houses in the village where the South Essex had bivouacked. The dawn was a grey line in the east. ‘Sergeant!’
‘Sir!’
‘The bloody frog’s sword!’
‘Sharpe!’ Colonel Windham’s protest sounded resigned.
Patrick Harper turned and bellowed into one of the houses. ‘Mr McDonald, sir! The French gentleman’s sword, sir, if you’d get a move on, sir!’
McDonald, Sharpe’s new Ensign, just sixteen years old and desperately eager to please his famous Captain, hurried from the house with the beautiful, scabbarded blade. He tripped in his haste, was held by Harper, and then he came to Sharpe and gave him the sword.
God, but he wanted it! He had handled the weapon during the night, feeling its balance, knowing the power of the plain, shining steel, and Sharpe had felt the lust to own this sword. This was a thing of lethal beauty, made by a master, worthy of a great fighter.
‘Monsieur?’ Delmas’s voice was mild, polite.
Beyond Delmas, Sharpe could see Lossow, the Captain of the German Cavalry and Sharpe’s friend, who had driven Delmas into the prepared trap. Lossow had held the sword too, and shaken his head in mute wonder at the weapon. Now he watched as Sharpe handed the weapon to the Frenchman, a symbol that he had given his parole and could be trusted with his personal weapon.
Windham gave an exaggerated sigh. ‘Now, perhaps, we can start?’
The Light Company marched first behind Lossow’s cavalry screen, striking up onto the plains before the day’s heat rose in the sky to blind them with sweat and choke them with warm, gritty dust. Sharpe went on foot, unlike most officers, because he had always gone on foot. He had entered the army as a private, wearing the red jacket of the line Regiments and marching with a heavy musket on his shoulder. Later, much later, he had made the impossible jump from Sergeant to officer, joining the elite Rifles with their distinctive green jacket, but Sharpe still marched on foot. He was an infantryman and he marched as his men marched, and he carried a rifle as they carried their rifles or muskets. The South Essex were a redcoat Battalion, but Sharpe, Sergeant Harper, and the nucleus of the Light Company were all Riflemen, accidentally attached to the Battalion, and they proudly retained their dark green jackets.
Light flooded grey on the plain, the sun hinting with a pale red strip in the east of the heat to come, and Sharpe could see the dark shapes of the cavalry outlined on the dawn. The British were marching east, invading French-held Spain, aiming at the great city of Salamanca. Most of the army was far to the south, marching on a dozen roads, while the South Essex with Lossow’s men and a handful of Engineers had been sent north to destroy a small French fort that guarded a ford across the Tormes. The job had been done, the fort abandoned by the enemy, and now the South Essex marched to rejoin Wellington’s troops. It would take two days before they were back with the army and Sharpe knew they would be days of relentless heat as they crossed the dry plain.
Captain Lossow dropped behind his cavalry to be beside Sharpe. He nodded down at the Rifleman. ‘I don’t trust your Frenchman, Richard.’
‘Nor do I.’
Lossow was not discouraged by Sharpe’s curt tone. He was used to Sharpe’s morning surliness. ‘It’s strange, I think, for a Dragoon to have a straight sword. He should have a sabre, yes?’
‘True.’ Sharpe made an effort to sound more sociable. ‘We should have killed the bastard in the wood.’
‘That’s true. It’s the only thing to do with Frenchmen. Kill them.’ Lossow laughed. Like most of the Germans in Britain’s army, he came from a homeland that had been overrun by Napoleon’s troops. ‘I wonder what happened to the second man.’
‘You lost him.’
Lossow grinned at the insult. ‘Never. He hid himself. I hope the Partisans get him.’ The German drew a finger across his throat to hint at the way the Spanish Guerilleros treated their French captives. Then he smiled down at Sharpe. ‘You wanted his sword, ja?’
Sharpe shrugged, then spoke the truth. ‘Ja.’
‘You’ll get it, my friend! You’ll get it!’ Lossow laughed and trotted ahead, back to his men. He truly did believe that Sharpe would get the sword, though whether the sword would make Sharpe happy was another matter. Lossow knew Sharpe. He knew the restless spirit that drove the Rifleman through this war, a spirit that drove Sharpe from achievement to achievement. Once Sharpe had wanted to capture a French standard, an Eagle, something never done before by a Briton, and he had done it at Talavera. Later he had defied the Partisans, the French, even his own side, in taking the gold across Spain, and in doing it he had met and wanted Teresa. He had won her too, marrying her just two months ago, after he had been the first man across the death-filled breach at Badajoz. Sharpe, Lossow suspected, often got what he wanted, but the achievements never seemed to satisfy. His friend, the German decided, was like a man who, searching for a crock of gold, found ten and rejected them all because the pots were the wrong shape. He laughed at the thought.
They marched two days, bivouacking early and marching before dawn and, on the morning of the third day, the dawn revealed a smear of fine dust in the sky, a great plume that showed where Wellington’s main force covered the roads leading towards Salamanca. Captain Paul Delmas, conspicuous in his strange rust-red pantaloons and with the tall, brass helmet on his head, spurred past Sharpe to stare at the dust cloud as if he hoped to see beneath it the masses of infantry, cavalry and artillery that marched to challenge the greater forces of France. Colonel Windham followed the Frenchman, but reined in beside Sharpe. ‘A damn fine horseman, Sharpe!’
‘Yes, sir.’
Windham pushed back his bicorne hat and scratched at his greying scalp. ‘He seems a decent enough fellow, Sharpe.’
‘You talked to him, sir?’
‘Good God, no! I don’t speak Froggy. Snap! Come here! Snap!’ Windham was shouting at one of his foxhounds, perpetual companions to the Colonel. Most of the pack had been left in Portugal, in summer quarters, but half a dozen outrageously spoiled dogs came with the Colonel. ‘No, Leroy chatted to him.’ Windham managed to convey that the American Major was bound to speak French, being a foreigner himself. Americans were strange, anyone was strange to Windham who did not have true English blood. ‘He hunts, you know.’
‘Major Leroy, sir?’
‘No, Sharpe. Delmas. Mind you, they hunt bloody queer in France. Packs of bloody poodles. I suppose they’re trying to copy us and just can’t get it right.’
‘Probably, sir.’
Windham glanced at Sharpe to see if his leg was being pulled, but the Rifleman’s face was neutral. The Colonel courteously touched his hat. ‘Won’t keep you, Sharpe.’ He turned to the Light Company. ‘Well done, you scoundrels! Hard marching, eh? Soon over!’
It was over at mid-day when the Battalion reached the hills directly across the river from Salamanca. A messenger had come from the army, ordering the South Essex to that spot while the rest of the army marched further east to the fords that would take them to the north bank. The French had left a garrison in the city that overlooked the long Roman bridge and the job of the South Essex was to make sure that none of the garrison tried to escape across the river. It promised to be an easy, restful afternoon. The garrison planned to stay; the guard on the bridge was nothing more than a formal gesture.
Sharpe
