"Sharpe's Battle" - читать интересную книгу автора (Корнуэлл Бернард)CHAPTER IVNext morning, just after dawn, a delegation discovered Sharpe at the deserted northern end of the fort. The sun was slicing across the valley to gild the small mist that sifted above the stream where Sharpe was watching a harrier float effortlessly in the light wind with its gaze trained down on the hillside. The eight men of the delegation halted awkwardly behind Sharpe who, after one sour glance at their serious faces, looked back to the valley. "There's some rabbits down there," Sharpe said to no one in particular, "and that daft bird keeps losing them in the mist." "He won't go hungry for long though," Harper said, "I've never seen a hawk dafter than a rabbit." The greenjacket Sergeant was the only delegate from Sharpe's company: the other men were all from the "Is it?" Sharpe responded. He had been standing on a merlon beside a gun embrasure, but now he jumped down to the firing platform and from there into the bed of the dry ditch. Years of rainfall had eroded the glacis and filled the ditch, just as frost had degraded and crumbled the stonework of the ramparts. "I've seen hovels built better than this," Sharpe said. He kicked at the wall's base and one of the larger stones shifted perceptibly. "There's no bloody mortar there!" he said. "There wasn't enough water in the mix," Harper explained. He took a deep breath, then, realizing that his companions would not speak up, took the plunge himself. "We wanted to see you, sir. It's important, sir." Sharpe clambered back up to the ramparts and brushed his hands together. "Is it about the new muskets?" "No, sir. The muskets are just grand, sir." "The training?" "No, sir." "Then the man you want to see is Colonel Runciman," Sharpe said curtly. "Call him «General» and he'll give you anything." Sharpe was deliberately dissembling. He knew exactly why the delegation was here, but he had small appetite for their worries. "Talk to Runciman after breakfast and he'll be in a good enough mood," he said. "We've spoken to the Colonel," Captain Donaju spoke at last, "and the Colonel said we should speak with you." Father Sarsfield smiled. "I think we knew he would say that, Captain, when we approached him. I don't think Colonel Runciman is particularly sympathetic to the problems of Ireland." Sharpe looked from Sarsfield to Donaju, from Donaju to Lacy, then from Lacy to the sullen faces of the four rank and file guardsmen. "So it's about Ireland, is it?" Sharpe said. "Well, go on. I haven't got any other problems to solve today." The chaplain ignored the sarcasm, offering Sharpe a folded newspaper instead. "It is about that, Captain Sharpe," Sarsfield said respectfully. Sharpe took the paper which, to his surprise, came from Philadelphia. The front page was a dense mass of black type: lists of ships arriving or departing from the city wharves; news from Europe; reports of Congress and tales of Indian atrocities suffered by settlers in the western territories. "It's at the bottom of the page," Donaju offered. " 'The Melancholy Effects of Intemperance'?" Sharpe read a headline aloud. "No, Sharpe. Just before that," Donaju said, and Sharpe sighed as he read the words "New Massacres in Ireland". What followed was a more lurid version of the tale Runciman had already told Sharpe: a catalogue of rape and slaughter, of innocent children cut down by English dragoons and of praying women dragged out of houses by drink-crazed grenadiers. The newspaper claimed that the ghosts of Cromwell's troopers had come back to life to turn Ireland into a blood-drenched misery again. Ireland, the English government had announced, would be pacified once and for all, and the newspaper commented that the English were choosing to make that pacification when so many Irishmen were fighting against France in the King's army in Portugal. Sharpe read the piece through twice. "What did Lord Kiely say?" he asked Father Sarsfield, not because he cared one fig what Kiely thought, but the question bought him a few seconds while he thought how to respond. He also wanted to encourage Sarsfield to do the delegation's talking, for the "His Lordship hasn't seen the newspaper," Sarsfield said. "He has gone hunting with the Dona Juanita." Sharpe handed the paper back to the priest. "Well, I've seen the newspaper," he said, "and I can tell you it's bloody rubbish." One of the guardsmen stirred indignantly, then stiffened when Sharpe gave him a threatening look. "It's a fairy tale for idiots," Sharpe said provocatively, "pure bloody make-believe." "How do you know?" Donaju asked resentfully. "Because if there was trouble in Ireland, Captain, we'd have heard about it before the Americans. And since when did the Americans have a good word to say about the British?" "But we have heard about it," Captain Lacy intervened. Lacy was a stocky young man with a pugnacious demeanour and scarred knuckles. "There've been rumours," Lacy insisted. "There have too," Harper added loyally. Sharpe looked at his friend. "Oh, Christ," he said as he realized just how hurt Harper was, though he also realized that Harper must have come to him hoping that the stories were not true. If Harper had wanted a fight he would not have chosen Sharpe, but some other representative of the enemy race. "Oh, Christ," Sharpe swore again. He was plagued with more than enough problems already. The "A month ago," the priest said. "So?" Lacy asked belligerently. "So how many bloody drafts have arrived from Ireland in the last month?" Sharpe asked, his voice as scornful as it was forceful. "Ten? Fifteen? And not one of those men thought to tell us about his sister being raped or his mother being buggered witless by some dragoon? Yet suddenly some bloody American newspaper knows all about it?" Sharpe had addressed his words to Harper more than to the others, for Harper alone could be expected to know how frequently replacement drafts arrived from Ireland. "Come on, Pat! It doesn't make bloody sense, and if you don't believe me then I'll give you a pass and you can go down to the main camps and find some newly arrived Irishmen and ask them for news of home. Maybe you'll believe them if you don't believe me." Harper looked at the date on the paper, thought about Sharpe's words, and nodded reluctantly. "It doesn't make sense, sir, you're right. But not everything in this world needs to make sense." "Of course it bloody does," Sharpe snapped. "That's how you and I live. We're practical men, Pat, not bloody dreamers! We believe in the Baker rifle, the Tower musket and twenty-three inches of bayonet. You can leave superstitions to women and children, and these things" — he slapped the newspaper — "are worse than superstitions. They're downright lies!" He looked at Donaju. "Your job, Captain, is to go to your men and tell them that they're lies. And if you don't believe me then you ride down to the camps. Go to the Connaught Rangers and ask their new recruits. Go to the Inniskillings. Go wherever you like, but be back here by dusk. And in the meantime, Captain, tell your men they've got a full day of musket training. Loading and firing till their shoulders are raw meat. Is that clear?" The men from the "How would I know, Father? I'm just saying it isn't true. Where did you get it?" Sarsfield shrugged. "They're scattered throughout the army, Sharpe." "And when did you and I ever see a newspaper from America, Pat?" Sharpe asked Harper. "And funny, isn't it, that the first one we ever see is all about Britain being bloody to Ireland? It smacks of mischief to me." Father Sarsfield folded the paper. "I think you're probably right, Sharpe, and praise be to God for it. But you won't mind, will you, if I ride with Captain Donaju today?" "It isn't up to me what you do, Father," Sharpe said. "But for the rest of you, let's get to work!" Sharpe waited while the delegation left. He motioned Harper to stay behind, but Father Sarsfield also lingered for Sharpe's attention. "I'm sorry, Sharpe," the priest said. "Why?" Sarsfield flinched at Sharpe's harsh tone. "I imagine you do not need Irish problems intruding on your life." "I don't need any damn problems, Father. I've got a job to do, and the job is to turn your boys into soldiers, good soldiers." Sarsfield smiled. "I think you are a rare thing, Captain Sharpe: an honest man." "Of course I'm not," Sharpe said, almost blushing as he remembered the horrors done to the three men caught by El Castrador at Sharpe's request. "I'm not a bloody saint, Father, but I do like to get things done. If I spent my damn life dreaming dreams I'd still be in the ranks. You can only afford dreams if you're rich and privileged." He added the last words viciously. "You speak of Kiely," Sarsfield said and started walking slowly back along the ramparts beside Sharpe. The skirts of the