Voltigeur

	“Do you see anything?” asked a man with an eye-patch, pushing up his shako and looking closer through the brush of the great pine trees that lay before him. Another man, much younger than the one with an eye-patch, cupped his hands to his eyes in a vain attempt at getting a better view of the small village that lay at the bottom of the ridge from where the five men were hidden. It was a poor, ugly village; it’s meager dwelling-places were made of stacked logs which had not seen the carpenter’s beautifying saw, roofed with damp and rotting thatch. One particular cabin, visible to the younger man, had no windows that he could see, only a gnarled and dilapidated door, which promptly opened to let out a young girl, maybe fifteen years of age, and her mother, not much older than thirty, yet already becoming homely with age. The church was a pitiful thing; it looked completely identical to the other four or five dwellings, except for the Byzantine cross which was affixed to the roof. A pitiful, sad looking well lay in the middle of what could jokingly be called the town’s center, it’s aging roof falling apart, giving it the appearance of a moth-eaten garment. The blacksmith’s fire was out, the bellows extinguished, as crisp, white snow piled up around every surface it could pile up onto. Ducks, chickens, and goats all milled about both on the dirt path that could be laughably called a road and inside the fences of woven branches each of the small buildings boasted. The younger man pulled away from the treeline and into the clearing where the rest of his comrades awaited his reports.
	“Sergent, I don’t see anything of use down there. Apart from a few women and goats, there isn’t anything worth getting our hopes up for.”
	The man with the eye-patch removed his hat and rubbed his greying hair with his weathered hand before quickly replacing it. That small moment’s worth of stress relief had made his head quite cold, as the chill in the air had penetrated his unkempt hair and reached his scalp. He knew that he would be feeling the ramifications of that moment for a long time coming.
	A third man spoke, gripping his musket hard so as to ward off the coming cold. “Did you see any men?” His face was darkened by stubble, and his eyes reflected days of forced marching in the cold with little to eat. He shivered. “If there’s no men then I say we do it.”
	The fourth man hit the third with his gloved hand, and said, “Henri, are you stupid? What if there are men and we just can’t see them?” This man had the same look in his eyes as Henri; all the men did.
	“What about you Pyotr?” There was no answer. Pyotr sat on a log, looking at nothing in particular.
	The man with the eye-patch, the Sergent, sighed a heavy sigh, and rubbed his beard. “Jacques says he didn’t see any men, and I didn’t see any men either. I think we can assume there are no men down there.”
	“Then let’s do it,” replied Henri, a fire in his eyes.
	Jacques looked disturbed at his eagerness. “Just… just wait a moment.” He turned his back to his comrades and returned to the treeline. The soft, October snows heralded a harsh, Russian winter ahead. Jacques scanned the village once more, making certain he took count of every person he could see. The young woman, her mother, a young boy dressed in worn-out rags, an old woman wrapped in a headscarf, another old woman wearing an almost identical headscarf sitting opposite the first, a young woman, an old man. Jacques put his hands to his eyes and brought them down his cheeks in stress, and once again returned to the group.
	“Okay okay, I did see a man. I’m certain.” Jacques paused.  “He was old though, frail.”
	“Dangerous?” inquired the Sergent.
	Jacques shook his head reluctantly. He scanned the group, and grew frustrated with their eagerness. “They are old women and poor children. We cannot.”
	 The Sergent looked at Henri, then at Pierre. Their votes were shown in their eyes and in their grimacing faces. He looked at Pyotr. His expression had remained unchanged, his gaze still fixed on nothing, his hands still doing nothing, his eyes still filled with nothing. Again he sighed.
	“Jacques, you know our orders: find anything that may tell us where the Russians are going, any supplies we may need, and bring it back to the Capitaine.”
	At those words, Jacques got a sad, worried look on his face, and blurted, “Sergent, please. We’ve seen enough of this in the last month. You know what going down there means.”
