Still none of them moved. Those who had been scooping handfuls of gold from the broken chests stared at the tall Englishman who, slowly, his eyes on El Matarife, dismounted. Sharpe unbuckled his sword. He laid it, with his haversack, beside the wheel of the wagon.
El Matarife looked down at the chain, then back to Sharpe as the Rifleman looped the silver links about his upper left arm. Sharpe left a length of the chain to swing free from his arm. ‘Are you a coward, Matarife?’
El Matarife’s answer was to swing himself from his saddle. He dragged La Marquesa down and pushed her towards his men, shouting at them to hold her and keep her. She cried out as she stumbled, as a man reached down and seized her golden hair and held her against the flank of his horse, and as she turned and saw Sharpe standing in the wheel-churned mud and silver.
‘Richard!’ Her eyes were huge, staring in disbelief. Like her captor, in a half-forgotten gesture from her past, she touched her face, her belly, and her breasts in the sign of the cross. ‘Richard?’
‘Helene.’ He smiled at her, seeing her fear, her astonishment, her beauty. Even here the sight of that unfair loveliness struck into his soul like a dagger.
Behind Sharpe, Harper curbed his horse. He took Carbine’s rein, then leaned down and retrieved Sharpe’s sword and haversack. ‘Behind you, sir!’
‘Watch the bastards, Patrick! Put a bullet into them if they take her away!’ Sharpe had spoken in Spanish, a language that Harper had learned from Isabella.
‘Consider it done, sir.’
The Partisans were awed by the huge man who sat on his horse with his two guns, one of them larger than any gun they had ever seen held by a man. Beside Harper was Angel with his rifle in his practised hands. Angel was staring at the woman he thought more beautiful than lust.
The sky was darkening towards night, the west reddened with the sun’s setting. Skeins of smoke, dark blue-grey.against the cloudless sky, stretched above the field of plunder in delicate rills. They were the gun’s detritus, the drifting remnants of the battle that had been and gone on Vitoria’s plain.
El Matanfe shrugged off his heavy cloak. ‘You can ride away, Englishman, You will live.’
Sharpe laughed. ‘I shall count the ways of your death, coward.’
El Matanfe stooped, picked up the chain, and knotted it about his upper arm. He drew his knife and, with a patronising smile on his wet lips that showed through the thick hair of his face, threw it to Sharpe.
It turned in the air, catching the dying sun, and landed at Sharpe’s feet.
It was bone handled, with a blade as long as a bayonet’s. The blade looked delicate. It was thin, needle pointed, and its two edges were feathered where it had been sharpened on the stone. This weapon, Sharpe knew, would draw blood at the lightest stroke. In El Matarife’s comfortable grip, taken from one of his lieutenants, was a similar blade; as bright, as sharp, as deadly.
El Matanfe stepped backwards and the silver chain slowly lifted from the mud. The links clinked softly. The Partisan smiled. ‘You’re a dead man, Englishman.’
Sharpe remembered the terrible skill with which his enemy had taken the eyes from the French prisoner. He waited.
El Matarife’s men were silent. From the city came the jangling of church bells, announcing that the French were gone and that the first Allied troops were in the narrow streets. The chain tightened. The sun reddened its links.
The Slaughterman smiled. His poleaxe was stuck into the ground at the edge of the circle made by his men. He pulled against Sharpe’s strength until the silver links were as taut as a bar of steel, and the only evidence of the huge strengths that opposed each other were the scraps of mud that fell from the tight links.
Sharpe felt the pressure on his arm. El Matanfe was pulling with extraordinary force. Sharpe pulled back and saw the Slaughterman’s eyes judging him.
The Slaughterman jerked. Sharpe’s arm came up, he jerked back, and the Slaughterman was grunting and pulling, and Sharpe was jarred forward. He pulled back, knowing he did not have the same brute strength as his enemy, but when he saw the Slaughterman smile and gather his strength for a massive pull, Sharpe jumped forward to throw the man off balance.
The Slaughterman was ready, he had expected it, invited it, and he closed the ten foot gap with lightning speed and his knife slashed up towards Sharpe, bright in the dusk light. The Rifleman swerved, not bothering to reply, backed away, and his left hand caught the chain for greater leverage and he pulled on it with all his power and the Slaughterman did not move.
El Matanfe looked at Sharpe’s gritted teeth and laughed. ‘Your death will be slow, Englishman.’
The crowd, swollen by people from the city, shouted an abrupt, brief shout in appreciation of the Slaughterman’s skill. El Matanfe acknowledged the cheer with a wave of his knife and then hooked his left hand over the chain. He stepped back, tightening it.
The power came. It pulled Sharpe forward. He could not resist it and he saw the Slaughterman smile with the ease of the task. Sharpe braced his feet, but his boots slid in the mire and he was being dragged towards his opponent. Then the jerking began, the vicious, hard jerks that pulled him off balance and he tripped, fell, and the chain was pulling his arm from his socket and when the pressure stopped he rolled to one side, knowing the knife was slicing down, only to hear the Slaughterman laughing.
‘The Englishman is frightened!’
Sharpe stood up. His jacket and overalls were smeared with mud. The crowd was catcalling, jeering him. The Slaughterman had simply made a fool of him to demonstrate his strength. El Matarife was smiling now; smiling with relief and triumph. He had made this kind of fighting his speciality, and he would play with Sharpe as Sharpe had watched him play with the French prisoner.
El Matarife beckoned Sharpe forward. ‘Come, Englishman, come! Come on! Come to your death.’
Sharpe dropped his left arm and flexed it.
He went forward.
El Matarife waited. He was crouching, the knife low. He began to shake the chain, trying to loop it about Sharpe’s blade, but Sharpe simply held his left arm out and the chain went away from him.
‘Come, Englishman.’
They were close now, four feet from each other, both men staring into the other’s eyes, both knives held low. Neither moved. The crowd was silent.
When El Matarife moved it was as fast as a scorpion’s strike, but Sharpe had fought all his life and his own speed matched that of the Spaniard. Sharpe stepped back and the blade hissed past his face. Sharpe smiled.
El Matarife bellowed at him, trying to frighten him, and then looped the chain high so it would fall over Sharpe’s head. Sharpe caught the loop as it came, jerked on it, and sliced up with his knife as the Spaniard’s guard was lifted, and Sharpe saw the sudden fear on the beast’s face as El Matarife realised Sharpe’s speed and as the Rifleman’s knife whipped upwards.
‘Uno,’ El Matarife’s right forearm was bleeding.
The crowd was silent.
Sharpe had gone back as fast as he had moved forward. The Spaniard growled. He had underestimated the Englishman, even let him live as a boast to the crowd, but now El Matarife planned Sharpe’s death. He stepped back, tightening the chain, and began again to try and tug Sharpe off balance, jerking the silver chain with massive strength, but this time Sharpe stepped into the pull, letting himself be dragged forward, and the Slaughterman had to step back and keep stepping back until he was at the edge of the fighting space with nowhere to go and Sharpe laughed at him. ‘You are a traitor, Spaniard, and your mother whored with swine.’
El Matarife roared and leaped forward. The knife seared high, coming at Sharpe’s eyes, dropped, and slashed upwards.
‘Uno!’ El Matarife was shouting it in triumph and the crowd shouted with him.