priest's soutane were wet with the dew from the ragweed and grass that grew inside the fort. "Lord Kiely is a very weak man, Captain," Sarsfield went on. "He had a very strong mother" — the priest grimaced at the memory—"and you would not know, Captain, what a trial to the church strong women can be, but I think they can be even more of a trial to their sons. Lady Kiely wanted her son to be a great Catholic warrior, an Irish warrior! The Catholic warlord who would succeed where the Protestant lawyer Wolfe Tone failed, but instead she drove him into drink, pettiness and whoring. I buried her last year" — he made a quick sign of the cross — "and I fear her son did not mourn her as a son should mourn his mother nor, alas, will he ever be the Christian she wanted him to be. He told me last night that he intends to marry the Lady Juanita and his mother, I think, will be weeping in purgatory at the thought of such a match." The priest sighed. "Still, I didn't want to talk to you about Kiely. Instead, Captain, I beg you to be a little patient with us." "I thought I was being patient with you," Sharpe said defensively. "With us Irish," Father Sarsfield explained. "You are a man with a country, Captain, and you don't know what it's like to be an exile. You cannot know what it is like to be listening to the harps beside the waters of Babylon." Sarsfield smiled at the phrase, then shrugged. "It's like a wound, Captain Sharpe, that never heals, and I pray to God that you never have to feel that wound for yourself Sharpe felt a stab of embarrassed pity as he looked into the priest's kindly face. "Were you never in Ireland, Father?" "Once, my son, years ago. Long years ago, but if I live a thousand years that one brief stay will always seem like yesterday." He smiled ruefully, then hitched up his damp soutane. "I must join Donaju for our expedition! Think about my words, Captain!" The priest hurried away, his white hair lifting in the breeze. Harper joined Sharpe. "A nice man, that," Harper said, nodding at the priest's receding back. "He was telling me how he was in Donegal once. Up in Lough Swilly. I had an aunt who lived that way, God rest her poor soul. She was in Rathmullen." "I never was in Donegal," Sharpe said, "and I'll probably never get there, and frankly, Sergeant, right at this moment I don't care. I've got enough bloody troubles without the bloody Irish going moody on me. We need blankets, food and money which means I'm going to have to get Runciman to write another of his magic orders, but it won't be easy because the fat bugger's scared shitless of being court-martialled. Lord bloody Kiely's no bloody help. All he does is suck brandy, dream about bloody glory and trail around behind that black-haired whore like a mooncalf." Sharpe, despite Sarsfield's advice about patience, was losing his temper. "The priest is telling me to feel sorry for you all, Hogan wants me to kick these lads in the teeth and there's a fat Spaniard with a castrating knife who thinks I'm going to hold Loup down while he cuts off his bloody balls. Everyone expects me to solve all their bloody problems, so for God's sake give me some bloody help." "I always do," Harper said resentfully. "Yes, you do, Pat, and I'm sorry." "And if the stories were true—" Harper began. "They're not!" Sharpe shouted. "All right! All right! God save Ireland." Harper blew out a long breath, then there was an awkward silence between the two men. Sharpe just glowered to the north while Harper clambered down into a nearby gun embrasure and kicked at a loosened stone. "God knows why they built a fort up here," he said at last. "There used to be a main road down there." Sharpe nodded to the pass which lay to the north. "It was a way to avoid Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, but half the road got washed away and what's left of it can't take modern guns so it's no use these days. But the road eastwards is still all there, Pat, and Loup's bloody brigade can use it. Down there" — he pointed to the route as he spoke—"up this slope, over these walls and straight down on us and there's bugger all here to stop them." "Why would Loup do that?" Harper asked. "Because he's a mad, brave, ruthless bugger, that's why. And because he hates me and because kicking the lights out of us would be a cheap victory for the bastard." Sharpe had become preoccupied by the threat of a night raid by Loup's brigade. He had first thought of the raid merely as a means of frightening Colonel Runciman into signing his fraudulent wagon orders, but the more Sharpe had thought about it, the more likely such a raid seemed. And the San Isidro Fort was hopelessly ill prepared for such an attack. A thousand men might have been able to hold its degraded ramparts, but the "What's that, sir?" "They don't bloody trust your Irishmen, see? They want them out of the way and I'm supposed to help get rid of the buggers, but the trouble is I like them. Damn it, Pat. If Loup comes we'll all be dead." "You think he's coming?" "I bloody well know he's coming," Sharpe said fervently, and suddenly the vague suspicions hardened into an utter certainty. He might have just made a vigorous proclamation of his practicality, but in truth he relied on instinct most of the time. Sometimes, Sharpe knew, the wise soldier listened to his superstitions and fears because they were a better guide than mere practicality. Good flat hard sense dictated that Loup would not waste valuable effort by raiding the San Isidro Fort, but Sharpe rejected that good sense because his every instinct told him there was trouble coming. "I don't know when or how he'll come," he told Harper, "but I'm not trusting a palace guard to serve picquet. I want our boys up here." He meant he wanted riflemen guarding the fort's northern extremity. "And I want a night picquet too, so make sure a couple of the lads get some sleep today." Harper gazed down the long northern slope. "You think they'll come this way?" "It's the easiest. West and east are too steep, the southern end is too strong, but a cripple could waltz across this wall. Jesus." This last imprecation was torn from Sharpe as he realized just how vulnerable the fort was. He stared eastwards. "I'll bet that bastard is watching us right now." From the far peaks a Frenchman armed with a good telescope could probably count the buttons on Sharpe's jacket. "You really think he'll come?" Harper asked. "I think we're damn lucky he hasn't come already. I think we're damn lucky to be alive." Sharpe jumped off the ramparts onto the grass inside the fort. There was nothing but grass and weed-strewn waste land for a hundred yards, then the red stone barracks buildings began. There were eight long buildings and the "You can beat him?" Harper asked. "He thinks he can surprise us. He thinks he can break into the barracks and slaughter us in our beds, Pat, but if we just have some warning we can turn that gate tower into a fortress and without artillery Loup can't do a damn thing about it." Sharpe was suddenly enthusiastic. "Don't you always say that a good fight is a tonic to an Irishman?" he asked. "Only when I'm drunk," Harper said. "Let's pray for a fight anyway," Sharpe said eagerly, "and a victory. My God, that'll put some confidence into these guards!" But then, at dusk, just as the last red-gold rays were shrinking behind the western hills, everything changed. The Portuguese battalion arrived unannounced. They were caзadores, Their Colonel was a thin-faced man called Oliveira. "For a few days every year," he explained off-handedly to Lord Kiely, "we occupy the San Isidro. Just as a way of reminding ourselves that the fort exists and to discourage anyone else from setting up house here. No, don't move your men out of the barracks. My men don't need roofs. And we won't be in your way, Colonel. I'll exercise my rogues across the frontier for the next few days." Behind the last supply wagons the fort's great gates creaked shut. They crashed together, then one of Kiely's men lifted the locking bar into position. Colonel Runciman hurried out of the gatehouse to offer his greeting to Colonel Oliveira and to invite the Portuguese officer to supper, but Oliveira declined. "I share my men's supper, Colonel. No offence." Oliveira spoke good English and nearly half his officers were British, the result of a policy to integrate the Portuguese army into Wellington's forces. To Sharpe's delight one of the caзador officers was Thomas Garrard, a man who had served with Sharpe in the ranks of the 33rd and who had taken advantage of the promotion prospects offered to British sergeants willing to join the Portuguese army. The two men had last met at Almeida when the great fortress had exploded in a horror that had led to the garrison's surrender. Garrard had been among the men forced to lay down his arms. "Bloody Crapaud