Sharpe's Escape (26 page)

"I need more bullets for this," Harper said.

"How many have you got?"

"After this load?" Harper patted the breech, then carefully lowered the flint to make the gun safe. "Twenty-three."

"I'll filch some from Lawford," Sharpe said. "His bloody great horse pistol takes half-inch balls and he never fires the bloody thing. Sorry, miss. He doesn't like firing it, it's too powerful. God knows why he keeps it. Perhaps to frighten his wife." He looked for Vicente. "You're ready? Let's find this damn food, then you can report it to your Colonel. That should put you in his good books."

Francisco was anxious as he led them out of the tavern and down a stepped alleyway. Before arriving at the tavern he had been enquiring about the city for anyone who had seen two men dressed in green uniforms who were with Professor Vicente's clever son, and it had not taken long to discover they were in the Three Crows. Ferragus would be pleased. "Here,
senhor
," Francisco told Vicente and pointed across the street at a great double doorway in a blank stone wall.

"Why don't I just tell my Colonel?" Vicente suggested.

"Because if you come back here," Sharpe said, "and find that this bastard has been lying to us, sorry, miss, you'll look like an idiot. No, we'll look inside, you go to your Colonel and we'll take Miss Fry down to battalion."

The door was padlocked. "Shoot it?" Vicente suggested.

"You only mangle the works if you do that," Sharpe said, "and make it harder." He felt through his haversack until he found what he wanted. It was a picklock. He had carried one since he was a child, and he unfolded the hooked levers, selected the one he wanted and stooped to the lock.

Vicente looked aghast. "You know how to do that?"

"I was a thief once," Sharpe said. "Earned my living that way." He saw the shock on Sarah's face. "I wasn't always an officer and a gentleman," he told her.

"But you are now?" she asked anxiously.

"He's an officer, miss," Harper said, "he's certainly an officer." He unslung the volley gun and cocked it. He glanced up and down the street, but there was no one taking any interest in them. A shopkeeper was stacking clothes on a handcart, a woman was shouting at two children, and a small group of people were struggling with bags, boxes, dogs, goats and cows downhill towards the river.

The lock clicked and Sharpe tugged it out of the staple. Then before opening the door, he took the rifle from his shoulder and cocked it. "Grab hold of Francisco," he told Harper, "because if there's nothing inside here I'm going to shoot the big bastard. Sorry, miss."

Francisco tried to pull away, but Harper held him fast as Sharpe dragged one of the huge gates open. He walked through into the darkness, watching for movement, seeing none, and as his eyes became accustomed to the shadows he saw the boxes, barrels and sacks piled up towards the beams and rafters of the high roof. "Jesus Christ!" he said in amazement. "Sorry, miss."

"Blasphemy," Sarah said, staring up at the huge stacks, "is worse than mere swearing."

"I'll try to remember that, miss," Sharpe said, "I really will. Good Christ Almighty! Just look at this!"

"Is it food?" Vicente asked.

"Smells like it," Sharpe said. He uncocked his rifle, slung it and drew his sword, which he jabbed into a sack. Grain trickled out. "Jesus wept, sorry, miss." He sheathed the sword and stared around the vast room. "Tons of food!"

"Does it matter?" Sarah asked.

"Oh, it matters," Sharpe said. "An army can't fight if it doesn't have food. The trick of this campaign, miss, is to let the Frogs march south, stop them in front of Lisbon, and watch them get hungry. This damn lot could keep them alive for weeks!"

Harper had let go of Francisco who backed away and suddenly darted out into the street and Harper, amazed at the piles of food, did not notice. Sharpe, Vicente and Sarah were walking down the central aisle, gazing up in astonishment. The stores were stacked in neat squares, each pile about twenty feet by twenty feet, and divided by alleys. Sharpe counted a dozen stacks. Some of the barrels were stamped with the British government's broad arrow, meaning they had been stolen. Harper was following the other three, then remembered Francisco and turned to see men coming from the house across the street. There were half a dozen of them and they were filling the warehouse's wide entrance and he saw, too, that they carried pistols in their hands. "Trouble!" he shouted.