	He did know. Pierre and Henri knew as well, and their hardened expressions softened. Their grips on their muskets became less viselike. Going down there meant burning the whole village to the ground, until the pitiful hovels became nothing more than cinders on the earth. No doubt, they would have to execute people, or turn them out into the cold Russian autumn to freeze or starve to death, whichever came first. Still, the siren’s call of food and a warm blanket was more than enough to keep Henri and Pierre from fully switching to Jacques’ side.
	The Sergent squatted low on his feet, and braced himself with the butt of his musket. He was deep in thought, rolling the fate of the people below in his mind like a potter rolls clay in between his fingers. All eyes, except Pyotr’s, were on him as he sat pensively on the hard ground.
	As he thought, the Sergent heard what sounded like weeping, a very dull and quiet weeping, but weeping nonetheless. It was not Pierre, nor Henri or Jacques. He looked behind him to find Pyotr, on the ground, his face in the cold dirt, tears streaming from his eyes. The deep, royal blue of his uniform mixed with the light, earthen browns of the forest floor, and the tears that streamed down his face made the hard ground turn to mud. He cried softly at first, then louder, and louder, until finally the Sergent put his hand over the man’s mouth to keep him quiet. The three other men watched the Sergent grab hold of Pyotr from behind, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his mouth. Pyotr sat up, still sobbing like a newborn babe, until he gasped for air from beneath the Sergent’s workworn hand. The Sergent let up his hand and put it on Pyotr’s shoulder, grasping him tight, and tried to calm him,  the way a parent tries to calm their child. Five minutes passed until the tears no longer came. The other three men sat there, watching him, for every second of it, never once averting their eyes. Jacques had moved to help the Sergent at one point, but a look from the grizzled old man told him that his help was unneeded, and he stopped in his tracks next to Henri and Pierre. Five minutes more, and Pyotr was on his feet. He dried what tears remained on his cold, weather-beaten cheeks, and picked up his musket. The Sergent turned to head back to camp, and the rest of the men followed suit.

~

	The marching column was five men wide and many hundreds of men deep, all marching in a row down a dusty and ugly dirt path. The Sergent and his men were marching together next to each other, at the very front of the line, with the rest of the  skirmishers, their rhythmic steps beating a steady pace on the now snow-covered ground, when there came the order to stop.
	“Sergent!” cried the Capitaine, his voice sounding urgent. 	The Sergent came running at a brisk pace, his heavy pack and marching gear weighing his battered body down. “Yes, Capitaine?”
	“Take your men and scout ahead, into the village close by. If you see any of the enemy, return immediately.” His voice was filled with a haughtiness only the inexperienced and green can have. He had feasted on roast duck and salted pork and a fine, heady wine the night before, in the officer’s tent. The sound of their merriment could be heard throughout the camp as men ripped apart pieces of hardtack and fought over their ill-gotten pieces of preserved beef. He hadn’t seen a battle since the Armee had entered Russia.
	“Yes, Capitaine,” answered the Sergent, and he summoned the four men to his side with a wave, marching at a brisk pace down the road as the column behind them stopped.
	The men had been walking for what felt like an hour when they saw it. Blackened and charred, the cross of the feeble church lay unceremoniously on the ground, one of the arms burned to a sickly black charcoal. The houses, paltry though they were, now were naught but cinders and ashes, blowing away in the cold October wind. Jacques lifted what he guessed might have at one time been a crossbeam of one of the miserable shacks, only to find a skeleton, it’s void-black flesh burned onto it’s now brittle bones. He vomited. Henri and Pierre looked for where the bellows of the blacksmith had been not but four days earlier, but to no avail; not a stone of it remained in the now eerily quite expanse.
	“What do we do now Sergent?” asked Henri, with a resigned sigh. He looked at Pierre, but Pierre did not look back.
	“We go back,” said the Sergent, turning his back on the deserted wasteland. He walked back, slowly, his eyes to the ground. He did not know if his men followed. He did not care.
