Patrick Harper pushed through the men and stared up at Sharpe. `Sir?’
Sharpe took the sword from his slings. It was a sword that Sergeant Harper had re-fashioned for him while Sharpe lay in Salamanca’s hospital. It was a cheap blade, one of many made in Birmingham for Britain’s Heavy Cavalry, nearly a yard of heavy steel that was clumsy and ill-balanced except in the hands of a strong man.
Sharpe tossed the sword to the Irishman. `Put an edge on it for me, Harps. A real edge.’
The men cheered, but Harper held the sword unhappily. He looked up at Sharpe and saw the madness on the dark, scarred face.
Sharpe remembered a face of delicate beauty, the face of a woman whom the Spanish now called the Golden Whore. Sharpe knew he could never possess her, but he could fight for her. He could give up all for her, what else was a warrior to do for a beauty? He smiled. He would fight for a woman who was known to be treacherous, and because, in an obscure way that he did not fully understand, he thought that this challenge, this duel, this risk was some expiation for the guilt that racked him. He would fight.
CHAPTER 4
`You’re slow, Sharpe, very slow.’ Captain Peter d’Alembord, who had taken Sharpe’s place as Captain of the Light Company, had run his slim sword past Sharpe’s guard and now the tip quivered an inch beneath the silver whistle holstered on Sharpe’s cross belt. D’Alembord, an impressively elegant and slim man, had volunteered, with some diffidence, to `put Sharpe over the jumps’. He had also scouted the opposition and his news was grim. `It seems the Marques is rather good.’
`Good?’
`Took lessons in Paris from Bouillet. They say he could beat him. Still, not to worry. Old Bouillet must have been getting on, perhaps he was slow.’ D’Alembord smiled, stepped back, and raised his sword. `En garde?’
Sharpe laughed. `I’ll just hack the bugger to bits.’
`Hope springs eternal, my dear Sharpe. Do raise your blade, I’m going to pass it on the left. With some warning you might just be able to stop me. Engage.’
The blades rattled, scraped, disengaged, clanged, and suddenly, with eye-defeating speed, d’Alembord had passed Sharpe’s guard on the left and his sword was poised again to split Sharpe’s trunk. Captain d’Alembord frowned. `If I darken my hair with lamp black, Sharpe, and paint a scar on my face, I might just pass for you. It’s really your best hope of survival.’
`Nonsense. I’ll chop the bastard into mincemeat.’
`You seem to forget that he has handled a sword before.’
`He’s old, he’s fat, and I’ll slaughter him.’
`He’s not yet fifty,’ d’Alembord said mildly, `and don’t be fooled by that waist. The fastest swordsman I ever saw was fatter than a hogshead. Why didn’t you choose pistols? Or twelve pounder cannons?’
Sharpe laughed and hefted his big, straight sword. `This is a lucky blade.’
`One sincerely hopes so. On the other hand, finesse is usually more useful than luck in a duel.’
`You’ve fought a duel?’
D’Alembord nodded. `Rather why I’m here, Sharpe. Life got a little difficult.’ He said it lightly, though Sharpe could guess the ruin that the duel had meant for d’Alembord. Sharpe had been curious as to why the tall, elegant, foppish man had joined a mere line regiment like the South Essex. D’Alembord, with his spotless lace cuffs, his silver cutlery and crystal wine glasses that were carefully transported by his servant from camp ground to camp ground, would have been more at home in a Guards regiment or a smart cavalry uniform.
Instead he was in the South Essex, seeking obscurity in an unfashionable regiment while the scandal blew itself out in England, and an example to Sharpe of how a duel could blight a career. Sharpe smiled. `I suppose you killed your man?’
`Didn’t mean to. Meant to wing him, but he moved into the blade. Very messy.’ He sighed. `If you would deign to hold that thing more like a sword and less like a cleaving instrument, one might hold out a morsel of hope. Part of the object of the exercise is to defend one’s body. Mind you, it’s quite possible that he’ll faint with horror when he sees it. It’s positively mediaeval. It’s hardly an instrument for fencing.’