Sharpe’s rifles

by Bernard Cornwell

  “I can manage Harper.” Sharpe said the words with a false conviction. In the short time that he had been with this Battalion, Sharpe had often noticed the Irishman, and he had seen for himself the truth of Captain Murray’s assertion that he was a natural leader. Men crowded to Harper’s campfire, partly to relish his stories, and partly because they wanted his approval. To the officers he liked the Irishman offered a humorous allegiance, while to those he disliked he offered nothing but scorn. And there was something very intimidating about Rifleman Harper; not just because of his size, but because of his air of knowing self-reliance.

  “I’ve no doubt Harper thinks he can manage you. He’s a hard man,” Murray paused, then smiled, “but he’s filled with sentimentality.”

  “So he has a weakness,” Sharpe said harshly.

  “Is that a weakness?” Murray shrugged. “I doubt it. But now you’ll think I’m weak. When I’m dead, you see,” and again he had to shake his head to stop Sharpe interjecting, “when I’m dead,” he repeated, “I want you take my sword. I’ll tell Williams you’re to have it.”

  Sharpe looked at the Heavy Cavalry sword that was propped in its metal scabbard against the wall. It looked an awkward and clumsy weapon, but Sharpe could not make any such objection to the gift now. “Thank you.” He said it awkwardly. He was not used to receiving personal favours, nor had he learned to be gracious in accepting them.

  “It isn’t much of a sword,” Murray said, “but it’ll replace the one you lost. And if the men see you carrying it…“ he was unable to finish the sentence.

  “They’ll think I’m a real officer?” The words betrayed Sharpe’s resentment.

  “They’ll think I liked you,” Murray spoke in gentle correction, “and that will help.”

  Sharpe, reproved by the tone in the dying man’s voice, again muttered his thanks.

  Murray shrugged. “I watched you yesterday. You’re good in a fight, aren’t you?”

  “For a Quartermaster?”

  Murray ignored the self-pity. “You’ve seen a lot of battles?”

  “Yes.”

  “That wasn’t very tactful of you,” Murray smiled, “new Lieutenants aren’t supposed to be more experienced than their seniors.” The Captain looked up at the broken roof. “Bloody silly place to die, isn’t it?”

  “I’m going to keep you alive.”

  “I suspect you can do many things, Lieutenant Sharpe, but you’re not a miracle worker.”

  Murray slept after that. All the Riflemen rested that day. The rain was insistent and, in mid-afternoon, turned to a heavy, wet snow which, by nightfall, was settling on the shoulders of the closest hills. Hagman had snared two rabbits, thin fare, but something to flavour the few beans and scraps of bread that the men had hoarded in their knapsacks. There were no cooking cauldrons, but the men used tin mugs as saucepans.

  Sharpe left the barn at dusk and went to the cold shelter of the ruined farmhouse to watch the night fall. It was not much of a house, merely four broken stone walls that had once held up a timber and sod roof. One door faced east, another west, and from the eastern door Sharpe could see far down a valley that now whirled and bellied with snow. Once, when the driving snow was lifted by the wind, he thought he saw the grey smear of smoke at the valley’s end; evidence, perhaps, of a tiny village where they could find shelter, then the snow blanketed the view again. He shivered, and it seemed impossible that this was Spain.

  Footsteps made him turn. Rifleman Harper ducked under the western door of the small house, saw Sharpe, and checked. He waved a hand at some fallen roof beams that were embedded in stones and turf. “Timber, sir,” he explained his errand, “for the fire.”

  “Carry on.” Sharpe watched as the Irishman took hold of the rotted timbers and snapped them clear of their obstructions. Harper seemed to resent being watched, for he straightened up and stared at the Lieutenant. “So what are we doing, sir?”

  For a second Sharpe took offence at the surly tone, then realized that Harper was only asking what every man in the company wanted to know. “We’re going home.”

  “You mean England?”

  “I mean back to the army.” Sharpe suddenly wished he faced this journey alone, unencumbered by resentful men. “We’ll have to go south. To Lisbon.”

  Harper crossed to the doorway where he stooped to stare eastwards. “I didn’t think you meant Donegal.”

