Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (103 page)

A stone grated beneath Sharpe’s foot and brought his thoughts back to the present. They were in a street now, the countryside left behind. The windows of the silent houses had iron grilles. The road was climbing, not steeply, but enough of a slope to make the charge more difficult. A shape moved by the fire, then Sharpe saw there was a crude barrier placed across the road that would stop his mad dash to the city’s main defences. The barriers was nothing but two handcarts and some chairs, but still a barrier.

The moving shape by the watch-fire resolved itself into a human silhouette; a Frenchman who stooped to light a pipe with a burning spill taken from the flames. The man suspected nothing, nor did he look northwards to where he might have seen the reflection of firelight on fixed bayonets.

Then a dog barked in a house to Sharpe’s right. He was so tense that he jumped sideways. The dog became frantic. Another dog took up the alarm, and a cockerel challenged the morning. The Riflemen instinctively quickened their pace.

The Frenchman by the fire straightened and turned. Sharpe could see the distinctive shape of the man’s shako; an infantryman. Not a dismounted cavalryman, but a God-damned French infantryman who unslung his musket and pointed it towards the Riflemen. ‘
Qui vive
?’

The challenge began the day’s fight. Sharpe took a breath, and ran.

It was extraordinary how, once the waiting was over, the fears sloughed away.

Sharpe ran. It was uphill. His bootsole, so carefully sewn into place the day before, flapped free. Though he ran on the road’s flint-hardened surface, it seemed as if he pounded through a thick and cloying mud, yet the fears went because the die was cast and the game must be seen to its end.

‘
Qui vive
?’

‘
Ami! Ami! Ami
!’ Vivar had given him a whole French phrase that might confuse an alert enemy sentry, but Sharpe had been unable to commit the strange words to memory, and so had settled on the simpler word for ‘friend’. He shouted it louder, at the same time pointing behind him as though he fled from some enemy hidden in the mist.

The sentry hesitated. Four other Frenchmen had come from the church porch. One had a Sergeant’s stripe on his blue sleeve, but he evidently did not want the responsibility of firing on his own side for he shouted into the church for an officer to come. ‘
Capitaine! Capitaine
!’ Then, shako-less and still buttoning his bluejacket, the Sergeant turned back towards the approaching Riflemen. ‘
Halte là
!’

Sharpe held up his left hand as though he was ordering his men to slow down. He slowed himself, gasping again: ‘
Ami! Ami
!’ He appeared to stumble forward, exhausted, and the clumsy subterfuge took him to within two paces of the enemy Sergeant. Then he looked into the Frenchman’s eyes and saw the sudden terror of realization.

It was too late. All Sharpe’s fears, and all the relief from those fears, went into his first sword stroke. One pace forward, the snarling lunge, and the Sergeant was folding over the twisting blade and the first sentry was opening his mouth to shout as Harper’s bayonet came up into his belly. The Frenchman’s finger closed in spasm on his musket’s trigger. Sharpe was so close to the man that he did not see the muzzle flame, only the explosion in the pan. A spark of burning powder fizzed over his head, smoke billowed around him, then he was twisting and wrenching his sword free of the Frenchman’s flesh. The Sergeant fell backwards into the watch-fire and his hair, which had served as his towel for greasy hands, flared bright and high for an instant.

The remaining three Frenchmen were retreating towards the porch, but the Riflemen were faster. Another musket shot stunned the dawn, then the sword-bayonets did their work. A Frenchman screamed terribly.

‘Silence the bastard!’ Harper snapped. A blade ripped, there was a choking sound, then nothing.

A pistol banged from the church door. A greenjacket gasped, turned, and fell into the fire. Two rifles fired, throwing a dark shape back into the church’s shadowed interior. The burning Rifleman screamed foully as he was dragged from the flames. The dogs were barking like the hounds of hell.

Surprise was gone, and there were yet three hundred yards of road to cover. Sharpe was pulling the handcart aside, opening the road to the cavalry that must follow. ‘Leave the buggers!’ There were still Frenchmen inside the church but they must be ignored if the assault was to have any chance of success. Even Sharpe’s own wounded must be abandoned if the city was to fall. ‘Leave them! Come on!’

The Riflemen obeyed. One or two hung back, seeking safety in the shadows, but Harper demanded to know whether they would prefer to fight him or the French and the laggards found their courage. They followed Sharpe into the dark mist that was not so dark any longer. There were bugles sounding in the city, not in alarm yet, merely ordering the stand-to, but the calls served to instil urgency into the greenjackets. The haste made them lose all semblance of military order; they advanced neither in file nor line, but as a pounding mass of men who ran up the slope towards the looming city.

