Sharpe's Havoc (24 page)

“Sweet Jesus,” Sharpe said. He was sweating, shaking. He collapsed back against the wall
and looked at his men who were weak with laughter. “Oh, God,” he said.

“You’d have had a bellyache if that had popped, sir,” Hagman said and that started them all
laughing again.

Sharpe felt drained. “If you bastards have nothing better to do,” he said, “then take out
the canteens. Give everyone a drink.” He was rationing the water like the food, but the day
was hot and he knew everyone would be dry. He followed the riflemen outside. Vicente, who
had no idea what had just happened, but only knew that a second shell had failed to explode,
looked anxious. “What happened?”

“Fuse went out,” Sharpe said, “just went out.”

He went down to the northernmost redoubts and stared at the gun. How much bloody
ammunition did the bastards have? The rate of fire had slowed a little, but that seemed more
to do with the gunners’ weariness than a shortage of shells. He watched them load another
round, did not bother to take cover and the shell exploded up behind the watch-tower. The
howitzer had recoiled eight or nine feet, much less than a field gun, and he watched as the
gunners put their shoulders to the wheel and shoved it back into place. The air between
Sharpe and the gun wavered because of the day’s heat, which was made more intense by a small
grass fire ignited by the cannon’s blast. That had been happening all day and the
howitzer’s muzzle flame had left a fan-shaped patch of scorched grass and ferns in front of the
barrel. And then Sharpe saw something else, something that puzzled him, and he opened
Christopher’s small telescope, cursing the loss of his own, and he steadied the barrel on a
rock and stared intently and saw that an officer was crouching beside the gun wheel with an
upraised hand. That odd pose had been what puzzled him. Why would a man crouch by the front of
a gun’s wheels? And Sharpe could just see something else. Shadows. The ground there had been
cleared, but the sun was now low in the sky and it was throwing long shadows and Sharpe could
see that the cleared ground had been marked with two half-buried stones, each maybe the size of a
twelve-pounder’s round shot, and that the officer was bringing the wheels right up to the two
stones. When the wheels touched the stones he dropped his hand and the men went about the
business of reloading.

Sharpe frowned, thinking. Now why, on a fine sunny day, would the French artillery
officer need to mark a place for his gun’s wheels? The wheels themselves, iron-rimmed, would
leave gouges in the soil that would serve as markers for when the gun was repositioned after
each shot, yet they had taken the trouble to put the stones there as well. He ducked down
behind the wall as another blossom of smoke heralded a shell. This one fell fractionally
short and the jagged-edged iron scraps rattled against the low stone walls that Sharpe’s men had
built. Pendleton poked his head above the redoubt. “Why don’t they use round shot, sir?” he
asked.

“Howitzers don’t have round shot,” Sharpe said, “and it’s hard to fire a proper gun
uphill.” He was brusque for he was wondering about those stones. Why put them there? Had he
imagined them? But when he looked through the glass he could still see them.

Then he saw the gunners walk away from the howitzer. A score of infantrymen had appeared,
but they were merely a guard for the gun which was otherwise abandoned. “They’re having
their supper,” Harper suggested. He had brought water for the men in the forward
positions and now sat beside Sharpe. For a moment he looked embarrassed, then grinned.
“That was a brave thing you did, sir.”

“You’d have done the bloody same.”

“I bloody wouldn’t,” Harper said vehemently. “I’d have been out of that bloody door like a
scalded cat if my legs had bloody worked.” He saw the deserted gun. “So it’s over for the
day?” he asked.

“No,” Sharpe said, because he suddenly understood why the stones were there.

And knew what he could do about it.

Brigadier Vuillard, ensconced in the Quinta, poured himself a glass of Savages’ finest
white port. His blue uniform jacket was unhooked and he had eased a button of his breeches
to make space for the fine shoulder of mutton that he had shared with Christopher, a dozen
officers and three women. The women were French, though certainly not wives, and one of
them, whose golden hair glinted in the candlelight, had been seated next to Lieutenant
Pelletieu who seemed unable to take his bespectacled eyes from a cleavage that was deep,
soft, shadowed and streaked where sweat had made rivulets through the white powder on her skin.
Her very presence had struck Pelletieu almost dumb, so that all the confidence he had shown
on first meeting Vuillard had fled.

