Recovered Note - Jacques Bridge Tower Armoury

If this is found, let it be a record. Not just of our deaths, but of what passed here, and why we could not stop it. My name is Lieutenant Mathieu Renaud, formerly of the 7th Line, now posted to Jacques Bridge - as we have taken to calling it. There were a hundred of us assigned here after Fort Sang Rogue fell. Not for distinction. For silence. We had asked questions, that was all. About the rumours. About the so-called “experiments” that Marshal Jacques de Molay was conducting. About the men who came back wrong, or not at all. We asked quietly, but not quietly enough. So we were sent to hold a bridge they already knew would fall. They told us we would be the line. That the Folly, where the Marshal and the rest of our men retreated to, could not be held without this crossing. That if we stood, the north might hold, and we could reconvene with the others. We wanted to believe that. At nightfall, we took our posts and waited. The road south to Fort Sang Rouge sloped gently into the dark. Silent. Bellefontaine lay out to the southeast, its fields still and low beneath the moon. Then came the sound. Not drums. Not boots. Nothing ordered. It was like hearing a thousand chairs scraped across stone, but distant and wet. A dragging shuffle, ever rising. The sound of a thousand mad men all chanting out of time.  We saw them coming just as the moon broke through the clouds. A tide of shapes spilling out of Bellefontaine and from the shadow of the fort. They did not march. They swarmed. Across fences, through ditches, over stone walls and wagon frames. Peasants, nobles, workers and military - stumbling, faster than we were told they could be. They reached the farmland below the bridge and did not slow. The first of them hit the barricade in the centre span before we even saw the rear ranks clear the hills. The men stationed forward at the breastwork had barely raised their rifles when the first wave struck. They seemed to be enveloped by the darkness. The men at the second breastwork fired into the crowd until they too vanished beneath them. Some twenty men gone in seconds. The rest of the men turned and ran for the tower, but most were too late. A handful of us reached the lower armoury and barricaded the door. The lock held. The stone held. Above us, the tower shook with the weight of passing feet, an endless thunder that carried on through the night until dawn broke. They did not leave. Day and night they pressed the tower. Mostly silent, unless we made noise, then we heard them scream and bang at the door. After a full day, Armand spoke of the river. The armoury window looks out over it, narrow but open. We thought we could widen it and drop down, let the water carry us away. We used powder. Michel held the charge too close. When it went off, the blast took his hand clean away. He screamed. Not once, but over and over, full-throated, swearing in pain and fury. Armand and I tried to stop the bleeding, wrapping the stump with belts and torn cloth, pressing hard even as he thrashed beneath us. The sound on the door grew louder with every cry. Fists and nails, the scrape of bone or wood. The creak of the frame bending under strain.  We worked the stone loose by hand after that. When enough fell away, we saw the drop clearly. Too far. There was a beam jutting from the wall below, perhaps old scaffolding. Armand volunteered to try. He jumped. He struck the beam and broke part of his fall, but he slipped. He fell the rest of the way into the river. It was shallow there. He lived, yet his leg was ruined. He called up to us, begging for us to help him. We argued about ropes, belts, how to lower a man safely. While we spoke, one of those things descended the bank to the river. Then another. Then more. They fell on Armand without hesitation. We watched them tear at him while he still screamed. When the sound stopped, none of us spoke again. That path was closed to us. We decided then to fight our way out. Henri led when we unbarred the door, and the rest of us followed. They were dead almost immediately. Shot did nothing. Bayonets slowed the creatures only long enough for another to step in and attack. I saw Henri still firing after his throat was opened. Only Michel and I made it back inside. We sealed the door. Two more days passed. The sounds never stopped. We chose not to face them again. Michel asked me if I believed there was anything after this. I told him yes, because it seemed better than saying nothing. But even if there is not - it would surely be preferable to becoming one of them. If this paper is found, know that we held the bridge as long as men could. We did not flee. We were simply surrounded by those who would not stay dead.