Read Online The Pirates of the Levant by Arturo Pérez-Reverte - Free Book Online

shapes, soldiers making the most of their last opportunity to do just that, rather than have their guts sliced open with their bladder still full. Alatriste unfastened his breeches and did likewise. A man fights best on an empty bladder and an empty belly, that's what his first sergeant in Flanders used to tell them. His name was Don Francisco del Arco, and he had died at Alatriste's side in the dunes of Nieuwpoort, by which time he'd been promoted to Captain. Alatriste had served under him towards the end of the last century, when he was only fifteen, in the war against the Estates General and France, when Amiens was attacked under cover of night and the city was sacked. Now that had been a profitable cavalcade, although the worst came later, when they spent nearly six months besieged by the French.
While he relieved himself, Captain Alatriste gazed up at the sky. He could see the occasional laggardly star, but the grey light of dawn was growing in the east. The bare hills still cast their shadow over the tents and walnut trees, and it wasn't bright enough yet to tell a white thread from a black in the large dried-up riverbed that the guides called Uad Berruch, five leagues from Oran. When he had finished, Alatriste lay down again, having first checked his belt and his weapons, and fastened his buff coat. The latter would weigh on him later, in the heat of the day, when the African, sun was at its highest, but in the dawn chill, he was glad of it. And as soon as the attack began, he would be gladder still of that old buffalo hide, for a knife-thrust was a knife-thrust whether it came from a Moor, a Turk or a Lutheran. He recalled the various places where he had received such blows — eyebrow, forehead, hand, legs, hip, back ... He counted as far as nine if he included the harquebus shot and ten if he counted the burn to his arm. He didn't have room on his body for many more such wounds.
'Damned dog,' someone whispered nearby.
The dog howled again and, shortly afterwards, was joined by another. It would be bad news, thought Alatriste, if they had scented the presence of the marauders and were alerting the people sleeping in the encampment. He reckoned the group on the opposite side of the riverbed would be in position by now, keeping their horses well back, in case their whinnying spoiled the surprise. Two hundred men on that side and the same number on this, including fifty mogataces — more them enough to take on the three hundred or so Arabs, including women, children and the old, who were camped there with their animals, asleep and unaware of what awaited them.
He had been given the background the previous evening in Oran, when the order had come to get ready. He had found out more details during the six-hour march through the night, guided by mogataz scouts. They had marched hard, first in ranks and then in single file, down the Tlemcen road, along the riverbank, and then on past the lake, the house of the local marabout, the well and the fields, after which they headed west, skirting the hills before dividing into two groups to wait in silent ambush for dawn to break.
According to what he had been told, the people in the encampment belonged to the Beni Gurriaran tribe, who were considered by the Spanish garrison to be peaceful Moors. The agreement was that the garrison would protect them against other hostile Berber tribes in exchange for agreed quantities of wheat, barley and livestock to be handed over every year on predetermined dates. However, last year, the wheat and barley harvest had been late and the contribution rather sparse — a third of it was still owing to the garrison — and now the Moors were trying to avoid handing over the livestock that had been due in the spring. They still had not done so, and rumour had it that the people of Beni Gurriaran were preparing to move somewhere far from Uad Berruch, beyond the reach of the Spanish.
'So we're going to catch them napping,' Sergeant Major Biscarrues had