Sharpe's Havoc

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Only one or two?”

  Pelletieu looked abashed. “We needed a mortar, sir.”

  Vuillard smiled. “When a man lacks instruments, Lieutenant, he uses what he has to hand. Isn’t that right, Annette?” He smiled, then took a fat watch from his waistcoat pocket and snapped open the lid. “How many rounds of shell do you have left?”

  “Thirty-eight, sir.”

  “Don’t use them all at once,” Vuillard said, then raised an eyebrow in mock surprise. “Don’t you have work to do, Lieutenant?” he asked. The work was to fire the howitzer through the night so that the ragged forces on the hilltop would get no sleep, then an hour before first light the gunfire would stop and Vuillard reckoned the enemy would all be asleep when his infantry attacked.

  Pelletieu scraped his chair back. “Of course, sir, and thank you, sir.”

  “Thank you?”

  “For the supper, sir.”

  Vuillard made a gracious gesture of acceptance. “I’m just sorry, Lieutenant, that you can’t stay for the entertainment. I’m sure Mademoiselle Annette would have liked to hear about your charges, your rammer and your sponge.”

  “She would, sir?” Pelletieu asked, surprised.

  “Go, Lieutenant,” Vuillard said, “just go.” The Lieutenant fled, pursued by the sound of laughter, and the Brigadier shook his head. “God knows where we find them,” he said. “We must pluck them from their cradles, wipe the mother’s milk from their lips and send them to war. Still, young Pelletieu knows his business.” He dangled the watch on its chain for a second, then thrust it into a pocket. “First light at ten minutes to four, Major,” he spoke to Dulong.

  “We’ll be ready,” Dulong said. He looked sour, the failure of the previous night’s attack still galling him. The bruise on his face was dark.

  “Ready and rested, I hope?” Vuillard said.

  “We’ll be ready,” Dulong said again.

  Vuillard nodded, but kept his watchful eyes on the infantry Major. “Amarante is taken,” he said, “which means some of Loison’s men can return to Oporto. With luck, Major, that means we shall have enough force to march south on Lisbon.”

  “I hope so, sir,” Dulong answered, uncertain where the conversation was going.

  “But General Heudelet’s division is still clearing the road to Vigo,”

  Vuillard went on, “Foy’s infantry is scouring the mountains of partisans, so our forces will still be stretched, Major, stretched. Even if we get Delaborde’s brigades back from General Loison and even with Lorges’s dragoons, we shall be stretched if we want to march on Lisbon.”

  “I’m sure we’ll succeed all the same,” Dulong said loyally.

  “But we need every man we can muster, Major, every man. And I do not want to detach valuable infantry to guard prisoners.”

  There was silence round the table. Dulong gave a small smile as he understood the implications of the Brigadier’s words, but he said nothing.

  “Do I make myself clear, Major?” Vuillard asked in a harder tone.

  “You do, sir,” Dulong said.

  “Bayonets fixed then,” Vuillard said, tapping ash from his cigar, “and use them, Major, use them well.”

  Dulong looked up, his grim face unreadable. “No prisoners, sir.” He did not inflect the words as a question.

  “That sounds like a very good idea,” Vuillard said, smiling. “Now go and get some sleep.”

  Major Dulong left and Vuillard poured more port. “War is cruel,” he said sententiously, “but cruelty is sometimes necessary. The rest of you”-he looked at the officers on both sides of the table-”can ready yourselves for the march back to Oporto. We should have this business finished by eight tomorrow morning, so shall we set a march time of ten o’clock?”

  For by then the watchtower on the hill would have fallen. The howitzer would keep Sharpe’s men awake by firing through the night and in the dawn, as the tired men fought off sleep and a wolf-gray light seeped across the world’s rim, Dulong’s well-trained infantry would go in for the kill.

  At dawn.

  Sharpe had watched till the very last seep of twilight had gone from the hill, until there was nothing but bleak darkness, and only then, with Pendleton, Tongue and Harris as his companions, he edged past the outer stone wall and felt his way down the path. Harper had wanted to come, had even been upset at not being allowed to accompany Sharpe, but Harper would need to command the riflemen if Sharpe did not come back. Sharpe would have liked to take Hagman, but the old man was still not fully mended and so he had gone with Pendleton who was young, agile and cunning, and with Tongue and Harris who were both good shots and both intelligent. Each of them carried two rifles, but Sharpe had left his big cavalry sword with Harper for he knew that the heavy metal scabbard was likely to knock on stones and so betray his position.

