Sharpe's Battle s-12

by Бернард Корнуэлл

  Little news came from behind the British lines. There had been a time when Loup's men could ride with impunity on either side of the frontier, but now the British and Portuguese armies were firmly clamped along the border and Loup had to depend for his intelligence on the unreliable and minuscule handful of civilians willing to sell information to the hated French, on interrogations of deserters and on educated guesses formed from the observations of his own men as they peered through spyglasses across the mountainous border.

  And it was one of those scouts who first brought Loup news of the Real Companпa Irlandesa. A troop of grey dragoons had gone to one of the lonely hill tops which offered a long view into Portugal, and from where, with luck, a patrol might see some evidence of a British concentration of forces that could signal a new advance. The lookout post dominated a wide, barren valley where a stream glittered before the land rose to the rocky ridge on which the long-abandoned fort of San Isidro stood. The fort was of little military value for the road it guarded had long fallen into disuse and a century of neglect had eroded its ramparts and ditches into mockeries of their former strength so that now the San Isidro was home to ravens, foxes, bats, wandering shepherds, lawless men, and the occasional patrol of Loup's grey dragoons who might spend a night in one of the cavernous barracks rooms to stay out of the rain.

  Yet now there were men in the fort, and the patrol leader brought Loup news of them. The new garrison was not a full battalion, he said, just a couple of hundred men. The fort itself, as Loup well knew, would need at least a thousand men to man its crumbling walls, so a mere two hundred hardly constituted a garrison, yet strangely the newcomers had brought their wives and children with them. The dragoons' troop leader, a Captain Braudel, thought the men were British. "They're wearing red coats," he said, "but not the usual stovepipe hats." He meant shakoes. "They've got bicornes."

  "Infantry, you say?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "No cavalry? Any artillery?"

  "Didn't see any."

  Loup picked at his teeth with a sliver of wood. "So what were they doing?"

  "Doing drill," Braudel said. Loup grunted. He was not much interested in a group of strange soldiers taking up residence in San Isidro. The fort did not threaten him and if the newcomers were content to sit tight and make themselves comfortable then Loup would not stir them into wakefulness. Then Captain Braudel stirred Loup himself into wakefulness. "But some of them were unblocking a well," the Captain said, "only they weren't redcoats. They were wearing green."

  Loup stared at him. "Dark green?"

  "Yes, sir."

  Riflemen. Damned riflemen. And Loup remembered the insolent face of the man who had insulted him, the man who had once insulted all France by taking an eagle touched by the Emperor himself. Maybe Sharpe was in the San Isidro Fort? Ducos had denigrated Loup's thirst for vengeance, calling it unworthy of a great soldier, but Loup believed that a soldier made his reputation by picking his fights and winning them famously. Sharpe had defied Loup, the first man to openly defy him in many a long month, and Sharpe was a champion among France's enemies, so Loup's vengeance was not just personal, but would send ripples throughout the armies that waited to fight the battle that would decide whether Britain lunged into Spain or was sent reeling back into Portugal.

  So that afternoon Loup himself visited the hill top, taking his finest spyglass which he trained on the old fort with its weed-grown walls and half-filled dry moat. Two flags hung limply in the windless air. One flag was British, but Loup could not tell what the second was. Beyond the flags the red-coated soldiers were doing musket drill, but Loup did not watch them long, instead he inched the telescope southwards until, at last, he saw two men in green coats strolling along the deserted ramparts. He could not see their faces at this distance, but he could tell that one of the men was wearing a long straight sword and Loup knew that British light infantry officers wore curved sabres. "Sharpe," he said aloud as he collapsed the telescope.

  A scuffle behind made him turn round. Four of his wolf-grey men were guarding a pair of prisoners. One captive was in a gaudily trimmed red coat while the other was presumably the man's wife or lover. "Found them hiding in the rocks down there," said the Sergeant who was holding one of the soldier's arms.

  "He says he's a deserter, sir," Captain Braudel added, "and that's his wife." Braudel spat a stream of tobacco juice onto a rock.

