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Sharpe's Sergeant	By : Sable899 Category: S through Z > The Sharpe Books Views: 1683 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Sharp series of books that this fanfiction is written for, nor do I know Sean Bean. I do not make any money from the writing of this story. This story is fiction.

Chapter List
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Chapter 22 Rallying Call

1822, Reichelbrau Brewery, Grafenwoehr, Germany

Jamie Sharpe found Harry Price’s pub with little difficulty. The largest building in the town of Grafenwoehr, the Reichelbrau brewery was easy to spot. The entry to the pub was down a short flight of stairs to the cellar. Being early in the week, the public room was nearly empty, the soldiers from the post all tucked away for the night in their barracks. The few customers there barely noticed the young man wrapped in a loden-green cloak with the hood pulled close around his face quietly speak to the big-chested barmaid.

A jerk of the barmaid’s head pointed Jamie in the direction of a rough-hewn knotty-pine door at the end of the bar. Entering, Jamie quickly spotted the tall slender figure of one of his father’s oldest friends, Harry Price, bent over a work table studying a large weather-beaten volume of parchments.

Harry Price had been very fortunate following his survival of the Battle of Waterloo. With no small thanks to his dear friend Richard Sharpe, he had come away not only with his life and all his limbs, but with honors and a bump up to Major, soon taking command of the garrison posted to the British Consulate in Munich. There, his luck ran out when he was caught taking liberties with the only daughter of the Burgermeister of Grafenwoehr. Forced into marrying the girl, Harry found that the fringe benefits of the marriage more than made up for the fact that his bachelor days had come to an end. Geilika’s father was not only the Burgermeister, but also a brewmaster of great renown throughout Bavaria. His father-in-law passed away a few years later, but not before teaching Harry everything he knew about brewing beer and distilling schnapps. Harry resigned his commission and took over the old man’s brewery, opened a pub in the cellar and settled into a new life with a steady supply of alcohol.

The day that Captain Simon Doggett had walked into the pub, Harry was quick to agree to the use of his establishment as a safe house for the agents of Sharpe’s new intelligence service. Doggett was equally quick to agree with Harry’s assessment that whenever Richard Sharpe was involved, life was certain to be bloody well interesting, with an emphasis on bloody. He was happy that his old friend had thought to include him in something that he believed was historic.

“I knew somebody would be showing up soon,” Harry affirmed, turning towards the sound of the door latching shut, “Sweet Jesus! I’d know you anywhere Young Mister Sharpe. Doggett said you looked remarkably like the Colonel. I must say, that was certainly an understatement!”

“Pleased to meet you, Major Price,” Jamie announced, moving to join him at the table, “How did you know I would be coming?”

“I didn’t. But Oma Geilie knew. She heard the voices on the wind last night,” Harry explained, “She says the Colonel was ‘drawn over’. She has felt him close by, but he’s out of reach. And please, call me Harry.”

“I haven’t the foggiest what you’re on about, Harry,” Jamie puzzled, “I do know that something fey has happened and now the Colonel is missing.”

“Pull yerself up a keg and I’ll tell you a story,” Harry invited, “A story about gypsies and spirits and curses and twixt and between. Then, we’ll get on about the job of getting him back. We’ve got five days until the height of the full moon.”

The tale Harry told came straight from gypsy lore. Oma Geilie was the great-grandmother of Harry’s wife, Geilika. Oma was a pure-blooded Romany, feared as a witch by the people in the area. Completely blind with cataracts, and at ninety-four years of age, Oma Geilie had never considered herself a witch, but she did admit to having the ‘sight’. And the tale she presented to Harry before the sun was even up that morning was fantastical indeed.

“A man has gone over,” Oma calmly explained, “He has fallen into another time. The curse of the white caves has claimed him. He should have gone mad with the others, but this one is strong. A warrior unequaled, he has been sent to find his purpose now that peace has come to his homeland. He will need the help of his true friends to find his way back.”

Harry spent the rest of the day encoding messages and dispatching carrier pigeons while waiting for the young, green-eyed soldier that Oma Geilie had told him would come to help perform the vigil described in the old volume of parchments that he now showed to Jamie. Harry was prepared to do anything, even if it meant sacrificing his own life to bring Richard Sharpe back to his own time. He had once taken a pistol shot in the gut while protecting Richard’s beloved Theresa and his infant daughter and would gladly risk his life for him again, so spending time in a cursed and haunted cave was little to ask.

Thames House, London

Cade Harper was a happy Corporal and an extremely fortunate young man. His Uncle Pat’s dearest friend, Colonel Richard Sharpe had gotten him appointed to his own staff in the new Intelligence Service, providing him with the same private lessons in tactical sword fighting, sharp shooting and sabotage methods as Lieutenant Jamie Sharpe. The two young men had spent their teen years together under Patrick Harper’s roof and Cade had idolized the fearless, swashbuckling Jamie. It was Jamie who had been the one to convince his father to bring aboard the younger Cade. It hadn’t been difficult; for Sharpe had noted the bond the two young men had and recognized it as the same sort of bond that had kept Patrick Harper at his side for all those years. For having given him that opportunity, Jamie had earned Cade’s undying loyalty and it was why Cade left within an hour of receiving the cryptic summons that arrived by way of Harry Price’s carrier pigeon. With a fair wind for the channel crossing and fresh horses for a non-stop ride, Cade calculated he would arrive in Bavaria inside of forty-eight hours.

