Sharpe knew he could not defeat all of them. There were twenty muskets there that would snatch him from the saddle and leave her to the mercy of the bearded man. Yet El Matarife, Sharpe knew, would not be able to resist a challenge to his manhood. There was one way, and one way only, that this fight must be fought.
He swerved Carbine towards La Marquesa’s abandoned carriage. He drew his sword and, reaching the vehicle, he leaned down, grasped the last trace chain, and hacked with his sword at the leather strap which held it to the splinter-bar.
He looped the chain in his left hand, and turned towards his enemy.
Weeks before, he thought, he had been foolish enough to accept a challenge to a duel. Now he would issue the challenge.
He rode towards the wagon, and the men who ripped at the chests stopped when they saw him coming. They called to their leader and El Matarife, who had been told that this man was dead, crossed himself and stared at the tall Rifleman who came out of the scarlet lit chaos. ‘Shoot him!’
But no one moved. The Rifleman had tossed a silver chain onto the ground into the mud that was thick with unwanted silver dollars, and he stared with savage loathing at the bearded man. ‘Are you a coward, Matarife? Do you only fight women?’
Still none of them moved. Those who had been scooping handfuls of gold from the broken chests stared at the tall Englishman who, slowly, his eyes on El Matarife, dismounted. Sharpe unbuckled his sword. He laid it, with his haversack, beside the wheel of the wagon.
El Matarife looked down at the chain, then back to Sharpe as the Rifleman looped the silver links about his upper left arm. Sharpe left a length of the chain to swing free from his arm. ‘Are you a coward, Matarife?’
El Matarife’s answer was to swing himself from his saddle. He dragged La Marquesa down and pushed her towards his men, shouting at them to hold her and keep her. She cried out as she stumbled, as a man reached down and seized her golden hair and held her against the flank of his horse, and as she turned and saw Sharpe standing in the wheel-churned mud and silver.
‘Richard!’ Her eyes were huge, staring in disbelief. Like her captor, in a half-forgotten gesture from her past, she touched her face, her belly, and her breasts in the sign of the cross. ‘Richard?’
‘Helene.’ He smiled at her, seeing her fear, her astonishment, her beauty. Even here the sight of that unfair loveliness struck into his soul like a dagger.
Behind Sharpe, Harper curbed his horse. He took Carbine’s rein, then leaned down and retrieved Sharpe’s sword and haversack. ‘Behind you, sir!’
‘Watch the bastards, Patrick! Put a bullet into them if they take her away!’ Sharpe had spoken in Spanish, a language that Harper had learned from Isabella.
‘Consider it done, sir.’
The Partisans were awed by the huge man who sat on his horse with his two guns, one of them larger than any gun they had ever seen held by a man. Beside Harper was Angel with his rifle in his practised hands. Angel was staring at the woman he thought more beautiful than lust.
The sky was darkening towards night, the west reddened with the sun’s setting. Skeins of smoke, dark blue-grey against the cloudless sky, stretched above the field of plunder in delicate rills. They were the gun’s detritus, the drifting remnants of the battle that had been and gone on Vitoria’s plain.
El Matarife shrugged off his heavy cloak. ‘You can ride away, Englishman, You will live.’
Sharpe laughed. ‘I shall count the ways of your death, coward.’
El Matarife stooped, picked up the chain, and knotted it about his upper arm. He drew his knife and, with a patronising smile on his wet lips that showed through the thick hair of his face, threw it to Sharpe.
It turned in the air, catching the dying sun, and landed at Sharpe’s feet.
It was bone handled, with a blade as long as a bayonet’s. The blade looked delicate. It was thin, needle pointed, and its two edges were feathered where it had been sharpened on the stone. This weapon, Sharpe knew, would draw blood at the lightest stroke. In El Matarife’s comfortable grip, taken from one of his lieutenants, was a similar blade; as bright, as sharp, as deadly.
El Matarife stepped backwards and the silver chain slowly lifted from the mud. The links clinked softly. The Partisan smiled. ‘You’re a dead man, Englishman.’
Sharpe remembered the terrible skill with which his enemy had taken the eyes from the French prisoner. He waited.
El Matarife’s men were silent. From the city came the jangling of church bells, announcing that the French were gone and that the first Allied troops were in the narrow streets.
