Sharpe's Devil

Bautista should resent Dona Louisa's interest in her husband's fate, for that interest could bring the scrutiny of Madrid onto this far, doomed colony, but was killing Louisa's emissaries the way to avert such interest?

He slept at last, but it seemed he was woken almost immediately. Captain Morillo was shaking his shoulder. 'You should go now, before the others stir. My Sergeant will open the gate. Wake up, sir!'

Sharpe groaned, turned over, groaned again. There had been a time when he could live on no sleep, but he felt too old for such tricks now. There was a pain in his back, and an ache in his right leg where a bullet had once lodged. 'Oh, Jesus.'

'Dregara's bound to be awake when my men leave, and he mustn't see you,' Morillo hissed.

Sharpe and Harper pulled on their boots, strapped on their sword belts, slung their weapons, then carried their saddles, bags and the strongbox to the fort's gate where a Sergeant let them out into the chill night. A moment later Morillo, together with a much smaller man, brought their horses. The mule was left behind in the fort to lull any suspicions Dregara might have.

'This is Ferdinand,' Morillo introduced the small man. 'He's your guide. He'll take you across the hills and cut a good ten hours off your journey. He's a picunche. He speaks no Spanish, I'm afraid, nor any other Christian language, but he knows what to do.'

'Picunche?' Sharpe asked.

He was given his answer as a cloud slid from the moon to reveal that Ferdinand, named for the King of Spain, was an Indian. He was a small, thin man, with a flat mask of a face, dressed in a tatter of a cast-off cavalry uniform decorated with bright feathers stuck into its loops and buttonholes. He wore no shoes and carried no weapon.

'Picunche is a kind of tribal name,' Morillo explained as he helped saddle Harper's horse. 'We use the Indians as scouts and guides. There aren't many savages who are friendly to us. Don Bias wanted to recruit more, but that idea died with him.'

'Doesn't Ferdinand have a horse?' Harper asked.

Morillo laughed. 'He'll outrun your horses over a day's marching. He'll also give you a fighting chance to stay well ahead of Sergeant Dregara.' Morillo tightened a girth strap, then stepped away. 'Ferdinand will find his way back to me when he's finished with you. Good luck, Colonel.'

Sharpe thanked the cavalry Captain. 'How can we repay you?'

'Mention my name to Vivar's widow. Say I was a true man to her husband.' Morillo was hoping that Dona Louisa would still have some influence in Spain, influence that would help his career when he was posted home again.

'I shall tell her you deserve whatever is in her gift,' Sharpe promised, then he pulled himself into the saddle and took the great strongbox onto his lap. 'Good luck, Captain.'

'God bless you, senor. Trust Ferdinand!'

The Indian reached up and took hold of both horses' bridles. The moon was flying in and out of ragged clouds, offering a bare light to the dark slope down which Ferdinand led their horses to where the trees closed over their heads. The main road went eastward, detouring about the thickly wooded country into which Ferdinand unerringly led them just as a bugle called its reveille up in the Celestial Fort. Sharpe laughed, pulled his hat over his eyes to protect them from the twigs and followed a savage to the south.

At dawn they rode through the forests of morning, hung with mists, spangled with a million beads of dew that were given light by the lancing, slanting rays of the rising sun. Drifts of vapor softened the great tree trunks among which a myriad of bright birds flew. The clouds had cleared, gone back to the mountains or blown out to the endless oceans. Ferdinand had relinquished the horses' bridles and was content simply to lead the way through the towering trees. 'I wonder where the hell we are,' Harper said.

'Ferdinand knows,' Sharpe replied, and the mention of his royal name made the small Indian turn and smile with file-sharpened teeth.

'We could have done with a few hundred of him at Waterloo,' Harper said. 'They'd have frightened the buggers to death by just grinning at them.'

