Sharpe's Battle Part 3

French, sir. They reckon they're an elite unit. Their job was to hold the road open through the mountains this past winter and they did it by beating the h.e.l.l out of the natives. If any of Loup's men get killed then he kills fifty civilians as revenge. That's what they were doing here, sir. A couple of his men were ambushed and killed, and this is the price." Harris gestured at the houses of the dead. "And Loup's not far away, sir," he added in warning.

"Unless these fellows are lying, which I doubt. He left a detachment here and took a squadron to hunt down some fugitives in the next valley."

Sharpe looked at the cavalryman's horse which was still tethered in the settlement's centre and thought of the infantryman he had captured. "This

Brigade Loup," he asked, "is it cavalry or infantry?"

"The brigade has both, sir," Harris said. "It's a special brigade, sir, formed to fight the partisans, and Loup's got two battalions of infantry and one regiment of dragoons."

"And they all wear grey?"

"Like wolves, sir," Harris said helpfully.

"We all know what to do with wolves," Sharpe said, then turned as Sergeant

Latimer shouted a warning. Latimer was commanding the tiny picquet line that stood between Sharpe and the French, but it was no new attack that had caused

Latimer to shout his warning, but rather the approach of four French hors.e.m.e.n.

One of them carried the tricolour guidon, though the swallowtailed flag was now half obscured by a dirty white s.h.i.+rt that had been impaled on the guidon's lance head. "b.a.s.t.a.r.ds want to talk to us," Sharpe said.

"I'll talk to them," Harper said viciously and pulled back the c.o.c.k of his seven-barrelled gun.

"No!" Sharpe said. "And go round the company and tell everyone to hold their fire, and that's an order."

"Aye, sir." Harper lowered the flint, then, with a baleful glance towards the approaching Frenchmen, went to warn the greenjackets to hold their tempers and keep their fingers off their triggers.

Sharpe, his rifle slung on his shoulder and his sword at his side, strolled towards the four Frenchmen. Two of the hors.e.m.e.n were officers, while the flanking pair were standard-bearers, and the ratio of flags to men seemed impertinently high, almost as if the two approaching officers considered themselves greater than other mortals. The tricolour guidon would have been standard enough, but the second banner was extraordinary. It was a French eagle with gilded wings outspread perched atop a pole that had a cross-piece nailed just beneath the eagle's plinth. Most eagles carried a silk tricolour from the staff, but this eagle carried six wolf tails attached to the cross- piece. The standard was somehow barbaric, suggesting the far-off days when pagan armies of horse soldiers had thundered out of the Steppes to rape and ruin Christendom.

And if the wolf-tail standard made Sharpe's blood run chill, then it was nothing compared to the man who now spurred his horse ahead of his companions.

Only the man's boots were not grey. His coat was grey, his horse was a grey, his helmet was lavishly plumed in grey and his grey pelisse was edged with grey wolf fur. Bands of wolf pelt encircled his boot tops, his saddlecloth was a grey skin, his sword's long straight scabbard and his carbine's saddle holster were both sheathed in wolfskin while his horse's nose band was a strip of grey fur. Even the man's beard was grey. It was a short beard, neatly trimmed, but the rest of the face was wild and merciless and scarred fit for nightmare. One bloodshot eye and one blind milky eye stared from that weather- beaten, battle-hardened face as the man curbed his horse beside Sharpe.

"My name is Loup," he said, "Brigadier General Guy Loup of His Imperial

Majesty's army." His tone was strangely mild, his intonation courteous and his

English touched with a light Scottish accent.

"Sharpe," the rifleman said. "Captain Sharpe. British army."

The three remaining Frenchmen had reined in a dozen yards away. They watched as their Brigadier swung his leg out of the stirrup and dropped lightly down to the path. He was not as tall as Sharpe, but he was still a big man and he was well muscled and agile. Sharpe guessed the French Brigadier was about forty years old, six years older than Sharpe himself. Loup now took two cigars from his fur-edged sabretache and offered one to Sharpe.

"I don't take gifts from murderers," Sharpe said.

Loup laughed at Sharpe's indignation. "More fool you, Captain. Is that what you say? More fool you? I was a prisoner, you see, in Scotland. In Edinburgh.

A very cold city, but with beautiful women, very beautiful. Some of them taught me English and I taught them how to lie to their drab Calvinist husbands. We paroled officers lived just off Candlemaker Row. Do you know the place? No? You should visit Edinburgh, Captain. Despite the Calvinists and the cooking it is a fine city, very learned and hospitable. When the peace of

Amiens was signed I almost stayed there." Loup paused to strike flint on steel, then to blow the charred linen tinder in his tinderbox into a flame with which he lit his cigar. "I almost stayed, but you know how it is. She was married to another man and I am a lover of France, so here I am and there she is and doubtless she dreams about me a lot more than I dream about her." He sighed. "But this weather reminded me of her. We would so often lie in bed and watch the rain and mist fly past the windows of Candlemaker Row. It is cold today, eh?"

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

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

Loup saw a tall man with a well-used rifle on one shoulder and a battered ugly-bladed sword at his hip. Sharpe's uniform was torn, stained and patched.

The jacket's black cord hung in tatters between a few silver b.u.t.tons that hung by threads, while beneath the jacket Sharpe wore a set of leather-reinforced

French cavalry overalls. The remains of an officer's red sash encircled

Sharpe's waist, while around his neck was a loosely knotted black choker. It was the uniform of a man who had long discarded the peacetime trappings of soldiering in exchange for the utilitarian comforts of a fighting man. A hard man, too, Loup guessed, not just from the evidence of the scar on Sharpe's cheek, but from the rifleman's demeanour which was awkward and raw-edged as though Sharpe would have preferred to be fighting than talking. Loup shrugged, abandoned his pleasantries and got down to business. "I came to fetch my two men," he said.

"Forget them, General," Sharpe replied. He was determined not to dignify this

Frenchman by calling him 'sir' or 'monsieur'.

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

"They will be."

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

Sharpe offered Loup a word that he doubted the Frenchman had heard much in

Edinburgh's learned society. "I don't take lessons from murderers," Sharpe went on, "not in the rules of war. What your men did in that village wasn't war. It was a ma.s.sacre."

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

"You might not need a lecture, General, but you d.a.m.n well need a lesson."

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

"The Castrator?" Sharpe guessed the translation.

"Indeed. Because of what he does to French soldiers, only he does it while they are alive and then he lets them bleed to death. El Castrador, I am sorry to say, still lives, but I do a.s.sure you that none of my men has been castrated in three months, and do you know why? Because El Castrador's men fear me more than they fear him. I have defeated him, Captain, I have made the mountains secure. In all of Spain, Captain, these are the only hills where

Frenchmen can ride safely, and why? Because I have used the guerrilleros' weapon against them. I castrate them, just as they would castrate me, only I use a blunter knife." Brigadier Loup offered Sharpe a grim smile. "Now tell me, Captain, if you were in my boots, and if your men were being castrated and blinded and disembowelled and skinned alive and left to die, would you not do as I do?"

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

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

Captain, whatever their age."

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

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