Sharpe's Prey

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Sir.”

  “Still with us, I see?”

  Sharpe said nothing. He had not seen the General in three years, not since India, and he did not detect the General’s embarrassment, for he was too acutely aware of his disapproval. Grace had been a cousin of Wellesley’s. True, she had been a very distant cousin, but her family’s enmity had spread wide and Sharpe was certain Sir Arthur must share it.

  “Enjoying the Rifles, are you, Sharpe?” Wellesley asked. He was looking up the road as he spoke.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thought you would,” Wellesley said, “thought you would. And we shall see how useful your new weapons are today, eh?” The General, like most officers in the British army, had never seen the rifles in action. “Where the devil is Linsingen? Not even a damned message!” He looked at the Danes through his glass. “Would you say they’re readying to move?” He had asked his aides the question and one of them said he thought he could see a baggage cart behind the enemy guns. “Then damn it,” Wellesley said, “we’ll manage without Linsingen. To your regiments, gentlemen.” He was talking to the red-coated infantry officers who had gathered near the guns. “Good day, Sharpe!” He turned his horse and spurred away.

  “Know him well, do you?” Captain Dunnett was jealous that the General had spoken to Sharpe and could not resist asking the question.

  “Yes,” Sharpe said curtly.

  Damn you, Dunnett thought, while Sharpe was thinking he did not really know the General at all. He had spoken to him often enough, he had saved his life once and he had received the telescope as a reward for that favor, but he did not know him. There was something too cold and frightening about Sir Arthur, but Sharpe was still glad he was in charge today. He was good, simple as that, just plain good.

  “Stay on the right,” Dunnett ordered him, “with Sergeant Filmer.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dunnett wanted to ask why Sharpe was carrying a rifle, but managed to resist the question. The man probably still thought he was in the ranks. Sharpe, as an officer, should not have carried a longarm, but he liked the Baker rifle and so he had collected one from the regimental surgeon who had a small armory of weapons that belonged to his patients. The rifle was much less cumbersome than a musket, was far more accurate and had a squat, brutal efficiency that appealed to Sharpe.

  Sergeant Kilmer nodded a greeting to Sharpe. “Glad you’re back, sir.”

  “Captain Dunnett sent me to look after you.”

  Filmer grinned. “Going to make us tea, sir, are you? Tuck us up in bed?”

  “Just going for a walk with you, Lofty. Straight up the hill.”

  Filmer glanced at the distant enemy. “Any good, are they?”

  “God knows. The militia aren’t, but those look like regulars to me.”

  “Find out soon enough,” Filmer said. He was a very short man and was thus known throughout the regiment as Lofty. He was also very competent. He scraped out the bowl of a clay pipe, then opened his pouch and offered Sharpe a scrap of honeycomb. “Fresh, sir. Found some hives in that last village.”

  Sharpe sucked the honey. “They’ll hang you if they catch you, Lofty.”

  “Hung a couple of fellows yesterday, didn’t they? Silly bastards got caught.” He spat wax onto the grass. “Is it right there’s a town over the skyline, sir?”

  “Called Koge,” Sharpe said, thinking that he must have been very near this place when he had escaped from Lavisser.

  “Bloody daft names they’ve got here, sir.” Filmer held his rifle’s trigger and worked the cock back and forth. “I put some oil on her,” he explained, “‘cos I reckon she got a bit damp at sea.” He glanced at his men. “Don’t be bloody sleeping, you dozy bastards, there’ll be work for you in a minute.”

  The artillerymen had loaded their guns and now stood ready to fire while the 92nd, over by the beach, was forming in line. The 43rd, immediately behind Sharpe, was doing the same. Two regiments of redcoats and one of greenjackets. It was a small force, much smaller than the enemy, but Sharpe knew what these regular soldiers could do and felt pity for the Danes. He gazed at their white cross on its red field. We should not be doing this, he thought. We should be fighting the French, not the Danes. He thought of Astrid and then felt guilty because of Grace. “We’ll see if it all works now, sir,” Filmer said cheerfully.

