Sharpe's Eagle (34 page)

Denny protested. "I want to come, sir!"

Sharpe shook his head. "Whoever else comes, Mr Denny, you are not. I'd like you to have a
seventeenth birthday."

The men grinned, Denny blushed, and Sharpe turned away from them. He heard Harper unsheath his
bayonet and then came the sound of other blades clicking into place. He began to walk towards the
enemy, sword held low, and heard the steps behind him. Harper was beside him, and they walked on
towards the unsuspecting Battal-ion.

"They've all come, sir. All."

Sharpe looked at him. "All?" He turned. "Mr Denny? Go back to the Battalion! That is an
order!"

"But, sir. ,

"No, Mr Denny. Back!"

He watched as the boy turned and took a few steps. Gibbons was still sitting on his horse and
watching them, and Sharpe wondered again what the Lieutenant was doing, but it was immaterial;
the Eagle was all. He turned back and went on, praying that the enemy would not notice them,
praying to whatever was beyond the blue sky skeined in smoke that they would be successful. He
had set his heart on an Eagle.

The enemy still faced away from them, still fired into the smoke, and the noise of battle
became louder. At last Sharpe could hear the regular platoon volleys and knew that the second
French attack had met the new British line and the dreadful monotony of the British volleys once
again wrestled with the hypnotic drumming. The six-pound roundshot of the British thundered
overhead and cut vicious paths in the unseen French columns, but the drumming increased, the
shouts of `Vive L'Empereur' were unabated, and suddenly they were within a hundred yards of the
Eagle and Sharpe twisted the sword in his hand and hurried the pace. Surely the enemy would see
them!

A drummer boy, rattling his sticks at the rear of the enemy line, turned to be sick and saw
the small group coming silently through the smoke. He shouted a warning, but no-one heard; he
shouted again and Sharpe saw an officer turn. There was movement in the ranks, men were
swivelling to face them, but they had ramrods half down their barrels and were still loading.
Sharpe raised his sword. "On! On!"

He began to run, oblivious of everything except the Eagle and the frightened faces of the
enemy who were desperately hurrying to load their muskets. Around the standard-bearer Sharpe
could see Grenadiers wearing the tall bearskins, some of them armed with axes, the protec-tors of
French honour. A musket banged and a ramrod cart-wheeled .over his head; Harper was beside him,
the sword bayonet in his hand, and the two men screamed their challenge as the drummer boys fled
to either side and the two huge Riflemen ploughed into the centre of the enemy line. Muskets
exploded with a terrible crash, Sharpe had an impression of men in green uniforms being thrown
backwards, and then he could see nothing except a tall Grenadier who was lunging in short and
professional jabs with a bayonet. Sharpe twisted to one side, let the blade slide past him,
grabbed the muzzle of the musket with his left hand and pulled the Grenadier onto his levelled
sword blade. Someone cut at him from the left, a swinging down-stroke with a clubbed musket, and
he turned so that it thudded viciously into his pack to throw him forward onto the body of the
Grenadier whose hands were clutching the blade embedded in his stomach. A gun deafened him, one
of his own rifles, and suddenly he was clear and dragging the blade from the heavy corpse and
screaming murder at the men who guarded the Eagle. Harper had cut his way, like Sharpe, through
the first rank, but his sword-bayonet was too short and the Irish-man was being driven back by
two men with bayonets, and Sharpe crushed them to one side with his sword, slicing a vast
splinter from the nearest musket, and Harper leapt into the gap, cutting left and right, as
Sharpe struggled alongside.

More muskets, more screams; the white-jackets were clawing at them, surrounding them,
reloading to blast the tiny band with musket fire that would crush them unmerci-fully. The Eagle
was retreating, away from them, but there was nowhere for the standard-bearer to go except
towards the musket fire of an unseen British Battalion that was somewhere in the smoke that
poured from the crash of column onto line. An axeman came at Sharpe; he was a huge man, as big as
Harper, and he smiled as he hefted the huge blade and then swung it powerfully down in a blow
that would have severed the head of an ox. Sharpe wrenched himself out of the way, felt the wind
of the blade, and saw the axe thud into the blood-wet ground. He stabbed the sword down into the
man's neck, knew he had killed him, and watched as Harper plucked the axe from the earth and
threw away his bayonet. The Irishman was screaming in the language of his ancestors, his wild
blood surging, the axe searing in a circle so wildly that even Sharpe had to duck out of the way
as Patrick Harper went on; lips wrenched back in the blackened face, his shako gone, his long
hair matted with powder, the great silver blade singing in his hands and the old language carving
a path through the enemy.