  Loup scrambled down from the ridge. The soldier's uniform, he now saw, was not British. The waistcoat and sash, the half boots and the plumed bicorne were all too fancy for British taste, indeed they were so fancy that for a second Loup wondered if the captive was an officer, then he realized that Braudel would never have treated a captured officer with such disdain. Braudel clearly liked the woman who now raised shy eyes to stare at Loup. She was dark-haired, attractive and probably, Loup guessed, about fifteen or sixteen. Loup had heard that the Spanish and Portuguese peasants sold such daughters as wives to allied soldiers for a hundred francs apiece, the cost of a good meal in Paris. The French army, on the other hand, just took their girls for nothing. "What's your name?" Loup asked the deserter in Spanish.

  "Grogan, sir. Sean Grogan."

  "Your unit, Grogan?"

  "Real Companпa Irlandesa, seсor." Guardsman Grogan was plainly willing to cooperate with his captors and so Loup signalled the Sergeant to release him.

  Loup questioned Grogan for ten minutes, hearing how the Real Companпa Irlandesa had travelled by sea from Valencia, and how the men had been happy enough with the idea of joining the rest of the Spanish army at Cadiz, but how they resented being forced to serve with the British. Many of the men, the fugitive claimed, had fled from British servitude, and they had not enlisted with the King of Spain just to return to King George's tyranny.

  Loup cut short the protests. "When did you run?" he asked.

  "Last night, sir. Half a dozen of us did. And a good many ran the night before."

  "There is an Englishman in the fort, a rifle officer. You know him?"

  Grogan frowned, as though he found the question odd, but then he nodded. "Captain Sharpe, sir. He's supposed to be training us."

  "To do what?"

  "To fight, sir," Grogan said nervously. He found this one-eyed, calm-spoken Frenchman very disconcerting. "But we know how to fight already," he added defiantly.

  "I'm sure you do," Loup said sympathetically. He poked at his teeth for a second, then spat the makeshift toothpick away. "So you ran away, soldier, because you didn't want to serve King George, is that it?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "But you'd certainly fight for His Majesty the Emperor?"

  Grogan hesitated. "I would, sir," he finally said, but without any conviction.

  "Is that why you deserted?" Loup asked. "To fight for the Emperor? Or were you hoping to get back to your comfortable barracks in the Escorial?"

  Grogan shrugged. "We were going to her family's house in Madrid, sir." He jerked his head towards his wife. "Her father's a cobbler, and I'm not such a bad hand with a needle and thread myself. I thought I'd learn the trade."

  "It's always good to have a trade, soldier," Loup said with a smile. He took a pistol from his belt and toyed with it for a moment before he pulled back the heavy cock. "My trade is killing," he added in the same pleasant voice and then, without showing a trace of emotion, he lifted the gun, aimed it at Grogan's forehead and pulled the trigger.

  The woman screamed as her husband's blood splashed across her face. Grogan was thrown violently back, blood spraying and misting the air, then his body thumped and slid backwards down the hill. "He didn't really want to fight for us at all," Loup said. "He'd have been just another useless mouth to feed."

  "And the woman, sir?" Braudel asked. She was bending over her dead husband and screaming at the French.

  "She's yours, Paul," Loup said. "But only after you have delivered a message to Madame Juanita de Elia. Give madame my undying compliments, tell her that her toy Irish soldiers have arrived
and are conveniently close to us, and that tomorrow morning we shall mount a little drama for their amusement. Tell her also that she would do well to spend the night with us."

  Braudel smirked. "She'll be pleased, sir."

  "Which is more than your woman will be," Loup said, glancing at the howling Spanish girl. "Tell this widow, Paul, that if she does not shut up I will tear her tongue out and feed it to the Dona Juanita's hounds. Now come on." He led his men down the hill to where the horses had been picketed. Tonight the Dona Juanita de Elia would come to the wolf's stronghold, and tomorrow she would ride to the enemy like a plague rat sent to destroy them from within.

  And somewhere, some time before victory was final, Sharpe would feel France's vengeance for two dead men. For Loup was a soldier, and he did not forget, did not forgive and never lost.

