Sharpe's Prey

by Bernard Cornwell

  “No,” Barker said.

  “So where’s the key?” Sharpe asked.

  “I reckon he didn’t give it me.”

  “It’s customary, Barker, to address officers as ‘sir.’” Sharpe could not conceal his dislike for the servant, who was plainly employed for his size and his capacity for violence rather than for any skills as a valet. Sharpe rooted through his pack until he found the picklock, then went back to the beach where he knelt beside the chest.

  “What are you doing, sir?” Barker asked, putting a sarcastic stress on the last word.

  “Fetching my pistols,” Sharpe said, taking hold of the padlock.

  A bang made him turn. The launch must have reached the frigate which was now sheeting home her foresails to turn away from land and the bang had merely been the wind slatting the canvas, but it saved Sharpe’s life. He saw the gleam in Barker’s hand, realized it was a knife that was about to bury itself in his neck and so threw himself to one side before scrambling away from the chest. He let go of the picklock, hurled a handful of sand into Barker’s eyes and drew his saber, then heard the click of a gun being cocked and knew that Barker, careless of any noise, must have had a pistol hidden beneath his long coat. Sharpe just ran, going up the dune where he snatched up his pack and then down the sandy slope into the darkness behind the beach.

  He had hardly thought since the banging sail had made him turn. He had just reacted, but now he crouched in the coarse grass and watched the crest of the dune for Barker’s shadow. Sweet Jesus, he thought, but he had been fooled. He should have bloody known when Lavisser had claimed Barker possessed the chest’s key. No man would entrust a fortune in gold to a servant like Barker.

  So Lord Pumphrey had been right when he suggested there was something odd about this whole mission, but in his wildest imaginings Sharpe had not thought things were this warped. Lavisser wanted him dead. What else did Lavisser want? There was no way of knowing that, and now was not the time to speculate, for Barker had come to the dune’s top and pointed the pistol into the shadows. He was waiting for Sharpe to move, just waiting, but the fog was thickening as the southern summer wind crossed the cold northern sea. Sharpe stayed motionless. Far inland a bell tolled four times. The small light had vanished, obscured by the growing fog.

  Barker moved northward a few paces and Sharpe broke cover and ran southward. Barker heard him, and that was what Sharpe wanted, for he half hoped Barker would try a long shot. Once the gun was discharged it would take too long to reload and Sharpe would be on the servant like a terrier onto a rat, but Barker was no fool. He held his fire and instead followed Sharpe in hope of getting close enough for the pistol not to miss.

  Sharpe went to ground in black shadows between two low dunes. The fog was blanching the first hint of dawn and muffling the small sounds of the wind and waves. Barker had lost him again, though the servant had a rough idea of where Sharpe was and now crouched on the skyline. The man was no soldier, or else he would have sought the lower ground for at night it was impossible to see down into the hollows. A man could see upward against the sky, but not down. Sharpe watched the hulking servant, then raked his fingers through the sand and grass to come up with a scrap of wood and two pebbles that he flicked southward one after the other. They made tiny noises as they landed and Barker, hearing them, moved toward the small sounds.

  Sharpe went back northward. He crept, feeling ahead of him to make sure he did not trample any stiff grass. He found two more pieces of wood that he hurled away into the misty dark, hoping to lure Barker farther south, and only when he had lost sight of the man did he stand and cross the dunes back to the beach. He needed to find the picklock, but it had vanished in the trampled sand about the chest. He searched quickly, sifting handfuls of sand, but he could not find it and suddenly he heard Barker returning. The servant had given up his hunt and was coming back to guard the gold so Sharpe abandoned the weapons locked in the chest and went back across the dunes.

  He headed inland until he reached a damp vegetable field edged with a ditch. He moved northward now, following the ditch which was half silted with blown sand. A bird flew up from a nest, startling him, then he saw he had come to a rough track, deep rutted by cartwheels, that headed inland. He was about to follow it, then heard hoofbeats and so he scuttled back to the ditch and lay in its damp grass.