  “Is that where you come from?”

  “Aye.” Harper watched the snow settle in the darkening valley. “Donegal looks something like this, so it does. Only this is a better land.”

  “Better?” Sharpe was surprised. He was also obscurely pleased that the big man had deigned to have this conversation which made him suddenly more likeable. “Better?” Sharpe had to ask again.

  “The English never ruled here. Did they, sir?” The insolence was back. Harper, standing, stared down at the sitting Sharpe and there was nothing but scorn in his voice. “This is unsoiled country, so it is.”

  Sharpe knew he had been lured into the question which had released this man’s derision. “I thought you were fetching timber.”

  “I was.”

  “Then fetch it and go.”

  Later, after he had visited the shivering picquets, Sharpe went back to the barn and sat by the wall where he listened to the low voices of the men who gathered about Rifleman Harper. They laughed softly, letting Sharpe know that he was excluded from the company of soldiers, even of the damned. He was alone.

  Murray died in the night. He did it without noise or fuss, just sliding decorously into death.

  “The lads want to bury him.” Williams said it as though he expected Sharpe to disapprove.

  Sharpe was standing in the barn’s doorway. “Of course.”

  “He said to give you this.” Williams held out the big sword.

  It was an awkward moment and Sharpe was aware of the men’s gaze as he took the cumbersome weapon. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “He always said it was better than a sabre in a fight, sir,” Williams said. “Puts the fear of God into the bloody Frogs, it does. Right butcher’s blade, it is.”

  “I’m sure.”

  The moment of intimacy, forged by the gift of the sword, seemed to give Williams confidence. “We were talking last night, sir.”

  “We?”

  “Me and the lads.”

  “And?” Sharpe jumped from the barn’s raised doorway into a world made dazzling by new snow. The whole valley glittered under a pale sun that was threatened by thickening clouds.

  The Sergeant followed him. “They’re not going, sir. Not going south.” His tone was respectful, but very firm.

  Sharpe walked away from the barn. His boots squeaked in the fresh snow. They also let in damp because, like the boots of the men he was supposed to command, they were torn, gaping, and barely held together with rags and twine; hardly the footwear of a privileged officer whom these frightened Riflemen would follow through the valley of the shadow of death. “And who made that decision, Sergeant?”

  “We all did, sir.”

  “Since when, Sergeant, has this army been a…“ Sharpe paused, trying to remember the word he had once heard at a mess dinner. ”A democracy?“

  Williams had never heard the word. “A what, sir?”

  Sharpe could not explain what it meant, so tried a different approach. “Since when did Sergeants outrank Lieutenants?”

  “It isn’t that, sir.” Williams was embarrassed.

  “Then what is it?”

  The Sergeant hesitated, but he was being watched by men who clustered in the barn’s gaping entrance, and under their critical gaze he found courage and volubility. “It’s madness, sir. That’s what it is. We can’t go south in this weather! We’ll starve! And we don’t even know if there’s still a garrison at Lisbon.”

  “That’s true, we don’t.”

  “So we’ll go north, sir.” Williams said it confidingly, as though he did Sharpe a great favour by the sugge
stion.

  “There are ports up there, sir, and we’ll find a boat. I mean the Navy’s still off the coast, sir. They’ll find us.”

  “How do you know the Navy’s there?”

  Williams shrugged modestly. “It isn’t me who knows, sir.”

  “Harper?” Sharpe guessed.

  “Harps! Lord no, sir. He’s just a bog-Paddy, isn’t he? He wouldn’t know nothing, sir. No, it’s Rifleman Tongue, sir. He’s a clever man. He can read. It was the drink that did him in, sir, you see. Only the drink. But he’s an educated man, sir, and he told us, see, how the Navy’s off the coast, sir, and how we can go north and find a boat.” Williams, encouraged by Sharpe’s silence, gestured towards the steep northern hills. “It can’t be far, sir, not to the coast. Maybe three days? Four?”

