He stands in the snow as if it doesn’t bother him because it doesn’t; despite the shivering, he feels not the cold wind whipping against his face from gaps under the door or broken window panes; despite the attempts to huddle around the fire, he feels not the loss of tactile function, the feeling in one’s fingers, amiss a slow creep sinking frigidity; and though he knows there are tears to be spared for those lost along the way, through the snowcapped regions and frozen rivers and swamps of Prussia, they aren’t to be from his eyes. They’re from the families left behind – the wives, the sons, the daughters of those caught up in such post-revolutionary arrogance as conquest.

It is one they will lose – not because of the sleet and snow, not because of the Janvier and Février so readily worried about for the depth of winter to be experienced by troops ill-seasoned for such, but because of poor planning and the idea that no one, not even the Russians, would be so brazen, so bold, to destroy all that they had built simply to keep it from being taken over, and such scorched earth might not have been helpful to the civilians left behind or the soldiers fighting such a war, but just as well, it benefits not the invasion.

The Grande Armée is not so grand even with all the artillery stored, all the heavy guns, all the cannons with their tons of gunpowder, looking more now like a ghostly visage of French might in the dread light of snow. Their limbs freeze, their skin sinks, their eyes become dark and sullen like nothing more than foot soldiers in a death march, rations of horse meat only serving to weaken the power of their cavalry in light of sustenance – something far better than other means of surviving such an unfamiliar terrain.

Still, somehow, they march – to Vilna, to Vitebsk, to Minsk; through Berenzina and Borodino; and into Moscow – on stomachs not quite full or addled with illness, fighting against troops who know far more, who can survive on far less, and know just how to turn the tides; but men who march on their stomachs, emptied, only finds fuel in such desperation and in the dreary silence of an empty Moscow, only the weak and ill and injured to greet the invading forces as the Cossacks dwindle down their supply lines elsewhere, their anguish – their death - becomes painfully clear.

He knows he has spoken of this before – an echo, reaching across time that rings sharply in his ears as they pilfer for gold, for treasures, for luxuries like trophies to bring home in quantities they can’t reasonably carry through such tough terrain as there is to cross on their return. It continues to ring, to ripple, as they turn churches into stables for the horses that remain and latrines for the troops, such gross gesture pronouncing them the animals he sees them to be. It dwindles, a whisper of a melody from long ago, as their attacks turn on the civilians who want nothing to do with them, these French invaders so readily welcomed through the gates and he finds room for tears from such an intrinsic space, however unknown.

If you must, be hungry enough to fight for more, not to be given no choice but fall.

To fall, however, is the only choice he has – a moment found only when he feels it, the trickle of something warm in his chest let free by a single shot that echoes by the Kaluga Gate and all at once, as if heralded by incendiary rockets, Moscow seems to erupt in flames. They rise up from the empty streets and wooden structures, small shops becoming tinder boxes to feed the flames against strong winds which show no mercy to those inside; but his immolation is slow in the panic that becomes the French soldiers, unable to quell the flames as they are quick to become a sea, a firestorm meant to raze them all to the ground.

The shadow that settles over him, looming in those last moments, isn’t the one he wants to feel; it doesn’t carry serenity and it doesn’t carry familiarity; and the cold it imparts is in no parts comforting as it warrants the impulse to move – to try – before he forgets again; but there is only so much strength in burning bones that is easily subdued by his grasp.

“Я поймал тебя, Жар-птица.”

I caught you, Firebird.

“Et j’espère pour la dernière fois.”

And hopefully for the last time.