tied once more to the animal’s tail.
Their route lay downhill. They followed a streambed which tumbled to the bottom of a valley so huge that it dwarfed the hundred soldiers into insignificant dark scraps. In front of them was an even wider, deeper valley which lay athwart the first. It was an immense space of wind and sleet. “We cross that valley,” Vivar explained, “climb those far hills, then we drop down to the pilgrim way. That will lead you west to the coast road.”
First, though, the two officers used their telescopes to search the wide valley. No horsemen stirred there, indeed no living thing broke the grey monotony of its landscape. “What’s the pilgrim way?” Sharpe asked.
“The road to Santiago de Compostela. You’ve heard of it?”
“Never.”
Vivar was clearly annoyed by the Englishman’s ignorance. “You’ve heard of St James?”
“I suppose so.”
“He was an apostle, Lieutenant, and he is buried at Santiago de Compostela. Santiago is his name. He is Spain’s patron saint, and in the old days thousands upon thousands of Christians visited his shrine. Not just Spaniards, but the devout of all Christendom.”
“In the old days?” Sharpe asked.
“A few still visit, but the world is not what it used to be. The devil stalks abroad, Lieutenant.”
They waded a stream and Sharpe noted how this time Vivar took no precautions against the water spirits. He asked why and the Spaniard explained that the xanes were only troublesome at night.
Sharpe scoffed at the assertion. “I’ve crossed a thousand streams at night and never been troubled.”
“How would you know? Perhaps you’ve taken a thousand wrong turnings! You’re like a blind man describing colour!”
Sharpe heard the anger in the Spaniard’s voice, but he would not back down. “Perhaps you’re only troubled if you believe in the spirits. I don’t.”
Vivar spat left and right to ward off evil. “Do you know what Voltaire called the English?”
Sharpe had not even heard of Voltaire, but a man raised from the ranks to the officers’ mess becomes adept at hiding his ignorance. “I’m sure he admired us.”
Vivar sneered at his reply. “He said the English are a people without God. I think it is true. Do you believe in God, Lieutenant?”
Sharpe heard the intensity in the question, but could not match it with any responding interest. “I never think about it.”
“You don’t think about it?” Vivar was horrified.
Sharpe bridled. “Why the hell should I?”
“Because without God there is nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing!” The Spaniard’s sudden passion was furious. “Nothing!” He shouted the word again, astonishing the tired men who twisted to see what had prompted such an outburst.
The two officers walked in embarrassed silence, breaking a virgin field of snow with their boots. The snow was pitted by rain and turning yellow where it thawed into ditches. A village lay two miles to their right, but Vivar was hurrying now and was unwilling to turn aside. They pushed through a brake of trees and Sharpe wondered why the Spaniard had not thought it necessary to throw picquets ahead of the marching men, but he assumed Vivar must be certain that no Frenchmen had yet penetrated this far from the main roads. He did not like to mention it, for the atmosphere was strained enough between them.
They crossed the wider valley and began to climb again. Vivar was using tracks he had known since childhood, tracks that climbed from the frozen fields to a treacherous mountain road which zigzagged perilously up the steep slope. They passed a wayside shrine where Vivar crossed himself. His men followed his example, as did the Irishmen among his greenjackets. There were fifteen of them; fifteen troublemakers who would hate Sharpe because of Rifleman Harper.
Sergeant Williams must have had much the same thoughts, for he caught up with Sharpe and, with a sheepish expression, fell into step with him. “It wasn’t Harps’s fault, sir.”
“What wasn’t?”
“What happened yesterday, sir.”
Sharpe knew the Sergeant was trying to make peace, but his embarrassment at his loss of dignity made his response harsh. “You mean you were all agreed?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You all agreed to murder an officer?”
Williams flinched from the accusation. “It wasn’t like that, sir.”
“Don’t tell me what it was like, you bastard! If you were all agreed, Sergeant, then you all deserve a flogging, even if none of you had the guts to help Harper.”
Williams did not like the charge of cowardice. “Harps insisted on doing it alone, sir. He said it should be a fair fight or none at all.”
Sharpe was too angry to be affected by this curious revelation of a mutineer’s honour. “You want me to weep for him?” He knew he had handled these men wrongly, utterly wrongly, but he did not know how else he could have behaved. Perhaps Captain Murray had been right. Perhaps officers were born to it, perhaps you needed privileged birth to have Vivar’s easy authority, and Sharpe’s resentment made him snap at the greenjackets who shambled past him on the wet road. “Stop straggling! You’re bloody soldiers, not prinking choirboys. Pick your bloody feet up! Move it!”
They moved. One of the greenjackets muttered a word of command and the rest fell into step, shouldered arms, and began to march as only the Light Infantry could march. They were showing the Lieutenant that they were still the best. They were showing their derision for him by displaying their skill and Major Vivar’s good humour was restored by the arrogant demonstration. He watched the greenjackets scatter his own men aside, then called for them to slow down and resume their place at the rear of the column. He was still laughing when Sharpe caught up with him. j
“You sounded like a Sergeant, Lieutenant,” Vivar said.
“I was a Sergeant once. I was the best God-damned bloody Sergeant in the God-damned bloody army.”
The Spaniard was astonished. “You were a Sergeant?”
“Do you think the son of a whore would be allowed to join as an officer? I was a Sergeant, and a private before that.”
Vivar stared at the Englishman as though he had suddenly sprouted horns. “I didn’t know your army promoted from the ranks?” Whatever anger he had felt with Sharpe an hour or so before evaporated into a fascinated curiosity.
“It’s rare. But men like me don’t become real officers, Major. It’s a reward, you see, for being a fool. For being stupidly brave. And then they make us into Drillmasters or Quartermasters. They think we can manage those tasks. We’re not given fighting commands.” Sharpe’s bitterness was rank in the cold morning, and he supposed he was making the self-pitying confession because it explained his failures to this competent Spanish officer. “They think we all take to drink, and perhaps we do. Who wants to be an officer, anyway?”
But Vivar was not interested in Sharpe’s misery. “So you’ve seen much fighting?”
Tn India. And in Portugal last year.“
Vivar’s opinion of Sharpe was changing. Till now he had seen the Englishman as an ageing, unsuccessful Lieutenant who had failed to either buy or win promotion. Now he saw that Sharpe’s promotion had been extraordinary, far beyond the dreams of a common man. “Do you like battle?”
It seemed an odd question to Sharpe, but he answered it as best he could. “I have no other skill.”
“Then I think you will make a good officer, Lieutenant. There’ll be much fighting before Napoleon is sent down to ‘ roast in hell.”
They climbed another mile, until the slope flattened out and the troops trudged between immense rocks that loomed above the road. Vivar, his friendliness restored, told Sharpe that a battle had been fought in this high place where the eagles nested. The Moors had used this same road and the Christian archers had ambushed them from the rocks on either side. “We drove them back and made the very road stink with their blood.” Vivar stared at the towering bluffs as if the stone still echoed with the screams of dying pagans. “That must be nearly nine hundred years ago.” He spoke as if it were yesterday, and he himself had carried a sword to the fight. “Each year the
