Sharpe 14 sharpes comm.., p.5
Sharpe 14 - Sharpe's Command, page 5
“And will we do that by shooting them, or by feeling sorry for them?”
“They’re only lads,” Hagman said.
“And they won’t waste pity on you.” Sharpe looked south again. He reckoned the French would have to go at least half a mile that way before they could cross the stream unseen. That is what he would have done if he were leading the Frenchmen. Go south and work his way behind the rocky spur and assault from behind. Then it would be quick and brutal bayonet work at nightfall. “Soon as it’s real dark,” he called, “we’ll keep moving south.”
Still there was no movement ahead or to either side. Sharpe assumed the men on the opposite ridge were led by an officer, and was that man waiting for twilight? Sharpe’s instinct told him that the men opposing him were not a real threat. They outnumbered him and a charge across the valley would mean some men inevitably reaching his position, and once the French were within a few yards the rifles would offer no advantage over the French muskets, but in a close fight Sharpe had every confidence in two of his companions. The French would have lost close to half their force to the deadly rifles and then have to deal with Harper’s volley gun and his own brutal sword. It would be a nasty fight, but Sharpe did not fear it. He reckoned such a charge was likely, simply because it was the enemy’s simplest solution. Of course the opposing officer might already have dispatched half his force north or southward, unseen to Sharpe, but his instinct rejected the idea. The French would go for the easiest solution and doubtless were waiting for the failing light to make aiming rifles difficult. If Dan Hagman was right, then the French patrol had already lost one man at a range when a musket shot would be a sheer fluke, which meant they must realize they were facing rifles, so waiting for the light to fail made some sense for them.
“You reckon they’ll come in a line, Mister Sharpe?” Hagman asked.
“I’m sure they will, Dan.”
“Makes it easier for us,” Hagman said sourly, “but the buggers don’t like lines.”
“He’ll spread them out if he has any sense.”
“If he had any sense,” Harper said, “he’d crawl back to his bed. Probably got a warm frow waiting for him. Instead he’ll kill his men and probably die himself.”
“Why are they waiting, sir?” Lieutenant Love hissed at Sharpe.
“Because they don’t want to die,” Sharpe said, “and they want the sun to go down.”
The western clouds were now rimmed with golden fire, the valley darkening with shadow. Sharpe saw a movement on the far ridge and knew it was a man peering round a rock. He lowered his eye to the rifle and folded up the rear sight. The notch in the sight lined with the nub at the muzzle and both lay over the distant face, but Sharpe kept his finger from the trigger. He doubted the shot would be accurate. Dan Hagman could make the shot, but Dan was a phenomenal marksman. “You don’t aim,” he had once told Sharpe, “you feel the shot.”
And who was the man lined up in the crude sights? Hagman was right, it was probably some farm boy from God knows where, forced by conscription into the French ranks and sent to Spain to be shot at by partisans and terrified by cannon fire. Sharpe lowered the rifle so it rested on the turf and twitched with surprise as Hagman fired again.
“Nineteen left,” the old poacher said. He had hit another man on the southernmost end of the French line. Sharpe’s target had vanished, ducking behind the rock that sheltered him.
“Well done, Dan,” Sharpe called.
“Too easy, Mister Sharpe.”
The smoke from Hagman’s rifle hung above the valley, drifting slowly toward the stream. Sharpe folded the backsight flat again. He felt annoyed. The enemy officer was being stupid, which offended Sharpe. There was a job to be done and the man was doing it all wrong. That, of course, was to Sharpe’s advantage, but like Hagman he could not help feeling pity for the youngsters who would die because of it. The opposing officer had not been completely stupid; he had worked out the route Sharpe must take back to the village and set an ambush in a good place that gave him the high ground, and if it had not been for Hagman’s keen eyesight the ambush might well have worked. But now, with his plan foiled, the wretched man did not know what to do, or at least he showed no sign of knowing. Sharpe guessed that the French in Fort Napoleon had spotted the riflemen as they walked the ridge-top to gaze down at the pontoon bridge, and presumably the officer commanding Fort Napoleon had sent a subordinate officer to capture the four strangers, and that officer was now in a quandary. He did not want to retreat to be greeted by his commanding officer’s scorn and had no idea how to advance. He seemed to be making no attempt to outflank, had ordered no charge across the stream’s valley, and had not even encouraged a musket shot. “He’s a rabbit,” Sharpe said angrily.
