They rode through wide vineyards, past rich villas and through white-painted villages, yet always, beyond the vines or the orchards or the tobacco fields, or behind the churches with their twin towers and high-peaked roofs, there were the great sharp edged mountains and deep swooping valleys and rushing white streams that cut like knives down from the peaks, above which, staining the otherwise clear sky, the smoke of two volcanoes smeared the blue with their gray-brown plumes. At other times, staring to their right, Sharpe and Harper could see ragged fingers of rocky land jutting and clawing out to an island-wracked sea. A ship, her white sails bright in the sun, was racing southward from Valdivia.
Luncheon was served beside a waterfall. Hummingbirds darted into a bank of wildflowers. The wine was heady. One of the girls, a dark-skinned mestizo, waded in the waterfall’s pool, urged by her friends ever farther into the deepening water until her skirt was hitched high about her thighs and the young officers cheered their glimpse of dark, tantalizing skin. Marquinez, sitting beside Sharpe, was more interested in a patrol of a dozen cavalrymen that idled southward on small, wiry horses. Marquinez raised a languid hand to acknowledge the patrol’s presence, then looked back to Sharpe. “What did you think of the Captain-General?”
A dangerous question, and one that Sharpe parried easily. “He seemed very efficient.”
“He’s a man of genius,” Marquinez said enthusiastically.
“Genius?” Sharpe could not hide his skepticism.
“Customs dues have increased threefold under his rule, so have tax revenues. We have firm government at last!” Sharpe glanced at his companion’s handsome face, expecting to see cynicism there, but Marquinez clearly meant every word he said. “And once we have all the guns we need,” Marquinez went on, “we’ll reconquer the northern regions.”
“You’d best be asking Madrid for some good infantry,” Sharpe said.
Marquinez shook his head. “You don’t understand Chile, Colonel. The rebels think they’re invincible, so sooner or later they will come to our fortresses, and they will be slaughtered, and everyone will recognize the Captain-General’s genius.” Marquinez tossed pebbles into the pool. Sharpe was watching the mestizo girl who, her thighs and skirt soaking, climbed onto the bank. “You find her pretty?” Marquinez suddenly asked.
“Yes. Who wouldn’t?”
“They’re pretty when they’re young. By the time they’re twenty and have two children they look like cavalry mules.” Marquinez fished a watch from his waistcoat pocket. “We must be leaving you, Colonel. You know your way from here?”
“Indeed.” Sharpe had been well coached by Blair in the route he must take. He and Harper would climb into the hills where their travel permit dictated that they must spend the night at a high fortress. Tomorrow they would ride down into the wilder country that sprawled across the border of the southern province. It was in that unsettled country, close to the hell-dark forests where embittered Indian tribes lived, that Blas Vivar had died. Blair and Marquinez had both assured Sharpe that the border country had been tamed since Vivar’s death, and that the highway could be used in perfect safety. “There have been no rebels there since Blas Vivar died,” Marquinez said. “There have been some highway robberies, but nothing, I think, that should worry either you or Mister Harper.”
“They’re welcome to try, so they are,” Harper had said, and indeed he and Sharpe fairly bristled with weapons. Sharpe wore his big butcher’s blade of a sword, the sword with which he had fought through Portugal, Spain and France, and then at the field of Waterloo. It was no ordinary infantry officer’s sword, but instead the killing blade of a trooper from Britain’s Heavy Cavalry. Soldiers armed with just such big swords had carved a corps of veteran French infantry into bloody ruin at Waterloo, capturing two Eagles as they did it. The sword was reckoned a bad weapon by experts—unbalanced, ugly and too long in its blade—but Sharpe had used it to lethal effect often enough, and by now he had a sentimental attachment to it. He also had a loaded Baker rifle slung on one shoulder, and had two pistols in his belt.
Harper was even more fiercely armed. He too carried a rifle and two pistols, and had a saber at his waist, yet the Irishman also carried his own favorite weapon; a seven-barreled gun, made for Britain’s navy, yet too powerful for any but the biggest and most robust men to fire. The navy, which had wanted a weapon that could be fired like an overweight shotgun from the rigging onto an enemy’s deck, had abandoned the weapon because of its propensity to shatter the shoulders of the men pulling its trigger, but in Patrick Harper the seven-barreled gun had found a soldier capable of taming its brute ferocity. The gun was a cluster of seven half-inch barrels which were fired by a single lock, and was, in its effect, like a small cannon loaded with grapeshot. Sharpe was hoping that any highway robber, seeing the weapon, let alone the swords, rifles and pistols, would think twice before trying to steal the strongbox.
“Bloody odd, when you think about it,” Harper broke their companionable silence an hour after they had parted from Marquinez.
“What’s odd?”
“That there wasn’t any room on the frigate. It was a bloody big boat.” Harper frowned. “You don’t think the buggers want us on this road so they can do us some mischief, do you?”