The chain tightened. The sun reddened its links.
The Slaughterman smiled. His poleaxe was stuck into the ground at the edge of the circle made by his men. He pulled against Sharpe’s strength. until the silver links were as taut as a bar of steel, and the only evidence of the huge strengths that opposed each other were the scraps of mud that fell from the tight links.
Sharpe felt the pressure on his arm. El Matarife was pulling with extraordinary force. Sharpe pulled back and saw the Slaughterman’s eyes judging him.
The Slaughterman jerked. Sharpe’s arm came up, he jerked back, and the Slaughterman was grunting and pulling, and Sharpe was jarred forward. He pulled back, knowing he did not have the same brute strength as his enemy, but when he saw the Slaughterman smile and gather his strength for a massive pull, Sharpe jumped forward to throw the man off balance.
The Slaughterman was ready, he had expected it, invited it, and he closed the ten foot gap with lightning speed and his knife slashed up towards Sharpe, bright in the dusk light. The Rifleman swerved, not bothering to reply, backed away, and his left hand caught the chain for greater leverage and he pulled on it with all his power and the Slaughterman did not move.
El Matarife looked at Sharpe’s gritted teeth and laughed. ‘Your death will be slow, Englishman.’
The crowd, swollen by people from the city, shouted an abrupt, brief shout in appreciation of the Slaughterman’s skill. El Matarife acknowledged the cheer with a wave of his knife and then hooked his left hand over the chain. He stepped back, tightening it.
The power came. It pulled Sharpe forward. He could not resist it and he saw the Slaughterman smile with the ease of the task. Sharpe braced his feet, but his boots slid in the mire and he was being dragged towards his opponent. Then the jerking began, the vicious, hard jerks that pulled him off balance and he tripped, fell, and the chain was pulling his arm from his socket and when the pressure stopped he rolled to one side, knowing the knife was slicing down, only to hear the Slaughterman laughing.
‘The Englishman is frightened!’
Sharpe stood up. His jacket and overalls were smeared with mud. The crowd was catcalling, jeering him. The Slaughterman had simply made a fool of him to demonstrate his strength. El Matarife was smiling now; smiling with relief and triumph. He had made this kind of fighting his speciality, and he would play with Sharpe as Sharpe had watched him play with the French prisoner.
El Matarife beckoned Sharpe forward. ‘Come, Englishman, come! Come on! Come to your death.’
Sharpe dropped his left arm and flexed it.
He went forward.
El Matarife waited. He was crouching, the knife low. He began to shake the chain, trying to loop it about Sharpe’s blade, but Sharpe simply held his left arm out and the chain went away from him.
‘Come, Englishman.’
They were close now, four feet from each other, both men staring into the other’s eyes, both knives held low. Neither moved. The crowd was silent.
When El Matarife moved it was as fast as a scorpion’s strike, but Sharpe had fought all his life and his own speed matched that of the Spaniard. Sharpe stepped back and the blade hissed past his face. Sharpe smiled.
El Matarife bellowed at him, trying to frighten him, and then looped the chain high so it would fall over Sharpe’s head. Sharpe caught the loop as it came, jerked on it, and sliced up with his knife as the Sp
aniard’s guard was lifted, and Sharpe saw the sudden fear on the beast’s face as El Matarife realised Sharpe’s speed and as the Rifleman’s knife whipped upwards.
‘Uno!’
El Matarife’s right forearm was bleeding.
The crowd was silent.
Sharpe had gone back as fast as he had moved forward. The Spaniard growled. He had underestimated the Englishman, even let him live as a boast to the crowd, but now El Matarife planned Sharpe’s death. He stepped back, tightening the chain, and began again to try and tug Sharpe off balance, jerking the silver chain with massive strength, but this time Sharpe stepped into the pull, letting himself be dragged forward, and the Slaughterman had to step back and keep stepping back until he was at the edge of the fighting space with nowhere to go and Sharpe laughed at him. ‘You are a traitor, Spaniard, and your mother whored with swine.’
El Matarife roared and leaped forward. The knife seared high, coming at Sharpe’s eyes, dropped, and slashed upwards.
