Sharpe's Prey

by Bernard Cornwell

  Darkness came gently to the cloud-filled sky. The wind was chill from the east as the whole city waited. It seemed, for a time, as though there would be no bombardment this second night, but then a great flash seared across the western dark and a streak of red, thin as a needle scratch, climbed toward the clouds. The red scratch reached its topmost height and there hovered for a heartbeat before it began to fall.

  And then the other mortars fired, their sound joining to make a gigantic thunderclap that rolled about the city as the fuse trails whipped upward and the first bomb hurtled down toward the houses.

  “We can go,” Sharpe said.

  The three men walked through streets lit by distant fire. Sharpe could tell from the trails of the fuses that the bombardment was sparing the citadel tonight citadel this night, instead dropping its bombs close to the streets that had already been burned. The missiles from the fleet streaked overhead, while rocket traces, thick and glowing, curved above the rooftops. Sharpe, like his two companions, carried a thirteen-inch bomb in a leather bag hung from his shoulder. It was surprisingly heavy.

  He led Hopper and Clouter into the alley behind Lavisser’s house. It was black dark between the high close walls, though the backs of the big houses on Bredgade were reddened by the far-off flames. No bombs had touched this quarter of the city that lay near the royal palaces.

  Sharpe dropped his bomb beside the gate that led into Lavisser’s courtyard. Then he knelt, took out the tinderbox and struck the steel on flint. The charred linen glowed and he blew on it until it burst into flames that he touched to the quick fuse, then he ran back down the alley and crouched beside Hopper and Clouter. He could see the tiny red glow of the fuse, then it vanished and he lowered his head as he waited, but no explosion came and he wondered if the bomb had some other fault. Perhaps its powder was wet? “Bloody thing,” he snarled, looking up, and just then the bomb caught the fire and the alley was filled with screaming shards of metal that rattled and ricocheted from the brick walls. Flame and smoke boiled up, while Lavisser’s gate was ripped from its hinges and, propelled by a blast of heated smoke, slammed across the yard.

  “Yours, Hopper,” Sharpe said, and the three men ran to the smoky gateway and Sharpe again lit the tinder. Hopper held his bomb out, Sharpe put the fire to the fuse, then the bomb was rolled like a bowling ball into the courtyard’s center. The three men sheltered behind the wall. Someone shouted from the house. Sharpe suspected men were stationed in the carriage house and that they would be the first into the yard to investigate the first explosion, which was why he was sending them the second bomb. A voice shouted quite close, then Hopper’s bomb cracked the night apart, searing the alley with sudden flame light and filling the yard with more thick smoke.

  Clouter was already at the gate with the third bomb. Sharpe struck the flint, blew on the charred linen and lit the fuse. He took the bomb from Clouter, stepped through the gate and ran a few paces into the smoke until he could just see where the steps went down to the basement entrance. The fuse hissed by his belly. He stopped, guaged the distance and heaved the shell over the remains of the shattered gate. The bomb landed on the stones short of the steps, wobbled for a second, then toppled over. Hopper and Clouter had their backs against the stable wall. Both were staring up through the smoke. A musket fired from an upper window and the ball smacked into the cobbles beside Sharpe, who stepped back and almost tripped on a body. So someone had been caught by the second bomb. Then the third exploded, blasting its flame straight up the back of the house. Glass shattered in a dozen windows.

  “Come on!” Sharpe shouted. He had the rifle in his right hand as he ran down the steps and pushed through the ruins of the splintered door. He found himself in a kitchen lit by the flaming scraps of the blown door. No one was in sight. He jumped the burning wood, crossed the flagstone floor and pushed open the farther door to see a dark staircase going upward. Pistol shots sounded behind him and he snatched a glance to see that Clouter was firing up into the yard. “You need help?”

  “They’re dead!” Clouter said, then backed away from the doorway and started reloading. An oilcloth covering a table by the window had caught fire. Sharpe ignored it, running up the stairs instead. Hopper came with him. Sharpe pushed open the door at the top to find himself in a wide hallway. There was a man on the stairs above, but he turned and vanished before Sharpe could aim the rifle. Clouter came up from the kitchen and behind him the smoke thickened with alarming speed.

