Sharpe's Prey

by Bernard Cornwell

  Nothing was working well. But Copenhagen was surrounded, the Danish fleet was trapped and Sharpe had survived.

  General Castenschiold had been ordered to harry the southern flank of the British forces blockading Copenhagen and he was not a man to ignore such orders. He dreamed of glory and dreaded defeat and his moods swung between optimism and a deep gloom.

  The core of his force was a handful of regular soldiers, but most of his fourteen thousand men were from the militia. A few of those were well trained and decently armed, but far more were new recruits, some still wearing their wooden clogs and most carrying weapons that belonged in farmyards rather than on battlefields. They were country boys, or else from the small Danish towns of southern Zealand.

  “They are enthusiastic,” an aide told the General.

  That only made Castenschiold even more worried. Enthusiastic men would rush into battle with no knowledge of its realities, yet duty and patriotism demanded that he take his inadequate force north to attack the British troops encircling the capital and he tried to persuade himself that there was a real chance of surprise. Perhaps he could drive so deep into the British-held ground that he could reach the siege works about Copenhagen before the redcoats knew of his presence, and in his secret and slightly guilty dreams he imagined his men slaughtering the hapless enemy and throwing down their newly dug batteries, but in his heart he knew the outcome would not be so happy. But it had to be tried and he dared not allow his pessimism to show. “Are there any enemy south of Roskilde?” he asked an aide.

  “A few,” was the airy answer.

  “How many? Where?” Castenschiold demanded savagely and waited while the aide sifted through the dozens of messages sent by loyal people. Those reports said that enemy troops had appeared in Koge, but not many. “What is not many?” Castenschiold inquired.

  “Fewer than five thousand, sir. The schoolmaster in Ejby says six thousand, but I’m sure he exaggerates.”

  “Schoolmasters can usually count reliably,” Castenschiold said sourly. “And who leads these troops?”

  “A man called”-the aide paused as he sought the right piece of paper-“Sir Arthur Wellesley.”

  “Whoever he is,” Castenschiold said.

  “He fought in India, sir,” the aide said, “at least the schoolmaster says he did. It seems some officers were billeted at the school, sir, and they said Sir Arthur gained a certain reputation in India.” The aide tossed down the schoolmaster’s carefully written letter. “I’m sure it isn’t hard to beat Indians, sir.”

  “You are?” Castenschiold asked sarcastically. “Let us hope this Sir Arthur underestimates us as you underestimate him.” Castenschiold’s dream of piercing the British lines about Copenhagen was dying fast, for even a handful of British troops would be sufficient to detect his approach and warn their comrades. And if the five or six thousand men were under the command of an experienced general then Castenschiold doubted he would even get past them. But it had to be tried, the Crown Prince had ordered it, and so Castenschiold gave the order to move north.

  It was a glorious late-summer day. Castenschiold’s army marched on three roads, filling the warm air with dust. They had a handful of field guns, though all were very old and the Captain who commanded the battery was not at all sure their barrels would endure too much firing. “They’ve been used for ceremonial purposes, sir,” he told the General. “For salutes on the King’s birthday. Haven’t had an actual ball up their gullets in fifteen years.”

  “But they should fire well enough?” Castenschiold asked.

  “They should, sir,” the Captain said, though his voice was dubious.

  “Then make sure they do,” the General snapped. The presence of the guns gave his men confidence, though they did little for Castenschiold himself. He would rather have had a battery of new artillery, but all the new field guns were in Holstein, waiting for a French invasion that now seemed unlikely to happen. Why should the French invade Denmark when the British were forcing the Danes to become France’s ally? Which meant the best troops and guns of the Danish army were all stranded in Holstein and the British navy was blocking them from the island of Zealand, and General Castenschiold was realistic enough to know that the best Danish generals were also in Holstein, which meant that the hopes of Denmark were pinned on one middle-aged and punctilious general who had a single ancient battery of unreliable artillery and fourteen thousand inadequately trained troops. Yet still he dared dream of glory.