“Who?” Lieutenant Love asked.
“The officer leading them. Doesn’t know what he’s doing.”
“Lieutenant Lapin,” Love said happily.
“You know him?” Sharpe asked, astonished.
“Lapin is the French for rabbit, sir,” Love said, “a masculine noun, though I believe in some regions they use the word cony.”
“Well, this Lieutenant Lapin is bloody useless,” Sharpe growled.
“Rabbits can be cunning little buggers, Mister Sharpe,” Hagman said as he primed his rifle again.
“This rabbit’s waiting for the light to fade,” Sharpe said. The sun must have gone behind the western horizon for the clouds there darkened and their golden rim shrank. There was still a glow in the sky, though behind Sharpe a spreading darkness stained the east. “Soon,” he muttered, “and once it’s dark we go whether they’ve attacked or not.” He was beginning to expect that Capitaine Rabbit was waiting for full darkness so he could withdraw and plead the night as an excuse for losing two men. Three men. Hagman had just shot again.
“Eighteen, Mister Sharpe.”
“Leave some for us, Dan,” Harper said.
“Plenty to go round,” Hagman muttered.
Sharpe glanced to his right and saw the glow of firelight illuminating the distant inner courtyard walls of Fort Napoleon. They must have heard the shots coming from the hills, so had they sent more men? He could see no movement to the east, but any French reinforcements would be hidden by the ridge where Capitaine or maybe Lieutenant Rabbit was waiting. General Hill’s aide had been certain that each of the two French forts had garrisons of about four to five hundred men, so they could certainly spare more troops, though if the garrison’s commander suspected that the outbreak of musket fire in the hills presaged a full attack on his walls he would likely keep the majority of his men behind their battlements. Which meant Capitaine Rabbit was all on his own, and faced by three of the best riflemen in the British army, but Sharpe just wished the bugger would make up his mind and move. Sharpe stared across the valley where the shadows were darkening into night. “If he’s going to move, he’d best do it soon,” he said, “so not long now!”
He used a finger to test how firmly his rifle’s flint was held by the doghead. It was a habit he did not like, but he knew he would compulsively test the flint again and again until the fight started. He gazed across the valley at the place he had seen a man and saw he was there again, now just a shape in the fading light. More than a shape, Sharpe could see the man’s pale face. He raised the backsight, aimed carefully, held his breath, and pulled the trigger. The face vanished. “Missed, sir,” Lieutenant Love said, “shot went high.”
“Bugger,” Sharpe said.
“The sun was in your eyes, Mister Sharpe,” Hagman said tactfully. Sharpe reversed the rifle and began the awkward process of reloading while prone. It was twilight now, the half-dark half-light prelude to night. There would be a half moon, Sharpe knew, but it had not yet risen and would offer little help till later. “I reckon we start walking now,” he called as he clumsily rammed the leather-wrapped bullet down his rifle.
“Now?” Harper sounded surprised.
“They’ll follow us on the valley’s far side,” Sharpe said, “and we just pick them off.”
But Capitaine Rabbit must have come to a decision at the same time as Sharpe, for he ordered a musket volley that crackled suddenly, obscuring the far crest with thick smoke and spattering musket balls into the rocky knoll where Sharpe sheltered. “Everyone all right?” he called.
“Good as new,” Harper said.
“They missed me, Mister Sharpe.”
“I’m alive, sir,” Love said.
“Then let’s go,” Sharpe said.
He stood. It seemed a pity to leave the cartridges and ready bullets on the rock, so he scuffed them into the turf with his boot. “Just follow the ridgeline south,” he said, and just then Capitaine Rabbit charged.