bastards," he said feelingly. "Kept us in Burgos with hardly enough food to feed a rat, and what food there was was all rotted. Christ, Dick, you and I have eaten some bad meals in our time, but this was really bad. And all because that damned cathedral exploded. I'd like to meet the French gunner who did that and wring his bloody neck." In truth it had been Sharpe who had caused the magazine in the cathedral's crypt to explode, but it did not seem a politic admission to make. "It was a bad business," Sharpe agreed mildly. "You got out next morning, didn't you?" Garrard asked. "Cox wouldn't let us go. We wanted to fight our way out, but he said we had to do the decent thing and surrender." He shook his head in disgust. "Not that it matters now," he went on. "The Crapauds exchanged me and Oliveira asked me to join his regiment and now I'm a captain like you." "Well done." "They're good lads," Garrard said fondly of his company which was bivouacking in the open space inside the northern ramparts where the Portuguese campfires burned bright in the dusk. Oliveira's picquets were on every rampart save the gate tower. Such efficient sentries meant that Sharpe no longer needed to deploy his own riflemen on picquet duty, but he was still apprehensive and told Garrard his fears as the two men strolled round the darkening ramparts. "I've heard of Loup," Garrard said. "He's a right bastard." "Nasty as hell." "And you think he's coming here?" "Just an instinct, Tom." "Hell, ignore those and you might as well dig your own grave, eh? Let's go and see the Colonel." But Oliveira was not so easily convinced of Sharpe's fears, nor did Juanita de Elia help Sharpe's cause. Juanita and Lord Kiely had returned from a day's hunting and, with Father Sarsfield, Colonel Runciman and a half-dozen of the Sharpe suppressed a stab of evil temper. He had been speaking to Oliveira, not to Kiely's whore, but this was not the time or the place to pick a quarrel. Besides, he recognized that in some obscure way his and Juanita's dislike of each other was bred into the bone and probably unavoidable. She would talk to any other officer in the fort, even to Runciman, but at Sharpe's very appearance she would turn and walk away rather than offer a polite greeting. "I think he'll bother with me, ma'am, yes," Sharpe said mildly. "Why?" Oliveira demanded. "Go on, man, answer!" Kiely said when Sharpe hesitated. "Well, Captain?" Juanita mocked Sharpe. "Lost your tongue?" "I think he'll bother with me, ma'am," Sharpe said, stung into an answer, "because I killed two of his men." "Oh, my God!" Juanita pretended to be shocked. "Anyone would think there was a war happening!" Kiely and some of the Portuguese officers smiled, but Colonel Oliveira just stared at Sharpe as though weighing the warning carefully. Finally he shrugged. "Why would he worry that you killed two of his men?" he asked. Sharpe hesitated to confess to what he knew was a crime against military justice, but he could hardly withdraw now. The safety of the fort and all the men inside depended on him convincing Oliveira of the genuine danger and so, very reluctantly, he described the raped and massacred village and how he had captured two of Loup's men and stood them up against a wall. "You had orders to shoot them?" Oliveira asked presciently. "No, sir," Sharpe said, aware of the eyes staring at him. He knew it might prove a horrid mistake to have admitted the executions, but he desperately needed to persuade Oliveira of the danger and so he described how Loup had ridden to the small upland village to plead for his men's lives and how, despite that appeal, Sharpe had ordered them shot. Colonel Runciman, hearing the tale for the first time, shook his head in disbelief. "You shot the men in front of Loup?" Oliveira asked, surprised. "Yes, sir." "So this rivalry between you and Loup is a personal vendetta, Captain Sharpe?" the Portuguese Colonel asked. "In a way, sir." "Either yes or no!" Oliveira snapped. He was a forceful, quicktempered man who reminded Sharpe of General Craufurd, the Light Division's commander. Oliveira had the same impatience with evasive answers. "I believe Brigadier Loup will attack very soon, sir," Sharpe insisted. "Proof?" "Our vulnerability," Sharpe said, "and because he's put a price on my head, sir." He knew it sounded feeble and he blushed when Juanita laughed aloud. She was wearing her Sharpe bit back a retort that the reward would prove more than enough to hire her services for a night. "I don't know," he lied instead. "Can't be very much," Kiely said. "Over-age captain like you, Sharpe? Couple of dollars maybe? Bag of salt?" Oliveira glanced at Kiely and the glance expressed disapproval of his Lordship's drunken gibes. The Colonel sucked on a cigar, then blew smoke across the fire. "I have doubled the sentries, Captain," he said to Sharpe, "and if this Loup does come to claim your head then we'll give him a fight." "When he comes, sir," Sharpe insisted, "can I suggest, with respect, sir, that you get your men into the gatehouse?" "You don't give up, do you, Sharpe?" Kiely interrupted. Before the Portuguese battalion's arrival Sharpe had asked Kiely to move the whole "We can't fight from the ramparts—" Sharpe began. "Don't tell me where we can fight! God damn you!" Kiely shouted, startling Juanita. "You're a jumped-up corporal, Sharpe, not a bloody general. If the French come, damn it, I'll fight them how I like and beat them how I like and I won't need your help!" The outburst embarrassed the assembled officers. Father Sarsfield frowned as though he was looking for some emollient words, but it was Oliveira who finally broke the awkward silence. "If they come, Captain Sharpe," he said gravely, "I shall seek the refuge you advise. And thank you for your advice." Oliveira nodded his dismissal. "Good night, sir," Sharpe said, then walked away. "Ten guineas to the price on your head says Loup won't come, Sharpe!" Kiely called after the rifleman. "What is it? Lost your damn nerve? Don't want to take a wager like a gentleman?" Kiely and Juanita laughed. Sharpe tried to ignore them. Tom Garrard had followed Sharpe. "I'm sorry, Dick," Garrard said and then, after a pause, "Did you really shoot two Crapauds?" "Aye." "Good for you. But I wouldn't tell too many people about it." "I know, I know," Sharpe said, then shook his head. "Bloody Kiely." "His woman's a rare one though," Garrard said. "Reminds me of that girl you took up with at Gawilghur. You remember her?" "This one's a bitch, that's the difference," Sharpe said. God, he thought, but his temper was being abraded to a raw bloody edge. "I'm sorry, Tom," he said, "it's like fighting with wet powder, trying to shake sense into this bloody place." "Join the Portuguese, Dick," Garrard said. "Good as gold they are and no bloody over-born buggers like Kiely making life hard." He offered Sharpe a cigar. The two men bent their heads over Garrard's tinderbox and, when the charred linen caught the spark to flare bright, Sharpe saw a picture chased into the inner side of the lid. "Hold it there, Tom," he said, stopping his friend from closing the lid. He stared at the picture for a few seconds. I'd forgotten those boxes," Sharpe said. The tinderboxes were made of a cheap metal that had to be protected from rust by gun oil, but Garrard had somehow kept this box safe for twelve years. There had once been scores like it, all made by a tinsmith in captured Seringapatam and all with explicit pictures etched crudely into the lids. Garrard's box showed a British soldier on top of a long-legged girl whose back was arched in apparent ecstasy. "Bugger might have taken his hat off first," Sharpe said. Garrard laughed and snapped the box shut to preserve the linen. "Still got yours?" Sharpe shook his head. "It was stolen off me years ago, Tom. I reckon it was that bastard Hakeswill that had it. Remember him? He was a thieving sod." "Jesus God," Garrard said, "I'd half forgotten the bastard." He drew on the cigar, then shook his head in wonder. "Who'd ever believe it, Dick? You and me captains? And I can remember when you were broken down from corporal for farting on church parade." "They were good days, Tom," Sharpe said. "Only because they're a long way back. Nothing like distant memory for putting green leaves on a bare life, Dick." Sharpe held the smoke in his mouth, then breathed out. "Let's hope it's a long life, Tom. Let's hope Loup isn't halfway here already. It would be a damned pity for you all to come up here for an exercise only to be slaughtered by Loup's brigade." "We're not really here for an exercise," Garrard said. There was a long awkward silence. "Can you keep a secret?" Garrard asked eventually. The two men had reached a dark open space, out of earshot of any of the bivouacked caзadores. Sharpe heard footfalls on the nearest rampart where