"Sharpe's Havoc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Корнуэлл Бернард)

CHAPTER 11

It had been at dawn that Sharpe and Hogan saw their fears were realized. Several hundred French infantry were across the Ponte Nova, the ordenanqa were nothing but bodies in a plundered village, and energetic work parties were remaking the roadway across the Cavado’s white water. The long and winding defile echoed with sporadic musket shots as Portuguese peasants, attracted to the beleaguered army like ravens to meat, took long-range shots. Sharpe saw a hundred voltigeurs in open order climb a hill to drive off one brave band that had dared to approach within two hundred paces of the stalled column. There was a flurry of shots, the French skirmishers scoured the hill and then trudged back to the crowded road. There was no sign of any British pursuit, but Hogan guessed that Wellesley’s army was still a half-day’s march behind the French. „He won’t have followed the French directly,” he explained, „he won’t have crossed the Serra de Santa Catalina like they did. He’ll have stayed on the roads, so he went to Braga first and now he’s marching eastward. As for us… „He stared down at the captured bridge. „We’d best shift ourselves to the Saltador,” he said grimly, „because it’s our last chance.”

To Sharpe it seemed there was no chance at all. More than twenty thousand French fugitives darkened the valley beneath him and Christopher was lost somewhere in that mass and how Sharpe was ever to find the renegade he did not know. But he pulled on his threadbare coat and picked up his rifle and followed Hogan who, Sharpe saw, was similarly pessimistic while Harper, perversely, was oddly cheerful, even when they had to wade through a tributary of the Cavado which ran waist deep through a steep defile which fell toward the larger river. Hogan’s mule baulked at the cold, fast water and the Captain proposed abandoning the animal, but then Javali smacked the beast hard across the face and, while it was still blinking, picked it up and carried it bodily through the wide stream. The riflemen cheered the display of strength while the mule, safe on the opposite bank, snapped its yellow teeth at the goatherd who simply smacked it again. „Useful lad, that,” Harper said approvingly. The big Irish Sergeant was soaked to the skin and as cold and tired as any of the other men, but he seemed to relish the hardship. „It’s no worse than herding back home,” he maintained as they trudged on. „I remember once my uncle was taking a flock of mutton, prime meat the lot of them, walking them on the hoof to Belfast and half the buggers ran like shite when we’d not even got to Letterkenny! Jesus, all that money gone to waste.”

„Did you get them back?” Perkins asked.

„You’re joking, lad. I searched half the bloody night and all I got was a clip round the ear from my uncle. Mind you, it was his fault, he’d never herded so much as a rabbit before and didn’t know one end of a sheep from the other, but he was told there was good cash for mutton in Belfast so he stole the flock off a skinflint in Colcarney and set off to make his fortune.”

„Do you have wolves in Ireland?” Vicente wanted to know.

„In red coats,” Harper said, and saw Sharpe scowl. „My grandfather now,” he went on hurriedly, „claimed to see a pack of them at Derrynagrial. Big, they were, he said, and with red eyes and teeth like graveyard stones and he told my grandmother that they chased him all the way to the Glenleheel bridge, but he was a drunk. Jesus, he could soak the stuff up.”

Javali wanted to know what they were talking about and immediately had his own tales of wolves attacking his goats and how he had fought one with nothing but a stick and a sharp-edged stone, and then he claimed to have raised a wolf cub and told how the village priest had insisted on killing it because the devil lived in wolves, and Sergeant Macedo said that was true and described how a sentry at Almeida had been eaten by wolves one cold winter’s night.

„Do you have wolves in England?” Vicente asked Sharpe.

„Only lawyers.”

„Richard!” Hogan chided him.

They were going north now. The road that the French would use from Ponte Nova to the Spanish frontier twisted into the hills until it met another tributary of the Cavado, the Misarella, and the Saltador bridge crossed the upper reaches of that river. Sharpe would rather have gone down to the road and marched ahead of the French, but Hogan would not hear of it. The enemy, he said, would put dragoons across the Cavado as soon as the bridge was repaired and the road was no place to be caught by horsemen, and so they stayed in the high ground that became ever more rugged, stony and difficult. Their progress was painfully slow because they were forced to make long detours when precipices or slopes of scree barred their way, and for every mile they went forward they had to walk three, and Sharpe knew the French were now advancing up the valley and gaining fast, for their progress was signaled by scattered musket shots from the hills about the Misarella’s defile. Those shots, fired at too long a range by men activated by hatred, sounded closer and closer until, at mid-morning, the French came into view.

A hundred dragoons led, but not far behind them was infantry, and these men were not a panicked rabble, but marching in good order. Javali, the moment he saw them, growled incoherently, grabbed a handful of powder from his bag, half of which he spilled as he tried to push it into his musket’s barrel. He rammed down a bullet, primed his musket and shot into the valley. It was not apparent that he hit an enemy, but he gave a small joyful shuffle and then loaded the musket again. „You were right, Richard,” Hogan said ruefully, „we should have used the road.” The French were overtaking them now.

