, when Thomas turned up on the balcony the morning after his night in the wheat field looking sickly pale and drawn, that he was suffering from anything more sinister than a bit of an upset stomach.

Translations:

"Schnell, Gänger" Quickly, Daredevil (Gänger is the Horseman's preferred contraction of the word Draufgänger, which translates literally as Daredevil.

"VERLASSEN THOMAS! LAUF JUNGE! ZURÜCK ZU CAMP! HILFE BEKOMMEN! LAUF!" Leave Thomas! Run Boy! Back to camp! Get help! Run!