  It was hard, slow work going down the hill. There was a thin suggestion of a moon, but stray clouds continually covered it and even when it showed clearly it had no power to light their path and so they felt their way down, saying nothing, groping ahead for each step and thereby making more noise than Sharpe liked, but the night was full of noises: insects, the sigh of the wind across the hill’s flank and the distant cry of a vixen. Hagman would have coped better, Sharpe thought, for he moved through the dark with the grace of a poacher, while all four of the riflemen going down the hill’s long slope were from towns. Pendleton, Sharpe knew, was from Bristol where he had joined the army rather than face transportation for being a pickpocket. Tongue, like Sharpe, came from London, but Sharpe could not remember where Harris had grown up and, when they stopped to catch their breath and search the darkness for any hint of light, Sharpe asked him.

  “Lichfield, sir,” Harris whispered, “where Samuel Johnson came from.”

  “Johnson?” Sharpe could not quite place the name. “Is he in the first battalion?”

  “Very much so, sir,” Harris whispered, and then they went on and, as the slope became less steep and they accustomed themselves to this blind journey, they became quieter. Sharpe was proud of them. They might not have been born to such a task, as Hagman had, but they had become stalkers and killers. They wore the green jacket.

  And then, after what seemed like an hour since they had left the watchtower, Sharpe saw what he expected to see. A glimmer of light. Just a glimmer that swiftly vanished, but it was yellow, and he knew it came from a screened lantern and that someone, a gunner probably, had drawn back the screen to throw a small wash of light, and then there was another light, this one red and tiny, and Sharpe knew it was the howitzer’s portfire. “Down,” he whispered. He watched the tiny red glow. It was further away than he would have liked, but there was plenty of time. “Close your eyes,” he hissed.

  They closed their eyes and, a moment later, the gun crashed its smoke, flame and shell into the night and Sharpe heard the missile trundle overhead and he saw a dull light on his closed eyelids, then he opened his eyes and could see nothing for a few seconds. He could smell the gunsmoke, though, and he saw the red portfire move as the gunner put it aside. “On!” he said, and they crept on down the hill, and the screened lantern blinked again as the gun crew pushed the howitzer’s wheels back to the two stones which marked the place where they could be sure that, despite the darkness, the gun would be accurate. That was the realization that had come to Sharpe at sunset, the reason why they had marked the ground, because in the night the French gunners needed an easy method for realigning the howitzer and the two big stones made better markers than gouges in the soil. So he had known this night firing was going to happen and knew exactly what he could do about it.

  It was a long time before the howitzer fired again, and by then Sharpe and his men were two hundred paces away and not much higher than the gun. Sharpe had expected the second shot much sooner, then he realized that the gunners would probably space their shells through the short night to keep his men awake and that would mean a long time between shots. “Harris? Tongue?” he whispered. “O
ff to the right. If you get into trouble, get the hell back up to Harper. Pendleton? Come on.” He led the youngster away to the left, crouching as he moved, feeling his way through the rocks until he reckoned he had gone about fifty paces from the path and then he settled Pendleton behind a boulder and positioned himself behind a low gorse bush. “You know what to do.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So enjoy it.”

  Sharpe was enjoying himself. It surprised him to realize it, but he was. There was a joy in thus foxing the enemy, though perhaps the enemy had expected what was about to happen and was ready for it. But this was no time to worry, just time to spread some confusion, and he waited and waited until he was certain he was wrong and that the gunners would not fire again, and then the whole night was split apart by a tongue of white flame, bright and long, that was immediately swallowed by the cloud of smoke and Sharpe had a sudden glimpse of the gun bucking back on its trail, its big wheels spinning a foot high in the air, and then his night vision was gone, seared from his eyes by the bright stab of fire, and he waited again, only this time it was just a few seconds before he saw the yellow glow of the unshielded lantern and he knew the gunners were manhandling the howitzer’s wheels toward the stones.

  He aimed at the lantern. His vision was smeared by the aftereffects of the fire, but he could see the square of lamplight clearly enough. He was just about to squeeze the trigger when one of his men on the right of the path fired and the lantern was dropped, its shielding fell away and Sharpe could see two dark figures half lit by the new and brighter light. He edged the rifle left and pulled the trigger, heard Pendleton fire, then he snatched up the second rifle and aimed again into the pool of light. A Frenchman jumped forward to extinguish the lantern and three rifles, one of them Sharpe’s, sounded at the same time and the man was snatched backward and Sharpe heard a loud clang like a cracked bell ringing and knew one of the bullets had hit the howitzer’s barrel.

  Then the light went out. “Come on!” Sharpe called to Pendleton and the two of them ran further to their left. They could hear the French shouting, one man gasping and moaning, then a louder voice calling for silence. “Down!” Sharpe whispered and the two went to ground and Sharpe began the laborious business of loading his two rifles in the dark. He saw a small flame burning back where he and Pendleton had been and he knew that the wadding from one of their rifles had started a small grass fire. It flickered for a few seconds, then he saw dark shapes nearby and guessed that the French infantry who had been guarding the gun were out looking for whoever had just fired the shots, but the searchers found nothing, trampled the small fire dead and went back to the trees.

