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 b
listered 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 Sha
rpe 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.
Sharpe's Havoc Page 32
