Sharpe's Escape (12 page)

Lawford marched the South Essex forward, only twenty yards, but the movement scared the voltigeurs who thought they might be the target of a regimental volley and so they hurried away to join the column that now marched slantwise across the front of the South Essex. "Present!" Lawford shouted, and nearly six hundred muskets went into men's shoulders.

"Fire!"

The massive volley pumped out a long cloud of gun smoke that smelled like rotting eggs, and then the musket stocks thumped onto the ground and men took new cartridges and began to reload. "Platoon fire now!" Lawford called to his officers, and he took off his hat again and wiped sweat from his forehead. It was still cold, the wind blowing chill from the far-off Atlantic, yet Lawford was hot. Sharpe heard the splintering crack of the Portuguese volley, then the South Essex began their own rolling fire, shooting half company by half company from the center of the line, the bullets never ending, the men going through the well-practiced motions of loading and firing, loading and firing. The enemy was invisible now, hidden from the battalion by its own gun smoke. Sharpe rode along the right of the line, deliberately not going left so no one could accuse him of interfering with Slingsby. "Aim low!" he called to the men. "Aim low!" A few bullets were coming back out of the smoke, but they were nearly all high. Inexperienced men usually shot high and the French, who were being flayed by the Portuguese and by the South Essex, were trying to fire uphill into a cloud of smoke and they were taking a terrible punishment from muskets and cannons. Some of the enemy must be panicking because Sharpe saw two ramrods go wheeling overhead, evidence that the men were too scared to remember their musket drill. He stopped by the grenadier company and watched the Portuguese and he reckoned they were firing as efficiently as any redcoat battalion. Their half-company volleys were steady as clockwork, the smoke rolling out from the battalion's center, and he knew the bullets must be striking hard into the disintegrating column's face.

More muskets flared as the 88th, the feared Connaught Rangers, wheeled forward of the line to blast at the wounded French column, but somehow the French held on. Their outer ranks and files were being killed and injured, but the mass of men inside the column still lived and more were climbing the hill to replace the dead, and the whole mass, in no good order, but crowding together, tried to advance into the terrible volleys. More red- and brown-jacketed troops were moving towards the fight, adding their musketry, but still the French pushed against the storm. The column was dividing again, torn by the slashing round shots and ripped by canister, so now it seemed as though disorganized groups of men were struggling uphill past piles of dead. Sharpe could hear the officers and sergeants shouting them on, could hear the rattle of the frantic drums, which was now challenged by a British band that was playing "Men of Harlech." "Not very appropriate!" Major Forrest had joined Sharpe and had to shout to make himself heard over the dense sound of musketry. "We're hardly in a hollow."

"You're wounded," Sharpe said.

"A scratch." Forrest glanced at his right sleeve, which was torn and bloodstained. "How are the Portuguese?"

"Good!"

"The Colonel was wondering where you were," Forrest said.

"Did he think I'd gone back to the light company?" Sharpe asked sourly.

"Now, now, Sharpe," Forrest chided him.

Sharpe clumsily turned his horse and kicked it back to Lawford. "The buggers aren't moving!" the Colonel greeted him indignantly. Lawford was leaning forward in his saddle, trying to see through the smoke and, between the half-company volleys, when the foul-smelling cloud thinned a little, he could just make out the huge groups of stubborn Frenchmen clinging to the hillside beneath the crest. "Will bayonets shift them?" he asked Sharpe. "By God, I've a mind to try steel. What do you think?"

"Two more volleys?" Sharpe suggested. It was chaos down the slope. The French column, broken again, was now clumps of men who fired uphill into the smoke, while more men, perhaps another column altogether or else stragglers from the first, were continually joining the groups. French artillery was adding to the din. They must have brought their howitzers to the foot of the slope and the shells, shot blind into the fog, were screaming overhead to crash onto the rear area where women, campfires, tents and tethered horses were the only casualties. A group of French voltigeurs had taken the rocky spur where Sharpe had placed his picquet in the night. "We should move those fellows away," Sharpe said, pointing to them.

"They're not harming us," Lawford shouted above the din, "but we can't let those wretches stay here!" He pointed to the smoke-wreathed Frenchmen. "That's our land!" He took a breath. "Fix bayonets! Fix bayonets!"