  “Upstairs,” Sharpe said. There were men up there, men who knew they were coming, men who would have guns, but he did not dare wait. The fire was flickering beneath him. “Wait here,” he told the two sailors. He hung the rifle on his shoulder and took the seven-barreled gun instead. He did not want to charge the stairs, but if he gave the men upstairs any longer then they would barricade themselves. He swore, nerved himself, and ran.

  He took the stairs three at a time. Up to the half landing where there were two closed doors. He ignored them. His instinct said that the house’s inhabitants were higher up, so he swung round the corner of the landing and took the next stairs at a run and saw a half-open door ahead of him and saw a musket barrel there and he threw himself down just as the musket flamed. The bullet cracked into a portrait high on the stairwell wall and Sharpe heaved himself up, pushed the seven-barreled gun over the lip and pulled the trigger.

  The seven bullets shredded the lower half of the door. A man screamed. Sharpe pulled out a pistol and fired again, then Hopper and Clouter were behind him and each of them fired into the door before running past Sharpe. “Wait!” he called. He wanted to be first into the room, not out of heroism, but because he had promised Captain Chase to look after the two men, but Clouter, the axe in his hand, had already shoulder-charged the door and tumbled through. “Pucelle,” the black man was shouting, “Pucelle!” just as if he was boarding an enemy ship.

  Sharpe followed just as Hopper fired his seven-barreled gun inside the room. An enemy’s bullet whipped past Sharpe’s head as he went through the door. He slid on the polished floorboards, crouching as he moved and turning the rifle down the length of the room that was an elegant study with portraits, bookshelves, a desk and a sofa. A man was flopping by the desk, jerking in pain from one of Hopper’s bullets. Another man was by the shuttered window with Clouter’s boarding axe buried in his neck. “There’s a live one behind the desk,” Hopper said.

  Sharpe gave his empty volley gun to Hopper. “Reload it,” he said, then he stalked toward the desk. He heard the scrape of a ramrod in a barrel and so knew his enemy was effectively unarmed. He took three more quick steps and saw a man crouching with a half-loaded pistol. Sharpe had hoped to find Lavisser, but the man was no one he recognized. The man looked up and shook his head. “Non, monsieur, non!”

  Sharpe fired. The bullet took the man in the skull, fountaining blood across the desk and onto the dying man at Sharpe’s feet.

  There was a fourth man in the room. He was naked and tied to a sofa in an alcove, but he was alive, though Sharpe almost gagged when he saw him. He was alive by a miracle, for Ole Skovgaard had been half blinded and tortured and he seemed oblivious of the fight that had filled the room with choking powder smoke.

  Clouter, bloodied boarding axe in one big hand, crossed to the sofa and swore softly. Sharpe grimaced at the sight of the empty eye socket, the bloodied mouth and the raw fingertips where the nails had been pulled before the fingers’ bones had been broken. He put down his rifle, took out his clasp knife and sliced the ropes that secured Skovgaard. “Can you hear me?” he asked. “Can you hear me?”

  Skovgaard raised a tentative hand. “Lieutenant?” He could hardly speak, for his bloody mouth was toothless.

  “We’re taking you home,” Sharpe said, “taking you home.”

  Hopper fired a pistol down the stairwell and Clouter went to help him. Skovgaard pointed feebly at the desk and Sharpe crossed to it and saw a pile of papers spattered with the blood of the man he had just shot. There
were names on the sheets, names and names, a list of the correspondents that London wanted protected. Hans Bischoff in Bremen, Josef Gruber in Hanover, Carl Friederich of Konigsberg. There were Russian names, Prussian names, seven pages of names and Sharpe snatched the papers up and thrust them into a pocket. Clouter fired down the stairs. Hopper had reloaded one of the seven-barreled guns and now shouldered Clouter aside, but it seemed no one was threatening for he held his fire.

  There were velvet curtains hanging inside the closed shutters. Sharpe seized one and tugged hard, ripping it from its hoops. He wrapped the naked Skovgaard in the red velvet, then lifted him. Skovgaard moaned in pain. “You’re going home,” Sharpe said. Smoke was coming up the stairwell. “Who’s down there?” Sharpe asked Clouter.