‘Uno!’ El Matarife was shouting it in triumph and the crowd shouted with him.
Sharpe would have waking nightmares about that moment for ever. The knife was within a half inch of slicing his belly open, slicing from his groin to his ribs and spilling his guts onto the silvered mud, and he would never know how his body moved so fast or how his right hand, seeing the opening, slashed in to chop at the Spaniard’s passing arm. He shouted as he jumped back.
‘Dos!’
La Marquesa had cried out and hidden her eyes with her hands.
The crowd breathed out a great sigh. The Englishman was not touched. El Matarife was panting, his great chest heaving beneath his black leather coat. Both his forearms were cut.
Harper breathed a huge sigh of relief. ‘God save Ireland.’ ‘Will he win?’ Angel asked.
‘I don’t know, lad. I tell you one thing.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll shoot that fat bastard through the gut before he kills Mr Sharpe.’
Angel hefted his rifle. ‘I kill him. I’m Spanish.’
The chain tightened as Sharpe stepped back. In his left hand he held the loose end of the chain. He watched El Matarife’s eyes, saw the moment when the Partisan would challenge the pressure of the chain, and Sharpe went suddenly forward. He lunged with the knife, going low, still watching the eyes between their mats of hair, and as the Slaughterman brought up his knife arm to spear the point into Sharpe’s face, the Rifleman whiplashed the silver chain.
The end struck the bestial face, slashing across his eyes to sting and momentarily blind him. and Sharpe turned, kicked, and his right boot-heel was going where he had wanted it to go, thumping into El Matarife’s left knee with sickening force, tearing down and away, grinding kneecap and flesh, and the Slaughterman’s eyes widened in pain as his knife came desperately down in defence.
Sharpe was falling. He saw the blade come, felt it razor into his skin, slicing through his leather boot as if it was cotton, and then he was scrambling away from the huge man and the roar of the crowd was like thunder among the wagons.
‘Uno! Uno! Uno!’
El Matarife jumped forward and Sharpe heard the cry of pain as his weight went onto the wounded knee. The pain gave Sharpe time to roll to his feet and the crowd, that had been noisy with anticipation, fell into uneasy silence.
Harper, who had seen the boot-heel slam into the knee, smiled to himself.
El Matarife had not shouted the number with the crowd. His knee was on fire, the pains shooting up to his groin and down to his ankle. He had never faced a man this fast.
Sharpe laughed. ‘You’re slow, Matarife.’
‘God damn you, Englishman.’ El Matarife leapt at Sharpe, knife going to the Englishman’s groin, but his knee crumpled on him, he stumbled forward, and Sharpe stepped back.
Patrick Harper laughed.
El Matarife tried to stand. Sharpe jerked back, pulling him forward. The Spaniard tried again, and again the chain jangled as Sharpe tugged it, and again the Slaughterman was pulled forward into the mud and coins.
El Matarife tried again, and again the Rifleman wrenched him down, and this time Sharpe jumped forward and his foot was on the Slaughterman’s right wrist, pinning the knife into the mud. The Slaughterman looked up at his enemy, seeing death.
Sharpe stared at the man. ‘You let me live a moment ago, Matarife. I return you the favour.’
He stepped away. He let the Spaniard stand, then pulled again, pulling all the huge man’s weight onto the knee so that the bestial face screwed in pain and the great, leather-clad body fell once more to the mud. The crowd was silent. The Slaughterman was on his hands and knees, staring up at Sharpe, and, as the Rifleman came close, the Partisan lunged again with his knife at Sharpe’s groin, but Sharpe had moved faster.
The loose end of the chain whipped and curled about the Slaughterman’s hand, was jerked back, and El Matarife cried out as the chain crushed his fingers and snatched the knife from his grip. Sharpe kicked it under the half-plundered wagon.
The Rifleman went behind his enemy. He gripped the Slaughterman’s hair and jerked his head up.
The crowd watched in silence. Sharpe raised his voice. ‘You hear me, Matarife?’
‘I hear you.’
Sharpe spoke even louder. ‘You and your brother work for the French!’
‘No!’
But the blade was at the side of El Matarife’s neck. ‘You work for the French, Slaughterman. You whore for the French.’