Colonel Wallace, commander of the 88th, must have had the same thought, for Sharpe was aware that the Irishmen had stopped firing, and they would only do that to fix the seventeen-inch blades on their muskets. Clicks sounded all along the South Essex line as the two ranks slotted their bayonets onto blackened muzzles. The French, with extraordinary bravery, used the lull in the musket fire to try and advance again. Men clambered over dead and dying bodies, officers shouted them forward, the drummers redoubled their efforts and suddenly the Eagles were moving again. The leading Frenchmen were among the bodies of the dead voltigeurs now and must have been convinced that one more hard push would break through the thin line of Portuguese and British troops, yet the whole hilltop must have seemed ripples of flame and rills of smoke to them. "South Essex!" Lawford shouted. "Advance!" The cannons jetted more powder smoke and flaming scraps of wadding deep into the tight French ranks. Sharpe could hear the screaming of wounded men now. Musket shots hammered from a knot of Frenchmen to the right, but the South Essex and the men of Connaught were going forward, bayonets bright, and Sharpe kicked the horse forward, following the battalion, which suddenly broke into the double and shouted their challenge. The Portuguese, seeing the redcoats advance, cheered and fixed their own blades.

The charge struck home. The French were not formed properly, most did not have loaded muskets and the British line closed on the clumps of blue-coated infantry and then wrapped around them as the redcoats lunged with bayonets. The enemy fought back and Sharpe heard the crack of muskets clashing, the scrape of blades, the curses and shouts of wounded soldiers. The enemy dead obstructed the British, but they clambered over the bodies to rip with long blades at the living. "Hold your lines! Hold your lines!" a sergeant bellowed, and in some places the companies had split because some files were attacking one French group and the rest another, and Sharpe saw two French soldiers break clear through such a gap and start uphill. He turned the horse towards them and drew his sword, and the two men, hearing the blade's long scrape against the scabbard's throat, immediately threw down their muskets and spread their hands. Sharpe pointed the sword uphill, indicating they were prisoners now and should go to the South Essex color party. One obediently set off, but the other snatched up his musket and fled downhill. Sharpe let him go. He could see the Eagles were being hurried down the slope, being carried away from the danger of capture, and more Frenchmen, seeing their standards retreat, broke from the unequal fight. The allied cannons had stopped their fire because their targets were masked by their own men, but the French guns still shot through the thinning fog and then, off to Sharpe's right, more cannons opened and he saw a second column, even larger than the first, appearing on the lower slope.

The first French attack broke from the back. Most of the men in the front ranks could not escape because they were trapped by their comrades behind, and those men were being savaged by Portuguese and British bayonets, but the French rear ranks followed the Eagles and, as the pressure eased, the remnants of the column fled. They ran, leaping over the dead and wounded that marked their passage up the hill, and the redcoats and Portuguese pursued them. A man from the grenadier company rammed his bayonet into the small of a Frenchman's back, stabbed him again when he fell, then kicked him and stabbed him a third time when the man obstinately refused to die. A drum, painted with a French Eagle, rolled downhill. A drummer boy, his arm shot off by a cannonball, hunched in misery beside a gorse bush. British redcoats and blue-jacketed Portuguese ran past him, intent on pursuing and killing the fleeing enemy. "Come back!" Lawford shouted angrily. "Come back!" The men did not hear him, or did not care; they had won and now they simply wanted to kill. Lawford looked for Sharpe. "Get them, Sharpe!" the Colonel snapped. "Fetch them back!"

Sharpe wondered how the hell he was to stop such a chaotic pursuit, but he obediently kicked his borrowed horse, which immediately bolted downhill so violently that he was nearly thrown off the back of the saddle. He yanked the reins to slow the mare and she swerved to her left and Sharpe heard a bullet flutter past him and looked up to see that scores of voltigeurs still held the rocky knoll and were firing at him. The horse ran on, Sharpe clinging to the saddle's pommel for dear life, then she stumbled and he felt himself flying. By a miracle his feet came clear of the stirrups and he landed on the slope with an almighty thump, rolled for a few yards and then banged against a boulder. He was sure he must have broken a dozen bones, but when he picked himself up he found he was only bruised. Ferragus had hurt him much worse, but the fall from the horse had exacerbated those injuries. He thought the mare must have been shot, but when he turned round to look for his fallen sword he saw the horse trotting calmly uphill without any apparent damage except her bullet-cropped ear. He swore at the mare, abandoned her, picked up his sword and rifle and went on downhill.

