They searched. They looked in every room that could be entered and tried to look even in those where no human could stay alive. Once Sharpe teetered on the brink of a broken floor, staring hopelessly into a roaring fire that swept upwards, white hot, and he heard the fall of great timbers and knew that no man could live in that. He put a hand on his ammunition pouch and the leather was almost too hot to touch and he went back, suddenly fearing that the rifle ammunition would explode, and he felt the first stirrings of doubt, of frustration. He was soaked with sweat, begrimed, and still the sun burned down on the furnace building, the prisoners milled outside and Sharpe cursed Leroux.
Price panted in the heat. “I haven’t seen him, sir.”
Sharpe pointed at a separate group. “Who are they?”
“Wounded, sir.”
He looked at the wounded. He even made one man take off a dirty bandage from his head, and wished he had not. The man was terribly burned and he was not Leroux. Sharpe looked at the scene on the glacis. “How many prisoners?”
“Four hundred here, sir. At least.”
“Search them again!” They marched up the ranks, stopping at each man, and the French prisoners looked at them dully. Some were tall, and those were pushed out of the ranks into a separate group, but it was hopeless. Some had no teeth, others were the wrong age, some were similar but not Leroux.
“Patrick!”
“Sir?”
“Find that officer who spoke French. Ask him to see me.”
The officer came and gladly helped. He asked prisoners if they knew of the tall Colonel Leroux or else of Captain Delmas, and most shrugged, but one or two volunteered help and said they remembered a Captain Delmas who had fought so well at Austerlitz, and one remembered a Leroux who had been in the town guard at Pau, and the sun smashed down, bounced off the broken stones, and the sweat trickled into Sharpe’s eyes, stinging them, and it was as if Leroux had vanished from the face of the earth.
“Sir?” Harper pointed across the ravine. “The little one’s surrendered.”
They crossed the ravine again and, now that the third fort had surrendered, the wounded who had been taken from the San Cayetano and the San Vincente were allowed up the trench. Sharpe wondered how many had died as they waited in the burning sun. The artillery officer whose guts had been laid open by a flying splinter still lived, his face with the bloody mess where there had been an eye rocked back and forth, and Sharpe saw Harper touch his crucifix as the Sergeant watched the stretcher being carried towards the waiting carts. There but for the grace of God, thought Sharpe, and then they climbed up the ravine and headed towards La Merced.
Leroux was not there. Leroux was in none of the forts and Sharpe and Harper walked the wide, burning wasteland again to the San Vincente and once again they searched the prisoners on the glacis. Leroux was not there. Pray as Sharpe might, he could not make one face fit the French Colonel. He looked at the French-speaking officer in frustration. “Someone must know!”
The Lieutenant Colonel was impatient. He wanted the prisoners moved, to release his men from guarding them in the afternoon heat, but Sharpe stubbornly went down the ranks again. He wiped the sweat from his eyes, searched the faces, but he knew it was no good. He nodded reluctantly to the Colonel. “I’m through, sir.”
He was not through. He searched the burning convent again, went down into the coolness of the huge cellar that had been the magazine, but there were no signs of the fugitive. It was Harper who finally admitted what Sharpe did not want to admit. “He’s not here, sir.”
“No.” But he would not give up. If Leroux had escaped, and for the life of him he could not see how, then La Marquesa was in danger. It might take the Frenchman days, or weeks, or just hours before he made his move and Sharpe thought of her body in that man’s hands and he hacked with his sword at an open cupboard as if it might conceal a false compartment. He let the rage subside. “Search the dead.” It was quite possible that Leroux was among the dead, but Sharpe suspected the tall, clever Colonel would not have exposed himself to the artillery fire. Yet Sharpe must search the corpses.
