"Sharpe's Battle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Корнуэлл Бернард)

CHAPTER III

Eleven men deserted during the Real Companпa Irlandesa's first night in the San Isidro Fort and eight men, including four picquets set to stop such desertions, ran on the second night. The guardsmen were providing their own sentries and Colonel Runciman suggested Sharpe's riflemen took over the duty. Sharpe argued against such a change. His riflemen were supposed to be training the Real Companпa Irlandesa and they could not work all day and stand guard all night. "I'm sure you're right, General," Sharpe said tactfully, "but unless headquarters sends us more men we can't work round the clock."

Colonel Runciman, Sharpe had discovered, was malleable so long as he was addressed as 'General'. He only wanted to be left alone to sleep, to eat and to grumble about the amount of work expected from him. "Even a general is only human," he liked to inform Sharpe, then he would inquire how he was supposed to discharge the onerous duties of liaising with the Real Companпa Irlandesa while he was also expected to be responsible for the Royal Wagon Train. In truth the Colonel's deputy still ran the wagon train with the same efficiency he had always displayed, but until a new Wagon Master General was formally appointed Colonel Runciman's signature and seal were necessary on a handful of administrative documents.

"You could surrender the seals of office to your deputy, General?" Sharpe suggested.

"Never! Never let it be said that a Runciman evaded his duty, Sharpe. Never!" The Colonel glanced anxiously out of his quarters to see how his cook was proceeding with a hare shot by Daniel Hagman. Runciman's lethargy meant that the Colonel was quite content to let Sharpe deal with the Real Companпa Irlandesa, but even for a man of Runciman's idle nonchalance, nineteen deserters in two nights was cause to worry. "Damn it, man" — he leaned back after inspecting the cook's progress—"it reflects on our efficiency, don't you see? We must do something, Sharpe! In another fortnight we won't have a soul left!"

Which, Sharpe reflected silently, was exactly what Hogan wanted. The Real Companпa Irlandesa was supposed to self-destruct, yet Richard Sharpe had been put in command of their training and there was a stubborn streak in Sharpe's soul that would not let him permit a unit for which he was responsible to slide into ruin. Damn it, he would make the guards into soldiers whether Hogan wanted him to or not.

Sharpe doubted he would get much help from Lord Kiely. Each morning his Lordship woke in a foul ill-temper that lasted until his steady intake of alcohol gave him a burst of high spirits that would usually stretch into the evening, but then be replaced by a morose sullenness aggravated by his losses at cards. Then he would sleep till late in the morning and so begin the cycle again. "How in hell," Sharpe asked Kiely's second-in-command, Captain Donaju, "did he get command of the guard?"

"Birth," Donaju said. He was a pale, thin man with a worried face who looked more like an impoverished student than a soldier, but of all the officers in the Real Companпa Irlandesa he seemed the most promising. "You can't have a royal guard commanded by a commoner, Sharpe," Donaju said with a touch of sarcasm, "but when Kiely's sober he can be quite impressive." The last sentence contained no sarcasm at all.

"Impressive?" Sharpe asked dubiously.

"He's a good swordsman," Donaju replied. "He detests the French, and in his heart he would like to be a good man."

"Kiely detests the French?" Sharpe asked without bothering to disguise his scepticism.

"The French, Sharpe, are destroying Kiely's privileged world," Donaju explained. "He's from the ancien rйgime, so of course he hates them. He has no money, but under the ancien rйgime that didn't matter because birth and title were enough to get a man a royal appointment and exemption from taxes. But the French preach equality and advancement on merit, and that threatens Kiely's world so he escapes the threat by drinking, whoring and gambling. The flesh is very weak, Sharpe, and it's especially feeble if you're bored, underemployed and also suspect that you're a relic of a bygone world." Donaju shrugged, as though ashamed of having offered Sharpe such a long and high-minded sermon. The Captain was a modest man, but efficient, and it was on Donaju's slender shoulders that the day-to-day running of the guard had devolved. He now told Sharpe how he would attempt to stem the desertions by doubling the sentries and using only men he believed were reliable as picquets, but at the same time he blamed the British for his men's predicament. "Why did they put us in this godforsaken place?" Donaju asked. "It's almost as if your General wants our men to run."

That was a shrewd thrust and Sharpe had no real answer. Instead he mumbled something about the fort being a strategic outpost and needing a garrison, but he was unconvincing and Donaju's only response was to politely ignore the fiction.

For the San Isidro Fort was indeed a godforsaken place. It might have had strategic value once, but now the main road between Spain and Portugal ran leagues to the south and so the once huge fastness had been abandoned to decay. Weeds grew thick in the dry moat that had been eroded by rainfall so that the once formidable obstacle had become little more than a shallow ditch. Frost had crumbled the walls, toppling their stones into the ditch to make countless bridges to what was left of the glacis. A white owl roosted in the remains of the chapel's bell tower while the once-tended graves of the garrison's officers had become nothing but shallow declivities in a stony meadow. The only serviceable parts of San Isidro were the old barracks buildings that had been kept in a state of crude repair thanks to the infrequent visits of Portuguese regiments which had been stationed there in times of political crisis. During those crises the men would block the holes in the barracks walls to protect themselves from the cold winds, while the officers took up quarters in the twin-towered gatehouse that had somehow survived the years of neglect. There were even gates that Runciman solemnly ordered closed and barred each night, though employing such a precaution against desertion was like stopping up one earth of a mighty rabbit warren.

Yet, for all its decay, the fort still held a mouldering grandeur. The impressive twin-towered gateway was embellished with royal escutcheons and approached by a four-arched causeway that spanned the only section of the dry moat still capable of checking an assault. The chapel ruins were laced with delicate carved stonework while the gun platforms were still hugely massive. Most impressive of all was the fort's location for its ramparts offered sky-born views deep across shadowy peaks to horizons unimaginable distances away. The eastern walls looked deep into Spain and it was on those eastern battlements, beneath the flags of Spain and Britain, that Lord Kiely discovered Sharpe on the third morning of the guard's stay in the fort. It seemed that even Kiely had become worried about the rate of desertion. "We didn't come here to be destroyed by desertion," Kiely snapped at Sharpe. The wind quivered the waxed tips of his moustaches.

Sharpe fought back the comment that Kiely was responsible for his men, not Sharpe, and instead asked his Lordship just why he had come to join the British forces.

And, to Sharpe's surprise, the young Lord Kiely took the question seriously. "I want to fight, Sharpe. That's why I wrote to His Majesty."

"So you're in the right place, my Lord," Sharpe said sourly. "The Crapauds are just the other side of that valley." He gestured towards the deep, bare glen that separated the San Isidro from the nearest hills. Sharpe suspected that French scouts must be active on the valley's far side and would already have seen the movement in the old fort.

