„Weather like home, Sergeant?” Perkins asked.
„What would you know, lad? In Donegal, now, the sun never stops shining, the women all say yes and both the gamekeepers have wooden legs.” He gave Perkins the canteen and peered into the wet dark. „How are we going to find your fellow in this, sir?”
„God knows if we do.”
„Does it matter now?”
„I want my telescope back.”
„Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Harper said, „you’re going to wander into the middle of the French army and ask for it?”
„Something like that,” Sharpe said. All day he had been besieged by a sense of the futility of the effort, but that was no reason not to make the effort. And it seemed right to him that Christopher should be punished. Sharpe believed that a man’s loyalties were at his roots, that they were immovable, but Christopher evidently believed they were negotiable. That was because Christopher was clever and sophisticated. And, if Sharpe had his way, he would soon be dead.
The dawn was cold and wet. They climbed back up to the boulder-strewn heights, leaving behind the valley which was filled with mist. The rain was soft now, but still in their faces. Sharpe led and saw nobody, and still saw nobody even when a musket banged and a cloud of smoke blossomed beside a rock and he dived for cover as the bullet smacked on a boulder and whined into the sky. Everyone else sheltered, except for Hogan who was stranded on his ugly mule, but Hogan had the presence of mind to shout. „Ingles,” he called, „ingles!” He was half on and half off the mule, fearing another bullet, but hoping his claim to be English would prevent it.
A figure in ragged goatskins appeared from behind the rock. The man had a vast beard, no teeth and a wide grin. Vicente called to him and the two had a rapid conversation at the end of which Vicente turned to Hogan. „He calls himself Javali and says he is sorry, but he did not know we were friends. He asks you to forgive him.”
„Javali?” Hogan asked.
„It means wild boar.” Vicente sighed. „Every man in this countryside gives himself a nickname and looks for a Frenchman to kill.”
„There’s just one of him?” Sharpe asked.
„Just the one.”
„Then he’s either bloody stupid or bloody brave,“ Sharpe said, then succumbed to an embrace from Javali and a gust of foul-smelling breath. The man’s musket looked ancient. The wooden stock, which was bound to the barrel by old-fashioned iron hoops, was split and the hoops themselves were rusted and loose, but Javali had a canvas bag filled with loose powder and an assortment of differently sized musket balls and he insisted on accompanying them when he learned there might be Frenchmen to kill. He had a wicked-looking curved knife stuck into his belt and a small axe hanging by a fraying piece of string.
Sharpe walked on. Javali talked incessantly and Vicente translated some of his story. His real name was Andrea and he was a goatherd from Bouro. He had been an orphan since he was six, and he thought he was now twenty-five years old though he looked much older, and he worked for a dozen families by protecting their animals from lynx and wolves, and he had lived with a woman, he said proudly, but the dragoons had come and they had raped her when he was not there, and his woman had possessed a temper, he said, worse than a goat’s, and she must have drawn a knife on her rapists for they had killed her. Javali did not seem very upset by his woman’s death, but he was still determined to avenge her. He patted the knife and then tapped his groin to show what he had in mind.
Javali at least knew the quickest ways through the high ground. They were traveling well to the north of the road they had left when Harris spotted the horsemen, and that road led through the wide valley that now narrowed as it went eastward. The Cavado twisted beside the road, sometimes vanishing in stands of trees, while streams, fed by the rain, tumbled from the hills to swell the river.