a Portuguese officer made his rounds. A challenge rang out and was answered. It was comforting to hear such military efficiency. "By Wellington?" Sharpe asked. Garrard shrugged. "I suppose so. His Lordship doesn't talk to me, but not much happens in this army without Nosey's say-so." "So why did he send you?" "Because he doesn't trust your Spanish Irishmen, that's why. There have been some odd stories going round the army these last few days. Stories of English troops burning Irish priests and raping Irish women, and—" "I've heard the tales," Sharpe interrupted, "and they're not true. Hell, I even sent a captain down to the camps today and he found out for himself." Captain Donaju, returning from the army's cantonments with Father Sarsfield, had possessed enough grace to apologize to Sharpe. Wherever Donaju and Sarsfield had visited and whoever they had asked, even men fresh out of Ireland, they could find no confirmation of the stories printed in the American newspaper. "No one can believe the stories!" Sharpe now protested to Garrard. "But true or not," Garrard said, "the stories worry someone high up, and they think the stories are coming from your men. So we've been sent to keep an eye on you." "Guard us, you mean?" Sharpe asked bitterly. "Keep an eye on you," Garrard said again. "No one's really sure what we're supposed to do except stay here until their Lordships make up their mind what to do. Oliveira thinks your lads will probably be sent to Cadiz. Not you, Dick," Garrard hastened to add reassuringly, "you're not one of the Irish, are you? We'll just make sure these Irish lads can't make mischief and then your lads can go back to some proper soldiering." "I like these Irish lads," Sharpe said flatly, "and they're not making mischief. I can warrant that." "I'm not the one you have to convince, Dick." It was Hogan or Wellington, Sharpe supposed. And how clever of Hogan or Wellington to send a Portuguese battalion to do the dirty work so that General Valverde could not say that a British regiment had persecuted the Royal Irish Company of the King of Spain's household guard. Sharpe blew out cigar smoke. "So those sentries on the wall, Tom," he said, "they're not looking outwards for Loup, are they, but looking in at us?" "They're looking both ways, Dick." "Well, make sure they're looking outwards. Because if Loup comes, Tom, there'll be hell to pay." "They'll do their duty," Garrard said doggedly. And they did. The diligent Portuguese picquets watched from the walls as the night chill spread down into the eastern valley where a ghostly mist worked its way upstream. They watched the long slopes, always alert to the smallest motion in the vaporous dark while in the fort some children of the At three in the morning the owl flew back to its roost in the ruined chapel, its great white wings beating above the smouldering remnants of the Portuguese fires. Sharpe had been walking the sentries' beat and staring into the long shadowed night for the first sign of danger. Kiely and his whore were in bed, as was Runciman, but Sharpe stayed awake. He had taken what precautions he could, moving vast quantities of the And ten minutes later woke to gunfire. As the wolf, at last, attacked. The first Sharpe knew of the attack was when Miranda, the girl rescued from the high border settlement, screamed like a banshee and for a second Sharpe thought he was dreaming, then he became aware of the gunshot that had preceded the scream by a split second and he opened his eyes to see that Rifleman Thompson was dying, shot in the head and bleeding like a stuck pig. Thompson had been hurled clear down the flight of ten steps that led from the magazine's crooked entrance and now lay twitching as a flood of gore spurted from his matted hair. He had been carrying his rifle when he was shot and now the weapon skidded over the floor to stop beside Sharpe. Shadows loomed at the stairhead. The magazine's main entrance led into a short tunnel which would have been equipped with two doors when the fort had been properly garrisoned and its magazine filled with shot and powder. Where the second door should have hung the tunnel turned in an abrupt right angle, then reversed back to the stairhead. The pair of turns had been designed to baffle any enemy shell that might have breached the magazine's entrance and in the bleak darkness the double angle had succeeded in slowing down Thompson's killers who now erupted into the tiny rushlight that burned in the great underground chamber. Grey uniforms. This was not a dream, but a nightmare for the grey killers had come. Sharpe seized Thompson's rifle, pointed the muzzle and pulled the trigger. An explosion crashed through the cellar as a cluster of flames speared through a smoke cloud towards the French at the top of the stair. Patrick Harper had fired his seven-barrelled gun and the volley of pistol balls slammed into the attackers to throw them back into the angle of the corridor's last turn where they went down in a welter of blood and pain. Two more riflemen fired. The magazine echoed with the shots and the air was stinking and thick with the choking smoke. A man was screaming, so was a girl. "Back way! Back way!" Sharpe shouted. "Shut that bloody girl up, Perkins!" He seized his own rifle and fired it up the stairs. He could see nothing now except for the small shining spots where the tiny rushlights glimmered in the smoke. The French seemed to have vanished, though in truth they were merely trying to negotiate the barricade of screaming, bleeding, twitching men who had been hurled back by Harper's volley and the fusillade of rifle bullets. There was a second stair at the magazine's end, a stair that twisted up to the ramparts and was designed to let ammunition be delivered direct to the firestep rather than be carried through the fort's courtyard. "Sergeant Latimer!" Sharpe shouted. "Count them up! Thompson's out of it. Go, go!" If the French already held the ramparts, Sharpe reflected, then he and his riflemen were already trapped and doomed to die like rats in a hole, but he dared not abandon hope. "Go!" he shouted at his men. "Out! Out!" He had been sleeping with his boots on, so all he needed to do was snatch up his belt, pouches and sword. He slung the belt over his shoulder and began reloading the rifle. His eyes were smarting from the smoke. A French musket coughed more smoke at the top of the stairs and the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the back wall. "Just you and Harps, sir!" Latimer called from the back stair. "Go, Pat!" Sharpe said. Boots clattered on the stairs. Sharpe abandoned his attempt to load the rifle, reversed the weapon instead and hammered its butt at the shadow that appeared in the smoke. The man went down silently and hard, felled instantly by the brass-weighted blow. Harper, his rifle reloaded, fired blindly up the stairs, then grabbed Sharpe's elbow. "For the love of God, sir. Come on!" Grey attackers were pouring down the stairs into the smoky darkness. A pistol fired, a man shouted in urgent French and another tripped over Thompson's corpse. The damp cave-like space stank of urine, rotted eggs and sweat. Harper pulled Sharpe through the cloying smoke to the foot of the back stairs where Latimer crouched. "Go on, sir!" Latimer had a loaded rifle that would serve as the parting shot. Sharpe pounded up the stairs towards the cool and blessedly clean night air. Latimer fired into the chaos, then followed Harper up the crooked stair. Cresacre and Hagman were waiting at the stairhead with pointed rifles. "Don't shoot!" Sharpe called as he neared the stairhead, then pushed past the two riflemen and ran to the inner edge of the firestep to try and understand the night's full horror. Harper ran to the door that led into the gate tower, only to find it was barred from the inside. He hammered on the wood with the butt of his volley gun. "Open up!" he shouted. "Open up!" Hagman fired down the winding stair and a scream echoed up the steps. "Behind us, sir!" Perkins called. He was sheltering a terrified Miranda in one of the machicolations, "and there's more on the road, sir!" Sharpe swore. The gatehouse, that he had thought would be the night's salvation, was already captured. He could see that the gate was wide open and being guarded by grey-uniformed soldiers. Sharpe guessed two companies of Loup's voltigeurs, distinguished by the red epaulettes they wore, had led the attack and both were now inside the fort. One company had gone straight to the magazine where Sharpe and his men were bivouacking while most of the second company had spread into a skirmish line that was now advancing fast among the barracks blocks. Another squad of the grey-clad infantry was running up a ramp which led to the wall's wide firestep. Harper kept trying to break the door down, but no one inside