‘No, sir?’
‘There’ll be English ships loading with wine at Oporto. And we can’t be more than a week from Oporto.’
One week to safety! Sharpe rejoiced in the thought. One week of hard marching on his broken boots. One week to prove that he could survive without Blas Vivar. One week of whipping these Riflemen into a disciplined unit. One week with Louisa Parker, and then at least two more weeks at sea as their ship beat north against the Biscay winds.
Two hours after midday, Sharpe called a halt. The sea was still invisible, yet its salt odour was thin among the straggly pine trees beneath which the carriage horses were given a feed of dried maize and hay. The Riflemen, after breaking apart the last of the monastery’s loaves, lay exhausted. They had just crossed a stretch of flooded meadows where the road had proved a morass from which the men had had to push the great carriage free. Now the road led gently upwards between mossy walls towards a stone farmhouse which lay, perhaps a mile to the south, on the next crest.
The Parkers sat on rugs beside their carriage. Mrs Parker would not look at Sharpe since his outburst beside the stream, but Louisa gave him a happy and conspiratorial smile that caused Sharpe instant embarrassment for he feared his men would see it and jump to the correct and unavoidable conclusion that the Lieutenant was smitten. To avoid betraying his feelings, Sharpe walked from beneath the stand of pines to where a single picquet squatted beside the road.
‘Anything?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, sir.’ It was Hagman, the oldest Rifleman, and one of the very few not to have drunk himself insensible during the night. He was chewing tobacco and his eyes never left the northern skyline. ‘It’s going to rain again.’
‘You think so?’
‘Know so.’
Sharpe squatted. The clouds seemed endless, black and grey, rolling from the invisible sea. ‘Why did you join the army?’ he asked.
Hagman, whose toothless mouth gave his already ugly face a nutcracker profile, grinned. ‘Caught poaching, sir. Magistrate gave me a choice, sir. Clink or the ranks.’
‘Married?’
‘That’s why I chose the ranks, sir.’ Hagman laughed, then spat a stream of yellow spittle into a puddle. ‘God-damned sawny-mouthed bitch of a sodding witch she was, sir.’
Sharpe laughed, then went utterly still.
‘Sir!’ Hagman said softly.
‘I see them.’ Then Sharpe was standing, turning, shouting, for on the southern skyline, silhouetted against the dark clouds, were cavalry.
The French had caught up.
CHAPTER 8
It was a bad place to be caught; a stretch of open country where cavalry could manoeuvre almost at will. It was true that there were patches of bog at the edges of the fields which, like the road, were lined with low stone walls, but Sharpe knew he would be hard put to extricate his men from the enemy.
‘You’re certain it’s the French?’ Parker asked.
Sharpe did not even bother to answer. A soldier who could not recognize enemy silhouettes did not deserve to live, but neither did a soldier who hesitated. ‘Go! Go!’ This was to the coachman who, jarred by Sharpe’s sudden anger, cracked his long whip at his lead pair. Traces jangled, splinter bars jerked with the strain, and the carriage lunged forward.
The Riflemen tore rags from their weapon locks. Sharpe said a silent prayer of thanks to whichever deity looked after soldiers that, on the day when they had been cut off from the army, these men had been issued with so much ammunition. They would need it, for they were horribly outnumbered and their only hope lay in the ability of the rifle to delay the enemy’s pursuit.
Sharpe estimated it would take the French horsemen ten minutes to reach the stand of pines which presently shrouded the Riflemen. There was no escape to east or west, where only empty fields lay; instead he needed to reach the southern crest where the farm stood and hope that, beyond the crest and by some miracle, he would find an obstacle impassable to horsemen. If there was no escape, then the farmhouse must be barricaded into a fortress. But ten minutes was not enough time to reach the farm, so Sharpe held back a dozen men at the pines. The rest, under Williams’s command, went with the coach.
Sharpe kept Hagman, for the old poacher had an uncanny skill with his rifle, and he retained Harper with his closest cronies, for Sharpe suspected that they were his best fighters. ‘We can’t hold them up for long,’ he told the few men, ‘but we can buy some time. But when we do move, we’ll have to run like the devil.’
Harper crossed himself. ‘God save Ireland.’ There were at least two hundred Dragoons now filing along the boggy road that had mired the coach an hour earlier.