Sharpe had been wondering the same thing, but unaware how best to prepare for such trouble, he had not thought to perturb Harper by talking about it. Yet there was something altogether too convenient about the ease with which Marquinez had given them all the necessary permits but then denied them the chance to travel on the Espiritu Santo, something which suggested that maybe Sharpe and Harper were not intended to reach Puerto Crucero after all. “But I think we’re safe today,” Sharpe said.
“Too many people about, eh?” Harper suggested.
“Exactly.” They were riding through a plump and populated countryside on a road that was intermittently busy with other travelers; a friar walking barefoot, a farmer driving a wagon of tobacco leaves to Valdivia, a herdsman with a score of small bony cattle. This was not the place to commit murder and theft; that would come tomorrow in the wilder southern hills.
“So what do we do tomorrow?” Harper asked.
“We ride very carefully,” Sharpe answered laconically. He was not as sanguine as he sounded, but he did not know how else to plan against a mere possibility of ambush and he was unwilling to think of just turning back. He had come to Chile to find Blas Vivar and, even if his old friend was dead, he would still do his best to carry him home.
That night, in obedience to their travel permits, they stopped at a timber-walled fort that had been built so high above the surrounding land that it had been nicknamed the Celestial Fort. Its simple log ramparts stared east to the mountains and west to the sea. To the north of the Celestial Fort, at the foot of the steep ridge that gave the fort its commanding height, was a small ragged village that was inhabited by natives who worked a nearby tobacco plantation. To the south, like a sullen warning of the dangers to come, were line after line of dark, wooded ridges. “I trust you brought your own food?” the fort’s commander, a cavalry Captain named Morillo, greeted Sharpe and Harper.
“Yes.”
“I’d like to feed you, but rations are scarce.” Morillo gave Sharpe back the travel permits while his men eyed the newcomers warily. Morillo was a tall young man with a weathered face. His eyes were cautious and watchful, the eyes of a soldier. His job was to lead his cavalrymen on long, aggressive patrols down the highway, deterring any rebels who might think of ambushing its traffic. “Not that we have rebels here now,” Morillo said. “The last Captain-General swept these valleys clean. He was a cavalryman, so he knew how to attack.” There was an unspoken criticism in the words, suggesting that the new Captain-General knew only how to defend.
“I knew Vivar well,” Sharpe said. “I rode with him in Spain. At Santiago de Compostela.”
Morillo stared at Sharpe with momentary disbelief. “You were at Santiago when the French attacked the cathedral
?”
“I was in the cathedral when they broke the truce.”
“I was a child then, but I remember the stories. My God, but what times they were.” Morillo frowned in thought for a few seconds, then abruptly twisted to stare across the fort’s parade ground, which was an expanse of smoothly trampled earth. “Do you know Sergeant Dregara?”
“Dregara? No.”
“He rode in an hour ago, with a half troop. He was asking about you.”
“About me? I don’t know him,” Sharpe said.
“He knows you, and your companion. They’re across the parade ground, around an open fire. Dregara’s got a striped blanket over his shoulders.”
Sharpe half-turned and surreptitiously stared across the fort to where the group of cavalry troopers squatted about their fire. Sharpe suspected, but could not be sure, that it was the same patrol that had saluted Marquinez at lunchtime.
Morillo drew Sharpe away from the ears of his own men. “Sergeant Dregara tells me he proposes to escort you tomorrow.”
“I don’t need an escort.”
“Maybe what you need and what you will receive are very different, Colonel Sharpe. Things often are in Chile. Do I need to explain more?”
Sharpe had walked with the tall Spanish Captain into the open gate of the fort. Both men stopped and stared toward the distant sea which, from this eyrie, looked like a wrinkled sheet of hammered silver. “I assume, Captain,” Sharpe said, “that you regret the death of Don Blas?”
Morillo was tense as he skirted the betrayal of the present Captain-General with his admiration of the last. “Yes, sir, I do.”
“It happened not far from here, am I right?”
“A half day’s journey south, sir.” Morillo turned and pointed across the misted valleys of the wild country. “It wasn’t on the main road, but off to the east.”
“Strange, isn’t it,” Sharpe said, “that Don Blas cleared the rebels out of this region, yet was ambushed here by those same rebels?”
“Things are often strange in Chile, sir.” Morillo spoke very warily.
“Perhaps,” Sharpe said pointedly, “you could patrol southward tomorrow? Along the main road?”
Morillo, understanding exactly what Sharpe was suggesting, shook his head. “Sergeant Dregara brought me orders. I’m to ride to Valdivia tomorrow. I’m to leave a dozen men on post here, and the rest are to go to the Citadel with me. We’re to report to Captain Marquinez before two o’clock in the afternoon.”
“Meaning an early start,” Sharpe said, “that will leave my friend and I alone with Sergeant Dregara?”
“Yes, sir.” Morillo stooped to light a cigar. The wind whipped the smoke northward. He snapped shut the glowing tinderbox and pushed it into his sabretache. “The orders are signed by Captain-General Bautista. I’ve never received orders direct from a General before.” Morillo drew on his cigar and Sharpe felt a chill creep up his spine. “You should also understand, sir,” Morillo spoke with an admirable understatement, “that General Bautista is not kind to men who disobey his orders.”
