„So we’re still at war, you think?”
„Oh, we’re at war, Pat,” Sharpe said, looking at the wreckage and thinking of Christopher, „we’re bloody well at war.”
Vicente was staring at the new graves. He nodded when Sharpe said he proposed marching south during the night, but he did not speak until they were outside the cemetery gates. „I am going to Porto,” he said.
„You believe there’s been a peace treaty?”
„No,” Vicente said, then shrugged. „Maybe? I don’t know. But I do know Colonel Christopher and Brigadier Vuillard are probably there. I didn’t fight them here, so I must pursue them there.”
„So you’ll go to Oporto,” Sharpe said, „and die?”
„Maybe,” Vicente said grandly, „but a man cannot hide from evil.”
„No,” Sharpe said, „but if you fight it, fight it clever.”
„I’m learning how to fight,“ Vicente said, „but I already know how to kill.”
That was a recipe for suicide, Sharpe thought, but he did not argue. „What I’m planning,” he said instead, „is to go back the way we came. I can find the way easy enough. And once I’m at Barca d’Avintas I’ll look for a boat. There has to be something that will float.”
„I’m sure there is.”
„So come with me that far,” Sharpe suggested, „because it’s close to Oporto.”
Vicente agreed and his men fell in behind Sharpe’s when they left the village, and Sharpe was glad of it for the night was pitch black again and despite his confidence that he could find the way he would have become hopelessly lost if Vicente had not been there. As it was they made painfully slow progress and eventually rested in the darkest heart of the night and made better time when the wolf light edged the eastern horizon.
Sharpe was in two minds about going back to Barca d’Avintas. There was a risk, for the village was perilously close to Oporto, but on the other hand he knew it was a place where the river was safe to cross, and he reckoned he should be able to find some wreckage from the huts and houses that his men could fashion into a raft. Vicente agreed, saying that much of the rest of the Douro valley was a rocky ravine and that Sharpe would face difficulty in either approaching the river or finding a crossing place. A larger risk was that the French would be guarding Barca d’Avintas, but Sharpe suspected they would be content with having destroyed all the boats in the village.
Dawn found them in some wooded hills. They stopped by a stream and made a breakfast of stale bread and smoked meat so tough that the men joked about re-soling their boots, then grumbled because Sharpe would not let them light a fire and so make tea. Sharpe carried a crust to the summit of a nearby hill and searched the landscape with the small telescope. He saw no enemy, indeed he saw no one at all. A deserted cottage lay further up the valley where the stream ran and there was a church bell tower a mile or so to the south, but there were no people. Vicente joined him. „You think there might be French here?”
„I always think that,” Sharpe said.
„And do you think the British have gone home?” Vicente asked.
„No.”
„Why not?”
Sharpe shrugged. „If we wanted to go home,” he said, „we’d have gone after Sir John Moore’s retreat.”
Vicente stared south. „I know we could not have defended the village,” he said.
„I wish we could have done.”
„It is just that they are my people.” Vicente shrugged.
„I know,” Sharpe said, and he tried to imagine the French army in the dales of Yorkshire or in the streets of London. He tried to imagine the cottages burning, the alehouses sacked and the women screaming, but he could not envisage that horror. It seemed oddly impossible. Harper could doubtless imagine his home being violated, could probably recall it, but Sharpe could not.
„Why do they do it?” Vicente asked with a genuine note of anguish.
Sharpe collapsed the telescope then scuffed the earth with the toe of his right boot. On the day after they had climbed to the watchtower he had dried the rain-soaked boots in front of the fire, but he had left them too close and the leather had cracked. „There are no rules in war,” he said uncomfortably.