the gatehouse responded. Sharpe shouldered his half-loaded rifle and drew his sword. "Leave it, Pat!" he shouted. "Rifles! Line on me!" The real danger now was the section of men coming up to the wall. If those men got a lodging in the gun platforms then Sharpe's riflemen would be trapped while the rest of Loup's men swarmed into the San Isidro. That main enemy force was now hurrying up the approach road and, from the one quick southward glance that he could spare, Sharpe could see that Loup had sent his whole brigade into this attack which had been spearheaded by two companies of light infantry. God damn it, Sharpe thought, but he had got everything wrong. The French had not attacked from the north, but from the south, and in so doing they had already captured the fort's strongest point, the place Sharpe had planned to turn into an impregnable stronghold. He guessed that the two elite companies had crept up the approach road and rushed the causeway before any sentry called the alarm. And doubtless, too, the gates had been unbarred from inside by the same person who had betrayed where Sharpe, Loup's sworn enemy, was to be found and where Loup, seeking his revenge, had sent one of the two attacking companies. Now, though, was not the time to analyse Loup's tactics, but to clear the ramparts of the Frenchmen who threatened to isolate Sharpe's riflemen. "Fix swords," he ordered, and waited while his men slotted the long, sword-handled bayonets onto their rifles' muzzles. "Be calm, lads," he said. He knew his men were frightened and excited after being woken to nightmare by a clever enemy, but this was no time for panic. It was a time for very cool heads and murderous fighting. "Let's get the bastards! Come on!" Sharpe called and he led his men in a ragged line down the moonlit battlements. The first Frenchmen to reach the firestep dropped to their knees and took aim, but they were outnumbered, in the dark and nervous and so they fired early and their bullets flew wide or high. Then, fearing to be overwhelmed by the dark mass of riflemen, the voltigeurs turned and ran down the ramp to join the skirmish line that was advancing between the barracks blocks towards Oliveira's caзadores. The Portuguese, Sharpe decided, must fend for themselves. His duty lay with the They ran down the ramp just as Oliveira's skirmishers attacked from the right. The appearance of the caзadores distracted the voltigeurs and gave Sharpe's riflemen the chance to cross to the barracks without fighting through a whole voltigeur company, but it was a narrow chance, for even as Harper began shouting in Gaelic to order the "Don't speak bloody Crapaud, do I?" Harris lied and pulled his trigger. Sharpe swerved past the falling body, parried a clumsy bayonet thrust and hammered his attacker down with his heavy sword. The man tried to stab his bayonet up at Sharpe who gave him two furious slashes with the big sword and left him screaming and bleeding and curled into a ball. He back-cut another French skirmisher, then ran on to the moon-cast shadow of the next empty barracks block where a huddle of riflemen were protecting Miranda. Harper still shouted in Gaelic, one of the precautions Sharpe had agreed with Donaju in case the French used an English speaker to confuse the defenders. The Sergeant's shouting had at last gained the attention of the guardsmen in the nearest barracks and the end door opened a crack. A rifle flared and crashed close beside Sharpe, a bullet hissed through the dark overhead while behind him a man screamed. Hagman was already at the barracks door where he crouched and counted the riflemen inside. "Come on, Perks!" he called, and Perkins and Miranda scuttled over the open space, followed by a rush of riflemen. "They're all safe, sir, all safe," the Cheshireman called to Sharpe, "just you and Harps." "Go, Pat," Sharpe said, and just as the Irishman began to run a voltigeur came round the corner of the building, saw the big rifle Sergeant running away and dropped to one knee as he levelled his musket. He saw Sharpe a second later, but it was already too late. Sharpe came out of the dark shadow with the sword already swinging. The blade caught the voltigeur just above the eyes and such was the anger and strength in the blow that the top of the man's skull came away like a decapitated boiled egg. "God save England," Hagman said, watching the blow from the barracks door. "Come in, Harps! Come on, sir! Hurry!" The panic started among the voltigeurs by the counterattacking Portuguese had helped the riflemen escape Loup's first assault, but that panic was subsiding as Loup's main force arrived through the captured gatehouse. That force would soon have Sharpe's men trapped in the barracks. "Mattresses! Packs!" Sharpe shouted. "Pile 'em behind the doors! Pat! Look to the windows! Move, woman!" he snarled at a screaming wife who was trying to leave the barracks altogether. He unceremoniously pushed her back. Bullets cracked on the stone walls and splintered the door. There were two small windows on either side of the long room and Harper was stuffing them with blankets. Rifleman Cresacre pushed his rifle through one of the half-blocked windows and fired towards the gatehouse. Sharpe and Donaju had discussed earlier what might happen if the French attacked and they had gloomily agreed that the "You all know what to do," Sharpe called to the guardsmen. "The French can't get in here, and they can't blow the walls down and they can't shoot through stone. You keep up a good fire and you'll drive the bastards away." He was not sure that anything he had said was true, but he had to do his best to restore the men's spirits. There were ten loopholes in the barracks, five on each long side, and each loophole was manned by at least eight men. Few of the men were as efficient as Sharpe would have liked at loading a musket, but with so many men using each loophole their fire would still be virtually continuous. He hoped the men in the second barracks were making similar preparations for he expected the French to assault both barracks at any moment. "Someone opened that damned gate for them," Sharpe told Harper. Harper had no time to answer, for instead a great howling noise announced the advance of Loup's main body of troops. Sharpe peered through a chink in one of the blocked windows and saw the flood of grey uniforms surge past the barracks. Behind them, pale in the moonlight, Loup's horsemen rode under their wolf-tail banner. "It's my own fault," Sharpe said ruefully. "Yours, why?" Harper was ramming the last barrel of his volley gun. "What does a good soldier do, Pat? He goes for surprise. It was so obvious that Loup had to attack from the north that I forgot about the south. Damn it." He pushed his rifle through the gap and looked for the one-eyed Loup. Kill Loup, he thought, and this attack would stall, but he could not see the Brigadier among the mass of grey uniforms into which he fired his rifle indiscriminately. The enemy's fire crackled harmlessly against the stone walls, while inside the barracks muskets crashed loud at loopholes and children wailed. "Keep those damn kids quiet!" Sharpe snapped. The dark, chill barracks room became foul with the acrid smell of powder smoke that scared the children almost as much as the deafening gunfire. "Quiet!" Sharpe roared, and there was a sudden gasping silence except for one baby that screamed incessantly. "Keep the damn thing quiet!" Sharpe shouted at the mother. "Hit it if you have to!" The mother plunged a breast into the baby's mouth instead, effectively stifling it. Some of the women and older children were usefully loading spare muskets and stacking them beside the windows. "Can't stand bloody children crying," Sharpe grumbled as he reloaded his rifle, "never have and never will." "You were a baby once, sir," Daniel Hagman said reprovingly. The poacher turned rifleman was liable to such sententious moments. "I was sick once, damn it, but that doesn't mean I have to like disease, does it? Has anyone seen that bastard Loup?" No one had, and by now the mass of the Loup Brigade had swept past the two barracks in pursuit of the Portuguese who had called back their skirmish line and formed two ranks so that they could trade volleys with their attackers. The fight was lit by a half-moon and the guttering flicker of what remained of the camp-fires. The Frenchmen had ceased their wolf-like howling as the fight became grim, but it was still a one-sided affair. The newly woken Portuguese were outnumbered and facing men armed with a quick-loading musket, while they were equipped with the slow-loading Baker rifle. Even if they tap-loaded the rifle, abandoning the rammer and the leather patch that gripped the barrel's rifling, they still could not compete with the speed of the well-trained French force. Besides, Oliveira's