“I do understand that, Captain.”
“I’d like to help you, sir, truly I would. General Vivar was a good man.” Morillo shook his head ruefully. “When he was in command we had a score of forts like this one. We were training native cavalry. We were aggressive! Now?” He shrugged. “Now the only patrols are to keep this road open. We don’t really know what’s happening fifty miles east.”
Sharpe turned to look back into the fort. “These aren’t built for defense.”
“No, sir. They’re just refuges where tired men can spend a few nights in comparative safety. General Vivar deliberately made them uncomfortable so that we wouldn’t be tempted to live in them permanently. He believed our place was out there.” Morillo waved toward the darkening hills.
The temporary nature of the fort’s accommodation was suggesting an idea to Sharpe. There was only one walled and roofed structure, a log cabin which Sharpe guessed was the officer’s perquisite, while the other cavalrymen were sheltered beneath the overhang of the firestep. Essentially the fort was nothing more than a walled bivouac; there was not even a water supply inside the walls. The horses had to be watered at the stream at the ridge’s foot, and any other drinking water had to be lugged up from the same place. Sharpe gestured at the log cabin. “Your quarters, Captain?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe Mister Harper and I can share them with you?”
Morillo frowned, not quite understanding the request, but he nodded anyway. “We’ll be cramped, but you’re welcome.”
“What time do you rouse the men?” Sharpe asked.
“Usually at six. We’d expect to leave at seven.”
“Could you leave earlier? While it was dark?”
Morillo nodded cautiously. “I could.”
Sharpe smiled. “I’m thinking, Captain, that if Sergeant Dregara is convinced Mister Harper and I are still asleep, he won’t disturb us. He may even wait till midmorning before he ventures to knock on the door of your quarters.”
Morillo understood the ruse, but looked doubtful. “He’ll surely see your horses are gone.”
“He might not notice if the horses are missing. After all, his horses and a dozen of yours will still be here. But he’ll notice if the mule is gone, so I’ll just have to leave it here, won’t I?”
Morillo drew on his cigar, then blew a stream of smoke toward the distant sea. “Captain-General Bautista’s orders are addressed to me. They say nothing about you, sir, and if you choose to leave at three in the morning, then I can’t stop you, can I?”
“No, Captain, you can’t. And thank you.”
But Morillo was not finished. “I’d still be unhappy about you using the main road, sir. Even if you get a six-hour start on Dregara, you’ll be traveling slowly, while he knows the short cuts.” Morillo smiled. “I’ll give you Ferdinand.”
“Ferdinand?”
“You’ll meet him in the morning.” Morillo seemed amused, but would not say more.
The two men went back into the fort where the cooking fires crackled and smoked. Sentries paced the firestep as darkness seeped up from the valleys to engulf the sky and the mountains. Sulphurous yellow clouds shredded off the Andean peaks to spill toward the seaward plains, patterning the stars and shadowing the moon. An hour after sundown, Sharpe and Harper accompanied Captain Morillo as he went around the cooking fires to announce that his Valdivia patrol would be leaving three hours before dawn. Men groaned at the news, but Sharpe heard the humor behind their reaction and knew that at least these men still had confidence in their cause. Not all Vivar’s work had gone to waste.
“And you, señor?” Sergeant Dregara, who had been sitting at the fire with Morillo’s sergeants, looked slyly up at Sharpe. “You will go early, too?”
“Good Lord, no!” Sharpe yawned. “I’m an English gentleman, Sergeant, and English gentlemen don’t stir till at least an hour after dawn.”
“And the Irish not for another hour after that,” Harper put in happily.
Dregara was a middle-aged runt of a man with yellow teeth, a lined face, a scarred forehead and the eyes of a killer. He was holding a half-empty bottle of clear Chilean brandy that he now gestured toward Sharpe. “Maybe we can ride south together, señor? There is sometimes safety in numbers.”
“Good idea,” Sharpe said in his best approximation of the braying voice some British officers liked to use. “And one of your men can bring us hot shaving water at, say, ten o’clock? Just tell the fellow to knock on the door and leave the bowl on the step.”
“Shaving water?” Dregara clearly hated being treated as a servant.
“Shaving water, Sergeant. Very hot. I can’t bear shaving in tepid water.”
Dregara managed to suppress his resentment. “Si, señor. At ten.”
The troopers wrapped themselves in blankets and lay down under the meager shelter of the fort’s firestep. The sentries paced overhead. Somewhere beyond the wa
ll, in the forests that lapped against the ridge, a beast screamed. Sharpe, sleepless on the floor of Morillo’s quarters, listened to Harper’s snores. If Dregara was supposed to kill them, Sharpe thought, how would Bautista react when he heard they still lived? And why would Bautista kill them? It made no sense. Maybe Dregara meant no harm, but why would Morillo be ordered back to Valdivia? The questions flickered through Sharpe’s mind, but no answers came. It made sense, he supposed, that Bautista should resent Doña 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.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe’s Revenge, Sharpe’s Waterloo, Sharpe’s Devil Page 82