He shouted at redcoats to get back to the ridge. Some were Irishmen from the 88th, many of them busy plundering the bodies of French dead and, because he was an officer they did not know, they snarled, swore or simply ignored him, implicitly daring him to tangle with them. Sharpe let them be. If there was one regiment in the army that could look after itself it was the men of Connaught. He ran on down, shouting at troops to get the hell up to the ridge top, but most were halfway down the long slope, almost to where the fog had retreated, and Sharpe had to run hard to get within shouting distance and it was then, as the fog swirled away, that he saw two more French columns climbing from the valley. There was another column, he knew, somewhere near the summit, but these were new troops making a fresh attack. "South Essex!" he shouted. He had been a sergeant once and still had a voice that could carry halfway across a city, though using it caused his ribs to bang pain into his lungs "South Essex! Back! Back!" A shell struck the hill not five paces away, bounced up and exploded in jets of hissing smoke. Two scraps of casing spun past his face so close that he felt the momentary warmth and the slap of the hot air. French cannon were at the foot of the slope, just visible in the thinning fog, and they were firing at the men who had pursued the broken column, but who now had checked their reckless downhill run to watch the new columns advance. "South Essex!" Sharpe roared, and the anger in his voice was harsh, and at last men turned to trudge uphill. Slingsby, his saber drawn, was watching the columns, but, hearing Sharpe, he suddenly snapped at men to turn around and go back to the ridge top. Harper was one of them and, seeing Sharpe, the big man angled across the slope. His seven-barreled gun was slung on his back and in his hand was his rifle with its twenty-three-inch sword bayonet reddened to its brass handle. The rest of the light company, at last aware that more columns were attacking, hurried after Harper.

Sharpe waited to make sure that every redcoat and rifleman had turned back. French shells and round shot were banging onto the hill, but using artillery against such scattered targets was a waste of powder. One cannonball, spent after its bouncing impact, rolled down the hill to make Harper skip aside, then he grinned at Sharpe. "Gave it to them proper, sir."

"You should have stayed up top."

"It's a hell of a climb," Harper said, surprised to see how far down the hill he had gone. He fell in beside Sharpe and the two climbed together. "Mister Slingsby, sir," the Irishman said, then fell silent.

"Mister Slingsby what?"

"He said you weren't well, sir, and he was taking command."

"Then he's a lying bastard," Sharpe said, careless that he ought not to say such a thing of another officer.

"Is he now?" Harper said tonelessly.

"The Colonel told me to step aside. He wants Mister Slingsby to have a chance."

"He had that right enough," Harper said.

"I should have been there," Sharpe said.

"And so you should," Harper said, "but the lads are all alive. Except Dodd."

"Matthew? Is he dead?"

"Dead or alive, I don't know," Harper said, "but I couldn't see him anywhere. I was keeping an eye on the boys, but I can't find Matthew. Maybe he went back up the hill."

"I didn't see him," Sharpe said. They both turned and counted heads and saw the light company were all present except for Corporal Dodd. "We'll look for him as we climb," Sharpe said, meaning they would look for his body.

Lieutenant Slingsby, red-faced and saber drawn, hurried over to Sharpe. "Did you bring orders, Sharpe?" he demanded.

"The orders are to get back to the top of the hill as quick as you can," Sharpe said.

"Quick, men!" Slingsby called, then turned back to Sharpe. "Our fellows did well!"

"Did they?"

"Outflanked the voltigeurs, Sharpe. Outflanked them, by God! We turned their flank."

"Did you?"

"Pity you didn't see us." Slingsby was excited, proud of himself. "We slipped past them, drove in their wing, then hurt them."

Sharpe thought the light company had been led to one side where it had been about as much use as a kettle with a hole in it, and had then been ignominiously chased away, but he kept silent. Harper unclipped his sword bayonet, cleaned the blade on the jacket of a French corpse, then quickly ran his hands over the man's pockets and pouches.