  Sharpe walked a few paces further from the barn. The snow was about four inches thick, though it had drifted into deeper tracts where the ground was hollowed. It was not too deep for marching, which was all Sharpe cared about this morning. The clouds were beginning to mist the sun as Sharpe glanced into the Sergeant’s face. “Has it occurred to you, Sergeant, that the French are invading this country from the north and east?”

  “Are they, sir?”

  “And that if we go north, we’re likely to march straight into them? Or is that what you want? You were quite ready to surrender yesterday.”

  “We might have to be a bit clever, sir. Dodge about a bit.” Williams made the matter of avoiding the French sound like a child’s game of hide and seek.

  Sharpe raised his voice so that every man could hear him. “We’re going south, Sergeant. We’ll head down this valley today and find shelter tonight. After that we turn south. We leave in one hour.”

  “Sir…“

  “One hour, Sergeant! So if you wish to dig a grave for Captain Murray, start now. And if you wish to disobey me, Sergeant Williams, then make the grave large enough for yourself as well. Do you understand me?”

  Williams paused, wanting to offer defiance, but he quailed before Sharpe’s gaze. There was a moment of tension when authority trembled in the balance, then he nodded acceptance. “Yes, sir.”

  “Then get on with it.”

  Sharpe turned away. He was shaking inside. He had sounded calm enough giving Williams his parting orders, but he was not at all certain those orders would be obeyed. These men had no habit of obeying Lieutenant Sharpe. They were cold, far from home, surrounded by the enemy, and convinced that a journey north would take them to safety far faster than a journey to the south. They knew their own army had been outmanoeuvred and driven into retreat, and they had seen the remnants of the Spanish armies that had been similarly broken and scattered. The French spread victorious across the land, and these Riflemen were bereft and frightened.

  Sharpe was also frightened. These men could call the bluff of his tenuous authority with a terrifying ease. Worse, if they perceived him as a threat to their survival, then he could only expect a blade in the back. His name would be recorded as an officer who had died in the debacle of Sir John Moore’s retreat, or perhaps his death would not even be noticed by anyone for he had no family. He was not even sure he had friends any more, for when a man was lifted from the ranks into the officers’ mess he left his friends far behind.

  Sharpe supposed he should turn back to impose his will on the makeshift company, but he was too shaken, and unwilling to face their resentment. He persuaded himself that he had a useful task to perform in the ruined farmhouse where, with a horrid feeling that he evaded his real duty, he took out his telescope.

  Lieutenant Richard Sharpe was not a wealthy man. His uniform was no better than those of the men he led, except that his threadbare officer’s trousers had silver buttons down their seams. His boots were as ragged, his rations as poor, and his weapons as battered as any of the other Riflemen’s equipment. Yet he possessed one object of value and beauty.

  It was the telescope; a beautiful instrument made by Matthew Burge in London and presented to Sergeant Richard Sharpe by General Sir Arthur Wellesley. There was a brass plate recording the date of the battle in India where Sharpe, a redcoat then, had saved the General’s life. That act had also brought a battlefield commission and, staring through the glass, he now resented that commission. It had made him a man apart, an enemy to his own kind. There had been a time when men crowded about Richard Sharpe’s campfire, and sought Richard Sharpe’s approval, but no longer.

  Sharpe gazed down the valley to where, in the dusk’s snowstorm, he thought he had seen the grey smear of smoke from a village’s fires. Now, through the finely ground lenses, he saw the stone buildings and small high arch of a church’s bell tower. So there was a village just a few hours’ march away and, however poor, it would have some hoarded food; grain and beans would be buried in wax-sealed pots and hams hanging in chimneys. The thought of food was suddenly poignant and overwhelming.

  He edged the telescope right, scanning the glaring brilliance of the snow. A tree hung with icicles skidded across the lens. A sudden movement made Sharpe stop the slewing glass, but it was only a raven flapping black against a white hillside. Behind the raven a churned line of footsteps showed where men had slithered down the hill into dead ground.

  Sharpe stared. The tracks were fresh. Why had the picquets not raised an alarm? He moved the glass to look at the shallow trench in the snow that marked the line of the goat track and he saw that the picquets were gone. He swore silently. The men were already in mutiny. God damn them! He slammed the tubes of the spyglass shut, stood, and turned.

