Sharpe's Sword Part 14

Harper did not reply. He gestured ahead of them and Sharpe saw a man, staggering in the rubble, coming towards them. He had the red facings of the 53rd, the Shropshires, and his face was the colour of his uniform. Sharpe stood up, slung his rifle, and called to the man. "Here! Over here!"

The man seemed not to hear. He was walking, almost drunkenly, weaving on the stones, and Sharpe and Harper ran towards him. The man was moaning. Blood poured from his skull. "I can't see!"

"You'll be all right!" Sharpe could not see the man's face through the blood. His hands, musket discarded, were clutched at his stomach. He seemed to hear Sharpe, the blood-soaked head quested towards the sound, and then he fell into Sharpe's-arms. The hands came away and blood pumped onto Sharpe's jacket and overalls. "It's all right, lad, it's all right!"

They laid him down and the man began to choke. Harper twisted his torso over, cleared the man's throat with his finger, and shook his head at Sharpe. The Shropshire man vomited blood, moaned, and muttered again that he could not see. Sharpe undid his canteen, poured water on his eyes, and the blood, soaked there from a canister wound on his forehead, cleared slowly away. "You'll be all right!"

The eyes opened, then shut immediately as a pain spasm shook him and blood seemed to well from his midriff. Harper tore at the man's uniform. "G.o.d save Ireland!" It was a miracle he was still alive.

"Here!" Sharpe undid his officer's sash, handed it across, and Harper pushed it beneath the body, caught the end, and tied it as a crude bandage round the horrid wound. He looked at Sharpe. "Head or legs?"

"Legs."

He took the man's ankles, they lifted him, and struggled with the burden back towards the houses. Other men were limping on the stones. The French were silent.

They put the man down in the street, full now once again with men, and Sharpe bellowed for bandsmen. The soldier was fighting for his life, the air sc.r.a.ping in his throat, and it seemed impossible that he could survive the wounds. Sharpe shouted again. "Bandsmen!"

An officer, his uniform unstained by dust or blood, his red facings and gold lace new and pristine, looked past Sharpe. "Dale. No musket." He was dictating to a bespectacled clerk.

"What?" Sharpe turned and looked at the Lieutenant. Harper raised his eyes to heaven, then looked at Sergeant McGovern. The two Sergeants grinned. They knew Sharpe and knew his anger.

"Equipment check." The Lieutenant looked at Sharpe's rifle, then at the great sword, then at the Rifleman's shoulder. "If you'll excuse me, sir."

"No." Sharpe jerked his head towards the wounded man. "Are you planning to charge him?"

The Lieutenant looked round for escape or support, then sighed. "He has lost his musket, sir."

"It was broken by French shot." Sharpe's voice was quiet.

"I'm sure you'll put that in writing, sir."

"No. You will. You were out there, weren't you?"

The Lieutenant swallowed nervously. "No, sir."

"Why not?"

"Sir! I was ordered to stay here, sir!"

"And no one ordered you to make life a b.l.o.o.d.y misery for the men who went out, did they? How many battles have you been in, Lieutenant?"

The Lieutenant's eyes looked round the circle of grim, interested faces. He shrugged. "Sir?"

Sharpe reached over to the clerk-Corporal and took the notebook out of his hand. "You write "destroyed by enemy" against everything, understand? Everything. Including the boots they lost last week."

"Yes, sir." The Lieutenant took the notebook from Sharpe and gave it to the clerk. "You heard the man, Bates. "Destroyed by enemy"." The Lieutenant backed away.

Sharpe watched him go. His anger had not vented itself and he wanted to strike out at something, at someone, because the men had died through treachery. The French had been ready, warned of the attack, and good men had been thrown away, and he bellowed again. "Bandsmen!"

Two musicians, doing their battlefield job offending the wounded, came and crouched by the injured Dale. They lifted him clumsily onto a stretcher. Sharpe stopped one of them as they were about to go. "Where's the Hospital?"

"Irish College, sir,"

"Look after him."

The man shrugged. "Yes, sir."

