Sharpe's Enemy by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page B

words.
    ‘Why would they want to ransom her, sir, if she’s their insurance against attack?’
    ‘You’re not a fool, are you. God knows the answer to that. They have deemed to send us a letter and the letter informs us that we may send the money on a certain date, at a certain time, and so on and so on. I want you to go.’
    ‘Alone?’
    ‘You can take one other man, that’s all.’
    ‘The money?’
    ‘Sir Augustus will provide it. He claims his lady wife is a pearl beyond price so he’s busy writing notes of hand to get her back.’
    ‘And if they won’t release her?’
    Nairn smiled. He was huddled back in his dressing gown. ‘I don’t believe they will. They just want the money, that’s all. Sir Augustus made a half-hearted offer to deliver it, but I turned him down much to his relief. I suppose two hostages are better than one and a Knight of the Realm makes a useful bargaining piece. Anyway, I need a soldier to go up there.’
    Sharpe raised the book. ‘He’s a soldier.’
    ‘He’s a bloody author, Sharpe, all words and wind. No, you go, man. Take a look at their defences. Even if you don’t bring the filly back you’ll know how to go and get her.’
    Sharpe smiled. ‘A rescue?’
    Nairn nodded. ‘A rescue. Sir Augustus Farthingdale, Major, is our government’s military representative to the Portuguese government which means, between you and me, damn all except that he gets to eat a lot of dinners and meet pretty young ladies. How he stays so thin, God only knows. He is, however, popular in Lisbon. The government likes him. His wife, moreover, is supposed to be from some high-up family and we’re not going to get letters of thanks if we casually allow her to be raped by a gang of scum in the mountains. We have got to get her out. Once that’s done our hands are free and we can cook Pot-au-Feu in a very hot cauldron. You’re happy to go?’
    Sharpe looked through the window. A score of smoke trails rose vertically from the chimneys of Frenada, smoke fading into a flawless cold sky. Of course he would go. Nairn had not let Sir Augustus go because the Colonel might become a hostage himself, but Nairn had not expressed any such fear about Sharpe. He smiled at the Major General. ‘I assume I’m expendable, sir.’
    ‘You’re a soldier, aren’t you? Of course you’re expendable!’
    Sharpe was still smiling. He was a soldier, and a lady needed rescuing, and was that not what soldiers throughout history had done? The smile became wider. ‘Of course I’ll go, sir. With pleasure.’
    In the churches of Spain they were praying for revenge on the perpetrators of Adrados’s misery. The prayers were being answered.

CHAPTER 4
    La Entrada de Dios.
    The Gateway of God.
    It looked it, too, from two hundred feet below on a bright winter morning as Sharpe and Harper walked their patient horses up the track which wound between rocks whose shadows still harboured the night’s frost. Adrados lay just beyond the saddle of the pass, but the pass was the Gateway of God.
    To left and right were rocky peaks, a nightmare landscape, savage and sharp. In front of them was the smooth grass of the road through the Sierra. Guarding that road was the Gateway.
    To the right of the pass was the castle. The Castillo de la Virgen. El Cid himself had known that castle, had stood on its ramparts before riding out against the curved scimitars of Islam. Legend said that three Muslim Kings had died in the dungeons beneath the Castle of the Virgin, died refusing to profess Christianity, and their ghosts were said to wander wraith-like in the Gateway of God. The castle had stood years beyond number, built before the Wars of God were won, but when the Muslims had been thrown back across the sea, the castle had begun to decay. The Spanish had moved from the high places of refuge, back down the passes into the softer plains. Yet the castle still stood, a refuge for foxes and ravens, its keep and gatehouse still holding the