And none of you will sneeze! If you sneeze, I will geld you with a blunt knife. And we do not charge till the last minute, and when we reach the bridge you will kill whoever you find there. Kill and kill! And if you fail? I shall geld you with my own teeth. With my own blunt teeth!»
The hussars grinned. They liked Pailleterie, for he looked after them, he was brave and he gave them victory.
And he was about to give them another.
It was almost dawn and no warning shots had been fired from the hills.
Sharpe felt an immense weariness. It's nerves, he thought. Nerves as tight as a snare drum, and what kind of a soldier was it who got nervous? Damn it, he thought, but maybe he could not be trusted with command.
He walked to the western side of the parapet and leaned over to stare down at the barricade on the bridge. He had all his men awake, all on guard, for it was coming up to dawn and that was the most dangerous time. "Are you alert down there?" He shouted.
"Bright as buttercups, sir, " Lieutenant Price answered. "Can you see anything, sir?"
"Bugger all, Harry."
"That's a relief, sir."
Sharpe went back to the northern parapet and gazed up the road. Nothing moved there. Quiet as the damn grave. A few last bats still flew around the tower, and earlier he had seen an owl come flapping in to a hole in the fort's decaying stonework. Otherwise it was still. The river slid silent beneath a smokelike layer of mist. The bridge's three arches were dark. Sergeant Harper reckoned he had seen some large trout under those arches, but Sharpe had given him no time to try and catch them. It was nerves, he thought again. Jumpy as hell, and he had made everyone else nervous.
Teresa came up the ladder stairs from the living quarters. She yawned, then put her arm into Sharpe's elbow. "All quiet?"
"All quiet." There were four riflemen up on the parapet. Sharpe had thought to put some redcoats up here, but their smoothbore muskets were so inaccurate that they could do little good from this height and so he had merely kept his remaining riflemen here. He moved away from them so they would not overhear him. "I'm thinking I panicked yesterday, " he said to Teresa.
"I didn't see you panic."
"Seeing enemies where there aren't any, " he admitted.
She squeezed his arm. "At least you are ready for them if they come."
He grimaced. "But they're not out there, are they? They're bloody miles away, tucked up in their beds and I've had a sleepless night because of it."
"You can sleep today, " Teresa said. The eastern sky was ablaze now, banded with clouds that reflected the first sunlight. The olive groves, still in night's shadows, were dark, but in another few minutes the sun would rise over the hills and Sharpe would stand the company down. Give them an easy day, he thought, for they deserved it. A make and mend day in which they could sew up their uniforms, or just sleep, or perhaps fish in the river.
"Perhaps I will go back to Salamanca today, " Teresa said.
"Leaving me?"
"Just for the day. To visit Antonia."
Antonia was their daughter, a baby, but she might as well have been an orphan, Sharpe reckoned, her parents were both so busy killing frogs. "If the weather stays nice, " he said, "and the frogs don't come, you can bring her out here?"
"Why not?" Teresa asked.
The sun slipped above the hills and Sharpe flinched from its dazzling light. The shadows of trees and hedgerows stretched long across the road where no Frenchmen stirred. Mister MacKeon strolled out from the fort and went to the riverbank where he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed into the Tormes. "All that good wine, " Teresa said softly.
Then there was a shout from the bridge, and Sharpe turned, and he heard the hooves and he was unslinging his rifle, but he could not see a damn thing because the sun was so low and it was filling the eastern sky with dazzling light, but coming from the heart of the blinding light were horsemen.
Not from the road, but from the east, from among the gnarled olive trees that had hidden them, and Sharpe shouted a warning, but it was already too late. "Mister Price!»
"Sir!»
"Let them get close!»
But Price misheard, or else panicked, and shouted at the redcoats to fire and the muskets flamed towards the olive groves, but at much too long a range. Then the first rifles fired from the parapet, jetting smoke a dozen feet from the stonework. Sharpe aimed at a horseman close to the bank, pulled the trigger and his target was immediately hidden by smoke as the rifle hammered back into his shoulder. «Teresa,» he shouted, but Teresa was already running down the courtyard stairs to fetch her horse. Sharpe began to reload the rifle and heard the sound of hooves on the bridge stone. Christ, he thought, I'm in the wrong place. Can't do a damn thing up here! «Daniel!» he shouted at Hagman, the senior rifleman on the parapet.
