Sharpe's Battle s-12

by Бернард Корнуэлл

  "You're dressed for it, General," Sharpe said. "Got as much fur as a Christmas whore, you have."

  Loup smiled. It was not a pleasant smile. He was missing two teeth, and those that remained were stained yellow. He had spoken pleasantly enough to Sharpe, even charmingly, but it was the smooth charm of a cat about to kill. He drew on his cigar, making the tip glow red, while his single bloodshot eye looked hard at Sharpe from beneath the helmet's grey visor.

  Loup saw a tall man with a well-used rifle on one shoulder and a battered ugly-bladed sword at his hip. Sharpe's uniform was torn, stained and patched. The jacket's black cord hung in tatters between a few silver buttons that hung by threads, while beneath the jacket Sharpe wore a set of leather-reinforced French cavalry overalls. The remains of an officer's red sash encircled Sharpe's waist, while around his neck was a loosely knotted black choker. It was the uniform of a man who had long discarded the peacetime trappings of soldiering in exchange for the utilitarian comforts of a fighting man. A hard man, too, Loup guessed, not just from the evidence of the scar on Sharpe's cheek, but from the rifleman's demeanour which was awkward and raw-edged as though Sharpe would have preferred to be fighting than talking. Loup shrugged, abandoned his pleasantries and got down to business. "I came to fetch my two men," he said.

  "Forget them, General," Sharpe replied. He was determined not to dignify this Frenchman by calling him 'sir' or 'monsieur'.

  Loup raised his eyebrows. "They're dead?"

  "They will be."

  Loup waved a persistent fly away. The steel-plated straps of his helmet hung loose beside his face, resembling the cadenettes of braided hair that French hussars liked to wear hanging from their temples. He drew on his cigar again, then smiled. "Might I remind you, Captain, of the rules of war?"

  Sharpe offered Loup a word that he doubted the Frenchman had heard much in Edinburgh's learned society. "I don't take lessons from murderers," Sharpe went on, "not in the rules of war. What your men did in that village wasn't war. It was a massacre."

  "Of course it was war," Loup said equably, "and I don't need lectures from you, Captain."

  "You might not need a lecture, General, but you damn well need a lesson."

  Loup laughed. He turned and walked to the stream's edge where he stretched his arms, yawned hugely, then stooped to scoop some water to his mouth. He turned back to Sharpe. "Let me tell you what my job is, Captain, and you will put yourself in my boots. That way, perhaps, you will lose your tedious English moral certainties. My job, Captain, is to police the roads through these mountains and so make the passes safe for the supply wagons of ammunition and food with which we plan to beat you British back to the sea. My enemy is not a soldier dressed in uniform with a colour and a code of honour, but is instead a rabble of civilians who resent my presence. Good! Let them resent me, that is their privilege, but if they attack me, Captain, then I will defend myself and I do it so ferociously, so ruthlessly, so comprehensively, that they will think a thousand times before they attack my men again. You know what the major weapon of the guerrilla is? It is horror, Captain, sheer horror, so I make certain I am more horrible than my enemy, and my enemy in this area is horrible indeed. You have heard of El Castrador?"

  "The Castrator?" Sharpe guessed the translation.

  "Indeed. Because of what he does to French soldiers, only he does it while they are alive and then he lets them bleed to death. El Castrador, I am sorry to say, still lives, but I do assure you that none of my men has been castrated in three months, and do you know why? Because El Castrador's men fear me more than they fear him. I have defeated him, Captain, I have made the mountains secure. In all of Spain, Captain, these are the only hills where Frenchmen can ride safely, and why? Because I have used the guerrilleros' weapon against them. I castrate them, just as they would castrate me, only I use a blunter knife." Brigadier Loup offered Sharpe a grim smile. "Now tell me, Captain, if you were in my boots, and if your men were being castrated and blinded and disembowelled and skinned alive and left to die, would you not do as I do?"

  "To children?" Sharpe jerked his thumb at the village.

  Loup's one eye widened in surprise, as though he found Sharpe's objection odd in a soldier. "Would you spare a rat because it's young? Vermin are vermin, Captain, whatever their age."

  "I thought you said the mountains were safe," Sharpe said, "so why kill?"