The dead stank. Some had been dead for two days, unburied in the heat, and Sharpe raked the bodies off the pile and, the nearer the bottom he reached, the more he knew that Leroux was not here. He went out again, onto the glacis, and stared at the other two forts. La Merced was empty, its garrison marching away into captivity, and only McGovern with his small picquet stood guard on the San Cayetano.. Sharpe looked at Harper’s squad. They were tired, worn out, and he gestured at them to sit down. He took off his jacket and gave it to Lieutenant Price. “I’m going for one more look at the San Cayetano.”
“Yes, sir.” Price was coated with sweat-streaked dust.
Harper came with Sharpe, but no one else, and for the fourth time they climbed the ravine and the two tall Riflemen walked slowly towards the first fort to fall. Sergeant McGovern had seen nothing. His men had searched the building again, but he swore it was empty, and Sharpe nodded. “Go back to Lieutenant Price, Mac. Send a man to bring Sergeant Huckfield back.”
La Merced had received very little of the bombardment and there were no corpses in the smallest fort, so the only hope left was the dead in the San Cayetano. Sharpe and Harper went slowly into the ghastly courtyard and looked at the grisly pile. There was nothing for it but to search.
The corpses lolled unnaturally after they had been raked down from the stack. Sharpe looked at each face, and each was a stranger, and then he went up to one of the less damaged parapets and stared with Harper across the river. The clean, green hills were pale in the sunlight. He looked at his hands, stained with the dirt and blood of death, and swore long and foully.
Harper offered his canteen and said nothing. He knew what Sharpe was thinking; that the Light Company had pulled an easy duty, a detachment that had given them days by the river and nights in wine shops, and in return they had failed in the one thing they had been asked to do.
Huckfield’s men filed beneath the parapet and the Sergeant looked up at Sharpe and offered help. Sharpe shook his head. “There’s nothing here! Go on. We’ll join you in a minute.”
“What now, sir?” Harper sat on the parapet.
“I don’t know.” He glanced at the small fort, La Merced, and wondered if he should search it again, but he knew it was empty. He could wait for the fires to burn down in the San Vincente and then rake through the ashes looking for a body. By God! He would do it! And he would pull the damned convents down, stone by bloody stone, until he had found the Frenchman. His new shirt was stained and stinking, glued to his chest with sweat. He thought of La Marquesa, of the coolness of her rooms, of the bath that waited for him and the chilled wine on the mirador. He shook his head. „He can’t have escaped. He can’t!“
“He did before.” Harper offered cold comfort.
Sharpe thought of La Marquesa’s silk smooth skin ripped from her body, inch by inch, and the thought of Leroux torturing her made him shut his eyes.
Harper swilled his mouth with water and spat it into the ditch. “We can search again, sir.”
“No, Patrick. It’s no damned good.” He stood up and walked wearily down the steps into the courtyard. He hated to admit failure, but he did not think another search would reveal anything. He stopped, waiting for Harper, and stared at a French corpse that had been disembowelled. The man was naked, his wound had laid him open so that his spine was visible through his stomach, but Sharpe was not seeing anything. He was just staring, his thoughts hammering at him. Harper saw the stare and looked himself at the corpse.
“Funny, that.”
“What?” Sharpe was startled from his reverie.
Harper nodded at the corpse. “That other poor bugger was gutted, just like that. Except the other one lived.”
“Yes.” Sharpe shrugged. “Funny things, wounds. Remember Major Collett? Not a mark on him. Other poor bastards live with half their stuffing taken out.” He was making conversation, trying to hide his disa
ppointment. He moved away, but Harper still stared at the corpse. “You coming? Patrick?”
Harper crouched and batted at the flies with a hand. “Sir?” His voice was worried. “Would you say this one had his full kit, sir? I know he’s a bloody mess, so he is, but…‘
“Oh God in heaven! Christ!” Sharpe knew that the corpse’s guts could have been lost in an explosion, they could have been tossed to the stray dogs that scavenged the wasteland at night, or they could have been scooped out to make the perfect disguise. “Oh Christ!”
They began running.
