“You mean England?”
“I mean back to the army.” Sharpe suddenly wished he faced this journey alone, unencumbered by resentful men. “We’ll have to go south. To Lisbon.”
Harper crossed to the doorway where he stooped to stare eastwards. “I didn’t think you meant Donegal.”
“Is that where you come from?”
“Aye.” Harper watched the snow settle in the darkening valley. “Donegal looks something like this, so it does. Only this is a better land.”
“Better?” Sharpe was surprised. He was also obscurely pleased that the big man had deigned to have this conversation which made him suddenly more likeable. “Better?” Sharpe had to ask again.
“The English never ruled here. Did they, sir?” The insolence was back. Harper, standing, stared down at the sitting Sharpe and there was nothing but scorn in his voice. “This is unsoiled country, so it is.”
Sharpe knew he had been lured into the question which had released this man’s derision. “I thought you were fetching timber.”
“I was.”
“Then fetch it and go.”
Later, after he had visited the shivering picquets, Sharpe went back to the barn and sat by the wall where he listened to the low voices of the men who gathered about Rifleman Harper. They laughed softly, letting Sharpe know that he was excluded from the company of soldiers, even of the damned. He was alone.
Murray died in the night. He did it without noise or fuss, just sliding decorously into death.
“The lads want to bury him.” Williams said it as though he expected Sharpe to disapprove.
Sharpe was standing in the barn’s doorway. “Of course.”
“He said to give you this.” Williams held out the big sword.
It was an awkward moment and Sharpe was aware of the men’s gaze as he took the cumbersome weapon. “Thank you, Sergeant.”
“He always said it was better than a sabre in a fight, sir,” Williams said. “Puts the fear of God into the bloody Frogs, it does. Right butcher’s blade, it is.”
“I’m sure.”
The moment of intimacy, forged by the gift of the sword, seemed to give Williams confidence. “We were talking last night, sir.”
“We?”
“Me and the lads.”
“And?” Sharpe jumped from the barn’s raised doorway into a world made dazzling by new snow. The whole valley glittered under a pale sun that was threatened by thickening clouds.
The Sergeant followed him. “They’re not going, sir. Not going south.” His tone was respectful, but very firm.
Sharpe walked away from the barn. His boots squeaked in the fresh snow. They also let in damp because, like the boots of the men he was supposed to command, they were torn, gaping, and barely held together with rags and twine; hardly the footwear of a privileged officer whom these frightened Riflemen would follow through the valley of the shadow of death. “And who made that decision, Sergeant?”
“We all did, sir.”
“Since when, Sergeant, has this army been a…“ Sharpe paused, trying to remember the word he had once heard at a mess dinner. ”A democracy?“
Williams had never heard the word. “A what, sir?”
Sharpe could not explain what it meant, so tried a different approach. “Since when did Sergeants outrank Lieutenants?”
“It isn’t that, sir.” Williams was embarrassed.
“Then what is it?”
The Sergeant hesitated, but he was being watched by men who clustered in the barn’s gaping entrance, and under their critical gaze he found courage and volubility. “It’s madness, sir. That’s what it is. We can’t go south in this weather! We’ll starve! And we don’t even know if there’s still a garrison at Lisbon.”
“That’s true, we don’t.”
“So we’ll go north, sir.” Williams said it confidingly, as though he did Sharpe a great favour by the suggestion.
“There are ports up there, sir, and we’ll find a boat. I mean the Navy’s still off the coast, sir. They’ll find us.”
“How do you know the Navy’s there?”
Williams shrugged modestly. “It isn’t me who knows, sir.”
“Harper?” Sharpe guessed.
“Harps! Lord no, sir. He’s just a bog-Paddy, isn’t he? He wouldn’t know nothing, sir. No, it’s Rifleman Tongue, sir. He’s a clever man. He can read. It was the drink that did him in, sir, you see. Only the drink. But he’s an educated man, sir, and he told us, see, how the Navy’s off the coast, sir, and how we can go north and find a boat.” Williams, encouraged by Sharpe’s silence, gestured towards the steep northern hills. “It can’t be far, sir, not to the coast. Maybe three days? Four?”