„You were right, sir,” Sharpe said. „People like him”-he jerked his head toward the wild-bearded Javali-”would have been taking shots at us all morning.”

„Maybe,” Hogan said. He swayed on the mule’s back, then glanced down again at the French. „Pray the Saltador has been broken,” he said, but he did not sound hopeful.

They had to clamber down into a saddle of the hills, then climb again to another hog-backed ridge littered with the massive rounded boulders. They lost sight of the fast-flowing Misarella and of the French on the road beside it, but they could hear the occasional flurry of musket shots which told of partisans sniping into the valley.

„God grant the Portuguese have got to the bridge,” Hogan said for the tenth or twentieth time since dawn. If all had gone well then the Portuguese forces advancing northward in parallel to Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army should have blocked the French at Ruivaens, so cutting the last eastward road to Spain, and then sent a brigade into the hills to plug the final escape route at the Saltador. If all had gone well the Portuguese should now be barring the mountain road with cannon and infantry, but the weather had slowed their march as it had slowed Wellesley’s pursuit and the only men waiting for Marshal Soult at the Saltador were more ordenanqa.

There were over a thousand of them, half trained and ill armed, but an English major from the Portuguese staff had ridden ahead to give them advice. His strongest recommendation was to destroy the bridge, but many of the ordenanga came from the hard frontier hills and the soaring arch across the Misarella was the lifeline of their commerce and so they refused to heed Major Warre’s advice. Instead they compromised by knocking off the bridge’s parapets and narrowing its roadway by breaking the roadway’s stones with great sledgehammers, but they insisted on leaving a slim strip of stone to leap the deep ravine, and to defend the ribbon-like arch they barricaded the northern side of the bridge with an abattis made from thorn bushes, and behind that formidable obstacle, and on either side of it, they scraped earthworks behind which they could shelter as they fired at the French with ancient muskets and fowling guns. There was no artillery.

The strip of bridge that remained was just wide enough to let a farm cart cross the river’s ravine. It meant that once the French were gone the valley’s commerce could resume while the roadway and parapets were rebuilt. But to the French that narrow strip would mean only one thing: safety.

Hogan was the first to see that the bridge was not fully destroyed. He climbed off the mule and swore viciously, then handed Sharpe his telescope and Sharpe stared down at the bridge’s remnants. Musket smoke already shrouded both banks as the dragoons of the French vanguard fired across the ravine and the ordenanga in their makeshift redoubts shot back. The sound of the muskets was faint.

„They’ll get across,” Hogan said sadly, „they’ll lose a lot of men, but they’ll clear that bridge.”

Sharpe did not answer. Hogan was right, he thought. The French were making no effort to take the bridge now, but doubtless they were assembling an assault party and that meant he would have to find a place from where his riflemen could shoot at Christopher as he crossed the narrow stone arch. There was nowhere on this side of the river, but on the Misarella’s opposite bank there was a high stone bluff where a hundred or more ordenanqa were stationed. The bluff had to be less than two hundred paces from the bridge, too far for the Portuguese muskets, but it would provide a perfect vantage for his rifles, and if Christopher reached the center of the bridge he would be greeted by a dozen rifle bullets.

The problem was reaching the bluff. It was not far away, perhaps a half-mile, but between Sharpe and that enticing high ground was the Misarella. „We have to cross that river,” Sharpe said.

„How long will that take?” Hogan asked.

„As long as it takes,” Sharpe said. „We don’t have a choice.”

The musketry grew in intensity, crackling like burning thorn, then fading before bursting back into life. The dragoons were crowding the southern bank to swamp the defenders with fire, but Sharpe could do nothing to help.

So, for the moment, he walked away.

In the valley of the Cavado, just twelve miles from the advance guard that fought the ordenanqa across the ravine of the Misarella, the first British troops caught up with Soult’s rearguard which protected the men and women still crossing the Ponte Nova. The British troops were light dragoons and they could do little more than exchange carbine fire with the French troops who were drawn across the road to fill the valley between the river and the southern cliffs. But not far behind the dragoons the Brigade of Guards was marching, and behind them was a pair of three-pounder cannons, guns that fired shot so light that they were derided as toys, but on this day, when no one else could deploy artillery, the two toys were worth their weight in gold.

The French rearguard waited while, a dozen miles away, the vanguard readied to attack the Saltador. Two battalions of infantry would assault the bridge, but it was plain that they would become mincemeat if the thick barrier of thorn were not removed from the bridge’s far end. The abattis was four feet high and just as thick and made from two dozen thorn bushes that had been tied together and weighted down with logs, and it made a formidable obstacle and so a Forlorn Hope was proposed. A Forlorn Hope was a company of men who were expected to die, but in doing so they would clear a path for their comrades, and usually such suicidal bands were deployed against the heavily defended breaches of enemy fortresses, but today’s band must cross the narrow remnant of a bridge and die under the flail of musket fire, and as they died they were to clear away the thorn abattis. Major Dulong of the 31st Leger, the new Legion d’Honneur medal still bright on his chest, volunteered to lead the Forlorn Hope. This time he could not use darkness, and the enemy was far more numerous, but his hard face showed no apprehension as he pulled on a pair of gloves and then twisted the loops of his saber cords about his wrist so that he would not lose the weapon in the chaos he anticipated as the thorns were wrenched aside. General Loison, who commanded the French vanguard, ordered every available man to the river bank to swamp the ordenanga with musket, carbine and even pistol fire and when the noise had swelled to a deafening intensity Dulong raised his saber then swung it forward as a signal to advance.

