Sharpe 14 - Sharpe's Sword (9 page)

A ladder, far ahead, banged on rubble and there was the sound of loose stones falling. He froze, his senses acute for an enemy reaction, but still the night was quiet. There was a soft background noise, unceasing, and he realised it was the wash of water against the piles of the bridge arches. An owl sounded, south of the river. The light was pearl grey, the west soaked in crimson, the air warm after the day’s heat. The people of Salamanca, he knew, would be walking the stately circles in the great Plaza, sipping wine and brandy, and it would be a night of rich beauty in the city. Wellington was waiting, fearing surprise was lost, and Sharpe suddenly thought of La Marquesa, up on her roof or balcony, staring at the darkening shadows of the wasteland. A bell struck the half-hour past nine.

He heard a scraping and clicking ahead and knew that the attackers were fixing bayonets ready to run from the cover and rush the jumbled waste ground towards the San Cayetano. Lieutenant Price caught Sharpe’s eye and gestured at one of his men’s bayonets. Sharpe shook his head. He did not want the blades to betray the position of his company, far back, and they had no business, anyway, in attacking the fort.

“Go!” Bowes’ voice broke the silence, there was a scramble of feet and the sunken road ahead of Sharpe heaved with bodies that clambered over and through the rubble. This was the moment of danger, the first appearance, for if the French were ready, expecting them, the guns would fire now and decimate the attack.

They fired.

They were small guns in the forts, some were old and captured four pounders, but even a small gun, loaded with canister, can destroy an attack. Sharpe knew the figures well enough. A four pound canister was a tin can, packed with balls, sixty or eighty to a can, and when it was fired the tin burst apart at the gun’s muzzle and the balls spread, like duckshot, in a widening cone. Three hundred yards from the muzzle the cone would be ninety feet across, good odds for a single man in the line of fire, but not if several guns’ cones intersected. The San Cayetano, ahead of the attack, had only four guns, but the San Vincente, across the gorge, the biggest fort, could bring twenty to bear on the flank of the British attack.

They all fired. One first, followed in a handful of seconds by the rest, and the noise of the guns was different, deeper than usual, somehow more solid and Sharpe looked aghast at Harper. “They’re double shotted!”

Harper nodded, shrugged. Two canisters to a gun, say seventy balls in each, and twenty four guns firing. Sharpe listened to the metal hell that was criss-crossing the rubble and tried to work out the figures. Three thousand musket balls, at least, had greeted the attack, ten to each man, and in the silence after the volley he could hear the screams of wounded and then the rattle of muskets from the French embrasures. He could see nothing. He looked at the Company. “Stay there!”

He climbed the rubble side of the street, rolled over its crest and found cover behind a timber baulk. Bowes was alive, sword drawn, and ahead of the attack. “On! On!”

Ladder parties, miraculously alive, came off the ground where they had dived for shelter and began struggling over the jumbled stones. Each ladder was thirty feet, cumbersome on the shadowed ground, but the men were moving and, behind them, more figures advanced towards the dark bulk of the San Cayetano.

The attackers cheered, still confident despite the first, shattering discharge, and it was a miracle to Sharpe that so many had lived through the screaming cones. He slid his rifle forward, leafed up the sight, and then the second shots sounded from the French.

This volley was more ragged than the first. The gunners were loading as fast as they could, single canister only, and the faster crews would fire first. The balls bellowed from the embrasures, clattered on the stones, whirled the dead and wounded in limp disarray, and Sharpe cursed the French. They had known! They had known! There had been no surprise! They had double shotted the guns, had the matches ready for the fuses, and the attack stood no chance. The canisters burst and spread their death over the attackers, gun after gun, the shots coming singly or in small groups, and the lead balls hammered like hard rain on the stones, timber and bodies in the wasteland.

The two forts were ringed with smoke. The third, off to Sharpe’s left, was silent as if its guns, insultingly, were not needed. He could hear the French now, cheering their work as the gunners heaved at their weapons, loaded and fired, loaded and fired, and their flames sprang across the ditch, split the smoke, and licked behind the shredding canister.

“Rifles!”

There was not much they could do, but anything was better than being a spectator of this slaughter. He shouted again. “Rifles!”

