Sharpe's Devil

landing he suddenly checked, then swore. “Jesus!'

'What?'

'Thieves!' Harper was charging up to the landing. Sharpe followed.

'Get down!' Harper screamed, then threw himself sideways through an open doorway. Sharpe had a glimpse of two men in a second doorway, then the landing was filled with smoke as one of the men fired a gun. The noise was huge, echoing around the house. Bitter-smelling smoke churned in the corridor. Sharpe did not see where the bullet went. He only knew it had not hit him.

He scrambled to his feet and ran past the doorway where Harper had sheltered. He could hear the thieves running ahead of him. 'We've got the buggers trapped!' He shouted the encouragement for Harper, then he saw that there was another staircase at the back of the house, presumably a stair for servants, and the two thieves were jumping its steps three at a time.

'Stop!' Sharpe bellowed. He had visited the Citadel in civilian clothes, not bothering to wear any weapons. 'Stop!' he shouted again, but the two men were already scrambling out into the stableyard. The mestizo cook was screaming.

Sharpe reached the kitchen door as the thieves tugged open the stableyard gate. Sharpe ran into the rain, still shouting at the men to stop. Both thieves were carrying sacks of plunder, and both were armed with short- barreled cavalry carbines. One carbine had been fired, but now the second man, fearing Sharpe's pursuit, turned and aimed his gun. The man had black hair, a bushy moustache and a scar on his cheek, then Sharpe realized the carbine was at point-blank range and he hurled himself sideways, slithering through puddles of rain and heaps of stable muck to thump against a bale of straw. The gate was open now, but the moustached gunman did not run; instead he carefully leveled the carbine at Sharpe. He was holding the gun one-handed. There was a pause of a heartbeat, then he smiled and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened. For a second the man just gaped at Sharpe, then, suddenly scared, he hurled the carbine like a club and took off through the gate after his companion.

Sharpe was climbing to his feet, but had to drop flat again as the gun flew over his head. He stood again, slipped as he began running, found his balance, then clung to the gatepost when he saw that the two men had disappeared into a crowded alley. He swore.

He closed the gate, brushed the horse manure off his jacket and breeches, picked up the thief's carbine and went back to the kitchen. 'Stop your noise, woman!' he snapped at the cook, then stared up to where Harper had appeared at the top of the back stairs. 'What's the matter with you?'

'God save Ireland.' Harper came slowly down the stairs. He had gone pale as paper, and had a hand clapped to the side of his head. Blood showed between his fingers. 'Bugger shot me!' Harper staggered against the wall, but managed to keep his balance. 'I went through the whole damned French wars, so I did, and never once did I take a bullet, and now a damned thief in a damned town at the end of the damned world hits me! Jesus sweet Christ!' He took his hand away and blood oozed from his sandy hair to trickle down his neck. 'I'm feeling dizzy, so I am.'

Sharpe helped Harper to a chair, sat him down, then probed the blood-soaked hair. The damage was slight. The bullet had seared across the scalp, breaking the skin, but not doing any other damage. 'The bullet just grazed you,' Sharpe said in relief.

'Grazed, indeed! I was hit, so I was!'

'Barely broke the skin.'

'Lucky to be alive, I am. Sweet mother of God, but I could have been dead by now.'

'Luckily you've got a skull like a bloody ox.' Sharpe rapped Harper's temple. 'It would take a twelve pounder to dent that skull.'

'Would you listen to him! As near to death as a goose at Christmas, so I am, and all he can do is tap my skull!'

Sharpe went to the big water vat by the back door, soaked a piece of cloth, and tossed it to Harper. 'Hold that against your head. It'll bring you back to life. I'm going to see what the bastards took.'

Apart from their weapons and the chest with Louisa's gold, all of which had been locked in Blair's strong room, the thieves appeared to have taken everything. Sharpe, disconsolate, went downstairs to where Harper was dabbing his bloody head with the wet rag. 'The lot,' Sharpe said bitterly. 'Your bag, my bags, our clothes, boots, razors. The lot.'

'The Emperor's thimble?' Harper asked in disbelief.

'Everything,' Sharpe said. 'Bonaparte's portrait, and some stuff of Blair's as well. I can't tell what, but the candlesticks are gone and those small pictures that were on the shelf. Bastards!'

'What about your locket?'

'Around my neck.'

'The guns?'

Sharpe shook his head. 'The strong-room padlock wasn't touched.' He picked up the thief s weapon. 'The bastard tried to shoot me twice. It wouldn't fire.'

'He forgot to prime it?'

Sharpe opened the pan and saw a sludge of wet powder there, then saw that the trigger was loose. He scraped the priming out of the pan and tapped the gun's butt on the floor. His guess was that the carbine's mainspring had jammed because the wood of the stock had swollen in the damp weather. It was a common enough problem with cheap guns. He tapped harder and this time the trapped spring jarred itself free and the flint snapped down on the emptied pan.

'Swollen wood?' Harper asked.

'Saved my life, too. Bugger had me lined up at five paces.' He peered at the lockplate and saw the mark of the Cadiz Armory, which made this a Spanish army gun. There was nothing sinister in that. The world was awash with old army weapons; even Sharpe and Harper carried rifles with the British Government's Tower Armory mark on their plates.

Sharpe turned to the whimpering cook and accused her of letting the two thieves into the house, but the woman protested her innocence, claiming that the two men must have climbed across the church roof and jumped from there onto the half-roof at the side of Blair's house. 'It has happened before, senar' she said resignedly, 'which is why the master has his strong room.'

'What do we do now?' Harper still held the rag against his head.

'I'll make a formal complaint,' Sharpe said. 'It won't help, but I'll make it anyway.' He went back to the Citadel where, in the guardroom, a surly clerk took down a list of the stolen property. Sharpe, as he dictated the missing items, knew that he wasted his time.

'You wasted your time,' Blair said when he came home. 'Place is full of bloody thieves. That clerk will already have thrown your list away. You'll have to buy more clothes tomorrow.'

'Or look for the bloody thieves,' Harper, his head sore and bandaged, growled threateningly.

'You'll never find them,' Blair said. 'They brand some of them on the forehead with a big L, but it doesn't do any good.' Sharpe guessed the L stood for ladron, thief. 'That's why I have a strong room,' Blair went on, 'it would take more than a couple of cutthroats to break in there.' He had fetched a bottle of gin back from the H.M.S. Charybdis and in consequence was a happy man. By nightfall he was also a drunken man who once again offered Sharpe and Harper the run of his servants. 'None of them are poxed. They'd better not be, God help them, or I'll have the skin off their backs.'

'I'll manage without,' Sharpe said.

'Your loss, Sharpe, your loss.'

That night the clouds rolled back from the coastal plain so that the dawn brought a wondrous clean sky and a sharp, bright sun that rose to silhouette the jagged peaks of the Andes. There was something almost springlike in the air—something so cleansing and cheerful that Sharpe, waking, felt almost glad to be in Chile, then he suddenly remembered the events of the previous day, and knew that he must spoil this bright clean day by buying a new greatcoat, new breeches, a coat, shirts, small clothes and a razor. At least, he thought grimly, he had been wearing his good kerseymere coat for his abortive visit to Bautista, which had served to save the coat from the thieves and to save Sharpe from Lucille's wrath. She was forever telling him he should dress more stylishly, and the dark green kerseymere coat had been the first success in her long and difficult campaign. The coat had