  The hoofbeats sounded like a whole troop of cavalry, but Sharpe could see nothing in the soft fog. He lay motionless, the hat shadowing his face from the wan early light. Then he saw a shape in the whiteness, another, and suddenly there were a half-dozen horsemen in sight. They all wore long red jackets with pale-blue collars and cuffs. Their breeches were black, edged with white piping, and their hats were black bicornes, elaborately plumed with white feathers. Their long straight swords hung from sashes of yellow silk and suggested they were dragoons. A second group appeared, all of them going slowly because of the fog, and then a shabby cart materialized. It was pulled by a plodding pony and was hung with remnants of seaweed. Sharpe guessed the cart was normally used to fetch weed from the beach to use as fertilizer and now it had come for the gold.

  The horsemen and the cart vanished onto the beach. Sharpe darted across the track and found shelter in another ditch. He heard muffled voices and thought he detected anger. But who was angry, and why? Had the dragoons captured Lavisser, or had they been sent by him? Sharpe raised his head, but could see nothing. He crawled inland, staying low so that he did not appear as a dark patch in the lightening fog. What the hell was he to do? The clink of a curb-chain made him lie flat again. The horsemen had evidently spread into the fog to search for him, but they were looking too far to the south. They called to each other, sounding oddly cheerful now, and Sharpe sensed they were a group of friends rather than a military unit. All were apparently officers, judging by the sashes, and none was shouting orders. They laughed as they kicked their horses through the wet soil of the vegetable field, then they were gone to the south and Sharpe kept crawling. Go inland, he thought, and find shelter. Find trees. Find anything that would hide him and then work out what to do. Maybe, he thought, he should just wait. A British army was supposedly coming to Denmark, but the thought of emerging from some barn or ditch to a welcoming committee of supercilious officers was more than he could bear. They would say he had failed again, but what else could he do?

  The voices and hoofbeats sounded again and Sharpe dropped into the mud. He must have been closer to the track than he had thought, for he could hear the squeal and rumble of the cart. Then he heard Barker’s voice. He was apologizing, but his apology was cut short when Lavisser interrupted him. “It’s a pity, Barker,” the guardsman said, “but it’s not a tragedy. And what can he do to us? I quite liked the fellow, but he’s still an encumbrance and quite useless. Pitifully useless.”

  Useless? Sharpe raised his head to see that Lavisser was wearing the Danish uniform. He must have gone back home to his grandfather, changed into the uniform, joined his waiting friends and so become wealthy. All in an hour or two. Then damn him, Sharpe thought. Damn him. He watched the cart and the cavalrymen fade into the fog.

  Get to Copenhagen, he thought. He felt in his pocket and found the piece of paper that Lord Pumphrey had given him in Harwich. There was just enough light to read the elegant handwriting. “Ole Skovgaard, Ulfedt’s Plads,” it read, and Sharpe stared at it. Was that a name? Or an address? Then he guessed the comma meant that Ole Skovgaard was the man’s name and Ulfedt’s Plads was where he lived, and that, Pumphrey had said, was in Copenhagen, so get there fast. Be useful.

  He pushed the scrap of paper back into his coat pocket, checked that Lavisser and the other horsemen were truly gone from sight, then stood.

  And that was when the dragoon sprang the trap.

  It was an old trick. The cavalrymen had left one horseman behind, reckoning that Sharpe would think himself safe when he saw the riders leave and so come out of hiding.

  Which Sharpe dutifully did and the last dragoon,
waiting by the dunes, saw the rifleman appear as a dark shape in the field.

  The dragoon should have shouted immediately. He should have called his companions back, but he wanted all the credit for capturing the missing Englishman and so he drew his sword and raked his spurs back. Sharne heard the hooves, turned and saw the big horse being spurred but saw, too, that the horseman was right-handed, understood that the horse would therefore go to his own right and knew that the dragoon would lean from the saddle to chop with the sword, and knew, too, that there was no time to draw his own saber. Or perhaps he knew none of that, but instinctively realized it in the space of a heartbeat and understood how to react.

