Sharpe’s rifles

by Bernard Cornwell

  But it was a magnificent madness. Sharpe’s men watched and he barked at them to keep firing at the enemy behind the barricade. He permitted himself to watch as the tough Galician soldiers discarded their firearms and drew their own long swords. They climbed over the dead horses and stabbed down at dazed Dragoons. Others seized bridles or dragged at riders.

  The Frenchmen behind the barricade stood to make their own charge and Sharpe shouted a warning at Vivar, but one which he knew the Spaniard would never hear. He turned. “Sergeant Williams! Keep your men here! The rest of you! Follow!”

  The Riflemen ran in a frenzied scramble down the hill. They made a ragged charge that would take the last Dragoons in the flank, and the French saw them coming, hesitated, then fled. Vivar’s men were taking prisoners or rounding up riderless horses, while the surviving Frenchmen scrambled away to safety. The battle was over. The ambushed, outnumbered, had snatched an impossible victory, and the snow stank of blood and smoke.

  Then gunfire sounded from the canyon behind Sharpe.

  Vivar turned, his face ashen.

  A rifle fired, its sound amplified by the echo of rock walls.

  “Lieutenant!” Vivar gestured desperately towards the canyon. “Lieutenant!” There was a genuine despair in his voice.

  Sharpe turned and ran towards the chasm. The gunfire was sudden and brusque. He could see Sergeant Williams firing downwards, and he knew there must have been more Frenchmen hidden at the canyon’s far end; men who would have blocked the panicked retreat they had expected to provoke. Instead those men must be advancing up the canyon to take Vivar and Sharpe in the rear.

  Except they had been stopped by one man. Rifleman Harper had found the rifle of a fallen man and, using the corpse of the mule as a bastion, was holding off the handful of Dragoons. He had cut the bonds from his wrists, using a bayonet that had slashed deep wounds into his hands, but, despite the bleeding cuts, he still loaded and fired his rifle with a fearful precision. A dead French horse and a wounded Dragoon witnessed to the Irishman’s skill. He screamed his Gaelic challenge at the others, daring them to come closer. He turned, wild-eyed, as Sharpe appeared, then turned scornfully back to face the French.

  Sharpe lined his Rifles across the road. “Take aim!” The chasseur in his red pelisse and black fur hat was in the gorge. Next to him rode the tall man in a black riding coat and white boots.

  “Fire!” Sharpe shouted.

  A dozen rifles flamed. Bullets whined in ricochet, and two more horsemen fell. The man in red and the man in black were safe. They seemed to stare directly into Sharpe’s eyes for an instant, then a fusillade from above made them turn their horses and spur away to safety. The Riflemen jeered, and Sharpe snapped them into silence. “And reload!”

  The French had gone. Water dripped from thawing icicles that hung from rocks. A wounded horse whinnied. The filthy smoke of gunfire drifted in the gorge. A Rifleman vomited blood, then sighed. Another man wept. The wounded horse was silenced by a rifle shot, and the sound slammed in brutal echoes from the rock walls.

  Footsteps sounded behind Sharpe. It was Bias Vivar who walked past him, past the greenjackets, and knelt by the mule. He carefully unstrapped the strongbox from the dead beast’s harness. Then, standing, he looked up at Harper. “You saved it, my friend.”

  “I did, sir?” It was clear the Irishman had no idea what value Vivar placed on the chest.

  The Spaniard reached up to the huge man and kissed both his cheeks. One of Sharpe’s Riflemen sniggered, then was shamed to silence by the moment’s solemnity.

  “You saved it,” Vivar said again, and there were tears in his eyes. Then he lifted the strongbox and carried it back up the canyon.

  Sharpe followed. His men, silent and cold, came down to the roadway. There was no exultation in victory for, unnoticed until this moment, and far beyond the abandoned French barricade, a smear of grey smoke rose into the winter air. It rose from the village, and the smoke was grey as a pauper’s shroud and carried the stench of death and fire.

  And from it, like dark snow, ashes fell on a bloodied land.

  Chapter 5

  The villagers could have sent no warning of the French presence for there was no village any more, nor villagers.

  The fires must have been set just as the ambush was sprung, for the houses still burned fiercely. The corpses, though, had frozen hard. The French had killed the people, then sheltered in their houses as they waited for Vivar’s small column to reach the high canyon.