  “Two men. Maybe three.”

  “We’ve got to go down,” Sharpe said, “and out of the front door.” He had not seen Lavisser or Barker.

  Hopper was loading the second seven-barreled gun. He had given the first to Clouter. Sharpe could hear the flames downstairs. Bombs were detonating to the west. A maid, eyes wide with terror, ran down the stairs. She seemed not to notice the men in the study door, but just vanished round the half landing. There was a shot from the hallway and the maid screamed. “Jesus Christ,” Sharpe swore.

  Hopper had four of the barrels loaded and decided they were enough. “Do we go?”

  “Go,” Sharpe said.

  Clouter and Hopper went first, then Sharpe carried Skovgaard after them. The two seamen jumped to the half landing and both fired their guns straight down into the smoke that filled the hallway. Sharpe went more slowly, trying to ignore Skovgaard’s soft moans. The maid was lying beside the banisters, blood streaking her gown. Another body lay beside a table in the hall while flames were flickering at the door which led down to the kitchen. The front door was open and Clouter led the way out. Sharpe shouted a warning that Lavisser’s men might be waiting in the street, but the only folk there were neighbors who believed the fire and smoke had been caused by British bombs. One of the woman looked alarmed at the sight of the two huge men who burst from the door with their guns, then a murmur of sympathy sounded when the crowd saw Skovgaard in Sharpe’s arms.

  But one woman screamed at the sight of the injured man.

  It was Astrid who ran to meet Sharpe. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.

  “I knew you would be coming here so I came to make sure you were safe.” She gave an involuntary grimace when she saw her father’s face. “Is he alive?”

  “He needs a doctor,” Sharpe said. He reckoned Skovgaard must have resisted for hours before he broke.

  “The hospitals are full,” Astrid said, holding her father’s wrist because his hand was nothing but a broken claw. “They made an announcement this morning,” she went on, “that only the worst injured must go to hospital.”

  “He’s badly injured,” Sharpe said, then thought that Lavisser would know that and so the hospitals were exactly where Lavisser would look for Skovgaard. The bombs were thumping steadily, their explosions flashing in the smoky sky. “Not the hospital,” he told Astrid. He thought about Ulfedt’s Plads, then reckoned that was the second place Lavisser would search.

  Astrid touched her father’s cheek. “There’s a good nurse at the orphanage,” she said, “and it’s not far.”

  They carried Skovgaard to the orphanage where the nurse took charge of him. Astrid helped her, while Sharpe took Hopper and Clouter out to the courtyard where they sat under the flagpole. Some of the smaller children were crying because of the noise of the bombs, but they were all safe in their dormitories which were a long way from where any missiles fell. Two women carried milk and water up the outside staircase and glanced fearfully at the three men. “Lavisser wasn’t there,” Sharpe said.

  “Does it matter?” Hopper asked.

  “He wants this list,” Sharpe said, patting his pocket. “These names buy him favor with the French.”

  “There was no gold either,” Clouter growled.

  Sharpe looked surprised, then shook his head. “I clean forgot about the gold,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He rubbed his face. “We can’t go back to the warehouse. Lavisser will look for us there.” And Lavisser, he thought, would take Danish troops with him, claiming he was looking for British agents. “We’ll have to stay here,” he decided.

  “We could go back to the ships?” Clouter suggested.

  “You can if you want,” Sharpe said, “but I’ll stay.” He would stay because he knew Astrid would remain with her father and he would stay with Astrid.

  Hopper began to reload one of the volley guns. “Did you see that nurse?” he asked.

  “I think he wants to stay here, sir,” Clouter said with a grin.

  “We can wait it out here,” Sharpe said. “And thank you, both of you. Thank you.” The bombs lit the sky. By morning, he thought, the Danes must surrender and the British army would come and Lavisser would hide, but Sharpe would find him. If he had to search every damned house in Copenhagen he would find him and kill him. And then he would have finished the job and he could stay here, stay in Denmark, because he wanted a home.

  Next morning General Peymann called a council in the Amalienborg Palace. Coffee was served in royal china to men who were dirty with soot and ash, and whose faces were pale and drawn from another night of fighting fires and carrying horribly burned people to the crowded hospitals. “I thought there were fewer bombs last night,” the General observed.

