Sharpe's Battle Part 43

Sharpe tensed. The silence, after the crash of the guns and the splintering thunder of the roundshots' destructive impacts, was unnerving. Maybe, he thought, it was just a strange pause, like the sudden coincidental silence that could descend on a room of lively talkers during that moment when an angel was said to be pa.s.sing over the room, and maybe an angel had flickered across the gunsmoke and all the French cannon had found themselves momentarily unloaded. Sharpe almost found himself praying for the guns to start again, but the silence stretched and stretched, threatening to be replaced by something much worse than a cannonade. Somewhere in the village a man coughed and a musket lock clicked. A horse whinnied up on the ridge where the pipes played.

Rubble fell in a house where a wounded man whimpered. Out in the street a spent French cannon ball rolled gently downhill, then lodged against a fallen beam.

"I suspect we'll have company soon, gentlemen," Williams said. He climbed down from the bench and brushed white dust from his faded green jacket. "Very soon.

Can't see a thing from here. Gunsmoke, you see. Worse than fog." He was talking to fill the ominous silence. "Down to the stream, I think. Not that we can hold them there, not enough loopholes, but once they're in the village they'll find life a bit difficult. At least I hope so." He nodded agreeably to

Sharpe, then ducked out of the door. His staff ran after him.

"We're not staying here, are we, sir?" Harper asked.

"Might as well see what's happening," Sharpe said. "Got nothing better to do.

Are you loaded?"

"Just the rifle."

"I'd have the volley gun ready," Sharpe said. "Just in case." He began loading his own rifle just as the British guns on the ridge opened fire. Their smoke jetted sixty feet out from the crest and their noise punched at the wounded village as the shots screamed overhead towards the advancing French battalions.

Sharpe stood on the bench to see the dark columns of infantry emerging from the French gunsmoke. The first British case shot exploded above and ahead of the columns, each explosion staining the air with a smear of grey-white smoke riven with fire. Solid shots seared into the ma.s.sed ranks, but none of the missiles seemed to make an ounce of difference. The columns kept coming: twelve thousand men under their eagles being drummed across the flat land towards the hammering artillery and the waiting muskets and the primed rifles beyond the stream. Sharpe looked left and right, but saw no other enemies apart from a handful of green-coated dragoons patrolling the southern fields.

"They're coming straight in," he said, "no messing. One attack, Pat, hard at the village. No b.u.g.g.e.ring round the edge yet. Looks like they think they can come straight through here. There'll be more brigades behind, and they'll throw them in one after the other till they get the church. After that it's downhill all the way to the Atlantic, so if we don't stop them here we'll not stop them anywhere."

"Well, as you say, sir, we've got nothing better to do." Harper finished loading his seven-barrelled gun, then picked up a small rag doll that had been discarded under the garden bench. The doll had a red torso on which a mother had st.i.tched a white crossbelt to imitate a British infantryman's uniform.

Harper propped the doll in a niche in the wall. "You keep guard now," he said to the rag bundle.

Sharpe half drew his sword and tested the edge. "Didn't get it sharpened," he said. Before a battle he liked to have the big blade professionally honed by a cavalry armourer, but there had been no time. He hoped it was not an omen.

"You'll just have to bludgeon the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds to death then," Harper said, then crossed himself before reaching into his pocket to make sure his rabbit's foot was in its proper place. He looked back to the rag doll and was suddenly overwhelmed by a certainty that his own fate hung on the doll surviving in the wall's niche. "You take care now," he told the doll, then gave fate a nudge by jamming a sc.r.a.p of stone across the niche's face to try and imprison the small rag toy.

A crackling sound like the tearing of calico announced that the British skirmishers had opened fire. The French voltigeurs had been advancing a hundred paces in front of their columns, but now were stopped by the fire of the riflemen concealed among the gardens and hovels on the stream's far bank.

For a few minutes the skirmish fire stuttered loud, then the outnumbering voltigeurs threatened to surround the British skirmishers and the whistles of the officers and sergeants sounded shrilly to call the greenjackets back through the gardens. Two riflemen were limping, a third was being carried by two of his comrades, but most splashed unscathed through the stream and up into the labyrinthine maze of cottages and alleys.

The French voltigeurs crouched behind the garden walls on the stream's far bank and began trading fire with the village's defenders. The stream became fogged with a lacy veil of powder smoke that drifted south in the day's small wind. Sharpe and Harper, still waiting in the inn, could hear the French drummers sounding the pas de charge, the rhythm that had driven Napoleon's veterans over half Europe to fell their enemies like ninepins. The drums suddenly paused and both Sharpe and Harper instinctively mouthed the words along with twelve thousand Frenchmen, "Vive l'Empereur." Both men laughed as the drums started again.

