I don't own Sharpe. Please let me know what you think.
El-Casco.
Sharpe could not help but shake slightly, and he was ashamed of his weakness and surprised by it at the same time. He hadn't shaken this bad since he was much younger until he'd become old enough to see what he had been frightened of wasn't to be scared of. And yet… when he had laid eyes on El-Casco…
He was ashamed to admit it, but Sharpe had seen something about that partisan leader which had shaken him deeply but he wasn't sure what it was that had scared him.
Next to him, his sergeant Patrick Harper was eyeing him curiously and with a little bit of concern. While he and the other Chosen Men had grown to like Sharpe, at first they had disliked him because he was like them, a common soldier, a grunt, not a gentleman. But he had impressed them and they had grown to trust and like him over the years. Sharpe was fair-minded and generous, and he was loyal to them to a fault. But Harper had never seen his friend and major in this state before.
"Sir, what is it about this bastard that's got you so rattled?" Patrick asked curiously.
Sharpe jumped at the question and he sighed. "I dunno, Pat," he admitted truthfully, "I really don't know… it's... its just something is not right with him. When you saw him, what was your impression?"
"I didn't like him, so I didn't," Patrick admitted ruefully immediately. "There was something about his eyes, like a dead wolf, so it was."
"Or a crocodile's eyes," Sharpe said.
"Eh?"
"Massive animal that lives in water. I saw a few of the bastards in India. They had a tactic of sneaking up beneath the surface, and snatch whoever or whatever was stupid enough to wander close to the bank," Sharpe explained, remembering his own sightings of the massive river monsters during his time in India, but he had never gotten close enough to the water to see one for himself, but he had seen something in their eyes… "El-Casco's eyes reminded me of them, soulless bastards."
"What d'you know 'bout him, then?" Harper handed Sharpe a bottle; the major sniffed the top and quickly identified it as brandy.
"Not a lot," Sharpe nodded his thanks to Harper for the brandy. "I know him by reputation; I've heard about him from reports from intelligence officers whenever we were sent on missions on behalf of Hogan, Nairn, Ross, or Munro, even when we were sent to deal with other partisans. But I learnt all of them view El-Casco with great care; he's a ruthless fighter, and any Frenchman who goes into his territory never come out."
"He sounds like an ideal ally, then," Harper commented, sitting down and uncorking his own bottle.
"Don't be so sure, Pat," Sharpe warned his sergeant and friend, "I've heard El-Casco personally skins his enemies."
"Mother of God!" Harper gasped; he had never heard of anyone who'd do something like that. It sounded ungodly. And then something occurred to him. "Did…. Did Miss Teresa speak about him?" He asked curiously and a little cautiously. Teresa was a sore subject with Sharpe. Her senseless murder at the hands of Hakeswill had nearly shattered the major. While he might have slept with a few women while he'd been with her, Sharpe had loved her and there was no doubt about it. There was no doubt in Harper's mind when they had been in the town Hakeswill and his gang of deserters had captured, Sharpe had had something going with Lord Fop's wife, but he hadn't said a word especially when Teresa was murdered.
Sharpe licked his lips. "Yes, she did. I'd taken the name of a partisan to her, see if she knew of him not long after I was first raised from the ranks. She then took it upon herself to give me a rundown on all of the other Spanish leaders out there. When she got to El-Casco…," he trailed off while he tried to find the most adequate words to describe him, "she said he was the Devil, a heathen bastard. She once tried to open an alliance with him, but she instead found the corpses of several French soldiers. They had been skinned, and one of her men happened to be experienced as a hunter. They had been alive when they had been skinned. They found another man, a French soldier who had been beaten so badly, I'm amazed nothing else tore him to bits. Teresa might have hated the French, Pat. God knows she had good reason to, but even she was horrified by that."
"Mother of God!" Harper hissed again.
He had trusted and liked Teresa, and he would never have revealed what Sharpe had done with Farthingdale's wife out of respect for the pair of them.
"That's not all. I've heard enough stories from Spaniards who weren't part of any partisan group. Some of 'em have heard about El-Casco, and they're always terrified of him. The French have been trying to wipe him and his group out for years, but they have failed. They head out into mountains near his lair, and they are never seen again. Each and every time. El-Casco and his men operate in a relatively small part of Spain, whereas Teresa moved from one place to another. But all of them won't have any dealings with him, but we do."
"Why, why do we help a man like that?" Harper demanded.
"Because he's against the French," Sharpe replied simply. "I was sceptical about the rumours, but Teresa was deadly serious when she described him. We supply him with weapons. In return, he gives us intelligence in order to conduct operations."
"So we have to make deals with the Devil, to fight the Devil?" Harper reasoned.
Sharpe nodded. "It wouldn't be the first time, Pat.
He went silent for a moment as he thought about what Teresa had told him about the feared guerrilla. "Teresa told me a story about him, Pat. A story I've only just managed to remember. A French Marshall despatched a small army to the mountains El-Casco operates from. This army took everything with them; horse, foot, artillery."
"What?" Harper scoffed with a laugh, hiding how he felt as he wondered where this was leading to. "Why take all of that?"
"To get rid of this group. Some believe this large number of French soldiers was assembled because the French had become frustrated and fearful of the partisans, they needed to have superior numbers just to wipe them out."
"Still seems over the top to me, sir."
"Me too," Sharpe agreed, nodding at Harper. "The way I heard the story, a few British agents observed the whole thing. The guerrillas took the French by surprise - hardly a shock - and they were picked off, one by one before the artillery men had the time to load their guns."
"Guns? Jesus, how many of the bloody things did they take?"
"Three."
"What?" Harper downed some of the brandy from the bottle he was holding, desperately trying to make sense of the insane tale he was hearing. "Three cannons up mountains; they must have been desperate, but did they really think they were gonna work?"
"I can't say, but nobody ever said some French weren't desperate," Sharpe drank from his own bottle, picturing the scene in his mind; French soldiers running in every direction, desperately trying to get their weapons to bear against the partisans, but the constant fire coming from every direction picked more and more of them off, making it impossible to complete the task of loading the cannons in the first place, proving the French had committed just too much and the weapons would have been harder to get up there in the first place, proving how desperate they were; in the meantime, the cavalrymen, usually some of the best in Europe, were riding around chaotically, trying to desperately find someone to kill, only to be killed themselves because they were easier targets. "I can't see the slaughter lasting long."
"That I believe. Did any of the Frogs survive?"
Sharpe was silent for a few moments before he replied to the question. "No. The partisans managed to overpower them all in minutes, and there was only a small number of the French left, and they were led away while some of the partisans came and tidied up what they needed. They paid a lot of attention towards the cannon, guns, swords, and the powder and ammunition cart, but nothing else. A few days later, the agents came across the guerrillas erecting something. When they left, they went closer… it was one of the French soldier's pat. They'd crucified him. He'd been tortured, and he was dead, with his chest ripped open. His body was still warm."
"My god," Harper shook his head as he trailed off, his eyes wide with horror. Patrick Harper was a brave, strong soldier, but he was a Christian, and he had been in Spain long enough to know even the nastiest pieces of work out there who fought the French never went that far.
"I know," Sharpe tried to smile reassuringly, but it came off as more than a grimace as he thought about what El-Casco had done.
"But why is he here now?"
Sharpe shrugged. "I don't know, but I only hope someone else deals with him. There's something…. strange, and twisted about him. He makes my skin crawl."
"Yeah, me too."