Where the defences would have been alerted. Now the fear had time to surge back, and it was made worse because Sharpe saw how the French had pulled down the houses nearest the old wall so that the guards behind the barricades would have a clear field of fire.

Shots came from the Frenchmen in the church behind. A bullet fluttered overhead, another skipped between the Riflemen to smash into a broken wall ahead. Sharpe imagined the muskets and carbines sliding over the city’s barricades. He imagined a French officer ordering the troops to wait until the enemy was close. Now was the moment of death. Now, if there were cannon in the defences, the great barrels would gout their spreading canisters. Riflemen would be flensed alive, their bellies ripped out, their guts spread ten yards along a cold road.

No such shots came, and Sharpe realized that the city’s defenders must be confused by the shots from the church. To a man on the main defence line it must seem as if the approaching Riflemen were the remnants of the guardhouse’s garrison being pursued by the musketry of a distant enemy. He shouted the magic word as loud as he could, hoping it would reinforce the mistaken identity. ‘
Ami! Ami
!’

Sharpe could see the main defences now. A high-sided farm-waggon had been pushed across the nearest street entrance to make a temporary barricade which, by day, could be hauled aside to let the cavalry patrols enter or leave the city. It was illuminated by a fire which also showed the shapes of men climbing onto the waggon bed. Sharpe could see them fixing their bayonets. He could also see a narrow gap to the left of the waggon where the harness pole formed the only obstacle.

A question was shouted from the waggons, and Sharpe had no answer beyond the single word, ‘
Ami
!’ He was panting with the uphill run, but managed to snarl an order to his men. ‘Don’t bunch! Spread!’

Then, from the church behind him, a bugle sounded. It must have been an agreed signal, but one which had been delayed by the death of the picquet’s officer and Sergeant. It was the alarm; shrill and desperate, and it provoked an instant volley from the waggon.

The muskets banged, but the defenders had fired too soon and, like so many troops firing downhill, too high. The realization gave Sharpe a sudden burst of hope. He was shouting a war cry now, nothing coherent, just a scream of murderous rage that would carry him to the very edge of the enemy’s position. Harper was beside him, feet pounding, and the Riflemen were spreading across the road so that they did not make a bunched target for the French soldiers who scrambled onto the waggon to take the places of the men who had fired.

‘
Tirez
!’ An enemy officer’s sword slashed down.

The musket flames leaped three feet clear of the French muzzles, smoke pumped to hide the cart, and a Rifleman was jerked back as though a rope had yanked him off his feet.

Sharpe had gone to the left of the road where he stumbled on the rubble from the dismantled houses. He saw a Rifleman stop to take aim and he shouted at him to keep running. There could be no pause now, none, for if this attack lost its momentum, the enemy would merely swat it away. Sharpe clenched himself for the awful moment when the gap must be faced.

He leapt for the gap, screaming his challenge that was meant to strike fear into whoever waited for him. Three Frenchmen were there, lunging with bayonets, and Sharpe’s sword clanged from the blades to bite into a musket stock. He stumbled on the waggon pole, then was thumped aside as Sergeant Harper crashed through the narrow gap. Other Riflemen were clawing at the cart’s side, trying to climb it. A Frenchman stabbed down with a bayonet, but was hurled back by a rifle bullet. More rifles fired. A Frenchman aimed at Sharpe but, in his nervousness, he had forgotten to prime his musket. The flint sparked on an empty pan, the man screamed, then Sharpe had found his footing and drove forward with the sword. Harper was twisting his sword-bayonet from an enemy’s ribs. More Riflemen were crowding through the gap, chopping and slashing, while others came over the waggon to drive the Frenchmen back. The defenders had been too few, and had waited too long before the bugle had turned their uncertainty into action. Now they died or fled.

‘The waggon! The waggon!’ Sharpe jerked his sword free of the man who had forgotten to prime his gun. Harper slammed down with his rifle butt to stun the last Frenchman, then bellowed at the Riflemen to drag the cart out of the way. ‘Pull, you bastards! Pull!’ The greenjackets threw themselves at the wheels and slowly the waggon creaked into the space which the French had cleared for their killing ground.

Most of the French picquet had fled down the street ahead. It was a narrow, cobbled street with a central gutter. Other streets led left and right, following the line where the walls had once stood. In all the streets, Frenchmen were spilling from the houses and some paused to fire at the Riflemen. A pistol bullet ricocheted from the window grille beside Sharpe’s head.

