Clash of Empires Read online

  Victorie is chained between two bollards on the dockside. Thibault leaps for the rope ladder that is unfurled from her side and begins to climb.

  FINAL CHARGE

  A crossroads is in front of him but Willem ignores it, heading for what appears to be a town square. Perhaps here there will be room to turn and fight. A blur of movement catches his eye and he looks sideways to see Cosette on her beast, in full charge, Arbuckle still with her.

  A crash comes from behind him and he glances around; the greatjaw has completely disappeared. He reaches the square and turns, heading back the way he came. Cosette’s animal blocks the crossroads. The greatjaw is embedded in the side of a house, covered in bricks and dust, impaled on the two longest horns of Cosette’s tricorne. The greatjaw struggles in the cavity that has been created in the side of the building, clawing at bricks with its massive hind legs, turning its head and trying to reach the tricorne with those massive teeth. Cosette’s tricorne backs away and a rush of blood pours from the two gaping holes in the greatjaw’s side. It continues to struggle feebly but makes no effort to get up.

  Cosette spurs her tricorne forward, taking the lead with Willem following, toward a small bridge over the river. On the other side of the bridge, the wall of the fort is high and strong, but the gates seem no more sturdy than those of the city wall. Willem finds himself yelling with excitement, as is Frost behind him.

  Cosette’s saur slams its head into the gap between the two gates, which burst open in a spray of splintered wood.

  “Cosette!” Willem screams, but he knows she has seen what he has seen. A row of French cannon lined up facing the gates. She is barely through and into the fort when the cannon roar and Cosette, Arbuckle, and her saur are enveloped in a cloud of smoke. There is a thud as the tricorne hits the ground and slides toward the cannon, smashing into them, sending them flying backward into their own ammunition caissons.

  Willem bursts through the gates to see to his horror another cannon battery to the right.

  Another thunder of gunpowder, long fingers of flame stretching out toward him, and Willem’s saur shudders under the impact of cannonballs.

  The great steed is dead on its feet and falling sideways. Willem rolls away as the beast crashes into the stone floor of the fort. A wave of the most intense pain spreads like lightning from the wound in his chest. The world spins, then turns to black.

  * * *

  “Willem!”

  He wakes to find Arbuckle dragging him and an unconcious Frost behind the wall of the fort for safety. A group of cavalry soldiers charge toward them and for a moment Willem is sure he will die, but the uniforms are Prussian; no longer allied with the French, the red plume of the emperor has been stripped from their shakos.

  The soldiers dismount, drawing their sabers, and follow Arbuckle into the courtyard of the fort.

  It takes every effort that Willem can muster to drag himself back to the doorway and peer around. He sees the bodies of the French artillerymen strewn among their cannon. He sees Cosette lying by her tricorne, her leg trapped under the huge bony flare at the top of its skull. He sees Arbuckle and the Prussian cavalry officers disappearing into the door of the tower.

  Then he sees the battlesaur.

  It has arrived through a far gate, on the coastal side of the fort. But it is the rider, not the mount, that most terrifies Willem. Thibault.

  Pain or no pain Willem drags himself to his feet, leaving Frost propped against a wall. He has no pistol, only his sword. He takes a single faltering step toward Cosette. The world swims but he does not fall, and he takes another step, then another.

  The greatjaw steps over the remains of a shattered caisson, a few meters from Cosette. She screams and scrabbles about for a pistol in the saddle behind her.

  Willem is still trying to get his legs to work properly, staggering across the courtyard, his head swimming with the pain.

  Cosette reaches the pistol, cocks it, and fires it up at Thibault. There is a thud and a metal object flies out of the devil’s hands. She has missed, Willem realizes, and hit the battery.

  Not that Thibault needs the battery. The saur has its eyes fixed on Cosette, still trapped on the ground in front of it.

  It lunges down, its huge jaws widening.

  And it stops.

  Its eyes are fastened on the flickering light that has appeared in Willem’s hands. A sparkle stick. Even as he struck the flint he was suddenly aware of the gunpowder, loose and in kegs, in the crushed caissons around them. A single spark and they will all go up in a sheet of flame. A lit linstock lies perilously close to a dark pool of spilled powder.

  Willem holds the stick in his left hand and draws his sword with his right. The pain in his chest is almost overwhelming but he knows he must not lose focus. Without the battery, Thibault cannot jolt the saur out of the mesmerization. Willem moves closer and tries to lift the sword, his eyes fixed on the soft skin under the battlesaur’s neck. He can barely raise the sword off the ground. Something is torn in his chest and no amount of strength nor willpower will make his arm go higher.

  “Willem!” Cosette calls.

