The Sleigh West

He brought roughly six hundred thousand men east in the summer. What is walking west now is a column of frostbitten men who have burned their own wagons for heat and are being cut apart from behind every day.

A courier has reached him from Paris. There has been an attempted coup — a general announced he was dead, and for a few hours a good part of the government believed it and started making arrangements. It failed. It came far closer than it should have.

If he stays with the column, he shares the retreat and the men see him doing it, and Paris stays a place where his death can be announced by anyone with enough nerve.

If he goes, he can be in Paris in two weeks, hold the throne, and raise another army from a country that has not yet been told how bad this is — which is the only thing that keeps the empire standing. And the column will watch his sleigh leave.

The sleigh is ready. Almost nobody has been told.