  A squadron of cavalry trotted through the fields of stubble. They looked fine and the sound of their laughter was reassuring. Ahead, up on the northern horizon, there was the smallest gray cloud. Castenschiold fancied that was the smoke from the big guns at Copenhagen, though he could not be sure.

  Castenschiold’s hopes rose in the afternoon when his cavalry patrols reported that the British troops under Sir Arthur Wellesley had withdrawn from Koge. No one knew why. They had come, stayed for a night and marched away again and the road to Copenhagen was evidently open. Castenschiold’s dream of slicing into the soft belly of the British troops was still alive, and it grew even stronger when his small army reached Koge that evening and discovered the cavalry’s reports were true. The British were gone and the road was indeed open. The commander of the local militia, an energetic chandler, had spent the time since the British departure digging entrenchments all about the small town. “If they come back, sir, we’ll pepper them, pepper them proper!”

  “You have evidence that they’ll come back?” Castenschiold inquired, wondering why else the chandler had dug such impressive trenches.

  “I hope they come back! We’ll pepper them!” The chandler said he had only seen three British regiments, two in red coats and one in green. “Hardly more than two thousand men, I should think.”

  “Cannon?”

  “They had some, but so do we now.” The chandler beamed at the Danish guns trundling into the town.

  Castenschiold’s men bivouacked that night at Koge. There were reports of horsemen in the fields to the west, but by the time the General reached the place where the strange riders had been seen, they were gone. “Were they in uniform?” he asked, but no one was sure. Perhaps they had been local men? Castenschiold feared it was an enemy patrol, but the pickets saw no more such horsemen. Most of the army camped in the fields where a small stream twisted between woods and fields of stubble or turnips, while the luckier troops found shelter in the town and the General himself was billeted in the pastor’s house behind Saint Nicholas’s church where he tried to reassure his host that all would be well. “God will not desert us,” Castenschiold claimed, and his pious optimism seemed justified when, at midnight, he was woken by a returning cavalry patrol who had succeeded in riding as far as Roskilde where they had discovered that town’s garrison to be intact. The General decided he would send a message to Roskilde in the morning, demanding that its defenders march east toward Copenhagen. That might divert the British while he lunged up the open coast road. He forgot the vague reports of unidentified horsemen in the previous dusk because the dream was again taking shape.

  The General’s breakfast of cold herrings, cheese and bread was taken long before dawn. The army was stirring, readying to march. One of the militia colonels came to the pastor’s house with a gloomy report that his men had been issued with ammunition of the wrong calibre. “It will fit,” the Colonel reported, “but the balls rattle in the barrels. Too much windage, I think it’s called.” The Colonel was a cheese-maker from Vordingborg and was not entirely sure he wanted to lead his wooden-clogged soldiers against British regulars.

  Castenschiold ordered an aide to sort out the problem, then strapped on his sword belt and listened to the gulls crying on the long beach. Today, he thought, he would either become famous or infamous. Today he must march his men up that long coast road, ever flanked by the sea with its threat of the British navy, and he must hope to pierce deep into the enemy troops that were wrapped about the capital. “Hammers and nails,�
� he told an aide.

  “Hammers and nails, sir?”

  “To spike the British guns, of course,” Castenschiold snapped, wondering if he had to do all the thinking in the army. “Soft nails, if you can find them. And search the town for axes. To break the wheel spokes of the gun carriages,” he added quickly before the aide could ask why he wanted axes.

  “You have time for prayers?” the pastor asked him.

  “Prayers?” Castenschiold had been wondering if the water anywhere along the coast was deep enough to allow the big British ships close enough inshore to use their terrible broadsides against the road.

  “You would be most welcome at our family prayers,” the pastor explained.