  It had never been much of a village; a poor place of goats and sheep, and of people who made a living from high pastures. The houses lay in a hollow sheltered by dwarf oaks and chestnut trees. Potatoes had grown in a few small fields that were edged with wild mulberries and furze. The houses had been mere thatched huts with dungheaps at their doors. They had been shared by men and animals alike, just as the houses Sharpe’s own Riflemen had known in England had been, and that nostalgic resemblance added to the poignancy of the day.

  If anything could add to the poignancy of children and babies killed, of women raped, or of men crucified. Sergeant Williams, who had known his share of horror in a bad world, vomited. One of the Spanish infantrymen turned in silence on a French captive and, before Vivar could utter a word, disembowelled the man. Only then did the Cazador utter a howl of hatred.

  Vivar ignored the killing and the howl. Instead, with an odd formality, he marched to Sharpe. “Would you…“ he began, but found it hard to continue. The stench of those bodies which burned inside the houses was thick. He swallowed. ”Would you place picquets, Lieutenant?“

  “Yes, sir.”

  That, at least, took the Riflemen away from the bodies of slaughtered infants and the burning hovels. All that was left of the village’s buildings were the church walls; walls of stone which could not be burned, though the church’s timber roof still flamed high to spew smoke above the valley’s rim where, among the trees, Sharpe placed his sentries. The French, if they still lingered, were invisible.

  “Why did they do it, sir?” Dodd, a quiet man, appealed to Sharpe.

  Sharpe could offer no answer.

  Gataker, as fly a rogue as any in the army, stared empty-eyed at the landscape. Isaiah Tongue, whose education had been wasted by gin, winced as a terrible scream sounded from the village; then, realizing that the scream must have come from a captured Frenchman, spat to show that it had not troubled him.

  Sharpe moved on, placing more sentries, finally reaching a spot from which, between two great granite boulders, he could see far to the south. He sat there alone, staring into the immense sky that promised yet more bad weather. His drawn sword was still in his hand and, almost in a daze, he tried to push it home into its metal scabbard. The blade, still sticky with blood, stopped halfway, and he saw to his astonishment that a bullet had pierced the scabbard and driven the lips of metal inwards.

  “Sir?”

  Sharpe looked round to see a nervous Sergeant Williams. “Sergeant?”

  “We lost four men, sir.”

  Sharpe had forgotten to ask, and he cursed himself for the omission. “Who?”

  Williams named the dead, though the names meant nothing to Sharpe. “I thought we’d have lost more,” he said in wonderment.

  “Sims is wounded, sir. And Cameron. There are some others, sir, but those are the worst.” The Sergeant was only doing his job, but he was shaking with nerves as he spoke to his officer.

  Sharpe tried to gather his thoughts, but the memory of the dead children was withering his senses. He had seen dead children often enough, who had not? In these past weeks he had passed a score of the army’s children frozen to death in the ghastly retreat, but none of them had been murdered. He had seen children beaten till their blood ran, but not till they were dead. How could the French have waited in the village and not first hidden their obscene butchery? How could they have committed it in the first place?

  Williams, troubled by Sharpe’s brooding silence, muttered something ab
out finding a stream from which the men could fill their canteens. Sharpe nodded. “Make sure the French haven’t fouled the water, Sergeant.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  Sharpe twisted to look at the burly man. “And the men did well. Very well.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Williams sounded relieved. He flinched as another scream sounded from the village.

  “They did very well.” He said it too hastily, as if trying to distract both their thoughts from the scream. The French prisoners were being questioned, then would die. Sharpe stared south, wondering whether the clouds would send rain or snow. He remembered the man in the red coat, the chasseur of the Imperial Guard, and the man in the black coat beside him. Why those two men again? Because, he thought, they had known Vivar was coming, yet the one thing the French had not reckoned on was Riflemen. Sharpe thought of the moment at the hilltop when the first green-jacket had gone past him, sword-bayonet fixed, and he recalled another failing of his own. He had never ordered the swords to be fixed, but the men had done it themselves. “The men did very well,” Sharpe repeated, “tell them that.”

  Williams hesitated. “Sir? Wouldn’t it be better if you told them?”