"We're not in the right place, Sharpe," Kiely said. "I asked King Ferdinand to order us to Cadiz, to be in our own army and among our own kind, but he sent us to Wellington instead. We don't want to be here, but we have royal orders and we obey those orders."

"Then give your men a royal order not to desert," Sharpe said glibly.

"They're bored! They're worried! They feel betrayed!" Kiely shuddered, not with emotion, but because he had just risen from his bed and was still trying to shake off his morning hangover. "They didn't come here to be trained, Sharpe," he snarled, "but to fight! They're proud men, a bodyguard, not a pack of raw recruits. Their job is to fight for the King, to show Europe that Ferdinand still has teeth."

Sharpe pointed east. "See that track, my Lord? The one that climbs to that saddle in the hills? March your men up there, keep them marching for half a day and I'll guarantee you a fight. The French will love it. It'll be easier for them than fighting choirboys. Half your men don't even have working muskets! And the other half can't use them. You tell me they're trained? I've seen militia companies better trained in Britain! And all those plump militia bastards do is parade in the market place once a week and then beat a retreat to the nearest bloody tavern. Your men aren't trained, my Lord, whatever you might think, but you give them to me for a month and I'll have them sharper than a bloody razor."

"They're merely out of practice," Kiely said loftily. His immense pride would not let him concede that Sharpe was right and that his vaunted palace guards were a shambles. He turned and gazed at his men who were being drilled on the weed-thick flagstones of the fort's plaza. Beyond the company, hard by the gatehouse towers, grooms were bringing saddled horses ready for the officers' midday exercises in horsemanship, while just inside the gate, on a stretch of smooth flagstones, Father Sarsfield was teaching the catechism to some of the company's children. The learning process evidently involved a deal of laughter; indeed, Sharpe had noticed, wherever the chaplain went, good humour followed. "If they were just given an opportunity," Kiely said of his men, "they'd fight."

"I'm sure they would," Sharpe said, "and they'd lose. What do you want of them? Suicide?"

"If necessary," Kiely said seriously. He had been staring east into enemy-held country, but now looked Sharpe in the eye. "If necessary," he said again, "yes."

Sharpe gazed at the dissolute, ravaged young face. "You're mad, my Lord."

Kiely did not take offence at the accusation. "Would you call Roland's defence of Roncesvalles the suicide of a madman? Did Leonidas's Spartans do nothing but throw away their lives in a fit of imbecility? What about your own Sir Richard Grenville? Was he just mad? Sometimes, Sharpe, a great name and undying fame can only come from a grand gesture." He pointed at the far hills.

"There are three hundred thousand Frenchmen over there, and how many British here? Thirty thousand? The war is lost, Sharpe, it is lost. A great Christian kingdom is going down to mediocrity, and all because of a Corsican upstart. All the glory and the valour and the splendour of a royal world are about to become commonplace and tawdry. All the nasty, mean things—republicanism, democracy, equality—are crawling into the light and claiming that they can replace a lineage of great kings. We are seeing the end of history, Sharpe, and the beginnings of chaos, but maybe, just maybe, King Ferdinand's household guard can bring the curtain down with one last act of shining glory." For a few seconds the drunken Kiely had betrayed his younger, nobler self. "That's why we're here, Sharpe, to make a story that will still be told when men have forgotten the very name of Bonaparte."

"Christ," Sharpe said, "no wonder your boys are deserting. Jesus! I would too. If I take a man into battle, my Lord, I like to offer him a better than evens chance that he'll march away with his skin intact. If I wanted to kill the buggers I'd just strangle them in their sleep. It's kinder." He turned and watched the Real Companпa Irlandesa. The men were taking it in turns to use the forty or so serviceable muskets and, with a handful of exceptions, they were virtually useless. A good soldier could shoot a smoothbore musket every twenty seconds, but these men were lucky to get a shot away every forty seconds. The guards had spent too long wearing powdered wigs and standing outside gilded doors, and not long enough learning the simple habits of priming, ramming, firing and loading. "But I'll train them," Sharpe said when the echo of another straggling volley had faded across the fort, "and I'll stop the buggers deserting." He knew he was undermining Hogan's stratagem, but Sharpe liked the rank and file of the Real Companпa Irlandesa. They were soldiers like any others, not so well trained maybe, and with more confused loyalties than most, but the majority of the men were willing enough. There was no mischief there, and it cut against Sharpe's grain to betray good men. He wanted to train them. He wanted to make the company into a unit of which any army could be proud.

"So how will you stop them deserting?" Kiely asked.

"By my own method," Sharpe said, "and you don't want to know what it is, my Lord, because it isn't a method Roland would have much liked."

Lord Kiely did not respond to Sharpe's taunt. Instead he was staring eastwards at something that had just claimed his attention. He took a small telescope from his uniform pocket, snapped it open and trained it across the wide bare valley to where Sharpe, staring into the morning sun, could just make out the figure of a lone horseman picking his way down the track which zigzagged from the saddle. Kiely turned. "Gentlemen!" he shouted at his officers. "To horse!" His Lordship, energized by a sudden excitement, ran down one of the ammunition ramps and shouted for a groom to bring his big black stallion.

Sharpe turned back east and took out his own telescope. It took him a moment or two to train the cumbersome instrument, then he managed to trap the distant rider in the lens. The horseman was in the uniform of the Real Companпa Irlandesa and he was also in trouble. Till now the man had been following the course of the steep track as it twisted down the valley's side, but now he abandoned the track and put his horse to the precipitous slope and slashed back with his whip to drive the beast down that dangerous descent. Half a dozen dogs raced ahead of the horseman, but Sharpe was more interested in what had prompted the man's sudden, dangerous plunge down the mountainside and so he raised the telescope to the skyline and there, silhouetted against the cloudless sky's hard brilliance, he saw dragoons. French dragoons. The lone horseman was a fugitive and the French were close behind.

"Are you coming, Sharpe?" Colonel Runciman, mounted on his carthorse-like mare, had thoughtfully provided his spare horse for Sharpe. Runciman was relying more and more on Sharpe as a companion to stave off the necessity of dealing with the sardonic Lord Kiely whose tart comments constantly dispirited Runciman. "D'you know what's happening, Sharpe?" Runciman asked as his nemesis led a ragged procession of mounted officers out of the fort's imposing entranceway. "Is it an attack?" The Colonel's uncommon display of energy was doubtless caused by fear rather than curiosity.

"There's a fellow in company uniform coming towards us, General, with a pack of Frogs on his tail."