The Brigadier, amused by the woman’s effect on the artillery officer, leaned forward to
accept a candle from Major Dulong that he used to light a cigar. It was a warm night, the
windows were open and a big pale moth fluttered about the candelabra at the table’s center.
“Is it true,” Vuillard asked Christopher between the puffs that were needed to get the cigar
properly alight, “that in England the women are expected to leave the supper table
before the cigars are lit?”

“Respectable women, yes.” Christopher took the toothpick from his mouth to answer.

“Even respectable women, I would have thought, make attractive companions to a good
smoke and a glass of port.” Vuillard, content that the cigar was drawing properly, leaned
back and glanced down the table. “I have an idea,” he said genially, “that I know precisely
who is going to answer the next question. What time is first light tomorrow?”

There was a pause as the officers glanced at each other, then Pelletieu blushed.
“Sunrise, sir,” he said, “will be at twenty minutes past four, but it will be light enough to
see at ten minutes to four.”

“So clever,” the blond, who was called Annette, whispered to him.

“And the moon state?” Vuillard asked.

Pelletieu blushed an even deeper red. “No moon to speak of, sir. The last full moon was on
the thirtieth of April and the next will be … “ His voice faded away as he became aware that
the others about the table were amused by his erudition.

“Do go on, Lieutenant,” Vuillard said.

“On the twenty-ninth of this month, sir, so it’s a waxing moon in its first quarter, sir,
and very slight. No illumination in it. Not now.”

“I like a dark night,” Annette whispered to him.

“You’re a veritable walking encyclopaedist, Lieutenant,” Vuillard said, “so tell me
what damage your shells did today?”

“Very little, sir, I’m afraid.” Pelletieu, almost overwhelmed by Annette’s perfume,
looked as though he was about to faint. “That summit is prodigiously protected by boulders,
sir. If they kept their heads down, sir, then they should have survived mostly intact, though
I’m sure we killed one or two.”

“Only one or two?”

Pelletieu looked abashed. “We needed a mortar, sir.”

Vuillard smiled. “When a man lacks instruments, Lieutenant, he uses what he has to hand.
Isn’t that right, Annette?” He smiled, then took a fat watch from his waistcoat pocket and
snapped open the lid. “How many rounds of shell do you have left?”

“Thirty-eight, sir.”

“Don’t use them all at once,” Vuillard said, then raised an eyebrow in mock surprise.
“Don’t you have work to do, Lieutenant?” he asked. The work was to fire the howitzer through
the night so that the ragged forces on the hilltop would get no sleep, then an hour before
first light the gunfire would stop and Vuillard reckoned the enemy would all be asleep when
his infantry attacked.

Pelletieu scraped his chair back. “Of course, sir, and thank you, sir.”

“Thank you?”

“For the supper, sir.”

Vuillard made a gracious gesture of acceptance. “I’m just sorry, Lieutenant, that you
can’t stay for the entertainment. I’m sure Mademoiselle Annette would have liked to hear
about your charges, your rammer and your sponge.”

“She would, sir?” Pelletieu asked, surprised.

“Go, Lieutenant,” Vuillard said, “just go.” The Lieutenant fled, pursued by the sound of
laughter, and the Brigadier shook his head. “God knows where we find them,” he said. “We must
pluck them from their cradles, wipe the mother’s milk from their lips and send them to war.
Still, young Pelletieu knows his business.” He dangled the watch on its chain for a second,
then thrust it into a pocket. “First light at ten minutes to four, Major,” he spoke to
Dulong.

“We’ll be ready,” Dulong said. He looked sour, the failure of the previous night’s attack
still galling him. The bruise on his face was dark.

“Ready and rested, I hope?” Vuillard said.

“We’ll be ready,” Dulong said again.

Vuillard nodded, but kept his watchful eyes on the infantry Major. “Amarante is taken,”
he said, “which means some of Loison’s men can return to Oporto. With luck, Major, that means
we shall have enough force to march south on Lisbon.”

“I hope so, sir,” Dulong answered, uncertain where the conversation was going.

“But General Heudelet’s division is still clearing the road to Vigo,”

Vuillard went on, “Foy’s infantry is scouring the mountains of partisans, so our forces
will still be stretched, Major, stretched. Even if we get Delaborde’s brigades back from
General Loison and even with Lorges’s dragoons, we shall be stretched if we want to march on
Lisbon.”

“I’m sure we’ll succeed all the same,” Dulong said loyally.

“But we need every man we can muster, Major, every man. And I do not want to detach
valuable infantry to guard prisoners.”