The Riflemen lay at the edge of the trees. To the French, still half a mile off, they would be invisible. ‘Lie still,’ Sharpe warned his men. ‘Aim at the horses. It’s going to be a very long shot.’ He would have liked to have waited till the enemy was just two hundred yards away before opening fire, but that would let the horsemen come far too close. Instead he would be forced to fire at the very limit of the rifle’s killing range in the hope that the bullets created enough surprise and panic to check the French advance for a few precious moments.
Sharpe, concealed by the darkness beneath the pines, stood a few paces behind his men. He drew out his telescope and steadied its long barrel against a pine trunk.
He saw pale green coats, pink facings, and pigtails. The telescope foreshortened the advancing French column so that the lens seemed filled with men rising and falling in their saddles. Scabbards, carbines, pouches, and sabretaches jiggled. At this distance the French faces, dark beneath their forage caps, were expressionless and menacing. There were curious bundles strapped behind the saddles which Sharpe realized were netfuls of fodder for the horses. The French halted.
Sharpe swore softly.
He panned the telescope left and right. The Dragoons had left the worst of the marshland behind and had spread into a line that was now quite motionless. Horses lowered their heads to crop at the damp grass.
‘Sir?’ Hagman called. ‘On the road, sir? See the buggers?’
Sharpe jerked the telescope back to the centre of the enemy line. A group of officers had appeared there, their aiguillettes and epaulettes a dark gold in the wintry light, and in their midst were the chasseur in his red pelisse, and the civilian in his black coat and white boots. Sharpe wondered by what weird skill those two men followed his scent across the winter land.
The chasseur opened his own telescope and it seemed to Sharpe that the Frenchman stared directly into the betraying circle of his own lens. He kept his glass motionless until the other telescope was snapped shut. Then he watched as the chasseur gave an order to a Dragoon officer, apparently an aide, who galloped his horse westward.
The result of the order was that a small detachment of Dragoons lifted the heavy helmets which hung from their saddles’ pommels. The six men pulled the helmets onto their heads; a sure sign they had been ordered to advance. Sensible to the fact that the pines could hide an ambush, the chasseur was sending a picquet ahead. Sharpe had lost surprise, for even though the enemy did not know that he waited for them, they were prepared for trouble. He slammed his glass shut, and cursed the French commander’s caution that now imposed a delicate choice on him.
Sharpe could kill the six men, but would that stop the other Dragoons? Or would they, judging his strength from the paucity of shots fired, spur into an instant gallop that would bring the mass of horsemen into the trees long before the Riflemen could reach the southern crest? Instead of ten minutes, he might have five.
He hesitated. But if he had learned one thing as a soldier it was that any decision, even a bad one, was better than none. ‘We’re pulling back. Fast! Keep hidden!’
The Riflemen slithered backwards, stood when the trees shielded them from the French, then followed Sharpe onto the road. They ran.
‘Jesus!’ The imprecation came from Harper and was caused by the sight of the Parkers’ carriage which, just two hun
dred yards ahead, was stuck fast. The coachman, in his haste, had rammed a wheel against a stone wall at a bend in the road. Williams and his men were vainly trying to free the vehicle.
‘Leave it!’ Sharpe bellowed. ‘Leave it!’
Mrs Parker’s head appeared at the window of the coach to countermand his orders. ‘Push! Push!’
‘Get out!’ Sharpe floundered in the road’s mud. ‘Get out!’ If the coach was to be rescued then the horses would have to be coaxed backwards, slewed, then whipped forward, and that would take time which he did not have, so it must be abandoned.
But Mrs Parker was in no mood to sacrifice the carriage’s comfort. She ignored Sharpe, instead leaning perilously from the opened window to threaten her coachman with a furled umbrella. ‘Whip them harder, you fool! Harder!’
Sharpe seized the door handle and tugged it down. ‘Get out! Out!’
Mrs Parker flailed the umbrella at him, knocking his mildewed shako over his eyes, but Sharpe seized her wrist, tugged, and heard her scream as she fell in the mud. ‘Sergeant Williams?’
‘Sir?’