The skirmishing company of his own regiment ran across the bridge. Three men could just go abreast on the narrow ribbon of stone and Dulong was in the very first rank. The ordenanqa roared their defiance and a volley blasted from the closest earthwork. Dulong was hit in the chest, he heard the bullet strike his new medal and then distinctly heard the snap as a rib broke and he knew the bullet must be in his lung, but he felt no pain. He tried to shout, but his breath was very short, yet he began hauling at the thorns with his gloved hands. More men came, cramming themselves on the bridge’s thin roadway. One slipped and fell screaming into the white tumult of the Misarella. Bullets smacked into the Forlorn Hope, the air was nothing but smoke and splintering noise and hissing bullets, but then Dulong managed to pitch a whole section of the abattis into the river and there was a gap wide enough to let a man through and big enough to save a trapped army, and he staggered through it, saber raised, spitting bubbles of blood as his breath labored. A huge shout came from behind him as the first of the support battalions ran toward the bridge with fixed bayonets. Dulong’s surviving men cleared away the last of the thorn abattis, a dozen dead voltigeurs were unceremoniously kicked over the roadway’s edge into the ravine, and suddenly the Saltador was dark with French troops. They screamed a war cry as they came and the ordenanqa, most of whom were still reloading after trying to stop Dulong’s Forlorn Hope, now fled. Hundreds of men ran westward, climbing into the hills to escape the bayonets. Dulong paused by the nearest abandoned earthwork and there he bent over, his saber dangling by the cords tied to his wrist and a long dribble of mingled blood and saliva trickling from his mouth. He closed his eyes and tried to pray.

„A stretcher!” a sergeant shouted. „Make a stretcher. Find a doctor!” Two French battalions chased the ordenanqa away from the bridge. A few Portuguese still lingered on a high rocky bluff to the left of the road, but they were too far away for their musket fire to be anything except a nuisance and so the French let them stay there and watch an army escape.

For Major Dulong had prized open the last jaws of the trap and the road north was open.

Sharpe, up in the rough ground south of the Misarella, heard the furious musketry and knew the French must be assaulting the bridge and he prayed the ordenanqa would hold them, but he knew they would fail. They were amateur soldiers, the French were professional and, though men would die, the French would still cross the Misarella and once the first troops were over then the rest of their army would surely follow.

So he had little time in which to cross the river which tumbled white in its deep rocky ravine and Sharpe had to go more than a mile upstream before he found a place where they might just negotiate the steep slopes and rain-swollen water. The mule would have to be abandoned for the ravine was so precipitous that not even Javali could manhandle the beast down the cliff and through the fast water. Sharpe ordered his men to strip the slings off their rifles and muskets, then buckle or tie them together to make a long rope. Javali, eschewing such an aid, scrambled down to the Misarella, waded through and began climbing the other side, but Sharpe feared losing one of his men to a broken leg up in these hills and so he went more slowly. The men eased themselves down, using the rope as a support, then passed down their weapons. The river was scarcely a dozen paces across, but it was deep and its cold water tugged hard at Sharpe’s legs as he led the crossing. The rocks underfoot were slick and uneven. Tongue fell over and was swept a few yards downstream before he managed to haul himself onto the bank. „Sorry, sir,” he managed to say through chattering teeth as water drained from his cartridge box. It took over forty minutes for them all to cross the ravine and climb its other side where, from a peak of rock, Sharpe could just see the cloud-shadowed hills of Spain.

They turned east toward the bridge just as it began to rain again. All morning the dark showers had slanted about them, but now one opened directly above them, and then a crash of thunder bellowed across the sky. Ahead, far off to the south, there was a patch of sunshine lightening the pale hills, but above Sharpe the sky grew darker and the rain heavier and he knew the rifles would have difficulty firing in such a teeming downpour. He said nothing. They were all cold and dispirited, the French were escaping and Christopher might already be over the Misarella and on his way into Spain.

To their left the grass-grown road twisted up into the last Portuguese hills and they could see dragoons and infantry slogging up the road’s tortuous bends, but those men were a half-mile away and the rocky bluff was just ahead. Javali was already on its summit and he warned the remnants of the ordenanga who waited among the ferns and boulders that the uniformed men who approached were friends. The Portuguese, whose muskets were useless in the heavy rain, had been reduced to throwing rocks that bounded down the bluff’s eastern face and were nothing but a minor nuisance to the stream of French who crossed the thin lifeline across the Misarella.

