Bernard Cornwell: Sharpe’s Honour: The Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813

Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

Previously published in paperback by Fontana 1986

Reprinted seven times

First published in Great Britain by Collins 1985

Copyright © Rifleman Productions Ltd 1985

Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook Edition © July 2009 ISBN: 9780007338696

Version: 2017-05-06

This novel is a work of fiction. The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Sharpe’s Honour is for Jasper Partington

and Shona Crawford Poole,

who marched from the very start

We’ll search every room for to find rich treasure,

And when we have got it we’ll spend it at leisure.

We’ll card it, we’ll dice it, we’ll spend without measure,

And when it’s all gone, bid adieu to all pleasure.

From: The Grenadier’s March (Anon), Quoted in THE RAMBLING SOLDIER, edited by Roy Palmer, Penguin Books, 1977.

‘Men huddled on hillsides, anxiously surveying the enemy guns trained against them and steeling themselves for some kind of counter-attack. They are beautifully observed and, in their evocation of quiet heroism, pulse with rare humanity’

Sunday Telegraph

Table of Contents

Title Page SHARPE’S HONOUR Richard Sharpe and the Vitoria Campaign, February to June 1813 BERNARD CORNWELL

Copyright Copyright Published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk Previously published in paperback by Fontana 1986 Reprinted seven times First published in Great Britain by Collins 1985 Copyright © Rifleman Productions Ltd 1985 Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Ebook Edition © July 2009 ISBN: 9780007338696 Version: 2017-05-06 This novel is a work of fiction. The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Dedication Sharpe’s Honour is for Jasper Partington and Shona Crawford Poole, who marched from the very start

Epigraph We’ll search every room for to find rich treasure, And when we have got it we’ll spend it at leisure. We’ll card it, we’ll dice it, we’ll spend without measure, And when it’s all gone, bid adieu to all pleasure. From: The Grenadier’s March (Anon), Quoted in THE RAMBLING SOLDIER, edited by Roy Palmer, Penguin Books, 1977.

Map

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Epilogue

Historical Note

Sharpe’s Story

About the Author

The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)

The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)

Also by Bernard Cornwell

About the Publisher

There was a secret that would win the war for France. Not a secret weapon, nor some surprise strategy that would send the enemies of France reeling in defeat, but a sleight of politics that would drive the British from Spain without a musket being fired. It was a secret that must be kept, and must be paid for.

To which end, on a pitiless winter’s day in 1813, two men climbed into the northern hills of Spain. Whenever the road forked they took the lesser path. They climbed by frost-hardened tracks, going ever higher into a place of rocks, eagles, wind, and cruelty, until at last, at a place where the far sea could be seen glittering beneath a February sun, they came to a hidden valley that smelt of blood.

There were sentries at the valley’s head; men wrapped in rags and pelts, men with muzzle-blackened muskets. They stopped the travellers, challenged them, then incongruously knelt to one of the horsemen, who, with a gloved hand, made a blessing over their heads. The two men rode on.

The smaller of the two travellers, the keeper of this secret of secrets, had a thin, sallow face that was pock-marked by the old scars of smallpox. He wore spectacles that chafed the skin behind his ears. He stopped his horse above a rock amphitheatre that had been made when this valley was mined for iron. He looked with his cold eyes at the scene below him. ‘I thought you didn’t fight the bulls in winter.’

It was a crude bullfight, nothing like the splendour of the entertainment provided in the barricaded plazas of the big cities to the south. Perhaps a hundred men cheered from the sides of the rock pit, while, beneath them, two men tormented a black, angry bull that was slick with the blood drawn from its weakened neck muscles. The animal was weak anyway, ill fed through the winter, and its charges were pitiful, easily evaded, and its end swift. It was not killed with the traditional sword, nor with the small knife plunged between its vertebrae, but by a pole-axe.

A huge man, clothed in leather beneath a cloak of wolf’s fur, performed the act. He swung the great axe, its blade glittering in the weak sun, and the animal tried to swerve from the blow, failed, and it bellowed one last useless challenge at the sky as the axe took its life and cut down, through bone and pipes and sinews and muscles, and the men about the rock pit cheered.

The small man, whose face showed distaste for what he saw, gestured at the axeman. ‘That’s him?’