‘Two men to get those packs off the roof!’ They contained all Sharpe’s spare ammunition. Gataker and Dodd scrambled up, slashed at the ropes with their sword-bayonets, and tossed the heavy packs down to the waiting riflemen. George Parker tried to speak with Sharpe, but the officer had no time for his nervousness. ‘You’ll have to run, sir. To the farm!’ Sharpe physically turned the tall man and pointed him towards the stone house and barn which were the only refuges left in this bare country.
There was nervous excitement in Louisa’s eyes, then the girl was pushed aside by Mrs Parker who, muddied by her fall and made incoherent by the loss of her carriage and luggage, tried to reach Sharpe, but he shouted at the family to start running. ‘You want to die, woman? Move! Sergeant Williams! Escort the ladies! Get into the farmhouse!’ Mrs Parker screamed for her valise that Mr Parker, shaking like a leaf, rescued from inside the carriage. Then, surrounded by Riflemen, the family and their coachman fled uphill.
‘Sir?’ Harper checked Sharpe. ‘Block the road?’ He gestured at the coach.
Sharpe did not have the time to be astonished at the Irishman’s sudden willingness. He did, however, recognize the value of the suggestion. If the road was blocked then the French would be forced to negotiate the stone walls which barred the fields on either side. It would not buy much time, but even a minute would help in this desperate plight. He nodded. ‘If we can.’
‘No trouble at all, sir.’ Harper unhooked the chain-traces, splinter bars, and lead bars while other men slashed at the harness and reins. The Irishman slapped the horses’ rumps to drive the loosened team uphill. ‘Right, lads! We’re going to tip the bastard!’
The Riflemen gathered on the coach’s right side. Sharpe was staring at the trees, waiting for the enemy picquet, but he could not resist turning to watch as the Irishman commanded the men to lift.
For a moment the coach refused to budge, then Harper seemed to take all the carriage’s weight into his own huge body and thrust it skywards. The wheels shifted in the mud and the axle boss scraped against the stone where it was stuck. ‘Heave!’ Harper drew the word out into a long bellow as the coach rose ever higher into the air. For a second it threatened to collapse back, crushing the greenjackets, and Sharpe ran and put his own weight into the huge vehicle. It teetered for a second, then, with a splintering thump, collapsed onto its side in the road. Luggage and seat cushions tumbled inside, and Spanish testaments were strewn thick into the road’s mud.
‘Cavalry, sir!’ Hagman shouted.
Sharpe turned north to see the six enemy horsemen curbing in at the edge of the trees. He aimed swiftly, too swiftly, and his shot missed. Hagman, firing a second later, made one of the horses rear in pain. The other Dragoons wrenched their reins about. Two more shots were fired before the enemy picquet was safe among the pines.
‘Run!’ Sharpe shouted.
The Riflemen ran. Their scabbards flapped and their packs thumped on their backs as they scrambled up the road. A carbine bullet, fired at long range, fluttered above Sharpe’s head. He could see Mrs Parker being bodily dragged by two greenjackets and the sight made him want to laugh. It was ludicrous. He was trapped by cavalry and he wanted to double over in laughter.
Sharpe caught up with Sergeant Williams’s group. Mrs Parker, furious, was too breathless to shout at him, but she was equally too fat to move fast. Sharpe looked for Harper. ‘Drag her!’
‘You can’t mean it, sir!’
‘Carry her if you must!’
The Irishman pushed Mrs Parker in the rump. Louisa laughed, but Sharpe yelled at the girl to run. He himself, with the remainder of his squad, filed into the field beside the road where, sheltered by a stone wall, they watched for the pursuit.
Sharpe could hear the cavalry trumpets talking with each other. The picquets had sent the call that the enemy was in sight and running, so now the other Dragoons would be spurring forward, exchanging forage caps for canvas-covered helmets. Swords would be rasping out of scabbards, carbines would be unslung. ‘They’ll have to come through the trees, so we’ll give the bastards a volley, then run! Aim where the road comes through the trees, lads!’ Sharpe hoped to delay the Dragoons by at least a minute, maybe more. When the head of the enemy column appeared beneath the trees he would hammer it with one well-aimed volley, and it would take time for the cavalrymen who followed to negotiate the wounded horses.