"Sir?" Hagman was ramming his rifle.
"I'm going down! Don't get trapped up here!»
"We'll be all right, sir, " Hagman said stoically. The old poacher had a face like a grave-digger and hair down to his shoulder blades, but he was the best man Sharpe and Harper had.
Sharpe took the stairs four at a time. He had been right all along, but he had also been wrong. He had expected the damned French to come straight down the road, straight into his rifles like lambs to the slaughter, and the buggers had fooled him. The buggers had fooled him!
Muskets banged on the bridge, then other guns sounded. Pistols, Sharpe thought, recognising the crisper tone of the smaller weapons. Someone screamed. Men were shouting. Sharpe landed heavily at the foot of the stairs and ran through the arch.
And saw instantly that the fort was lost. He had failed.
Captain Pailleterie had not even reckoned on the sun's help, but the God of War was on his side that morning and just before the hussar captain released his men from the concealment of the olive trees the sun slid across the horizon to slash its blinding light into the defenders' faces.
«Charge!» Pailleterie shouted, and rowelled back his spurs to drive his big black horse straight for the bridge that was now less than a quarter mile away. One last effort from the horse, that was all he wanted, and he spurred her again and saw puffs of smoke appear at the fort's high parapet, then more smoke showed at the bridge. Bullets flecked the turf, hitting no one. A wagon made a crude barricade on the bridge itself.
Behind the wagon were redcoats. British! Not Spanish, but Pailleterie did not care. They were all enemies of France, all better dead. «Charge!» He drew the word out, using it as a war cry, and a flickering thought went through his mind that there was nothing, nothing in the world, not even a woman, who could give a joy like this. A horse at full gallop, an enemy surprised, death at your side and a sabre drawn.
More smoke, this time from the left, from a farmhouse, and Pailleterie was dimly aware of one of his troopers tumbling, of a horse screaming and a sabre skidding along the ground, but then he swerved into the lingering smoke that hung above the bridge's roadway and swung out of the saddle even before his horse had come to a halt. A single musket banged, spewing stinging smoke into Pailleterie's eyes. He stumbled as he dismounted, crashed into the wagon that had been slewed sideways on the bridge, then pulled himself up onto its bed. He was screaming like a madman, expecting a bullet in his belly at any second, but the redcoats were still reloading. He jumped down at them, sabre swinging, and Sergeant Coignet was beside him, and then a swarm of pigtailed hussars was jumping over the wagon with pistols flaming and sabres reflecting the dazzling sun. A redcoat was on his knees, hands at his face and blood seeping between his fingers. Another was dead, slumped on the bridge parapet, and the others were going backwards. They did not even have bayonets fixed, and Pailleterie swept a musket aside with his heavy sabre and chopped down at the redcoat, and the man span away, his cheek laid open, and then the other redcoats broke and ran.
"Into the fort! " Pailleterie shouted at his excited men, "into the fort!»
The redcoats could wait. The fort must be taken and held until Herault
arrived, and he saw there were no gates in the big arch and he ran inside and saw a tall man in a green jacket disappearing though a door. «Up!» He shouted, pointing his men at the courtyard staircase, «up!» A gun banged from the sky and a bullet flattened itself on the stones beside Pailleterie who looked up and saw another green jacketed man silhouetted against the sky, then that man vanished as the hussars ran up the stairs.
Pailleterie hauled a watch from a small pocket of his dolman jacket. Six hours till Herault arrive, maybe less. He closed the watch's lid, put it away, and bent over, hands on his knees, suddenly tired. My God, though, he had done it! The tip of his sabre was red, and he wiped it on a handful of straw, then was aware that his men were shouting angrily out on the bridge.