Sharpe shrugged off the ordenanqa who wanted to welcome him and threw himself down on the bluff’s lip. Rain thrashed the rocks, poured down the cliff’s face and drummed on his shako. A crash of thunder sounded overhead to be echoed by another from the southwest, and Sharpe recognized the second peal as the sound of guns. It was cannon fire, and the noise meant that Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army must have caught up with the French and that his artillery had opened fire, but that fight was miles away, back beyond the Ponte Nova, and here, at the final obstacle, the French were escaping.

Hogan, panting from the exertion of climbing the bluff, dronned beside Sharpe. They were so close to the bridge they could see the mustaches on the faces of the French infantry, see the striped brown-and-black pattern of a woman’s long skirt. She walked beside her man, carrying his musket and his child, and had a dog tied to her belt by a length of string. Behind them an officer led a limping horse. „Is that cannon I’m hearing?” Hogan asked.

„Yes, sir.“

„Must be the three-pounders,” Hogan guessed. „We could do with a couple of those toys here.”

But they had none. Only Sharpe, Vicente and their men. And an army that was escaping.

Back at the Ponte Nova the gunners had manhandled their two toy cannon to the crest of a knoll that overlooked the French rearguard. It was not raining here. An occasional flurry whipped down from the mountains, but the muskets could still fire and the Brigade of Guards loaded their weapons, fixed bayonets and then formed to advance in column of companies.

And the guns, the despised three-pounders, opened on the French and the small balls, scarcely bigger than an orange each, whipped through the tight ranks and bounced on rock to kill more Frenchmen, and the band of Coldstream Guards struck up „Rule Britannia” and the great colors were unfurled to the damp air, and the three-pound balls struck again, each shot leaving a long spray of blood in the air as though a giant unseen knife were slashing through the French ranks. The two light companies of the Guards and a company of the green-jacketed 60th, the Royal American Rifles, were advancing among a jumble of rocks and low stone walls on the French left flank and the muskets and Baker rifles began taking their toll of French officers and sergeants. French skirmishers, men from the renowned 4th Leger, a regiment chosen by Soult to guard his rear because the 4th was famous for its steadiness, ran forward to drive the British skirmishers back, but the rifles were too much for them. They had never faced such long-range accurate fire before and the voltigeurs backed away.

„Take them forward, Campbell, take them forward!” Sir Arthur Wellesley called to the brigade’s commander and so the first battalion of the Coldstreamers and the first battalion of the 3rd Foot Guards marched toward the bridge. Their bearskins made them seem huge, the band’s drummers thumped for all they were worth, the rifles snapped and the two three-pounders crashed back onto their trails to cut two more bloody furrows through the long lines of Frenchmen.

„They’re going to break,” Colonel Waters said. He had served as Sir Arthur’s guide all day and was watching the French rearguard through his glass. He could see them wavering, see the sergeants dashing back and forth behind the ranks to push men into file. „They’re going to break, sir.”

„Pray they do,” Sir Arthur said, „pray they do.” And he wondered what was happening far ahead, whether the French escape route had been blocked. He already had a victory, but how complete would it be?

The two battalions of Guards, both twice the size of an ordinary battalion, marched steadily and their bayonets were two thousand specks of light in the cloud-dimmed valley and their colors were red, white, blue and gold above them. And in front of them the French shivered and the cannons fired again and the blood mist flickered in two long lines to show where the round shots ploughed the files.

And Sir Arthur Wellesley did not even watch the Guards. He was staring up into the hills where a great black rainfall blotted the view. „God grant,” he said fervently, „that the road is cut.”

„Amen,” Colonel Waters said, „amen.”

The road was not blocked because a leaping strip of stone spanned the Misarella and a seemingly endless line of French made their way across the hump-backed arch. Sharpe watched them. They walked like beaten men, tired and sullen, and he could see from their faces how they resented the handful of engineer officers who chivvied them across the bridge. In April these men had been the conquerors of northern Portugal and they had thought they were about to march south and capture Lisbon. They had plundered all the country north of the Douro: they had ransacked houses and churches, raped women, killed men and strutted like the cocks of the dunghill, but now they had been whipped, broken and chased, and the distant sound of the two cannon told them that their ordeal was not yet over. And above them, on the rock-strewn hill crests, they could see dozens of bitter men who just waited for a straggler and then the knives would be sharpened, the fires lit, and every Frenchman in the army had heard the stories of the horribly mutilated corpses found in the highlands.

Sharpe just watched them. Every now and then the bridge arch would be cleared so that a recalcitrant horse could be coaxed over the narrow span. Riders were peremptorily ordered to climb down from their saddles and two hussars were on hand to blindfold the horses and lead them across the stone remnant. The rain eased and then became heavy again. It was getting dark, an unnatural dusk brought by black cloud and veils of rain. A general, his uniform heavy with sodden braid, followed his blindfolded horse across the bridge. The water seethed white far below him, bouncing off the rocks of the ravine, twisting in pools, foaming on down to the Cavado. The General hurried off the bridge and then had trouble remounting his horse. The ordenanqa jeered him and hurled a volley of rocks, but the missiles merely bounced on the bluff’s lower slopes and rolled harmlessly toward the road.

