The Slaughterman was ready, he had expected it, invited it, and he closed the ten foot gap with lightning speed and his knife slashed up towards Sharpe, bright in the dusk light. The Rifleman swerved, not bothering to reply, backed away, and his left hand caught the chain for greater leverage and he pulled on it with all his power and the Slaughterman did not move.
El Matanfe looked at Sharpe’s gritted teeth and laughed. `Your death will be slow, Englishman.’
The crowd, swollen by people from the city, shouted an abrupt, brief shout in appreciation of the Slaughterman’s skill. El Matanfe acknowledged the cheer with a wave of his knife and then hooked his left hand over the chain. He stepped back, tightening it.
The power came. It pulled Sharpe forward. He could not resist it and he saw the Slaughterman smile with the ease of the task. Sharpe braced his feet, but his boots slid in the mire and he was being dragged towards his opponent. Then the jerking began, the vicious, hard jerks that pulled him off balance and he tripped, fell, and the chain was pulling his arm from his socket and when the pressure stopped he rolled to one side, knowing the knife was slicing down, only to hear the Slaughterman laughing.
`The Englishman is frightened!’
Sharpe stood up. His jacket and overalls were smeared with mud. The crowd was catcalling, jeering him. The Slaughterman had simply made a fool of him to demonstrate his strength. El Matarife was smiling now; smiling with relief and triumph. He had made this kind of fighting his speciality, and he would play with Sharpe as Sharpe had watched him play with the French prisoner.
El Matarife beckoned Sharpe forward. `Come, Englishman, come! Come on! Come to your death.’
Sharpe dropped his left arm and flexed it.
He went forward.
El Matarife waited. He was crouching, the knife low. He began to shake the chain, trying to loop it about Sharpe’s blade, but Sharpe simply held his left arm out and the chain went away from him.
`Come, Englishman.’
They were close now, four feet from each other, both men staring into the other’s eyes, both knives held low. Neither moved. The crowd was silent.
When El Matarife moved it was as fast as a scorpion’s strike, but Sharpe had fought all his life and his own speed matched that of the Spaniard. Sharpe stepped back and the blade hissed past his face. Sharpe smiled.
El Matarife bellowed at him, trying to frighten him, and then looped the chain high so it would fall over Sharpe’s head. Sharpe caught the loop as it came, jerked on it, and sliced up with his knife as the Spaniard’s guard was lifted, and Sharpe saw the sudden fear on the beast’s face as El Matarife realised Sharpe’s speed and as the Rifleman’s knife whipped upwards.
`Uno,’ El Matarife’s right forearm was bleeding.
The crowd was silent.
Sharpe had gone back as fast as he had moved forward. The Spaniard growled. He had underestimated the Englishman, even let him live as a boast to the crowd, but now El Matarife planned Sharpe’s death. He stepped back, tightening the chain, and began again to try and tug Sharpe off balance, jerking the silver chain with massive strength, but this time Sharpe stepped into the pull, letting himself be dragged forward, and the Slaughterman had to step back and keep stepping back until he was at the edge of the fighting space with nowhere to go and Sharpe laughed at him. `You are a traitor, Spaniard, and your mother whored with swine.’
El Matarife roared and leaped forward. The knife seared high, coming at Sharpe’s eyes, dropped, and slashed upwards.
`Uno!’ El Matarife was shouting it in triumph and the crowd shouted with him.
Sharpe would have waking nightmares about that moment for ever. The knife was within a half inch of slicing his belly open, slicing from his groin to his ribs and spilling his guts onto the silvered mud, and he would never know how his body moved so fast or how his right hand, seeing the opening, slashed in to chop at the Spaniard’s passing arm. He shouted as he jumped back.