Sharpe 3-Book Collection 5: Sharpe's Company, Sharpe's Sword, Sharpe's Enemy (87 page)

‘Come on!’ Frederickson rushed the hilltop, waving his men left and right, listening to the curses and shouts and they pulled themselves from the thorns. ‘Skirmishers in front!’ A musket bullet flattened itself on the tower. ‘Kill those bastards!’

Frederickson was not worried by a Company of French Skirmishers. He spent his life fighting Voltigeurs, as his men did, and he left his Lieutenants to push them back while he walked to the gun facing north and pulled the nail out of the touch-hole. A sketch-book had fallen under the trail of the gun and he stooped, wiped the mud from the open page, and saw the drawing of the tower doorway.

‘Captain?’ A grinning Fusilier came round the tower, bayonet in the back of the aide-de-camp. The Frenchman looked terrified. He had run at the first bullets, dived into the gunpit, and then the hilltop was swarming with British troops. Now he faced the most villainous man he had ever seen, a man with one eye, the other socket raw and shadowed, a man whose top front teeth were missing, and a man who smiled wolfishly at him.

‘Yours?’ Frederickson asked, holding the sketch pad out.

‘Oui, monsieur.’

The vile looking Rifleman looked at the sketch, looked back to the Frenchman, and this time Frederickson spoke in French. ‘Have you been to Leca do Balio?’

‘No, monsieur.’

‘A very similar doorway. You’d like it. And some fine lancet windows in the clerestory. And below it, too. A Templar’s church, which might explain the foreign influence.’ But Frederickson could have saved his breath. The aide-de-camp had fainted clean away, and the Fusilier grinned at Frederickson. ‘Shall I kill him, sir?’

‘Good God, no!’ Frederickson sounded pained. ‘I want to talk to him!’

Rifles cracked from the top of the tower, Rifles that drove confusion in the ranks of the Lancers. The German Colonel swore, grimaced, and blood was on his thigh. He clamped a hand on the wound, looked up the hill, and swore again.

The Voltigeurs were going back, hunted through the thorns that crackled as the Rifle bullets spun through them. The French Voltigeur Captain saw more troops appear, red-coated and equipped with bayonets. ‘Back! Back!’

Dubreton turned his horse and spurred back to the village. They had done everything Sharpe had known they would do, everything! They had played into his hand and now they would be forced to do the next thing Sharpe had planned. They would be forced to ask for a truce to rescue their wounded. Sharpe wanted time, and they would hand it to him on a plate!

‘Colonel!’ The General shouted. Behind the General an aide-de-camp was already skewering one of the white cloths from the inn onto a sword.

‘Yes, sir. I know.’

The aide-de-camp unhappily spread the cloth out and Dubreton could see the stains of last night’s wine. It seemed so long ago, and already his dinner guests had bloodied French pride in the grass. The next time it would not be so easy for them. Dubreton turned and spurred his horse between the ranks of the new Battalion, the aide-de-camp following him.

The firing died in the Gateway of God, the powder smoke drifting westward on the breeze, and Sharpe walked out into the pasture-land that he had spattered with the dead and waited for his enemy.

‘Major Sharpe.’

‘Sir.’ Sharpe saluted.

‘I should have known, shouldn’t I?’ Dubreton was leaning forward on his saddle. ‘Did Sir Augustus die in the night?’

‘He found he had business elsewhere.’

Dubreton sighed, straightened up and looked at the wounded. ‘The next time it won’t be so easy, Major.’

‘No.’

The French Colonel gave Sharpe a wry smile. ‘It’s no good telling you that this is futile, is it? No.’ His voice became more formal. ‘We wish to rescue our wounded.’

‘Please do.’

‘May I ask why you fired on the parties we sent forward to do just that?’

‘Did we hit anyone?’

‘Nevertheless I wish to register our protest.’

Sharpe nodded. ‘Sir.’

Dubreton sighed. ‘I am empowered to offer a truce for the time it takes to clear the field.’ He looked over Sharpe’s head and frowned. Fusiliers were digging at the graves which had been dug the day before.

Sharpe shook his head. ‘No, Colonel.’ The French could bring gun limbers and have their wounded off the field in thirty minutes. ‘Any truce must last till mid-day.’

Dubreton looked to his right. The wounded who were still conscious shouted at him for help, they knew why he had come, and some, more horrible still, pulled themselves by their arms towards him. Others lay in their blood and just cried. Some were silent, their lives shattered, their future to be cripples in France. Some would live to fight again and a few of them limped on the road towards the village. The French Colonel looked back to Sharpe. ‘I must formally tell you that our truce will last only as long as it will take us to rescue our men.’

