They stepped to the ground and looked around. We were caught unprepared and unequipped, Nichols offered lamely. Keep your eyes open for a research ship with a red hull and flying the British blue ensign. From now on it would be outright warfare-no quarter asked and none given-until the fiend was staked, decapitated, burned and definitely dead! They didn't even consider that there might be some other explanation apart from Bodescu. That had clinched it, not only for Roberts but for everyone else involved. It was only as he was actually making his exit from the HQ that word of Harvey Newton came in: how his car had been discovered in an overgrown ditch just off the motorway at Doncaster, and how his mutilated body had been found in the boot with a crossbow bolt transfixing the head. It was shivering, its eyes were rolling white and sweat or spittle was dripping from its drooping head. The grey stallion was certainly suffering. A group of senior officers, majors and colonels, stood beside the General's tent, suggesting that a council of war had been interrupted by the horse's distress. An orderly, in the blue-and-yellow coat of the igth Dragoons, was holding a big grey stallion by its bridle and Wellesley was alternately patting the horse and snapping at the halfdozen aides who cowered nearby. The General, still a young man, was standing beside a line of six picketed horses and was evidently in a blazing temper. Sir Arthur had always been a cold fish, sparing with approval and frightening in his disapproval, and his most casual glance somehow managed to make Sharpe feel both insignificant and inadequate, and so, when McCandless dismounted outside the General's tent, Sharpe deliberately hung back. It had been two years since Sharpe had last seen his old Colonel and he doubted that Major-General Sir Arthur Wellesley would prove any friendlier now than he ever had. 'Night attacks are prone to confusion, sir.'
The word must have come from Captain Rymer, Sharpe thought, so he shrugged. Was the thing really stalking him in New Orleans, or had the doctor misunderstood the silent specter? If wine is your preference, a selection will be put in your quarters. Optheria produces excellent wines, Pirinio said rather testily, with a reproving glance at Mirbethan.They cannot be exported and indeed, some do not travel well even the relatively short distance to the City.
Antona's already scolded me, but I had to cut enough marketable crystal to get off-planet this time.