Hagman was carefully reloading his rifle with the best powder and shot. He eschewed the ready-made cartridges which were made with coarser powder, charging his rifle instead with the best fine powder which each Rifleman carried in a horn. He wrapped the ball in the greased leather patch which, when the weapon was fired, would grip the seven spiralling grooves and lands which imparted spin to the bullet. He rammed the leather-patched ball down past the resistance of the lands’ quarter turn, then primed the lock with a pinch of good powder. It took a long time to load a rifle thus, but the resultant shot could be wickedly accurate. When Hagman was done he levelled the gun across the top of the stone wall and spat a stream of tobacco-stained spittle. ‘Aim a pace left for the wind.’
A spot of rain landed on the wall beside Sharpe. He prayed it would hold off long enough to let his rifles fire. He paced behind the men. ‘Make this shot hurt! One volley, then we run like hell.’
‘Sir?’ A man at the end of the line pointed to the trees east of the road and, staring there, Sharpe wondered if he saw movement among the pines. He unbuttoned the pocket in which his telescope was stored, but before he could even draw the glass from its protective case, the enemy burst in a great line from the trees.
Sharpe had expected them to file in column through the gap where the road pierced the pines, but instead the Dragoons had spread left and right in the woodland and now, helmeted and carrying drawn swords, the enemy’s whole strength erupted into the light.
‘Fire!’
It was a puny volley. If the rifles had been able to concentrate their bullets into the head of a packed column of cavalry, they might have turned the road into a charnel of screaming horses and bleeding men. But against a whole spread of horsemen, coming in single line abreast, the bullets were scarcely more of a nuisance than horseflies. Only one horse, struck by Hagman’s careful bullet, staggered and fell.
‘Run!’ Sharpe shouted.
The Rifles ran as if the devil was on their heels. The French had foreseen that volley, guarded against it, and now were in the open and hullooing forward like hunters smelling blood. Ahead of Sharpe the other Riflemen were angling towards the farm. Louisa, he saw was carrying the wounded Cameron’s pack and pulling the man along by his hand.
‘Bastards on the right!’ Hagman called the warning and Sharpe twisted to see that the horsemen to the east were on the firmest ground and thus the likeliest to catch his small group. The Dragoons were riding like steeple chasers, victory in their nostrils, and a gap in a stone wall lent them s
peed, just as it made them bunch together like men racing for a turn. Sharpe saw the water spray up from their hooves as the cavalry charged through a damp patch, then, extraordinarily, he saw red blood appear on two of the horses, a sword circle through the air, then he saw a man twisting in the saddle, falling, and being dragged by a screaming, frightened horse. Only then did Sharpe hear the crack of the rifles ahead.
Harper had abandoned Mrs Parker and formed a line of Riflemen at the edge of the farm’s outer wall. Their volley had scattered the easternmost cavalry to give Sharpe’s group a ghost of a chance. ‘Run! Run!’
The men slung their rifles and ran. Sharpe could hear the enemy hooves behind. He could hear the creak of the saddles and the shout of the officers and Sergeants. More rifle bullets flicked past, firing from the farm to give him cover. Louisa stared, eyes wide.
‘Left, sir!’ A man shouted. ‘Left!’ Cavalrymen were coming from the west; men who had ridden around the roadblock and who now put their beasts to jump the stone wall that edged the road. One man, his horse in midflight, was hit by a bullet and slewed sideways. The others came on unscathed and Sharpe knew his squad would be trapped. He dragged the big sword free, planted his feet, and let the first Frenchman ride at him. ‘Run on!’ he shouted at his men. ‘Run on!’
The first Frenchman was a Dragoon officer who leaned low in his saddle and speared his sword forward so that, like a lance, it would rip into Sharpe’s belly. The Rifleman backswung his own sword, left to right, in a two-handed blow that was aimed at the horse’s mouth. It struck home on bone and teeth, the animal wrenched aside, and Sharpe threw himself against its body so that the Frenchman’s sword went past and outside him. He tried to reach up to drag the rider from the saddle, missed, and his shako went flying as the forage net thumped him down on to the road. The horse’s rear leg struck his hip, then the Dragoon was gone and Sharpe scrambled to his feet.
Bernard Cornwell Box Set: Sharpe's Triumph , Sharpe's Tiger , Sharpe's Fortress Page 79
