Normandy smelled of rot.
Not the clean rot of autumn leaves. The sickly sweet rot of unburied bodies.
I rode at the head of the column. My horse, a massive black destrier, picked its way through the mud.
Behind me, the Old Guard marched in silence.
Two thousand men. The elite of the elite. Bearskin hats soaking up the rain. Mustaches drooping.
They didn't complain. They didn't speak. They knew this wasn't a glorious campaign. It was a liquidation.
General Bonaparte rode next to me.
He was hunched in his saddle. His grey coat was stained with mud. He held a silver flask to his lips.
Glug. Glug.
He wiped his mouth. His eyes were red-rimmed.
"How much further, Michel?" he rasped.
"Ten miles to Gaillon, sir," I said. "If the map is right."
"The map is right," Napoleon muttered. "The Accountant is never wrong."
We crested a hill.
Below us, a village lay in the valley.
It was burning.
Flames licked at the thatched roofs. Smoke coiled into the grey sky.
But it wasn't soldiers burning it.
It was the villagers.
I raised my telescope.
It was a scene from Hell.
Men and women were tearing at each other in the mud. They weren't fighting over food. They were fighting over nothing.
They were screaming. Clawing at their own faces.
"Blue Drop withdrawal," I whispered.
The drug had run out three days ago. Now the madness was setting in.
A group of peasants was breaking down the doors of a granary. They weren't taking the grain. They were setting it on fire.
"Purify!" one of them screamed. "Burn the hunger!"
"General," I said, lowering the glass. "They are destroying the winter stores. If we don't stop them, the province starves."
Napoleon looked down.
He took another drink.
"They are already dead, Michel," he said. "Look at them. They are husks."
"They are French citizens!" I snapped.
"They are liabilities," Napoleon said. His voice was cold. It sounded like the King's. "We have orders. Secure the machine. Ignore the noise."
"This isn't noise!" I shouted. "This is a massacre!"
I drew my saber.
"Old Guard!" I roared. "Form line!"
The soldiers behind me snapped to attention. Muskets came down. Bayonets gleamed in the firelight.
"Michel, no," Napoleon warned. "We don't have time."
"I make time," I said. "Charge!"
I kicked my horse.
We thundered down the hill.
The peasants saw us coming. They didn't run. They turned.
Their eyes were wide. Dilated pupils. Foam on their lips.
They charged the horses.
It was suicide.
My saber slashed down. Snick.
A man fell, his shoulder opened to the bone.
Another lunged at my horse with a pitchfork.
My pistol barked. Bang.
He dropped.
It wasn't a battle. It was a harvest.
We cut through them like wheat.
I reached the granary. I jumped off my horse.
"Bucket line!" I yelled. "Put it out!"
Soldiers scrambled. They grabbed buckets from the well.
I grabbed a peasant who was trying to light a torch. I shook him.
"Stop it!" I screamed. "You'll starve!"
He looked at me.
His eyes were empty. Just black holes.
"The Blue Prophet says burn it," he giggled. "Burn the pain."
I shoved him away.
I looked around.
Bodies everywhere. French bodies. Killed by French steel.
I felt sick.
"Michel!"
Napoleon was shouting from the hill.
"Leave it! The mission!"
I looked at the fire. It was too big. The granary was lost.
I looked at my men. They were covered in blood. Civilian blood.
I sheathed my sword.
"Mount up," I whispered.
We rode away.
We left the village burning. We left the people screaming.
We rode in silence for another hour.
The sun set. The world turned grey.
Then we heard it.
Thump-thump-click.
A low vibration.
It shook the water in the puddles. It rattled my teeth.
It sounded like a giant heart beating underground.
"There," Napoleon said.
He pointed.
The Chateau de Gaillon.
It was a ruin. The roof was gone. The walls were crumbled stone.
But smoke was pouring from the cellars.
Thick, black smoke. Coal smoke.
And the sound... it was coming from beneath the earth.
"Redcoats," a scout whispered.
I looked.
British soldiers. A company of them. They were dug in behind the walls.
Red uniforms. Muskets ready.
"They're guarding a hole in the ground," I said.
"They're guarding the future," Napoleon said.
He drew his sword.
"No prisoners," Napoleon ordered. "Liquidate the assets."
We charged.
The British fired a volley. Crack-crack-crack.
Musket balls whizzed past. A soldier next to me fell, gargling blood.
We hit the wall.
I vaulted over the rubble.
A Redcoat thrust his bayonet at me. I parried. I slashed his throat.
He fell.
I kept moving.
We pushed them back. Step by bloody step.
Into the courtyard.
The sound was deafening now. THUMP-THUMP-CLICK.
It was coming from a massive iron door in the ground.
"Breaching charge!" I yelled.
Engineers ran forward. They planted a keg of powder.
BOOM.
The door blew inward.
We poured into the breach.
Stairs led down.
It was hot. Humid.
We descended into hell.
The cellar was massive.
And it was filled with... a monster.
A machine.
It took up the entire space. Brass gears the size of carriage wheels. Pistons pumping steam. Thousands of tiny levers clicking and whirring.
In the center, a man was feeding cards into a slot.
Punch cards. Stiff paper with holes in them.
He saw us.
He grabbed a torch. He tried to throw it into a pile of papers.
"Stop him!" Napoleon shouted.
I tackled the man.
We hit the floor. The torch rolled away.
I punched him. Once. Twice.
He went limp.
I stood up.
I grabbed the papers he was trying to burn.
A ledger.
Napoleon walked to the machine.
He looked at the punch cards.
He pulled one out.
He held it to the light.
It wasn't code.
It was names.
"Look," Napoleon whispered.
I looked.
Jean-Paul Marat.
Maximilien Robespierre.
Georges Danton.
"It's a list of dead men," I said.
"No," Napoleon said. He flipped through the stack.
Napoleon Bonaparte.
Michel Ney.
Joachim Murat.
He stopped at a card near the top.
Louis-Charles.
"It's a targeting list," Napoleon said. His voice was shaking.
"This isn't a communication device, Michel. It's an assassination engine."
He looked at the massive brass gears.
"It calculates probability," Napoleon said. "It predicts who will be a threat to British interests. And it issues kill orders."
He looked at the unconscious man on the floor.
"Rothschild isn't fighting a war," Napoleon said. "He's editing history."
He looked at the card with the Prince's name.
Louis-Charles. Priority: Alpha. Method: Thermal destabilization.
"Thermal destabilization?" I asked. "What does that mean?"
Napoleon crushed the card in his hand.
"It means they know," he said.
He turned to the engineers.
"Rig it to blow," Napoleon ordered.
"Sir?"
"The machine," Napoleon said. "Pack every barrel of powder we have around the base."
"But the King said bring it back intact!" I protested. "He said he wanted to audit the source code!"
Napoleon looked at the machine. At the thousands of names. At the cold, mechanical logic of death.
"The King is wrong," Napoleon said. "You can't audit evil, Michel. You can only burn it."
He looked at me.
"Do it."
I nodded.
We planted the charges.
We dragged the prisoner out.
We rode to the top of the hill.
Napoleon lit the fuse.
BOOM.
The earth shook.
The chateau collapsed inward. A plume of fire shot into the sky.
The humming stopped.
Silence returned to the valley.
Napoleon watched the fire.
"One monster down," he whispered.
He turned his horse.
"Let's go home, Michel. before the other one realizes what we did."
We rode north.
Back to Paris.
Back to the Accountant.
And I prayed that Napoleon was right.
Because if Alex Miller found out we burned his prize...
God help us all.