They rode on. At times, when the path was especially steep or slippery, they dismounted and led the horses. Once they circled a hill on a narrow path above a chasm of pearl-bright mist. Strange birds screeched at them. The worst moment of the morning came when Ferdinand brought them to a great canyon that was crossed by a perilously fragile bridge made of leather, rope and green wood. The green wood slats were held in place by the twisted leather straps and the whole precarious roadway was suspended from the rope cables. Ferdinand made gestures at Sharpe and Harper, grunting the while in a strange language.

'I think,' Harper said, 'he wants us to cross one at a time. God save Ireland, but I think I'd rather not cross at all.'

It was a terrifying crossing. Sharpe went first and the whole structure shivered and swayed with every step he took. Ferdinand followed Sharpe, leading his blindfolded horse. Despite its blindfold the horse was nervous and trembling. Once, when the mare missed her footing and plunged a hoof through the slats, she began to panic, but Ferdinand soothed and calmed the beast. Far beneath Sharpe the mist shredded to reveal a white thread which was a quick-flowing stream deep in the canyon's jungle.

Harper was white with terror when he finished the crossing. 'I'd rather face the Imperial bloody Guard than do that again.'

They remounted and rode on, taking it in turns to balance the great box of golden guineas on their saddles' pommels. Ferdinand loped tirelessly ahead. Harper, chewing a lump of hard bread, had begun to think of Bautista. 'Why does that long-nosed bastard want to kill us?'

'God knows. I've been trying to make sense of it, and I can't.'

Harper shook his head. 'I mean if the man wants to be rid of us, then why the hell doesn't he just let us take Don Bias's body and be away? Why send those fellows to kill us?'

'If he did send them.' Sharpe, as the morning unfolded into sun-drenched innocence, had again begun to doubt the fears that had crowded in on him during the night.

'He sent them, right enough,' Harper said. 'He's an evil bastard, that Bautista. You only had to look in his eye. If a man like that comes into the tavern I throw him out. I won't have him drinking my ale!'

'I don't know if he's evil,' Sharpe said, 'but he's certainly frightened.'

'Bautista? Frightened?' Harper was scornful.

'He's like a man playing drumhead.' Drumhead was a card game that had been popular in the army. It was a simple game, needing only a pack of cards, as many players as wanted to risk their money and a playing surface like a drumhead. Each player nominated a card and another man dealt the cards face up onto the drumhead. The man whose card appeared last won the game.

'Drumhead?' Harper was still unconvinced.

'Bautista's playing for very big stakes, Patrick. He's cheating left, right and center and he knows, if he's caught, that he'll face court martial, disgrace, maybe even imprisonment. But if he wins, then he wins very big indeed. He's watching the cards turn over and he's dreading that he'll lose. But he can't stop playing because the winnings are so huge.'

'Then why the hell doesn't he fight the war propejly?' Harper grunted as he settled the strongbox more comfortably on his pommel.

'Because he knows the war is lost,' Sharpe said. 'It would take an extraordinary soldier to win this war, and Bautista isn't an extraordinary soldier. Don Bias might have won it, but only if Madrid had sent him the ships to beat Cochrane, which they didn't. So Bautista knows he's going to lose, and that means he has to do two things. First, he needs to blame someone else for losing the war, and second, he has to grab as much of Chile's wealth as possible. Then he can go home rich and blameless, and he can use the money to gain power in Madrid.'

'But why kill us? We're bugger all to do with his problems.'

'We're the enemy,' Sharpe said. 'The closest Bautista came to losing was when Don Bias was here. Don Bias knew something that would destroy Bautista, and he was on the point of confronting Bautista when he died. We're on Don Bias's side, so we're enemies.' It was the only answer that made sense to Sharpe, and though it was an answer full of gaps, it helped to explain the Captain-General's enmity.

'So he'll kill us?' Harper asked indignantly.

Sharpe nodded. 'But not in public. If we can reach Puerto Crucero, we're safe. Bautista needs to blame our disappearance on the rebels. He won't dare attack us in a public place.'