"Dregara? No."
"He rode in an hour ago, with a half troop. He was asking about you."
"About me? I don't know him," Sharpe said.
"He knows you, and your companion. They're across the parade ground, around an open fire. Dregara's got a striped blanket over his shoulders."
Sharpe half-turned and surreptitiously stared across the fort to where the group of cavalry troopers squatted about their fire. Sharpe suspected, but could not be sure, that it was the same patrol that had saluted Marquinez at lunchtime.
Morillo drew Sharpe away from the ears of his own men. "Sergeant Dregara tells me he proposes to escort you tomorrow."
"I don't need an escort."
"Maybe what you need and what you will receive are very different, Colonel Sharpe. Things often are in Chile. Do I need to explain more?"
Sharpe had walked with the tall Spanish Captain into the open gate of the fort. Both men stopped and stared toward the distant sea which, from this eyrie, looked like a wrinkled sheet of hammered silver. "I assume, Captain," Sharpe said, "that you regret the death of Don Bias?"
Morillo was tense as he skirted the betrayal of the present Captain-General with his admiration of the last. "Yes, sir, I do."
"It happened not far from here, am I right?"
"A half day's journey south, sir." Morillo turned and pointed across the misted valleys of the wild country. "It wasn't on the main road, but off to the east."
"Strange, isn't it," Sharpe said, "that Don Bias cleared the rebels out of this region, yet was ambushed here by those same rebels?"
"Things are often strange in Chile, sir." Morillo spoke very warily.
"Perhaps," Sharpe said pointedly, "you could patrol southward tomorrow? Along the main road?"
Morillo, understanding exactly what Sharpe was suggesting, shook his head. "Sergeant Dregara brought me orders. I'm to ride to Valdivia tomorrow. I'm to leave a dozen men on post here, and the rest are to go to the Citadel with me. We're to report to Captain Marquinez before two o'clock in the afternoon."
"Meaning an early start," Sharpe said, "that will leave my friend and I alone with Sergeant Dregara?"
'Yes, sir." Morillo stooped to light a cigar. The wind whipped the smoke northward. He snapped shut the glowing tinderbox and pushed it into his sabretache. "The orders are signed by Captain-General Bautista. I've never received orders direct from a General before." Morillo drew on his cigar and Sharpe felt a chill creep up his spine. "You should also understand, sir," Morillo spoke with an admirable understatement, "that General Bautista is not kind to men who disobey his orders."
"I do understand that, Captain."
"I'd like to help you, sir, truly I would. General Vivar was a good man." Morillo shook his head ruefully. "When he was in command we had a score of forts like this one. We were training native cavalry. We were aggressive! Now?" He shrugged. "Now the only patrols are to keep this road open. We don't really know what's happening fifty miles east."
Sharpe turned to look back into the fort. "These aren't built for defense."
"No, sir. They're just refuges where tired men can spend a few nights in comparative safety. General Vivar deliberately made them uncomfortable so that we wouldn't be tempted to live in them permanently. He believed our place was out there." Morillo waved toward the darkening hills.
The temporary nature of the fort's accommodation was suggesting an idea to Sharpe. There was only one walled and roofed structure, a log cabin which Sharpe guessed was the officer's perquisite, while the other cavalrymen were sheltered beneath the overhang of the firestep. Essentially the fort was nothing more than a walled bivouac; there was not even a water supply inside the walls. The horses had to be watered at the stream at the ridge's foot, and any other drinking water had to be lugged up from the same place. Sharpe gestured at the log cabin. "Your quarters, Captain?"
"Yes, sir."
"Maybe Mister Harper and I can share them with you?"
Morillo frowned, not quite understanding the request, but he nodded anyway. "We'll be cramped, but you're welcome."
"What time do you rouse the men?" Sharpe asked.
"Usually at six. We'd expect to leave at seven."
"Could you leave earlier? While it was dark?"
Morillo nodded cautiously. "I could."
Sharpe smiled. "I'm thinking, Captain, that if Sergeant Dregara is convinced Mister Harper and I are still asleep, he won't disturb us. He may even wait till midmorning before he ventures to knock on the door of your quarters."
Morillo understood the ruse, but looked doubtful. "He'll surely see your horses are gone."
"He might not notice if the horses are missing. After all, his horses and a dozen of yours will still be here. But he'll notice if the mule is gone, so I'll just have to leave it here, won't I?"
Morillo drew on his cigar, then blew a stream of smoke toward the distant sea. "Captain-General Bautista's orders are addressed to me. They say nothing about you, sir, and if you choose to leave at three in the morning, then I can't stop you, can I?"
"No, Captain, you can't. And thank you."
But Morillo was not finished. "I'd still be unhappy about you using the main road, sir. Even if you get a six-hour start on Dregara, you'll be traveling slowly, while he knows the short cuts." Morillo smiled. "I'll give you Ferdinand."
"Ferdinand?"
"You'll meet him in the morning." Morillo seemed amused, but would not say more.
The two men went back into the fort where the cooking fires crackled and smoked. Sentries paced the firestep as darkness seeped up from the valleys to engulf the sky and the mountains. Sulphurous yellow clouds shredded off the Andean peaks to spill toward the seaward plains, patterning the stars and shadowing the moon. An hour after sundown, Sharpe and Harper accompanied Captain Morillo as he went around the cooking fires to announce that his Valdivia patrol would be leaving three hours before dawn. Men groaned at the news, but Sharpe heard the humor behind their reaction and knew that at least these men still had confidence in their cause. Not all Vivar's work had gone to waste.
"And you, senor?" Sergeant Dregara, who had been sitting at the fire with Morillo's sergeants, looked slyly up at Sharpe. "You will go early, too?"
"Good Lord, no!" Sharpe yawned. "I'm an English gentleman, Sergeant, and English gentlemen don't stir till at least an hour after dawn."
"And the Irish not for another hour after that," Harper put in happily.
Dregara was a middle-aged runt of a man with yellow teeth, a lined face, a scarred forehead and the eyes of a killer. He was holding a half-empty bottle of clear Chilean brandy that he now gestured toward Sharpe. "Maybe we can ride south together, senor! There is sometimes safety in numbers."
"Good idea," Sharpe said in his best approximation of the braying voice some British officers liked to use. "And one of your men can bring us hot shaving water at, say, ten o'clock? Just tell the fellow to knock on the door and leave the bowl on the step."
"Shaving water?" Dregara clearly hated being treated as a servant.
"Shaving water, Sergeant. Very hot. I can't bear shaving in tepid water."
Dregara managed to suppress his resentment. "Si, senor. At ten."
The troopers wrapped themselves in blankets and lay down under the meager shelter of the fort's firestep. The sentries paced overhead. Somewhere beyond the wall, in the forests that lapped against the ridge, a beast screamed. Sharpe, sleepless on the floor of Morillo's quarters, listened to Harper's snores. If Dregara was supposed to kill them, Sharpe thought, how would Bautista react when he heard they still lived? And why would Bautista kill them? It made no sense. Maybe Dregara meant no harm, but why would Morillo be ordered back to Valdivia? The questions flickered through Sharpe's mind, but no answers came. It made sense, he supposed, that Bautista should resent Dona Louisa's interest in her husband's fate, for that interest could bring the scrutiny of Madrid onto this far, doomed colony, but was killing Louisa's emissaries the way to avert such interest?