The standard-bearer jumped out of the ranks to carry the precious Eagle down the Battalion to
safety, but there was a crack, the man fell, and Sharpe heard Hagman's customary `got him'. Then
there was a new sound, more volleys, and the Dutch Battalion shook like a wounded animal as the
South Essex arrived on their flank and began to pour in their volleys. Sharpe was faced by a
crazed officer who swung at him with a sword, missed, and screamed in panic as Sharpe lunged with
the point. A man in white ran out of the ranks to pick up the fallen Eagle but Sharpe was through
the line as well and he kicked the man in the ribs, bent, and plucked the staff from the ground.
There was a formless scream from the enemy, men lunged at him with bayonets and he felt a blow on
the thigh, but Harper was there with the axe and so was Denny with his ridiculously slim
sword.

Denny! Sharpe pushed the boy down, swung the sword to protect him, but a bayonet was in the
Ensign's chest and even as Sharpe smashed the sword down on the man's head he felt Denny shudder
and collapse. Sharpe screamed, swung the gilded copper Eagle at the enemy, watched the gold scar
the air and force them back, screamed again, and jumped the bodies with his bloodied sword
reaching for more. The Dutchmen fell back, appalled; the Eagle was coming at them and they
retreated in the face of the two huge Riflemen who snarled at them, swung at them, who bled from
a dozen cuts yet still came on. They were unkillable! And now there were volleys coming from the
right, from the front, and the Dutchmen, who had fought so well for their French masters, had had
enough. They ran, as the other French Battalions were running, and in the smoke of the Portina
valley the scratch Battalions like the 48th, and the men of the Legion and the Guards who had
reformed and come forward to fight again, marched forward on ground made slippery with blood and
thrust with their bayonets and forced the massive French columns backwards. The enemy went, away
from the dripping steel, backwards, in a scene that was like the most lurid imaginings of hell.
Sharpe had never seen so many bodies, so much blood spilt on a field; even at Assaye which he had
thought unrivalled in horror there had not been this much blood.

From the Medellin, through the smoke, Sir Henry watched the whole French army go backwards,
blasted once more by British muskets, shattered and bleeding, a quarter of their number gone;
defeated, broken by the line, by the musket that could be fired five times a minute on a good
day, and by men who were not frightened by drums. And in his head Sir Henry composed a letter
that would explain how his withdrawing the South Essex from the line was the key move that
brought victory. Had not he always said that the British would win?

It was still not over, but very nearly so. As the British troops in the centre of the field
sank in exhausted lines by the edge of the discoloured Portina stream, they heard flurries of
firing and the shrill tones of cavalry trumpets from the ground north of the Medellin. But
nothing much happened; the 23rd Light Dragoons made a suicidal charge, the British six-pounders
ground twelve French Battalion squares into horror, and then the French gave up. Silence fell on
the field. The French were done, defeated, and the British had the victory and the
field.

And with it the dead and wounded. There were more than thirteen thousand casualties but no-one
knew that yet. They did not know that the French would not attack again, that King Joseph
Bonaparte and the two French Marshals would ride away eastward through the night, so the
exhausted and blackened victors stayed in the field. The wounded cried for water, for their
mothers, for a bullet, for anything other than the pain and helplessness in the heat. And the
horror was not done with them. The sun had burned relentlessly for days, the grass on the
Medellin and in the valley was tinder dry, and from somewhere a flame began that rippled and
spread and flared through the grass and burned wounded and dead alike. The smell of roasting
flesh spread and hung like the lingering palls of smoke. The victors tried to move the wounded
but it was too much, too soon, and the flames spread and the rescuers cursed and dropped beside
the fouled Portina stream and slaked their thirst in its bloodied water.