Hogan was watching the French bunched behind the bridge through his telescope which he constantly wiped clear of water. „Where are you, Mister Christopher?” he asked bitterly.

„Maybe the bastard’s gone ahead,” Harper said tonelessly. „If I was him, sir, I’d be in the front. Get away, that’s what he wants to do.”

„Maybe,” Sharpe acknowledged, „maybe.” He thought Harper was probably right and that Christopher might already be in Spain with the French vanguard, but there was no way of knowing that.

„We’ll watch till nightfall, Richard,” Hogan suggested in a flat voice that could not hide his disappointment.

Sharpe could see a mile back down the road which was crammed thick as the men, women, horses and mules shuffled toward the bottleneck of the Saltador. Two stretchers were carried over the bridge, the sight of the wounded men prompting shouts of triumph from the orde-nanqa on the bluff. Another man, his leg broken, limped over on a makeshift crutch. He was in agony, but it was better to struggle on with blistered hands and a bleeding leg than fall behind and be caught by the partisans. His crutch slipped on the bridge’s stone and he fell heavily, and his predicament provoked another flurry of curses from the ordenanqa. A French infantryman aimed his musket up at the taunting Portuguese, but when he pulled his trigger the spark fell on damp powder and nothing happened except that the jeering became louder.

And then Sharpe saw him. Saw Christopher. Or rather he saw Kate first, recognized the oval of her face, the contrast of her pale skin and jet-black hair, her beauty apparent even in this dark, wet horror of an early dusk, and he saw, surprised, that she was wearing a French uniform which was strange, he thought, but then he saw Christopher and Williamson beside her horse. The Colonel was dressed in civilian clothes and was trying to edge and bully and force his way through the crowd so that he could get across the bridge and so know himself to be safe from his pursuers. Sharpe snatched up Hogan’s telescope, wiped its lens and stared. Christopher, he thought, looked older, almost aged with something gray about his face. Then he edged the lens to the right and saw Williamson’s sullen face and felt a surge of pure anger.

„Have you seen him?” Hogan asked.

„He’s there,” Sharpe said, and he put the glass down, slid his rifle from its new leather case and eased the barrel forward across a lip of rock.

„That’s him, so it is.” Harper had seen Christopher now.

„Where?” Hogan wanted to know.

„Twenty yards back from the bridge, sir,” Harper said, „beside the horse. And that’s Miss Kate on the horse’s back. And, Jesus!” Harper had seen Williamson. „Is that — ”

„Yes,” Sharpe said curtly, and he was tempted to aim the rifle at the deserter rather than at Christopher.

Hogan was gazing through the telescope. „A good-looking girl,” he said.

„She makes the heart beat faster, right enough,” Harper said.

Sharpe kept the rifle’s lock covered, hoping to keep the powder dry, and now he took off the scrap of cloth, pulled back the flint and aimed the gun at Christopher, and just then the heavens bellowed with thunder, and the rain, which was already heavy, increased in malevolence. It crashed in torrents to make Sharpe curse. He could not even see Christopher now! He jerked the rifle up and stared down into the blurred air which was filled with silver streaks, a cloud-bursting rain, a deluge fit to make a man build an ark. Jesus! And he could see nothing! And just then a slash of lightning sliced the sky in two and the rain drummed like the devil’s hoofbeats and Sharpe pointed the barrel toward the heavens and pulled the trigger. He knew what would happen, and it did. The spark died, the rifle was useless and so he threw the weapon down, stood up and drew his sword.

„What the hell are you doing?” Hogan asked.

„Going to fetch my damn telescope,” Sharpe said.

And went toward the French.

The 4th Leger, counted as one of the best infantry units in Soult’s army, broke and the two cavalry regiments broke with them. The three regiments had been well posted, dominating a slight ridge that ran athwart the road as it approached the Ponte Nova, but the sight of the Brigade of Guards and the constant smack of rifle bullets and the stinging blows of the twin three-pounders had finished the French rearguard.

Their task had been to halt the British pursuit, then withdraw slowly and destroy the repaired Ponte Nova behind them, but instead they ran.

Two thousand men and fourteen hundred horses were converging on the makeshift roadway across the Cavado. None tried to fight. They turned their backs and they fled, and the whole dark panicked mass of them was crushed against the river’s bank as the Guards came up behind.

„Move the guns!” Sir Arthur spurred his horse toward the gunners whose weapons had scorched two wide fans of grass in front of the barrels. „Move them up!” he shouted. „Move them up! Keep at them!” It was beginning to rain harder, the sky was darkening and forked lightning slithered above the northern hills.