  “They fired just under two thousand, sir,” Major Lavisser reported, “and that includes rockets.”

  “And the night before?” Peymann tried to remember.

  “Nearer five thousand,” an aide answered.

  “They are running short of ammunition,” the General declared, unable to conceal a triumphant note. “I doubt we’ll receive more than a thousand missiles tonight. And tomorrow? Perhaps none at all. We shall hold on, gentlemen, we shall hold on!”

  The superintendent of the King Frederick Hospital offered a sobering report. There were no more bed available, not even now they had taken over the Maternity Hospital next door, and there was a severe shortage of salves, bandages and fresh water, but he still expressed a cautious optimism. If the bombardment got no worse then he thought the hospitals would cope.

  A city engineer reported that an old well in Bjornegaden was yielding copious amounts of fresh water and that three other abandoned wells, capped when the city began piping supplies from north Zealand, were to be opened during the day. The deputy mayor said there was no shortage of food. Some cows had died in the night, he said, but plenty were left.

  “Cows?” Peymann asked.

  “The city needs milk, sir. We brought two herds into the city.”

  “Then I think,” General Peymann concluded, “that when all is said and done we might congratulate ourselves. The British have thrown their worst at us, and we have survived.” He pulled the large-scale map of the city toward him. The engineers had inked over the streets worst affected by the first night’s bombardment, and now Peymann looked at the light pencil hatching which showed the effects of the second night’s assault. The newly penciled areas were much smaller, merely a short length of street near the Norre Gate and some houses in Skindergade. “At least they missed the cathedral,” he said.

  “And there was also damage here.” An aide leaned over the table and tapped Bredgade. “Major Lavisser’s house was destroyed, and the neighboring houses lost their roofs to fire.”

  Peymann frowned at Lavisser. “Your house, Major?”

  “My grandfather’s house, sir.”

  “Tragic!” Peymann said. “Tragic.”

  “We think it must have been a rocket, sir,” the first aide said. “It’s so far from the rest of the damaged streets.”

  “I trust no one was hurt?” Peymann inquired earnestly.

  “We fear some servants might have been trapped,” Lavisser answered, “but my grandfather, of course, is with the Crown Prince
.”

  “Thank God for that,” Peymann said, “but you must take some time today to rescue what you can of your grandfather’s property. I am so very sorry, Major.”

  “We must all share in the city’s suffering, sir,” Lavisser declared, a sentiment that brought murmurs of agreement about the table.

  A naval pastor ended the council by thanking God for helping the city to endure its ordeal, for the manifold blessings that would doubtless flow from victory and begging the Almighty to shower His saving grace upon the wounded and the bereaved. “Amen,” General Peymann boomed, “amen.”

  A weak sun was shining through the pall of smoke that smothered the city when Lavisser emerged into the palace courtyard where Barker was waiting. “They prayed, Barker,” he said, “they prayed.”

  “Do a lot of that here, sir.”

  “So what do you make of it?”

  Barker, while his master had been attending the council meeting, had done his best to explore the ruins of Bredgade. “It’s still too hot to get into, sir, and it’s a heap of rubble anyway. Smoking, it is, but Jules, he got out.”

  “Only Jules?”

  “He was the only one I found, sir. Rest are dead or in hospital, I reckon. And Jules swears it were Sharpe.”

  “It can’t be!”

  “He says three men came out the house, sir. Two were sailors and the other was a tall man, black hair and scar on the cheek.”

  Lavisser swore.

  “And,” Barker went on implacably, “the man with the scarred face was carrying Skovgaard.”

  Lavisser swore again. “And the gold?” he asked.

  “That’s probably still in Bredgade, sir. Melted, probably, but it’ll be there.”

  Lavisser said nothing for a while. The gold could be salvaged and it could certainly wait, but he could expect no advancement from the French if he did not give them the list of names that had been so painfully extracted from Skovgaard. That list would open the Emperor’s largesse to Lavisser, make him Prince of Zealand or Duke of Holstein or even, in his most secret dreams, King of Denmark. “Did Jules say anything about the list?”