  “I must be moving,” Castenschiold said hurriedly, “but pray for us, do pray for us.” He mounted his horse and, followed by a half-dozen aides, rode north in the thinning mist. The dawn was just showing above the eastern sea when he reached the northern edge of his encampment and there summoned his commanders. “I want your men on either flank today,” he told the two cavalry officers. “Push patrols forward, of course, but keep the bulk of your men close. And there’ll be no stopping today. Carry forage if you need it, and tell your men to put dinner in their saddlebags. Speed, gentlemen!” He spoke now to all the officers. “Speed is essential. We have to reach the enemy before they know we are coming!”

  He talked to his officers atop a small ridge. To his right, surprisingly close, was the long beach, and ahead of him the road to Copenhagen led between wide fields that sloped toward a shadowed tangle of hedgerows and trees. The sun was still below the horizon, but far off, silhouetted against the blanching east, he could see a ship of the line. “The regular infantry will lead the march,” Castenschiold decreed, “artillery next and then the militia. I want to be fighting by midday!” By noon he should be close to Copenhagen and he planned to keep his cavalry and regular infantry to fight any redcoats who might oppose him, but release his militia loose among the batteries. They would spike the guns, break the carriage wheels and burn the powder charges. He could see it now, see the smoke whirling up from shattered batteries, see himself a hero. “Right, gentlemen! Let us make ready! We march in thirty minutes!” He pointed dramatically northward, a gesture in keeping with his grand ambitions. Some of the officers turned to stare where he pointed and saw a dark patch of shadow move where the road vanished among some trees. Castenschiold also saw the shadow and thought it was a deer, or perhaps a cow, then he saw it was a man on horseback. “Who sent out patrols?” he demanded.

  “Not one of ours, sir,” a cavalryman answered.

  There were six horsemen on the road now and they had stopped, probably because they had seen the faint glow of the Danish campfires showing above the ridge where Castenschiold had tried to inspire his men. Castenschiold took his telescope from his saddlebag. The light was still bad so he dismounted and had an aide stand in front of him so he could use the man’s shoulder as a rest for the glass.

  Cavalrymen. He could see saber scabbards, but the men were not Danes, their hats were the wrong shape. He stooped slightly, letting the glass go beyond the cavalrymen to where the road ran beside the distant beach. For a time he could only see gray and black, mist and shadow, then the hidden sun’s light grew and the General could see men marching. It was darkness moving, a mass of men, columns of men and they were trampling on his dream. He collapsed the telescope. “We’re staying here,” he said quietly.

  “Sir?” One of the aides thought he must have misheard.

  “Regular infantry here,” Castenschiold said, indicating the low crest that dominated the road. “Dragoons on the beach, light dragoons to the left flank. The militia will form a reserve between here and the town. Artillery right here, on the road.” He spoke decisively, knowing that any sign of uncertainty would destroy his men’s morale.

  Because the British were coming. There would be no attack on the siege works about Copenhagen, instead fate had decreed that General Castenschiold must fight in front of Koge. So let them attack us here, Castenschiold decided. It was not a bad position. His regular troops dominated the road, his right flank was secured by the sea, and the newly dug entrenchments were at his back if he should need to retreat.

  The six enemy cavalry scouts had vanished, carrying the news of the Danish presence to the advancing British. The sun flared on the horizon to flood the wrinkling sea with gold. It would be a beautiful day, Castenschiold thought, a beautiful day for a killing. His gloomy thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a small cart from Koge. The cart was pulled by a shaggy pony and escorted by a cheerful aide. “Hammers and nails, sir!” the aide reported. “And forty-three axes.”

  “Take them back,” Castenschiold said, “just take them back.”

  “Sir”

  “Take them back!” he snarled. For the dream was dead. Castenschiold extended his telescope again and saw the enemy infantry coming from the woods. Some were in red jackets and some in green. Green? He had never heard of any British infantry wearing green. The enemy was spreading along his front now, too far away for any cannon to reach, but waiting for their own guns to arrive and for a few moments Castenschiold was tempted to attack them. He outnumbered the British, he could see that, and he toyed with the thought of releasing his men down the slope, but resisted the temptation. Inexperienced troops fought better when they defended a position, so he would let the outnumbered enemy climb the long hill into the teeth of his guns and perhaps, even if he could not raise Copenhagen’s siege, he could give Denmark a victory.

