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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 33 Departures

Her ears ringing, Camden could hear nothing as she felt Ducos’ pistol shot enter the fleshy outer edge of her left thigh. A plume of sulphurous white smoke billowed around his head as he continued onwards in his hobbling gait, a thin blade drawn to strike. Sharpe caught Camden beginning to collapse backwards into him as Sean turned, heavy sword in hand. Ducos, emerging from the obscuring smoke, momentarily froze when he recognized not one Richard Sharpe, but two.

As Camden fell against Sharpe and he wrapped his arms about her to gently lower her to the ground, he felt a stab of pain deep in his head. A glimmer of a memory flashed before him of a fair-haired young woman with brilliant blue eyes. There was a familiarity about her, but he couldn’t quite put a finger on it. She was dressed in loose brown trousers and jacket like those of the Portuguese militia. He was younger too, for she leaned heavily into his left shoulder and he could sense the warmth of her body where there should have been a long, numb scar from the wound he received from the treacherous Leroux at Villafranca. Rifleman Hagman stood at his side wearing his hair short the way he had before he went all superstitious and next to him was a cheekily grinning Sergeant Harper. The presence of a mustachioed Jorge Vicente further confirmed the vision was from his early days in Portugal. As a smile crossed the woman’s face, the vision quickly melted, startling Sharpe back to the scene rapidly unfolding in the clearing at the base of the Steinmetz escarpment.

“No! He’s mine!” Sean shouted as Harper and Fredrickson moved to intercept Ducos in his lunge forward. Smitty and Orry bounded from their ambush points to converge on the scene while Rich Moore helped Zara move to the safety of a large tree. “Sharpe, you see to Camden!”

“You heard him!” Sharpe confirmed and the two instantly stepped aside, drawing Jamie and Calvet with them to join Smitty and Orry in a semi-circle around the rapidly developing spectacle.

Stumbling, Ducos turned first towards Sharpe where he cradled the wounded Camden, then turned back to Sean. His wooden foot twisted in the loose gravel and he pitched forward, the sword clattering to the ground ahead of him.

“Get up, you bastard!” Sean roared as Ducos lifted his head to stare in disbelief, his eyeglasses falling back onto the gravel.

“Nooooooooo!” Duco bellowed in denial, “Impossible! Cannot be…two!”

Sean glared with deadly intent at the prostrate Ducos and laughed ironically. Breathing heavily, chest heaving, his head spun with a chaos of confusing thoughts while his adrenaline surged. He knew his sword was in his hand, but he couldn’t understand why he had drawn it. He wasn’t a soldier. He was an actor. He had never been in a real fight for his life, ever. But he knew this man, this pitiful creature, created by hate and contempt. He knew that given the chance, Ducos would end Sharpe’s life and because he looked like Sharpe, he would kill him too. Every nerve in his body was tingling, every muscle trembling; he contemplated what he knew for certain was required of him.

“Pick it up!” Sean heard himself involuntarily shout and grinned in instant satisfaction as Ducos lunged for his wayward blade and gathered himself upright.

With time to think having run out, Sean met Ducos in an instant. He felt the shock of the blades’ meeting; they rang like anvils. A single stray thought flashed through Sean’s mind: The point always beats the edge. Never in the course of fifteen Sharpe films had Sean ever experienced the true psychological impact of the sight of the weapon resting so familiarly in his hand; it was to make his foe understand there would be no quarter. When his opponent’s blade caught in the pommel pikes at the base of the heavy blade, freezing a brief moment in time, Sean looked to Sharpe, searching for confirmation, for permission to press on. Sharpe, holding a wide-eyed Camden, gave a simple single nod of his head and a grin, as if to say: Go on, lad, I’d do it were I in your shoes.