He hurried back. Most of his troopers had not needed to dismount and cross the barricade, and those men now milled about at the bridge's southern end. And there they were suffering because a steady fire was coming from a white farmhouse just a couple of hundred paces down the road. Horses were whinnying in pain, men were on the ground, and the damn fire kept coming and it struck Pailleterie that he had seen green jackets, which meant riflemen, and if he did not shelter his men soon then the damned rifles would kill every last one of them.
"Sergeant! Move the wagon! Move it!»
A dozen men heaved the wagon up, thrusting one pair of its wheels onto the bridge's parapet, and the horses at last had an escape route across the bridge. "Into the fort! " Pailleterie shouted, "into the fort! " A corporal had rescued the Captain's own horse, and Pailleterie led the beast into the courtyard where it was safe from the rifle fire. Then he opened a saddlebag and took out a tricolour. He gave the flag to Coignet. "Hang it on the battlements, Sergeant."
Hagman and his riflemen had gone down the ladder stairs and now bolted out of the door leading to the storeroom. The French found that entrance a moment too late, but it did not matter. They had seized San Miguel, they had secured the river crossing, and Herault was coming to spread panic along the British supply lines.
And the tricolour flew above the Tormes.
It was Sergeant Coignet who found the wine, hundreds of bottles of it, all hidden behind the chipped plaster image of the Virgin Mary that stood in the small shrine across the bridge from the fort. "You want me to break the bottles, sir" He asked Pailleterie.
"Leave them be, " Pailleterie said. The wine would make a gift for General Herault. "But make sure no one takes any. If one man gets drunk Sergeant, I'll geld him."
"They'll not touch it, sir, " Coignet promised. He was a short, tough man who had never known any life other than the army, and within the elite company his word was law. The wine was safe.
Pailleterie had taken three prisoners. Two were wounded redcoats, one of whom would probably die, while the third was a plump man in a blue uniform who claimed to be a Major of the Commissary service. His presence was explained by the hoard of French muskets that the hussars had discovered, muskets that would now go back to their proper owners. "You give me your word as a gentleman, " Pailleterie asked Tubbs in English, "that you will not try to escape?"
"Of course not, " Tubbs said.
"You won't give me your word?"
"No, no! I won't try to escape! " Tubbs backed away from the pigtailed Frenchman.
"Then you may keep your sword, monsieur, and do me the honour of staying inside the fortress."
Not that any of the hussars had much choice in the matter, for whenever they spent too long outside the fort's walls a rifleman would fire.
Coignet had narrowly escaped injury when he went to explore the shrine, and two men had been wounded when Pailleterie had tipped the wagon that had been half-blocking the bridge over the parapet and into the river.
Pailleterie regretted the wounding of those two men, but he needed the roadway to be clear for Herault, and so he had led twenty men out of the fort where they immediately came under fire from the farmhouse on the northern bank. Once the barricade was gone Pailleterie ordered his men to stay inside the fort's walls, even though his Lieutenant, who had been watching the farmhouse from the parapet, swore that the riflemen there had now run away. But Pailleterie knew that if they stayed inside the fort his hussars and their horses were safe. The British might try to recapture the bridge, but Pailleterie was confident he could thwart them. He had forty of his men lined in the fort's gateway, all armed with pistols, and if the British did run up the road and turn into the arch they would die in a blistering volley.
So the road from the south was open.
Herault and his small army was coming.
And all Pailleterie needed to do was wait.
"It was my fault, " Sharpe said bitterly.
"I shouldn't have fired so soon, " Price admitted.
"I shouldn't have put Pat Harper across the river, " Sharpe said. "I should have kept our men together."
Ensign Hickey said nothing, but just looked heartbroken. He had not thought Captain Sharpe could be defeated.
"Bloody hell! " Sharpe swore uselessly. He had pulled his surviving men back to the village where they could shelter behind garden walls. The fort was a hundred paces away, and he had thought about making an attack on it, but he would have to lead his men round to the far side and then through the archway and he guessed the French would be expecting that approach.
The store-room door had been shut, and was doubtless barricaded. Every now and then a black fur hat showed on the parapet as an hussar peered over to make certain the British troops were not planning any mischief.
Daniel Hagman, keeping watch from the river bank, reported that the frogs had tipped the cart into the river. "I got one of the bastards, sir, " he said, "and Harris popped another."
