Sharpe turned back at the sound of trickling, wasted water. He grimaced at her paranoia, but still offered up the last few mouthfuls held in his canteen. It was clean enough -- safe enough -- considering he'd been drinking from it, too.

"Pick yourself up out of the muck. Do what you're doing -- and get better at it. Most importantly? Do it for your bloody self, and not the bastards with the Malnosso. Make the souls who've threatened you in the past respect you, now. And if they can't do that? Make'em feel like shite for that, too."

Be someone self-made. Although Sharpe's leap into officerdom had come at the hands of an aristocrat, everything afterwards had been blood and sweat and toil. Hard work for hard won advancement, and now -- as a Major -- the kind of men who'd had him flogged when he was in his twenties now had to call him sir. That, he decided, was the most flavourful vengeance.