They moved. One of the greenjackets muttered a word of command and the rest fell into step, shouldered arms, and began to march as only the Light Infantry could march. They were showing the Lieutenant that they were still the best. They were showing their derision for him by displaying their skill and Major Vivar’s good humour was restored by the arrogant demonstration. He watched the greenjackets scatter his own men aside, then called for them to slow down and resume their place at the rear of the column. He was still laughing when Sharpe caught up with him. j
“You sounded like a Sergeant, Lieutenant,” Vivar said.
“I was a Sergeant once. I was the best God-damned bloody Sergeant in the God-damned bloody army.”
The Spaniard was astonished. “You were a Sergeant?”
“Do you think the son of a whore would be allowed to join as an officer? I was a Sergeant, and a private before that.”
Vivar stared at the Englishman as though he had suddenly sprouted horns. “I didn’t know your army promoted from the ranks?” Whatever anger he had felt with Sharpe an hour or so before evaporated into a fascinated curiosity.
“It’s rare. But men like me don’t become real officers, Major. It’s a reward, you see, for being a fool. For being stupidly brave. And then they make us into Drillmasters or Quartermasters. They think we can manage those tasks. We’re not given fighting commands.” Sharpe’s bitterness was rank in the cold morning, and he supposed he was making the self-pitying confession because it explained his failures to this competent Spanish officer. “They think we all take to drink, and perhaps we do. Who wants to be an officer, anyway?”
But Vivar was not interested in Sharpe’s misery. “So you’ve seen much fighting?”
Tn India. And in Portugal last year.“
Vivar’s opinion of Sharpe was changing. Till now he had seen the Englishman as an ageing, unsuccessful Lieutenant who had failed to either buy or win promotion. Now he saw that Sharpe’s promotion had been extraordinary, far beyond the dreams of a common man. “Do you like battle?”
It seemed an odd question to Sharpe, but he answered it as best he could. “I have no other skill.”
“Then I think you will make a good officer, Lieutenant. There’ll be much fighting before Napoleon is sent down to ‘ roast in hell.”
They climbed another mile, until the slope flattened out and the troops trudged between immense rocks that loomed above the road. Vivar, his friendliness restored, told Sharpe that a battle had been fought in this high place where the eagles nested. The Moors had used this same road and the Christian archers had ambushed them from the rocks on either side. “We drove them back and made the very road stink with their blood.” Vivar stared at the towering bluffs as if the stone still echoed with the screams of dying pagans. “That must be nearly nine hundred years ago.” He spoke as if it were yesterday, and he himself had carried a sword to the fight. “Each year the villagers celebrate a Mass to remember the event.”
“There’s a village here?”
“A mile beyond the gorge. We can rest there.”
Sharpe saw what a magnificent site the canyon made for an ambush. The Christian forces, hidden in the high rocks, would have had an eagle’s view of the road and the Moors, climbing to the gorge, would have been watched every step of the way to the killing arrows. “And how do you know the French aren’t waiting for us?” Emboldened by Vivar’s renewed affability, he raised the question which had worried him earlier. “We’ve got no picquets.”
“Because the French won’t have reached this far into Spain,” Vivar said confidently, “and if they had, then the villagers would have sent warning down all the roads, and even if the warnings missed us, we’d smell the French horses.” The French, always careless of their cavalry horses, drove them until their saddle and crupper sores could be smelt half a mile away. “One day,” Vivar added cheerfully, “the French will flog their last horse to death and we’ll ride over that loathsome country.” The thought gave him a renewed energy and he turned towards the marching men. “Not far before you can rest!”