Bernard Cornwell – 1807 09 Sharpe’s Prey

“I don’t want him to either.”

“I won’t tell the bastard,” Pierce said, then settled back to watch the bitch hunt the last few rats. The sand was speckled with fresh blood. A few of the rats were merely crippled and those who had wagered on the bitch were shouting at her to finish them off. “I thought when I first saw her,” Pierce said, “that she’d hunt like her mother did. Christ, but that bitch was a cold-hearted killer. But this one’s too young. She’ll get better.” He watched her kill a rat that had been particularly elusive. She shook it hard, spraying blood onto the customers closest to the barrier. “It ain’t the teeth that kills `em,” Pierce said, “but the shaking.”

“I know.”

“Course you do, `course you do.” Pierce watched as the boy climbed into the ring and shoved the bloodied rats into a sack. “Lumpy’s still trying to sell the corpses,” he said. “You’d think someone would want to eat them. Nothing wrong with rat pie, especially if you don’t know what it is. But he can’t sell `em.” He looked down at Jem Hocking. “Is there to be trouble?”

“Would you mind?”

Pierce picked at a tooth with a long fingernail. “No,” he said curtly, “and Lumpy will be pleased. He wants to run the book here, but Hocking won’t let him.”

“Won’t let him?”

“Hocking owns the place now,” Pierce said. “He owns every house in the street, the bastard.” Two more cages had been tipped into the arena and the new rats, black and slick, scampered about the ring as a roar from the crowd greeted the dog. It was held above the skittering sand for a second, then dropped and began to fight. It went about its business efficiently and Pierce grinned. “Jem’s going to lose his shirt on this one.”

The bitch had been good and quick, but the dog was old and experienced. It killed swiftly and the crowd’s cheers got louder. Most, it seemed, had bet on the dog and the pleasure of winning was doubled by the knowledge that Jem Hocking was about to lose. Except that Jem Hocking was not a man to lose. The dog had killed about twenty of the rats when suddenly a spectator on the front bench leaned forward and vomited over the barrier and the dog immediately ran to gobble up the half-digested meat pie. The owner screamed at it, the crowd jeered and Hocking’s face showed nothing.

“Bastard,” Pierce said.

“Old trick that,” Sharpe said, leaning back. He fingered his saber’s hilt. He did not like the weapon’s curved blade which was too light to do real damage, but it was the official weapon of Rifle officers. He would have preferred one of the basket-hilted broadswords that the Scots carried into battle, but regulations were regulations and the greenjackets had insisted he equip himself properly. A sword or saber, they said, was merely decorative and an officer who was forced to use one in battle had already failed so it did not matter that the light cavalry saber was unhandy, but Sharpe had used enough swords in battle and he had never failed. Go into a breach, he had told Colonel Beckwith, and you’ll be glad enough of a butchering sword, but the Colonel had shaken his head. “It is not the business of Rifle officers to be in the breach,” he had said. “Our job is to be outside, killing from a distance. That is why we have rifles, not muskets.” Not that any of it mattered to Sharpe now. He would make his money, resign his commission, sell the saber and forget the Rifles.

Lumpy closed the entertainment by announcing that the next evening would be a mixture of cockfighting and badger-baiting. They would be Essex badgers, he boasted, as though Essex gave the animals special fighting skills, though in truth it was simply the closest source to Wapping. The crowd streamed out and Sharpe went back to the storeroom. Dan Pierce went with him. “I wouldn’t stay, Dan,” Sharpe said. “Likely to be trouble.”

“Trouble for you, Dick,” Pierce tried to warn his old friend. “He’s never on his own.”

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