Sharpe's Battle Part 41

"I'm ordered to stay with you till someone tells me to go somewhere else,"

Sharpe said. He did not want to admit that he was facing a court of inquiry, not because he was ashamed of his conduct, but because he did not want other men's sympathies. The court was a battle that he would have to face when the time came.

"You're guarding the ammunition?" Donaju seemed surprised.

"Someone has to," Sharpe said. "But don't worry, Donaju, they'll take me away from you before you go to Cadiz. Valverde doesn't want me there."

"So what do we do today?" Donaju asked nervously.

"Today," Sharpe said, "we do our duty. And there are fifty thousand Frogs doing theirs, and somewhere over that hill, Donaju, their duty and our duty will get b.l.o.o.d.y contradictory."

"It will be bad," Donaju said, not quite as a statement and not quite as a question either.

Sharpe heard the nervousness. Donaju had never been in a major battle and any man, however brave, was right to be nervous at the prospect. "It'll be bad,"

Sharpe said. "The noise is the worst, that and the powder fog, but always remember one thing: it's just as bad for the French. And I'll tell you another thing. I don't know why, and maybe it's just my imagination, but the Frogs always seem to break before we do. Just when you think you can't hold on for a minute longer, count to ten and by the time you reach six the b.l.o.o.d.y Frogs will have turned tail and b.u.g.g.e.red off. Now watch out, here's trouble."

The trouble was manifested by the approach of a thin, tall and bespectacled major in the blue coat of the Royal Artillery. He was carrying a sheaf of papers that kept coming loose as he tried to find one particular sheet among the rest. The errant sheets were being fielded by two nervous red-coated privates, one of whom had his arm in a dirty sling while the other was struggling along on a crutch. The Major waved at Sharpe and Donaju, thus releasing another flutter of paper. "The thing is," the Major said without any attempt to introduce himself, "that the divisions have their own ammunition parks. One or the other, I said, make up your mind! But no! Divisions will be independent! Which leaves us, you understand, with the central reserve. They call it that, though G.o.d knows it's rarely in the centre and, of course, in the very nature of things, we are never told what stocks the divisions themselves hold. They demand more, we yield, and suddenly there is none. It is a problem. Let us hope and pray the French do things worse. Is that tea?" The

Major, who had a broad Scottish accent, peered hopefully at the mug in

Donaju's hand.

"It is, sir," Donaju said, "but foul."

"Let me taste it, I beg you. Thank you. Pick up that paper, Magog, the day's battle may depend upon it. Gog and Magog," he introduced the two hapless privates. "Gog is bereft one arm, Magog one leg, and both the rogues are

Welsh. Together they are a Welshman and a half, and the three of us, or two and a half if I am to be exact, comprise the entire staff complement of the central reserve." The Major smiled suddenly. "Alexander Tarrant," he introduced himself. "Major in the artillery but seconded to the Quartermaster

General's staff. I think of myself as the a.s.sistant-a.s.sistant-a.s.sistant

Quartermaster General, and you, I suspect, are the new a.s.sistant-a.s.sistant-

a.s.sistant-a.s.sistant Quartermaster Generals? Which means that Gog and Magog are now a.s.sistant-a.s.sistant-a.s.sistant-a.s.sistant-a.s.sistant Quartermaster Generals.

Demoted, by G.o.d! Will their careers ever recover? This tea is delicious, though tepid. You must be Captain Sharpe?"

"Yes, sir."

"An honour, Sharpe, 'pon my soul, an honour." Tarrant thrust out a hand, thus releasing a cascade of paper. "Heard about the d.i.c.kie-bird, Sharpe, and confess I was moved mightily." It took Sharpe half a second to realize that

Tarrant was talking about the eagle that Sharpe had captured at Talavera, but before he could respond the Major was already talking again. "And you must be

Donaju of the royal guard? 'Pon my soul, Gog, but we're in elevated company!

You'll have to mind your manners today!"

"Private Hughes, sir," Gog introduced himself to Sharpe, "and that's my brother." He gestured with his one arm at Magog.

"The Hughes brothers," Tarrant explained, "were wounded in their country's service and reduced to my servitude. Till now, Sharpe, they have been the sole guard for the ammunition. Gog would kick intruders and Magog shake his crutch at them. Once recovered, of course, they will return to duty and I shall be provided with yet more cripples to protect the powder and shot. Except today,

Donaju, I have your fine fellows. Let us examine your duties!"

The duties were hardly onerous. The central reserve was just that, a place where hard-pressed divisions, brigades or even battalions could send for more ammunition. A motley collection of Royal Wagon Train drivers augmented by muleteers and carters recruited from the local population were available to deliver the infantry cartridges while the artillery usually provided their own transport. The difficulty of his own job, Tarrant said, was in working out which requests were frivolous and which desperate. "I like to keep the supplies intact," the Scotsman said, "until we near the end of an engagement.