"Well done, Dan, " Sharpe said morosely, then wondered why the French would clear the barricade away. and the answer was depressingly obvious. Because they were expecting more men, that was why. Because the hussars were only holding the bridge long enough to let a flood of bloody Crapauds across the river. Because all hell was about to be loosed on the British supply lines, and Captain Richard Sharpe would be blamed. «Jesus!» Sharpe cursed.
"He doesn't seem to be on our side today, " Hagman said.
The only good news was that Harper had brought his men safely back across the Tormes. He had led them a mile westwards and used a fisherman's skiff to ferry them over the river, and it was reassuring for Sharpe to have the big Irishman and the twenty rifleman back at his side, but he did not know what he could do with them. Have them killed in a forlorn attack on the fort's gate?
The Scotsman, MacKeon, came and squatted beside Sharpe. He was smoking a short foul pipe that he now pointed towards the fort. "It reminds me, Captain, " he said, "of that terrible place in India."
Sharpe wondered if MacKeon was drunk. The fort at San Miguel was nothing like Gawilghur. The Indian fort had been built on a clifftop, dizzyingly high above the Deccan plain, while San Miguel was a decaying ruin built beside a river. "It don't look much like Gawilghur to me, " Sharpe said.
"Mebbe not, " MacKeon said, tapping the pipe out against a stone, "but the pigtailed fellows reckon there's only one way in. And they're guarding that entrance, like as not, but there's always a back way, Captain, always a back way. And you were the laddie that found it at Gawilghur." He pointed the stem of his pipe at the fort. "See that great crack?"
MacKeon was pointing to a jagged fissure that began low on the shadowed western wall then zig-zagged up the stones almost to the parapet. For a moment Sharpe was wondering whether the Scotsman really expected the light company to climb the wall, then saw that, maybe a third of the way up, a whole section of stone had fallen away. The space looked like a small cave and was half hidden by ivy, but MacKeon was right. It was a back way in, and an agile man could squeeze through the gap, but to what? Sharpe could not remember seeing a hole inside the fort, so where did it lead?
"Sergeant Harper?"
"Sir?"
"If a frog shows his head above that parapet, shoot hi
m." The riflemen could keep the French out of sight, and if they were out of sight they could not see what mischief Sharpe planned. He unbuckled his sword belt, let the clumsy weapon drop, and then, with the rifle slung on his shoulder, ran across the waste ground to the fort's wall. No Frenchman saw him, for they were keeping their heads below the parapet. They might have captured the fort, but they had a healthy respect for the rifles.
It was a hard climb. Much worse than the cliff at Gawilghur, Sharpe reckoned. That had been steep, but not vertical, and there had been bushes to provide handholds. The crack in the fort wall gave plenty of handholds, but it sloped from left to right and Sharpe had to scrabble to find footholds in the old wall, but he hauled himself up, half expecting a pistol to bang above him, and then at last he could grab the ivy's thick trunk and that helped. One good lodgement for his foot and he could thrust himself up into the hole.
The hole was smaller than it had looked, but Sharpe turned sideways and squeezed between the stones. His rifle caught on the ivy, and his uniform snagged on the edge of the stones, but he untangled himself and pushed on until his head was inside the fort. A foul stench assailed him, and at first he could see nothing but darkness, then he saw chinks of light above him and heard footsteps on timber and realised that he had entered the space above the store-room's barrel-vaulted stone ceiling and the lowermost timber floor. He wriggled on until he was inside the wall and wondered what he had achieved. There was no way to mount an attack from here. It would take men far too long to climb the wall, and they could only enter one at a time and even when they were inside, what could they do? They would be trapped in a narrowing space between two floors, and as his eyes became accustomed to the gloom he saw that the floor beams were oddly ragged, and then he realised he was staring at thousand of bats hanging from the timbers. "Bloody hell, " he muttered, and he tried to forget the bats and looked about him and saw that the space was thick with supporting timbers, some quite small, but all placed to support the floors on the curved stone roof that was thick with bat dung. It was the dung that stank so high.
Sharpe's Skirmish s-14 Page 4