  "Because last week two of my men were ambushed and killed in a village not far from here. The families of the murderers came here to take refuge, thinking I would not find them. I did find them, and now I assure you, Captain, that no more of my men will be ambushed in Fuentes de Onoro."

  "They will if I find them there."

  Loup shook his head sadly. "You are so quick with your threats, Captain. But fight me and I think you will learn caution. But for now? Give me my men and we shall ride away."

  Sharpe paused, thinking, then finally shrugged and turned. "Sergeant Harper!"

  "Sir?"

  "Bring the two Frogs out!"

  Harper hesitated as though he wanted to know what Sharpe intended before he obeyed the order, but then he turned reluctantly towards the houses. A moment later he appeared with the two French captives, both of whom were still naked below the waist and one of whom was still half doubled over in pain. "Is he wounded?" Loup asked.

  "I kicked him in the balls," Sharpe said. "He was raping a girl."

  Loup seemed amused by the answer. "You're squeamish about rape, Captain Sharpe?"

  "Funny in a man, isn't it? Yes, I am."

  "We have some officers like that," Loup said, "but a few months in Spain soon cures their delicacy. The women here fight like the men, and if a woman imagines that her skirts will protect her then she is wrong. And rape is part of the horror, but it also serves a secondary purpose. Release soldiers to rape and they don't care that they're hungry or that their pay is a year in arrears. Rape is a weapon like any other, Captain."

  "I'll remember that, General, when I march into France," Sharpe said, then he turned back towards the houses. "Stop there, Sergeant!" The two prisoners had been escorted as far as the village entrance. "And Sergeant!"

  "Sir?"

  "Fetch their trousers. Get them dressed properly."

  Loup, pleased with the way his mission was going, smiled at Sharpe. "You're being sensible, good. I would hate to have to fight you in the same way that I fight the Spanish."

  Sharpe looked at Loup's pagan uniform. It was a costume, he thought, to scare a child, the costume of a wolfman walking out of nightmare, but the wolfman's sword was no longer than Sharpe's and his carbine a good deal less accurate than Sharpe's rifle. "I don't suppose you could fight us, General," Sharpe said, "we're a real army, you see, not a pack of unarmed women and children."

  Loup stiffened. "You will find, Captain Sharpe, that the Brigade Loup can fight any man, anywhere, anyhow. I do not lose, Captain, not to anyone."

  "So if you never lose, General, how were you taken prisoner?" Sharpe sneered. "Fast asleep, were you?"

  "I was a passenger on my way to Egypt, Captain, when our ship was captured by the Royal Navy. That hardly counts as my defeat." Loup watched as his two men pulled on their trousers. "Where is Trooper Godin's horse?"

  "Trooper Godin won't need a horse where he's going," Sharpe said.

  "He can walk? I suppose he can. Very well, I yield you the horse," Loup said magniloquently.

  "He's going to hell, General," Sharpe said. "I'm dressing them because they're still soldiers, and even your lousy soldiers deserve to die with their trousers on." He turned back to the settlement. "Sergeant! Put them against the wall! I want a firing squad, four men for each prisoner. Load up!"

  "Captain!" Loup snapped and his hand went to his sword's hilt.

  "You don't frighten me, Loup. Not you nor your fancy dress," Sharpe said. "You draw that sword and we'll be mopping up your blood with your flag of truce. I've got marksmen up on that ridge who can whip the good eye out of your face at two hun
dred yards, and one of those marksmen is looking at you right now."

  Loup looked up the hill. He could see Price's redcoats there, and one greenjacket, but he plainly could not tell just how many men were in Sharpe's party. He looked back to Sharpe. "You're a captain, just a captain. Which means you have what? One company? Maybe two? The British won't entrust more than two companies to a mere captain, but within half a mile I have the rest of my brigade. If you kill my men you'll be hunted down like dogs, and you will die like dogs. I will exempt you from the rules of war, Captain, just as you propose exempting my men, and I will make sure you die in the manner of my Spanish enemies. With a very blunt knife, Captain."

  Sharpe ignored the threat, turning towards the village instead. "Firing party ready, Sergeant?"