  The cavalryman shouted, more to frighten Sharpe than summon his companions, but the horseman was too confident and too inexperienced. He believed Sharpe would stand like a scarecrow and be beaten down by the flat of his sword and the last thing he expected was for the rifleman to swing the heavy pack hard into the side of his horse’s head. The horse slewed away and the dragoon, already swinging his heavy sword, found his horse going one way while he was leaning the other. Lavisser had cautioned him that the Englishman was dangerous so he had intended to stun Sharpe with the weight of his heavy straight blade, but instead he flailed for balance. Sharpe let go of his pack, seized the dragoon’s sword arm and simply tugged. The man yelped as he was jerked from the saddle, then the breath was thumped out of him as he fell into the rnud. He yelped again as Sharpe dropped onto his belly. “Bloody fool,” Sharpe said.

  The horse, shaking its head, had stopped. There was a pistol bolstered on its saddle.

  Sharpe was angry. It did not take much to make him angry, not since Grace died, and he hit the man hard. Too hard. He found a fist-sized stone in the field’s mud and used it to break the dragoon’s jaw. The man moaned as blood trickled into his long fair mustache. “Bloody fool,” Sharpe said again. He stood and kicked the man. He thought about taking the sword, for a heavy cavalry sword was a much better weapon than a light saber, but the blade had fallen some feet away and the scabbard was secured by a complicated buckle and meanwhile the man’s shout must have been heard by the other dragoons, for a voice called urgently out of the fog. Lavisser and his companions were coming back so Sharpe rescued his pack and ran to the horse. He put his left foot in the stirrup, hopped clumsily as the horse sidled nervously away, then managed to haul himself into the saddle. He fiddled his right foot into the second stirrup, turned the horse north, and kicked his heels back. The fallen man watched him sadly.

  Sharpe swerved back to the beach. He could hear hoofbeats and knew the other dragoons would soon be in full pursuit. Once across the dunes and on the beach he turned south and kicked the horse into a gallop. Sharpe clung on for dear life, the pack bouncing against his right thigh and the saber scabbard clanging like a cracked bell. He rode past the jumble of hoofprints where he and Lavisser had come ashore, then turned inland again. He was riding in a circle, hoping that the changes of direction would confuse his pursuers. He crossed the dunes, let the horse find its own way over the ditch, then curbed it in the field. He listened, but could hear nothing except his horse’s harsh breathing.

  He kicked the beast on. He crossed two more ditches, then turned northward again until he came to the rutted track where he turned west, then north again where a path branched away between windbent trees. His instinct told him he had lost his pursuers, but he doubted they would have given up the chase quite yet. They would be looking for him and, as the sun rose, the fog began to thin. The horse would be a liability soon, for Lavisser and his companions would be searching for a horseman in this flat, featureless landscape and so, reluctantly, Sharpe slid out of the saddle. He unbuckled the girth and took the saddle off the beast, then slapped its rump to drive it into a pasture. With any luck the other horsemen would simply see a grazing horse, not an abandoned cavalry mount.

  He threw away the pistol. It had not been loaded and its ammunition must have been with its rider, so Sharpe tossed it into the ditch where he had hidden the saddle and walked on north. He hurried now, using the last vestiges of the fog to cover his escape. By midmorning, when the sun at last burned the mist away, Sharpe had gone to earth in a ditch from where he could just see his pursuers. They were far off, staring across the fields. He watched them for an hour or more, until at last they abandoned the search and rode inland.

  Sharpe waited in case another man had been left behind. He was getting hungry, but there was nothing he could do about that. The sky was clouding over, threatening rain. Still he waited until he was certain there was no one looking for him, then he climbed from the ditch and walked through drab fields in a flat land. He kept the dunes to his right to make sure he was going north. He passed white-painted farms with red-tiled roofs and big barns, crossed earth roads and waded wide drainage ditches and, in the afternoon, just as it began to rain, he had to cut deep inland to skirt a fishing village. He splashed through a stream and threaded through a wood of oak and ash to find himself in the park of a vast mansion with two lofty towers. The windows were shuttered and a dozen men, their heads protected from the rain by hoods of sacking, were scything the big lawn. He walked along the edge of the park, climbed a wall and was back in the drab fields, though ahead of him the sky was smeared with a haze of smoke, evidence of a town, and he prayed it was Copenhagen, though he sensed that he was still far to the south. He could only judge the distance by the time it had taken the Cleopatra to sail down the coast and he reckoned the city was probably a two- or three-day walk.

