Sharpe's Battle

Valverde smiled. 'Maybe I shall. Now back to your digging, Captain. Or should it be Lieutenant?' Valverde waited for an answer, but when none came he turned his horse and rammed his spurs hard back.

'What was all that about?' Harper asked.

'God knows,' Sharpe said, watching the elegant Spaniard gallop to catch up with the wagons and the other horsemen. Except he did know, and he knew it meant trouble. He swore, then plucked the pick out of the soil and rammed it hard down again. A spark flew from a scrap of flint as the pick's spike slashed deep. Sharpe let go of the handle. 'But I'll tell you what I do know, Pat. Everyone loses out of last night's business except goddamned Loup, and Loup's still out there and that gives me the gripe.'

'So what can you do about it, sir?'

'At this moment, Pat, nothing. I don't even know where to find the bastard.'

Then El Castrador arrived.

'El Lobo is in San Cristobal, seсor,' El Castrador said. The partisan had come with five of his men to collect the muskets Sharpe had promised him. The Spaniard claimed he needed a hundred weapons, though Sharpe doubted whether the man had even a dozen followers any more, yet doubtless any extra guns would be sold for a healthy profit. Sharpe gave El Castrador thirty of the muskets he had stored overnight in Runciman's quarters.

'I cannot spare more,' he had told El Castrador, who had shrugged acceptance in the manner of a man accustomed to disappointments.

Now El Castrador was poking among the Portuguese dead, searching for plunder. He picked up a rifle horn, turned it over and saw it had been holed by a bullet. He nevertheless wrenched off the horn's metal spout and shoved it into a capacious pocket of his bloodstained apron. 'El Lobo is in San Cristobal,' he said again.

'How do you know?' Sharpe asked.

'I am El Castrador!' the gross man said boastfully, then squatted beside a blackening corpse. He prised open the dead man's jaws with his big fingers. 'Is it true, seсor, that you can sell the teeth of the dead?'

'In London, yes.'

'For gold?'

'They pay gold, yes. Or silver,' Sharpe said. The plundered teeth were made into sets of dentures for rich clients who wanted something better than replacement teeth made from bone or ivory.

El Castrador peeled the corpse's lips back to reveal a handsome set of incisors. 'If I take the teeth out, seсor, will you buy them from me? Then you can send them to London for a profit. You and me, eh? We can do business.'

'I'm too busy to do business,' Sharpe said, hiding his distaste. 'Besides, we only take French teeth.'

'And the French take British teeth to sell in Paris, yes? So the French bite with your teeth and you bite with theirs, and neither of you will bite with your own.' El Castrador laughed as he straightened from the corpse. 'Maybe they will buy teeth in Madrid,' he said speculatively.

'Where's San Cristobal?' Sharpe changed the subject.

'Over the hills,' El Castrador said vaguely.

'Show me.' Sharpe pulled the big man towards the eastern ramparts. 'Show me,' he said again as they reached the firestep.

El Castrador indicated the track that twisted up into the hills on the valley's far side, the same track down which Juanita de Elia had fled from the pursuing dragoons. 'You follow that path for five miles,' El Castrador said, 'and you will come to San Cristobal. It is not a big place, but it is the only place you can reach by that road.'

'And how do you know Loup is there?' Sharpe asked.

'Because my cousin saw him arrive there this morning. My cousin said he was carrying wounded men with him.'

Sharpe gazed eastwards. Five miles. Say two hours if the moon was unclouded or six hours if it was jet dark. 'What was your cousin doing there?' he asked.

'He once lived in the village, seсor. He goes to watch it from time to time.'

A pity, Sharpe thought, that no one had been watching Loup the previous evening. 'Tell me about San Cristobal,' he said.

It was a village, the Spaniard said, high in the hills. Not a large village, but prosperous with a fine church, a plaza, and a number of substantial stone houses. The place had once been famous for rearing bulls destined for the fighting rings of the small frontier towns. 'But no more,' El Castrador said. 'The French stewed the last bulls.'

'Is it a hill-top village?' Sharpe asked.

El Castrador shook his head. 'It sits in a valley like that one' — he waved at the eastern valley—'but not so deep. No trees grow there, seсor, and a man cannot get close to San Cristobal without being seen. And El Lobo has built walls across all the gaps between the houses and he keeps watchmen in the church's bell tower. You cannot get close.' El Castrador issued the warning in a worried voice. 'You are thinking of going there?'

Sharpe did not answer for a long time. Of course he was thinking of going there, but to what purpose? Loup had a brigade of men while Sharpe had half a company. 'How close can I get without being seen?' he asked.

El Castrador shrugged. 'A half-mile? But there is also a defile there, a valley where the road runs. I've often thought we could trap Loup there. He used to scout the valley before he rode through it, but not now. Now he is too confident.'

So go to the defile, Sharpe thought, and watch. Just watch. Nothing else. No attack, no ambush, no disobedience, no heroics, just a reconnaissance. And after all, he told himself, Wellington's order to take the Real Companпa Irlandesa to the army headquarters at Vilar Formoso did not detail the route he must take. Nothing specifically forbade Sharpe taking a long, circuitous journey via San Cristobal, but he knew, even as he thought of that evasion, that it was specious. The sensible thing was to forget Loup, but it cut against all his instincts to be beaten and just lie down and accept the beating. 'Does Loup have artillery at San Cristobal?' he asked the partisan.

'No, seсor.'

Sharpe wondered if Loup had arranged for this intelligence to reach him. Was Loup enticing Sharpe into a trap? 'Would you come with us, seсor?' he asked El Castrador, suspecting that the partisan would never come if Loup was the inspiration behind this news of the brigade's whereabouts.

'To watch Loup,' the Spaniard asked guardedly, 'or to fight him?'

'To watch him,' Sharpe said, knowing it was not the honest answer.

The Spaniard nodded. 'You haven't enough men to fight him,' he added to explain his cautious question.

Privately Sharpe agreed. He did not have enough men, not unless he could surprise Loup or maybe ambush him in the defile. One rifle bullet, well aimed, would kill a man as surely as a full battalion attack, and when Sharpe thought of Oliveira's mangled and tortured body he reckoned that Loup deserved that bullet. So maybe tonight, Sharpe thought, he could take his riflemen to San Cristobal and pray for a private revenge in the defile at dawn. 'I would welcome your help,' Sharpe told El Castrador, flattering the man.

'In a week's time, seсor,' El Castrador said, 'I can assemble a respectable troop.'

'We go tonight,' Sharpe said.

'Tonight?' The Spaniard was appalled.

'I saw a bullfight once,' Sharpe said, 'and the matador gave the bull the killing stroke, the one over the neck and down through the shoulders, and the bull staggered, then sank to its knees. The man pulled the sword out and turned away with his arms raised in triumph. You can guess what happened.'

El Castrador nodded. 'The bull rose?'

'A horn in the small of the man's back,' Sharpe confirmed. 'Well, I am the bull, seсor, and I confess to being wounded, but Loup's back is turned. So tonight, when he thinks we're too weak to move, we march.'

'But only to watch him,' the partisan said cautiously. He had been scorched by Loup too often to risk a fight.

'To watch,' Sharpe lied, 'just to watch.'