He was not a completely foolish rabbit. He had held back nine of his men, who were now standing on the far ridge and reloading their muskets. The rest leaped down the farther slope, led by Capitaine Rabbit, who was waving a saber and shouting them on. “You take the men on the ridge, Dan!” Sharpe shouted, then aimed his rifle down at the stream, waiting for the Frenchmen to leap it. They were dark shapes in the shadowed valley, but he could see the bayonets and the glint of buckles and shako plates. He aimed at the officer, betrayed by his drawn saber, and pulled the trigger just as the man jumped the stream. The gun kicked into his shoulder and his right cheek stung from the flecks of burning powder. The smoke obscured whether or not he had hit the officer, but the shot had felt good. Harper fired as Sharpe bit off a bullet from the next cartridge. He would not bother about the leather patch, but just spit the ball down the barrel and ram the wadding on top. Hagman fired and still the smoke hid Sharpe’s view so he ran three paces to his left and saw seven Frenchmen climbing toward him. Rifle to the shoulder, pull back the doghead, aim, and again the rifle kicked back. The Frenchmen, all of whom had fixed bayonets, had instinctively bunched together. “Leave them to me!” Harper shouted and put the volley gun to his right shoulder.
Lieutenant Love fired his pistol and yelped with delight as a Frenchman stumbled.
“If the buggers reach us,” Sharpe said to Love, “you run like buggery and take Pat and Dan home.”
“Run away?” Love sounded astonished.
“Sometimes it’s the best tactic,” Sharpe growled, then rammed the rifle and brought the gun to his shoulder. A musket ball ripped past his face, maybe a hand’s breadth away. He could see men firing from the far ridge, but the range was far too long for the clumsy French muskets. Six of the seven men were getting nearer and their nervousness was making them bunch even closer together. The officer had vanished and Sharpe could just see the curve of his saber glinting in the stream. The surviving Frenchmen were shouting each other on, then the darkness was split by a gout of flame as the sound of the volley gun bellowed across the valley. The Frenchmen were blasted apart as the seven balls flayed them. Sharpe saw two fall backward, a third was staggering and screaming, then the others were at the summit and Harper was beating at them with the volley gun’s butt. Hagman fired again and Sharpe threw his rifle aside and drew his sword.
It was no ordinary sword, or rather it was very ordinary, though not for an infantryman. The sword was a heavy cavalry blade, cheap to produce, long, straight, heavy and clumsy, but Sharpe liked it. In the hands of a strong man it was a butcher’s blade, and he slammed the steel into the back of the nearest Frenchman’s neck, then lunged into another man’s ribs. Harper had beaten one man down and seized the musket of a second man. He was cursing the Frenchman in Gaelic, then more usefully hit him with a massive fist and the man went down. Hagman, a slight man, had sensibly retreated a few paces along the spur and shot one man, then clubbed the last Frenchman in the face with the brass-bound butt of his rifle. That man was staggering, half-stunned, and Hagman drew his sword-bayonet and disemboweled the man with one quick stroke. Not much pity for the enemy there, Sharpe thought.
Seven enemy left, all now standing leaderless on the far ridge and too appalled by what they had seen to even reload and fire their muskets. Sharpe picked up his rifle, took time to wrap a bullet in leather and rammed it down the barrel. “I hate idiots,” he snarled. He knelt, aimed the rifle, and fired.
“You missed again,” Harper said, amused.
The seven men on the valley’s far side turned and ran. Hagman tried a last shot and one of them stumbled, but limped on as Sharpe went down to the stream. The water made a gentle noise as it tumbled over small stones and round the body of a young French officer at whose waist was an empty saber scabbard. “You bloody useless rabbit,” Sharpe snarled at him, then knelt in the stream and filleted the dead man’s pockets. He found some coins though it was too dark to tell what they were, and a sausage wrapped in paper that he pushed into his cartridge pouch. The night seemed suddenly silent. Three of the four men who had charged up the final slope of the hill were still alive. “What do we do with them, Mister Sharpe?” Hagman asked.
“Make their weapons useless and leave them where they are. And bring me one of their shakos.”
They wrenched the dogheads off the French muskets’ locks then shattered the stocks by beating them against rocks and threw the broken muskets down beside the four men. “You broke this poor bugger’s neck.” Harper nudged a dead man with his foot.
“I shot their damned officer too,” Sharpe said, proud of his aim in the darkness.