The guns were moved a hundred yards nearer the bridge and then rolled up the southern slope of the valley to a small terrace from where they could slam their round shot into the crowded French. Rain hissed and steamed on the barrels as the first rounds crashed out and the blood flickered its red haze above the broken rearguard. A dragoon’s horse screamed, reared and killed a man with its flailing hooves. More round shots slammed home. A few Frenchmen, those at the back who knew they would never reach the bridge alive, turned back, threw down their muskets and held up their hands. The Guards opened ranks to let the prisoners through, closed ranks and loosed a volley that punched into the rear of the French rabble. The fugitives were jostling, pushing and fighting their way onto the bridge and the congestion on the unbalustraded roadway was so great that men and horses were forced off the edge to fall screaming into the Cavado, and still the two guns kept at them, slamming shots onto the Ponte Nova itself now, bloodying the rafters and the felled trunks that were the rearguard’s only escape. The round shots drove more men and horses off the span’s unprotected edges, so many that the dead and dying made a dam beneath the bridge. The high point of the French invasion of Portugal had been a bridge at Oporto where hundreds of folk had drowned in panic, and now the French were on another broken bridge and the dead of the Douro were being avenged. And still the guns hammered the French, and now and then a musket or rifle would fire despite the rain and the British were a vengeful line converging on the horror that was the Ponte Nova. More French surrendered. Some were weeping with shame, misery, hunger and cold as they staggered back. A captain of the 4th Leger threw down his sword and then, in disgust, picked it up and snapped the thin blade across his knee before letting himself be taken captive.

„Cease fire!” a Coldstreamer officer shouted.

A dying horse whinnied. The smoke of muskets and cannon was lost in the rain and the bed of the river was pitiful with the moans of men and beasts who had broken their bones when they fell from the roadway. The dam of dying and dead, of soldiers and horses, was so high that the Cavado was piling up behind them and drying up downstream of them, though a trickle of blood-reddened water escaped from the human spillway. A wounded Frenchman tried to drag himself up from the river and died just as he reached the top of the bank where the Coldstreamer bandsmen were collecting their wounded enemies. The doctors stropped their scalpels on leather belts and took fortifying slugs of brandy. The Guards took the bayonets from their muskets and the gunners rested beside their three-pound cannon.

For the pursuit was over and Soult was gone from Portugal.

Sharpe went headlong down the bluff’s steep escarpment, leaping recklessly between rocks and praying that he would not lose his footing on the soaking grass. The rain was hammering down and thunder was drowning the distant noise of the guns at the Ponte Nova. It was getting darker and darker, twilight and storm combining to throw a hellish gloom across Portugal’s wild northern hills, though it was the sheer intensity of the rain that did most to obscure the bridge, but as Sharpe neared the foot of the bluff, where the ground began to level, he saw that the Saltador was suddenly empty. A riderless horse was being led across the narrow span and the beast had held back the men behind, and then Sharpe saw a hussar leading the horse and Christopher, Williamson and Kate were just behind the saddled beast. A group of infantrymen were walking away from the bridge as Sharpe came from the rain with his drawn sword and they stared at him, astonished, and one man moved to intercept him, but Sharpe told him in two short words what to do and the man, even if he did not speak English, had the good sense to obey.

Then Sharpe was on the Saltador and the hussar leading the horse just gaped at him. Christopher saw him and turned to escape, but more men were already climbing the roadway and so there was no way off the bridge’s other side. „Kill him!” Christopher shouted at both Williamson and the hussar, and it was the Frenchman who obediently began to draw his saber, but Sharpe’s sword hissed in the rain and the man’s sword hand was almost cut off at the wrist and then Sharpe rammed the blade at the hussar’s chest and there was a scream as the cavalryman fell into the Misarella. The horse, terrified by the lightning and by the uncertain footing on the bridge, gave a great whinny and then bolted past Sharpe, almost knocking him off the roadway. Its horseshoes made sparks from the stones, then it was gone and Sharpe faced Christopher and Williamson on the Saltador’s thin crest.

Kate screamed at the sight of the long sword. „Get up the hill!” Sharpe shouted at her. „Move, Kate, move! And you, you bastard, give me my telescope!”

Christopher reached out to stop Kate, but Williamson darted past the Colonel and obstructed his hand, and Kate, seeing safety a few feet away, had the sense to run past Sharpe. Williamson tried to grab her, then saw Sharpe’s sword swinging toward him and he managed to parry the cut with his French musket. The clash of sword and gun drove Williamson back a pace and Sharpe was already following, snarling, the sword flickering out like a snake’s tongue to force Williamson another pace backward and then Christopher shoved the deserter forward again. „Kill him!” he screamed at Williamson and the deserter did his best, swinging the musket like a great club, but Sharpe stepped back from the wild blow, then came forward and the sword seared through the rain to catch Williamson on the side of his head, half severing his ear. Williamson staggered. The wide-brimmed leather hat had taken some of the blade’s sting, but the sheer force of the blow still sent Williamson lurching sideways toward the roadway’s ragged edge and Sharpe was still attacking, this time lunging, and the point of the blade pierced the deserter’s green jacket, jarred on a rib and sent Williamson over the edge. He screamed, then Christopher was alone with Sharpe on the high arched summit of the Saltador.

