Sharpe's Battle Part 25

d.i.c.k," Garrard hastened to add rea.s.suringly, "you're not one of the Irish, are you? We'll just make sure these Irish lads can't make mischief and then your lads can go back to some proper soldiering."

"I like these Irish lads," Sharpe said flatly, "and they're not making mischief. I can warrant that."

"I'm not the one you have to convince, d.i.c.k."

It was Hogan or Wellington, Sharpe supposed. And how clever of Hogan or

Wellington to send a Portuguese battalion to do the dirty work so that General

Valverde could not say that a British regiment had persecuted the Royal Irish

Company of the King of Spain's household guard. Sharpe blew out cigar smoke.

"So those sentries on the wall, Tom," he said, "they're not looking outwards for Loup, are they, but looking in at us?"

"They're looking both ways, d.i.c.k."

"Well, make sure they're looking outwards. Because if Loup comes, Tom, there'll be h.e.l.l to pay."

"They'll do their duty," Garrard said doggedly.

And they did. The diligent Portuguese picquets watched from the walls as the night chill spread down into the eastern valley where a ghostly mist worked its way upstream. They watched the long slopes, always alert to the smallest motion in the vaporous dark while in the fort some children of the Real

Compania Irlandesa cried in their sleep, a horse whinnied and a dog barked briefly. Two hours after midnight the sentries changed and the new men settled into their posts and gazed down the hillsides.

At three in the morning the owl flew back to its roost in the ruined chapel, its great white wings beating above the smouldering remnants of the Portuguese fires. Sharpe had been walking the sentries' beat and staring into the long shadowed night for the first sign of danger. Kiely and his wh.o.r.e were in bed, as was Runciman, but Sharpe stayed awake. He had taken what precautions he could, moving vast quant.i.ties of the Real Compania Irlandesa's spare ammunition into Colonel Runciman's day parlour and issuing the rest to the men. He had talked a long while with Donaju, rehearsing what they should do if an attack did come and then, when he believed he had done all he could, he had walked with Tom Garrard. Now, following the owl, Sharpe went to his bed. It was less than three hours till dawn and Loup, he decided, would not come now.

He lay down and fell fast asleep.

And ten minutes later woke to gunfire.

As the wolf, at last, attacked.

The first Sharpe knew of the attack was when Miranda, the girl rescued from the high border settlement, screamed like a banshee and for a second Sharpe thought he was dreaming, then he became aware of the gunshot that had preceded the scream by a split second and he opened his eyes to see that Rifleman

Thompson was dying, shot in the head and bleeding like a stuck pig. Thompson had been hurled clear down the flight of ten steps that led from the magazine's crooked entrance and now lay twitching as a flood of gore spurted from his matted hair. He had been carrying his rifle when he was shot and now the weapon skidded over the floor to stop beside Sharpe.

Shadows loomed at the stairhead. The magazine's main entrance led into a short tunnel which would have been equipped with two doors when the fort had been properly garrisoned and its magazine filled with shot and powder. Where the second door should have hung the tunnel turned in an abrupt right angle, then reversed back to the stairhead. The pair of turns had been designed to baffle any enemy sh.e.l.l that might have breached the magazine's entrance and in the bleak darkness the double angle had succeeded in slowing down Thompson's killers who now erupted into the tiny rushlight that burned in the great underground chamber.

Grey uniforms. This was not a dream, but a nightmare for the grey killers had come.

Sharpe seized Thompson's rifle, pointed the muzzle and pulled the trigger.

An explosion crashed through the cellar as a cl.u.s.ter of flames speared through a smoke cloud towards the French at the top of the stair. Patrick Harper had fired his seven-barrelled gun and the volley of pistol b.a.l.l.s slammed into the attackers to throw them back into the angle of the corridor's last turn where they went down in a welter of blood and pain. Two more riflemen fired. The magazine echoed with the shots and the air was stinking and thick with the choking smoke. A man was screaming, so was a girl. "Back way! Back way!"

Sharpe shouted. "Shut that b.l.o.o.d.y girl up, Perkins!" He seized his own rifle and fired it up the stairs. He could see nothing now except for the small shining spots where the tiny rushlights glimmered in the smoke. The French seemed to have vanished, though in truth they were merely trying to negotiate the barricade of screaming, bleeding, twitching men who had been hurled back by Harper's volley and the fusillade of rifle bullets.

There was a second stair at the magazine's end, a stair that twisted up to the ramparts and was designed to let ammunition be delivered direct to the firestep rather than be carried through the fort's courtyard. "Sergeant

Latimer!" Sharpe shouted. "Count them up! Thompson's out of it. Go, go!" If the French already held the ramparts, Sharpe reflected, then he and his riflemen were already trapped and doomed to die like rats in a hole, but he dared not abandon hope. "Go!" he shouted at his men. "Out! Out!" He had been sleeping with his boots on, so all he needed to do was s.n.a.t.c.h up his belt, pouches and sword. He slung the belt over his shoulder and began reloading the rifle. His eyes were smarting from the smoke. A French musket coughed more smoke at the top of the stairs and the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the back wall.

"Just you and Harps, sir!" Latimer called from the back stair.

"Go, Pat!" Sharpe said.

Boots clattered on the stairs. Sharpe abandoned his attempt to load the rifle, reversed the weapon instead and hammered its b.u.t.t at the shadow that appeared in the smoke. The man went down silently and hard, felled instantly by the bra.s.s-weighted blow. Harper, his rifle reloaded, fired blindly up the stairs, then grabbed Sharpe's elbow. "For the love of G.o.d, sir. Come on!"