Vultures circled the northern hills. The sun dropped red and slanted shadows on the burning
field, on the men who struggled to escape the flames, and on the blackened troops who stirred
themselves to loot the dead and move the wounded. Sharpe and Harper wandered their own course,
two men in the curtains of smoke and burning grass, both bleeding but with their faces creased in
private mirth. Sharpe held the Eagle. It was not much to look at: a light blue pole eight feet
long and on its top the gilded bird with wings outspread and in its left raised claw a
thunder-bolt it was about to launch at the enemies of France. There was no flag attached; like so
many other French Battalions the previous owners had left their colour at the depot and just
carried Napoleon's gift to the war. It was less then two hands' breadth across, and the same in
height, but it was an Eagle and it was theirs.

The Light Company had watched them go. Only Sharpe, Harper and Denny had gone through the
ranks of the enemy Battalion, and when the French attack crum-bled the rest of the Light Company
had been pushed to one side by the panicked rush of the survivors fleeing from the clockwork
volleys. Lieutenant Knowles, a bullet in his shoulder, watched as the men went on firing at the
retreating French and then led them back to meet the Battalion. He knew Sharpe and Harper were
somewhere in the smoke and they would turn up, with or without the Eagle.

Lieutenant Colonel the Honourable William Lawford sat his horse and stared at the bodies on
the field. He had led the South Essex down the slope and watched as they fired their muskets,
slowly but calmly, into the white-jacketed enemy. He had seen the fight for the Eagle, but the
spreading smoke of the Battalion's volleys had blotted out the scene and the survivors of the
Light Company told him little more. A Lieutenant brought in forty-three bleeding and stained men,
grinning like monkeys, who talked of the Eagle but where was it? He wanted to see Sharpe, wanted
to see his friend's face when he discovered that his companion of the Seringapatam jail was now
his Colonel, but the field was shrouded in flames and smoke, so he gave up looking and started
the Battalion on the grisly task of stripping the dead and piling the naked bodies like cordwood
for the fire. There were too many to bury.

Sir Henry Simmerson was done. Wellesley had sworn, briefly and fluently, and sent Lawford to
take over the Battalion. Lawford hoped to keep it, it was time he commanded a Battalion, and
there was much to be done with it. Major Forrest rode up to him and saluted.

"Major?"

"Except for the Light Company, sir, we've lost very few."

"How many?" Lawford watched as Forrest fetched a piece of paper from his pouch.

"A dozen dead, sir, perhaps twice as many wounded."

Lawford nodded. "We got off lightly, Major. And the Light Company?"

"Lieutenant Knowles brought in forty-three, sir, and most of them are wounded. Sergeant Read
stayed with the baggage with two others, that's forty-six. There were five men too sick to fight
who are in the town." Forrest paused. "That's fifty-one, sir, out of a complement of
eighty-nine."

Lawford said nothing. He leaned forward on his saddle and peered into the shifting smoke.
Forrest cleared his throat nervously. "You don't think, sir. , He tailed the question
away.

"No, Major, I don't." Lawford sat upright and turned his charm onto the Major. "I've known
Richard Sharpe since I was a Lieutenant and he was a Sergeant. He should have died a dozen times,
Major, at least a dozen, but he crawls through somehow." Lawford grinned. "Don't worry about
Sharpe, Major. It's much better to let him worry about you. Who else is missing?"

"There's Sergeant Harper, sir. ,

"Ah!" Lawford interrupted. "The legendary Irishman."

"And Lieutenant Gibbons, sir."

"Lieutenant Gibbons?" Lawford remembered the meet-ing in Wellesley's headquarters at Plasencia
and the petulant expression on the blond Lieutenant's face. "I wonder how he'll get on without
his uncle?" The Lieutenant Colonel smiled briefly; Gibbons was his least concern. There was still
so much to do, so many men to be rescued before the townspeople spread into the carnage to loot
the bodies. "Thank you, Major. We'll just have to wait for Captain Sharpe. In the meantime would
you arrange a party to get water for the men? And let's hope these French dead have got food in
their packs, otherwise we're in for a lean night."

The French did carry food, and gold, and Sharpe, as he always did, split his finds with
Harper. The Sergeant was carrying the Eagle, and he peered at the bird thoughtfully.