Anyone requesting ammunition in the first few hours is either already defeated or merely nervous. These papers purport to describe the divisional reserves, though the Lord alone knows how accurate they are." He thrust the papers at

Sharpe, then pulled them back in case Sharpe muddled them. "Lastly, of course," Tarrant went on, "there is always the problem of making certain the ammunition gets through. Drivers can be"-he paused, looking for a word-

"cowards!" he finally said, then frowned at the severity of the judgement.

"Not all, of course, and some are wonderfully stout-hearted, but the quality isn't consistent. Perhaps, gentlemen, when the fighting gets b.l.o.o.d.y, I might rely on your men to fortify the drivers' bravery?" He made this inquiry nervously, as though half expecting that Sharpe or Donaju might refuse. When neither offered a demurral, he smiled. "Good! Well, Sharpe, maybe you'd like to survey the landscape? Can't despatch ammunition without knowing whither it's bound."

The offer gave Sharpe a temporary freedom. He knew that both he and Donaju had been shuffled aside as inconveniences and that Tarrant needed neither of them, yet still a battle was to be fought and the more Sharpe understood of the battlefield the better. "Because if things go bad, Pat," he told Harper as the two of them walked towards the gun line on the misted plateau's crest, "we'll be in the thick of it." The two carried their weapons, but had left their packs and greatcoats with the ammunition wagons.

"Still seems odd," Harper said, "having nothing proper to do."

"b.l.o.o.d.y Frogs might find us work," Sharpe said dourly. The two men were standing at the British gun line that faced east into the rising sun that was making the mist glow above the Dos Casas stream. That stream flowed south along the foot of the high, flat-topped ridge where Sharpe and Harper were standing and which barred the French routes to Almeida. The French could have committed suicide by attacking directly over the stream and fighting up the ridge's steep escarpment into the face of the British guns, but barring that unlikely self-destruction there were only two other routes to the besieged garrison at Almeida. One led north around the ridge, but that road was barred by the still formidable ruins of Fort Conception and Wellington had decided that Ma.s.sena would try this southern road that led through Fuentes de Onoro.

The village lay where the ridge fell to a wide, marshy plain above which the morning mist now shredded and faded. The road from Ciudad Rodrigo ran white and straight across that flat land to where it forded the Dos Casas stream.

Once over the stream the road climbed the hill between the village houses to reach the plateau where it forked into two roads. One road led to Almeida a dozen miles to the north-west and the other to Castello Bom and its murderously narrow bridge across the deep gorge of the Coa. If the French were to reach either road and so relieve the besieged town and force the redcoats back to the bottleneck of the narrow bridge, then they must first fight up the steep village streets of Fuentes de Onoro which was garrisoned with a mix of redcoats and greenjackets.

The ridge and the village both demanded that the enemy fight uphill, but there was a second and much more inviting option open to the French. A second road ran west across the plain south of the village. That second road ran through flat country and led to the pa.s.sable fords that crossed the Coa further south.

Those fords were the only place Wellington could hope to withdraw his guns, wagons and wounded if he was forced to retreat into Portugal, and if the

French threatened to outflank Fuentes de Onoro by looping deep around the southern plain then Wellington would have to come down from the plateau to defend his escape route. If he chose not to come down from the heights then he would abandon the only routes that offered a safe crossing of the River Coa.

Such a decision to let the French cut the southern roads would commit

Wellington's army to victory or to utter annihilation. It was a choice Sharpe would not have wanted to make himself.

"G.o.d save Ireland," Harper suddenly said, "but would you look at that?"

Sharpe had been looking south towards the inviting flat meadows that offered such an easy route around Fuentes de Onoro's flank, but now he looked east to where Harper was staring.

And to where the mist had thinned to reveal a long, dark grove of cork oaks and holm oaks, and out of that grove, just where the white road left the dark trees, an army was appearing. Ma.s.sena's men must have bivouacked on the trees' far side and the smoke of their morning fires had melded with the mist to look like cloud, but now, in a grimly threatening silence, the French army debouched onto the plain that lapped wide about the village.

Some of the British gunners leaped to their guns' trails and began handspiking the cannons around so that the barrels were aimed at the place where the road came from the trees, but a gunner colonel trotted along the line and shouted at the crews to hold their fire. "Let them come closer! Hold your fire! Let's see where they place their batteries! Don't waste your powder. Morning, John!

Nice one again!" the Colonel called to an acquaintance, then touched his hat in a polite greeting to the two strange riflemen. "You boys will have some trade today, I don't doubt."

"You too, Colonel," Sharpe said.

The Colonel spurred on and Sharpe turned back to the east. He drew out his telescope and leaned on a gunwheel to steady the spygla.s.s's long barrel.

French infantry was forming at the tree line just behind the deploying batteries of French artillery. The guns' teams of oxen and horses were being led back into the shelter of the oaks while squads of gunners hoisted the hugely heavy cannon barrels out of their rear travelling trunnion holes and moved them into the forward fighting holes where other men used hammers to fasten the capsquares over the newly placed trunnions. Other gunners were piling ammunition close to the guns: squat cylinders of roundshot ready- strapped to their canvas bags of gunpowder. "Looks like solid shot," Sharpe told Harper. "They'll be aiming for the village."