caзadores Yet even so the caзadores did not break easily. The French infantry found it hard to pinpoint the Portuguese infantry in the half-dark, and when they did establish where the line was formed it took time for the scattered French companies to come together and make their own line of three ranks. But once the two French battalions were in line they overlapped the small Portuguese battalion and so the flanks of the French pressed inwards. The Portuguese fought back hard. Rifle flames stabbed the night. The sergeants shouted at the files to close to the centre as men were hurled back by the heavy French musket balls. One man fell into the smouldering embers of a fire and screamed terribly as his cartridge pouch exploded to tear a haversack-sized hole in his back. His blood hissed and bubbled in the red-hot ashes as he died. Colonel Oliveira paced behind his men, weighing the fight's progress and judging it lost. That damned English rifleman had been right. He should have taken refuge in the barracks blocks, but now the French were between him and that salvation and Oliveira sensed the coming calamity and knew there was little he could do to prevent it. He had even fewer options when he heard the ominous and unmistakable sound of hooves. The French even had cavalry inside the fort. The Colonel sent his colour party back to the northern ramparts. "Find somewhere to hide," he ordered them. There were old magazines in the bastions, and fallen walls that had made dark caves amidst the ruins, and it was possible that the regiment's colours might be preserved from capture if they were hidden in the tangle of damp cellars and tumbled stone. Oliveira waited as his hard-pressed men fired two more volleys then gave the order to retreat. "Steady now!" he called. "Steady! Back to the walls!" He was forced to abandon his wounded, though some bleeding and broken men still tried to crawl or limp back with the retreating line. The French uniforms pressed closer, then came the moment Oliveira feared most as a trumpet blared in the dark to the accompaniment of swords scraping out of scabbards. "Go!" Oliveira shouted to his men. "Go!" His men broke ranks and ran to the walls just as the cavalry charged, and thus the caзadores became the dream target of all horsemen: a broken unit of scattered men. The grey dragoons slashed into the retreating ranks with their heavy swords. Loup himself led the charge and deliberately led it wide so that he could turn and herd the fugitives back towards his advancing infantry. Some of Oliveira's left-hand companies reached the ramparts safely. Loup saw the dark uniforms streaming up an ammunition ramp and was content to let them go. If they crossed the wall and fled out into the valleys then the remainder of his dragoons would hunt them down like vermin, while if they stayed on the ramparts his men inside the San Isidro Fort would do the same. Loup's immediate concern was the men who were trying to surrender. Dozens of Portuguese soldiers, their rifles unloaded, stood with hands raised. Loup rode at one such man, smiled, then cut down with a backswing that half severed the man's head. "No prisoners!" Loup called to his men. "No prisoners!" His withdrawal from the fort could not be slowed by prisoners and, besides, the slaughter of a whole battalion would serve to warn Wellington's army that in reaching the Spanish frontier they had encountered a new and harder enemy than the troops they had chased away from Lisbon. "Kill them all!" Loup shouted. A caзador aimed at Loup, fired, and the bullet slapped inches past the Brigadier's short grey beard. Loup laughed, spurred his grey horse and threaded his way through the panicking infantry to hunt down the wretch who had dared try to kill him. The man ran desperately, but Loup cantered up behind and slashed his sword in an underhand swing that laid the man's spine open to the night. The man fell, writhing and screaming. "Leave him!" Loup called to a French infantryman tempted to give the wretch his coup de grвce. "Let him die hard," Loup said. "He deserves it." Some of the survivors of Oliveira's battalion opened a galling rifle fire from the walls and Loup wheeled away from it. "Dragoons! Dismount!" He would let his dismounted cavalry hunt down the defiant survivors while his infantry dealt with the Loup turned to see a thin-faced and angry Portuguese officer in the firm grip of a tall French corporal. "My name is Colonel Oliveira, and I must protest, monsieur. Loup fished a cigar from his sabretache and stooped to a dying fire to find an ember that would serve to light the tobacco. "Good soldiers don't surrender," he said to Oliveira, "they just die." "But we are surrendering," Oliveira insisted bitterly. "Take my sword." Loup straightened, sucked on the cigar and nodded to the Corporal. "Let him go, Jean." Oliveira shook himself free of the Corporal's grip. "I must protest, monsieur Loup shrugged. "Terrible things happen in war, Colonel. Now give me your sword." Oliveira drew his sabre, reversed the blade and held the hilt towards the hard-faced dragoon. "I am your prisoner, monsieur "You hear that!" Loup shouted so that all his men could hear. "They have surrendered! They are our prisoners! See? I have their Colonel's sabre!" He took the sabre from Oliveira and flourished it in the smoky air. Gallantry insisted he should now give the weapon back to his defeated enemy on a promise of parole, but instead Loup hefted the blade as though judging its effectiveness. "A passable weapon," he said grudgingly, then looked into Oliveira's eyes. "Where are your colours, Colonel?" "We destroyed them," Oliveira said defiantly. "We burned them." The sabre slashed silver in the moonlight and blood seeped black from the slash on Oliveira's face where the steel had sliced across his left eye and his nose. "I don't believe you," Loup said, then waited until the shocked and bleeding Colonel had recovered his wits. "Where are your colours, Colonel?" Loup asked again. "Go to hell," Oliveira said. "You and your filthy country." He had one hand pressed over his wounded eye. Loup tossed the sabre to the Corporal. "Find out where the colours are, Jean, then kill the fool. Cut him if he won't tell you. A man usually loosens his tongue to keep his balls screwed on tight. And the rest of you," he shouted at his men who had paused to watch the confrontation between the two commanding officers, "this isn't a damned harvest festival, it's a battle. So start doing your job! Kill the bastards!" The screams began again. Loup drew on his cigar, brushed his hands and walked towards the barracks. The Dona Juanita's hounds began to howl. The sound set more children crying, but one glance from Sharpe was enough to make the mothers quell their infants' misery. A horse whinnied. Through one of the loopholes Sharpe could see that the French were leading away the horses captured from the Portuguese officers. He assumed the Irish company's horses had already been taken away. It had gone quiet in the barracks. Most of the French attackers had pursued the Portuguese, leaving just enough infantrymen behind to keep the trapped men blocked inside the barracks. Every few seconds a musket ball cracked against the stone, a reminder to Sharpe and his men that the French were still watching every blocked-up door and window. "Bastards will have captured poor old Runcibubble," Hagman said. "I can't see the General living on prisoners' rations." "Runciman's an officer, Dan," Cooper said. Cooper was aiming his rifle through one of the loopholes, stalking a target. "He won't live on rations. He'll give his parole and be feeding on proper Frog victuals. He'll get even fatter. Got you, you bastard." He pulled his trigger, then slid the rifle inside to let another man take his place. Sharpe suspected that the erstwhile Wagon Master General would be lucky to be a prisoner because if Loup was fighting true to his reputation then it was more likely that Runciman was lying slaughtered in his bed with his flannel nightdress and tasselled woollen cap soaked in blood. "Captain Sharpe, sir!" Harper called from the far end of the block. "Here, sir!" Sharpe worked his way between the straw mattresses that lay on the beaten earth floor. The air inside the blocked-up barracks was fetid and the few wicks still alight were guttering. A woman spat as Sharpe went by and Sharpe turned on her. "You'd rather be out there being raped, you stupid bitch? I'll bloody well throw you out, if that's what you want." "No, seсor The woman's husband, crouching at a loophole, tried to apologize for his wife. "It's just that the women are frightened, sir." "So are we. Anyone but a fool would be frightened, but that doesn't mean you lose your manners." Sharpe hurried on to where Harper was kneeling beside the pile of straw-filled sacks that had