The guns on the ridge had abandoned the case shot and were smashing roundshot down into the columns and now that the enemy's main formations were almost at the village's eastern gardens Sharpe could see the damage being done by the iron b.a.l.l.s as they slashed through file and rank to fling men aside like b.l.o.o.d.y rags before bouncing in sprays of misted blood to smash into yet more ranks of men. Again and again the missiles lanced through the ma.s.sed files, yet again and again, doggedly, unstoppably, the French closed up their ranks and kept on coming. The drummers beat on, the eagles flashed in the sun as brightly as the bayonets on the muskets of the leading ranks.

The drums paused again. "Vive l'Empereur!" the ma.s.s of Frenchmen called, but this time they drew out the last syllable into a long cheer that sustained them as they were released to the attack. The columns could not march in close order through the maze of walled gardens on the village's eastern bank and so the attacking infantry was let off the leash and ordered to charge pell-mell through the vegetable plots and small orchards, across the stream and up into the fire of Colonel Williams's defenders.

"G.o.d save us," Harper said in awe as the French attack engulfed the far bank like a dark wave. The enemy were cheering as they ran and as they overwhelmed the small walls and trampled down the spring crops and splashed into the shallow stream.

"Fire!" a voice shouted and the muskets and rifles cracked from the loopholed houses. A Frenchman went down, his blood thick in the water. Another fell on the clapper bridge and was unceremoniously pushed into the ford by the men crowding behind. Sharpe and Harper both fired from the inn garden, their bullets spinning over the lower roofs to plough into the ma.s.s of attackers who were now shielded from the artillery on the ridge by the village itself.

The first French attackers burst against the village's eastern walls. Bayonets clashed against bayonets. Sharpe saw a Frenchman appear on a top of a wall, then jump down into a hidden yard. More Frenchmen followed him across the wall. "Sword on, Pat," Sharpe said and drew his own sword as Harper clicked the sword bayonet onto his rifle. They ducked through the garden door and ran down the main street to find their progress blocked by a double rank of redcoats who were waiting with charged muskets and fixed bayonets. Twenty yards further down the street there were more redcoats who were firing over a makeshift barricade of window shutters, doors, tree branches and a pair of commandeered handcarts. The barricade was shaking from the a.s.sault of the

French on the far side and every few seconds a musket would be thrust through the entanglement and blast fire, smoke and bullet at the defenders.

"Ready to open files!" the redcoat Lieutenant called. He looked to be about eighteen years old, but his West Country voice was firm. He nodded a greeting to Sharpe, then looked back to the barricade. "Steady now, boys, steady!"

Sharpe knew he would not need the sword yet, so sheathed it and reloaded his rifle instead. He bit the bullet off the cartridge, then held the round in his mouth as he pulled the rifle's hammer back one click to the half c.o.c.k. He could taste the acrid, salty powder in his mouth as he poured a pinch of powder from the cartridge into the lock's open pan. He held tight to the rest of the cartridge as he pulled the frizzen full up to close the pan cover, then, with the rifle so primed, he let its bra.s.s stock fall to the ground. He poured the rest of the cartridge's powder into the muzzle, crammed the empty waxed cartridge paper on top of the powder to serve as wadding, then bent his head to spit the bullet into the gun. He yanked out the steel ramming rod with his left hand, spun the ramrod so that the splayed head faced downwards and thrust the rod hard down the barrel. He pulled it out, spun it again and let it fall into its holding rings, then tossed the rifle up with his left hand, caught it under the lock with his right and pulled the hammer back through a second click so that the weapon was at full c.o.c.k and ready to fire. It had taken him twelve seconds and he had not thought once about what he was doing, nor even looked at the gun while he loaded it. The manoeuvre was the basic skill of his trade, the necessary skill that had to be taught to new recruits and then practised and practised until it was second nature. As a new recruit, just sixteen years old, Sharpe had dreamed about loading muskets. He had been forced to do it again and again until he had been bored rigid by the drill and was ready to spit at the sergeants for making him do it one more time and then, on a damp day in Flanders, he had found himself doing it for real and suddenly he had fumbled the cartridge and lost his ramrod and forgotten to prime the musket. He had somehow survived that fight, and afterwards he had practised again until at last he could do it without thinking. It was the same skill that he had laboured to drive into the Real Compania Irlandesa during their unhappy stay in the San Isidro Fort.

Now, as he watched the defenders back away from the collapsing barricade, he found himself wondering how many times he had loaded a gun. Except there was no time to make a guess for the barricade's defenders were running back up the street and the victory roar of the French was swelling as they dismantled the last pieces of the obstacle.

