8
Zillah Moody
thing in her stride was so typical of her, the same as most self-reliant,
confident women the world over. She had always been the same.
Many years before when Veronika had been in Smalenai one day
early on in her marriage she had witnessed some terrible goings on
when a French foraging party had burst into the village commandeering food
left, right and centre. Although the people knew there was
something big happening and there were rumours of a huge French
army moving eastwards further to the north nevertheless it was still a
shock to see them in these circumstances.
This party of around twenty soldiers armed to the teeth, overconfident to
the point of arrogance, had stolen wagons and horses and
loaded them up with thatch torn from people's rooftops as animal
fodder. When they had commandeered all the food they could carry
they found some sacks of peas which had been hastily hidden by a
few of the villagers, who evidently must have had some warning of
their arrival, and they just threw them into the river. They manhandled some
of the peasants and stomped around in their houses as if
they owned them, taking whatever took their fancy although it wasn't
much and afterwards they laughed their heads off while the peasants
stood around helpless. They didn't find all of the hidden food though
but they did trample around in the unripe corn pulling up whatever
they could to add to the fodder. It was a bullying chaotic shambles
and they carried out their actions with no thought for the rest of the
army which would be following on behind as they outstripped their
own supply column.
One of the soldiers, a younger man, who seemed to be in charge,
noticed her watching them and after mounting his steed and consulting another
soldier also mounted alongside him, they both cantered
over towards her looking powerful and overbearing. The young officer
gazed down at her sternly and asked in French and very broken
Polish why she was looking at him. His companion alongside was a
much older man, a Polish Lancer from another of the French regiments who
interjected now and then with translation in a terse gruff