Second day on the march

"From the irregulars, or - no, you wouldn't know that." Edrington looked down at the dead man, and then explained: "Some French hussars were captured, I believe by the Scots Greys, four days ago - which would be about the time of the earlier wounds. Others of the troop escaped. But not it seems for long. Less than a day." He tore his eyes away from the corpse to look at Maturin. "I am hoping that they are French - if these men are British, we have a serious problem."

Stephen nodded. "I heard this - there were some French soldiers in the hospital in Belem. Do you know how many of them escaped? If we can find some uniform at all, you might be able to identify their nationality?"

The full number of the mutinous was not here, of course - Brissac had obviously cut loose his wounded, anyone who would slow him down, and ridden on. They could still be alive, approaching Oporto. Stephen felt ill, suddenly. He had been hoping that the irregulars would catch the escaped mutineers, those who would be able to identify him and Padstowe, and he had not even had the excuse of ignorance. He had blithely ignored what being caught by the Portuguese would actually mean for the French, save safety for himself. He had been counting on this.

Edrington noticed Maturin's face change as he looked at the body. the full scale of the atrocity, and the violence getting through to him.

"Perkins mentioned grey uniforms. The third Hussars - the source of our missing soldiers - are the only unit in the French Cavalry to wear grey uniforms . For all I know it may the only Regiment in either army. Which would appear to settle the matter. Except. If you were a French patrol on the run, might you not welcome the chance to kill a few British soldiers, steal their uniforms, weapons and horses and make your way north disguised as your own enemy."

Perkins had returned, approaching hesitantly until he heard his name mentioned. "Sir - doctor - I'm sorry sir, I forgot to say, the fiery burned place where we found the scrap of cloth, it's over there." He paused. "And there's a tree with more... of the dead."

Stephen nodded, looking down at the brambles and the crucified man, not pale or trembling or sick, but infinitely melancholy. "It is certainly possible," he said softly, "but I would urge you to consider the lex parsimoniae: frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora. Have there been any reports of missing British soldiers? Is there any other way of identifying these men as those of the French hussars?"

He looked up at the young rifleman - he at least looked a little better, no longer so pale. "I will be with you in a moment, Perkins."

"Soldiers on patrol four days ago? Yes, they would probably be missed by now. Deserters? It would be possible, a small group making their way south away from the main army." Edrington looked at the face of the dead man. And the other, his eyes cut out. After the men, the birds had inflicted damage, and death itself had changed them. "Their Captain might have been able to identify them. But I wouldn't inflict that on anyone."

"Never in life." Stephen paused for a moment, but his guilt outweighed his paranoia. "However, I return to Lisbon today - if their Captain was among those captured, and is in the city, I can bring him news, and any descriptions that we may glean."

Edrington thought of asking Maturin to convey a message to Raoul, but cheerful messages of encouragement would not be appropriate with news like this. "He was taken, and was being held in the Guardhouse - do you know it? If he has been moved from there, they will know where he is, I am sure."

It would be easy to alert his own people about the possibility that there were Frenchmen dressed as redcoats. The probability was, as Maturin said, that the simplest and most obvious solution applied - that they were some at least of the French hussars, caught and killed by the Irregulars. French troops might have been clever enough to think to disguise their killings as the work of the Portuguese, but it would have been even easier to hide the bodies better, and much less time-consuming.

Raoul had said that the British troops were supported by Irregulars. "They hated these men," he said softly, "The prisoners were the fortunate ones."

"I will find it." Stephen swallowed, and nodded. "They do. Never in life would I condone this evil act, but I can understand the emotion behind it, and so would you if England was invaded. And those taken prisoner were fortunate indeed - both this man, and the one without his eyes, were wounded before death, by about a day. Both serious enough to slow down a mounted escape. Do you know how many escaped?"

Edrington took his eyes away from the dead man, and said, "About half the original thirty - say fifteen. I can't..." He then realized what Maturin was implying. These men would have slowed down the escape of the fleeing Hussars. "I understand what you are suggesting. To leave them for us to find and care for - that would have been merely sensible. To leave them where they might be found by the Portuguese..." He swallowed. "War is never pretty, but this is horrific. I might be able to understand the emotion, but not the act."

Stephen had seen terrible, terrible things, on both sides, during the past year in Spain - more than a year, even longer than that, God save him, for the 2nd of May, and then, even bloodier, the 3rd; closer to two years then - and the saddest thing was that even a death as cruel and inventive as this, while not common, was by no means unique. That was why he had left, in the end: his heart, always sensitive, had become so raw in the face of the everyday sight of atrocity that he had fled his homeland to England, and when he had thought he had recovered, he had accepted Blaine's proposal to go to Portugal.

"I pray we never come to understand acts such as these. The day this becomes a thing of common human comprehension, I believe there is little help for us."

Sharpe could smell death before he could see it. He loped up the hill and stopped short when he saw the first body. He had seen death before, in numerous ways, and not all of them natural. This was barbaric, on a level with anything the Tippoo's jettis had done in India.

"Bloody hellfire. The bastards," he said. He noticed Carty looking green. The lad would learn, but there was no need to make things wosre on him than they were already. He would probably have nightmares about this. "Carty, sit down and put your head down, between your knees," he said. "And Carty? Well done."

He made his way over to where Stephen was examining one of the bodies. He said nothing, hoping his face spoke the question he dared not ask: Are these the men we fought off the other day?