The Fatted Calf, Brussels, Belgium

Jean Calvert had fallen a long way thanks to Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. It started when the new French government, after initially celebrating Calvert for his heroic return of Napoleon’s treasury after the fall of Toulouse, nearly had him shot when they learned of his alliance with the notorious Richard Sharpe. The worst insult of all was when he was striped of his rank and ordered out of France following his support of the ill-fated Napoleon and the near annihilation of the Imperial Guard at Waterloo. Only a chance meeting at an inn on the road on his way north out of Normandy with Richard Sharpe had saved him from complete and utter ruin. Just as he had suspected, the scoundrel had managed to pocket a considerable number of gold Napoleons during their joint mission to Naples. After a roaring drunk together, Calvert had landed such a load of guilt in Sharpe’s lap that the man had no choice but to bestow enough coins on him to keep him from the life of a beggar. Once in Brussels, Calvert had used the coins wisely to set himself up as an innkeeper. With that single act of kindness, Sharpe had ensured that Calvert would never go hungry. For that alone, Calvert had vowed that he would lay down his life for Sharpe should the need ever arise.

So, when Jean Calvert woke to read a sealed message that had been slipped under his bedroom door sometime during the wee hours of morning, he didn’t hesitate to order his old aide and faithful servant, Gaston, to pack rations, saddle his horse and mind the inn for he was off to Bavaria just as fast as his Hanoverian gelding could carry him. Besides, he mused aloud, it was another opportunity to pull Sharpe’s arse out of the fire and prove he was still the better soldier, even if only to himself.

Pilzen, Solvakia

The gypsy camp was silent in the hazy light just before dawn. It was a small camp, just seven caravans with an assortment of ponies, cows, chickens, goats, and mongrel dogs. Every person in the camp was distantly related by blood to Zara, the gypsy wife of Major Septimus Pycroft, the scarred man who protected them from those who would drive them away from the villages and towns thru which they passed. Pycroft had found a home with these people who didn’t cringe to see him without his mask, where children didn’t run from him and with his beloved Zara.

So it was with great alarm that he was woken suddenly by Zara’s cries of anguish at that early hour. It had been several years since he had had to comfort her due to such a nightmare. But now she was shaking in fear, sweating, digging her nails into his shoulders as he held her close. It was several minutes until she was collected enough to tell him what she had seen in her sleep.

“Your Mister Sharpe needs us. He has gone over,” Zara haltingly explained, “He has fallen into another time. We must go. We must go to Bavaria to help him return. The runes must be read.”

Munich, Germany

“Dally! Dally!” Doggett yelled while pounding on the door to D’Alembord’s quarters at the Munich consulate, “Get your lazy arse out of bed, man!”

“What in bloody hell are you doing here?” Dally sleepily asked as he opened the door, “The sun’s not even up yet.”

“Get your kit and kiss the wife good-bye, Mister D'Alembord. We’re off to Bavaria to help fetch the Colonel back from wherever in bloody hell he’s gone off to,” Doggett rattled off loudly, “I’ll give you ten minutes before I leave without you. Harry and the Young Mister Sharpe are waiting on us in Graf.”

Grafenwoehr, Germany

Pierre Ducos sat in the putrid cellar of the tannery that sat behind Harry Price’s brewery. The room, a neighbor to the service room of the cellar pub, was dark and dank; the stone walls coated in green slime from the water and refuse that dripped from the tannery vats on the floor above. The damp air was deathly still, reeking of rotting animal flesh and rancid fat. A single oil lamp barely broke through the dark gloom. Ducos sat on an upturned barrel next to the wall shared with the pub, listening at the hole left by a loose stone that lay on the floor next to the wooden stump that now served for a foot. He only had one left since the night in Naples when Richard Sharpe had wounded him and his horse had dragged him for miles. The foot had nearly been torn off, the bones twisted and splintered, caught in the stirrup. There had been no hope of saving it and to avoid gangrene, the surgeon had amputated it just above the ankle.

Ducos’ sole purpose in life since that disastrous night had been to end the life of Richard Sharpe with his own two hands and he no longer cared if he survived it. All he cared about was the death of Richard Sharpe. That drive, that single-minded purpose was all that had kept him alive, what had brought him to this place. Employment by Minister Montgelas had provided the means with which to exact his revenge and now all of his careful planning was coming to fruition. This shadow of a man wrapped in a black, hooded cape, listened intently to the plans Harry Price and Jamie Sharpe were making, his sardonic, twisted grin mocking the empty darkness.
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Sharpe's Sergeant