Grey attackers were pouring down the stairs into the smoky darkness. A pistol fired, a man shouted in urgent French and another tripped over Thompson's corpse. The damp cave-like s.p.a.ce stank of urine, rotted eggs and sweat. Harper pulled Sharpe through the cloying smoke to the foot of the back stairs where

Latimer crouched. "Go on, sir!" Latimer had a loaded rifle that would serve as the parting shot.

Sharpe pounded up the stairs towards the cool and blessedly clean night air.

Latimer fired into the chaos, then followed Harper up the crooked stair.

Cresacre and Hagman were waiting at the stairhead with pointed rifles. "Don't shoot!" Sharpe called as he neared the stairhead, then pushed past the two riflemen and ran to the inner edge of the firestep to try and understand the night's full horror.

Harper ran to the door that led into the gate tower, only to find it was barred from the inside. He hammered on the wood with the b.u.t.t of his volley gun. "Open up!" he shouted. "Open up!"

Hagman fired down the winding stair and a scream echoed up the steps.

"Behind us, sir!" Perkins called. He was sheltering a terrified Miranda in one of the machicolations, "and there's more on the road, sir!"

Sharpe swore. The gatehouse, that he had thought would be the night's salvation, was already captured. He could see that the gate was wide open and being guarded by grey-uniformed soldiers. Sharpe guessed two companies of

Loup's voltigeurs, distinguished by the red epaulettes they wore, had led the attack and both were now inside the fort. One company had gone straight to the magazine where Sharpe and his men were bivouacking while most of the second company had spread into a skirmish line that was now advancing fast among the barracks blocks. Another squad of the grey-clad infantry was running up a ramp which led to the wall's wide firestep.

Harper kept trying to break the door down, but no one inside the gatehouse responded. Sharpe shouldered his half-loaded rifle and drew his sword. "Leave it, Pat!" he shouted. "Rifles! Line on me!" The real danger now was the section of men coming up to the wall. If those men got a lodging in the gun platforms then Sharpe's riflemen would be trapped while the rest of Loup's men swarmed into the San Isidro. That main enemy force was now hurrying up the approach road and, from the one quick southward glance that he could spare,

Sharpe could see that Loup had sent his whole brigade into this attack which had been spearheaded by two companies of light infantry. G.o.d d.a.m.n it, Sharpe thought, but he had got everything wrong. The French had not attacked from the north, but from the south, and in so doing they had already captured the fort's strongest point, the place Sharpe had planned to turn into an impregnable stronghold. He guessed that the two elite companies had crept up the approach road and rushed the causeway before any sentry called the alarm.

And doubtless, too, the gates had been unbarred from inside by the same person who had betrayed where Sharpe, Loup's sworn enemy, was to be found and where

Loup, seeking his revenge, had sent one of the two attacking companies.

Now, though, was not the time to a.n.a.lyse Loup's tactics, but to clear the ramparts of the Frenchmen who threatened to isolate Sharpe's riflemen. "Fix swords," he ordered, and waited while his men slotted the long, sword-handled bayonets onto their rifles' muzzles. "Be calm, lads," he said. He knew his men were frightened and excited after being woken to nightmare by a clever enemy, but this was no time for panic. It was a time for very cool heads and murderous fighting. "Let's get the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! Come on!" Sharpe called and he led his men in a ragged line down the moonlit battlements. The first Frenchmen to reach the firestep dropped to their knees and took aim, but they were outnumbered, in the dark and nervous and so they fired early and their bullets flew wide or high. Then, fearing to be overwhelmed by the dark ma.s.s of riflemen, the voltigeurs turned and ran down the ramp to join the skirmish line that was advancing between the barracks blocks towards Oliveira's cacadores.

The Portuguese, Sharpe decided, must fend for themselves. His duty lay with the Real Compania Irlandesa whose twin barracks had already been surrounded by the French skirmishers. The voltigeurs were firing at the barracks from the shelter of the other buildings, but they dared not attack, for the Irish guardsmen had opened a brisk return fire. Sharpe a.s.sumed the Real Compania

Irlandesa's officers were already either dead or prisoners, though it was possible that a few might have escaped out of the gatehouse's rampart doors as the French streamed into the lower rooms. "Listen, lads!" Sharpe raised his voice so that all his riflemen could hear. "We can't stay here. The b.u.g.g.e.rs will be up from the magazine soon so we're going over to join the Irish boys.

We'll barricade ourselves inside and keep firing." He would have liked to split his greenjackets into two groups, one for each of the besieged barracks, but he doubted any man could reach the further barracks alive. The nearer of the two was less infested by voltigeurs, but it was also the barracks where the wives and children were quartered and thus the more in need of extra firepower. "Are you ready?" Sharpe called. "Let's go!"

They ran down the ramp just as Oliveira's skirmishers attacked from the right.

The appearance of the cacadores distracted the voltigeurs and gave Sharpe's riflemen the chance to cross to the barracks without fighting through a whole voltigeur company, but it was a narrow chance, for even as Harper began shouting in Gaelic to order the Real Compania Irlandesa to open their door a huge cheer from the gatehouse on Sharpe's left announced the arrival of Loup's main force. Sharpe was among the barracks now where the voltigeurs were retreating from the attack of the Portuguese skirmishers. The Frenchmen's retreat drove them at right angles across Sharpe's path. Loup's men realized their danger too late. A sergeant screamed a warning, then was clubbed to the ground by Harper's volley gun. The Frenchman tried to stand, then the b.u.t.t of the heavy gun slammed sickeningly into his skull. Another Frenchman tried to turn and run in the opposite direction, then realized in his panic that he was running towards the Portuguese and so turned back again only to find Rifleman

Harris's sword bayonet at his throat. "Non, monsieur!" the Frenchman cried as he dropped his musket and raised his hands.