"My word!" Runciman looked alarmed. As Wagon Master General he had been given few opportunities to see the enemy and he was not certain he wanted to remedy that lack now, but he could hardly display timidity in front of the guards and so he spurred his horse into a lumbering walk. "You'll stay close to me, Sharpe! As an aide, you understand?"

"Of course, General." Sharpe, uncomfortable as ever on horseback, followed Runciman across the entrance bridge. Sergeant Harper, curious about the excitement that had stirred the fort into sudden activity, led the Real Companпa Irlandesa onto the ramparts, ostensibly to stand guard, but in reality so they could watch whatever event had prompted this sudden exodus of officers from San Isidro.

By the time Sharpe had negotiated the causeway over the half-filled dry moat and had persuaded his horse to turn east off the road, the adventure seemed over. The fugitive had already crossed the stream and was now closer to Lord Kiely's rescue party than to his French pursuers, and as Kiely was attended by a dozen officers and there were only half a dozen dragoons, the horseman was clearly safe. Sharpe watched the fugitive's dogs lope excitedly round the rescue party, then he saw that the pursuing Frenchmen were dressed in the mysterious grey coats of Brigadier General Loup's brigade. "That fellow had a lucky escape, General," Sharpe said, "those are Loup's dragoons."

"Loup?" Runciman asked.

"Brigadier Loup, General. He's a nasty Frog who dresses his men in wolf fur and likes to cut off his enemies' balls before they die."

"Oh, my word." Runciman paled. "Are you sure?"

"I've met him, General. He threatened to geld me."

Runciman was driven to fortify himself by taking a handful of sugared almonds from a pocket and putting them one by one into his mouth. "I do sometimes wonder if my dear father was not right," he said between mouthfuls, "and that perhaps I should have chosen a churchman's career. I would have made a very serviceable bishop, I think, though perhaps a bishop's life might not have proved full enough for a man of my energies. There's little real work to do as a prelate, Sharpe. One preaches the odd sermon, of course, and makes oneself pleasant to the better sort of people in the county, and from time to time a fellow has to whip the lesser clergy into line, but there's not much else to the job. It's hardly a demanding life, Sharpe, and, quite frankly, most episcopal palaces are inhabited by very mediocre men. My dear father excepted, of course. Oh, my word, what's happening?"

Lord Kiely had ridden ahead to greet the fugitive, but, after stretching out a hand and offering a hasty word, his Lordship had spurred on towards the French pursuers who, recognizing that their quarry had escaped, had already reined in their horses. But now Kiely crossed the stream, drew his sword and shouted a challenge to the Frenchmen.

Every man in the valley knew what Kiely intended. He was challenging an enemy officer to a duel. Men of sense, like infantrymen or anyone given half a set of wits, disapproved of the practice, but cavalrymen could rarely resist the challenge. To take part in such a combat required pride and bravery, but to win such a fight was to forge a name as a warrior and every cavalry regiment in every army had officers whose fame went back to just such a fight: one man against one man, single sword against single sword, a duel between strangers that invited fame or death. "Kiely's trying to get himself killed, General," Sharpe told Runciman. Sharpe sounded sour, yet he could not deny a reluctant admiration for Kiely who, for this moment at least, had thrown off his hangover and his morose bitterness to become what he was in his own daydreams: the perfect knight and king's champion. "Kiely's got a fancy to die famous," Sharpe said. "He wants to be Roland or that Spartan fellow who thumped the Persians."

"Leonidas, Sharpe, King Leonidas," Runciman said. "Mind you, Sharpe, Kiely's a fine swordsman. I've watched him at practice, and the drink scarcely slows him a beat! Not that we'll see any evidence of that today," Runciman said as Kiely turned away from the unmoving Frenchmen. "None of them will fight!" Runciman sounded surprised, but also a little relieved that he would not have to witness any bloodshed.

"Kiely hardly gave them time to accept," Sharpe said. And Kiely had indeed stayed only a few seconds, almost as though he had wanted to make the defiant gesture, but was scared lest any of the enemy might accept his challenge.

Then one of the enemy did accept. Kiely had reached the stream's bank when a shout sounded behind him and a dragoon officer spurred out from among his companions. Kiely twisted in his saddle and Sharpe could have sworn that his Lordship blanched as the Frenchman rode towards him. "Oh, my word," Runciman said in alarm.

Kiely could not refuse to fight now, not without losing face, and so he returned to the grey dragoon who threw back his wolf-fur pelisse, tugged down on his helmet's brim, then drew his long-bladed straight sword. He twisted its strap about his wrist, then held the blade upright in salute of the man who would be either his killer or his victim. Lord Kiely returned the salute with his own straight blade. His Lordship might have made the challenge as a gesture that he never expected to be taken up, but now that he was committed to the fight he showed neither reluctance nor nervousness.

"They're both bloody fools," Sharpe said, "dying for bloody nothing." He and Runciman had joined the Real Companпa Irlandesa's officers as had Father Sarsfield who had abandoned his catechism class to follow Kiely into the valley. The priest heard Sharpe's scorn and offered the rifleman a surprised glance. The priest, like Runciman, seemed uncomfortable with the imminent duel and was running the beads of his rosary through plump fingers as he watched the two horsemen face each other across a fifty-yard gap. Lord Kiely dropped his blade from the salute and both men put spurs to their horses' flanks.

"Oh, my word," Runciman said. He fumbled another handful of almonds from his pocket.

The two horses closed slowly at first. Only at the very last moment did their riders release them to the full gallop. Both men were right-handed and looked to Sharpe to be well-matched in size, though Lord Kiely's black horse was the bigger by a clear hand.

The dragoon cut first. He seemed to have put his faith in a savage sweeping slash that would have disembowelled an ox, except that at the last moment he checked the swing to reverse the blade and cut back at his enemy's unprotected neck. It was done as fast as a man could blink and on the back of a horse at full gallop, and against any other rider it might have worked, but Lord Kiely simply turned his horse into his opponent's mount without even bothering to parry. The dragoon's smaller horse staggered as the weight of the stallion hit its hindquarters. The Frenchman's backslash cut thin air, then the horses parted and both men were sawing on their reins. Kiely turned faster and rammed his spurs back to add the horse's weight to the lunge of his straight sword. Masters-at-arms always taught that the point beats the edge, and Kiely now lanced his sword's point at the grey dragoon's belly and for a second Sharpe thought the lunge would surely pierce the Frenchman's defence, but somehow the dragoon parried and a second later the sound of the blades' ringing clash carried to Sharpe. By the time the harsh sound had echoed back from the far hills the two horses were already twenty yards apart and being turned into the attack again. Neither man had dared ride too far from his opponent in case he should be pursued and attacked from behind, so from now on the duel would be fought at close quarters and it would depend as much on the training of the two horses as on the riders' swordsmanship.

