Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe’s Honour, Sharpe’s Regiment, Sharpe’s Siege. Bernard Cornwell

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      It lay there, links of rusting iron in the bull’s blood which had steamed in the cold. The prisoner shivered. He took a step back as a man picked up one end of the chain, but then submitted quietly as the links were tied to his left forearm.

      The Slaughterman, his huge beard flecked with the blood of the bull, picked up the other end of the chain. He looped it about his own left arm and laughed at the prisoner. ‘I shall count the ways of your death, Frenchman.’

      The French prisoner did not understand the Spanish words. He did understand, though, the knife that was tossed to him; a long, wicked-bladed knife that was identical to the weapon in the hands of El Matarife. The chain that linked the two men was ten feet long.

      The priest smiled. ‘You’ve seen such a fight?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘There is a skill to it.’

      ‘Undoubtedly,’ Ducos said drily.

      The skill was all with the Slaughterman. He had fought the linked knife fight many times, and he feared no opponent. The Frenchman was brave, but desperate. His attacks were fierce, but clumsy. He was pulled off balance by the chain, he was tormented, he was cut, and with every slice of El Matarife’s knife the count was shouted out by the watching partisans. ‘Uno!’ greeted a slash that opened the Frenchman’s forehead to his skull. ‘Dos!’ saw his left hand slit between his fingers. The numbers mounted.

      Ducos watched. ‘How long does it go on?’

      ‘Perhaps fifty cuts?’ The priest shrugged. ‘Maybe more.’

      Ducos looked at the priest. ‘You enjoy it?’

      ‘I enjoy all manly pursuits, Major.’

      ‘Except one, priest,’ Ducos smiled.

      Father Hacha looked back at the pit. The priest was a big man, as big as El Matarife himself. He showed no distress as the prisoner was slashed and cut and flayed. Father Hacha was, in many ways, an ideal partner to Major Pierre Ducos. Like the Frenchman he was part spy, part policeman, and wholly politician, except that his politics were those of the Church, and his skills were given to the Spanish Inquisition. Father Hacha was an Inquisitor.

      ‘Fourteen!’ the Partisans shouted, and Ducos, startled by the loudness of the shout, looked back at the pit.

      El Matarife, who had not been touched by the prisoner’s knife, had, with exquisite skill, taken out his opponent’s left eye. El Matarife fastidiously wiped the tip of his blade on his leather sleeve. ‘Come, Frenchman!’

      The prisoner had his left hand clapped over his ruined eye. The chain tightened, the links making a small noise in the pit, and the tension of the chain dragged his hand away from the blood and pain. He was shaking his head, half sobbing, knowing that the ways of his death would be long and painful. Such was always the death of the French when captured by the Partisans, and such were the deaths of the Partisans caught by the French.

      The Frenchman pulled back on the chain, trying to resist the pressure, but he was powerless against the huge man. Suddenly the chain was thrashed, the Frenchman fell, and he was dragged about the floor of the pit like a landed fish. When the Spaniard paused, the Frenchman tried to get up, but a boot hammered into his left forearm, breaking the bones, and the pulling began again and the watching Partisans laughed at the squeals of pain as the chain pulled on the broken limb.

      Ducos’s face showed nothing.

      Father Hacha smiled. ‘You’re not upset, Major? He is your countryman.’

      ‘I hate all unnecessary cruelty.’ Ducos pushed again at the spectacles. These were new glasses, fetched from Paris. His old ones had been broken on Christmas Day by a British officer called Richard Sharpe. That insult still hurt Ducos, but he believed, with the Spanish, that revenge was a dish best eaten cold.

      At the count of twenty, the Frenchman lost his right eye.

      At the count of twenty-five, he was sobbing for mercy, unable to fight, his ragged, dirty trousers bright with new blood.

      At the count of thirty, his breath misting as he sobbed, the prisoner was killed. El Matarife, disgusted with the lack of fight in the man, and bored with the entertainment, slit his throat, and went on cutting until the head came away in his hand. He threw the head to the dogs that had been beaten away from the dead bulls. He unwound the chain from his left forearm, sheathed the wet knife, and looked again at the two horsemen. He smiled at the priest. ‘Welcome, brother! What have you brought me?’

      ‘A guest.’ The priest said it forcibly.

      El Matarife laughed. ‘Take him to the house, Tomas!’

      Ducos followed the Inquisitor through rocks stained red by iron ore to a house built of stone with blankets for windows and doors. Within the house, warmed by a fire that filled the damp walls with smoke, a meal waited. There was stew of gristle and grease, loaves, wine, and goat’s cheese. It was served by a scared, thin-faced girl. El Matarife, bringing into the damp warmness of the small room the stink of fresh blood, joined them.

      El Matarife clasped the priest in his arms. They were brothers, though it was hard to see how the same womb could have given birth to two such different men. They were alike in their size, but in nothing else. The Inquisitor was subtle, clever, and delicate where El Matarife was crude, boisterous, and savage. The Partisan leader was the kind of man despised by Pierre Ducos, who admired cleverness and hated brute strength, but the Inquisitor would not give the Frenchman his help unless his brother was taken into their confidence and used in their scheme.

      El Matarife spooned the greasy stew into his mouth. Gravy dripped onto his huge beard. He looked with his small, red-rimmed eyes at Ducos. ‘You’re a brave man, coming here.’

      ‘I come with your brother’s protection.’ Ducos spoke Spanish perfectly, as he spoke a half dozen other languages.

      El Matarife shook his head. ‘In this valley, Frenchman, you are under my protection.’

      ‘Then I am grateful.’

      ‘You enjoyed seeing your countryman die?’

      Ducos kept his voice mild. ‘Who would not enjoy your skill?’

      El Matarife laughed. ‘You’d like to see another die?’

      ‘Juan!’ The Inquisitor’s voice was loud. He was the elder brother, and his authority cowed El Matarife. ‘We have come for business, Juan, not pleasure.’ He gestured to the other men in the room. ‘And we will talk alone.’

      It had not been easy for Pierre Ducos to come to this place, yet such was the state of the war that he had agreed to the Inquisitor’s demands.

      Ducos had agreed to sit at this table with his enemy because the war had turned sour for France. The Emperor had invaded Russia with the greatest army of modern times, an army which, in one winter, had been destroyed. Now northern Europe threatened France. The armies of Russia, Prussia, and Austria scented victory. To fight them, Napoleon was taking troops from Spain, at the very time when the English General Wellington was increasing his forces. Only a fool was now confident of a French military victory in Spain, and Pierre Ducos was no fool. Yet if the army could not defeat the British, politics might.

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