Sharpe's Battle Part 16

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 b.a.s.t.a.r.ds do is parade in the market place once a week and then beat a retreat to the nearest b.l.o.o.d.y 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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 horsemans.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+ning glory." For a few seconds the drunken Kiely had betrayed his younger, n.o.bler 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 b.u.g.g.e.rs I'd just strangle them in their sleep. It's kinder." He turned and watched the Real Compania 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 b.u.g.g.e.rs deserting." He knew he was undermining Hogan's stratagem, but

Sharpe liked the rank and file of the Real Compania 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 Lords.h.i.+p, 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 c.u.mbersome instrument, then he managed to trap the distant rider in the lens. The horseman was in the uniform of the Real Compania

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

Compania 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' b.a.l.l.s 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 Lords.h.i.+p 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

Lords.h.i.+p 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 Lords.h.i.+p 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 b.l.o.o.d.y fools," Sharpe said, "dying for b.l.o.o.d.y nothing." He and

Runciman had joined the Real Compania Irlandesa's officers as had Father