  CHAPTER III

  Eleven men deserted during the Real Companпa Irlandesa's first night in the San Isidro Fort and eight men, including four picquets set to stop such desertions, ran on the second night. The guardsmen were providing their own sentries and Colonel Runciman suggested Sharpe's riflemen took over the duty. Sharpe argued against such a change. His riflemen were supposed to be training the Real Companпa Irlandesa and they could not work all day and stand guard all night. "I'm sure you're right, General," Sharpe said tactfully, "but unless headquarters sends us more men we can't work round the clock."

  Colonel Runciman, Sharpe had discovered, was malleable so long as he was addressed as 'General'. He only wanted to be left alone to sleep, to eat and to grumble about the amount of work expected from him. "Even a general is only human," he liked to inform Sharpe, then he would inquire how he was supposed to discharge the onerous duties of liaising with the Real Companпa Irlandesa while he was also expected to be responsible for the Royal Wagon Train. In truth the Colonel's deputy still ran the wagon train with the same efficiency he had always displayed, but until a new Wagon Master General was formally appointed Colonel Runciman's signature and seal were necessary on a handful of administrative documents.

  "You could surrender the seals of office to your deputy, General?" Sharpe suggested.

  "Never! Never let it be said that a Runciman evaded his duty, Sharpe. Never!" The Colonel glanced anxiously out of his quarters to see how his cook was proceeding with a hare shot by Daniel Hagman. Runciman's lethargy meant that the Colonel was quite content to let Sharpe deal with the Real Companпa Irlandesa, but even for a man of Runciman's idle nonchalance, nineteen deserters in two nights was cause to worry. "Damn it, man" — he leaned back after inspecting the cook's progress—"it reflects on our efficiency, don't you see? We must do something, Sharpe! In another fortnight we won't have a soul left!"

  Which, Sharpe reflected silently, was exactly what Hogan wanted. The Real Companпa Irlandesa was supposed to self-destruct, yet Richard Sharpe had been put in command of their training and there was a stubborn streak in Sharpe's soul that would not let him permit a unit for which he was responsible to slide into ruin. Damn it, he would make the guards into soldiers whether Hogan wanted him to or not.

  Sharpe doubted he would get much help from Lord Kiely. Each morning his Lordship woke in a foul ill-temper that lasted until his steady intake of alcohol gave him a burst of high spirits that would usually stretch into the evening, but then be replaced by a morose sullenness aggravated by his losses at cards. Then he would sleep till late in the morning and so begin the cycle again. "How in hell," Sharpe asked Kiely's second-in-command, Captain Donaju, "did he get command of the guard?"

  "Birth," Donaju said. He was a pale, thin man with a worried face who looked more like an impoverished student than a soldier, but of all the officers in the Real Companпa Irlandesa he seemed the most promising. "You can't have a royal guard commanded by a commoner, Sharpe," Donaju said with a touch of sarcasm, "but when Kiely's sober he can be quite impressive." The last sentence contained no sarcasm at all.

  "Impressive?" Sharpe asked dubiously.

  "He's a good swordsman," Donaju replied. "He detests the French, and in his heart he would like to be a good man."

  "Kiely detests the French?" Sharpe asked without bothering to disguise his scepticism.

  "The French, Sharpe, are destroying Kiely's privileged world," Donaju explained. "He's from the ancien rйgime, so of course he hates them. He has no money, but under the ancien rйgime that didn't matter because birth and title were enough to get a man a royal appointment and exemption from taxes. But the French preach equality and advancement on merit, and that threatens Kiely's world so he escapes the threat by drinking, whoring and gambling. The flesh is very weak, Sharpe, and it's especially feeble if you're bored, underemployed and also suspect that you're a relic of a bygone world." Donaju shrugged, as though ashamed of having offered Sharpe such a long and high-minded sermon. The Captain was a modest man, but efficient, and it was on Donaju's slender shoulders that the day-to-day running of the guard had devolved. He now told Sharpe how he would attempt to stem the desertions by doubling the sentries and using only men he believed were reliable as picquets, but at the same time he blamed the British for his men's predicament. "Why did they put us in this godforsaken place?" Donaju asked. "It's almost as if your General wants our men to run."