‘Then I must formally instruct you to send no more than ten men to their aid. Any others will be fired on, and my Riflemen will be ordered to kill.’

Dubreton nodded. He had known, as Sharpe had known, how this conference would go. ‘Eleven o’clock, Major?‘

Sharpe hesitated, then nodded. ‘Eleven o’clock, sir.‘

Dubreton half smiled. ‘Thank you, Major.’ He gestured towards the village. ‘May I?’

‘Please.’

Dubreton waved vigorously and the first men ran out from the ranks of the waiting Battalion, some holding stretchers, and then there was a bigger disturbance in the ranks and two of the strange French ambulances were galloping along the road. They were small covered carts, sprung for the comfort of the wounded, and they were the envy of the British soldiers. More men survived an amputation if their limb was removed within minutes of the battle wound, and the French had developed the fast ambulances to take the casualties to the waiting surgeons. Sharpe looked up to Dubreton. ‘You had them very close, considering you were not expecting to fight.’

Dubreton shrugged. ‘They were used to bring last night’s food and wine, Major.’ Sharpe wished he had not spoken. The last time he had met Dubreton a gift had passed between them, now they were enemies on a field. The Colonel looked at the Pioneers who were shovelling the loose earth from the graves. ‘I assume, Major, that we will undertake no military works for the duration of the truce?’

Sharpe nodded. ‘I agree.’

‘So I assume that is not a defensive trench?’

‘A grave, sir. We lost men, too.’ The lie came smoothly off his tongue. Three Fusiliers had died, and eight were wounded, but the grave was not being enlarged for the dead.

Sharpe turned to the Castle and waved, as Dubreton had waved, and the French Captain was released by the sentries on the gate. He rode into the field, trotted towards Dubreton, and he looked aghast at the carnage that had been wreaked on his Battalion. Behind him Fusiliers rolled the cart into the archway, sealing it.

Sharpe waved towards the Captain and spoke to Dubreton. ‘Captain Desaix had the misfortune to be in the Castle yard when the fighting begun. He has given me his parole and undertaken not to bear arms against His Britannic Majesty, or his allies, until he has been exchanged for an officer of equal rank. Till then he is in your charge.’ It was a pompous speech, but a necessary formality, and Dubreton nodded.

‘It will be done.’ He spoke in French to the Captain, jerking his head towards the village, and the young man spurred away. Dubreton looked back to Sharpe. ‘He was lucky.’

‘Yes.’

‘I hope luck stays with you, Major.’ Dubreton gathered his reins. ‘We shall meet again.’

He turned, his spurs touched the flanks of his horse, and Sharpe watched him go. An hour and a half, a little more, and the fighting would begin again.

He stopped by the Fusilier Pioneers who scraped in the graves. A Sergeant looked up at the officer. ‘Bloody horrid, sir. What do we do with them?’

The bodies had been uncovered, their nakedness horribly white and stained by earth, their wounds somehow unreal. ‘They weren’t buried deep, were they?’

‘No.’ The Pioneer Sergeant sniffed. The bodies were scarce one foot under the earth, no protection against the carrion eaters that would scrape them up and tear at the dead flesh.

Sharpe jerked his head towards the southernmost part of the trench, the excavation nearest to the thorn covered hillside. ‘Put them up there. Dig it deep. I want most of this trench free.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And hurry.’

The Sergeant shook his head. ‘We could do with some help, sir.’

Sharpe knew there were enough men. ‘If it isn’t ready in an hour and a half, Sergeant, I’ll leave you here when they attack.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The formal politeness barely disguised the hatred the Sergeant felt. As Sharpe walked away he heard the sound of the man spitting, but then there were bellowed orders, shouts for the Pioneers to get on with it, and Sharpe let the Sergeant be. It was a horrid job, but the Pioneers of a Battalion often got the horrid jobs, the worst of the digging and the least thanks. At least this time their work would not be wasted. Sharpe would need the trench to bury his dead in when this business was done.

