Sirnrnerson was in sight coming to claim his victory and his victims for the triangle.
“For what we are about to receive,” Harper said softly.
“Quiet! Make them load. We’ll give the man a demon-stration.” Sharpe watched Simmerson’s eyes as the slow dawning of his men’s unbuttoned collars and the signifi-cance of the leather shreds on the grass occurred in his brain. Sharpe watched the Colonel take a deep breath. “Now!”
,Fire!” Harper’s command unleashed a full volley that echoed like thunder in the valley. If Simmerson shouted then his words were lost in the noise, and the Colonel could only watch as his men worked their muskets like veterans to the orders of a Sergeant of the Rifles, even bigger than Sharpe, whose broad, confident face was of the kind that had always infuriated Sir Henry, provoking his most savage sentences from the uncushioned magis-trates’ bench in Chelmsford.
The last volley rattled onto the stone wall, and Forrest tucked his watch back into a pocket. “Two seconds under a minute, Sir Henry, and four shots.”
“I can count, Forrest.” Four shots? Simmerson was impressed because secretly he had despaired of teaching his men to fire fast instead of fumbling nervously. But a whole company’s stocks? At two and threepence apiece? And on a day when his nephew had come in smelling like a stable hand? “God damn your eyes, Sharpe!”
“Yes, sir.”
The acrid powder smoke made Sir Henry’s horse twitch its head, and the Colonel reached forward to quiet it. Sharpe watched the gesture and knew that he had made a fool of the Colonel in front of his own men, and he knew, too, that it had been a mistake. Sharpe had won a small victory but in doing so he had made an enemy who had both power and influence. The Colonel edged his horse closer to Sharpe and his voice was surprisingly quiet. “This is my Battalion, Mr Sharpe. My Battalion. Remember that!” He looked for a moment as if his anger would erupt, but he controlled it and shouted at Forrest to follow him instead. Sharpe turned away. Harper was grinning at him, the men looked pleased, and only Sharpe felt a foreboding of menace like an unseen but encircling enemy. He shook it off. There were muskets to clean, rations to issue, and, beyond the border hills, enemies enough for anyone.
CHAPTER 4
Patrick Harper marched with a long easy stride, happy to feel the road beneath his feet, happy they had at last crossed the unmarked frontier and were going some-where, anywhere. They had left in the small, dark hours so that the bulk of the march would be done before the sun was at its hottest, and he looked forward to an afternoon of inactivity and hoped that the bivouac Major Forrest had ridden ahead to find would be near a stream where he could drift a line down the water with one of his maggots impaled on the hook. The South Essex were somewhere behind them; Sharpe had started the day’s march at the Rifle Regiment’s fast pace, three steps walking, three running, and Harper was glad that they were free of the suspicious atmosphere of the Battalion. He grinned as he remembered the stocks. There was a sobering rumour that the Colonel had ordered Sharpe to pay for every one of the seventy-nine ruined collars, and that, to Harper’s mind, was a terrible price to pay. He had not asked Sharpe the truth of the rumour; if he had he would have been told to mind his own business, though, for Patrick Harper, Sharpe was his business. The Lieutenant might be moody, irritable, and liable to snap at the Sergeant as a means of venting frustration, but Harper, if pressed, would have described Sharpe as a friend. It was not a word that a Sergeant could use of an officer, but Harper could have thought of no other. Sharpe was the best soldier the Irishman had seen on a battlefield, with a countryman’s eye for ground and a hunter’s instinct for using it, but Sharpe looked for advice to only one man in a battle, Sergeant Harper. It was an easy relationship, of trust and respect, and Patrick Harper saw his business as keeping Richard Sharpe alive and amused.