served as mattresses and which now blocked the door. "There's a man calling you, sir," Harper said. "I think it's Captain Donaju." Sharpe crouched near the loophole next to the barricaded door. "Donaju! Is that you?" "I'm in the men's barracks, Sharpe. Just to let you know that we're all well." "How did you escape the gatehouse?" "Through the door to the ramparts. There's half a dozen officers here." "Is Kiely with you?" "No. Don't know what's happened to him." And Sharpe did not much care. "Is Sarsfield there?" he asked Donaju. "Fraid not," Donaju answered. "Keep the faith, Donaju!" Sharpe called. "These buggers will be gone at first light!" He felt oddly relieved that Donaju had taken over the defence of the other barracks, for Donaju, for all his shy and retiring appearance, was proving to be a very good soldier. "Pity about Father Sarsfield," Sharpe said to Harper. "He'll have gone straight to heaven, that one," Harper said. "Not many priests you can say that about. Most of them are proper devils for whiskey, women or boys, but Sarsfield, he was a good man, a real good man." The firing at the northern end of the fort died away and Harper crossed himself. "Pity about the poor Portuguese bastards too," he said, realizing what the lull in the sound of fighting meant. Poor Tom Garrard, Sharpe thought. Unless Garrard lived? Tom Garrard had always had a charmed life. He and Sharpe had crouched in the fiery red dust of Gawilghur's breach as blood from their comrades' corpses trickled past like rivulets flowing down a rockfall. Sergeant Hakes will had been there, gibbering like a monkey as he tried to hide under a drummer boy's corpse. Damn Obadiah Hakeswill, who had also claimed to bear a charmed life, though Sharpe could not believe the bastard still lived. Dead of the pox, like as not, or, if there was even a trace of justice in a bad world, gutted by the bullets of a firing squad. "Watch the roof," Sharpe said to Harper. The barracks roof was a continuous arch of masonry designed to resist the fall of an enemy mortar shell, but time and neglect had weakened the tough construction. "They'll find a weak spot," Sharpe said, "and try and break through to us." And it would be soon, he thought to himself, for the heavy silence in the fort betrayed that Loup had finished off Oliveira and would now be coming for his real prize, Sharpe. The next hour promised to be grim. Sharpe raised his voice as he walked back to the other end of the room. "When the attack comes just keep firing! Don't aim, don't wait, just fire and make room at your loophole for another man. They're going to reach the barracks walls, we can't stop that, and they're going to try to break open the roof, so keep a good ear above you. Soon as you see starlight, fire. And remember, it'll be light soon and they won't stay after sunrise. They'll be feared that our cavalry will cut off their retreat. Now, good luck, boys." "And God bless you all," Harper added from the gloom at the far end of the room. The attack came with a roar like a rush of water released by lifting a sluice gate. Loup had massed his men in the cover of some nearby barracks, then released them in a desperate charge against the two barracks' north-facing walls. The rush was designed to carry the French infantry fast across the dangerous patch of ground covered by Sharpe's muskets and rifles. Those guns cracked to fill the barracks with yet more filthy smoke, but the third or fourth shot from each loophole sounded perversely loud and suddenly a man reeled back cursing from his musket's wrist-shattering recoil. "They're blocking the holes!" another man called. Sharpe ran to the nearest loophole on the north wall and rammed his rifle into the hole. The muzzle cracked on stone. The French were holding masonry blocks against the loophole's outer opening, effectively ending Sharpe's fire. More Frenchmen were climbing onto the roof where their boots made a muffled, scraping sound like rats in an attic. "Jesus Christ!" A man stared wanly upwards. "Mary, Mother of God," he began to pray in a wailing voice. "Shut up!" Sharpe snapped. He could hear the ringing noise of metal working on stone. How long before the roof collapsed and let in a flood of vengeful Frenchmen? Inside the barracks a hundred pale faces stared at Sharpe, willing an answer he did not possess. Harper came up with the solution instead. He clambered up on the monstrous pile of straw-filled sacks by the door so that he could reach the topmost point of the end wall where a small hole served as a chimney and ventilator. The hole was too high for the French to block, and high enough to give Harper a clear shot along the roofline of Donaju's barracks. The bullets would be rising and so would be more of a threat to those Frenchmen nearest Harper, but if he could fire enough bullets he could at least slow down the assault on Donaju and pray that Donaju would return the compliment. Harper opened with his seven-barrelled gun. The crash echoed through the barracks with the sound of a thirty-two-pounder cannon. A scream answered the blast that had whipped like canister shot across the other roof. Now, one by one, muskets and rifles were handed up to the big Sergeant who fired again and again, not bothering to aim, but just cracking the bullets into the grey mass that swarmed on the neighbouring roof. After a half-dozen shots the mass began to shred as men sought shelter on the ground. The answering fire smacked all around Harper's loophole, creating more dust than danger. Perkins had reloaded the volley gun and Harper now fired it again just as a musket flashed from the equivalent venthole in Donaju's barracks. Sharpe heard a scraping sound above him as a Frenchman's boots slid down the outer curve to the wall's base. A man screamed in the barracks as he was hurled backwards by a musket ball. The French were randomly unmasking the loopholes and firing into the room where the wives and children crouched and whimpered. The besieged huddled away from the loopholes' lines of fire, the only defence they had. Harper kept firing while a group of men and women loaded for him, but most of the barracks' occupants could only wait in the smoky gloom and pray. The noise was hellish: a banging, ringing, scraping cacophony, and always, like an eerie promise of the horrid death that defeat promised, the feral wolf howl of Loup's men all around the barracks. Dust sifted down from a patch of the ceiling. Sharpe moved everyone away from the threatened area, then ringed it with men armed with loaded muskets. "If a stone falls," he told them, "shoot like hell and keep shooting." The air was difficult to breathe. It was filled with dust, smoke and the stench of urine. The cheap rushlight candles were guttering. Children were crying throughout the length of the barracks now and Sharpe could not stop them. Women were crying too, while muffled French voices mocked their victims, doubtless promising that they would give the women something better than mere smoke to cry about. Hagman coughed, then spat onto the floor. "Like a coal mine, it is," he said. "You ever been in a coal mine, Dan?" Sharpe asked. "I was a year down a mine in Derbyshire," Hagman said, then flinched as a musket flash speared through a nearby loophole. The ball spread itself harmlessly on the opposite wall. "I was just a littl'un," Hagman went on. "If my dad hadn't gone and died and my mam moved back to her sister's in Handbridge I'd be there still. Or more likely dead. Only the luckiest see their thirtieth birthday down the mines." He shuddered as a huge, rhythmic crashing began to reverberate through the tunnel-like barracks. Either the French had brought a sledgehammer, or else they were using a boulder like a battering ram. "Like the little pigs in the house, aren't we," Hagman said in the echoing dark, "with the big bad wolf huffing and puffing outside?" Sharpe gripped his rifle. He was sweating, and his rifle's stock felt greasy. "When I was a child," he said, "I never believed the pigs could really see off the wolf." "Pigs don't, as a rule," Hagman said grimly. "If the bastards go on banging like that they'll give me a headache." "Dawn can't be far off," Sharpe said, though whether Loup would truly withdraw in the first light, Sharpe did not know. He had told his men that the French would go at dawn to give them hope, but maybe there was no hope. Maybe they were all condemned to die in a wretched fight in the scrabbling ruins of an abandoned barracks where they would be bayoneted and shot by an elite French brigade who had come to destroy this scratch force of unhappy Irishmen. "Mind out!" a man called. More dust streamed down from the ceiling. So far the old barracks had stood the assault astonishingly well, but the first breach in the masonry was imminent. "Hold your fire!" Sharpe ordered. "Wait till