  The neck of the beast is right above her, Willem realizes. He drops the sword to the ground, kicking it across to her with his foot, and uses the sparkle stick to bring the snout of the beast down even lower. She waits, ready to thrust upward as soon as the neck is within reach.

  But then the animal jerks and breaks free of the mesmerization. Willem looks up to see Thibault with the battery back in his hand.

  The head of the beast snaps toward Willem but he is thrust suddenly to the side; someone is there, a tall strong boy, whose shape Willem knows well. The boy holds a canister shot. He grabs the sparkle stick out of Willem’s hands and touches it to the fuse of the canister even as the mouth of the beast crunches down.

  François’s head and torso disappear inside the great mouth.

  Willem throws himself to the ground next to the trapped Cosette, shielding her as best he can, and a moment later there is the roar of an explosion and a spray of blood and bone fills the air. A giant tooth clatters off the cobblestones near Willem’s face.

  When he can look he sees the saur still standing. Its head no longer exists, there are just bloody tatters of flesh at the end of its neck. There is no sign of Thibault.

  There is no sign of François either.

  The saur slowly topples, blood pouring through its shattered neck.

  Willem lies back as Prussian soldiers flood into the courtyard. The tall shape of the tower is spinning in circles above him, and a moment later so is a streak of light and an explosion, and a red star burns hot in the cool blue sky.

  * * *

  The red glow of the flare illuminates the smoke of the battle as Jack and Marengo gallop into the courtyard of the fort, skidding to a halt on the paving stones.

  Willem and Cosette, bathed in blood, lie in a butcher’s yard of dinosaur flesh. Thibault lies nearby, his grotesque face lifeless, his head all but removed from his body.

  “Mr. Willem!” Jack cries, jumping down and crouching beside him.

  To his amazement, Willem’s eyes open. “Cosette?” he croaks in a harsh whisper.

  It only takes a moment for Jack to ascertain that Cosette also lives, and although unconscious, seems unharmed. The blood is that of the dinosaur.

  “She’s alive, Mr. Willem! So is Lieutenant Frost.”

  Only now does Willem relax. His eyes close and he rests.

  A voice comes from behind Jack, shouting in a language he does not understand, though he thinks it is French. He spins around to see Field Marshal Blücher.

  “It is a bad business,” the Prussian commander says. “Are they dead?”

  “No, sir!” Jack cries.

  “Then I will call for the medical cart immediately,” the field marshal says, and speaks rapidly in German to his aides.

  “Blücher, late as always!”

  Jack looks up to see Captain Arbuckle running out of the towe
r, sword in hand, the blade dripping red.

  “I would not be here at all if not for you and those horned dinosaurs of yours,” Blücher says.

  “Nor would any of us, if not for Willem,” Arbuckle says, kneeling beside Willem and checking his pulse, before moving to Cosette. He stands. “Get your best gunners onto the cannon of the fort, and do it quickly. The French ships are trapped between us and the Royal Navy, which even now returns to Calais. Napoléon is dead; Thibault is dead; the French coalition will be in disarray. This battle is already won.”

  Again Blücher rattles off orders in German and aides run to see them carried out.

  Jack stays with Willem and Cosette, even when the hospital wagon arrives. He wipes blood from their faces and presses damp cloths to their lips.

  He hears a cheer, and even without seeing it, he knows that the French ships have struck their colors.

  In the sky above, a yellow rocket soars and fizzles, followed by a red one, then a green one. The drifting colors combine and make rainbow patterns on the gradually clearing smoke.

  EPILOGUE

  March 3, 1816

  THE MAGICIANS

  The hospital is a quiet place where white-frocked nurses hurry down long corridors with jugs of water or clean bedding in their hands. Set among green English gardens, it is as different as it is possible to imagine from the blood-soaked field hospital set up in Gaillemarde after the battle of Waterloo.

  The orderly assigned to take Willem and Cosette to see their friend is a large, cheerful fellow of many smiles but few words. He stops at a room and ushers them inside, but does not enter himself.

  A heavy curtain has been drawn across the doorway and they must push through it to enter.

  “Willem! Cosette!” The voice is Jack’s as he rises from a chair in the corner of the room, beaming. He grabs Willem’s hand and shakes it, and then, unsure of the proper greeting for Cosette, takes her hand and shakes it too, as if she were a man.

  She does not mind and laughs, a delightful sound that has become one of the everyday joys in Willem’s life.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Geerts,” Frost says. He is lying in the hospital bed, his eyes heavily bandaged.

  Willem smiles with a shy glance at Cosette. “How was the operation?” he asks.

  “Exceedingly painful,” Frost replies. “And yet I still live and breathe.”

  “And your eyes?” Cosette asks.