  “We will,” Sharpe agreed. They would see if the months of hard training at Shorncliffe had been worthwhile. The army had always employed skirmishers, men who ran ahead of the rigid formations to harry and weaken the waiting enemy, but now the army was employing riflemen to make those skirmishers more deadly. There were plenty who said the experiment was a waste of time and money, for rifles were much harder to reload than the smoothbore muskets and so a green jacket could only fire one shot to a musket’s three or even four. The sceptics claimed that the riflemen would be slaughtered while they recharged their expensive weapons, but those weapons could kill at four times the distance of a musket. It was accuracy against quantity.

  Both armies waited. Two redcoat regiments were in line, the guns were laid, and the Danes were showing no sign of retreat. Captain Dunnett walked to the right of his line. “You know what to do, Lofty.”

  “Skin ‘em alive, sir,” Filmer said.

  “Keep your head!” Dunnett called to the men. “Aim properly!” He was about to add some more encouragements, but just then a shrill whistle sounded in short urgent blasts. “Forward!” Dunnett shouted.

  The greenjackets were spread right across the British front so that both battalions would have the benefit of their rifles. They walked forward and Filrner’s men kicked down a low fence that divided a meadow from a field dotted with shocked wheat. The light companies of the 43rd and 92nd advanced with the riflemen, a scatter of red coats among the green. The skirmishers stayed well clear of the road for that was where the British guns would fire.

  Sharpe climbed the shallow slope and saw the Danish skirmishers double forward from their positions. These were regular soldiers, not militia, and their white crossbelts showed against pale-blue coats. The Danes spread along the hillside, waiting for the British skirmishers to come within range.

  “Bloody boots,” Sergeant Filmer said to Sharpe. The sole of the Sergeant’s right boot had just come loose and was flapping. “They were a bloody new pair too, sir! Bloody boots.”

  A whistle blast checked the skirmishers. They had only advanced a hundred paces, but now they knelt among the shocked wheat. They were far out of musket range, but well within a rifle’s killing distance. Sharpe watched a Danish officer holding on to his hat as he ran down the slope. “They haven’t got enough skirmishers,” he said. Even if the British had not deployed rifles still the enemy had sent too few men forward, which meant, perhaps, that they were relying on the efficiency of their battalion volleys, but only the British army trained with live ammunition, and Sharpe doubted that these Danish regulars could match the redcoats shot for shot. Poor bastards, he thought.

  “We’ll skin ‘em alive, sir.” Filmer tore the sole clean off his boot and pushed it into a pocket. He looked up the slope then cocked his rifle. “Skin ‘em alive.”

  The British guns fired.

  It had been as though both armies had been holding their breath. Now the smoke jetted and swelled above the road as the round shot screamed up the hill. The gunners were already sponging out the barrels as Sharpe saw a scrap of black turf arcing through the sky close to the Danish flag, then heard the whistle blasts again. “Right, lads,” Filmer shouted, “put the bastards down!”

  The greenjackets took the Danes by surprise. The enemy’s skirmishers had been waiting for the British to advance into range, but suddenly the bullets were whistling about them and men were being plucked backward.

  “Aim for the officers!” Filmer shouted. “And don’t be hurried! Aim proper!”

  The riflemen knew exactly what to do. They fought in pairs. One man aimed and fired, then the other protected the first a
s he reloaded. The Danish skirmishers were recovering from their surprise and coming downhill to get within musket range, but they were too few and the closer they came the faster they were hit. The rifles, unlike the smoothbore muskets, had sights and many of the riflemen wore merit badges because they were expert marksmen. They aimed, fired and killed and the Danes were being hit hard at a range no man would have thought to be lethal. Filmer just watched. “Good boys,” he muttered, “good boys.” The redcoat skirmishers were firing now, but it was the rifles that were doing the damage.

  “It works, Lofty!” Sharpe called.

  “Bloody well does, sir!” Filmer answered cheerfully.

  The enemy officer who had been holding his hat was on the ground. A man ran to him and was struck by two bullets. Riflemen called targets to each other. “See that big dozy bugger with a limp?”

