Sharpe had waited till he could hear no footsteps of the men who patrolled the tent lines against Girdwood’s fear of mutiny. He had waited, too, until the canvas of the tent was as dark as it would become, yet still it was treacherously light. Then he moved.
‘What are you doing, Dick?’ It was Charlie Weller.
‘You stay here!’ Jenkinson growled the words, fearing punishment if one man of the squad broke the rules, but Sharpe ignored him, went to the back of the tent and pulled the canvas up from its small pegs. He was staring west, across twenty yards of open ground towards the closest drainage ditch.
‘Dick?’ Weller asked again.
‘Quiet. All of you!’ He rolled under the canvas, the tent throwing a shadow over him, and he stared north and south, seeing no one, then stood carefully between the taut guy ropes of the tent.
He waited. He could hear no patrols, yet he knew that if one was close then they would be hidden by the tent’s bulk. He listened, ignoring the snores and the sound of the wind on the silvered grass, then ran.
He dropped at the drainage ditch, rolling himself in the mud to fall into the water. Like Harper, he was seeking to hide in the mud with the help of the mud. He paused when he had fallen, feeling the ripples beat back from the ditch’s side against his body, and listened.
No one called out, no patrol ran towards him.
He worked his way northwards, hidden by the ditch that stank because it drained the officers’ latrines. Its smell haunted the tents each night, but now, as he crawled north towards the buildings of the camp’s administration, it was thickly foul in his face.
He saw a group of men standing on the embanked road. They stared further northwards, towards the empty marsh, and he thought nothing of it except to be grateful that they did not look back towards the ditch where, ten yards from the kitchens, he climbed into the moonlight and, like a great predator, slipped into the shadows of the buildings.
There were guards in the compound between the stables and offices and they too, Sharpe saw, stared northwards. Then, from that direction, he heard three shots, close together, their sounds flattened by the night, and the sound alarmed him. Had they taken Harper into the marsh to shoot him like a dog?
He crossed the space between the kitchens and the stores. He made himself ignore his fears, for to hurry was to court defeat, and to be defeated was to deny the South Essex their victory in this war. He flattened himself against the store wall, on its dark side, and waited.
He had chosen to make his ambush here for it was a favoured place with the men who wore the red coats and guarded the camp. He waited, hearing indistinct shouts from the northern marsh, then, much closer, he heard what he wanted to hear.
The footsteps came close and stopped just round the corner from Sharpe. There was the rustle of cloth as buttons were undone, a grunt, then the sound of liquid falling onto the ground.
Sharpe moved with the speed of a man who has fought in wars for close to twenty years, a man who knew that speed in a fight was the prelude to victory, and the edge of his right hand, travelling upwards as he cleared the corner, caught the soldier beneath the chin and Sharpe’s left hand, following the first blow, thumped onto the sentry’s chest to knock the breath from him and fill his heart with pain, and, before the man could call out or bring his hands up in defence, his collar was grabbed and he was hauled savagely into the shadows around the corner. The man grunted, then a knee dropped into his belly and two fingers, rigid and jabbing, pressed into the base of his eyeballs. ‘Where’s the big Irishman?’
‘Stop!’ The man’s eyes were hurting. Sharpe pressed harder.
‘Where is he?’
‘They’re hunting him!’ The man spoke in panic. ‘The marsh!’
‘How many of them?’
The man told him what he knew, which was not much, and, when Sharpe was certain there was no more to be had from his captive, he slowly, leaving the eyes undamaged, drew back his hand. He hit the frightened man, once, twice, and again, until he was sure the man was unconscious.