Chapter 12
They ran, forcing themselves over the stones, stumbling in the debris of the ruined houses, taking the shortest route to the city. The cordon of Light troops, still in place, watched in astonishment as the two huge men, one in a stained and damp shirt and wielding a huge blade, the other carrying a seven-barrelled gun, charged at them. A man levelled a musket and gave an uncertain challenge.
“Out the bloody way!” Sharpe’s bellow convinced the picquets that the two were British.
Sharpe led the way into the alleyway from which the abortive attack, four days before, had been launched. Civilians were crammed in the streets, hoping for a glimpse of the excitement in the wasteland, but they parted hurriedly before the armed men. Thank God, Sharpe thought, it was downhill to the Irish College where the wounded were taken.
Yet the man who must, surely, have piled the guts of another man onto his stomach, who had smeared himself in blood and soot, who had sought his disguise in a wound so terrible that no one would think he could survive or think he was worth troubling over, had such a lead on them. Thirty minutes, forty even, and Sharpe felt a blind rage at his own stupidity. Trust nothing, and trust no one! Search everyone, and yet the sight of the disembowelled artillery officer had made him turn away in horror and pity. It had been the first officer he had seen inside the first fort and now he was convinced it had to be Leroux. Who could now be free inside the city.
They turned left, their breath coming in humid gasps, and Sharpe saw that they still had a chance. It was not much, but it drove him on. The crowds were holding up the wagons carrying the wounded, jeering at the enemy, and British troops were holding the people back with muskets. Sharpe pushed and forced his way to the nearest cart and shouted up at the driver. “Is this the first batch?”
“No, mate. Haifa dozen have gone already. Gawd knows ‘ow they’ll get through.”
The driver had mistaken Sharpe for a private. He had seen the rifle slung on the shoulder and, without his jacket or sash, Sharpe had no badge of rank except the sword. He looked for Harper. “Come on!”
He bellowed at the crowd, pushed at them, and they broke free of the crush around the wounded and ran on, down the hill, and ahead of them Sharpe could see the other carts standing empty at the steps of the College. Sentries barred the door, ignoring the pleas of civilians who seemed to want to get in to finish off what the British bombardment had begun. Apart from the civilians, young men mostly with long, slim knives, there was no excitement at the college. No shouts, no chase, no sign that a wounded man had suddenly sprung to full life and hacked his way to a dubious freedom among the vengeful Salamantine streets.
Sharpe took the steps two at a time and pushed into the crowd that filled the small terrace in front of the great gate. A sentry challenged him, saw the sword and rifle, and made a space for the two men to push through. They hammered on the gate.
Harper looked blown. He shook his head, pounded the studded wood again, and looked at Sharpe. “I hope you’re bloody right, sir.” The Company had been left at the San Vincente, ignorant of where their Captain and senior Sergeant had gone.
Sharpe hammered with the steel guard of his sword. “Open up!”
A wicket door opened in the gate and a face peered out. “Who is it?”
Sharpe did not answer. He pushed through, stooping through the small entrance, and a courtyard opened up before him. It would have been a beautiful place, a haven of peace in a peaceful city, a well surrounded by a lawn which, in turn, was surrounded by two storeys of carved cloisters. Today, though, it was the collecting place for the dying, the courtyard filled with the first French wounded who had come to join the men they had wounded four nights before. The courtyard was choked with bleeding men, with orderlies, and Sharpe paused at the archway and looked desperately for the artillery officer who had seemed so terribly wounded.
“What do you want?” A truculent Sergeant came from the gate lodge. “Who are you?”
„French officer, wounded. Where is he?“ Sharpe’s tone told the Sergeant he was speaking to an officer.
The Sergeant shrugged. “Surgeons are straight ahead, sir, across the yard. Officers’ wards upstairs. What does he look like?”
“Had his lights hanging out. On a stretcher.”
“Try the surgeons, sir.”
Sharpe glanced at the top cloister. It was in deep shadow, but he could see two or three bored British guards, muskets slung, and doubtless there were wounded officer prisoners in the shadows. He looked at Harper with his huge gun. “Try upstairs, Patrick. And be careful. Get one of those guards to help you.”