Poor b.l.o.o.d.y Dale, Sharpe thought, to be betrayed in his first battle. If he survived he would be invalided out of the army. His broken body, good for nothing, would be sent to Lisbon and there he would have to rot on the quays until the bureaucrats made sure he had accounted for all his equipment. Anything missing would be charged to the balance of his miserable wages and only when the account was balanced would he be put onto a foul transport and shipped to an English quayside. There he was left, the army's obligation discharged, though if he was lucky he might be given a travel doc.u.ment that promised to reimburse any parish overseer who fed him while he travelled to his home. Usually the overseers ignored the paper and kicked the invalid out of their jurisdiction with an order to go and beg somewhere else. Dale might be better offdead than face all that.

Lieutenant Price, wary of Sharpe's anger, saluted. "Dismiss, sir?"

"Dismiss and get drunk, Lieutenant."

Price grinned with relief. "Yes, sir. Morning parade?"

"Late one. Nine o'clock."

Harper could still hear the suppressed rage in Sharpe, but he was one man who did not fear the Captain's anger. He nodded at Sharpe's uniform. "Not planning on any formal dinner tonight, sir?"

The uniform was soaked with Dale's blood, dark against the green, and Sharpe cursed. He brushed at it uselessly. He had planned on going to the Palacio Casares and then he thought how La Marquesa had wanted a battle, and had been given one, and now she could see how a real soldier looked instead of the dripping confections of gold and silver who called themselves fighting men. Harper's uniform was b.l.o.o.d.y, too, but Harper had Isabella waiting for him and suddenly Sharpe was tired of being alone and he wanted the golden haired woman and his anger was such that he would use it to take him into her palace and see what happened. He looked at the Irish Sergeant. ,I'll see you in the morning."

"Yes, sir."

Harper watched Sharpe walk away and let out a deep breath. "Someone's in for trouble."

Lieutenant Price glanced at the huge Sergeant. "Should we go with him?"

"No, sir. I think he fancies a fight. That Lieutenant didn't give him one so he's going to look for another one." Harper grinned. "He'll be back in a couple of hours, sir. Just let him cool off." Harper raised his canteen to Price and shrugged. "Here's to a happy night, sir. A happy, b.l.o.o.d.y night."

CHAPTER 8.

Sharpe's resolution to go to La Marquesa waned as he neared the Palacio Casares. Yet he had said to Harper that he would not be back until morning and he could not face slinking back early with his tail between his legs and so he walked on. Yet with every step he worried more about the state of his uniform.

The streets were still filled with men from the Light Companies who waited for dismissal while the final rosters were taken. The wounded, on stretchers and carts, were being carried to the surgeons' knives and many of the dead were still on the wasteland. The unwounded living stood with bitter, angry expression and the citizens of Salamanca hurried by in the shadows, averting their eyes, hoping the soldiers would not vent their anger on helpless civilians.

The arch gates of the Palacio Casares were wide open, flickering with lights cast by resin torches and Sharpe, like the fearful citizens, kept to the shadows on the far side of the street. He leaned against the wall and pulled his blood-soaked jacket straight. He did up the top b.u.t.tons and tried to force the high collar, that had long lost its stiffness, into a decent shape round his neck. He wanted to see her.

Candles showed in the hallway. Their light was splintered by the fountain in the courtyard centre. The raised pool was surrounded by the silhouettes of British uniforms, officers' uniforms, and while most seemed to be taking the air, or smoking a cigar in the night's coolness, others were puking helplessly on the flagstones. The defeat, it seemed, had not affected the celebration. The courtyard was surrounded by light, the once masked windows ablaze with candles, and music came gently across the street. It was not the spirited thump of martial music, nor the full-bellied sound of soldiers' taverns, but the thin, precious tinkle of rich peoples' music. Music as expensive as a crystal chandelier, and Sharpe knew that if he walked over the street, through the tall arch, and over to the hallway he would feel as foreign and strange as if he had been plunged into the court of the King of Tartary. The house was lit like a festival, the rich were at play, and the dead who lay shredded by the canister just a quarter mile away might never have existed.

"Richard! By the moving bowels of the living saints! Is that you?" Lord Spears was in the gateway. In one hand was a cigar that beckoned to him. "Richard Sharpe! Come here, you dog!"

Sharpe smiled, despite his mood, and crossed the street. "My lord."

"Will you stop "my lording" me? You sound like a d.a.m.ned shop-keeper! My friends call me Jack, my enemies what they like. Are you coming in? You're invited. Not that it makes any difference, every d.a.m.ned mother's son in town is here."

Sharpe gestured at his uniform. "I'm hardly in a fit state."