	Voltigeur

	“Do you see anything?” asked a man with an eye-patch, pushing up his shako and looking closer through the brush of the great pine trees that lay before him. Another man, much younger than the one with an eye-patch, cupped his hands to his eyes in a vain attempt at getting a better view of the small village that lay at the bottom of the ridge from where the five men were hidden. It was a poor, ugly village; it’s meager dwelling-places were made of stacked logs which had not seen the carpenter’s beautifying saw, roofed with damp and rotting thatch. One particular cabin, visible to the younger man, had no windows that he could see, only a gnarled and dilapidated door, which promptly opened to let out a young girl, maybe fifteen years of age, and her mother, not much older than thirty, yet already becoming homely with age. The church was a pitiful thing; it looked completely identical to the other four or five dwellings, except for the Byzantine cross which was affixed to the roof. A pitiful, sad looking well lay in the middle of what could jokingly be called the town’s center, it’s aging roof falling apart, giving it the appearance of a moth-eaten garment. The blacksmith’s fire was out, the bellows extinguished, as crisp, white snow piled up around every surface it could pile up onto. Ducks, chickens, and goats all milled about both on the dirt path that could be laughably called a road and inside the fences of woven branches each of the small buildings boasted. The younger man pulled away from the treeline and into the clearing where the rest of his comrades awaited his reports.
	“Sergent, I don’t see anything of use down there. Apart from a few women and goats, there isn’t anything worth getting our hopes up for.”
	The man with the eye-patch removed his hat and rubbed his greying hair with his weathered hand before quickly replacing it. That small moment’s worth of stress relief had made his head quite cold, as the chill in the air had penetrated his unkempt hair and reached his scalp. He knew that he would be feeling the ramifications of that moment for a long time coming.
	A third man spoke, gripping his musket hard so as to ward off the coming cold. “Did you see any men?” His face was darkened by stubble, and his eyes reflected days of forced marching in the cold with little to eat. He shivered. “If there’s no men then I say we do it.”
	The fourth man hit the third with his gloved hand, and said, “Henri, are you stupid? What if there are men and we just can’t see them?” This man had the same look in his eyes as Henri; all the men did.
	“What about you Pyotr?” There was no answer. Pyotr sat on a log, looking at nothing in particular.
	The man with the eye-patch, the Sergent, sighed a heavy sigh, and rubbed his beard. “Jacques says he didn’t see any men, and I didn’t see any men either. I think we can assume there are no men down there.”
	“Then let’s do it,” replied Henri, a fire in his eyes.
	Jacques looked disturbed at his eagerness. “Just… just wait a moment.” He turned his back to his comrades and returned to the treeline. The soft, October snows heralded a harsh, Russian winter ahead. Jacques scanned the village once more, making certain he took count of every person he could see. The young woman, her mother, a young boy dressed in worn-out rags, an old woman wrapped in a headscarf, another old woman wearing an almost identical headscarf sitting opposite the first, a young woman, an old man. Jacques put his hands to his eyes and brought them down his cheeks in stress, and once again returned to the group.
	“Okay okay, I did see a man. I’m certain.” Jacques paused.  “He was old though, frail.”
	“Dangerous?” inquired the Sergent.
	Jacques shook his head reluctantly. He scanned the group, and grew frustrated with their eagerness. “They are old women and poor children. We cannot.”
	 The Sergent looked at Henri, then at Pierre. Their votes were shown in their eyes and in their grimacing faces. He looked at Pyotr. His expression had remained unchanged, his gaze still fixed on nothing, his hands still doing nothing, his eyes still filled with nothing. Again he sighed.
	“Jacques, you know our orders: find anything that may tell us where the Russians are going, any supplies we may need, and bring it back to the Capitaine.”
	At those words, Jacques got a sad, worried look on his face, and blurted, “Sergent, please. We’ve seen enough of this in the last month. You know what going down there means.”