Harper grinned and hefted the huge gun. “I don’t think your man will try anything stupid.” He crossed to one of the curved staircases that led to the officers’ wards. Sharpe threaded his way through the wounded towards the sound of screams that indicated where the surgeons worked.
Awnings had been rigged over patches of the lawn to keep the sun from roasting the wounded. A constant trickle of men drew water from the well, ladling from the bucket that was suspended by an intricate iron cage. Sharpe zig-zagged, looking at the men on stretchers, searching the faces of men in the deeper shadow of the cloisters, and going to the unshaded patch of lawn where the first dead, failures from the scalpel or men who died before they could reach the blood-stained table, had been laid out. His instinct told him that Leroux was in this place, yet he could not be sure, and he half expected to find the wounded artillery officer lying in the courtyard. Sharpe could not find him and turned, instead, to the surgeons’ rooms.
Colonel Leroux waited on the upper cloister. He needed now only two things, a horse and a long plain cloak to hide the charnel house appearance of his uniform, and both were due to be waiting for him at three o’clock in the alley behind the Irish College. He wished he had asked for them earlier, but he had never suspected that the surrender negotiations would be cut short by the British, and now he peered through the stone pillars of the balustrade and recognised the tall figure of the dark-haired Rifle Officer. Sharpe had no jacket, yet still he was easily identified because of the long sword and the slung rifle. Leroux had heard a clock in the town strike the half hour, he guessed it was now ten minutes short of the hour, and he would have to risk that the horse and cloak had been brought early. So far, at least, things had worked well. It had been a nuisance to be trapped in the forts instead of being with one of his agents in the city, but the escape had been planned with meticulous care, and it had worked thus far. He had been one of the first to enter the hospital and the surgeon waiting in the courtyard had hardly glanced at him. The man had gestured upstairs because it was obvious that no surgeon could save the desperately wounded artillery officer. He could be left to die in the shade of the upper cloister where the officers’ wards waited. Leroux watched Sharpe go into the surgeons’ rooms and smiled to himself; he had a few moments.
He was uncomfortable. He had piled a dead man’s intestines on his stomach and had tucked the entrails into the waistband of the borrowed uniform so that the gleaming, wet, jellied mass would stay in place. He had splashed himself with gore, soaked his blond hair in blood until it was matted and stiff, and then put an unrecognisable lump of flesh over his left eye. He had burned patches of the uniform. The Kligenthal was beneath him, unsheathed, and he prayed that Sharpe would be delayed in the surgeons’ rooms. Every minute now was precious. Then he heard the friendly challenge from the sentr
y at the curved stair’s head. “Sarge, can I help you?”
Leroux heard the newcomer silence the sentry and his instinct told him that this was danger so he moaned, rolled onto his side, and let the guts slide off him. The flies protested. He dug with his hand and twitched the cold entrails free, then reached up and wiped his left eye. It seemed glued shut and he had to spit on his hand, rub again, and then he could see properly. It was time to move.
It all happened terribly quickly. One moment a man seemed to be dying, moaning feebly, and the next he was rising to his feet and in his hand was a long grey blade. He was like something from the pit, something that had rolled and nuzzled and lapped in blood, and he freed the stiffness from his arm with a scythe of the sword and loosed his voice with a great war cry. In the Name of the Emperor!
Harper was looking the other way. He heard the shout, he turned, and the sentry was between him and the demonic figure. Harper shouted at the man to move, tried to force him aside with the squat barrels of the big gun, but the sentry lunged feebly with his bayonet at the ghastly figure and the Kligenthal drove it aside and came back to carve a line diagonally up the sentry’s face. The man screamed, fell backwards, and he fell on the seven barrelled gun and the impact made Harper’s finger pull on the trigger and the huge gun fired. The bullets hammered uselessly on the flagstones, ricocheted into the balustrade, and the recoil of the huge gun, a recoil that could throw a man clear from the fighting top of a battleship, slewed Harper round and backwards.
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy Page 42
