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 toward 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 gray 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 Compañía 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 disemboweled 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 gray dragoon’s belly and for a second Sharpe thought the lunge would surely pierce the Frenchman’s defense, 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 duelists 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 sword-fighting 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 gray 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 defense 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-tasseled 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 duelists 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 gray jacket as he collapsed backward off his tired horse.
An astonished Lord Kiely took one look at the vengeful dragoons spurring toward 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 protes
ts, 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 Compañía 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 toward 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 barefaced 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 toward the British officers.
“Brigadier Loup, sir,” Sharpe lied smoothly. “I was explaining to General Runciman the significance of the gray uniforms.” Sharpe pointed toward the dragoons who were now carrying the dead man’s body back up the hillside.
“A gray 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 toward the main border road. Where the hills petered out into rolling meadowland there was a small village of narrow twisting streets, stonewalled 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 Oñoro, 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 Oñoro were a small picket 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 Los-sow, a KGL friend of Sharpe’s, then the captain led his men out of the stream and onto the long straight road that led toward 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 Oñoro 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 veg
etable 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 poleax, 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.