  “Me?” Sharpe turned abruptly towards the Sergeant.

  “They did it for you, sir.” Williams was embarrassed, and made more so because Sharpe did not respond to his awkward words. “They were trying to prove something, sir. We all were. And hoping you’d…“

  “Hoping what?” The question was asked too harshly, and Sharpe knew it. “I’m sorry.”

  “We were hoping you’d let Harps go, sir. The men like him, you see, and the army’s always let men offpunishment, sir, if their comrades fight well.”

  The bitterness Sharpe felt for the Irishman was too strong to let him grant the request immediately. Til tell the men they did well, Sergeant.“ He paused. ”And I’ll think about Harper.“

  “Yes, sir.” Sergeant Williams was plainly thankful that, for the first time since he had come under Sharpe’s orders, the Lieutenant had treated him with some civility.

  Sharpe realized that too, and was shocked by it. He had been nervous of leading these men, and frightened of their insubordination, but he had not understood that they were also frightened of him. Sharpe knew himself to be a tough man, but he had always thought of himself as a reasonable one, yet now, in the mirror of William’s nervousness, he saw himself as something far worse; a bullying man who would use the small authority of his rank to frighten men. In fact, the very kind of officer Sharpe had most hated when he himself was under their embittered authority. He felt remorse for all the mistakes he had made with these men, and wondered how to make amends. He was too proud to apologize, so instead he made an embarrassed confession to the Sergeant. “I wasn’t sure any of the men would follow me up that hill.”

  Williams grunted, half in amusement and half in understanding. “Those lads would, sir. You’ve got the cream of the Battalion there.”

  “The cream?” Sharpe could not hide his surprise.

  “The rogues, anyway.” Williams grinned. “Not me, sir. I was never much of a one for a scrap. I always hoped I’d never have to earn my pay, like.” He laughed. “But these boys, sir, most of them are right bastards.” The words were said with a kind of admiration. “Stands to reason, sir, if you think about it. I watched the lads when those crapauds attacked at the bridge, sir. Some were just ready to give up, but not these lads. They made sure they got away. You’ve got the tough ones, sir. Except for me. I was just lucky. But if you give these lads a chance to fight, sir, they’ll follow you.”

  “They followed you, too,” Sharpe said. “I saw you on that hilltop. You were good.”

  Williams touched the chevrons on his right sleeve. “I’d be ashamed of the stripes if I didn’t muck in. But no, sir, it was you. Bloody madness, it was, to charge that hill. But it worked!”

  Sharpe shrugged the compliment away, but he recognized it for one and was secretly rather pleased. He might not be a born officer, but by God he was a born soldier. He was the son of a whore, bereft of God, but a God-damned soldier.

  There were spades and shovels in the village that, taken back to the mouth of the canyon, were used to dig graves for the French dead.

  Vivar walked with Sharpe to where the shallow graves were being scraped from the hard earth. The Spaniard stopped by one of the Dragoons who had died in the cavalry charge and whose body had since been stripped naked. The skin of the dead man’s body was as white as the churned snow, while his face had been turned brown by exposure to wind and sun. The bloodied face was framed by pigtails.

  ”Cadenettes,“ Vivar said abruptly. ”That’s what they call those. What do you call them, braids?“

  “Pigtails.”

  “It’s their mark.” He sounded bitter. “Their mark of being special, an elite.”

  “Like the rosemary in your men’s hats?”

  “No, not like that at all.” Vivar’s abrupt denial checked the words between the two men. They stood in embarrassed silence above the enemy dead.

  Sharpe, feeling uncomfortable, broke the silence. “I wouldn’t have believed it possible for dismounted cavalry to break horsemen.”

  The praise delighted the Major. “Nor would I have believed it possible for infantry to take that hill. It was stupid of you, Lieutenant, very stupid, and more brave that I could have dreamed possible. I thank you.”

  Sharpe, as ever made awkward by a compliment, tried to shrug it away. “It was my Riflemen.”

  “They did it to please you, I think?” Vivar spoke meaningfully, trying to offer Sharpe some reassurance. When the Englishman offered no response, the Spaniard’s voice became more intense. “Men always behave best when they know what is expected of them. Today you showed them what you wanted, and it was simple victory.”