‘Load! Load!’ Sharpe was kicking the watch-fire aside, trying to make a passage for Vivar’s horsemen. He booted flaming debris into an alley, scorching his boots and trousers. The Riflemen took shelter in doorways, spitting bullets into muzzles and thrusting down with their iron ramrods. There were shouts from the street and the first Riflemen to be reloaded sniped at the enemy. Sharpe turned and saw the cathedral’s three belltowers just two hundred yards away. The narrow street went uphill, turning slightly to the right after fifty paces. The misted light was growing, though the dawn proper had not yet come. A few Frenchmen in breeches, boots, and shirts still ran from houses with weapons and helmets clutched in their hands. One enemy cuirassier, panicking, ran towards the greenjackets and was thumped on the head by a rifle butt. Others took cover in doorways to fire at the invaders.

‘Fire!’ Sharpe called. More rifles snapped to drive the disorganized enemy further into the city. Sharpe’s rifle kicked his shoulder like a mule and the flaming powder from the pan stung his cheek. Harper was dragging French corpses aside, pulling the bodies through the frosted nightsoil in the central gutter.

There was a curious silence. The Rifles had achieved surprise, and the silence marked the precious, and precarious moments as the French tried to make sense of the sudden alarm. Sharpe knew a counterattack would come, but now there was just the eerie, unexpected, and menacing silence. He broke it by shouting his men into their places. He put one squad to cover the western street, a second to watch eastwards, while he held the largest number of Riflemen to guard the narrow way which led to the city’s centre. His voice echoed back from the stone walls. He suddenly felt the impertinence of what he had done, of what Blas Vivar had dared to order done, of this chilling moment in the dawn. A French bugle sounded the reveille, then, in betrayal of the spreading warnings, slurred into the alarm. A bell began an urgent clamour and a thousand pigeons clattered up from the cathedral’s pinnacled roof to fill the air with panicked wings. Sharpe turned to stare north and wondered when Vivar’s main force would arrive.

‘Sir!’ Harper had kicked in the door of the closest house where half a dozen Frenchmen, scared half-witless, cowered in the guardroom. A fire flickered in the hearth, and their bedding lay in confusion on the bare wood floor. They had been sleeping, and their muskets were still racked beside the door. ‘Get the guns out!’ Sharpe ordered. ‘Sims! Tongue! Cameron!’

The three Riflemen ran to him.

‘Cut their belts, braces, bootlaces, belts and buttons. Then leave the bastards where they are. Take their bayonets. Take anything you damn well want, but hurry!’

‘Yes, sir.’

Harper crouched beside Sharpe in the street outside the guardroom. ‘That was all easier than I thought.’

Sharpe had imagined the big Irishman to have felt no fear, and the words hinted at a relief which he shared. They were also true words. As he had run uphill from the church, Sharpe had expected an overwhelming defence to blaze and crash from the line of buildings; instead a half-dazed picquet had fired two volleys, then crumpled. ‘They weren’t expecting us,’ he offered in explanation.

Another enemy bugle snatched its urgent summons to rival the barking of dogs and the clangour of the bells. The closest streets were empty now but for the shredding mist and the humped shapes of two Frenchmen killed as they came from their billets. Sharpe knew that this was the moment for the enemy to counterattack. If one French officer had his wits and could find two companies of men, then the Riflemen were beaten. He looked to his right, but there was still no sign of the Cazadores. ‘Load! Then hold your fire!’

Sharpe loaded his own rifle. When he bit the bullet from the cartridge the saltpetre tasted bitter and foul. After a couple more shots he knew that the thirst would be raging in him because of the powder’s salty taste. He spat the bullet into the rifle’s muzzle and rammed it down on the wadding. He pushed the ramrod home and primed the pan.

‘Sir! Sir!’ It was Dodd, one of the men covering the street which led west. He fired. ‘Sir!’

‘Steady! Steady!’ Sharpe ran to the corner and saw a single French officer on horseback. Dodd’s bullet had missed the man who was seventy paces away. ‘Steady now!’ Sharpe called. ‘Hold your fire!’

The French officer, a cuirassier, pushed back the edges of his cloak in a gesture that was as disdainful as it was brave. His steel breastplate shone pale in the misty light. The man drew his long sword. Sharpe cocked his rifle. ‘Harvey! Jenkins!’

‘Sir?’ Both Riflemen answered at once.

‘Take that bastard when he comes.’

Sharpe twisted, wondering where the hell Vivar’s Cazadores were. The sound of hooves turned him back, and he saw that the officer had begun to trot down the street. Other cuirassiers joined him from the side alleys. Sharpe counted ten horsemen, then ten more. It was all the enemy could muster. The other cavalrymen in the city must still be saddling their horses or waiting for orders.

The Frenchman, who was as brave a man as any Sharpe had seen, barked a command. ‘
Casques en tête
!’ The plumed helmets were pulled on. The street was only wide enough for three horsemen to ride abreast. The cuirassiers’ swords were drawn. ‘Stupid bastard,’ Harper said in savage condemnation of the French officer who, in his bid for fame, led men to destruction.