“If my Eagle is lost,” Colonel Caillou said, “I shall blame you, Gudin.”
“So pray that the British have no blocked the road,” Gudin answered. The fort was a dark mass of stone in which streaks of fire glowed bloody red.
“It’s partisans I worry about, not the British,” Caillou sneered. “If the British are on the road, then General Picard will come from behind and they will be squeezed to death.”
For that was the plan. General Picard was marching south from St. Jean Pied-de-Port. He would climb the French side of the Pyrenees to make sure the frontier pass was open for Gudin’s men, and all Gudin needed to do was survive the forty kilometres of tortuous winter road that twisted up from Ochagavia to the pass where General Picard waited.
At a place of misery in the mountains, at a place called Irati.
SHARPE said, “It’s not such a bad place.” And it was true that in the fading evening light Irati was picturesque. It was a village of small stone houses, little more than huts, that lay in a sheltered valley at the junction of two high streams and clustered about a big tavern, the Casa Alta, that provided shelter for folks traveling the high pass. “Can’t see why anyone would want to live here, though,” he added.
“They’re mostly shepherds,” said Captain Peter d’Alembord.
“Shepherds! That’s fitting for Christmas,” Sharpe said. “I seem to remember something about shepherds. Shepherds and wise men, isn’t that right?”
“Quite right, sir,” d’Alembord said. He could never quite get used to the idea that Sharpe had received no education at all other than being taught to read while he was a prisoner in India.
“A fellow used to read the Christmas story to us in the foundling home,”
Sharpe remembered. “A big, fat parson, he was, with funny whiskers. Looked a bit like that sergeant who caught a bellyful of cannister at Salamanca. We had to sit and listen, and if we yawned, the bugger used to jump off the platform and clout us round the face with the Holy Book. One minute it was all peace on earth, the next you were flying across the floor with a thick ear.”
“But at least you learned your Bible stories.”
“Not there, I didn’t. I learned those in India. I worked with a Scottish colonel who was a Bible-thumper.” Sharpe smiled at the memory.
He was walking north, climbing the road that led from Irati towards the nearby French frontier. He had already found a place south of the village where the battalion could stop the escaping garrison and he wanted to be certain that no Frogs were lurking at his rear.
“You liked India?” d’Alembord asked.
“It was a bit hot,” Sharpe said, “and the food was funny, but yes, I liked it.
In India I served under the best colonel I ever had.”
“Wellesley?” d’Alembord asked.
“Not Nosey, no,” Sharpe laughed. “He was good, Nosey, but just as cold then as he is now. No, this man was a Frog. Long story, Dally, and I don’t want to bore you, but I served with the enemy for a bit in India. On purpose, it was, all official. Colonel Gudin, he was called.” Sharpe smiled, remembering. “He was very good to me, Colonel Gudin. He even wanted me to go back to France with him, and I can’t say I wasn’t tempted.”
D’Alembord smiled. He wished Sharpe would tell the story of Colonel Gudin, but he knew it was hopeless trying to get reminiscences out of Major Sharpe. He had seen other men try to learn how Sharpe had taken the French Eagle at Salamanca, but Sharpe would just shrug and say anyone could have done it. It was just luck, really, he happened to be there and the thing was looking for a new owner.
Like hell, d’Alembord thought. Sharpe was quite simply the best soldier he had ever known or would know.
Sharpe stopped at the head of the pass and pulled a telescope from a pocked of his green jacket. The telescope’s outer barrel had an ivory cover and an inscribed gold plate that read in French, “To Joseph, King of Spain and the Indies, from his brother, Napoleon, Emperor of France.” Sharpe trained the expensive glass northwards to search the misted slopes across the border. He saw rocks, stunted trees and the glint of a cold stream tumbling from a high place, and beyond a fading succession of mountain peaks.