The Viper, whose visits to Great Britain usually restricted themselves to crowded, sulfurous London, marveled that there should be two hundred square miles of England as desolate as Dartmoor.
A man traveled leagues through green wooded lowland, ideal for fox hunting, topped a rise, and found himself suddenly on the surface of the moon: great gray stretches of bleak moors pierced with jagged projectiles of stone and rock huts. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see a man emerge from one wearing animal skins and carrying a spear. At unpredictable intervals, swamp gas erupted in the mire, deploying eerie blue domes like umbrellas and stinking worse than an open sewer. The place existed perpetually on the verge, or in the aftermath, of a gray drizzling rain.
If a man believed in hell, this was it.
The local constabulary had posted signs to warn visitors away from the treacherous bogs, a well-meaning but perfunctory effort that seemed to have lost its novelty after the first few turnings. The danger didn’t end where the signs did, only the campaign.
It was no wonder Georges Cadoudal should have chosen this place to train his people in the art of killing Republicans.
The property belonged to one of the general’s Cutthroat benefactors, who if he had ever inspected it in person had probably blotted the directions from his memory. The absentmindedness of the English was often their best defense against a personal-injury suit: Milord Chief Magistrate, I can scarcely be held accountable for accidents that take place on a tract of land I haven’t visited in a generation.
With a Swiss compass and a map drawn on vellum during the reign of Charles I, the Viper guided his horse along a path worn by wild ponies and feral hogs and at midday came upon the property, identified by a rocky tor in the east shaped like a reclining beast (locals called this the Sleeping Lion, and had named a public house for it) and a copse of ancient-growth oaks to the northwest, as broad in girth as castle keeps. He knew he was in the right place when he directed his field glass on a goatskin bag suspended from the gallows arm of a post in a large level patch some three hundred paces off the path. The careless fools had overlooked this makeshift target when they abandoned the camp.
Folding the glass, he dismounted and led his horse that direction, testing the ground carefully with each step as the sodden loam squished round his boots.
For a long time the bag seemed to maintain the same distance; it was deceptive country, designed for sinister purposes. The horse didn’t care for it, and made no secret of the fact, snorting and blowing as it picked its way among rocks carried there by glaciers and left behind like jagged droppings.
At last the Viper drew near enough to see that the goatskin was torn open just below the middle. Clumps of sodden sawdust clung to the ragged edges and a heap of wet sand formed a cone on the earth beneath the bag, from where it had spilled. Here the earth was sound. He remounted, kneed the horse close to the object, leaned down, and gave it a push. The bag, roughly the size and shape of a human torso, moved reluctantly, swinging heavy and sodden from the frayed rope. Enough sand remained to replicate the heft of an adult male of average size.
Cadoudal had boasted of his lung power on the battlefield. His voice echoed in the Viper’s head as if he’d been present during maneuvers: Swing low, mes enfants, and put your backs into it. Brace yourself with your foot and twist the bayonet as you pull it out. Men have been known to survive stabbing, but never evisceration.
The rider pressed his lips together in his phantom smile. Alien creature, this bellowing soldier, who would paint the earth with blood and entrails but scrupled against slaying one man to spare all the rest.
This dummy warrior spared him from having to fashion a target of his own.
He urged the horse another forty paces at a walk, swung down, and tethered it to a low twisted root to charge his fine pistols. He’d left the cumbersome cherrywood case behind. Now he reached inside the leather drawstring bag strapped around his waist, removed two paper cartridges filled with powder from the flask, and slid them down inside the muzzles, followed by balls and wadding. He tamped it all down using the slim wooden ramrod.
He handled the cartridges with extreme caution. The powder inside contained a substance called fulminate of mercury, last year’s invention by Edward Howard of the Royal Society of London. It was several times more powerful than conventional gunpowder and expelled projectiles with greater velocity, using smaller amounts; but it was also several times more volatile. One errant spark, a tremor of the hand, and the world would hear no more from the Viper.
In his room off Knightsbridge, he’d tempted fate further. With a jeweler’s saw he’d split the leaden balls in half and hollowed them out with an ordinary nutpick. He’d then poured fulminate powder into the hollows, varying the amount of grains and marking each ball distinctively with the pick after fusing the halves back together in the handpress. He carried the loads in separate pouches in his courier’s belt, lest they collide with one another. It wouldn’t serve to travel with them in his luggage for any employee of an inn to stumble upon while unpacking.
No one to his knowledge had ever attempted what he was about.
There was a high likelihood that when he pulled the trigger the charge inside the ball would ignite and turn the weapon into a bomb, and the shooter into the victim.
He experimented. He wedged one of the pistols between two rocks, tied a cotton cord to the trigger, and withdrew ten paces, unrolling the cord from the spool. Pulling the cord taut, he drew a deep breath, held it, and jerked.
The hammer fell, the flint sparked, the cartridge flared, and with a thunderous crack! Nicholas Boutet’s beautiful workmanship split apart at the breech, flinging the firing mechanism and barrel in two directions.
The horse whistled and fought its tether. It held.
The Viper composed himself in thought.
At length, he retrieved the other pistol and charged the barrel, selecting a ball he’d marked differently from the first, containing a smaller load. He repeated himself, fitting the pistol between the blackened rocks, tying a fresh cord, and retracing his steps the same distance.
He hesitated, holding the cord. Another failure and he’d have to replace his weapon with an unfamiliar one, and likely inferior. But he must know.
He pulled the cord. The pistol bucked, but the ball flew from the muzzle and out across the moor until it spent itself, landing noiselessly on the wet ground.
But he was unsatisfied. If rocks could not hold the pistol steady, would his hand? Would his aim be true? He must know.
He cleaned and oiled the pistol with items retrieved from his saddle pouch, reloaded it with a ball containing the fulminate, raised the pistol to shoulder level, and extended it at arm’s length, lining up the iron sight with the goatskin bag hanging from the gallows post. He’d be much closer to his target on the day—much, much closer—but accuracy at a distance ensured success at close range. He filled his lungs once again and counted to three.…
Steel struck flint. The powder caught. A spurt of orange- and-yellow flame separated ball from barrel. The weapon pulsed in his hand like a living creature, but his grip held firm. His hand moved no more than a centimeter off level.
Time seemed to sag in the interval; in reality it was the smallest fraction of a second. Then the goatskin exploded with a report as loud as the first, but with results more satisfying. When the smoke slid aside, a scrap of skin no larger than a man’s scalp swung free at the end of the rope.
He went down to investigate, walking through a rotten-egg stench of brimstone. Fresh sawdust and sand—the bag’s entrails—lay in a pile at the base of the post.
The Viper knelt and ran a hand through the mess. Grains of sand slid between his fingers. Bits of sawdust clung to his palm.
He stood and wiped them off on his breeches. He was satisfied to the point of elation. No one could survive such destruction; not even the Strong Man of France.