  Sharpe was oddly surprised by the noise. He had been in bigger battles than this, far bigger, but he had never realized just how loud it was. The ear-pounding blows of the field guns were overlaid by the crack of the rifles and the brutal coughing of muskets. And that was only the skirmishers. None of the main battalions had so much as fired a volley, yet Sharpe had to shout if he wanted Filmer to hear him. He knew he was sympathizing with the Danes. Most of them, the overwhelming majority of them, would never have been in a battle and the noise alone was an assault on the senses. It was hammering and echoing, unending, crashing gouts of dirty smoke riven with red fire and over it, like a descant, the screams of the wounded and dying. The round shot blasted great lumps of earth from the crest, ripped a Danish cannon wheel to splinters and took a man’s head in an explosion of blood.

  The Rifles were pressing forward, going from shock to shock. Little fires left by wadding burned in the stubble. The redcoat skirmishers were adding their fire, but it was not needed. The Rifles were winning and the Danish light troops were going back to their line.

  “Forward!” Filmer called.

  “Two on the right!” Sharpe shouted.

  “See them! Maddox! Hart! Get those bastards!”

  The trails of the British field guns were gouging ruts in the road as the weapons recoiled. Smoke thickened until the gunners were firing blind, but still the shots seared home. The green jackets could shoot at the Danish ranks now. They looked for officers as they had been trained to do, took aim, killed and looked again. The Danish ranks shifted uncomfortably, unprepared for this kind of distant fusillade. Then, in the hell of other noises, Sharpe heard the savage flare of the pipes and saw that the 92nd was advancing up the long slope. The British guns were still hammering the enemy center. The Danish guns had stayed silent, but now a great blossom of smoke showed at the hill top, but the sound was all wrong. A gun had exploded.

  “On! On!” Dunnett called. “Closer!” The 43rd was advancing now. There was to be nothing subtle here. The Welshmen and the Highlanders were in line and walking straight up the slope. They would march till they were in musket range, then loose a volley and fix bayonets. “Keep killing them!” Dunnett shouted. “Keep killing! I want their officers dead!”

  A riderless horse galloped along the front of the blue-coated Danish troops. Men were being thrown back from the enemy ranks by rifle bullets and the file closers were pushing men to fill the gaps. The Rifles were working. God, Sharpe thought, but it was murder. His rifle was loaded, but he had not shot it.

  “Bring on the Frogs, eh, sir?” Filmer said. “Bring on the bloody Frogs!”

  Wellesley ordered his cavalry forward on the left flank beside the beach. They were German hussars and they streamed out of the dunes leaving a trail of dust, their drawn blades glittering, and the sight of them must have convinced the Danes that the position was lost, for, long before the advancing redcoat battalions came within range, they began to vanish from the crest. The firing died down as the targets vanished. There was a scatter of bodies higher up the field, but only one greenjacket was down. “Get his boots,” Filmer told a man. “It was Horrible Hopkins,” he told Sharpe, “smacked in the eye.”

  “Forward! Forward!” Wellesley’s voice rose sharp. The gunners were limbering up again. The German hussars had gone back to the line’s center, their mere presence having been enough to dislodge the enemy. The kilted Scots were already at the hill’s crest and the riflemen on the right of the road ran up to the skyline to see Koge ahead of them. Low roofs, chimneys, church spires and a mill. It could have been a town back home if the roofs had not been so red, but what caught Sharpe’s eyes were the entrenchments that scarred the fields at Koge’s edge. The Danes had not run away, they had merely pulled back into fortifications. The British infantry was hurrying on, but Danish cavalry was suddenly streaming out of the trenches and threatening to curl round the right-hand end of Wellesley’s line.

  There was a clamor of bugle and whistle calls. The 43rd stopped. It did not form square, though every man was half expecting the order. The riflemen, vulnerable to a cavalry charge, hurried back toward the protection of the Welshmen’s muskets, but then the German hussars appeared again, this time on the inland flank and the Danish horsemen, outnumbered, checked their advance. Sharpe, his rifle cocked ready to meet the cavalry charge, realized that Sir Arthur Wellesley must have anticipated the Danish maneuver and had his horsemen ready.

  The pipes started again and Sharpe saw that the 92nd was being sent straight at the entrenchments. They were not even waiting for the artillery, just marching forward to the beat of the drums and the wild music of the pipes. “Heathen bastards,” Filmer said in a tone of admiration.

