Second day on the march

There was another body, and vultures impatiently waiting on the ground nearby. Perkins used his rifle to push the brambles aside and saw the man's face, or what was left of it. The vultures and perhaps wolves had been at him, but it was obvious that much of the damage had been inflicted by human hands. Birds and wolves did not remove fingers one by one, nor were they so uniform in the selective removal of eyes.

"Dear God." This was not the result of a battle or a skirmish. These two men had been - Harris looked at Perkins. "Are you all right? Because I think there's more - further down the valley. But I don't think there's anyone alive around here."

Carty stayed where he was. Even if Harris had not given him an order, he doubted he would be able to move. He pulled away some of the brambles, not noticing as they scratched and pricked his hands. He shook. They had placed the man back-down on one of the thorn bushes, and then hammered stakes through his palms, so that he could choose between the exhausting, lung-crushing effort of holding up his body on impaled hands, or collapsing onto the two-inch long spikes. He felt too horrified to cry, and too sick to vomit. The man's eyes were open, staring up at the sky in agony, and his lips were pulled back to show his teeth in an open, silently-screaming bloodied mouth.

"Ha- Harris. Harris!" Carty shouted, forgetting that he was a scout, and forgetting that he was a rifleman. He was just terrified.

Carty was calling him. Harris went back to him, to look at what he had found. And pulled the boy away, to a place on the track where he could not see either of the bodies. "Sit down," he said. "You're not going to faint on us, are you?" But he felt like throwing up himself. War was one thing, torture was another. And these two men had been tortured to death and then - at least in the case of the one Carty had stumbled over - mutilated.

"Perkins," he said. "Stay with Carty." And moved off towards the big brown birds who hopped away from him as he approached.

Perkins nodded, unable to answer for a moment. When Harris moved away, Perkins suddenly knelt on the ground and was sick. "Oh God help me," he moaned. The nausea had strangely brought tears to his eyes, and he was too shocked to wipe them away as they rolled down his face.

Bugger it. His instincts were not getting any quieter. But he couldn't just leave the rest of his men simply because the hairs on the back of his neck were crawling.

He wondered where his scouting party was, and wished he'd sent Cooper or Hagman with them. Or better yet, Harper. He shivered, despite the heat of the sun, and glanced around the hills, as if the landscape could tell him what was wrong.

Harris propelled him away down the track, gently turning him away so that he faced down into the valley, not the wood. It did not matter - he could still see that man, with his stretched jaw, and the pitch-black blood everywhere, and the scratched marks on his chest that he knew was writing, and the stakes, and his eyes, and the hole...

There was a tiny flower, a little pink-purple thing, squashed and missing a petal. He stared at it as though his life depended on it; he heard retching and a prayer. "Ben?"

Stephen finally spotted him, quite a way ahead of the rest of the column - a fair head, streaked and highlighted by the sun, set atop tense shoulders, and he spurred Bethany on, putting the packet of papers back inside his jacket. "Lieutenant Sharpe!"

The vultures bounced away from their prize as Harris approached. As he had expected, it was another dead man. This one had been stabbed - hacked rather - many times as he tried to scrabble away. And then over the random hacking, a series of more targeted cuts, on the genitals and the chest, and the face. A very young man, not much older than Perkins and Carty.

Two of the vultures had moved only as far as one of the oaks, and were perching on its branches. Another was standing underneath it. There was something there too.

After a few minutes, Perkins began to look around, still keeping close to Carty. Among the trees he saw a bloody rope hanging from a high branch, though the victim was no longer attached to it. Crows - or ravens? - were complaining loudly.

"Carty. C'mere and look," he said, still whispering. He pointed across the path to where a very large scorch mark was visible amidst the tall grass. A bonfire?

A voice, somewhere behind him, calling his name. He stopped and turned to see a civilian riding a horse, waving and shouting.

Not just any civilian, but Stephen Maturin. He stepped aside, out of the way of the marching men. Was that Padstowe's horse that the Doctor was riding? It certainly looked like her... but where was the Captain?

"Stephen? What's wrong?"

Stephen reined Bethany in, and dismounted gingerly. He had left his crutch in the city, thinking that it would be too cumbersome on the horse, but he wanted to give his news properly. "I am afraid I have some bad news, Richard," he said, looking over Sharpe's shoulder at the other men in his company. He was by nature secretive to the point of paranoia, and he did not know what Sharpe did not mind the other men knowing about him.

His stomach clenched. "What?"

He knew there'd been something bad about to happen...

"Jonathan Padstowe. He was attacked, the night-" He fought to keep his emotions from showing on his face, guilt foremost among them, but his weariness made it difficult. "The night I was looking for him. It was not to do with his work," he said, not pausing for a second, but lowering his voice so that only Sharpe had a chance of hearing him, "for if that were the case they would have certainly seen him dead, and stolen some papers he had. It was a robbery: purse and watch gone."