His Riflemen poured over the lip of the rubble. He had trained a half dozen of the redcoats to use the Bakers, weapons left by men killed in the last three years, and they came, too. Harper dropped beside him, eyebrows raised, and Sharpe gestured at the nearest fort. “Go for the embrasures!”

They might kill a gunner or two, not much, but something. He heard the first shots, fired himself when the smoke showed a target, but the attack was done. The British did not know it. The men still went forward, shoulders hunched as if pushing into a storm, and they left their dead and wounded on the ground. Screams pierced the harsh sound of guns and Sharpe prayed with each new discharge of canister that a ball might end the screaming. Bowes was still up, still going ahead, taking his sword against the artillerymen and, behind and to each side, the survivors refused to give up. They were scattered now, less susceptible to the rain of lead, but too few to hope for victory. A ladder party actually made the ditch. Sharpe saw them jump in, heard the muskets fire from the palisade, and then he saw the Brigadier, limned against the spreading pall of smoke, and Bowes was hit. He seemed to dance on the spot, feet skittering to keep him upright and his sword fell as his hands clutched at his stomach. His head went back in a silent scream, more shots threw him forward and still he tried to stand, and then it was as if a whole barrel load of canister slammed the quivering figure, threw it flat, and the wasteland was suddenly empty of running men.

The attackers had gone to ground, defeated, and the French jeered at them, shouted insults, and the cannon fire died away.

There were no more men to throw into the attack, except Sharpe’s Company and he was not going to sacrifice them to the gunners. At Badajoz the army had gone on attacking, again and again into worse fire than this, in a smaller space, until it had seemed to Sharpe that all the canister in all the world could not go on killing the stream of men that had poured at the breaches. This attack had started with three hundred and fifty men, and there were no more. It was done.

The cannon smoke turned the dusk into false night and the French threw a lighted carcass, packed straw soaked with oil and bound in canvas, over their parapet. Shouts came from the wasteland. “Back! Back!”

Some men risked the fire, stood up, and ran. The French stayed silent. More men plucked up courage and the survivors, bit by bit, began their retreat. Still the French held their fire, happy that the British had given up, and men stopped to pick up their wounded. Sharpe looked at his Riflemen. “Back you go, lads.”

They were silent, depressed. They were used to victory, not defeat, but Sharpe knew they had been betrayed. He looked at Harper. “They knew we were coming.”

“Like as not.” The huge Irishman was easing the flint of his rifle, unfired, into the safe position. “They had the guns double-loaded. They knew.”

“I’d like to get the bastard who told them.”

Harper did not reply. He gestured ahead of them and Sharpe saw a man, staggering in the rubble, coming towards them. He had the red facings of the 53rd, the Shropshires, and his face was the colour of his uniform. Sharpe stood up, slung his rifle, and called to the man. “Here! Over here!”

The man seemed not to hear. He was walking, almost drunkenly, weaving on the stones, and Sharpe and Harper ran towards him. The man was moaning. Blood poured from his skull. “I can’t see!”

“You’ll be all right!” Sharpe could not see the man’s face through the blood. His hands, musket discarded, were clutched at his stomach. He seemed to hear Sharpe, the blood-soaked head quested towards the sound, and then he fell into Sharpe’s-arms. The hands came away and blood pumped onto Sharpe’s jacket and overalls. “It’s all right, lad, it’s all right!”

They laid him down and the man began to choke. Harper twisted his torso over, cleared the man’s throat with his finger, and shook his head at Sharpe. The Shropshire man vomited blood, moaned, and muttered again that he could not see. Sharpe undid his canteen, poured water on his eyes, and the blood, soaked there from a canister wound on his forehead, cleared slowly away. “You’ll be all right!”

The eyes opened, then shut immediately as a pain spasm shook him and blood seemed to well from his midriff. Harper tore at the man’s uniform. “God save Ireland!” It was a miracle he was still alive.

“Here!” Sharpe undid his officer’s sash, handed it across, and Harper pushed it beneath the body, caught the end, and tied it as a crude bandage round the horrid wound. He looked at Sharpe. “Head or legs?”

“Legs.”

He took the man’s ankles, they lifted him, and struggled with the burden back towards the houses. Other men were limping on the stones. The French were silent.

They put the man down in the street, full now once again with men, and Sharpe bellowed for bandsmen. The soldier was fighting for his life, the air scraping in his throat, and it seemed impossible that he could survive the wounds. Sharpe shouted again. “Bandsmen!”

