Sharpe's Havoc (25 page)

It was a long time before the howitzer fired again, and by then Sharpe and his men were two
hundred paces away and not much higher than the gun. Sharpe had expected the second shot
much sooner, then he realized that the gunners would probably space their shells through the
short night to keep his men awake and that would mean a long time between shots. “Harris?
Tongue?” he whispered. “Off to the right. If you get into trouble, get the hell back up to
Harper. Pendleton? Come on.” He led the youngster away to the left, crouching as he moved,
feeling his way through the rocks until he reckoned he had gone about fifty paces from the
path and then he settled Pendleton behind a boulder and positioned himself behind a low
gorse bush. “You know what to do.”

“Yes, sir.”

“So enjoy it.”

Sharpe was enjoying himself. It surprised him to realize it, but he was. There was a joy
in thus foxing the enemy, though perhaps the enemy had expected what was about to happen
and was ready for it. But this was no time to worry, just time to spread some confusion, and
he waited and waited until he was certain he was wrong and that the gunners would not fire
again, and then the whole night was split apart by a tongue of white flame, bright and long, that
was immediately swallowed by the cloud of smoke and Sharpe had a sudden glimpse of the gun
bucking back on its trail, its big wheels spinning a foot high in the air, and then his night
vision was gone, seared from his eyes by the bright stab of fire, and he waited again, only
this time it was just a few seconds before he saw the yellow glow of the unshielded lantern
and he knew the gunners were manhandling the howitzer’s wheels toward the stones.

He aimed at the lantern. His vision was smeared by the aftereffects of the fire, but he
could see the square of lamplight clearly enough. He was just about to squeeze the trigger
when one of his men on the right of the path fired and the lantern was dropped, its shielding
fell away and Sharpe could see two dark figures half lit by the new and brighter light. He edged
the rifle left and pulled the trigger, heard Pendleton fire, then he snatched up the second
rifle and aimed again into the pool of light. A Frenchman jumped forward to extinguish the
lantern and three rifles, one of them Sharpe’s, sounded at the same time and the man was
snatched backward and Sharpe heard a loud clang like a cracked bell ringing and knew one of the
bullets had hit the howitzer’s barrel.

Then the light went out. “Come on!” Sharpe called to Pendleton and the two of them ran
further to their left. They could hear the French shouting, one man gasping and moaning, then
a louder voice calling for silence. “Down!” Sharpe whispered and the two went to ground and
Sharpe began the laborious business of loading his two rifles in the dark. He saw a small
flame burning back where he and Pendleton had been and he knew that the wadding from one of
their rifles had started a small grass fire. It flickered for a few seconds, then he saw dark
shapes nearby and guessed that the French infantry who had been guarding the gun were out
looking for whoever had just fired the shots, but the searchers found nothing, trampled the
small fire dead and went back to the trees.

There was another pause. Sharpe could hear the murmur of voices and reckoned the French
were discussing what to do next. The answer came soon enough when he heard the trampling of
feet and he deduced that the infantry had been sent to scour the nearer hillside, but in the
dark they merely blundered through the ferns and cursed whenever they tripped on rocks or
became entangled by gorse. Officers and sergeants snarled and snapped at the men who were
too sensible to spread out and get lost or maybe ambushed in the darkness. After a while
they trailed back to the trees and there was another long wait, though Sharpe could hear the
clatter of the howitzer’s rammer as it shoved and scraped the next shell home.

The French probably thought their attackers were gone, he decided. No shots had come for
a long time and their own infantry had made a perfunctory search, and the French were
probably feeling safer, for the gunner foolishly tried to revive the portfire by whipping
it back and forth a couple of times until its tip glowed a brighter red. He did not need the
extra heat to light the reed in the touchhole, but rather to see the touch-hole, and it was his
death sentence for he then blew on the tip of the slow match held in the portfire’s jaws, and
either Harris or Tongue shot him, and even Sharpe jumped with surprise when the rifle shot
blistered the night and he had a glimpse of flame far off to his right, and then the French
infantry were forming ranks, the fallen portfire was snatched up and, just as the howitzer
fired, so the muskets hammered a crude volley in the direction of Tongue and Harris.