Sean let his long, straight sword do the work for him; he let its weight soak up the attacks as he planned Ducos’ death. Ducos pushed on, his rage conquering the fear he had always had when facing the Greenjacket Rifleman one-on-one. Such fighting had never been part of Ducos repertoire. His methods for disposing of his foes had been murderous; the pistol, the garrote, the knife or foul minions to do his bidding. He was a master of plots and intrigue, not the sword, and his clumsiness showed. There was no finesse in Ducos’ thrusts and parries as Sean scythed his blade back to cut across his chest, then back again so the sword sliced Duco’s forearm to the bone. He felt a surge of pleasure over the hopelessness in the pale eyes as Ducos realized that today he would die.

His face a terrifying rage, Sean’s heavy sword sang as he swept it backhanded at the creature before him. Ducos attempted to parry and the blades met. The thin blade shattered as if struck by a sledgehammer, the strike numbing his wounded arm and toppling him backwards. Sean halted, arched over a screeching Ducos, the metallic scent of the fresh blood spilling from the man’s chest and arm filling his nostrils, inflaming his lungs, raising a bloodlust that was foreign to him. He had no time to consider it even as his conscience attempted to argue against the criminal charge of murder for Ducos rallied himself to lunge once more upwards with the needle-pointed shard of blade left in his hand. The point always beats the edge. The thought crossed his mind once again.

He heard nothing; not the shouts of the men who had watched in stunned silence until this moment, not Sharpe’s cry of acclamation, not Ducos’ gasp of disbelief, for the blade was furious in its descent. Sean felt every last millimeter of steel blade going into Ducos’ body as if cutting into a tender slice of rare prime rib. The razor-sharp steel, perfectly centered on the breastbone, slid unhesitatingly through bone and muscle to pierce the black heart beating beneath. Ducos dropped the remnant of his broken sword as his right arm went dead, blood from the slash dripping after it. His left hand clutched at the blade that had pierced his heart. His mouth opened as a gurgle of black blood rushed up from his lungs for the sword had gone completely through his heart and lungs, the point lodged in his spine. A damning scream tore from his throat when he tried to draw one last breath and he fell forward at Sean’s feet, dead where he lay. This day, the point did beat the edge

Sean sat propped against a boulder at the base of the escarpment, his desperate breathing finally beginning to soothe his burning lungs and his pulse no longer pounding in his ears. Someone had brought him a bottle of water and he drank it absentmindedly, drizzling some over his tired eyes. Every muscle in his body, some he never knew he had, was still burning from the intense effort of the sword fight. His body flooded with relief, he smiled as he watched the soldiers of the past and the soldiers of the present mingle and talk as soldiers are wont to do, as if two hundred years did not divide them.

Smitty took charge of Camden the minute Harper began insisting on putting maggots into the oozing bullet wound. From the combat medical kit in his rucksack, he pulled out a field dressing and began treating Camden’s left thigh. Luckily, the lead ball had passed cleanly through, missing both muscles and blood vessels.

“Hey Sarge?” Smitty looked puzzled as he cut away a patch of blood-soaked fabric from her BDU trousers, “where did you get this scar?”

“What scar?” Camden couldn’t seem to recall having a scar anywhere on her whole leg, let alone in the same vicinity of the wound.

“This one, right here…” Smitty continued, drawing along it with a latex-gloved finger.

Camden focused on where his finger indicated and tried to recall the circumstances that had put it there. A sharp pain pinged deep in her brain as a faint memory of white hot metal tearing into her flesh dashed through her consciousness. Flame and fire glowed in the background of the vision and loud, cracking explosions pounded her eardrums. A familiar, yet bloodstained hand had hold of her wrist, pulling her towards a man with shaggy, soot-laden hair that tumbled over his brow into piercing green eyes. She gave an audible gasp as the vision just as quickly vanished and refused to be called up again.

“Looks like a scar from a shard of a cannonball,” offered Harper as he curiously watched
Smitty as he applied modern first aid methods to Camden’s wound.