Sharpe turned, saw the shadows in the entrance, knew instinctively that Francisco had betrayed them and knew too that he was in trouble. "Back here, Pat!" he shouted and at the same time he shoved Sarah hard, pushing her into one of the alleys between the sacks. The warehouse's open door was being tugged shut, darkening the huge room, and Sharpe was unslinging his rifle as the first shots came from the closing door. A ball thumped into a sack by his head, another ricocheted from an iron barrel hoop to smack into the back wall, and a third hit Vicente who spun back, dropping his rifle. Sharpe kicked the gun towards Sarah and dragged Vicente into the narrow space, then went back into the central aisle and aimed towards the door. He saw nothing, dodged back into cover. Some small light came through a handful of dirty skylights in the high roof, but not much. There was movement at the alley's far end and he turned, rifle going into his shoulder, but it was Harper who had sensibly avoided the central aisle by running around the flank of the high stacks.

"There's six of them, sir," Harper said, "maybe more."

"Can't stay here," Sharpe said. "Mister Vicente's hit."

"Christ," Harper said.

"Sorry, miss," Sharpe said on Harper's behalf and glanced at Vicente who was conscious, but hurt. He had fallen when the ball struck him, but that had been shock as much as anything else, and he was on his feet now, leaning against some boxes.

"It's bleeding," he said.

"Where?"

"Left shoulder."

"Are you spitting blood?"

"No."

"You'll live," Sharpe said and gave Vicente's rifle to Harper. "Give me the volley gun, Pat," he said, "and take Mister Vicente and Miss Fry to the back. See if there's a way out. Wait a second, though." Sharpe listened. He could hear small sounds, but they could have been rats or cats. "Use the side wall," he whispered to Harper, and he went there first and peered round the edge. A shadow in a shadow. Sharpe moved out into the open and the shadow sparked fire and a bullet scored along the wall beside him and he raised the rifle and saw the shadow vanish. "Now, Pat."

Harper shepherded Vicente and Sarah to the back of the warehouse. Pray God there was a door there, Sharpe thought, and he slung the rifle on his left shoulder, put the volley gun on his right, and climbed the nearest stack. He scrambled up, jamming his boots into the spaces between the grain sacks, not caring about the noise he made. He almost lost his footing once, but anger drove him up and he rolled onto the top of the great pile where he took the volley gun from his shoulder. He cocked it, hoping that no one beneath would hear the click. A big cat hissed at him, its back arched and tail up, but then decided not to contest the lumpy plateau on top of the sacks and stalked away.

Sharpe edged across the sacks. He crawled on his belly, listening to a faint muttering of voices and he knew there were men in the alley beyond the sacks and knew they were planning how best to finish what they had started. He knew they would be fearful of the rifles, but they would also be confident.

But evidently not too confident. They wanted to avoid a fight if they could, for Ferragus suddenly shouted, "Captain Sharpe!"

No answer. Claws scratched at the far side of the warehouse and wheels clattered on the street cobbles outside.

"Captain Sharpe!"

Still no answer.

"Come out!" Ferragus called. "Apologize to me and you can go. That is all I want. An apology!"

Like hell, Sharpe thought. Ferragus wanted this food preserved until the French arrived, and the moment Sharpe or his companions appeared in the open they would be shot down. So it was time to spring an ambush on the ambushers.

He crept forward to the stack's edge and, very slowly, peered over. There was a knot of men down there. Half a dozen, perhaps, and none was looking up. None had thought to check the high ground, but they should have known they were up against soldiers and soldiers always sought the high ground.

Sharpe brought the volley gun forward. The seven half-inch balls had been rammed down on wadding and powder, but there was always a chance, a good chance, that some would roll out of the barrels the moment he pointed the gun downwards. There was no time to ram more wadding on top of the balls, so the trick of this was to shoot fast, very fast, and that meant he could not aim. He edged back, stood up, then froze as another voice spoke. "Captain Sharpe!" The speaker was not one of the men beneath Sharpe. His voice seemed to come from closer to the great doors. "Captain Sharpe. This is Major Ferreira."

So that bastard was here. Sharpe cradled the volley gun, ready to move forward and fire, but then Ferreira spoke again. "You have my word as an officer! No harm will come to you! My brother wants an apology, nothing more!" Ferreira paused, then spoke in Portuguese, presumably because he knew Jorge Vicente was with Sharpe, and Sharpe reckoned Vicente's neat, legal and trusting mind might just believe Ferreira and so he gave his own answer. In one fast movement he stepped to the edge, turned the gun's muzzles down into the alley and pulled the trigger.