And the grass fires started again. One sprang up just in front of the howitzer and two
smaller fires were ignited by the wadding of the French muskets. Sharpe, his eyes still
dazzled by the gun’s big flame, nevertheless could see the crew heaving at the wheels and he
slid the rifle forward. He fired, changed weapons and fired again, aiming at the dark knot of
men straining at the nearest gun wheel. He saw one fall away. Pendleton fired. Two more shots
came from the right and the grass fires were spreading and then the infantry realized that
the flames were illuminating the gunners, making them targets, and they frantically
stamped out the small fires, but not before Pendleton had fired his second rifle and Sharpe
saw another gunner spin away from the howitzer, then a last shot came from Tongue or Harris
before the flames were at last extinguished.

Sharpe and Pendleton went back fifty paces before reloading. “We hurt them that time,”
Sharpe said. Small groups of Frenchmen, emboldening themselves with loud shouts, darted
forward to search the slope again, but again found nothing.

He stayed another half-hour, fired four more times and then went back to the hilltop, a
journey which, in the dark, took almost two hours, though it was easier than going down for
there was just enough light in the sky to show the outline of the hill and the broken stub of
the watch-tower. Tongue and Harris followed an hour later, hissing the password up at the
sentry before coming excitedly into the fort where they told the tale of their
exploit.

The howitzer fired twice more during the night. The first shot rattled the lower slope
with canister and the second, a shell, cracked the night with flame and smoke just to the east
of the watchtower. No one got much sleep, but Sharpe would have been surprised if anyone had
slept well after the day’s ordeal. And just before dawn, when the eastern edge of the world
was a gray glow, he went round to make sure everyone was awake. Harper was laying a fire
beside the watchtower wall. Sharpe had forbidden any fires during the night, for the flames
would have given the French gunners an excellent aiming mark, but now that the daylight was
coming it would be safe to brew up some tea. “We can stay here forever,” Harper had said, “so
long as we can stew some tea, sir. But run out of tea and we’ll have to surrender.”

The gray streak in the east spread, lightening at its base. Vicente shivered beside
Sharpe for the night had turned surprisingly cold. “You think they’re coming?” Vicente
asked.

“They’re coming,” Sharpe said. He knew that the howitzer’s ammunition supply was not
endless, and there could only have been one reason to keep the gun working through the night
and that was to fray his men’s nerves so that they would be easy meat for a morning attack.

And that meant the French would come at dawn.

And the light grew, wan and gray and pale as death, and the tops of the highest clouds were
already golden red as the light changed from gray to white and white to gold and gold to
red.

And then the killing began.

“Sir! mister Sharpe!”

“I see them!” Dark shapes melding into the dark shadows of the northern slope. It was
French infantry or, perhaps, dismounted dragoons, coming to attack. “Rifles! Make ready!”
There were clicks as Baker rifles were cocked. “Your men don’t fire, understand?” Sharpe said
to Vicente. “Of course,” Vicente said. The muskets would be hopelessly inaccurate at
anything more than sixty paces so Sharpe would keep the Portuguese volley as a final
defense and let his riflemen teach the French the advantages of the seven lands and seven
grooves twisting the quarter turn in the rifle barrels. Vicente was bouncing up and down on
the balls of his feet, betraying the nervousness he felt. He fingered one end of his small
mustache and licked his lips. “We wait till they reach that white rock, yes?” “Yes,” Sharpe
said, “and why don’t you shave that mustache off?” Vicente stared at him. “Why don’t I shave my
mustache?” He could scarcely believe his ears.

“Shave it off,” Sharpe said. “You’d look older. Less like a lawyer. Luis would do it for
you.” He had successfully taken Vicente’s mind off his worries, and now he looked east
where a mist hung over the low ground. No threat from there, he reckoned, and he had four of his
riflemen watching the southern path, but only four because he was fairly certain that the
French would concentrate their troops on one side of the hill and, once he was absolutely
certain of that, he would bring those four back across to the northern side and let a couple
of Vicente’s men guard the southern path. “When you’re ready, lads!” Sharpe called. “But don’t
fire high!”