  Sharpe was remembering Assaye, remembering the Highlanders marching so calmly into the heart of the enemy. The Danes, he reckoned, would have been unsettled by their swift retreat from the crest and now they were being presented with an impudent assault that reeked of confidence. They could see the British artillery unlimbering and knew that the second redcoat battalion was readying to follow the first, yet in all probability it would not be needed, for there was something utterly implacable about the Highlanders. They looked huge in their black fur hats as they advanced toward an angle of the trenches. The defenders far outnumbered them, but the trenches had been too hastily dug and the Scotsmen were attacking one salient corner so that their massed musketry could drown a small portion of the defenses with fire. The men farther down the trenches were too far away to help. “They’re going to run,” Sharpe said.

  “You reckon so?” Filmer was not sure.

  “One volley and the bayonet,” Sharpe said, “then the whole lot will bugger off.”

  The Danes opened fire. They had lost their artillery, but their musketry was heavy. “Close up! Close up!” Sharpe heard the familiar litany of battle. “Close up!” The Scots appeared to ignore the fire, but just walked toward the smoke-rimmed piles of earth. A few bodies lay behind the battalion. Yellow ribbons fluttered from the pipes.

  “Halt!” The 92nd stopped dead.

  “Present!” It seemed that every man took a slight turn to his right as the muskets came up into their shoulders.

  “Fire!” One volley. One blast of foul-stinking smoke.

  “Fix bayonets!”

  There was an odd silence in which Sharpe could hear the click of the bayonets being locked onto smoking muzzles.

  “Forward!” The line moved into their own smoke, showed again beyond the ragged cloud. “Charge!”

  The Scotsmen, released, gave a cheer and Sharpe saw defenders scrambling from trenches and fleeing south. The air was suddenly alive with bugles and whistles.

  “Don’t let them go to earth!” Wellesley shouted at the 43rd’s commanding officer. There were more troops appearing in the west and a Welsh officer called a warning, but the newcomers were the Germans under General Linsingen. Cavalrymen broke away from Linsingen’s columns to start the pursuit.

  “Bloody hell,” Kilmer said, “that was quick.”

  “Rifles!” a voice shouted. “Companies in column. On the road!” The greenjackets, like every other man in Wel
lesley’s army, had been hoping they could go into the town where there was food, liquor and women, but only two companies went with the Highlanders to clear Koge’s streets while the rest were ordered south behind the scavenging cavalry. They marched for an hour, passing corpses left in the fields by the marauding horsemen and listening to the occasional crackle of faraway carbines. Some of the Danish dead were wearing wooden clogs. Scores of prisoners were being escorted northward. At noon the marching column approached a village and found they had at last caught up with the cavalry. The German horsemen had dismounted because a rearguard of the enemy was stubbornly defending a church and graveyard. The horsemen were firing carbines and pistols at too long a range and wasting their bullets against stone walls that were wreathed with smoke from Danish muskets.

  “It’ll be a job for us,” Sergeant Filmer said, “just you wait.” And wait they did. The battalion’s senior officers wanted to gauge how many of the enemy were in the small village, and that took time. The riflemen lay in a field, smoking pipes or sleeping. Sharpe walked up and down. Every once in a while a musket would fire from the church or from one of the nearby houses, but the cavalry had pulled back out of range and the balls whistled uselessly overhead. Most incongruous of all was a group of civilian horsemen who were evidently watching the whole confrontation from a safe distance. They looked like the local gentry come to see a battle, though for much of the early afternoon they saw nothing, but then Sir Arthur Wellesley and his staff arrived and there was a flurry of shouts, whistle blasts and sergeants’ curses.

  “Told you it would be our job,” Filmer said. He squinted at the church. “Why can’t they just bugger off? Silly bastards have lost, ain’t they?”

  The greenjackets spread into a skirmish line then advanced until they were a hundred paces from the makeshift fortress. “Fire!” Dunnet shouted at his company and the rifle bullets cracked on stone. Sharpe watched the church, the closest cottages and graveyard wall and could see no answering musket smoke.