Sharpe 12 - Sharpe's Battle Read Online Free PDF Page A

awkward and raw-edged as though Sharpe would have preferred to be fighting than talking. Loup shrugged, abandoned his pleasantries and got down to business. “I came to fetch my two men,” he said.
    “Forget them, General,” Sharpe replied. He was determined not to dignify this
    Frenchman by calling him 'sir' or 'monsieur'.
    Loup raised his eyebrows. “They're dead?”
    “They will be.”
    Loup waved a persistent fly away. The steel-plated straps of his helmet hung loose beside his face, resembling the cadenettes of braided hair that French hussars liked to wear hanging from their temples. He drew on his cigar again, then smiled. “Might I remind you, Captain, of the rules of war?”
    Sharpe offered Loup a word that he doubted the Frenchman had heard much in
    Edinburgh's learned society. “I don't take lessons from murderers,” Sharpe went on, “not in the rules of war. What your men did in that village wasn't war. It was a massacre.”
    “Of course it was war,” Loup said equably, “and I don't need lectures from you, Captain.”
    “You might not need a lecture, General, but you damn well need a lesson.”
    Loup laughed. He turned and walked to the stream's edge where he stretched his arms, yawned hugely, then stooped to scoop some water to his mouth. He turned back to Sharpe. “Let me tell you what my job is, Captain, and you will put yourself in my boots. That way, perhaps, you will lose your tedious English moral certainties. My job, Captain, is to police the roads through these mountains and so make the passes safe for the supply wagons of ammunition and food with which we plan to beat you British back to the sea. My enemy is not a soldier dressed in uniform with a colour and a code of honour, but is instead a rabble of civilians who resent my presence. Good! Let them resent me, that is their privilege, but if they attack me, Captain, then I will defend myself and I do it so ferociously, so ruthlessly, so comprehensively, that they will think a thousand times before they attack my men again. You know what the major weapon of the guerrilla is? It is horror, Captain, sheer horror, so I make certain I am more horrible than my enemy, and my enemy in this area is horrible indeed. You have heard of El Castrador?”
    “The Castrator?” Sharpe guessed the translation.
    "Indeed. Because of what he does to French soldiers, only he does it while they are alive and then he lets them bleed to death. El Castrador, I am sorry to say, still lives, but I do assure you that none of my men has been castrated in three months, and do you know why? Because El Castrador's men fear me more than they fear him. I have defeated him, Captain, I have made the mountains secure. In all of Spain, Captain, these are the only hills where
    Frenchmen can ride safely, and why? Because I have used the guerrilleros' weapon against them. I castrate them, just as they would castrate me, only I use a blunter knife.“ Brigadier Loup offered Sharpe a grim smile. ”Now tell me, Captain, if you were in my boots, and if your men were being castrated and blinded and disembowelled and skinned alive and left to die, would you not do as I do?"
    “To children?” Sharpe jerked his thumb at the village.
    Loup's one eye widened in surprise, as though he found Sharpe's objection odd in a soldier. "Would you spare a rat because it's young? Vermin are vermin,
    Captain, whatever their age."
    “I thought you said the mountains were safe,” Sharpe said, “so why kill?”
    “Because last week two of my men were ambushed and killed in a village not far from here. The families of the murderers came here to take refuge, thinking I would not find them. I did find them, and now I assure you, Captain, that no more of my men will be ambushed in Fuentes de Onoro.”
    “They will if I find them there.”
    Loup shook his head sadly. “You are so quick with your threats, Captain. But fight me and I think you will learn caution. But for now? Give me my men and we