  “That remains to be seen,” Frost says. “My surgeon was the king’s own, and there is none better. But the procedure is still experimental. In a week I hope to finally gaze on this wife of yours, Willem, and if she is as pretty as you say, I may have to steal her for myself.”

  “It’s all right, ma’am,” Jack whispers to Cosette. “He’s only joking.”

  “I hear your opening night was the toast of London,” Frost says. “A husband-and-wife magic show, with electricity! Such a thing has never been seen before. And Jack tells me you made a dinosaur disappear right from the stage. Such an illusion! Or was it in fact real magic after all? I would not be surprised, with you two.”

  “A true magician will never say,” Cosette says.

  “Let us just say that we had a little help from my father, and an old friend,” Willem says.

  Frost loses his smile. “How is Sofie?”

  “She mourns her son,” Willem says. “As many mothers have mourned many sons over the many months of this war. But she has great spirit, and she is enjoying London.”

  “What of Héloïse?” Frost asks. “I heard you had sent people to look for her.”

  Willem smiles.

  “They did not find her,” he says. “But I did not need them to. I know where she is.”

  “And where is that?” Frost asks.

  “She is home,” he says.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Unlike Battlesaurus: Rampage at Waterloo, this book is pure fiction. Rampage at Waterloo was as historically accurate as I could make it, right up to the actual Battle of Waterloo. However, this alternative history diverged significantly from real history at that point.

  Even so, I have again tried to accurately portray the times and locations: the forts in Ireland and France, the streets of London, and the peculiar and terrifying world that was the Bedlam Lunatic Asylum.

  I again owe a great debt to some excellent books:

  Bedlam: London and Its Mad, by Catharine Arnold

  Ten Days in a Mad-House, by Nellie Bly

  The Art of Warfare in the Age of Napoleon, by Gunther E. Rothenberg

  Many of the characters in this story are real historical figures. I have tried to depict them as accurately as possible in this alternative version of our history. My apologies for any inaccuracies.

  Some of the fictional characters are named after real people. These are the grand-prize winners of my school competitions. Congratulations to:

  • Ethan Arbuckle

  • Hunter Frost

  • Joe Hoyes

  • Sam Roberts

  • Jack Sullivan

  • Dylan Townshend

  • Harry Wacker

  • Dylan Wenzel-Halls

  • Ben Wood

  • Lewis Wood

  And a special thanks to:

  Sofie Thielemans, Somerset College, Gold Coast, Australia

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Brian Falkner was born and raised in Auckland, New Zealand, and now lives in Australia. He is the award-winning, best-selling author of several action-adventure novels, including the Recon Team Angel series and Brainjack. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Château de Brest, France

  Book One: Invasion

  Saur-Killers

  Captivity

  The Trojansaurs

  Departure

  Napoléon

  The Races

  Running the Passage

  Nightmare

  Bedlam

  Rocketeers

  The Duke

  In Private

  A Proud and Lucky Ship

  Small Joys

  Escape from Bedlam

  Ireland

  Wenzel Park

  The Road to Cork

  Confinement

  Council of War

  Héloïse

  The Messenger

  Change of Plans

  An Unexpected Visitor

  Book Two: The Mission

  The Siege of Fort Carlisle

  Smugglers

  The Attack Begins

  Mathilde’s Charge

  Ambition

  Ambush

  Life and Death in a Meat Cart

  Secret Reunion

  A Man of God

  The Road to Calais

  The Devil’s Return

  Confusion

  The God of War

  Waterloo

  Loyalty

  Marengo

  Blücher

  Break Out

  A Desperate Act

  Gaillemarde

  The Swamp

  Rendezvous

  Priest Hole

  The Wizard of Gaillemarde

  Tricornes

  By the River

  Riding to Calais

  In the Name of the Devil

  Into Battle

  Victorie

  Final Charge

  Epilogue

  The Magicians

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Yo
ung Readers

  175 Fifth Avenue, New York 10010

  Text copyright © 2016 by Brian Falkner

  All rights reserved

  First hardcover edition, 2016

  eBook edition, July 2016

  fiercereads.com

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Falkner, Brian, author.

  Title: Battlesaurus: clash of empires / Brian Falkner.

  Description: First edition.|New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2016.|Series: Battlesaurus; 2

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015047553|ISBN 9780374300777 (hardback)

  Subjects:|CYAC: War—Fiction.|Dinosaurs—Fiction.|Science fiction.|Europe—History—1789–1815—Fiction.|BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Animals / Dinosaurs & Prehistoric Creatures.|JUVENILE FICTION / Historical / Military & Wars.|JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / General.|JUVENILE FICTION / Historical / Europe.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.F1947 Bap 2016|DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015047553

  eISBN 9780374300791