They were the same age, thirty-three, but Lawford had always been an officer, had never worried about promotion, because he could afford the next step, and never concerned himself where the next year's money would come from. Seven years ago, Lawford had been a Lieutenant and Richard Sharpe his Sergeant, both righting the Mahrattas in India, and the Sergeant had kept the officer alive in the dungeons of the Tippoo Sultan. In return, Lawford taught the Sergeant to read and write and thus qualified him for a commission if ever he were foolish enough to perform some act of bravery on a battlefield that could hoist a man from the ranks into the officers' exalted company!

Sharpe followed Lawford through the crowded streets: towards Wellington's headquarters, and seeing the Colonel's! exquisite uniform and expensive accoutrements, he wondered where they would be in another seven years. Lawford was ambitious, as was Sharpe, but the Colonel had the birth and the money for great things. He'll be a general, Sharpe thought, and he grinned because he knew that Lawford: would still need him or someone like him. Sharpe was; Lawford's eyes and his ears, his professional soldier, the man who could read the faces of the failed criminals, drunks, and desperate men who had somehow become the best infantry in the world. And more than that, Sharpe could read the ground, could read the enemy, and Lawford, for whom the army was a means to a glorious and exalted end, relied on his ex-Sergeant's instinct and talent. Lawford, Sharpe decided, had done well in the last year. He had taken over an embittered, brutalized, and frightened Regiment and turned them into a unit as good as any battalion in the line. Sharpe's Eagle had helped. It had wiped out the stain of Valdelacasa, where the South Essex, under Sir Henry Simmerson, had lost a colour and their pride; but it was not just the Eagle. Lawford, with his politician's instincts, had trusted the men while he worked them hard, had given them back their confidence. And the badge, which every man wore on his shako, shared the glory of Talavera with every soldier in the Regiment.