Sharpe’s Havoc by Bernard Cornwell

„There are rules,” Vicente insisted.

Sharpe ignored the protest. „Most soldiers aren’t saints. They’re drunks, thieves, rogues. They’ve failed at everything, so they join the army or else they’re forced to join by some bastard of a magistrate. Then they’re given a weapon and told to kill. Back home they’d be hanged for it, but in the army they’re praised for it, and if you don’t hold them hard then they think any killing is permitted. Those lads,”-he nodded down the hill to the men grouped under the cork oaks-”know damn well they’ll be punished if they step out of line. But if I let them off the leash? They’d run this country ragged, then make a mess of Spain and they’d never stop till someone killed them.” He paused, knowing he had been unfair to his men. „Mind you, I like them,” he went on. „They’re not the worst, not really, just unlucky, and they’re damn fine soldiers. I don’t know.” He frowned, embarrassed. „But the Frogs? They don’t have any choice. It’s called conscription. Some poor bastard is working as a baker or a wheelwright one day and the next he’s in uniform and being marched half a continent away. They resent it, and the French don’t flog their soldiers so there’s no way of holding them.”

„Do you flog?”

„Not me.” He thought about telling Vicente that he had been flogged once, long ago, on a hot parade ground in India, then decided it would sound like boasting. „I just take them behind a wall and beat them up,” he said instead. „It’s quicker.”

Vicente smiled. „I could not do that.”

„You could always give them a writ instead,” Sharpe said. „I’d rather be beaten up than get tangled by a lawyer.” Maybe, he thought, if he had beaten Williamson the man might have settled to authority. Maybe not. „So how far is the river?” he asked.

„Three hours? Not much longer.”

„Bugger all happening here, we might as well keep going.”

„But the French?” Vicente suggested nervously.

„None here, none there.” Sharpe nodded to the south. „No smoke, no birds coming out of trees like a cat was after them. And you can smell French dragoons a mile off. Their horses all have saddle sores, they stink like a cesspit.”

So they marched. The dew was still on the grass. They went through a deserted village that looked undamaged and Sharpe suspected the villagers had seen them coming and hidden themselves. There were certainly people there, for some drying washing was draped over two laurel bushes, but though Sergeant Macedo bellowed that they were friends no one dared to appear. One of the pieces of washing was a fine man’s shirt with bone buttons and Sharpe saw Cresacre dawdling so that he would have a moment on his own when the others were ahead. „The penalty for theft,” Sharpe called to his men, „is hanging. And there are good hanging trees here.” Cresacre pretended he had not heard, but hurried on all the same.

They stopped when they reached the Douro. Barca d’Avintas was still some way to the west and Sharpe knew his men were tired and so they bivouacked in a wood high on a bluff above the river. No boats moved there. Far off to the south a single spire of smoke wavered in the sky, and to the west there was a shimmering haze that Sharpe suspected was the smoke of Oporto’s cooking fires. Vicente said Barca d’Avintas was little more than an hour away, but Sharpe decided they would wait till next morning before marching again. Haifa dozen of the men were limping because their boots were rotting and Gataker, who had been wounded in the thigh, was feeling the pain. One of Vicente’s men was walking barefoot and Sharpe was thinking of doing the same because of the condition of his boots. But there was a still better reason for delay. „If the French are there,” he explained, „then I’d rather sneak up on them in the dawn. And if they’re not we’ve got all day to make some sort of raft.”

„What about us?” Vicente asked.

„You still want to go to Oporto?”

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