Sharpe waited. His head was ringing and blood was dripping from his ear. A bomb exploded in the courtyard, twitching the bloodied bodies of the dead infantrymen. A carcass was burning there and its flames set fire to a soldier’s ammunition pouch which crackled angrily. “I’m not going to shoot,” Lavisser said again, closer now. “Talk to me. Are you there?”
“I’m here,” Sharpe said.
Lavisser, the pistol held away from his body to show he meant no harm, stepped cautiously onto the balcony. “See?” He gestured with the pistol. “No more shooting, Richard.”
Sharpe had the volley gun at his waist and it’s seven barrels were pointing at Lavisser. He kept it there.
Lavisser glanced at the gun, then smiled. “Your woman’s safe. She ran out through the arch.”
“My woman?”
“Mister Bang seemed to think she was sweet on you.”
“Bang was an idiot.”
“My dear Richard, they’re all idiots. This is Denmark! Dull, insufferably dull. It threatens to be the most respectable country on God’s earth.” He flinched as a bomb fell into the storeroom over the archway, but he did not take his eyes from Sharpe. “Our gunners are showing rare form tonight. Mister Bang says you’re going to stay here.”
“So?”
“So am I, Richard, and I could do with a friend who isn’t insufferably respectable.”
Sharpe took a step forward for the heat behind him was growing intolerable. Lavisser stepped back. He still held the pistol out to one side. Clouter was walking down the far side of the balcony now, then he nimbly leaped off the balustrade onto the mast-rigged flagpole. The tarred ratlines were burning, but he scrambled down with such practiced speed that he came to no harm.
“So what’s the price of your friendship?” Sharpe asked Lavisser. “The list in my pocket?”
“Do you really care about the men on that list?” Lavisser asked. “Who are they? Unknown merchants in Prussia and Hanover? Let the French have them and the French will look after us. What do you want to be, Richard? A general in the Danish army? It can be arranged, believe me. You want a title? The Emperor is remarkably generous with titles. Everything is new in Europe, Richard. The old titles mean nothing! If you can take power then you can be a lord, a prince, an archduke or a king.” Lavisser glanced down into the courtyard where Clouter was threatening him with the reloaded volley gun. “Is your black friend going to shoot me?”
“Let him be, Clouter!”
“Aye aye, sir.” Clouter lowered the weapon.
Sharpe again stepped forward, forcing Lavisser another pace back toward the burning chapel. Lavisser was worrying now and began to swing the pistol to face Sharpe, but Sharpe twitched his own volley gun and Lavisser obediently held the pistol out to his right side again. “I’m serious, Richard,” he said. “You and me? We can be like wolves in a land of woolly baa-lambs.”
“I’m still wearing British uniform,” Sharpe said, “or hadn’t you noticed?”
“And what will Britain do for you?” Lavisser asked. “You think it will ever accept you? Besides, you’re staying here. You’re going to need money, Richard, money and friends. I offer you both. You really think you could endure Denmark without either?” He smiled with sudden relief because Sharpe had at last moved the seven-barreled gun so that it no longer pointed at Lavisser’s waist. Now, instead, it was aimed to the side. “I confess I would like your friendship, Richard,” Lavisser said.
“Why?”
“Because you’re a rogue,” Lavisser said, “and I like rogues. I always have. And you’re efficient, impressively efficient. Like our gunners tonight.” The gunners had turned Copenhagen into hell. Great swathes of the city were burning, the flames leaping high above the remaining spires and it seemed to Sharpe, glancing above Lavisser’s head, that a bow of fire like a rainbow of pure flame was arched across the city. It was a glimpse of the world’s ending, of hell’s vengeance. It was efficient, right enough.
“I’m a thug,” Sharpe said, “remember?”
“I aspire to be the same,” Lavisser said. “This world is ruled by thugs. What is the Emperor but a thug? What is the Duke of York but another thug? Albeit a dim one. Thugs win, Richard. To the powerful go the spoils.”
“I just have one problem,” Sharpe said. The heat was burning his back, but he stayed still. “You threatened Astrid.”
“Don’t be absurd, Richard,” Lavisser said with a smile. “Do you really think I meant it? Of course not. I like her far too much. Not as you do, of course, though I must say I admire your taste.” He glanced at the volley gun and saw it was still pointed away from him. “I would never have hurt her, Richard.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“No! What do you take me for, Richard?”
“A bastard,” Sharpe said, “a lying bloody bastard,” and he pulled the volley gun’s trigger. The seven bullets whipped up into the smoke and snatched the pistol out of Lavisser’s hand. They also ripped his hand and wrist into bloody shreds so that Lavisser gaped at it, then shrieked as the pain struck.
“You bastard,” Sharpe said, “you utter bloody bastard,” and he tossed the seven-barreled gun down to Clouter and drew the cutlass, which he shoved hard into Lavisser’s chest to drive him back and Lavisser snatched at his own sword hilt with his left hand, but he could not draw the weapon across his body, and Sharpe speared his chest with the cutlass point again and Lavisser staggered back a further step, then saw that the balcony ended at a doorway that had once led to the chapel’s gallery and now opened onto an inferno.
“No!” he screamed and tried to lurch forward, but Sharpe was quicker. He rammed the heavy blade at Lavisser’s chest, jarring him hard back, and Lavisser teetered on the doorway’s edge. Beneath him was the red-hot fire of burning pews and bibles. “No!”
“Go to hell,” Sharpe said and pushed again, but this time Lavisser caught hold of the cutlass blade with his good hand and clung on to the steel to keep himself from falling.
“Pull me back,” he said to Sharpe, “please. Please!”
Sharpe let go of the cutlass and Lavisser fell back into the burning chapel. He screamed as he fell, his arms outspread, then thumped into the flames.
The balcony lurched under Sharpe. He vaulted the rail and jumped down to the yard. The archway was filled with smoke and brilliant with flames, but Sharpe reckoned they could dash through safely enough. He took the seven-barreled gun from Clouter then looked at the fire that roared and boiled in the archway. “Are you feeling lucky, Clouter?”
“Luckier than that poor bastard, sir.”
“Then go!”
They ran.
The city surrendered next morning. Seven thousand bombs had fallen in the night and some of the streets blazed so fiercely that no one could get within a hundred paces. Charred pages of the university’s library had rained across a hundred square miles of Zealand, while the cathedral was a gaunt frame of scorched stone in which a heap of embers smoked like the pit. Bodies lay in neat rows in parks, squares and on the harbor quays. There were not nearly enough coffins, so folk whose homes were undamaged brought their sheets and did their best to make the dead decent. The fleet was whole, unburned and captured. No one had come to light the fuses and even if they had the ships would not have burned for Captain Chase had stripped the incendiaries away.
British soldiers fought the flames while a redcoat military band played outside the Amalienborg Palace. General Peymann listened to the unfamiliar music and tried to pay attention to the flattering remarks made by the city’s new masters, but he could not rid himself of a feeling of gross injustice. “There were women and children here,” he said again and again, but he spoke in Danish and the British officers, who dined off the palace’s finest porcelain plates, did not understand him. “We did not deserve this,” he finally protested, insisting one of his own aides offered a translation.