Stephen looked up to see Sharpe approaching, the question plain on his face - he shot him a warning look, and then nodded minutely.

Carty obeyed Sharpe's order, putting his head between his knees, and he became marginally less dizzy. Sharpe, the famous Lieutenant Sharpe, had told him "well done" - he clung to the words like a touchstone. He had slaved for Harris' approval, and Cooper's, and Harper's most of all - any of the Chosen Men - but he had not longed for notice from their officer, because it would be like wishing for the end of a rainbow.

The body swam in front of his face again, and his eyes grew hot and stung - he tried not to think about it. He tried to think about Lieutenant Sharpe saying "well done" to him instead.

Oh crap. They hadn't died easliy - they hadn't been meant to. How anyone was going to manage to break this to the French Captain, he didn't know. If this happened to any of his men... he winced. Thank God he was not fighting against the people who had done this. He turned to look for Perkins, who was standing at a distance, looking just as green as Carty. "Perkins. Go and sit with Carty for a bit. And well done, lad." It can't have been easy, for any of them.

Sharpe had come up. His face showed the normal distaste and he was looking at the doctor, questioningly. "Mr Sharpe, you can see what we have here. It seems likely that these are the survivors - some of the survivors at least - from the Hussar company that ran into a group of English soldiers four days ago and came off worse." Edrington watched him. Officially it was the Scots Greys that had brought in the prisoners. But rumour said riflemen had been among the original party. "Have your men searched the area - we seem to have four bodies here?"

Four bodies... Sounded about right. And Edrington was watching him rather too closely for his comfort. The handful of prisoners had been taken into Lisbon by the cavalry - the Scots Greys, he remembered vaguely, not his Riflemen at all. He looked guilelessly at Edrington.

"I don't think they've had a look for any more bodies, sir," he said. "Someone mentioned something about uniforms being found? Any idea how many?"

Sharpe had dismissed himself, and the General had allowed it. He hung back as the party moved off to where the boy - Perkins, had they called him? - had come from. He put the two bottles into his saddle bag a leafed throught the 'regimen' the doctor had voluntarily put together for him... and it seemed that he had been very thorough indeed. He would have to discuss it with him later.

About about five minutes on walking his horse along with the column, unaware that his continued presence had made all the soldiers and officers around him stiffen to nervous attention, he stowed the papers away safely, touched his heels back and cnatered off after Edrington and Sharpe. He wanted to see these dead Frenchmen for himself, because he had a strong suspiscion that if Maturin was concerned it may be important...

He followed the track up, overtaking the head of the column, and then stopped. He heard voices off to his right, up a small dirt track and urged Hercules forward into a trot, ducking under low branches as he entered the clearing to discover a scene of horror.

The General had bloody well followed them. He shouldn't be here, really he shouldn't. But Sharpe wasn't going to tell him that.

"It ain't pretty, sir," he said instead as the General walked his horse over to them. "You might feel a bit green, like them lads." He indicated Perkins and Carty.

"So I can see," he murmured quietly. He was shocked, but he had seen enough blood carnage and torture in his time not to go green at the gills, like the two young men Sharpe had indicated seemed to be. One was sitting shaking with his head between his knees...

"What do you know about them?" he asked, his eyes straying to the strangely crucified man, a stream of black, solidified blood flowed from his open, screaming mouth.

While Sharpe went to the General - what was he doing here? - Harris was beckoned over by the Colonel. The lads were both sitting down, still looking sick with the horror of their discovery. Harris was pretty horrified himself, but it would not do to show it. The question was about the uniforms they'd found.

He explained that they had found the grey cloth on the bonfire, and it was hard to say how much had been burned on it. "We found a handful of buttons, and a few more pieces after Perkins left - some of it had blown out of the fire. But most of it will be ash. "

"They're dead." Great, Sharpie, state the bleedin' obvious, why don't you! "Probably done by the Portuguese." He looked around and lowered his voice. "Not sure if it's the same bunch we ran into; I haven't seen the uniforms yet, sir. Remains of the uniforms, I mean. But chances are, they are. And if they are, their officer should be told."

War was not pretty, and Sharpe had thought he'd grown used to it by now. Winter in Lisbon had gone a way to making him soft, he thought ruefully. He didn't think he was going to be able to eat much this evening, remembering this liitle lot.

Harris brought over the largest piece they had found, singed but still recognizable as the lower part of a sleeve, grey with a red cuff, and white braiding. The sleeve had been cut at some point, quite cleanly and there were old dried bloodstains. He hesitated about giving it to the Colonel, but Mr Sharpe was still talking to the General, and so he simply tried to catch the Lieutenant's eye as he said: "This is what we found, and these buttons," holding out his hand.

Wellesley nodded - he'd suspected as much.

"Are there any uniforms left to find?" Every corpse he could see was stripped naked, and the smouldering remains of the bonfire had not escaped his attention.

Harris was trying to catch his attention and Sharpe saw that he had something in his hand. "'Scuse me, sir. What is it, Harris?"

What it was, was a piece of grey cloth - a sleeve - and a couple of buttons. The grey looked disturbingly familiar, and he took one of the buttons. Damn.

"The Third," he said, refusing to even try to attempt the French. "Aye. These're the ones we ran into. Poor buggers."

He wished he'd done something to try to persuade them that captivity was the better option. Anything was better than this. He wouldn't wish this fate on his worst enemy...

Then he remembered Stephen's news and imagined Padstowe in a hospital bed in Belem. He might have to revise that opinion.