"Oh, dear," Runciman said. He feared to watch the horror of a man dying, yet dared not take his eyes from the spectacle. It was a sight as old as warfare: two champions clashing in full view of their comrades. "It's a wonder Kiely can fight at all," Runciman continued, "considering how much he drank last night. Five bottles of claret by my count."

"He's young," Sharpe said sourly, "and he was born with natural gifts for riding horses and fighting with swords. But as he gets older, General, those gifts will waste away and he knows it. He's living on borrowed time and that's why he wants to die young."

"I can't believe that," Runciman said, then winced as the two men hammered at each other with their swords.

"Kiely should go for the bastard's horse, not the man," Sharpe said. "You can always beat a horseman by crippling his bloody horse."

"It isn't the way a gentleman fights, Captain," Father Sarsfield said. The priest had edged his horse close to the two British officers.

"There's no future in being a gentleman in a fight, Father," Sharpe said. "If you think wars should only be fought by gentlemen then you should stop recruiting people like me out of the gutter."

"No need to mention your origins, Sharpe," Runciman hissed reprovingly. "You are an officer now, remember!"

"I pray for the day when no gentleman fights at all, nor other men either," Father Sarsfield said. "I do so dislike fighting."

"Yet you're a chaplain in the army?" Sharpe asked.

"I go where the need is greatest," the chaplain said, "and where will a man of God look to find the greatest concentration of sinners outside of a prison? In an army, I would suggest, begging your presence." Sarsfield smiled, then flinched as the duellists charged and their long swords clashed again. Lord Kiely's stallion instinctively ducked its head to avoid the blades that hissed above its ears. Lord Kiely lunged at his opponent and one of Kiely's officers cheered when he thought that his Lordship had skewered the Frenchman, but the sword had merely pierced the cloak that was rolled onto the cantle of the dragoon's saddle. Kiely dragged his sword free of the cloak just in time to parry a vicious backslash from the dragoon's heavier blade.

"Will Kiely win, do you think?" Runciman asked Sharpe anxiously.

"God knows, General," Sharpe said. The two horses were virtually motionless now, just standing still as the riders exchanged blows. The sound of the steel was continuous and Sharpe knew the men would be getting tired for swordfighting was damned hard work. Their arms would be weary from the weight and Sharpe could imagine the breath rasping in their throats, the grunts as they cut down with the steel and the pain as the sweat stung their eyes. And every now and then, Sharpe knew, each man would feel the strange sensation of catching the dispassionate gaze of the stranger he was trying to kill. The blades clashed and scraped for another few seconds, then the grey dragoon yielded that phase of the fight by touching spurs to his horse.

The Frenchman's horse started forward, then put a hoof into a rabbit's hole.

The horse stumbled. Kiely spurred forward as he saw his opportunity. He slashed down hard, rising out of the saddle to put all the weight of his body behind the killing blow, but somehow the dragoon parried the cut, even though the strength of it almost knocked him out of the saddle. His tired horse struggled to rise as the dragoon parried again and again, then suddenly the Frenchman abandoned his defence and lunged hard at Kiely. His sword tip caught in the hilt of Kiely's sword and drove it clear out of Kiely's grip. Kiely had looped the silk-tasselled sword strap around his wrist so the sword just hung loose, but it would take his Lordship a few seconds to retrieve the snakeskin-wrapped hilt and to give himself that time he wheeled his horse desperately away. The Frenchman scented victory and spurred his tired horse after his opponent.

Then the carbine cracked. The report was startling and it echoed back from the steep hill slope before anyone reacted.

The dragoon gave a gasp as the bullet struck him. The shot had taken him in the ribs and knocked him back in his saddle. The dying man recovered his balance then shook his head in disbelief that someone had interfered in the duel. His own sword fell to dangle from its strap as his companions shouted in protest that anyone should have dared break the convention that such duellists should be left alone on the battlefield, then the dragoon's mouth fell open and a wash of dark blood soaked the front of his grey jacket as he collapsed backwards off his tired horse.

An astonished Lord Kiely took one look at the vengeful dragoons spurring towards their fallen companion, then fled across the stream. "I don't understand," Colonel Runciman said.

"Someone broke the rules, General," Sharpe said, "and they saved Kiely's bacon by doing it. He was a dead man till that shot was fired." The French were still shouting protests, and one of them rode to the stream bank and dared any of the allied officers to face him in a second duel. No one accepted his offer so he began to call taunts and insults, all of which Sharpe reckoned were deserved because whoever had fired the carbine had killed the Frenchman unfairly. "So who did fire?" Sharpe asked aloud.

It had been the single officer who had been pursued by the dragoons and whose arrival in the valley had prompted the duel who had ended it so unsportingly. Sharpe could see the carbine in the fugitive's hands, but what surprised him was that no one was chiding the officer for his interference in the duel. Instead the other officers of the Real Companпa Irlandesa clustered about the newcomer in evident welcome. Sharpe urged his horse closer to see that the fugitive was a slim young officer with what Sharpe took to be a plume of shining black horsehair reaching down his back, but then Sharpe saw that it was not horsehair at all, but real hair, and that the officer was not an officer either, but a woman.

"He was going for his pistol," the woman offered in explanation, "so I shot him."

"Bravo!" one of the admiring officers called. The taunting Frenchman had turned away in disgust.

"Is that…? Is she…? Is it…?" Runciman asked incoherently.

"It's a woman, General," Sharpe said drily.

"Oh, my word, Sharpe! So he… she is."

She was a striking-looking woman too, Sharpe thought, whose fierce looks were made even more noticeable by the man's uniform that had been tailored to her trim figure. She swept off her plumed hat to salute Lord Kiely, then leaned over to kiss his Lordship. "It's the mistress, General," Sharpe said. "Major Hogan told me about her. She collects uniforms from all her lovers' regiments."

"Oh, my word. You mean they're not married and we're to be introduced?" Runciman asked in alarm, but it was too late to escape, for Lord Kiely was already beckoning the two English officers forward. He introduced Runciman first, then gestured towards Sharpe. "Captain Richard Sharpe, my dear, our tutor in modern fighting." Kiely did not try to disguise the sneer as he so described Sharpe.

"Ma'am," Sharpe said awkwardly. Juanita gave Runciman one withering glance, then appraised Sharpe for a long time while her pack of hunting dogs sniffed about his horse's legs. The woman's gaze was unfriendly and she finally turned away without even acknowledging the rifleman's presence. "So why did you shoot the dragoon, ma'am?" Sharpe asked, trying to provoke her.

She turned back to him. "Because he was going to shoot my Lord Kiely," she answered defiantly. "I saw him reach for his pistol."