	He did know. Pierre and Henri knew as well, and their hardened expressions softened. Their grips on their muskets became less viselike. Going down there meant burning the whole village to the ground, until the pitiful hovels became nothing more than cinders on the earth. No doubt, they would have to execute people, or turn them out into the cold Russian autumn to freeze or starve to death, whichever came first. Still, the siren’s call of food and a warm blanket was more than enough to keep Henri and Pierre from fully switching to Jacques’ side.
	The Sergent squatted low on his feet, and braced himself with the butt of his musket. He was deep in thought, rolling the fate of the people below in his mind like a potter rolls clay in between his fingers. All eyes, except Pyotr’s, were on him as he sat pensively on the hard ground.
	As he thought, the Sergent heard what sounded like weeping, a very dull and quiet weeping, but weeping nonetheless. It was not Pierre, nor Henri or Jacques. He looked behind him to find Pyotr, on the ground, his face in the cold dirt, tears streaming from his eyes. The deep, royal blue of his uniform mixed with the light, earthen browns of the forest floor, and the tears that streamed down his face made the hard ground turn to mud. He cried softly at first, then louder, and louder, until finally the Sergent put his hand over the man’s mouth to keep him quiet. The three other men watched the Sergent grab hold of Pyotr from behind, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his mouth. Pyotr sat up, still sobbing like a newborn babe, until he gasped for air from beneath the Sergent’s workworn hand. The Sergent let up his hand and put it on Pyotr’s shoulder, grasping him tight, and tried to calm him,  the way a parent tries to calm their child. Five minutes passed until the tears no longer came. The other three men sat there, watching him, for every second of it, never once averting their eyes. Jacques had moved to help the Sergent at one point, but a look from the grizzled old man told him that his help was unneeded, and he stopped in his tracks next to Henri and Pierre. Five minutes more, and Pyotr was on his feet. He dried what tears remained on his cold, weather-beaten cheeks, and picked up his musket. The Sergent turned to head back to camp, and the rest of the men followed suit.

~

	The marching column was five men wide and many hundreds of men deep, all marching in a row down a dusty and ugly dirt path. The Sergent and his men were marching together next to each other, at the very front of the line, with the rest of the  skirmishers, their rhythmic steps beating a steady pace on the now snow-covered ground, when there came the order to stop.
	“Sergent!” cried the Capitaine, his voice sounding urgent. 	The Sergent came running at a brisk pace, his heavy pack and marching gear weighing his battered body down. “Yes, Capitaine?”
	“Take your men and scout ahead, into the village close by. If you see any of the enemy, return immediately.” His voice was filled with a haughtiness only the inexperienced and green can have. He had feasted on roast duck and salted pork and a fine, heady wine the night before, in the officer’s tent. The sound of their merriment could be heard throughout the camp as men ripped apart pieces of hardtack and fought over their ill-gotten pieces of preserved beef. He hadn’t seen a battle since the Armee had entered Russia.
	“Yes, Capitaine,” answered the Sergent, and he summoned the four men to his side with a wave, marching at a brisk pace down the road as the column behind them stopped.
	The men had been walking for what felt like an hour when they saw it. Blackened and charred, the cross of the feeble church lay unceremoniously on the ground, one of the arms burned to a sickly black charcoal. The houses, paltry though they were, now were naught but cinders and ashes, blowing away in the cold October wind. Jacques lifted what he guessed might have at one time been a crossbeam of one of the miserable shacks, only to find a skeleton, it’s void-black flesh burned onto it’s now brittle bones. He vomited. Henri and Pierre looked for where the bellows of the blacksmith had been not but four days earlier, but to no avail; not a stone of it remained in the now eerily quite expanse.
	“What do we do now Sergent?” asked Henri, with a resigned sigh. He looked at Pierre, but Pierre did not look back.
	“We go back,” said the Sergent, turning his back on the deserted wasteland. He walked back, slowly, his eyes to the ground. He did not know if his men followed. He did not care.