  The Danish guns unlimbered, the flag was raised and the infantry formed line.

  They were ready to fight.

  “What the devil are you doing here?” Captain Warren Dunnett inquired of the battalion’s quartermaster. He had never liked the man. He was up from the ranks and, in Dunnett’s opinion, had an inflated idea of his own competence and, worse, had served in India and believed, therefore, that he knew something of soldiering.

  “The Colonel sent me, sir. He told me you were a lieutenant short.”

  “And where the hell have you been anyway?” Captain Dunnett stooped to the hand mirror that he had wedged in the split top of a fence post. He scraped a razor down his cheek, carefully avoiding the tip of his wiry mustache. “Haven’t seen you in weeks.”

  “I was on detached service, sir.”

  “Detached service?” Dunnett inquired acidly. “What the hell’s that?”

  “I was working for General Baird.”

  And what the hell would Sir David Baird want with a man like Sharpe? Dunnett was not going to ask. “Just don’t get in the way,” he said curtly. He shook water off his razor and ran a hand over his chin. Bloody quartermaster, he thought.

  The riflemen chopped wood from a thicket and made small fires so they could brew their tea. The greenjackets were spread along a series of hedgerows and fences that straggled either side of the coast road. Behind them, in fields where the harvest was shocked, two battalions of redcoats waited. Every now and then an officer from one of those two battalions would come to the riflemen’s positions and stare up the shallow slope to where a Danish army was arrayed on the crest. The enemy flag, a white cross on a red field, stirred in the small wind that brought the smell of the sea. There were blue-coated cavalry on both Danish flanks and a battery of field guns in their center. Men made guesses about the enemy’s strength, most reckoning there were ten to twelve thousand Danes on the hill while the British numbered about three thousand and most of the redcoats and were happy with those odds. “What are we waiting for?” a man grumbled.

  “We are waiting, Hawkins, because General Linsingen is marching about their flank,” Captain Dunnett answered.

  That, at any rate, was the plan. General Wellesley would pin the enemy down by threatening an attack and Linsingen, of the King’s German Legion, would march around their backside to trap them. Except that a bridge had collapsed and Linsingen’s men were still three miles away on the wrong side of a
stream and no message had come and thus no one knew that the plan had already broken down.

  A rumbling series of crashes announced the arrival of a battery of British nine-pounders that unlimbered on the road. “Fires out!” a gunner officer snapped at the men crouched about the small campfires. He was worried because he was about to stack powder bags beside his guns.

  “Bloody gunners,” a rifleman complained.

  A captain of the 43rd, red-eyed and pale, begged a mug of tea from a group of riflemen. The 43rd was a Welsh regiment that had trained with the greenjackets at Shorncliffe barracks and the two battalions were friendly. “I shall give you boys some advice,” the Captain said.

  “Sir?”

  “Avoid akvavit. Avoid it. The devil brews it and the Danes drink it, God knows how. It looks like water.”

  The riflemen grinned and the Captain flinched as a kilted piper from the 92nd began taming his instrument to produce a series of moans, yelps and squeals. “Oh God,” the Captain moaned, “not that, please God, not that.”

  Sharpe heard the pipes and his mind flashed back to India, to a dusty field swirling with men, horses and painted guns where the Highlanders had ripped an enemy to ruin. “I don’t know if that noise frightens the Danes,” a voice behind him said, “but it terrifies me.”

  Sharpe turned to see that Sir Arthur Wellesley was examining the enemy through his telescope. The General was on horseback and had not been talking to Sharpe, but addressing two of his aides. Wellesley swept the glass left and right, then collapsed the tubes and found himself looking down at a Rifle officer. A look of mingled surprise and embarrassment showed on his face. “Mister Sharpe,” he said flatly, unable to avoid acknowledging Sharpe’s presence.