Sharpe did not know it, but the French were late. Dulong had wanted his men closed up on the
summit approach before the horizon turned gray, but it had taken longer than he
anticipated to climb the dark slope and, besides, his men were befuddled and tired after a
night of chasing phantoms. Except the phantoms were real and had killed one gunner,
wounded three more and put the fear of God into the rest of the artillery crew. Dulong,
ordered to take no prisoners, felt some respect for the men he faced.

And then the massacre began.

It was a massacre. The French had muskets, the British had rifles, and the French had to
converge on the narrow ridge that climbed to the small summit plateau and once on the ridge
they were easy meat for the rifles. Six men went down in the first few seconds and Dulong’s
response was to lead the others on, to overwhelm the fort with manpower, but more rifles
cracked, more smoke drifted from the hilltop, more bullets thumped home and Dulong
understood what he had only appreciated before through lectures: the menace of a
rifled barrel. At a range where a full battalion musket volley was unlikely to kill a
single man, the British rifles were deadly. The bullets, he noticed, made a different
sound. There was a barely detectable shriek in their whiplike menace. The guns themselves
did not cough like a musket, but had a snap to their report, and a man struck by a rifle
bullet was thrown back further than he would have been by a musket ball. Dulong could see the
riflemen now, for they stood up in their rock pits to reload their damned guns, ignoring the
threat of the howitzer’s shells that sporadically arced over the French infantry’s heads to
explode on the crest. Dulong shouted at his men to fire at the green-jacketed enemy, but
the musket shots sounded feeble and the balls went wide and still the rifle shots slashed
home and his men were reluctant to climb onto the narrow part of the ridge so Dulong,
knowing that example was all, and reckoning that a lucky man might possibly survive the
rifle fire and reach the redoubts, decided to set an example. He shouted at his men to
follow, drew his saber and charged. “For France,” he cried, “for the Emperor!”

“Cease fire!” Sharpe shouted.

Not one man had followed Dulong, not one. He came alone and Sharpe recognized the
Frenchman’s bravery and, to show it, he stepped forward and raised his sword in a formal
salute.

Dulong saw the salute, checked and turned and saw he was alone. He looked back to Sharpe,
raised his own saber, then sheathed it with a violent thrust that betrayed the disgust he felt
at his men’s reluctance to die for the Emperor. He nodded at Sharpe, then walked away, and
twenty minutes later the rest of the French were gone from the hill. Vicente’s men had been
formed in two ranks on the tower’s open terrace, ready to fire a volley that had not been
needed, and two of them had been killed by a howitzer shell, and another shell had slammed a
piece of its casing into Gataker’s leg, gouging a bloody path down his right thigh, but
leaving the bone unbroken. Sharpe had not even registered that the howitzer had been
firing during the attack, but it had stopped now, the sun was fully risen and the valleys
were flooded by light and Sergeant Harper, his rifle barrel fouled by powder deposits and
hot from firing, had made the day’s first pot of tea. 

it was just before midday when a French soldier climbed the hill carrying a white flag of
truce tied to the muzzle of his musket. Two officers accompanied him, one in French
infantry blue and the other, Colonel Christopher, in his red British uniform jacket with its
black facings and cuffs.

Sharpe and Vicente went to meet the two officers who had advanced a dozen paces ahead of
the glum-looking man with the white flag and Vicente was forcibly struck by the resemblance
between Sharpe and the French infantry officer, who was a tall, black-haired man with a scar
on his right cheek and a bruise across the bridge of his nose. His ragged blue uniform bore the
green-fringed epaulettes that showed he was a light infantryman and his flared shako was
fronted with a white metal plate stamped with the French eagle and the number 31. The badge
was surmounted by a plume of red and white feathers which looked new and fresh compared to
the Frenchman’s stained and threadbare uniform.

“We’ll kill the Frog first,” Sharpe said to Vicente, “because he’s the dangerous bugger,
and then we’ll fillet Christopher slowly.”

“Sharpe!” the lawyer in Vicente was shocked. “They’re under a flag of truce!”