Christopher stared at his green-jacketed enemy. He did not believe what he saw. He tried to speak, because words had always been Christopher’s best weapon, but now he found he was struck dumb and Sharpe walked toward him and then a surge of Frenchmen came up behind the Colonel and they were going to force him onto Sharpe’s sword and Christopher did not have the courage to draw his own and so, in sheer desperation, he followed Williamson into the rainy dark of the Misarella’s ravine. He jumped.

Vicente, Harper and Sergeant Macedo had followed Sharpe down the hill and now encountered Kate. „Look after her, sir!” Harper called to Vicente and then, with Sergeant Macedo, he hurried toward the bridge just in time to see Sharpe leap off the roadway. „Sir!” Harper shouted. „Oh, Jesus bloody God,” he swore, „the daft bloody bastard!” He led Macedo across the road just as a flood of blue-coated infantrymen spilled off the bridge, but if any of the Frenchmen thought it strange that enemy soldiers were on the Misarella’s bank they showed no sign of it. They just wanted to escape and so they hurried north toward Spain as Harper prowled the bank and stared into the ravine for a sight of Sharpe. He could see dead horses among the rocks and half submerged in the white water and he could see the sprawling bodies of a dozen Frenchmen who had fallen from the Saltador’s high span, but of Christopher’s dark coat and Sharpe’s green jacket he could see nothing.

Williamson had fallen straight into the deepest part of the ravine and by chance had landed in a swirling pool of the river that was deep enough to break his fall and he had pitched forward onto the corpse of a horse that had further cushioned him. Christopher was less fortunate. He fell close to Williamson, but his left leg struck rock and his ankle was suddenly a mass of pain and the river water was cold as ice. He clung to Williamson and looked about desperately and saw no sign of any pursuit and he reasoned that Sharpe could not stay long on the bridge in the face of the retreating French. „Get me to the bank,” he told Williamson. „I think my ankle’s broken.”

„You’ll be all right, sir,” Williamson said. „I’m here, sir,” and he put an arm round the Colonel’s waist and helped him toward the neatest bank.

„Where’s Kate?” Christopher asked.

„She ran, sir, she ran, but we’ll find her, sir. We’ll find her. Here we are, sir, we can climb here.” Williamson hauled Christopher onto rocks beside the water and looked for an easy way to climb the ravine’s side and instead saw Sharpe. He swore.

„What is it?” Christopher was in too much pain to notice much.

„That bloody jacked-up jack pudding,” Williamson said and drew the saber that he had taken from a dead French officer on the road near the seminary. „Bloody Sharpe,” he explained.

Sharpe had escaped the rush of oncoming Frenchmen by jumping for the side of the ravine where a gorse sapling clung to a ledge. Its stem bent under his weight, but it held and he had managed to find a foothold on the wet rock beneath and then jump down to another boulder where his feet had shot out from beneath him so that he slid down the big stone’s rounded side to crash into the river, but the sword was still in his hand and in front of him was Williamson and beside the deserter was a wet and terrified Christopher. Rain hissed about them as the dark ravine was garishly lit by a stab of lightning.

„My telescope,” Sharpe said to Christopher.

„Of course, Sharpe, of course.” Christopher pulled his sopping wet coat-tails up, groped in one of his pockets and took out the glass. „Not damaged!” he said brightly. „I only borrowed it.”

„Put it on that boulder,” Sharpe ordered.

„Not damaged at all!” Christopher said, putting the precious glass on the boulder. „And well done, Lieutenant!” Christopher nudged Williamson, who was just watching Sharpe.

Sharpe took a step nearer the two men, who both backed away. Christopher pushed Williamson again, trying to make him attack Sharpe, but the deserter was wary. The longest blade he had ever used in a fight was a sword bayonet, but that experience had not trained him to fight with a saber and especially not against a butcher’s blade like the heavy cavalry sword that Sharpe held. He stepped back, waiting for an opportunity.

„I’m glad you’re here, Sharpe,” Christopher said. „I was wondering how to get away from the French. They were keeping a pretty close eye on me, as you can imagine. I have lots to tell Sir Arthur. He’s done well, hasn’t he?”

„He’s done well,” Sharpe agreed, „and he wants you dead.”

„Don’t be ridiculous, Sharpe! We’re English!” Christopher had lost his hat when he jumped and the rain was flattening his hair. „We don’t assassinate people.”

„I do,” Sharpe said, and he took a step nearer again, and Christopher and Williamson edged away.

Christopher watched Sharpe pick up the glass. „Not damaged, you see? I took good care of it.” He had to shout to make himself heard over the seething rain and the crash of the river thrusting through the rocks. He pushed Williamson forward again, but the man obstinately refused to attack and Christopher now found himself trapped on a slippery ledge between cliff and river, and the Colonel, in this last extremity, finally abandoned trying to talk himself out of trouble and simply shoved the deserter toward Sharpe. „Kill him!” he shouted at Williamson. „Kill him!”