‘No!’ And the big, bearded man tried to seize Sharpe’s wrist, but the blade moved away and Sharpe’s hand jerked back on the thick, greasy hair and his knee ground into the Slaughterman’s spine so that the huge beard jutted out above his throat.
‘Who killed the Marqués?’
There was silence. Sharpe did not know what answer he expected, but the lack of any answer seemed to suggest that the question was not foolish. He pulled on the hair and let the blade rest on the skin of El Matarife’s neck. ‘Who killed the Marqués?’
The Slaughterman suddenly wrenched forward and his hands reached for Sharpe’s wrist, but Sharpe hauled back and flicked the knife sideways to slash the reaching hands of his enemy. ‘Who killed him?’
‘I did!’ It came out as a scream. His hands were soaked in blood.
Sharpe almost let him go, so surprised was he by the answer. He had expected to be told that the Inquisitor had done it, but it made sense that this man, the brother of the clever, ruthless priest, would be the killer.
He put the knife back on the neck. He spoke lower now, so that only the Slaughterman could hear him. The Partisans were watching Sharpe, and Harper was watching the Partisans. Sharpe bent down. ‘You killed that girl to fool me, Matarife.’
There was no answer.
Sharpe remembered the hanging, turning, bloodied body. He remembered the prisoner blinded. He paused, then struck.
The knife was as sharp as a razor, honed to a wicked, feather-bladed edge, and, tough as a man’s throat is, with its gristle and tubes and muscle and skin, the knife cut the throat as easily as silk. There was a gasp as the blood gushed out, as it splashed once, twice, and then the heart had nothing left to pump, and Sharpe let go of the black hair.
The Slaughterman fell forward and his bearded, brutal face fell into the mess of blood, mud and silver.
There was silence from all who watched.
Sharpe turned and walked towards La Marquesa. His eyes were on the man who held her, and in his eyes was a message of death. Slowly, his head shaking, the man let go of her.
Sharpe dropped the knife. She ran towards him, stumbling in the mud and silver coins, and his left arm was about her and she pressed herself against his mud smeared chest. ‘I thought you were dead.’
The first stars were visible above the plunder of an empire.
He held the woman for whom he had ridden across Spain, for whom he had ridden the field of jewels and gold, of silk and diamonds.
She could never be his, he kne
w that. He had known that even when she had said that she loved him, yet he would ride the fields of silver and pearls again for her; he would cross hell for her.
He turned from El Matarife’s men and Harper threw down his sword and haversack. Sharpe wondered why the bag was so heavy. He buckled. the sword and knew he would have to go into the city and find the Inquisitor. There were questions to be put to that Inquisitor, and Sharpe would be as delicate as the Inquisition in his search for the answers.
He would go into Vitoria, and he would take the answers to the mystery that Hogan had asked him to solve, but that, he knew, was not the reason that he had come to this place. Not for victory, and not for gold, but for the woman who would cheat him, lie to him, never love him, but who was the whore of gold and, for this one night at least, Sharpe’s woman.
EPILOGUE
The army had gone, following the French towards the Pyrenees, and Vitoria was left to the Spanish Battalions. Of the British only a few staff officers and the South Essex were left; the South Essex to guard the French prisoners who would soon start their journey to Dartmoor or the prison hulks.
On a warm night brilliant with starlight, Sharpe was in the hotel where so many British officers, on the night of the battle, had enjoyed a free meal. He was in a vast room with windows that looked towards the cathedral on its hill.
‘What is it?’
‘Open it.’ Helene smiled at him. She was dressed in cream silk that was cut so low that one deep breath, he was sure, would tip her breasts over the lace-trimmed collar.
She had given him a box. It was made from rosewood, polished to a deep shine, and it was locked with two golden clasps that he pushed aside.
‘Go on,’ she said, ‘open it.’
He lifted the lid.
The box was lined with red taffeta. Lying in a trough that ran the length of the box was a telescope. ‘God! It’s beautiful.’
‘Isn’t it?’ she said with satisfaction.
He lifted it. Its barrel was of ivory, its trimmings of gold, and it slid apart with extraordinary smoothness. There was a plate engraved and inset into the ivory. ‘What does it say?’
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe's Honour, Sharpe's Regiment, Sharpe's Siege Page 30