Sharpe’s Rifles. Bernard Cornwell

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      ‘I don’t know.’ Sharpe would have liked to have shot Harper there and then, but that would have turned the other Riflemen’s dislike into pure hatred. Besides, to circumvent the army’s careful disciplinary process and shoot him out of hand would have been to demonstrate a disdain of authority as great as that which had earned Harper punishment in the first place.

      ‘Wouldn’t we march faster if he was untied?’ Vivar asked.

      ‘And encourage him to desert to the French?’

      ‘The discipline of your men is your own affair,’ Vivar said delicately, thus intimating that he thought Sharpe had mishandled the whole business.

      Sharpe pretended to ignore his disapproval. He knew the Spaniard despised him, for so far Vivar had seen nothing but incompetence from Sharpe, and it was an incompetence made worse by comparison with his own easy authority. Vivar had not just rescued the British soldiers from their precarious refuge in the old farm, but from their officer as well, and every Rifleman in the makeshift Company knew it.

      Sharpe stood alone as the troops formed into companies for the march. The Spaniards would lead, then would come the mule with its box-shaped burden, and the Riflemen would bring up the rear. Sharpe knew he should say something to his men, that he should encourage them or inspect their equipment, do anything which would assert his authority, but he could not face their mocking eyes and so he stayed apart from them.

      Major Vivar, apparently oblivious to Sharpe’s misery, crossed to the village priest and knelt in the snow for a benediction. Afterwards he accepted a small object from the priest, but what it was Sharpe could not tell.

      It was a bitter night. The thin snowfall had stopped at dusk and gradually the clouds cleared in the eastern sky to reveal a brightness of cold stars. A fitful wind whipped the fallen snow into airy and fantastic shapes that curled and glinted above the path on which the men trudged like doomed animals. Their faces were wrapped with rags against the pitiless cold and their packs chafed their shoulders raw, yet Major Vivar seemed imbued with an inexhaustible energy. He roamed up and down the column, encouraging men in Spanish and English, telling them they were the best soldiers in the world. His enthusiasm was infectious forcing a grudging admiration from Richard Sharpe who saw how the scarlet-uniformed cavalrymen almost worshipped their officer.

      ‘They’re Galicians.’ Vivar gestured at his Cazadores.

      ‘Local men?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘The best in Spain.’ His pride was obvious. ‘They mock us in Madrid, Lieutenant. They say we Galicians are country fools, but I’d rather lead one country fool into battle than ten men from the city.’

      ‘I come from a city.’ Sharpe’s voice was surly.

      Vivar laughed, but said nothing.

      At midnight they crossed the road which led to the sea and saw evidence that the French had already passed. The road’s muddy surface had been ridged high by the guns, then frozen hard. On either verge white mounds showed where corpses had been left unburied. No enemy was in sight, no town or village lights showed in the valley, the soldiers were alone in an immensity of white cold.

      An hour later they came to a river. Small bare oaks grew thick on its banks. Vivar scouted eastwards until he found a place where the freezing water ran shallow across gravel and between rocks that offered some kind of footing for the tired men but, before he would allow a single man to try the crossing, he took a small phial from his pouch. He uncorked it, then sprinkled some liquid into the river. ‘Safe now.’

      ‘Safe?’ Sharpe was intrigued.

      ‘Holy water, Lieutenant. The priest in the village gave it to me.’ Vivar seemed to think the explanation sufficient, but Sharpe demanded to know more.

      ‘Xanes, of course,’ the Spaniard said, then turned and ordered his Sergeant to lead the way.

      ‘Xanes?’ Sharpe stumbled over the odd world.

      ‘Water spirits.’ Vivar was entirely serious. ‘They live in every stream, Lieutenant, and can be mischievous. If we did not scare them away, they might lead us astray.’

      ‘Ghosts?’ Sharpe could not hide his astonishment.

      ‘No. A ghost, Lieutenant, is a creature that cannot escape from the earth. A ghost is a soul in torment, someone who lived and offended the Holy Sacraments. A xana was never human. A xana is,’ he shrugged, ‘a creature? Like an otter, or a water rat. Just something that lives in the stream. You must have them in England, surely?’

      ‘Not that I know of.’

      Vivar looked appalled, then crossed himself. ‘Will you go now?’

      Sharpe crossed the fast-flowing stream, safe from malicious sprites, and watched as his Riflemen followed. They avoided looking at him. Sergeant Williams, who carried the pack of a wounded man, stepped into deeper water rather than scramble up the bank where the officer stood.

      The mule was prodded across the stream and Sharpe noticed with what care the soldiers guarded the oil-cloth-covered chest. He supposed it contained Major Vivar’s clothes and belongings. Harper, still tied to the packmule, spat towards him, a gesture Sharpe chose to ignore.

      ‘Now we climb,’ Vivar said with a note of satisfaction, as if the coming hardship was to be welcomed.

      They climbed. They struggled up a steeply rising valley where the rocks were glossed by ice and the trees dripped snow onto their heads. The wind rose and the sky clouded again.

      It began to sleet. The wind howled about their muffled ears. Men were sobbing with the misery and effort, but somehow Vivar kept them moving. ‘Upwards! Upwards! Where the cavalry can’t go, eh? Go on! Higher! Let’s join the angels! What’s the matter with you, Marcos? Your father would have danced up this slope when he was twice your age! You want the Englishmen to think a Spaniard has no strength? Shame on you! Climb!’

      By dawn they had reached a saddle in the hills. Vivar led the exhausted men to a cave that was hidden by ice-sheathed laurels. ‘I shot a bear here,’ he told Sharpe proudly. ‘I was twelve, and my father sent me out alone to kill a bear.’ He snapped off a branch and tossed it towards the men who were building a fire. ‘That was twenty years ago.’ He spoke with a kind of wonder that so much time had passed.

      Sharpe noted that Vivar was exactly his own age but, coming from the nobility was already a Major, while Sharpe came from the gutter and only an extraordinary stroke of fate had made him into a Lieutenant. He doubted if he would ever see another promotion, nor, seeing how badly he had handled these greenjackets, did he think he deserved one.

      Vivar watched as the chest was fetched from the mule’s back and placed in the cave-mouth. He sat beside it, with a protective arm over its humped surface, and Sharpe saw that there was almost a reverence in the way he treated the box. Surely, Sharpe thought, no man, having endured the frozen hell that Vivar had been through, would take such care to protect a chest if it only contained clothes? ‘What’s in it?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘Just papers.’ Vivar stared out at the creeping dawn. ‘Modern war generates papers, yes?’

      It was not a question that demanded an answer, but rather a comment to discourage further questions. Sharpe asked none.

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