“I don’t remember,” Camden fabricated for want of a plausible reason and hoping to end further inquiries, for she genuinely could not remember how she had gotten the jagged scar, “had it longer than I can recall. Probably a gift from one of my many step-dads.”

Relieved of his duty to take care of Camden, Sharpe inspected Sean’s handiwork, a proud smile lighting up his face as he twisted the sword free and pulled it from the lumpen, pathetic corpse. Seeing Ducos’ spectacles lying whole nearby, he casually stepped on them, grinding them into the gravel, a look of sheer joy dominating his ruggedly handsome face. His voice was mild, almost sympathetic, “The bastard would never die fer me. Damned if I didn’t try to finish him, though. At least he thought it were me what killed him in the end.”

“Are you certain, my friend, that he is truly dead?” General Calvet asked, joining Sharpe over the body, an affectionate arm going round his shoulders, “Perhaps we should make certain he will never rise again?”

“We could do this,” Calvet demonstrated by taking Sean’s sword from Sharpe’s hand. He quickly and neatly brought the cutting edge down across Ducos throat. With one stroke and a gush of blood, the head nearly came away from the body. The next stroke, not as forceful as the first, finished the task and the head rolled free, coming to rest just inches away from Camden.

“Was that really necessary?” Camden choked as she resisted the urge to vomit. Her system had had quite enough trauma for the day and she was beginning to get a bit agitated at the poor helpless female treatment she was being given.

“Aye, lass,” answered Sharpe returning to kneel at her side, “No amount of lye and water could ever wash away the blood of the innocent men, women and children who died by that man’s order. I’ve had abaht a dozen chances to kill him over the years, and ever time the bastard survived. Perhaps this time, this place and actor boy’s hands were meant to be the end for him all along.”

“Actor boy?” Sean, shaking his head to get his blood flowing once again, dragged himself to his feet only to kneel opposite Sharpe with Camden between them, “That’s right, I’m an actor. Not a blood-eh butcher, but I did the deed. I dint see you doin’ anythin’ to stop him.”

“Aye,” Sharpe gave himself away when he couldn’t contain his teasing laugh over Sean’s indignation, “Ye done good, lad. I’d a never thought ye had it in ye. Ducos weren’t much of a swordsman, but he always fought dirt-eh. Where in blood-eh blazes did ya learn ta fight like that?”

“I’ve been luck-eh. Had some o’ the best sword masters around tutor me over the years,” Sean explained, “that man over there, Rich Moore, taught me how ta’ ‘andle the 1796. His whole life has been dedicated ta keepin’ the spirit o’ Wellington’s Army alive.”

“So I got ‘im ta thank as well then,” Sharpe admitted sheepishly.

“Thank for what?” both Sean and Camden asked in unison.

“Them movin’ pictures what Smitty and Rich showed me last night,” Sharpe explained, “a lot o’ them lads what fought with me, fer me, never got so much as a wink and a nod after the peace come abaht. But them pictures prove somebod-eh remembered them and the deeds they done, the blood they shed, and I thank ya fer that.”

“Sir,” interrupted Jamie Sharpe, “time to go. Harry and the others will be frettin’ over us and the old woman there said its time.”

“Well, actor boy,” Sharpe said with that light-up-the-whole-world smile that no one could ever resist, “I’ve no words in me that can tell ya’ how beholden I feel. I’m right proud to ‘ave met ya.”

Paying no mind that Sean was there, Sharpe gathered Camden up in his arms, pressing his lips against her ear, “I’ll not be forgettin’ ya this time, lass, “ he whispered, then kissed her firmly, deep and long, the sort of a kiss a woman can rarely forget. His breathtaking hug seemed to last forever until he abruptly released her, stood and turned away.

“Oh, and Sean,” Sharpe, using Sean’s name for the very first time since the two men met, called out as he joined his little band of travelers, “tell that little lass Meg, she’s a right smart tumble.”
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Sharpe's Sergeant