“I’m greatly obliged to you, Sharpe,” Wellesley said, relinquishing the bridle into the orderly’s grasp.
“Pon my soul, I’m greatly obliged to you,” he repeated enthusiastically.
“As neat a blood-letting as ever I did see.” He put a hand into his pocket and brought out a haideri that he offered to Sharpe.
“Well done, Sergeant.”
“Thank you, sir,” Sharpe said, taking the gold coin. It was a generous reward.
“Good as new, eh?” Wellesley said, admiring the horse.
“He was a gift.”
“An expensive one,” McCandless observed drily.
“A valued one,” Wellesley said.
“Poor Ashton left him to me in his will. You knew Ashton, McCandless?”
“Of course, sir.” Henry Ashton had been Colonel of the i2th, a Suffolk regiment posted to India, and he had died after taking a bullet in the liver during a duel.
“A damned shame,” Wellesley said, ‘but a fine gift. Pure Arab blood, McCandless.”
Most of the pure Arab blood seemed to be on Sharpe, but the General was delighted with the horse’s sudden improvement. Indeed, Sharpe had never seen Wellesley so animated. He grinned as he watched the horse, then he told the orderly to walk Diomed up and down, and he grinned even more widely as he watched the horse move. Then, suddenly aware that the men about him were taking an amused pleasure from his own delight, his face drew back into its accustomed cold mask.
“Obliged to you, Sharpe,” he said yet again, then he turned and walked towards his tent.
“McCandless! Come and give me your news!”
McCandless and Sevajee followed the General and his aides into the tent, leaving Sharpe trying to wipe the blood from his hands. The dragoon orderly grinned at him.
“That’s a six-hundred-guinea horse you just bled, Sergeant,” he said.
“Bloody hell!” Sharpe said, staring in disbelief at the dragoon.
“Six hundred!”
“Must be worth that. Best horse in India, Diomed is.”
“And you look after him?” Sharpe asked.
The orderly shook his head.
“He’s got grooms to look after his horses, and the farrier to bleed and shoe them. My job is to follow him into battle, see? And when one horse gets tired I give him another.”
“You drag all those six horses around?” Sharpe asked, astonished.
“Not all six of them,” the dragoon said, ‘only two or three. But he shouldn’t have six horses anyway. He only wants five, but he can’t find anyone to buy the spare. You don’t know anyone who wants to buy a horse, do you?”
“Hundreds of the buggers,” Sharpe said, gesturing at the encampment.
“Every bleeding infantryman over there for a start.”
“It’s theirs if they’ve got four hundred guineas,” the orderly said.
“It’s that bay gelding, see?” He pointed.
“Six years old and good as gold.”
“No use looking at me,” Sharpe said.
“I hate the bloody things.”
“You do?”
“Lumpy, smelly beasts. I’m happier on my feet.”
“You see the world from a horse’s back,” the dragoon said, ‘and catch women’s eyes.”
“So they’re not entirely useless,” Sharpe said and the orderly grinned.
He was a happy, round-faced young man with tousled brown hair and a ready smile.
“How come you’re the General’s orderly?” Sharpe asked him.
The dragoon shrugged.
“He asked my Colonel to give him someone and I was chosen.”
“You don’t mind?”
“He’s all right,” the orderly said, jerking his head towards Wellesley’s tent.
“Don’t crack a smile often, leastwise not with the likes of you and me, but he’s a fair man.”
“Good for him.” Sharpe stuck out his bloodied hand.
“My name’s Dick Sharpe.”
“Daniel Fletcher,” the orderly said, ‘from Stoke Poges.”
“Never heard of it,” Sharpe said.
“Where can I get a scrub?”
“Cook tent, Sergeant.”
“And riding boots?” Sharpe asked.
“Find a dead man in Ahmednuggur,” Fletcher said.
“It’ll he cheaper than buying them off” me.”
“That’s true,” Sharpe said, then he limped to the cook tent. The limp was caused by the sore muscles from long hours in the saddle. He had purchased a length of cotton cloth in the village where they had spent the night, then torn the cloth into strips that he had wrapped about his calves to protect them from the stirrup leathers, but his calves still hurt.