Sharpe's Rifles (29 page)

Vivar smiled. “I would never have thought that. Here.” He reached up and took the tiny sprig
of dead rosemary from his hat and tucked it into a loose loop on Sharpe’s jacket.

“Does that make me one of your elite?” Sharpe asked.

Vivar shook his head. “It’s a herb that averts evil, Lieutenant.”

For a second Sharpe was tempted to reject the super-stition, then, remembering his defiance of
the xanes, he let the shred of rosemary stay where it was. The morning’s task had become so
desperate that he was even prepared to believe that a dead herb could give him protection.
“Forward!”

In for a penny, Sharpe thought and, God damn it, but he had put his approval on Vivar’s
madness back in the fort’s chapel when he had let the mystery of the gonfalon overwhelm him like
the heady fumes of some dark and heated wine. Now was not the time to let the fears stop the
insanity.

So forward. Forward through the trees, past a stone wall, and suddenly Sharpe’s boots grated
on flint and he saw they had come to the road. A building loomed dark to his right, while ahead
of him he could at last see the guardhouse fire. Its flames were dim, smeared vague by the mist,
but it had been lit outside the church and thus illumined the roadway. Any second now the
challenge might sound. “Close up!” Sharpe whispered to Harper. “And fingers off
triggers!”

“Close up!” Harper hissed. “And don’t bloody fire!”

Sharpe proposed to go past the guardhouse at a run. The noise would begin then, but that could
not be helped. It would begin with the smatter of musket and rifle fire, and end in the full
cacophony of death. For now, though, there was only the scrape of boots on flint, the thump of
muffled equipment, and the hoarse breathing of men already tired by hours and hours of
marching.

Harper crossed himself. The other Irishman in the company did the same. They grinned, not with
pleasure, but fear. The Riflemen were shaking, and their bellies wanted to empty. Mary, Mother of
God, Harper repeated to himself time and time again. He supposed he should say a prayer to St
James, but he knew none, and so he nervously repeated the more familiar invocation. Be with us
now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

Sharpe led the advance. He walked slowly; ever staring at the smeared light of the watch-fire.
The flamelight glinted up his sword blade which he held low. Far beyond the first blaze, he could
now see the blur of other fires which must be burning at the margin of the main French defence.
The mist was silvering, lightening, and he even thought he could see the faint tangle of
pinnacles and domes that was the city’s roofline. It was a small city, Vivar had said; a mere
handful of houses about the abbey, hostels, cathedral, and plaza, but a city held by the French
that must be taken by a motley little army.

A motley, brown-dressed, ill-trained little force that was inspired by one man’s faith. Vivar,
Sharpe thought, must be drunk on God if he believed the moth-eaten shred of silk could work its
miracle. It was madness. If the British army knew that an ex-Sergeant was leading Riflemen on
such a mission, they would court-martial him. Sharpe supposed he was as mad as Vivar; the only
difference was that Vivar was goaded by God, and Sharpe by the stubborn, stupid pride of a
soldier who would not admit defeat.

Yet, Sharpe reminded himself, other men had achieved glory on dreams just as impractical.
Those few knights, forced a thousand years before to their fastnesses in the mountains by the
overwhelming armies of Mahomet, must have felt just this same despair. When those knights had
tightened their girths and lifted their lances from the stirrup-couches and stared at the great
crescent of the enemy beneath the rippling banners that had brought blood from the desert, they
must have known that this was the hour of their death. Yet still they had slammed down the visors
of their helmets, raked back their spurs, and charged.

A stone grated beneath Sharpe’s foot and brought his thoughts back to the present. They were
in a street now, the countryside left behind. The windows of the silent houses had iron grilles.
The road was climbing, not steeply, but enough of a slope to make the charge more difficult. A
shape moved by the fire, then Sharpe saw there was a crude barrier placed across the road that
would stop his mad dash to the city’s main defences. The barriers was nothing but two handcarts
and some chairs, but still a barrier.

The moving shape by the watch-fire resolved itself into a human silhouette; a Frenchman who
stooped to light a pipe with a burning spill taken from the flames. The man suspected nothing,
nor did he look northwards to where he might have seen the reflection of firelight on fixed
bayonets.