She had not seen anything of the kind, Sharpe thought, but he would achieve nothing by challenging her bare-faced lie. She had shot to preserve her lover's life, nothing else, and Sharpe felt a pang of jealousy that the wastrel Kiely should have found himself such a brazen, defiant and remarkable woman. She was no beauty, but something in her clever, feral face stirred Sharpe, though he would be damned before he let her know she had that power. "You've come far, ma'am?" he asked.

"From Madrid, Captain," she said frostily.

"And the French didn't stop you?" Sharpe asked pointedly.

"I don't need French permission to travel in my own country, Captain, nor, in my own country, do I need explain myself to impertinent British officers." She spurred away, summoning her shaggy-haired, long-legged hounds to follow her.

"She doesn't like you, Sharpe," Runciman said.

"It's a mutual thing, General," Sharpe said. "I wouldn't trust the bitch an inch." It was mainly jealousy that made him say it and he knew it.

"She's a fine-looking woman, though, ain't she?" Runciman sounded wistful as though he understood he was not the man to donate a uniform of the 37th Line to Juanita's wardrobe. "I can't say as I've ever seen a woman in breeches before," Runciman said, "let alone astride a saddle. Doesn't happen much in Hampshire."

"And I've never seen a woman ride from Madrid to Portugal without a servant or a lick of luggage," Sharpe said. "I wouldn't trust her, General."

"You wouldn't trust who, Sharpe?" Lord Kiely asked. He was riding back towards the British officers.

"Brigadier Loup, sir," Sharpe lied smoothly. "I was explaining to General Runciman the significance of the grey uniforms." Sharpe pointed towards the dragoons who were now carrying the dead man's body back up the hillside.

"A grey uniform didn't help that dragoon today!" Kiely was still animated by the duel and apparently unashamed of the way it had ended. His face seemed younger and more attractive as though the arrival of his mistress had restored the lustre of youth to Kiely's drink-ravaged looks.

"Chivalry didn't help him either," Sharpe said sourly. Runciman, suspecting that Sharpe's words might provoke another duel, hissed in remonstrance.

Kiely just sneered at Sharpe. "He broke the rules of chivalry, Sharpe. Not me! The man was evidently going for his pistol. I reckon he knew he would be dead the moment I recovered my sword." His expression dared Sharpe to contradict him.

"Funny how chivalry becomes sordid, isn't it, my Lord?" Sharpe said instead. "But then war is sordid. It might start with chivalrous intentions, but it always ends with men screaming for their mothers and having their guts flensed out by cannon balls. You can dress a man in scarlet and gold, my Lord, and tell him it's a noble cause he graces, but he'll still end up bleeding to death and shitting himself in a panic. Chivalry stinks, my Lord, because it's the most sordid bloody thing on earth."

Kiely was still holding his sword, but now he slid the long blade home into its scabbard. "I don't need lectures on chivalry from you, Sharpe. Your job is to be a drillmaster. And to stop my rogues from deserting. If, indeed, you can stop them."

"I can do that, my Lord," Sharpe promised. "I can do that."

And that afternoon he went to keep his word.

Sharpe walked south from San Isidro following the spine of the hills as they dropped ever lower towards the main border road. Where the hills petered out into rolling meadowland there was a small village of narrow twisting streets, stone-walled gardens and low-roofed cottages that huddled on a slope climbing from a fast-flowing stream up to a rocky ridge where the village church was crowned by the ragged sticks of a stork's nest. The village was called Fuentes de Onoro, the village that had provoked Loup's fury, and it lay only two miles from Wellington's headquarters in the town of Vilar Formoso. That proximity worried Sharpe who feared his errand might be questioned by an inquisitive staff officer, but the only British troops in Fuentes de Onoro were a small picquet of the 60th Rifles who were positioned just north of the village and took no notice of Sharpe. On the stream's eastern bank were a few scattered houses, some walled gardens and orchards and a small chapel that were all reached from the main village by a footbridge constructed of stone slabs supported on boulders standing beside a ford where a patrol of King's German Legion cavalry was watering its horses. The Germans warned Sharpe that there were no allied troops on the further bank. "Nothing but French over there," the cavalry's Captain said and then, when he discovered Sharpe's identity, he insisted on sharing a flask of brandy with the rifleman. They exchanged news of Von Lossow, a KGL friend of Sharpe's, then the Captain led his men out of the stream and onto the long straight road that led towards Ciudad Rodrigo. "I'm looking for trouble," he called over his shoulder as he pulled himself up into the saddle, "and with God's help I'll find it!"

Sharpe turned the other way and climbed the village street to where a tiny inn served a robust red wine. It was not much of an inn, but then Fuentes de Onoro was not much of a village. The place lay just inside the Spanish border and had been plundered by the French as they had marched into Portugal then raked over again as they marched back out, and the villagers were justifiably suspicious of all soldiers. Sharpe took his wineskin out of the inn's smoky interior to a small vegetable garden where he sat beneath a grapevine with a half severed trunk. The damage seemed not to have affected the plant which was putting out vigorous new tendrils and bright fresh leaves. He dozed there, almost too weary to lift the wineskin.

"The French tried to cut the vine down." A voice spoke in sudden Spanish behind Sharpe. "They tried to destroy everything. Bastards." The man belched. It was a vast belch, loud enough to stir a cat sleeping on the garden's far wall. Sharpe turned to see a mountainous creature dressed in filthy brown leggings, a bloodstained cotton shirt, a green French dragoon coat that had split at all the seams in order to accommodate its new owner's bulk, and a leather apron that was caked black and stiff with dried blood. The man and his clothes stank of old food, bad breath, stale blood and decay. At his belt there hung an old-fashioned, unscabbarded sabre with a blade as dark, thick and filthy as a pole-axe, a horse pistol, a small bone-handled knife with a curiously hooked blade and a wooden whistle. "You're Captain Sharpe?" the enormous man asked as Sharpe rose to greet him.

"Yes."

"And my whistle tells you who I am, does it not?"

Sharpe shook his head. "No."

"You mean that castrators in England don't signal their coming with a blast on the whistle?"

"I've never heard of them doing it," Sharpe said.

El Castrador sat heavily on a bench opposite Sharpe. "No whistles? Where would I be without my little whistle? It tells a village I am coming. I blow it and the villagers bring out their hogs, beeves and foals, and I bring out my little knife." The man flicked the small, wickedly curved blade and laughed. He had brought his own wineskin which he now squirted into his mouth before shaking his head in rueful nostalgia. "And in the old days, my friend," El Castrador went on wistfully, "the mothers would bring out their little boys to be cut, and two years later the boys would travel to Lisbon or Madrid to sing so sweetly! My father, now, he cut many boys. One of his youngsters even sang for the Pope! Can you imagine? For the Pope in Rome! And all because of this little knife." He fingered the small bone-handled cutter.