  The town, though he did not know it, was Koge. He smelt it before he saw it. There was the familiar reek of a brewery and the pungent odor of smoking fish that made his hunger even more acute. He thought of going into the town to beg or steal food, but when he came close to Koge’s southern edge he saw two men in dark uniforms standing beside the road. They were sheltering from the rain as best they could, but when a carriage rattled along the road they stopped it and Sharpe saw one of them climb onto the step and peer through the window. The man saw nothing suspicious, jumped down and made a brief salute. So they were searching for someone and Sharpe knew who it was. Lavisser had made him into a hunted man.

  He told himself he had endured hunger before and so he struck inland again. The rain fell harder as night descended, but it hid him as he walked and walked, always keeping the smell of the town and its scatter of dim lights on his right-hand side. He crossed a major road, followed a track northward, then crossed more fields. His boots were clogged with mud, his clothes were soaked and the pack was biting into the small of his back and his shoulders. He walked till he could not endure another pace, then he slept in a wood where he was woken by a heavy rain that thrashed the trees just before dawn. His belly ached and he was shivering. He remembered the bedroom he had shared with Grace, its fireplace and the wide windows that led to a balcony. He had been careless, he now knew, in thinking that idyll could last forever. He had sold his Indian jewels and used the money to make a haven while the lawyers bickered over her dead husband’s will, but then Grace died and the same lawyers pounced like weasels on the property Sharpe had bought. He had put the house in Grace’s name, saying that she needed the safety of her own home while he soldiered abroad, and that quixotic gallantry had lost him everything. Worse, he had lost her. Grace, he thought, Grace, and the self-pity swept over him so that he tipped his face to the rain as if it could wash away his tears.

  Bloody fool, he told himself. Be useful. Pull yourself together. The woman is dead and you do not help her memory by collapsing. Get up, he told himself, walk. Sniveling and feeling sorry for himself would do nothing. Be useful. He got up, pulled on the pack and went to the wood’s edge.

  And there his fortune changed. A farm lay just a hundred yards away. It had a long low white-painted house, two barns, a windmill and a dairy. It looked prosperous and busy. Two men were driving a big herd of cattle toward the dairy while a dozen laborers gathered in the yard. All had haversacks slung on their shoulde
rs and Sharpe reckoned that was dinner; bread and cheese, perhaps. He watched from the wood’s edge. The rain eased. Most of the men went westward with a small cart laden with spades and forks, but three vanished inside the smaller of the two barns. Sharpe waited, hunger biting. The bigger barn had wide-open doors. Get inside there, he reckoned, and he could scout the rest of the farm, maybe even sneak into the kitchen or dairy to steal food. He never once thought of the guineas in his pack. He could have bought food, but his instinct was not to show himself. Live as he had learned to live before he met Grace.

  The dairy herd was driven back to pasture and then no one moved in the farm for a while until two children, school bags swinging, walked down the lane. When they had gone from sight Sharpe broke cover and ran across the damp pasture, crossed a ditch and sprinted the last few yards into the big barn. He half expected a shout of protest or a dog to start barking, but he was unseen. He slipped through the doors to find a vast wagon loaded high with hay. A haversack, like the ones the laborers had been carrying, lay discarded on the wagon’s seat and Sharpe scooped it up as he climbed the vehicle’s high side which was a wooden grille designed to keep the hay in place. He scrabbled a hole for himself in the hay, took off his pack and greatcoat, then opened the stolen haversack to find bread, cheese, a big piece of ham, a sausage and a stone bottle which, uncorked, proved to hold ale.