they break through!" A huddle of kneeling women were telling their beads, rocking back and forth on their knees as they said the Hail Mary. Nearby a circle of men waited with expectant faces, muskets aimed up at the threatened patch of ceiling. Behind them an outer ring of men waited with more loaded guns. "I hated the coal mine," Hagman said. "I was always frightened from the moment I went down the shaft. Men used to die there for no reason. None at all! We'd just find them dead, peaceful as you like, sleeping like babes. I used to think the devils came from the earth's centre to take their souls." A woman screamed as a masonry block in the ceiling jarred and threatened to fall. "At least you didn't have screaming women in the mines," Sharpe said to Hagman. "But we did, sir. Some worked with us and some were ladies working for themselves, if you follow my meaning. There was one called Dwarf Babs, I remember. A penny a time, she charged. She'd sing to us every Sunday. Maybe a psalm or perhaps one of Mr Wesley's hymns. "Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, till the storm of life be past"." Hagman grinned in the sultry dark. "Maybe Mr Wesley had some trouble with the Frenchies, sir? Sounds like it. Do you know Mr Wesley's hymns, sir?" he asked Sharpe. "I was never one for church, Dan." "Dwarf Babs wasn't exactly church, sir." "But she was your first woman?" Sharpe guessed. In the dark Hagman blushed. "And she didn't even charge me." "Good for Dwarf Babs," Sharpe said, then raised his rifle as, at last, a section of the roof gave way and crashed to the floor in a welter of dust, screams and noise. The ragged hole was two or three feet across and obscured by dust beyond which the wraith-like shapes of French soldiers loomed like giants. "Fire!" Sharpe yelled. The ring of muskets blazed, followed, a second later, by the second ring of guns as more men fired into the void. The French reply was oddly muted, almost as if the attackers had been surprised by the amount of musket fire that now poured up from the newly opened vent. Men and women reloaded frantically and passed the newly charged guns forward, and the French, driven from the hole's edge by the sheer volume of fire, began hurling rocks into the barracks. The stones crashed harmlessly onto the floor. "Block the loopholes!" Sharpe ordered, and men rammed the French-delivered stones into the loopholes to stop the intermittent bullets. Better still the air began to feel fresh. Even the candle flames took on new life and glowed into the darker recesses of the packed, fearful barracks. "Sharpe!" a voice called outside the barracks. "Sharpe!" The French had momentarily stopped firing and Sharpe ordered his men to hold their own fire. "Reload, lads!" He sounded cheerful. "It's always a good sign when the bastards want to talk instead of fight." He walked closer to the hole in the roof. "Loup?" he called. "Come out, Sharpe," the Brigadier said, "and we will spare your men." It was a shrewd enough offer even though Loup must have known that Sharpe would not accept, but he did not expect Sharpe to accept, instead he wanted the rifleman's companions to surrender him as Jonah had been surrendered to the ocean by his shipmates. "Loup?" Sharpe called. "Go to hell. Pat? Open fire!" Harper crashed a volley of half-inch balls at the other barracks. Donaju's men were still alive and still fighting, and now Loup's men came back to life as the fighting renewed itself. A frustrated volley of musketry cracked against the wall around Harper's loophole. One of the bullets ricocheted inside and slapped against the stock of Harper's rifle. He swore because the blow stung, then fired the rifle at the opposite roof. Another rush of feet on the roof announced a new attack. The men beneath the broken masonry fired upwards, but suddenly a blast of gunfire swamped down through the hole. Loup had sent every man possible onto the roof and the attackers were able to match the fury of the defenders' fusillades. The The fight, Sharpe knew, was ending. He could sense the defeat. He supposed it had been inevitable, right from the moment that Loup had outguessed and outmanoeuvred the San Isidro's defenders. Any second now, Sharpe knew, and a wave of Frenchmen would swarm through the hole in the roof and though the first few enemy to enter the barracks would surely die, the second wave would live to fight over their comrades' bodies and so win the battle. And what then? Sharpe flinched from the thought of Loup's revenge, the knife at his groin, the slicing cut and the pain beyond all pain. He watched the hole in the roof with his rifle ready for one last shot and he wondered whether it would not be better to put the muzzle beneath his chin and blow the top of his skull away. And then the world shook. Dust started from every masonry joint as a flash of light seared across the hole in the barracks' roof. A second later the boom and thunderous bellow of a great explosion rolled over the barracks, drowning even the furious crack of the French muskets outside and the desperate sobbing of the children inside. The vast noise reverberated against the gate tower to roll back again over the fort's interior while scraps of wood dropped from the sky to clatter on the roof. A kind of ragged silence followed. The French fire had stopped. Somewhere close to the barracks a man was sighing as he breathed in and whimpering as he breathed out. The sky looked lighter, but the light was vivid and red. A piece of stone or wood scraped and rattled its way down the curving side of the barracks. Men were moaning and crying, while further off there was the crackle of flame. Daniel Hagman cleared away some of the straw mattresses that blocked the end door and peered through a ragged bullet hole driven through the timber. "It's the Portuguese ammunition," Hagman said. "Two wagons of the stuff were parked over there, sir, and some silly bastard of a Frog must have been playing with fire." Sharpe unblocked a loophole and found it open at the far side. A Frenchman, his grey uniform burning, staggered past Sharpe's view. Now, in the silence after the great explosion, he could hear more men crying and gasping. "That blast scraped the buggers clean off the roofs, sir!" Harper called. Sharpe ran to the hole in the roof and ordered a man to crouch on the ground. Then, using the man's back as a step, he leaped up and caught the broken edge of the masonry. "Heave me up!" he ordered. Someone pushed his legs and he scrambled awkwardly over the broken lip. The fort's interior seemed to be scorched and smoking. The two carts of ammunition had blown themselves to smithereens and blasted the victorious French into chaos. Blood was smeared on the roof and a tangle of dead lay on the ground near the barracks where the explosion's survivors wandered in a daze. A naked man, blackened and bleeding, reeled among those shocked Frenchmen. One of the confused infantrymen saw Sharpe on the roof but did not have the strength or maybe lacked the sense to raise his musket. There appeared to be some thirty or forty dead, and maybe as many again badly injured; not many casualties out of the thousand men that Loup had brought to the San Isidro Fort, but the disaster had whipped the confidence clean out of the wolf's brigade. And, Sharpe saw, there was better news still. For through the swirling smoke and dust, through the grey-dark of night and the sullen glow of fire, a silver line showed in the east. The dawn light was shining and with the rising sun would come an allied cavalry picquet to discover why so much smoke plumed up from the San Isidro Fort. "We've won, boys," Sharpe said as he jumped back down to the barracks floor. That was not quite true. They had not won, they had merely survived, but survival felt uncommonly like victory and never more so than when, a half-hour later, Loup's men left the fort. They had made two more attacks on the barracks, but the assaults were feeble, mere gestures, for the explosion had ripped the enthusiasm out of Loup's brigade. So, in the first light, the Frenchmen went and they carried their wounded with them. Sharpe helped dismantle the barrier inside the nearest barracks door, then stepped cautiously into a chill and smoky morning that stank of blood and fire. He carried his loaded rifle in case Loup had left some marksmen behind, but no one shot at him in the pearly light. Behind Sharpe, like men released from nightmare, the guardsmen stepped cautiously into the dawn. Donaju emerged from the second barracks and insisted on shaking Sharpe's hand, almost as though the rifleman had won some kind of victory. He had not. Indeed Sharpe had come within a hand's breadth of ignominious defeat. But now, instead, he was alive and the enemy was gone. Which meant, Sharpe knew, that the real trouble was about to begin. |
||
|