"And sometimes the boys died?" Sharpe guessed.

El Castrador shrugged. "Boys are easily replaced, my friend. One cannot afford to be sentimental about small children." He jetted more red wine down his vast gullet. "I had eight boys, only three survived and that, believe me, is two too many."

"No girls?"

"Four." El Castrador fell silent for a second or two, then sighed. "That French bastard Loup took them. You know of Loup?"

"I know him."

"He took them and gave them to his men. El Lobo and his men like young girls." He touched the knife at his belt, then gave Sharpe a long speculative look. "So you are La Aguja's Englishman."

Sharpe nodded.

"Ah! Teresa!" The Spaniard sighed. "We were angry when we heard she had given herself to an Englishman, but now I see you, Captain, I can understand. How is she?"

"Fighting the French near Badajoz, but she sends her greetings." In fact Teresa had not written to Sharpe in weeks, but her name was a talisman among all the partisans and had been sufficient to arrange this meeting with the man who had been so roundly defeated by Brigadier Loup. Loup had tamed this part of the Spanish frontier and wherever Sharpe went he heard the Frenchman's name mentioned with an awed hatred. Every piece of mischief was the fault of Loup, every death, every house fire, every flood, every sick child, every robbed hive, every stillborn calf, every unseasonable frost; all were the wolf's work.

"She will be proud of you, Englishman," El Castrador said.

"She will?" Sharpe asked. "Why?"

"Because El Lobo has placed a price on your head," El Castrador said. "Did you not know?"

"I didn't know."

"One hundred dollars," El Castrador said slowly, with relish, as though he was tempted by the price himself.

"A pittance," Sharpe said disparagingly. Twenty-five pounds might be a small fortune to most people, a good year's pay indeed for most working folk, but still Sharpe reckoned his life was worth more than twenty-five pounds. "The reward on Teresa's head is two hundred dollars," he said resentfully.

"But we partisans kill more French than you English," El Castrador said, "so it is only right that we should be worth more." Sharpe tactfully refrained from asking whether there was any reward on El Castrador's own matted and lice-ridden head. Sharpe suspected the man had lost most of his power because of his defeats, but at least, Sharpe thought, El Castrador lived while most of his men were dead, killed by the wolf after being cut in the same way that El Castrador had cut his captives. There were times when Sharpe was very glad he did not fight the guerrilla.

El Castrador raised the wineskin again, spurted the wine into his mouth, swallowed, belched again, then breathed an effluent gust towards Sharpe. "So why do you want to see me, Englishman?"

Sharpe told him. The telling took a good while for though El Castrador was a brutal man, he was not especially clever and Sharpe had to explain his requirements several times before the big man understood. In the end, though, El Castrador nodded. "Tonight, you say?"

"I would be pleased. And grateful."

"But how grateful?" El Castrador shot a sly look at the Englishman. "Shall I tell you what I need? Muskets! Or even rifles like that!" He touched the barrel of Sharpe's Baker rifle which was propped against the vine's trunk.

"I can bring you muskets," Sharpe said, though he did not yet know how. The Real Companпa Irlandesa needed muskets much more desperately than this great butcher of a man did, and Sharpe did not even know how he was to supply those weapons. Hogan would never agree to give the Real Companпa Irlandesa new muskets, yet if Sharpe was to turn King Ferdinand's palace guard into a decent infantry unit then he would need to find them guns somehow. "Rifles I can't get," he said, "but muskets, yes. But I'll need a week."

"Muskets, then," El Castrador agreed, "and there is something else."

"Go on," Sharpe said warily.

"I want revenge for my daughters," El Castrador said with tears in his eyes. "I want Brigadier Loup and this knife to meet each other." He held up the small, bone-handled cutter. "I want your help, Englishman. Teresa says you can fight, so fight with me and help me catch El Lobo."

Sharpe suspected this second request would prove even more difficult than the first, but he nodded anyway. "You know where Loup can be found?"

El Castrador nodded. "Usually at a village called San Cristobal. He drove out the inhabitants, blocked the streets and fortified the houses. A stoat could not get near without being spotted. Sanchez says it would take a thousand men and a battery of artillery to take San Cristobal."

Sharpe grunted at the news. Sanchez was one of the best guerrilla leaders and if Sanchez reckoned San Cristobal was virtually impregnable, then Sharpe would believe him. "You said 'usually'. So he's not always at San Cristobal?"

"He goes where he likes, seсor," El Castrador said moodily. "Sometimes he takes over a village for a few nights, sometimes he would put his men in the fort where you now live, sometimes he would use Fort Concepciфn. Loup, seсor, is a law to himself." El Castrador paused. "But La Aguja says you are also a law unto yourself. If any man can defeat El Lobo, seсor, it must be you. And there is a place near San Cristobal, a defile, where he can be ambushed."

El Castrador offered this last detail as an enticement, but Sharpe ignored the lure. "I will do all a man can do," he promised.

"Then I shall help you tonight," El Castrador assured Sharpe in return. "Look for my gift in the morning, seсor," he said, then stood and shouted a command to the men he had evidently left outside the inn. Hooves clattered loud in the little street. "And next week," the partisan added, "I shall come for my reward. Don't let me down, Captain."

Sharpe watched the gross man go, then hefted the wineskin. He was tempted to drain it, but knew that a bellyful of sour wine would make his journey back to San Isidro doubly hard and so, instead, he poured the liquid over the roots of the ravaged vine. Maybe, he thought, it would help the vine repair itself. Wine to grapes, ashes to ashes and dust to dust. He picked up his hat, slung his rifle, and walked home.

That night, despite all Captain Donaju's precautions, three more guardsmen deserted. More men might have tried, but shortly after midnight a series of terrible screams sounded from the valley and any other men tempted to try their luck across the frontier decided to wait for another day. At dawn next morning, when Rifleman Harris was leading a convoy down the mountainside to fetch water from the stream to augment the trickle that the fort's well provided, he found the three men. He came back to Sharpe white-faced. "It's horrible, sir. Horrible."

"See that cart?" Sharpe pointed across the fort's courtyard to a handcart. "Get it down there, put them in and bring them back."

"Do we have to?" Rifleman Thompson asked, aghast.

"Yes, you bloody do. And Harris?"

"Sir?"

"Put this in with them," and Sharpe handed Harris a sack holding a heavy object. Harris began to untie the sack's mouth. "Not here, Harris," Sharpe said, "do it down there. And only you and our lads to see what you're doing."