  "They're ready, sir. And eager, sir!"

  Sharpe looked back to the Frenchman. "Your brigade is miles away, General. If it was any closer you wouldn't be here talking to me, but leading the attack. Now, if you'll forgive me, I've got some justice to execute."

  "No!" Loup said sharply enough to turn Sharpe back. "I have made a bargain with my men. You understand that, Captain? You are a leader, I am a leader, and I have promised my men never to abandon them. Don't make me break my promise."

  "I don't give a bugger about your promise," Sharpe said.

  Loup had expected that kind of answer and so shrugged. "Then maybe you will give a bugger about this, Captain Sharpe. I know who you are, and if you do not return my men I will place a price on your head. I will give every man in Portugal and Spain a reason to hunt you down. Kill those two and you sign your own death warrant."

  Sharpe smiled. "You're a bad loser, General."

  "And you're not?"

  Sharpe walked away. "I've never lost," he called back across his shoulder, "so I wouldn't know."

  "Your death warrant, Sharpe!" Loup called.

  Sharpe lifted two fingers. He had heard that the English bowmen at Agincourt, threatened by the French with the loss of their bowstring fingers at the battle's end, had first won the battle and then invented the taunting gesture to show the overweening bastards just who were the better soldiers. Now Sharpe used it again.

  Then went to kill the wolfman's men.

  Major Michael Hogan discovered Wellington inspecting a bridge over the River Turones where a force of three French battalions had tried to hold off the advancing British. The resulting battle had been swift and brutal, and now a trail of French and British dead told the skirmish's tale. An initial tide line of bodies marked where the sides had clashed, a dreadful smear of bloodied turf showed where two British cannon had enfiladed the enemy, then a further scatter of corpses betrayed the French retreat across the bridge which their engineers had not had time to destroy. "Fletcher thinks the bridge is Roman work, Hogan," Wellington greeted the Irish Major.

  "I sometimes wonder, my Lord, whether anyone has built a bridge in Portugal or Spain since the Romans." Hogan, swathed in a cloak because of the day's damp chill, nodded amicably to his Lordship's three aides, then handed the General a sealed letter. The seal, which showed the royal Spanish coat of arms, had been lifted. "I took the precaution of reading the letter, my Lord," Hogan explained.

  "Trouble?" Wellington asked.

  "I wouldn't have bothered you otherwise, my Lord," Hogan answered gloomily.

  Wellington frowned as he read the letter. The General was a handsome man, forty-two years old, but as fit as any in his army. And, Hogan thought, wiser than most. The British army, Hogan knew, had an uncanny knack of finding the least qualified man and promoting him to high command, but somehow the system had gone wrong and Sir Arthur Wellesley, now the Viscount Wellington, had been given command of His Majesty's army in Portugal, thus providing that army with the best possible leadership. At least Hogan thought so, but Michael Hogan allowed that he could be prejudiced in this matter. Wellington, after all, had promoted Hogan's career, making the shrewd Irishman the head of his intelligence department and the result had been a relationship as close as it was fruitful.

  The General read the letter again, this time glancing at a translation Hogan had thoughtfully provided. Hogan meanwhile looked about the battlefield where fatigue parties were clearing up the remnants of the skirmish. To the east of the bridge, where the road came delicately down the mountainside in a series of sweeping curves, a dozen work parties were searching the bushes for bodies and abandoned supplies. The French dead were being stripped naked and stacked like cordwood next to a long, shallow grave that a group of diggers was trying to extend. Other men were piling French muskets or else hurling canteens, cartridge boxes, boots and blankets into a cart. Some of the plunder was even more exotic, for the retreating French had weighed themselves down with the loot of a thousand Portuguese villages and Wellington's men were now recovering church vestments, candlesticks and silver plate. "Astonishing what a soldier will carry on a retreat," the General remarked to Hogan. "We found one dead man with a milking stool. A common milking stool! What was he thinking of? Taking it back to France?" He held the letter out to Hogan. "Damn," he said mildly, then, more strongly, "God damn!" He waved his aides away, leaving him alone with Hogan. "The more I learn about His Most Catholic Majesty King Ferdinand VII, Hogan, the more I become convinced that he should have been drowned at birth."