  Sharpe muttered something about luck.

  Vivar ignored the evasion. “You led them, Lieutenant, and they knew what was expected of them. Men should always know what their officers expect of them. I give my Cazadores three rules. They must not steal unless they will die for not stealing, they must look after their horses before themselves, and they must fight like heroes. Three rules only, but they work. Give men firm rules, Lieutenant, and they will follow you.”

  Sharpe, standing on the lonely and cold-swept plateau, knew he was being offered a gift by Major Vivar. Perhaps there were no rules for being an officer, and perhaps the best officers were born to their excellence, but the Spaniard was offering Sharpe a key to success and, sensing the value of the gift, he smiled. “Thank you.”

  “Rules!” Vivar went on as though Sharpe had not spoken. “Rules make real soldiers, not child-killers like these bastards.” He kicked the dead Frenchman, then shuddered. Other French corpses were being dragged across the slurried snow to the shallow grave. “I’ll have one of my men make some crosses from burnt wood.”

  Again Sharpe was surprised by this man. One moment he kicked the naked corpse of an enemy, the next he was taking care to mark those enemies‘ graves with crosses.

  Vivar saw his surprise. “It isn’t respect, Lieutenant.”

  “No?”

  “I fear their estadea, their spirits. The crosses will keep their filthy souls underground.” Vivar spat onto the body. “You think I’m a fool, but I’ve seen them, Lieutenant. The estadea are the lost spirits of the doomed dead and they look like a myriad of candles in the night mist. Their moaning is more terrible even than that.” He jerked his head towards another dying scream which sounded from the village. “For what they did to the children, Englishman, they deserve worse.”

  Sharpe could not quarrel with the Major’s justification. “Why did they do it?” He could not imagine killing a child, nor how a man could even dream of such an act.

  Vivar walked away from the French corpses, towards the edge of the small plateau across which the cavalry had charged. “When the French came here, Lieutenant, they were our allies. God damn our foolishness, but we invi
ted them. They came to attack our enemies, the Portuguese, but once they were here they decided to stay. They thought Spain was feeble, rotten, defenceless.” Vivar paused, staring into the great void of the valley. “And maybe we were rotten. Not the people, Lieutenant. Never think that, never! But the government.” He spat. “So the French despised us. They thought we were a ripe fruit for the picking, and perhaps we were. Our armies?” Vivar shrugged in hopelessness. “Men cannot fight if they’re badly led. But the people are not rotten. The land isn’t rotten,” he slammed his heel into the snow-covered turf. “This is Spain, Lieutenant, beloved of God, and God will not desert us. Why do you think you and I won today?”

  It was a question that expected no answer, and Sharpe made none.

  Vivar gazed again at the far hills where the first rain showed as dark stains against the horizon. “The French despised us,” he picked up his earlier thought, “but learned to hate us. They found victory hard in Spain. They even learned to taste defeat. We forced an army to surrender at Bailen, and when they besieged Saragossa, the people humiliated them. And for that the French will not forgive us. Now they flood us with armies and think, if they kill us all, they can beat us.”

  “But why do they kill children?” Sharp was still haunted by the memory of small and grievously tortured bodies.

  Vivar grimaced at the question. “You fight against men in uniforms, Lieutenant. You know who your enemy is because he dresses in a blue coat for you and hangs gold lace on the coat as a target for your rifles. But the French don’t know who their enemies are. Any man with a knife could be their enemy, and so they fear us. And to stop us they will make the price of enmity too high. They will spread a greater fear through Spain, a fear of that!” He turned and jabbed a finger towards the smear of smoke that still rose from the village. “They fear us, but they will try to make us fear them even more. And maybe they will succeed.”

  The sudden pessimism was startling from a man as indomitable as Bias Vivar. “You truly think so?” Sharpe asked.

  “I think men should fear the death of their children.” Vivar, who had buried his own children, spoke very bleakly. “But I do not think the French will succeed. They’re victorious now, and the Spanish people mourn their children and wonder if there is any hope left, but if those people can be given just one small scrap of hope, just one glint in the darkness, then they will fight!” He snarled the last words, then, in a quicksilver change of mood, smiled apologetically at Sharpe. “I have a favour to ask of you.”