Then a dog barked in a house to Sharpe’s right. He was so tense that he jumped sideways. The
dog became frantic. Another dog took up the alarm, and a cockerel challenged the morning. The
Riflemen instinctively quickened their pace.

The Frenchman by the fire straightened and turned. Sharpe could see the distinctive shape of
the man’s shako; an infantryman. Not a dismounted cavalryman, but a Goddamned French infantryman
who unslung his musket and pointed it towards the Riflemen. ‘Qui vive?

The challenge began the day’s fight. Sharpe took a breath, and ran.

  
I
t was extraordinary how, once the waiting was over,
the fears sloughed away.

Sharpe ran. It was uphill. His bootsole, so carefully sewn into place the day before, flapped
free. Though he ran on the road’s flint-hardened surface, it seemed as if he pounded through a
thick and cloying mud, yet the fears went because the die was cast and the game must be seen to
its end.

„Qui vive?“

‘Ami! Ami! Ami!“ Vivar had given him a whole French phrase that might confuse an alert enemy
sentry, but Sharpe had been unable to commit the strange words to memory, and so had settled on
the simpler word for ’friend‘. He shouted it louder, at the same time pointing behind him as
though he fled from some enemy hidden in the mist.

The sentry hesitated. Four other Frenchmen had come from the church porch. One had a
Sergeant’s stripe on his blue sleeve, but he evidently did not want the responsibility of firing
on his own side for he shouted into the church for an officer to come. ‘Capitaine! Capitaine!“
Then, shako-less and still buttoning his bluejacket, the Sergeant turned back towards the
approaching Riflemen. ’Halte la!”

Sharpe held up his left hand as though he was ordering his men to slow down. He slowed
himself, gasping again: “Ami! Ami!“ He appeared to stumble forward, exhausted, and the clumsy
subterfuge took him to within two paces of the enemy Sergeant. Then he looked into the
Frenchman’s eyes and saw the sudden terror of realization.

It was too late. All Sharpe’s fears, and all the relief from those fears, went into his first
sword stroke. One pace forward, the snarling lunge, and the Sergeant was folding over the
twisting blade and the first sentry was opening his mouth to shout as Harper’s bayonet came up
into his belly. The Frenchman’s finger closed in spasm on his musket’s trigger. Sharpe was so
close to the man that he did not see the muzzle flame, only the explosion in the pan. A spark of
burning powder fizzed over his head, smoke billowed around him, then he was twisting and
wrenching his sword free of the Frenchman’s flesh. The Sergeant fell backwards into the
watch-fire and his hair, which had served as his towel for greasy hands, flared bright and high
for an instant.

The remaining three Frenchmen were retreating towards the porch, but the Riflemen were faster.
Another musket shot stunned the dawn, then the sword-bayonets did their work. A Frenchman
screamed terribly.

“Silence the bastard!” Harper snapped. A blade ripped, there was a choking sound, then
nothing.

A pistol banged from the church door. A greenjacket gasped, turned, and fell into the fire.
Two rifles fired, throwing a dark shape back into the church’s shadowed interior. The burning
Rifleman screamed foully as he was dragged from the flames. The dogs were barking like the hounds
of hell.

Surprise was gone, and there were yet three hundred yards of road to cover. Sharpe was pulling
the handcart aside, opening the road to the cavalry that must follow. “Leave the buggers!” There
were still Frenchmen inside the church but they must be ignored if the assault was to have any
chance of success. Even Sharpe’s own wounded must be abandoned if the city was to fall. “Leave
them! Come on!”

The Riflemen obeyed. One or two hung back, seeking safety in the shadows, but Harper demanded
to know whether they would prefer to fight him or the French and the laggards found their
courage. They followed Sharpe into the dark mist that was not so dark any longer. There were
bugles sounding in the city, not in alarm yet, merely ordering the stand-to, but the calls served
to instil urgency into the greenjackets. The haste made them lose all semblance of military
order; they advanced neither in file nor line, but as a pounding mass of men who ran up the slope
towards the looming city.

Where the defences would have been alerted. Now the fear had time to surge back, and it was
made worse because Sharpe saw how the French had pulled down the houses nearest the old wall so
that the guards behind the barricades would have a clear field of fire.