The hard shove in his back seemed to startle Williamson, who nevertheless raised the saber and slashed it at Sharpe’s head. There was a great clang as the two blades met, then Sharpe kicked the deserter’s left knee, a kick that made Williamson’s leg buckle, and Sharpe, who looked as though he was not making any particular effort, sliced the sword across Williamson’s neck so that the deserter was knocked back to the right and then the sword lunged through the rifleman’s green jacket and into his belly. Sharpe twisted the blade to stop it being trapped by the suction of flesh, ripped it free and watched the dying Williamson topple into the river. „I hate deserters,” Sharpe said, „I do so hate bloody deserters.”

Christopher had watched his man defeated and seen that Sharpe had not had to fight hard at all to do it. „No, Sharpe,” he said, „you don’t understand!” He tried to think of the words that would make Sharpe think, make him step back, but the Colonel’s mind was in panic and the words would not come.

Sharpe watched Williamson. For a moment the dying man tried to struggle out of the river, but the blood ran red from his neck and his belly and he suddenly flopped back and his ugly face sank under the water. „I do so hate deserters,” Sharpe said again, then he looked at Christopher. „Is that sword good for anything except picking your teeth, Colonel?”

Christopher numbly drew his slender blade. He had trained with a sword. He used to spend good money that he could scarce afford at Horace Jackson’s Hall of Arms on Jermyn Street where he had learned the finer graces of fencing and where he had even earned grudging praise from the great Jackson himself, but fighting on the French-chalked boards of Jermyn Street was one thing and facing Richard Sharpe in the Misarella’s ravine was altogether another. „No, Sharpe,” he said as the rifleman stepped toward him, then raised his blade in a panicked riposte as the big sword flickered toward him.

Sharpe’s lunge had been a tease, a probe to see whether Christopher would fight, but Sharpe was staring into his enemy’s eyes and he knew this man would die like a lamb. „Fight, you bastard,” he said, and lunged again, and again Christopher made a feeble riposte, but then the Colonel saw a boulder in the river’s center and he thought that he might just leap to it and from there he could reach the opposite bank and so climb to safety. He slashed his sword in a wild blow to give himself the space to make the jump and then he turned and sprang, but his broken ankle crumpled, the rock was wet under his boots and he slipped and would have fallen into the river except that Sharpe seized his jacket and so Christopher fell on the ledge, the sword useless in his hand and with his enemy above him. „No!” he begged. „No.” He stared up at Sharpe. „You saved me, Sharpe,” he said, realizing what had just happened and with a sudden hope surging through him. „You saved me.”

„Can’t pick your pockets, Colonel, if you’re under water,” Sharpe said and then his face twisted in rage as he rammed the sword down.

Christopher died on the ledge just above the pool where Williamson had drowned. The eddy above the deserter’s body ran with new red blood, then the red spilled out into the main stream where it was diluted first to pink and then to nothing. Christopher twitched and gargled because Sharpe’s sword had taken out his windpipe and that was a mercy for it was a quicker death than he deserved. Sharpe watched the Colonel’s body jerk and then go still, and he dipped his blade in the water to clean it, dried it as best he could on Christopher’s coat and then gave the Colonel’s pockets a quick search and came up with three gold coins, a broken watch with a silver case and a leather folder crammed with papers that would probably interest Hogan. „Bloody fool,” Sharpe said to the body, then he looked up into the gathering night and saw a great shadow at the ravine’s edge above him. For a second he thought it must be a Frenchman, then he heard Harper’s voice.

„Is he dead?”

„Didn’t even put up a fight. Williamson too.”

Sharpe climbed up the ravine’s side until he was near Harper and the Sergeant lowered his rifle to haul Sharpe the rest of the way. Sergeant Macedo was there and the three could not return to the bluff because the French were on the road and so they took shelter from the rain in a gully formed where one of the great round boulders had been split by a frost. Sharpe told Harper what had happened, then asked if the Irishman had seen Kate.

„The Lieutenant’s got her, sir,” Harper answered. „The last I saw of her she was having a good cry and he was holding hard onto her and giving her a nice pat on the back. Women like a good cry, have you noticed that, sir?”

„I have,” Sharpe said, „I have.”

„Makes them feel better,” Harper said. „Funny how it doesn’t work for us.”

Sharpe gave one of the gold coins to Harper, the second to Macedo and kept the third. Darkness had fallen. It promised to be a long, cold and hungry night, but Sharpe did not mind. „Got my telescope back,” he told Harper.

„I thought you would.”

„Wasn’t even broken. At least I don’t think so.” The glass had not rattled when he shook it, so he assumed it was fine.

The rain eased and Sharpe listened and heard nothing but the scrape of French feet on the Saltador’s stones, the gusting of the wind, the sound of the river and the fall of the rain. He heard no gunfire. So that faraway fight at the Ponte Nova was over and he did not doubt that it was a victory. The French were going. They had met Sir Arthur Wellesley and he had licked them, licked them good and proper, and Sharpe smiled at that, for though Wellesley was a cold beast, unfriendly and haughty, he was a bloody good soldier. And he had made havoc for King Nicolas. And Sharpe had helped. He had done his bit.