By eight o'clock Sharpe had the one hundred and twenty-seven remaining guardsmen on parade, together with all their junior officers. Sharpe was the senior officer left inside the fort, for both Lord Kiely and Colonel Runciman had spent the night at army headquarters where they had gone to plead with the Assistant Commissary General for muskets and ammunition. Father Sarsfield was visiting a fellow priest in Guarda, while both Kiely's majors and three of his captains had gone hunting. Dona Juanita de Elia had also taken her hounds in search of hares, but had spurned the company of the Irish officers. "I hunt alone," she said, and then had scorned Sharpe's warning of patrolling Frenchmen. "In coming here, Captain," she told Sharpe, "I escaped every Frenchman in Spain. Worry about yourself, not me." Then she had spurred away with her hounds loping behind.

So now, bereft of their senior officers, the Real Companпa Irlandesa lined in four ranks beneath one of the empty gun platforms that served Sharpe as a podium. It had rained in the night and the flags on the crumbling battlements lifted reluctantly to the morning wind as Harris and Thompson manoeuvred the handcart up one of the ramps which led from the magazines to the gun platforms. They pushed the vehicle with its sordid cargo to Sharpe's side, then tipped the handles up so that the cart's bed faced the four ranks. There was an intake of breath, then a communal groan sounded from the ranks. At least one guardsman vomited while most just looked away or closed their eyes. "Look at them!" Sharpe snapped. "Look!"

He forced the guardsmen to look at the three mutilated naked bodies, and especially at the bloody, gut-churning mess dug out of the centre of each corpse and at the rictus of horror and pain on each dead face. Then Sharpe reached past one of the cold, white, stiff shoulders to drag free a steel-grey helmet plumed with coarse grey hair. He set it on one of the uptilted cart shafts. It was the same helmet that Harris had collected as a keepsake from the high settlement where Sharpe had discovered the massacred villagers and where Perkins had met Miranda who now followed the young rifleman with a touching and pathetic devotion. It was the same helmet that Sharpe had given back to Harris in the sack earlier that morning.

"Look at the bodies!" Sharpe ordered the Real Companпa Irlandesa. "And listen! The French believe there are two kinds of people in Spain: those who are for them and those who are against them, and there ain't a man among you who can escape that judgement. Either you fight for the French or you fight against them, and that isn't my decision, that's what the French have decided." He pointed to the three bodies. "That's what the French do. They know you're here now. They're watching you, they're wondering who and what you are, and until they know the answers they'll treat you like an enemy. And that's how the Frogs treat their enemies." He pointed to the bloody holes carved into the dead men's crotches.

"Which leaves you lot with three choices," Sharpe went on. "You can run east and have your manhood sliced off by the Frogs, or you can run west and risk being arrested by my army and shot as a deserter, or else you can stay here and learn to be soldiers. And don't tell me this isn't your war. You swore an oath to serve the King of Spain, and the King of Spain is a prisoner in France and you were supposed to be his guard. By God, this is your war far more than it's my war. I never swore an oath to protect Spain, I never had a woman raped by a Frenchman or a child murdered by a dragoon or a harvest stolen and a house burned by a Crapaud forage party. Your country has suffered all those things, and your country is Spain, and if you'd rather fight for Ireland than for Spain then why in the name of Almighty God did you take the Spanish oath?" He paused. He knew that not every man in the company was a would-be deserter. Many, like Lord Kiely himself, wanted to fight, but there were enough troublemakers to sap the company's usefulness and Sharpe had decided that this shock treatment was the only way to jar the troublemakers into obedience.

"Or does the oath mean nothing to you?" Sharpe demanded. "Because I'll tell you what the rest of this army thinks about you, and I mean the rest of this army, including the Connaught Rangers and the Inniskilling Dragoons and the Royal Irish Regiment and the Royal County Down Regiment and the Prince of Wales's Own Irish Regiment and the Tipperary Regiment and the County of Dublin Regiment and the Duke of York's Irish Regiment. They say you lot are soft. They say you're powder-puff soldiers, good for guarding a pisspot in a palace, but not good for a fight. They say you ran away from Ireland once and you'll run away again. They say you're about as much use to an army as a pack of singing nuns. They say you're overdressed and over-coddled. But that's going to change, because one day you and I will go into battle together and on that day you're going to have to be good! Bloody good!"

Sharpe hated making speeches, but he had seized these men's attention or at least the three castrated bodies had gripped their interest and Sharpe's words were making some kind of sense to them. He pointed east. "Over there," Sharpe said, and he plucked the helmet off the cart's shaft, "there's a man called Loup, a Frenchman, and he leads a regiment of dragoons called the wolf pack, and they wear these helmets and they leave that mark on the men they kill. So we're going to kill them. We're going to prove that there isn't a French regiment in the world that can stand up to an Irish regiment, and we're going to do that together. And we're going to do it because this is your war, and your only damned choice is whether you want to die like gelded dogs or fight like men. Now you make up your damned minds what you're going to do. Sergeant Harper?"

"Sir!"

"One half-hour for breakfast. I want a burial party for these three men, then we begin work."

"Yes, sir!"

Harris caught Sharpe's eye as the officer turned away. "Not one word, Harris," Sharpe said, thrusting the helmet into the rifleman's belly, "not one bloody word."

Captain Donaju stopped Sharpe as he walked away from the ramparts. "How do we fight without muskets?"

"I'll get you muskets, Donaju."

"How?"

"The same way a soldier gets everything that isn't issued to him," Sharpe said, "by theft."

That night not a single man deserted.

And next morning, though Sharpe did not recognize it at first, the trouble began.

"It's a bad business, Sharpe," Colonel Runciman said. "My God, man, but it's a bad business."

"What is, General?"

"You haven't heard?" Runciman asked.

"About the muskets, you mean?" Sharpe asked, assuming that Runciman must be referring to his visit to the army headquarters, a visit that had ended in predictable failure. Runciman and Kiely had returned with no muskets, no ammunition, no blankets, no pipe clay, no boots, no knapsacks and not even a promise of money for the unit's back pay. Wellington's parsimony was doubtless intended to draw the fangs of the Real Companпa Irlandesa, but it gave Sharpe horrid problems. He was struggling to raise the guardsmen's morale, but without weapons and equipment that morale was doomed. Worse still Sharpe knew he was close to enemy lines and if the French did attack then it would be no consolation to know that the Real Companпa Irlandesa's defeat had been a part of Hogan's plans, not if Sharpe was himself involved in the debacle. Hogan might want the Real Companпa Irlandesa destroyed, but Sharpe needed it armed and dangerous in case Brigadier Loup came calling.

"I wasn't talking about muskets, Sharpe," Runciman said, "but about the news from Ireland. You really haven't heard?"

"No, sir."