He shook his head. "It was more than that, though; it was a deliberate desire to injure. Skull fracture, broken ribs, severe bruising, and they opened up his shoulder." How he could speak without his voice catching, he did not know. "I found him at the hospital in Belem yesterday evening."

Hakeswill.

It had to be.

"Did... did anyone see owt? Any way of identifyin' who done it? And Jonathan..." He took a breath. "Is he goin' to make it?"

With no proof that it was Hakeswill, there was no way to bring the man to justice. And it seemed his personal vendetta against Sharpe had grown to encompass his friend, for whatever reason.

No; for one particular reason. He'd been defending officer at Williams' court martial, and had got the lad off.

Walking across to the charred circle, Perkins took notice of a more solitary tree next to the path. The tree had attracted many carrion birds and now he saw the reason. There was an arm swinging from one of the branches - just an arm, hanging down from the elbow as if a man had climbed the tree and was now letting his hand sway lazily in the breeze. But there was no man attached to the limb. On another branch he saw a leg, this time sticking up as if to kick at the skies. Horrified, he realized that the indistinct large black shape he was seeing must be a man's head. Perkins forcibly turned his own head away and focused instead on the charred remains of the bonfire.

"What's that?" he asked, poking at the ashes with his bayonet.

Perkins had found something else. Harris followed him, and caught him by the arm, his brain refusing to take in what they had found. The bonfire was easier to look at than the man's head. "I - it's cloth." He knelt down to look more closely. "Cloth," he repeated. But these men would not have come here naked. He picked it up and swore. "Perkins," he said, showing him the grey cloth with the distinctive frogging pattern. "Go and fetch Mr Sharpe. Tell him - Tell him to come here at once."

"If there is no internal rupture, yes - with the blessing," he added, with a quick pleading glance to the sky. "He responded - did not wake, but certainly responded - when I spoke to him, so no coma, no need to trepan, and Mister Whiting treated his shoulder, so he did not even lose too much blood. But he will not be marching for a while. I will stay in Lisbon, and move him out of the hospital as soon as he is able to be moved - the staff there are most conscientious, but those places are rife with infection, especially when new casualties start arriving. I will look after him," he said, sensing Sharpe's need for reassurance.

He spread his hands hopelessly. "I will ask him when he wakes up, but I do not expect much - two blows to the head, and amnesia is almost a certainty." He shook his head. "It looks to just be a random robbery, but... my instinct tells me that there is something more. It was a vicious beating, Richard - cruelty of that level is deliberate. There is more to this than a thief or a drunkard." He looked away. "If only I had carried on searching..."

"You wouldn't have found anythin'," Sharpe said, bleakly. "I reckon I know who did it, and there won't be any proof to find. There never is, and he'll get rid of his loot soon, if he ain't done so already." There wasn't anything he could do to help his friend, not here, on the march.

"Wellesley'll have to be told," he said. "You look all in, like. Wait here for him to come up. It'll give you a bit of a rest, and he won't be long in gettin' here." He paused and unslung his canteen. "You look like you could do wi' drink, though. Here." He passed it over.

Perkins ran as fast as he could, glad to be away from the slaughterhouse scene. He ran along the valley between the hills, not bothering to retrace their previous more discreet path. He finaly saw the redcoats ahead and he skidded to a stop, aware that they had seen him too. "Please, God, don't let them panic and shoot me. That would be just my luck, the idiots." Running to meet them, and then passing them, passing more and more of them, and then finally the rifles - the 60th, the 95th.

"Mister Sharpe!" he cried, spotting him at last.

Either Vickery or Sharpe, Edrington did not really mind which of them he found, but he wanted to know if they did intend to do a 'training day' or at least as much of a day as could be managed after a day's march. He saw Sharpe standing talking to a civilian, a short pale man holding the reins of a horse. Edrington slid from the back of his own horse.

Someone else wanted him now. He was getting to be popular, all of a sudden.

This time it was Perkins, running, rifle at the trail, looking... haunted, was the word that occurred to Sharpe first.

"Right, lad, slow down, get your breath back and make your report," he said, sending Stephen an apologetic look.

"You know?" Stephen took the offered canteen and drank, selfishly relieved that someone else knew, that there was someone he could share his worry with. "Who was it?" He handed back the canteen, his eyes dark in their pallor. "I will kill him."

He looked up - young Perkins, running as though the wraiths of hell were on his trail, calling for Richard.

Perkins nearly collided with the colonel. "Oh, I'm sorry sir," he muttered breathlessly but without slowing his pace. Here was Mister Sharpe at last.

"Sir!" He paused a moment to gasp. "Mister Harris says, will you please come quick. We've found something." His eyes flicked at the doctor briefly, but he did not speak to him.

"You won't, Stephen. I already promised meself that honour. Ten years ago."

"Found summat? What sort of summat? And where?" Was it his imagination, or did the young Rifleman look a little green round the gills?