  That was a shrewd thrust and Sharpe had no real answer. Instead he mumbled something about the fort being a strategic outpost and needing a garrison, but he was unconvincing and Donaju's only response was to politely ignore the fiction.

  For the San Isidro Fort was indeed a godforsaken place. It might have had strategic value once, but now the main road between Spain and Portugal ran leagues to the south and so the once huge fastness had been abandoned to decay. Weeds grew thick in the dry moat that had been eroded by rainfall so that the once formidable obstacle had become little more than a shallow ditch. Frost had crumbled the walls, toppling their stones into the ditch to make countless bridges to what was left of the glacis. A white owl roosted in the remains of the chapel's bell tower while the once-tended graves of the garrison's officers had become nothing but shallow declivities in a stony meadow. The only serviceable parts of San Isidro were the old barracks buildings that had been kept in a state of crude repair thanks to the infrequent visits of Portuguese regiments which had been stationed there in times of political crisis. During those crises the men would block the holes in the barracks walls to protect themselves from the cold winds, while the officers took up quarters in the twin-towered gatehouse that had somehow survived the years of neglect. There were even gates that Runciman solemnly ordered closed and barred each night, though employing such a precaution against desertion was like stopping up one earth of a mighty rabbit warren.

  Yet, for all its decay, the fort still held a mouldering grandeur. The impressive twin-towered gateway was embellished with royal escutcheons and approached by a four-arched causeway that spanned the only section of the dry moat still capable of checking an assault. The chapel ruins were laced with delicate carved stonework while the gun platforms were still hugely massive. Most impressive of all was the fort's location for its ramparts offered sky-born views deep across shadowy peaks to horizons unimaginable distances away. The eastern walls looked deep into Spain and it was on those eastern battlements, beneath the flags of Spain and Britain, that Lord Kiely discovered Sharpe on the third morning of the guard's stay in the fort. It seemed that even Kiely had become worried about the rate of desertion. "We didn't come here to be destroyed by desertion," Kiely snapped at Sharpe. The wind quivered the waxed tips of his moustaches.

  Sharpe fought back the comment that Kiely was responsible for his men, not Sharpe, and instead asked his Lordship just why he had come to join the British forces.

  And, to Sharpe's surprise, the young Lord Kiely took the question seriously. "I want to fight, Sharpe. That's why I wrote to His Majesty."

  "So you're in the right place, my Lord," Sharpe said sourly. "The Crapauds are just the other side of that valley." He gestured towards the deep, bare glen that se
parated the San Isidro from the nearest hills. Sharpe suspected that French scouts must be active on the valley's far side and would already have seen the movement in the old fort.

  "We're not in the right place, Sharpe," Kiely said. "I asked King Ferdinand to order us to Cadiz, to be in our own army and among our own kind, but he sent us to Wellington instead. We don't want to be here, but we have royal orders and we obey those orders."

  "Then give your men a royal order not to desert," Sharpe said glibly.

  "They're bored! They're worried! They feel betrayed!" Kiely shuddered, not with emotion, but because he had just risen from his bed and was still trying to shake off his morning hangover. "They didn't come here to be trained, Sharpe," he snarled, "but to fight! They're proud men, a bodyguard, not a pack of raw recruits. Their job is to fight for the King, to show Europe that Ferdinand still has teeth."

  Sharpe pointed east. "See that track, my Lord? The one that climbs to that saddle in the hills? March your men up there, keep them marching for half a day and I'll guarantee you a fight. The French will love it. It'll be easier for them than fighting choirboys. Half your men don't even have working muskets! And the other half can't use them. You tell me they're trained? I've seen militia companies better trained in Britain! And all those plump militia bastards do is parade in the market place once a week and then beat a retreat to the nearest bloody tavern. Your men aren't trained, my Lord, whatever you might think, but you give them to me for a month and I'll have them sharper than a bloody razor."