Sharpe's Battle

for swordfighting 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 grey 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 defence 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-tasselled 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 duellists 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 grey jacket as he collapsed backwards off his tired horse.

An astonished Lord Kiely took one look at the vengeful dragoons spurring towards 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 protests, 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 Companпa 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 towards 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 bare-faced 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 towards the British officers.

'Brigadier Loup, sir,' Sharpe lied smoothly. 'I was explaining to General Runciman the significance of the grey uniforms.' Sharpe pointed towards the dragoons who were now carrying the dead man's body back up the hillside.

'A grey 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 towards the main border road. Where the hills petered out into rolling meadowland there was a small village of narrow twisting streets, stone-walled gardens and low-roofed cottages that huddled on a slope climbing from a fast-