Shots came from the Frenchmen in the church behind. A bullet fluttered overhead, another
skipped between the Riflemen to smash into a broken wall ahead. Sharpe imagined the muskets and
carbines sliding over the city’s barricades. He imagined a French officer ordering the troops to
wait until the enemy was close. Now was the moment of death. Now, if there were cannon in the
defences, the great barrels would gout their spreading canisters. Riflemen would be flensed
alive, their bellies ripped out, their guts spread ten yards along a cold road.

No such shots came, and Sharpe realized that the city’s defenders must be confused by the
shots from the church. To a man on the main defence line it must seem as if the approaching
Riflemen were the remnants of the guard-house’s garrison being pursued by the musketry of a
distant enemy. He shouted the magic word as loud as he could, hoping it would reinforce the
mistaken identity. ‘„Ami! Ami!“

Sharpe could see the main defences now. A high-sided farm-waggon had been pushed across the
nearest street entrance to make a temporary barricade which, by day, could be hauled aside to let
the cavalry patrols enter or leave the city. It was illuminated by a fire which also showed the
shapes of men climbing onto the waggon bed. Sharpe could see them fixing their bayonets. He could
also see a narrow gap to the left of the waggon where the harness pole formed the only
obstacle.

A question was shouted from the waggons, and Sharpe had no answer beyond the single word,
‘Ami!“ He was panting with the uphill run, but managed to snarl an order to his men. ”Don’t
bunch! Spread!“

Then, from the church behind him, a bugle sounded.

It must have been an agreed signal, but one which had been delayed by the death of the
picquet’s officer and Sergeant. It was the alarm; shrill and desperate, and it provoked an
instant volley from the waggon.

The muskets banged, but the defenders had fired too soon and, like so many troops firing
downhill, too high. The realization gave Sharpe a sudden burst of hope. He was shouting a war cry
now, nothing coherent, just a scream of murderous rage that would carry him to the very edge of
the enemy’s position. Harper was beside him, feet pounding, and the Riflemen were spreading
across the road so that they did not make a bunched target for the French soldiers who scrambled
onto the waggon to take the places of the men who had fired.

”Tirez” An enemy officer’s sword slashed down.

The musket flames leaped three feet clear of the French muzzles, smoke pumped to hide the
cart, and a Rifleman was jerked back as though a rope had yanked him off his feet.

Sharpe had gone to the left of the road where he stumbled on the rubble from the dismantled
houses. He saw a Rifleman stop to take aim and he shouted at him to keep running. There could be
no pause now, none, for if this attack lost its momentum, the enemy would merely swat it away.
Sharpe clenched himself for the awful moment when the gap must be faced.

He leapt for the gap, screaming his challenge that was meant to strike fear into whoever
waited for him. Three Frenchmen were there, lunging with bayonets, and Sharpe’s sword clanged
from the blades to bite into a musket stock. He stumbled on the waggon pole, then was thumped
aside . as Sergeant Harper crashed through the narrow gap. Other Riflemen were clawing at the
cart’s side, trying to climb it. A Frenchman stabbed down with a bayonet, but was hurled back by
a rifle bullet. More rifles fired. A Frenchman aimed at Sharpe but, in his nervousness, he had
forgotten to prime his musket. The flint sparked on an empty pan, the man screamed, then Sharpe
had found his footing and drove forward with the sword. Harper was twisting his sword-bayonet
from an enemy’s ribs. More Riflemen were crowding through the gap, chopping and slashing, while
others came over the waggon to drive the Frenchmen back. The defenders had been too few, and had
waited too long before the bugle had turned their uncertainty into action. Now they died or
fled.

“The waggon! The waggon!” Sharpe jerked his sword free of the man who had forgotten to prime
his gun. Harper slammed down with his rifle butt to stun the last Frenchman, then bellowed at the
Riflemen to drag the cart out of the way. “Pull, you bastards! Pull!” The greenjackets threw
themselves at the wheels and slowly the waggon creaked into the space which the French had
cleared for their killing ground.

Most of the French picquet had fled down the street ahead. It was a narrow, cobbled street
with a central gutter. Other streets led left and right, following the line where the walls had
once stood. In all the streets, Frenchmen were spilling from the houses and some paused to fire
at the Riflemen. A pistol bullet ricocheted from the window grille beside Sharpe’s
head.