such things bring no happiness, Lieutenant, only a great discontent. He would cut out Spain’s heart and put a French encyclopaedia in its place. He would forget God, and enthrone reason, virtue, equality, liberty, and all the other nonsenses which make men forget that bread has doubled in price and only tears are more plentiful.”
“You don’t believe in reason?” Sharpe let the conversation veer away from the painful subject of the Count of Mouro-morto’s loyalty.
“Reason is the mathematics of thinking, nothing more. You don’t live your life by such dry disciplines. Mathematics cannot explain God, no more can reason, and I believe in God! Without Him we are no more than corruption. But I forget. You are not a believer.”
“No,” Sharpe said lamely.
“But that disbelief is better than Tomas’s pride. He thinks he is greater than God, but before this year is out, Lieutenant, I will deliver him to the justice of God.”
“The French may think otherwise?”
“I do not give a damn what the French think. I only care about victory. That is why I rescued you. That is why, this night, we travel in the dark.” Vivar would explain no more, for all his energies were needed to cajole the flagging men further and higher. Louisa Parker, exhausted beyond speech, was lifted onto a horse. Still the path climbed.
At dawn, beneath a sky scoured clean of cloud in which the morning star was a fading speck above the frosted land, Sharpe saw that they travelled towards a fortress built on a mountaintop.
It was not a modern fort, built low behind sloping earthen walls that would bounce the cannon shot high over ditches and ravelins, but a high fortress of ancient and sullen menace. Nor was it a gracious place. This was not the home of some flamboyant lord, but a stronghold built to defend a land till time itself was finished.
The fort had lain empty for a hundred years. It was too distant and too high to be easily supplied, and Spain had not needed such places. But now, in a cold dawn, Bias Vivar led his tired Cazadores under the old, moss-thick arch and into a cobbled courtyard that was rank with weed and grass. Some of his men, commanded by a Sergeant, had garrisoned the old fortress while the Major was gone, and the smell of their cooking fires was welcome after the chill of the night. Not much else was welcoming; the ramparts were overgrown, the keep was a home for ravens and bats, and the cellar was flooded, but Vivar’s delight, as he led Sharpe about the walls, was infectious.
“The first of the Vivars built this place almost a thousand years ago! It was our home, Lieutenant. Our flag flew from that tower and the Moors never took it.”
He led Sharpe to the northern bastion which, like the eyrie of some massive bird of prey, jutted above immeasurable space. The valley far below was a blur of streams and frosted tracks. From here, for centuries, steel-helmed men had watched for the glint of reflected sunlight from far-off heathen shields. Vivar pointed to a deep shadowed cleft in the northern mountains where the frost lay like snow. “You see that pass? A Count of Mouromorto once held that road for three days against a Muslim horde. He filled hell with their miserable souls, Lieutenant. They say you can still find rusted arrowheads and scraps of their chain mail in the crevices of that place.”
Sharpe turned to look at the high tower. “The castle now belongs to your brother?”
Vivar took the question to be a goad to his pride. “He has disgraced the family’s name. Which is why it is my duty to restore it. With God’s help, I shall.”
The words were a glimpse into a proud soul, a clue to the ambition which drove the Spaniard, but Sharpe had intended to elicit a different response; one that he now sought directly. “Won’t your brother know you’re here?”
“Oh, indeed. But the French would need ten thousand men to surround this hill, and another five thousand to assault the fortress. They won’t come. They are just beginning to discover what problems victory will give them.”
“Problems?” Sharpe asked.
Vivar smiled. “The French, Lieutenant, are learning that in Spain great armies starve, and small armies are defeated. You can only win here if the people feed you, and the people are learning to hate the French.” He led the way down the rampart. “Think of the French position! Marshal Soult pursued your army north-west, to where? To nowhere! He is stranded in the mountains, and around him is nothing but snow, bad roads, and a vengeful peasantry. Everything he eats he must find, and in winter, in Galicia, there is not much to be found if the people wish to hide it. No, he is desperate. Already his messengers are being killed, his patrols ambushed, and so far only a handful of the people are resisting him! When all the countryside rises against him, then his life will be a torment of blood.”
It was a chilling prophecy and spoken with so much verve that Sharpe was convinced by it. He remembered how de l’Eclin had frankly expressed his fear of the night; his fears of peasant knives in the dark.
Vivar turned again to stare at the notch in the mountains where his ancestor had made carnage of a Muslim army. “Some of the people fight already, Lieutenant, but the rest are frightened. They see the French victorious, and they feel abandoned of God. They need a sign. They need, if you like, a miracle. These are peasants. They don’t know reason, but they do know their Church and their land.”
Sharpe felt his skin creep, not with the morning’s cold, nor with fear, but with the apprehension of something beyond his imaginings. “A miracle?”
“Later, my friend, later!” Vivar laughed at the mystery he deliberately provoked, then ran down the steps towards the courtyard. His voice was suddenly mischievous, full of joy and nonsense. “You still haven’t thanked me for rescuing you!”
“Rescuing me! Good God! I was about to destroy those bastards, only you interfered!” Sharpe followed him down the steps. “You haven’t apologized for lying to me.”
“Nor do I intend to. On the other hand, I do forgive you for losing your temper with me when last we met. I told you that you wouldn’t last a day without me!”
Tf you hadn’t sent the damned French after me, I’d be halfway to Oporto by now!“
“But there was a reason for sending them after you!” Vivar had reached the foot of the rampart steps where he waited for Sharpe. “I wanted to clear the French out of Santiago de Compostela. I thought that if they pursued you, then I could enter the town when they were gone. So I spread the rumour, it was believed, but the town was garrisoned anyway. So!” He shrugged.
“In other words, you can’t win a war without me.”
“Think how bored you would be if you’d gone to Lisbon! No Frenchmen to kill, no Bias Vivar to admire!” Vivar linked his arm through Sharpe’s in the intimate Spanish manner. “In all seriousness, Lieutenant, I beg your pardon for my behaviour. I can justify my lies, but not my insults. For those, I apologize.”
Sharpe was instantly excruciated with embarrassment. “I behaved badly, too. I’m sorry.” Then he remembered another duty. “And thank you for rescuing us. We were dead men without you.”
Vivar’s ebullience returned. “Now I have another miracle to arrange. We must work, Lieutenant! Work! Work! Work!”
“A miracle?”
Vivar loosed his arm so he could face Sharpe. “My friend, I will tell you all, if I can. I will even tell you tonight after supper, if I can. But some men are coming here, and I need their permission to reveal what is in the strongbox. Will you trust me till I’ve spoken with those men?”
Sharpe had no choice. “Of course.”
“Then we must work.” Vivar clapped his hands to attract his men’s attention. “Work! Work! Work!”
Everything that Vivar’s men needed had to be carried up the mountain. The cavalry horses became packhorses for firewood, fuel, and fodder. The food came from mountain villages, some of it fetched for miles on the backs of mules or men. The Major had sent word throughout the land which had been his father’s domain that supplies were needed, and Sharpe watched the response in astonishment. “My brother,” Vivar said with grim satisfaction, “ordered his people to do nothing which might hinder the French. Ha!” All that day the supplies arrived in the castle. There were jars of grain and beans, boxes of cheese, nets of bread, and skins of wine. There was hay for the horses. Cords of wood were dragged up the steep path, and bundles of brushwood brought for tinder. Some of the brushwood was made into brooms that were used to clean out the keep. Saddle blankets made curtains and rugs, while fires seeped warmth into cold stone.
The men whom Vivar expected arrived at noon. A trumpet call announced the visitors’ approach, and there
