Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe's Revenge, Sharpe's Waterloo, Sharpe's Devil Read Online Free Page B

guard wears the white cockade now, and so would the other half if they had the guts.’ Ducos stood and crossed to a window from which he stared at the rain which swept in great swathes across the Place St Julien. ‘The wagon will be safe here tonight,’ he said, ‘and your men can take some of the empty billets.’ Ducos turned, suddenly smiling. ‘But you, Colonel, will do me the honour of taking supper at my lodgings?’
    All Maillot wished to do was sleep, but he knew in what favour the Emperor held this small bespectacled man and so, out of courtesy and because Ducos pressed the invitation so warmly, the Colonel reluctantly accepted.
    Yet, to Maillot’s surprise, Ducos proved a surprisingly entertaining host, and Maillot, who had snatched two hours’ exhausted sleep in the afternoon, found himself warming to the small man who talked so frankly of his services to the Emperor. ‘I was never a natural soldier like yourself, Colonel,’ Ducos said modestly. ‘My talents were used to corrupt, outguess and cheat the enemy.’ Ducos did not talk of his past failures that night, but of his successes such as the time when he had lured some Spanish guerrilla leaders to truce talks, and how they had all been slaughtered when they trustingly arrived. Ducos smiled at the memory. ‘I sometimes miss Spain.’
    ‘I never fought there,’ Maillot helped himself to more brandy, ‘but I was told about the guerilleros. How can you fight men who don’t wear uniforms?’
    ‘By killing as many civilians as you can, of course,’ Ducos said, then, wistfully, ‘I do miss the warm climate.’
    Maillot laughed at that. ‘You were evidently not in Russia.’
    ‘I was not.’ Ducos shivered at the very thought, then twisted in his chair to peer into the night. ‘It’s stopped raining, my dear Maillot. You’ll take a turn in the garden?’
    The two men walked the sodden lawn and their cigar smoke drifted up through the branches of the pear-trees. Maillot must still have been remembering the Russian Campaign, for he suddenly uttered a short laugh then commented how very clever the Emperor had been in Moscow.
    ‘Clever?’ Ducos sounded surprised. ‘It didn’t seem very clever to those of us who weren’t there.’
    ‘That’s my point,’ Maillot said. ‘We heard about the unrest at home, so what did the Emperor do? He sent orders that the female dancers of the Paris ballet were to perform without skirts or stockings!’ Maillot laughed at the memory, then turned to the garden’s high brick wall and unbuttoned his breeches. He went on talking as he pissed. ‘We heard later that Paris forgot all about the deaths in Russia, because all they could talk about was Mademoiselle Rossillier’s naked thighs. Were you in Paris at the time?’
    ‘I was in Spain.’ Ducos was standing directly behind Maillot. As the older man had talked, Ducos had drawn a small pistol from his tail pocket and silently eased back its oiled cock. Now he aimed the pistol at the base of Maillot’s neck. ‘I was in Spain,’ Ducos said again, and he screwed his eyes tight shut as he pulled the trigger. The ball shattered one of Maillot’s vertebrae, throwing the grey head back in a bloody paroxysm. The Colonel seemed to give a remorseful sigh as he collapsed. His head jerked forward to thump against the brickwork, then the body twitched once and was quite still. The foul-smelling pistol smoke lingered beneath the pear branches.
    Ducos retched, gagged, and managed to control himself. A voice shouted from a neighbouring house, wanting an
    explanation for the gunshot, but when Ducos made no reply there was no further question.
    By dawn the body was hidden under compost.
    Ducos had not slept. It was not conscience, nor disgust at Maillot’s death that had kept him awake, but the enormity of what that death represented. Ducos, by pulling the trigger, had abandoned all that had once been most dear to him. He had been raised to believe in the sanctity of the