He climbed to the ramparts of the keep and settled himself with his telescope and a cup of tea. He could see Frederickson’s men dragging thorn bushes from the slope facing the village, some men hacking at trunks with saw-backed bayonets, others pulling at the thorns so that a wide path was being cleared up the hillside. The bushes were being taken to the southern slope, the vulnerable slope, and Sharpe wondered what cunning had devised the orders. Doubtless he would find out soon. He expected the watchtower to be the next point of attack, and he expected it to fall by mid-afternoon, and he rehearsed in his mind the plan he had to evacuate the garrison. Strictly speaking, whatever Frederickson was doing on the hill broke the terms of the truce, but the French were not meticulous in it either. Through the lens of his glass Sharpe could see the artillery coming into the village. Twelve pounders, the kings of the battlefield, big bastards to make the next hours into misery and death.

For once in the morning he wanted company, but there was no soldier he would want to talk to. Teresa, maybe, but even she would have given short shrift to his fears of defeat. Common wisdom said that an attacker needed a three to one advantage over a well-sited defence, and Sharpe’s defence was as good as he could make it. Yet he lacked artillery to batter the French guns, and the French could bring far more than three attackers to each defender. There were the rockets, of course, but they would be useless against the artillery. For them Sharpe had other plans.

Futile plans, he thought, as useless as the pride and duty that had made him stay in this high place where he could not win. He could delay the French, and every hour was a victory of a sort, but the hours would be bought at the price of men. He knelt behind the rampart again, levelled the telescope, and saw eight Riflemens’ shakoes lined on the topmost stones of the watchtower. Eight Battalions of French infantry in sight. Eight! Call that four thousand men and it sounded no better. He laughed silently to himself, a grim laugh, and he laughed because they had made him into a Major and his first achievement would be to lose a Battalion. What had Harry Price told him on the march from Frenada? That men did not live long when they fought for Sharpe. That was a grim epitaph, the summation of his life, and he shook his head as if to clear the pessimism from his mind.

‘Sir?’ A squeaking voice. ‘Sir?’

The bugler walked slowly towards him, Sharpe’s rifle on his small shoulder, a plate balanced precariously on one hand. ‘The kitchen sent it, sir. For you.’

Bread, cold meat, and ships‘biscuits.’Have you eaten, lad?‘

The boy hesitated. Sharpe grinned.

‘Help yourself. How old are you?’

‘Fourteen, sir.’

‘Where did you get the rifle?’

‘Soldier put it in your room last night, sir. I’ve been looking after it. You don’t mind, sir?’

‘No. Do you want to be a Rifleman?’

‘Yes, sir!’ The boy was suddenly eager. ‘Another two years, sir, and Captain Cross says I can join the ranks.’

‘Maybe the war will be over.’

‘No.’ The head shook. ‘Can’t be, sir.’

He was probably right. There had been war between Britain and France for as long as this boy had lived. He would be the son of a Rifleman, he would have grown up in the Regiment, he knew no other life. He would be a Sergeant by twenty, if he lived, and if the war did end he would be spat out onto the rubbish heap of the old soldiers whom nobody wanted. Sharpe looked away from him, knelt again at the parapet, and stared at the horsemen who once again had appeared at the end of the village street. A full General, no less, coming to fight Sharpe.

The General drummed his fingers on the leather writing box of his saddle. Damn this Sharpe, damn this pass, and damn this morning! He looked to the aide-de-camp who scribbled figures. ‘Well?’

The Captain was nervous. ‘We think half the Battalion is in the Castle, sir, maybe more. We’ve seen one Company on the hill, and some redcoats in the Convent.’

‘Damned Riflemen?’

‘Certainly a Company on the hill, sir. But they’ve a few in the Castle and we saw a half dozen in the Convent.’

‘You mean there’s more than one Company?’

The Captain nodded unhappily. ‘It would seem so, sir.’

The General looked at Ducos whose eyes watered without the protection of his spectacles. ‘Well?’

‘So they have two Companies. One on the hill, the other split in two.’

The General did not like Ducos’ nonchalance. ‘Riflemen are bastards, Major. I don’t like the way they’re breeding over there. And tell me who those Lancers are, yes?’

Ducos shrugged. ‘I did not see them.’ His tone suggested that if he had not seen them, then they could not exist.

‘Well I saw them! God damn it, I saw them! Alexandre?’

Dubreton shook his head. ‘The English don’t have lancers, and if they did they would dress them in cavalry cloaks, not infantry greatcoats. And this morning, remember, they did not charge home.’

‘So?’

Dubreton shifted in his saddle, the leather creaking beneath him. ‘Well. We know La Aguja is here, and I think it’s unlikely she would travel alone. I think they were Partisans, given army greatcoats by the English.’ He shrugged. ‘They give them everything else.’