Three of the balls were loose and had started to roll, and that reduced the gun's huge power, but the blast of the shots still echoed from the stone walls like thunder and the recoil of the bunched barrels almost threw the gun up and out of Sharpe's hands as the smoke billowed in the passage beneath him. There were screams in the passage too, and a hoarse shout of pain and the sound of feet scrambling as men ran from the sudden horror that had belched from above. A pistol fired, shattering a skylight, but Sharpe was already running towards the back of the warehouse. He jumped the next alley, landing on a pile of barrels that wobbled dangerously, but his momentum carried him on, scattering cats, then another jump and he was at the far end. "Found anything, Pat?"

"Bloody great trapdoor, nothing else."

"Catch!" Sharpe threw Harper the volley gun, then scrambled down, fumbling for footholds on the edges of boxes and jumping the last six feet. He looked left and right, but saw no sign of Ferragus or his men. "Where the hell are they?"

"You hit some of them?" Harper asked in a hopeful voice.

"Two, maybe. Where's the trapdoor?"

"Here."

"Jesus, it stinks!"

"Something nasty down there, sir. Lots of flies."

Sharpe crouched, thinking. To escape out the front of the warehouse meant going into the alleys between the piles of food, and Ferragus would have men covering all those passages. Sharpe could probably make it, but at what cost? At least one more wound. And he had a woman with him. He could not expose her to more fire. He lifted the trapdoor, letting out a gust of foul-smelling air. Something dead was down in the blackness. A rat? He peered down, saw steps going into darkness, but the shadows suggested there was a cellar down there, and once he was at the base of the steps he could fire up the stone stairway. Ferragus and his men would have to brave that fire to approach, and they would be reluctant to do that. And perhaps there was a way out of the cellar?

There were footsteps on the warehouse's far side, then more sounds from the top of the stacks. Ferragus had learned quickly and sent men to take the high ground and Sharpe knew he was trapped properly now and the cellar was the only option left. "Down," he ordered, "all of you. Down."

He went last, clumsily closing the trapdoor behind him, letting the heavy timber down slowly so that Ferragus might not realize his enemies had gone to earth. It was pitch black at the foot of the steps, and so foul-smelling that Sarah gagged. Flies buzzed in the dark. "Load the volley gun, Pat," Sharpe said, "and give me the rifles."

Sharpe crouched on the steps, one rifle in his hands, two beside him. Anyone opening the trapdoor now would be silhouetted against the warehouse's dim light and would fetch a bullet for their pains. "If I fire," he whispered to Harper, "you have to reload the rifle before the volley gun."

"Yes, sir." Harper could have reloaded a rifle blindfolded in Stygian darkness.

"Jorge?" Sharpe asked, and the answer was a hiss, betraying Vicente's pain. "Feel your way round the walls," Sharpe said, "see if there's a way out."

"Major Ferreira was up there," Vicente said, sounding reproachful.

"He's as bad as his brother," Sharpe said. "He was planning to sell the Frogs some bloody flour, Jorge, only I stopped it, so then he set me up for a beating at Bussaco." He had no proof of that, of course, but it seemed obvious. Ferreira had persuaded Hogan to invite Sharpe to supper at the monastery, and must have let his brother know that the rifleman would be alone on the dark path afterwards. "Just feel round the walls, Jorge. See if there's a door."

"There are rats," Vicente said.

Sharpe took his folding knife from his pocket, took out the blade, and whispered Sarah's name. "Take this," he said, and felt for her hand. He put the knife's handle into her fingers. "Be careful," he warned her, "it's a knife. I want you to cut a strip off the bottom of your dress and see if you can bandage Jorge's shoulder."

He thought she might protest at mangling her only dress, but she said nothing and a moment later Sharpe heard the ripping sound as she slashed and tore at the silk. Sharpe crept a small way up the stairs and listened. There was silence for a while, then the sudden bang of a pistol and another bang, virtually instantaneous, as the ball hammered into the trapdoor. The ball stuck there, not piercing the heavy timber. Ferragus was announcing that he had found Sharpe, but plainly the big man was unwilling to lift the hatch and rush the cellar, for there was another long silence. "They want us to think they've gone," Sharpe said.

"There's no way out," Vicente announced.