Sharpe’s Rifles. Bernard Cornwell

and used the momentum of his recoil to drive his bunched fists into the other man’s belly. Harper’s head came forward, and Sharpe butted again; then, through the whirl of lights that seared across his vision, he brought his fists backwards and forwards across the Irishman’s face.

      Harper would not back down. He punched back, and drew blood from Sharpe’s nose and lips, then drove him reeling backwards. Sharpe slipped on snow, tripped on the floor’s rubble, and fell. He saw the massive boot coming, and twisted clear. He came up from the floor, snarling through blood, and grabbed Harper’s crossbelt. The Irishman was himself off balance now and Sharpe turned him, swung him, then let go. Harper spun away, staggered, and fell against the wall. A stone gouged blood down his left cheek.

      Sharpe was hurting. His ribs were tender, his head spinning, and his face bloody. He saw the other greenjackets edging closer to where the two men fought. Their faces showed disbelief, and Sharpe knew that not one of them would intervene to help Harper. The big Irishman had been delegated to do this job, and would be left alone to finish it.

      Harper spat, stared at Sharpe through a mask of blood, then heaved himself to his feet. He found his bayonet and drew it.

      ‘Use that, you Irish bastard, and I’ll kill you.’

      Harper said nothing, and there was something very terrifying in his silence.

      ‘Bastard,’ Sharpe said again. He glanced towards his new sword, but the Irishman had edged round to bar that salvation.

      Harper stepped forward, coming slowly, the sword-bayonet held like a fighter’s knife. He lunged with it once, sending Sharpe to one side, then lunged again, quick and hard, hoping to catch the officer off balance.

      Sharpe, expecting the second lunge, avoided it. He saw the flicker of astonishment on the big man’s face. Harper was good, he was younger than Sharpe, but he had not fought a man with Sharpe’s quickness. Nor had he been hurt so much in a long time, and the flicker of surprise turned to pain as Sharpe’s fists slapped at his eyes. Harper slashed with the bayonet, using it now to drive his attacker away, and Sharpe let the blade come at him. He felt it slice at his forearm, he ignored it, and rammed the heel of his hand forward to break the Irishman’s nose. He clawed at Harper’s eyes, trying to hook them out of his skull. The Irishman wrenched away and Sharpe pushed him off balance again. Fire seared at his arm, the fire of warm blood drawn by steel, but the pain went as Harper fell.

      Sharpe followed fast. He kicked once, twice, crunching his boot into the big man’s ribs, then he seized the bayonet, cutting his fingers, and stamped his heel onto Harper’s wrist. The weapon came away. Sharpe reversed it. He was panting now, his breath misting in the frigid air. Blood dripped from his hand to run down the blade. There was more blood on the snow which had drifted through the hovel’s broken roof and gaping doors.

      The Irishman saw his death above him. He rolled, then jerked back towards Sharpe with a stone in his hand. He lunged with the stone, smashing it onto the point of the descending blade and the shock of it numbed Sharpe’s arm. He had never fought such power, never. He tried to drive the weapon down again, but Harper had heaved up and Sharpe cried aloud as the rock thumped into his belly. He fell onto the wall behind, his hand still numb where it held the bayonet.

      He saw that Harper’s face had changed. Until that moment the big Irishman had seemed as dispassionate as a butcher, but now there was a berserker look on his face. It was the face of a man goaded into battle-fury, and Sharpe understood that till now Harper had been reluctantly doing a necessary job that had suddenly become a passion. The Irishman spoke for the first time since the fight had begun, but in Gaelic, a language Sharpe had never understood. He only understood that the words were an insult that would be the threnody of his death as Harper used the stone to crush his skull.

      ‘Come on, you bastard.’ Sharpe was trying to massage life back into his numbed arm. ‘You Irish scum. You bog-Paddy bloody bastard. Come on!’

      Harper peeled bloody lips back from bloody teeth. He screamed a challenge, charged, and Sharpe used the chasseur’s trick. He switched the blade from his right to his left hand and screamed his own challenge. He lunged.

      Then the world exploded.

      A noise like the thunder of doom crashed in Sharpe’s ear, and a flash of flame seared close to his face with a sudden warmth. He flinched, then heard the whip-crack of a bullet ricocheting from the hovel’s wall.

      Sharpe thought one of the other Riflemen had at last summoned up the courage to help Harper. Desperate as a cornered animal, he twisted snarling from the foul smell of the gunpowder smoke, then saw that the Irishman was as astonished as himself. The stone still grasped in his massive fist, Harper was staring at a newcomer who stood in the east-facing door.

      ‘I thought you were here to fight the French?’ The voice was amused, mocking, superior. ‘Or do the British have nothing better to do than squabble like rats?’

      The speaker was a cavalry officer in the scarlet uniform of the Spanish Cazadores, or rather the remnants of such a uniform for it was so torn and shabby that it might have been a beggar’s rags. The gold braid which edged the man’s yellow collar was tarnished and the chain-slings of his sword were rusted. The black boots that reached midway up his thighs were ripped. A sacking cloak hung from his shoulders. His men, who had made the tracks in the snow and who now formed a rough cordon to the east of the farmhouse, were in a similar condition, but Sharpe noted, with a soldier’s eye, that all these Spanish cavalrymen had retained their swords and carbines. The officer held a short-barrelled and smoking pistol that he lowered to his side.

      ‘Who the devil are you?’ Still holding the bayonet, Sharpe was ready to lunge. He was indeed like a cornered rat; bloody, salivating, and vicious.

      ‘My name is Major Blas Vivar.’ Vivar was a man of middle height with a tough face. He looked, as did his men, as though he had been through hell in the last days, yet he was not so exhausted that his voice did not betray derision for what he had just witnessed. ‘Who are you?’

      Sharpe had to spit blood before he could answer. ‘Lieutenant Richard Sharpe of the 95th. The Rifles,’ he added.

      ‘And him?’ Vivar looked at Harper.

      ‘He’s under arrest,’ Sharpe said. He threw down the sword-bayonet and pushed Harper in the chest. ‘Out! Out!’ He pushed him through the hovel’s door, out to where the other greenjackets waited in the snow. ‘Sergeant Williams!’

      ‘Sir?’ Williams stared with awe at their bloodied faces. ‘Sir?’

      ‘Rifleman Harper is under close arrest.’ Sharpe shoved Harper a last time, tumbling him into the snow, then turned back to the Spaniard’s mocking gaze.

      ‘You seem to be in trouble, Lieutenant?’ Vivar’s derision was made worse by the amusement in his voice.

      The shame of the situation galled Sharpe, just as the Spaniard’s tone stung him. ‘It’s none of your business.’

      ‘Sir,’ Major Vivar chided him.

      ‘None of your bloody business, sir.’

      Vivar shrugged. ‘This is Spain, Lieutenant. What happens here is more my business than yours, I think?’ His English was excellent, and spoken with a cold courtesy that made Sharpe feel mulish.

      But the Englishman could not help his mulishness. ‘All we want to do,’ Sharpe smeared blood from his mouth onto his dark green sleeve, ‘is get out of your damned country.’

      There was a hint of renewed anger in the Spaniard’s eyes. ‘I think I shall be glad to see you gone, Lieutenant. So perhaps I’d better help you leave?’

      Sharpe, for better or worse, had found an ally.

      CHAPTER THREE

      ‘Defeat,’ Blas Vivar said, ‘destroys