An officer, his uniform unstained by dust or blood, his red facings and gold lace new and pristine, looked past Sharpe. “Dale. No musket.” He was dictating to a bespectacled clerk.

“What?” Sharpe turned and looked at the Lieutenant. Harper raised his eyes to heaven, then looked at Sergeant McGovern. The two Sergeants grinned. They knew Sharpe and knew his anger.

“Equipment check.” The Lieutenant looked at Sharpe’s rifle, then at the great sword, then at the Rifleman’s shoulder. “If you’ll excuse me, sir.”

“No.” Sharpe jerked his head towards the wounded man. “Are you planning to charge him?”

The Lieutenant looked round for escape or support, then sighed. “He has lost his musket, sir.”

“It was broken by French shot.” Sharpe’s voice was quiet.

“I’m sure you’ll put that in writing, sir.”

“No. You will. You were out there, weren’t you?”

The Lieutenant swallowed nervously. “No, sir.”

“Why not?”

“Sir! I was ordered to stay here, sir!”

“And no one ordered you to make life a bloody misery for the men who went out, did they? How many battles have you been in, Lieutenant?”

The Lieutenant’s eyes looked round the circle of grim, interested faces. He shrugged. “Sir?”

Sharpe reached over to the clerk-Corporal and took the notebook out of his hand. “You write ”destroyed by enemy“ against everything, understand? Everything. Including the boots they lost last week.”

“Yes, sir.” The Lieutenant took the notebook from Sharpe and gave it to the clerk. “You heard the man, Bates. ”Destroyed by enemy“.” The Lieutenant backed away.

Sharpe watched him go. His anger had not vented itself and he wanted to strike out at something, at someone, because the men had died through treachery. The French had been ready, warned of the attack, and good men had been thrown away, and he bellowed again. “Bandsmen!”

Two musicians, doing their battlefield job offending the wounded, came and crouched by the injured Dale. They lifted him clumsily onto a stretcher. Sharpe stopped one of them as they were about to go. “Where’s the Hospital?”

“Irish College, sir,”

“Look after him.”

The man shrugged. “Yes, sir.”

Poor bloody Dale, Sharpe thought, to be betrayed in his first battle. If he survived he would be invalided out of the army. His broken body, good for nothing, would be sent to Lisbon and there he would have to rot on the quays until the bureaucrats made sure he had accounted for all his equipment. Anything missing would be charged to the balance of his miserable wages and only when the account was balanced would he be put onto a foul transport and shipped to an English quayside. There he was left, the army’s obligation discharged, though if he was lucky he might be given a travel document that promised to reimburse any parish overseer who fed him while he travelled to his home. Usually the overseers ignored the paper and kicked the invalid out of their jurisdiction with an order to go and beg somewhere else. Dale might be better offdead than face all that.

Lieutenant Price, wary of Sharpe’s anger, saluted. “Dismiss, sir?”

“Dismiss and get drunk, Lieutenant.”

Price grinned with relief. “Yes, sir. Morning parade?”

“Late one. Nine o’clock.”

Harper could still hear the suppressed rage in Sharpe, but he was one man who did not fear the Captain’s anger. He nodded at Sharpe’s uniform. “Not planning on any formal dinner tonight, sir?”

The uniform was soaked with Dale’s blood, dark against the green, and Sharpe cursed. He brushed at it uselessly. He had planned on going to the Palacio Casares and then he thought how La Marquesa had wanted a battle, and had been given one, and now she could see how a real soldier looked instead of the dripping confections of gold and silver who called themselves fighting men. Harper’s uniform was bloody, too, but Harper had Isabella waiting for him and suddenly Sharpe was tired of being alone and he wanted the golden haired woman and his anger was such that he would use it to take him into her palace and see what happened. He looked at the Irish Sergeant. „I’ll see you in the morning.“

“Yes, sir.”

Harper watched Sharpe walk away and let out a deep breath. “Someone’s in for trouble.”

Lieutenant Price glanced at the huge Sergeant. “Should we go with him?”

“No, sir. I think he fancies a fight. That Lieutenant didn’t give him one so he’s going to look for another one.” Harper grinned. “He’ll be back in a couple of hours, sir. Just let him cool off.” Harper raised his canteen to Price and shrugged. “Here’s to a happy night, sir. A happy, bloody night.”