  He turned to see Rifleman Harper standing in the hovel’s western doorway. He must have approached with a catlike stealth, for Sharpe had heard nothing. “We’re not going south,” the Irishman said flatly. He seemed somewhat startled that Sharpe had moved so suddenly but his voice was implacable.

  “I don’t give a damn what you think. Just get out and get ready.”

  “No.”

  Sharpe laid the telescope on his haversack that he had placed with his new sword and battered rifle on the window-sill of the ruined house. There was a choice now. He could reason and cajole, persuade and plead, or he could exercise the authority of his rank. He was too cold and too hungry to adopt the laborious course, and so he fell back on rank. “You’re under arrest, Rifleman.”

  Harper ignored the words. “We’re not going, sir, and that’s that.”

  “Sergeant Williams!” Sharpe shouted through the door of the hovel that faced towards the barn. The Riflemen stood in an arc about the shallow grave they had scooped in the snow. They watched, and their stillness was evidence that Harper was their emissary and spokesman this morning. Williams did not move. “Sergeant Williams!”

  “He’s not coming,” Harper said. “It’s very simple, sir. We’re not going south. We’ll go north to the coast. We talked about it, so we did, and that’s where we’re going. You can come or stay. It’s all the same to us.”

  Sharpe stood very still, disguising the fear that pricked his skin cold and churned in his hungry belly. If he went north then he tacitly agreed with this mutiny, he accepted it, and with that acceptance he lost every shred of his authority. Yet if he insisted on going south he was inviting his own murder. “We’re going south.”

  “You don’t understand, sir.”

  “Oh, I do. I understand very well. You’ve decided to go north, but you’re scared to death that I might go south on my own and reach the Lisbon garrison. Then I report you for disobedience and mutiny. They’ll stand you by your own grave, Harper, and shoot you.”

  “You’ll never make it to the south, sir.”

  “What you mean, Harper, is that you’ve been sent here to make sure I don’t survive. A dead officer can’t betray a mutiny, isn’t that right?”

  Sharpe could see from the Irishman’s expression that his words had been accurate. Harper shifted uneasily. He was a huge man, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, and with a broad body that betrayed a massive strength. Doubtl
ess the other Riflemen were content to let Harper do their dirty work, and perhaps only he had the guts to do it. Or perhaps his nation’s hatred of the English would make this murder into a pleasure.

  “Well?” Sharpe insisted. “Am I right?”

  Harper licked his lips, then put his hand to the braids hilt of his bayonet. “You can come with us, sir.”

  Sharpe let the silence drag out, then, as though surrendering to the inevitable, he nodded wearily. “I don’t seem to have much choice, do I?”

  “No, sir.” Harper’s voice betrayed relief that he would not have to kill the officer.

  “Bring those things.” Sharpe nodded at his haversack and weapons.

  Harper, somewhat astonished to receive the peremptory order, nevertheless bent over to pick up the haversack. He was still bending when he saw he had been tricked. Harper began to twist away but, before he could protect himself, Sharpe had kicked him in the belly. It was a massive kick, thumping deep into the hard flesh, and Sharpe followed it with a two-handed blow that slammed down onto the back of Harper’s neck.

  Sharpe was amazed that the Irishman could even stand. Another man would have been winded and stunned, but not him. He shook his head like a cornered boar, staggered backwards, then succeeded in straightening himself to receive Sharpe’s next blows. The officer’s right fist slammed into the big man’s belly, then his left followed.

  It was like hitting teak, but the blows hurt Harper. Not enough. The Irishman grunted, then lurched forward. Sharpe ducked, hit again, then his head seemed to explode like a cannon firing as a huge fist slammed into the side of his skull. He butted his head forward and felt it smash on the other man’s face, then his arms and chest were being hugged in a great, rib-cracking embrace.

  Sharpe raised his right foot and raked his heel down Harper’s shin. It must have hurt, but the grip did not lessen and Sharpe had no weapon left but his teeth. He bit the Irishman’s cheek, clamping his teeth down, tasting the blood, and the pain was enough to force Harper to release his huge embrace to hit at the officer’s head.