Barker was writhing on the balcony. “No!” he shouted at Sharpe who had drawn one of his pistols.
“Yes,” Sharpe said.
“I let you live!” Barker shouted.
“More bloody fool you,” Sharpe said and aimed the pistol. He fired and the ball took Barker under the chin, and then a musket banged from the courtyard and tore a splinter from the balustrade beside Sharpe. Clouter fired back with both his pistols, then crouched to reload the volley gun. Sharpe slid his last pistol along the balcony to the black man. “Wait there,” he told him.
“Where are you going?” Clouter asked.
“To find the bastard,” Sharpe said. Lavisser had vanished, so Sharpe took the volley gun from his shoulder, stepped over Barker’s corpse, and stalked along the landing. Flames were terrible to his right, threatening to roast him, but he ran past them into cooler air and came to the door leading to the inside stairs and saw Lavisser there, on the half landing, and Sharpe brought the volley gun to his shoulder, but Lavisser was quicker to raise his pistol and Sharpe ducked back. “I’m not going to shoot, Richard!” Lavisser called. “I just want to talk!”
Sharpe waited. His head was ringing and blood was dripping from his ear. A bomb exploded in the courtyard, twitching the bloodied bodies of the dead infantrymen. A carcass was burning there and its flames set fire to a soldier’s ammunition pouch which crackled angrily. “I’m not going to shoot,” Lavisser said again, closer now. “Talk to me. Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Sharpe said.
Lavisser, the pistol held away from his body to show he meant no harm, stepped cautiously onto the balcony. “See?” He gestured with the pistol. “No more shooting, Richard.”
Sharpe had the volley gun at his waist and it’s seven barrels were pointing at Lavisser. He kept it there.
Lavisser glanced at the gun, then smiled. “Your woman’s safe. She ran out through the arch.”
“My woman?”
“Mister Bang seemed to think she was sweet on you.”
“Bang was an idiot.”
“My dear Richard, they’re all idiots. This is Denmark! Dull, insufferably dull. It threatens to be the most respectable country on God’s earth.” He flinched as a bomb fell into the storeroom over the archway, but he did not take his eyes from Sharpe. “Our gunners are showing rare form tonight. Mister Bang says you’re going to stay here.”
“So?”
“So am I, Richard, and I could do with a friend who isn’t insufferably respectable.”
Sharpe took a step forward for the heat behind him was growing intolerable. Lavisser stepped back. He still held the pistol out to one side. Clouter was walking down the far side of the balcony now, then he nimbly leaped off the balustrade onto the mast-rigged flagpole. The tarred ratlines were burning, but he scrambled down with such practiced speed that he came to no harm.
“So what’s the price of your friendship?” Sharpe asked Lavisser. “The list in my pocket?”
“Do you really care about the men on that list?” Lavisser asked. “Who are they? Unknown merchants in Prussia and Hanover? Let the French have them and the French will look after us. What do you want to be, Richard? A general in the Danish army? It can be arranged, believe me. You want a title? The Emperor is remarkably generous with titles. Everything is new in Europe, Richard. The old titles mean nothing! If you can take power then you can be a lord, a prince, an archduke or a king.” Lavisser glanced down into the courtyard where Clouter was threatening him with the reloaded volley gun. “Is your black friend going to shoot me?”
“Let him be, Clouter!”
“Aye aye, sir.” Clouter lowered the weapon.
Sharpe again stepped forward, forcing Lavisser another pace back toward the burning chapel. Lavisser was worrying now and began to swing the pistol to face Sharpe, but Sharpe twitched his own volley gun and Lavisser obediently held the pistol out to his right side again. “I’m serious, Richard,” he said. “You and me? We can be like wolves in a land of woolly baa-lambs.”
“I’m still wearing British uniform,” Sharpe said, “or hadn’t you noticed?”