"Open files!" the Lieutenant shouted and the two ranks of men obediently opened their files out from the centre to let the barricade's defenders stream through. At least three red-jacketed bodies were left on the street. A wounded man collapsed and pulled himself into a doorway, then a red-faced captain with grey side whiskers ran through the gap and shouted at the men to close ranks.

The files closed again. "Front rank, kneel!" the Lieutenant shouted when his two ranks were again arrayed across the street. "Wait for it!" he called, and this time his voice cracked with nervousness. "Wait for it!" he called again more firmly, then drew his sword and gave the slim blade a couple of tentative strokes. He swallowed as he watched the French finally burst through the wreckage and charge up the hill with their bayonets fixed.

"Fire!" the Lieutenant shouted, and the twenty-four muskets crashed in unison to choke the road with smoke. Somewhere a man was screaming. Sharpe fired his rifle and heard the distinctive sound of a bullet hitting a musket stock.

"Front rank, stand!" the Lieutenant called. "At the double! Advance!"

The smoke cleared to show a half-dozen blue-coated bodies down on the stones and earth of the road. Burning sc.r.a.ps of wadding flickered like candle flames.

The enemy retreated fast from the threat of the bayonets, but then another ma.s.s of blue uniforms appeared at the bottom edge of the village.

"I'm ready, Pollard!" a voice called behind Sharpe, and the Lieutenant, hearing it, halted his men.

"Back, boys!" he shouted and the two ranks, unable to advance against the new ma.s.s of the enemy, broke files and retreated uphill. The new attackers had loaded muskets and some stopped to aim. Harper gave them the seven barrels of his volley gun, then followed Sharpe up the hill as the smoke of the big gun spread between the houses.

The grey-whiskered Captain had formed a new defence line that opened to let the Lieutenant's men through. The Lieutenant formed his men into their two ranks a few paces behind the Captain's men and shouted at the redcoats to reload. Sharpe reloaded with them. Harper, knowing he would not have time to reload the volley gun, strapped it across his back and spat a bullet into his rifle.

The drums were still beating the pas de charge, while on the ridge behind

Sharpe the pipes were rivalling the sound with their feral music. The cannon on the ridge were still firing, presumably aiming case shot at the distant

French artillery. The small village reeked of powder smoke, reverberated with musket shots and echoed with the screams and shouts of frightened men.

"Fire!" the Captain ordered and his men poured a volley down the street. It was answered by a French volley. The enemy had decided to use their firepower rather than try to rush the defenders, and it was a battle the Captain knew he must lose. "Close on me, Pollard!" he shouted and the young Lieutenant took his men down to join the Captain's troops.

"Fire!" Pollard shouted, then made a mewing sound that was momentarily drowned by the crash of his men's muskets. The Lieutenant staggered back, blood showing on the white facings of his elegant coat. He staggered again and let go of his sword which clattered on a doorstep.

"Take him back, Pat," Sharpe said. "Meet me at the top of the cemetery."

Harper lifted the Lieutenant as though he was a child and ran back up the street. The redcoats were reloading, their ramrods rising and falling over their dark shakoes. Sharpe waited for the smoke to clear and looked for an enemy officer. He saw a moustached man carrying a sword, aimed, fired and thought he saw the man twist backwards, but the smoke obscured his view and then a great rush of Frenchmen pounded up the street.

"Bayonets!" the Captain called.

One redcoat backed away. Sharpe put his hand in the small of the man's back and shoved him hard back into his rank. He slung his rifle and drew his sword again. The French charge stalled in the face of the unbroken ranks with their grim steel blades, but the Captain knew he was outgunned and outnumbered.

"Pace backwards!" he ordered. "Slow and steady! Slow and steady! If you're loaded, boys, give them a shot."

A dozen muskets fired, but at least twice as many Frenchmen returned the volley and the Captain's ranks seemed to shudder as the b.a.l.l.s struck home.

Sharpe was serving as a sergeant now, keeping the files in place from behind, but he was also looking back up the street to where a mixture of redcoats and greenjackets were retreating haphazardly from an alley. Their ragged retreat suggested the French were not far behind them and in a moment or two, Sharpe reckoned, the Captain's small company might be cut off. "Captain!" he shouted, then pointed with his sword when he had the man's attention.

"Back, lads, back!" The Captain grasped the danger immediately. His men turned and ran up the street. Some were helping their comrades, a few ran hard to find safety, but most stayed together to join the larger number of British troops who were forming in the small cobbled s.p.a.ce at the village's centre.