  Hogan smiled. "The recognized method, my Lord, is smothering."

  "Is it indeed?"

  "It is indeed, my Lord, and no one's ever the wiser. The mother simply explains how she rolled over in her sleep and trapped the blessed little creature beneath her body and thus, the holy church explains, another precious angel is born."

  "In my family," the General said, "unwanted children get posted into the army."

  "It has much the same effect, my Lord, except in the matter of angels."

  Wellington gave a brief laugh, then gestured with the letter. "So how did this reach us?"

  "The usual way, my Lord. Smuggled out of Valenзay by Ferdinand's servants and brought south to the Pyrenees where it was given to partisans for forwarding to us."

  "With a copy to London, eh? Any chance of intercepting the London copy?"

  "Alas, sir, gone these two weeks. Probably there already."

  "Hell, damn and hell again. Damn!" Wellington stared gloomily at the bridge where a sling cart was salvaging the fallen barrel of a dismounted French cannon. "So what to do, eh, Hogan? What to do?"

  The problem was simple enough. The letter, copied to the Prince Regent in London, had come from the exiled King Ferdinand of Spain who was now a prisoner of Napoleon in the French chвteau at Valenзay. The letter was pleased to announce that His Most Catholic Majesty, in a spirit of cooperation with his cousin of England and in his great desire to drive the French invader from the sacred soil of his kingdom, had directed the Real Companпa Irlandesa of His Most Catholic Majesty's household guard to attach itself to His Britannic Majesty's forces under the command of the Viscount Wellington. Which gesture, though it sounded generous, was not to the Viscount Wellington's taste. He did not need a stray company of royal palace guards. A battalion of trained infantry with full fighting equipment might have been of some service, but a company of ceremonial troops was about as much use to the Viscount Wellington as a choir of psalm-singing eunuchs.

  "And they've already arrived," Hogan said mildly.

  "They've what?" Wellington's question could be heard a hundred yards away where a dog, thinking it was being reproved, slunk away from some fly-blackened guts that trailed from the eviscerated body of a French artillery officer. "Where are they?" Wellington asked fiercely.

  "Somewhere on the Tagus, my Lord, being barged towards us."

  "How the hell did they get here?"

  "According to my correspondent, my Lord, by ship. Our ships." Hogan put a pinch of snuff on his left hand, then sniffed the powder up each nostril. He paused for a second, his eyes suddenly streaming, then sneezed. His horse's ears flicked back at the noise. "The commander of the Real Companпa I
rlandesa claims he marched his men to Spain's east coast, my Lord," Hogan went on, "then took ship to Menorca where our Royal Navy collected them."

  Wellington snorted his derision. "And the French just let that happen? King Joseph just watched half the royal guard march away?" Joseph was Bonaparte's brother and had been elevated to the throne of Spain, though it was taking three hundred thousand French bayonets to keep him there.

  "A fifth of the royal guard, my Lord," Hogan gently corrected the General. "And yes, that's exactly what Lord Kiely says. Kiely, of course, being their comandante."

  "Kiely?"

  "Irish peer, my Lord."

  "Damn it, Hogan, I know the Irish peerage. Kiely. Earl of Kiely. An exile, right? And his mother, I remember, gave money to Tone back in the nineties." Wolfe Tone had been an Irish patriot who had tried to raise money and men in Europe and America to lead a rebellion against the British in his native Ireland. The rebellion had flared into open war in 1798 when Tone had invaded Donegal with a small French army that had been roundly defeated and Tone himself had committed suicide in his Dublin prison rather than hang from a British rope. "I don't suppose Kiely's any better than his mother," Wellington said grimly, "and she's a witch who should have been smothered at birth. Is his Lordship to be trusted, Hogan?"

  "So far as I hear, my Lord, he's a drunk and a wastrel," Hogan said. "He was given command of the Real Companпa Irlandesa because he's the only Irish aristocrat in Madrid and because his mother had influence over the King. She's dead now, God rest her soul." He watched a soldier try to fork up the spilt French officer's intestines with his bayonet. The guts kept slipping off the blade and finally a sergeant yelled at the man to either pick the offal up with his bare hands or else leave it for the crows.