Runciman shook his head, making his jowls wobble. "It seems there are new problems in Ireland, Sharpe. Damned bad business. Bloody rebels making trouble, troops fighting back, women and children dead. River Erne blocked with bodies at Belleek. Talk of rape. Dear me. I really thought that 98 had settled the Irish business once and for all, but it seems not. The damned papists are making trouble again. Dear me, dear me. Why did God allow the papists to flourish? They try us Christians so sorely. Ah, well." Runciman sighed. "We'll have to break some skulls over there, just as we did when Tone rebelled in 98."

Sharpe reflected that if the remedy had failed in 1798 then it was just as likely to be ineffective in 1811, but he thought it tactful not to say as much. "It might mean trouble here, General," he said instead, "when the Irish troops hear about it?"

"That's why we have the lash, Sharpe."

"We might have the lash, General, but we don't have muskets. And I was just wondering, sir, exactly how a Wagon Master General orders his convoys about."

Runciman goggled at Sharpe, amazed at the apparently inappropriate question. "Paper, of course, paper! Orders!"

Sharpe smiled. "And you're still Wagon Master General, sir, isn't that so? Because they haven't replaced you. I doubt they can find a man to fill your shoes, sir."

"Kind of you to say so, Sharpe, most kind." Runciman looked slightly surprised at receiving a compliment, but tried not to show too much unfamiliarity with the experience. "And it's probably true," he added.

"And I was wondering, General, how we might divert a wagon or two of weapons up to the fort here?"

Runciman gaped at Sharpe. "Steal them, you mean?"

"I wouldn't call it theft, General," Sharpe said reproachfully, "not when they're being employed against the enemy. We're just re-allocating the guns, sir, if you see what I mean. Eventually, sir, the army will have to equip us, so why don't we anticipate the order now? We can always catch up with the paperwork later."

Runciman shook his head wildly, dislodging the careful strands of long hair that he obsessively brushed over his balding pate. "It can't be done, Sharpe, it can't be done! It's against all precedence. Against all arrangements! Damn it, man, it's against regulations! I could be court-martialled! Think of the disgrace!" Runciman shuddered at the thought. "I'm astonished, Sharpe," he went on, "even disappointed, that you should make such a suggestion. I know you were denied a gentleman's breeding or even an education, but I had still expected better from you! A gentleman does not steal, he does not lie, he does not demean a woman, he honours God and the King. These attributes are not beyond you, Sharpe!"

Sharpe went to the door of Runciman's quarters. The Colonel's day parlour was the old guard room in one of the gatehouse towers and, with the fortress's ancient gates propped open, the doorway offered a stunning view south. Sharpe leaned on a doorpost. "What happened, General," he asked when Runciman's sermon had petered out, "when a wagon went missing? You must have lost some wagons to thieves?"

"A few, very few. Hardly one. Two, maybe. A handful, possibly."

"So then—" Sharpe began.

Colonel Runciman held up a hand to interrupt him. "Don't suggest it, Sharpe! I am an honest man, a God-fearing man, and I won't contrive to cheat His Majesty's exchequer of a wagonload of muskets. No, I won't. I have never dealt in untruths and I shall not start now. Indeed, I expressly forbid you to continue talking of the matter, and that is a direct order, Sharpe!"

"Two wagonloads of muskets," Sharpe offered the correction, "and three ammunition carts."

"No! I have already forbidden you to speak of the matter, and that is an end of it. You will say no more!"

Sharpe took out the penknife he used to clean the fouling off his rifle's lock. He unfolded the blade and ran his thumb along the edge. "Brigadier Loup knows we're here now, General, and he's going to be upset about that young fellow that Kiely's whore killed. It wouldn't surprise me if he tried to take revenge. Let's see now? A night assault? Probably. And he's got two full battalions of infantry and each and every one of those bastards will be trying to earn the reward Loup's put on my head. If I was Loup I'd attack from the north because the walls have virtually disappeared there, and I'd have the dragoons waiting down there to cut off the survivors." Sharpe nodded down the steep approach road, then chuckled. "Just imagine it, can't you? Being hunted down in the dawn by a pack of grey dragoons, each of them with a newly sharpened castrating knife in his sabretache. Loup doesn't give quarter, you see. He's not known for taking prisoners, General. He just pulls out the knife, yanks down your breeches and slices off your—"

"Sharpe! Please! Please!" A wan Runciman stared at Sharpe's penknife. "Do you have to be so graphic?"

"General! I'm raising a serious matter! I can't hold off a brigade of Frenchmen with my handful of riflemen. I might do some damage if the Irish boys had muskets, but without muskets, bayonets and ammunition?" Sharpe shook his head, then snapped the blade shut. "It's your choice, General, but if I was the senior British officer in this fort then I'd find a way to get some decent weapons up here as fast as possible. Unless, of course, I wanted to be singing the high notes in the church choir when I got back to Hampshire."

Runciman gaped at Sharpe. The Colonel was sweating now, overwhelmed by a vision of castrating Frenchmen running wild inside the crumbling fort. "But they won't give us muskets, Sharpe. We tried! Kiely and I tried together! And that awkward man General Valverde pleaded for us as well, but the Quartermaster General says there's a temporary shortage of spare weapons. He hoped General Valverde might persuade Cadiz to send us some Spanish muskets."

Sharpe shook his head at Runciman's despair. "So we have to borrow some muskets, General, till the Spanish ones arrive. We just need to divert a wagon or two with the help of those seals you've still got."

"But I can't issue orders to the wagon train, Sharpe! Not any longer! I have new duties, new responsibilities."

"You've got too many responsibilities, General," Sharpe said, "because you're too valuable a man, but really, sir, you shouldn't be worrying yourself over details. Your job is to look after the big decisions and let me look after the small." Sharpe tossed the penknife in the air and caught it. "And let me look after the Crapauds if they come, sir. You've got better things to do."

Runciman leaned back in his folding chair, making it creak dangerously. "You have a point, Sharpe, you do indeed have a point." Runciman shuddered as he contemplated the enormity of the crime. "But you think I am merely anticipating an order rather than breaking one?"

Sharpe stared at the Colonel with feigned admiration. "I wish I had your mind, General, I really do. That's a brilliant way of putting it. "Anticipating an order." I wish I'd thought of that."

Runciman preened at the compliment. "My dear mother always maintained I could have been a lawyer," he said proudly, "maybe even Lord Chancellor! But my father preferred me to take an honest career." He pulled some empty papers across his makeshift desk and began writing orders. From time to time the horror of his conduct made him pause, but each time Sharpe snapped the small blade open and shut and the noise prompted the Colonel to dip his quill's tip into the inkwell.

And next day four ox-drawn wagons with puzzled drivers and beds loaded with weapons, ammunition and supplies arrived at the San Isidro Fort.

And the Real Companпa Irlandesa was armed at last.

And thinking of mutiny.