The Sun Over Breda

Taking losses and additions into account, the squad usually numbered between ten and fifteen men, depending on the situation, and it had no specific function in the company other than to move quickly and back up others in their various actions, carrying half a dozen harquebuses and about as many muskets. The squad operated in a unique way: It had no cabo, the leader appointed by the captain, for in any engagement they were under the direct orders of Captain Bragado himself, who might use them in the line with others from the unit or give them a free hand in surprise attacks, scouting missions, skirmishes, and raids. They were all, as I said, conditioned to gunfire and expert in their responsibilities, and it was perhaps for that reason that in their operations—even without having identified a leader or acting under a formal hierarchy of any sort—they had, in a kind of tacit accord, bestowed authority on Diego Alatriste.

As for the three escudos that went along with being head of the squad, it was Captain Bragado who collected them, in addition to the wages of forty escudos due as actual captain of the unit, since that was how he was listed in the documents of the tercio. Although he was a man of stature, owing to his family background, and a reasonable officer as long as his discipline was not questioned, don Carmelo Bragado was one of those men who hears clink and says mine. He never let so much as a maravedí get past him, and even went so far as to keep dead and deserters on the rolls in order to collect their pay…when there was pay. However, I have to say that it was a widespread practice, and in Bragado’s favor we can say two things: He never refused to help soldiers in need, and he personally had twice proposed Diego Alatriste’s promotion to squad leader, though both times Alatriste had declined.

As to the esteem in which Bragado held my master, I need say only that four years earlier at White Mountain, when General Tilly’s first assault and second attack under the orders of Count Bouquoy and Colonel don Guillermo Verdugo failed, Alatriste and Captain Bragado (and Lope Balboa, my father, right along with them) had climbed shoulder to shoulder up the slopes, fighting for every foot of corpse-strewn terrain. Then a year after that, on the plains of Fleurus, when don Gonzalo de Córdoba won the battle but the Cartagena tercio was nearly annihilated after holding fast against several cavalry charges, Diego Alatriste was among the last of the dauntless Spaniards who never broke ranks around the flag that, with the standard bearer dead, along with all the other officers, was held high by Captain Bragado himself. And, pardiez, in that time, and among those men, such things still counted for something.

It was raining in Flanders. ’Pon my word, it rained pitchforks and anvils that accursed autumn and through that whole accursed winter, turning to pure mud the flat, shifting, swampy land that was crossed in every direction by rivers, canals, and dikes that seemed to have been laid out by the hand of the devil himself. It rained for days, for weeks, for months, until the gray landscape of low clouds was completely erased. It was a strange land with an unfamiliar tongue, populated by people who despised and at the same time feared us; a countryside denuded by the season and the war, lacking any defense against the cold, the wind, and the water. There were no peaches in that land, or figs, or cherries, or peppers, or saffron, or olives, or oil, or oranges, or rosemary, or pines, or laurels, or cypresses. There was not even any sun, only a tepid disk that moved indolently behind a veil of clouds. The place our iron-and-leather-clad men had come from, men who plodded on though their bodies yearned for the clear skies of the south, was far away, as far as the ends of the earth. And those rough, proud soldiers, now in the lands of the north repaying the courtesy of a visit received centuries before at the fall of the Roman empire, recognized that they were very few in number and a great distance from any friendly country.