There was silence round the table. Dulong gave a small smile as he understood the
implications of the Brigadier’s words, but he said nothing.

“Do I make myself clear, Major?” Vuillard asked in a harder tone.

“You do, sir,” Dulong said.

“Bayonets fixed then,” Vuillard said, tapping ash from his cigar, “and use them, Major,
use them well.”

Dulong looked up, his grim face unreadable. “No prisoners, sir.” He did not inflect the
words as a question.

“That sounds like a very good idea,” Vuillard said, smiling. “Now go and get some
sleep.”

Major Dulong left and Vuillard poured more port. “War is cruel,” he said sententiously,
“but cruelty is sometimes necessary. The rest of you”-he looked at the officers on both
sides of the table-”can ready yourselves for the march back to Oporto. We should have this
business finished by eight tomorrow morning, so shall we set a march time of ten
o’clock?”

For by then the watchtower on the hill would have fallen. The howitzer would keep Sharpe’s
men awake by firing through the night and in the dawn, as the tired men fought off sleep and a
wolf-gray light seeped across the world’s rim, Dulong’s well-trained infantry would go in for
the kill.

At dawn.

Sharpe had watched till the very last seep of twilight had gone from the hill, until there
was nothing but bleak darkness, and only then, with Pendleton, Tongue and Harris as his
companions, he edged past the outer stone wall and felt his way down the path. Harper had
wanted to come, had even been upset at not being allowed to accompany Sharpe, but Harper
would need to command the riflemen if Sharpe did not come back. Sharpe would have liked to
take Hagman, but the old man was still not fully mended and so he had gone with Pendleton who
was young, agile and cunning, and with Tongue and Harris who were both good shots and both
intelligent. Each of them carried two rifles, but Sharpe had left his big cavalry sword
with Harper for he knew that the heavy metal scabbard was likely to knock on stones and so
betray his position.

It was hard, slow work going down the hill. There was a thin suggestion of a moon, but
stray clouds continually covered it and even when it showed clearly it had no power to
light their path and so they felt their way down, saying nothing, groping ahead for each step
and thereby making more noise than Sharpe liked, but the night was full of noises: insects,
the sigh of the wind across the hill’s flank and the distant cry of a vixen. Hagman would have
coped better, Sharpe thought, for he moved through the dark with the grace of a poacher, while
all four of the riflemen going down the hill’s long slope were from towns. Pendleton, Sharpe
knew, was from Bristol where he had joined the army rather than face transportation for being
a pickpocket. Tongue, like Sharpe, came from London, but Sharpe could not remember where
Harris had grown up and, when they stopped to catch their breath and search the darkness for
any hint of light, Sharpe asked him.

“Lichfield, sir,” Harris whispered, “where Samuel Johnson came from.”

“Johnson?” Sharpe could not quite place the name. “Is he in the first battalion?”

“Very much so, sir,” Harris whispered, and then they went on and, as the slope became less
steep and they accustomed themselves to this blind journey, they became quieter. Sharpe was
proud of them. They might not have been born to such a task, as Hagman had, but they had become
stalkers and killers. They wore the green jacket.

And then, after what seemed like an hour since they had left the watchtower, Sharpe saw
what he expected to see. A glimmer of light. Just a glimmer that swiftly vanished, but it
was yellow, and he knew it came from a screened lantern and that someone, a gunner probably,
had drawn back the screen to throw a small wash of light, and then there was another light,
this one red and tiny, and Sharpe knew it was the howitzer’s portfire. “Down,” he whispered.
He watched the tiny red glow. It was further away than he would have liked, but there was
plenty of time. “Close your eyes,” he hissed.

They closed their eyes and, a moment later, the gun crashed its smoke, flame and shell into
the night and Sharpe heard the missile trundle overhead and he saw a dull light on his closed
eyelids, then he opened his eyes and could see nothing for a few seconds. He could smell the
gunsmoke, though, and he saw the red portfire move as the gunner put it aside. “On!” he said,
and they crept on down the hill, and the screened lantern blinked again as the gun crew pushed
the howitzer’s wheels back to the two stones which marked the place where they could be sure
that, despite the darkness, the gun would be accurate. That was the realization that had
come to Sharpe at sunset, the reason why they had marked the ground, because in the night the
French gunners needed an easy method for realigning the howitzer and the two big stones made
better markers than gouges in the soil. So he had known this night firing was going to
happen and knew exactly what he could do about it.