The Contemptibles: Book Four: Last Horse Series

The old world is burning. The harvest of war has arrived.In the sweltering summer of 1914, Lieutenant Mallory finds himself caught in a fragile paradise. Restless on deferred leave in the Gloucestershire countryside, he has begun to glimpse the shape of a quieter, peaceful life-one shared in the quiet company of Eleanor Cathcart. For a man who has spent fifteen years as a mere instrument of the Empire, contentment is finally within reach.Then, a pistol shot in Sarajevo changes the weather of the world.As the financial markets collapse and the European powers activate their relentless railway timetables, Mallory's illusion of choice is stripped away. Recalled by British Intelligence and posted to a troop of strangers in the 4th Dragoon Guards, he is swept up in the brown flood of the British Expeditionary Force deploying to the Belgian frontier.They call themselves the "Mounted Micks," a proud, tight-knit cavalry family that has no room for a transferred ranker with a staff godfather. To earn their trust, Mallory must face the floor of the coming conflict.But the war they are riding into is not the romantic clash of lances and sabres they rehearsed on the plains of India. At Casteau, Mons, and the blood-soaked fields of Audregnies, the illusions of the old cavalry collide head-on with the brutal, industrialized reality of the machine gun. As the thin British line is left hanging in the dark, Mallory must use every ounce of his hard-won experience to keep his troop alive-before the screen is ground to dust.