“That was me, Mister Sharpe,” Hagman said apologetically. “I know you told me to aim at the buggers on the hill, but I took him first.”
“Always shoot the officers first,” Harper said, “rule of life that!”
“Oh, surely n—” Lieutenant Love began.
“Home,” Sharpe grunted. He kicked a broken musket down the hill and led them south.
* * *
Sergeant Latimer was waiting at the edge of the village with the rest of Sharpe’s riflemen. “I heard the noise,” Latimer said, “and we were coming to help.”
“Didn’t need help,” Harper answered.
Sharpe looked at Latimer in the small moonlight, then at the other men. “You’re carrying muskets! Why?”
“El Héroe,” Latimer said sheepishly, “he took our rifles.”
“The hell he did!”
“Didn’t have no choice, Mister Sharpe,” Sims said.
“You had rifles and cartridges!”
“Sorry, sir,” Latimer said miserably. “He came with all his men. Gave us these,” he hefted the musket. “Useless piece of French crap.”
“So where are the rifles?”
“In the church, Mister Sharpe,” Jack MacNeill said. “And the door’s locked.”
“You know that?”
“I was watching where they went, Mister Sharpe. You could hear the buggers bolt the door.”
“Who has an axe?”
Henderson, a grim-faced rifleman almost as large as Harper, pointed at the house where they had been billeted. “There’s an axe in the house, Mister Sharpe.”
“We’ll need it. And the rest of you load your pieces of crap. But no shooting without my command. And Pat, load the volley gun.” He looked at Latimer. “How many men did the bastard have?”
“Over forty, sir.”
Sharpe grunted. “And did he ask about the gold?”
“I said you’d taken it with you, sir.”
They waited as Harper reloaded the volley gun, charging all seven barrels with powder, bullets, and wadding. “I need more bullets,” he said, “I’m running out.”
“How many do you have?”
“After these? Twenty-four.” The balls were larger than musket or rifle balls and Harper had been paying a dragoon farrier to cast him more. “I can fire just two or three barrels more?” he suggested. “Or just the center one.”
“Give them a full load tonight,” Sharpe said vengefully. He had been angry at Capitaine Rabbit for leading his men to death, but the anger was now aimed at El Héroe. He might be an ally, but Sharpe would be damned before the bloody man got away with stealing his rifles. “But not yet.”
“Not yet?” Harper asked, sounding surprised and disappointed.
“El Héroe will be expecting us to make a fuss,” Sharpe said, “and you never do what the enemy expects.”
“Enemy now, is he?”
“So long as he has our rifles, yes.”
Sharpe led them back to the house. “Any wine?”
“Not even the dog piss they call ale,” Harris said.
Sharpe opened the front door and bellowed down the street. “El Héroe! El Héroe! Wake up!”
He had to shout a dozen more times before two men came down the street to the house door. Neither was El Héroe, but evidently his deputies.
“Qué quieres?” one of them asked.
“Harris!” Sharpe had understood perfectly, but wanted his knowledge of Spanish to stay hidden. “Can you tell this bugger we need wine?”
Harris hardly needed to translate because the riflemen began chanting, “Vino! Vino!”
“Vino!” Sharpe snarled at the man. “Now!”
“It’ll be more vinegar,” Harris grumbled.
The two men, evidently cowed by the harsh shouting, nodded and walked back toward the large house at the village’s center that was evidently El Héroe’s quarters. Sharpe stilled the noise and stood at the door, waiting. “You really want wine?” Harper asked in a low voice.
“I want El Héroe to think I do,” Sharpe said.
“If he gives us wine the boys will drink it.”
“That’s what it’s for, Pat.”
“They’re coming, Mister Sharpe!” Henderson called from his post at the door.
El Héroe was bringing all or most of his men. Sharpe counted thirty-six guerrilleros, all armed, though he could see no rifles, just the long Spanish muskets. Two men were carrying small barrels. “They can have a mug each,” Sharpe told Harper, “and tell the buggers to sing.”
“Singing there will be, sir,” Harper said.
Sharpe waited in the door. El Héroe stopped a pace away. “Captain Sharpe,” he said warily.
“My men need wine,” Sharpe said.