  There was another pause. Sharpe could hear the murmur of voices and reckoned the French were discussing what to do next. The answer came soon enough when he heard the trampling of feet and he deduced that the infantry had been sent to scour the nearer hillside, but in the dark they merely blundered through the ferns and cursed whenever they tripped on rocks or became entangled by gorse. Officers and sergeants snarled and snapped at the men who were too sensible to spread out and get lost or maybe ambushed in the darkness. After a while they trailed back to the trees and there was another long wait, though Sharpe could hear the clatter of the howitzer’s rammer as it shoved and scraped the next shell home.

  The French probably thought their attackers were gone, he decided. No shots had come for a long time and their own infantry had made a perfunctory search, and the French were probably feeling safer, for the gunner foolishly tried to revive the portfire by whipping it back and forth a couple of times until its tip glowed a brighter red. He did not need the extra heat to light the reed in the touchhole, but rather to see the touch-hole, and it was his death sentence for he then blew on the tip of the slow match held in the portfire’s jaws, and either Harris or Tongue shot him, and even Sharpe jumped with surprise when the rifle shot blistered the night and he had a glimpse of flame far off to his right, and then the French infantry were forming ranks, the fallen portfire was snatched up and, just as the howitzer fired, so the muskets hammered a crude volley in the direction of Tongue and Harris.

  And the grass fires started again. One sprang up just in front of the howitzer and two smaller fires were ignited by the wadding of the French muskets. Sharpe, his eyes still dazzled by the gun’s big flame, nevertheless could see the crew heaving at the wheels and he slid the rifle forward. He fired, changed weapons and fired again, aiming at the dark knot of men straining at the nearest gun wheel. He saw one fall away. Pendleton fired. Two more shots came from the right and the grass fires were spreading and then the infantry realized that the flames were illuminating the gunners, making them targets, and they frantically stamped out the small fires, but not before Pendleton had fired his second rifle and Sharpe saw another gunner spin away from the howitzer, then a last shot came from Tongue or Harris before the flames were at last extinguished.

  Sharpe and Pendleton went back fifty paces before reloading. “We hurt them that time,” Sharpe said. Small groups of Frenchmen, emboldening themselves with loud shouts, darted forward to search the slope again, but again found nothing.

  He stayed another half-hour, fired four more times and then went back to the hilltop, a journey which, in the dark, took almost two hours, though it was easier than going down for there was just enough light in the sky to show the outline of the hill and the broken stub of the watch-tower. Tongue and Harris followed an hour later, hissing the password up at the sentry before coming excitedly into the fort where they told the tale of their exploit.

  The howitzer fired twice more during the night. The first shot rattled the lower slope with canister and the second, a shell, cracked the night with flame and smoke just to the east of the watchtower. No one got much sleep, but Sharpe would have been surprised if anyone had slept well after the day’s ordeal. And just before dawn, when the eastern edge of the world was a gray glow, he went round to make sure everyone was awake. Harper was laying a fire beside the watchtower wall. Sharpe had forbidden any fires during the night, for the flames would have given the French gunners an excellent aiming mark, but now that the daylight was coming it would be safe to brew up some tea. “We can stay here forever,” Harper had said, “so long as we can stew some tea, sir. But run out of tea and we’ll have to surrender.”

  The gray streak in the east spread, lightening at its base. Vicente shivered beside Sharpe for the night had turned surprisingly cold. “You think they’re coming?” Vicente asked.

  “They’re coming,” Sharpe said. He knew that the howitzer’s ammunition supply was not endless, and there could only have been one reason to keep the gun working through the night and that was to fray his men’s nerves so that they would be easy meat for a morning attack.

  And that meant the French would come at dawn.

  And the light grew, wan and gray and pale as death, and the tops of the highest clouds were already golden red as the light changed from gray to white and white to gold and gold to red.

  And then the killing began.

  “Sir! mister Sharpe!”

  “I see them!” Dark shapes melding into the dark shadows of the northern slope. It was French infantry or, perhaps, dismounted dragoons, coming to attack. “Rifles! Make ready!” There were clicks as Baker rifles were cocked. “Your men don’t fire, understand?” Sharpe said to Vicente. “Of course,” Vicente said. The muskets would be hopelessly inaccurate at anything more than sixty paces so Sharpe would keep the Portuguese volley as a final defense and let his riflemen teach the French the advantages of the seven lands and seven grooves twisting the quarter turn in the rifle barrels. Vicente was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, betraying the nervousness he felt. He fingered one end of his small mustache and licked his lips. “We wait till they reach that white rock, yes?” “Yes,” Sharpe said, “and why don’t you shave that mustache off?” Vicente stared at him. “Why don’t I shave my mustache?” He could scarcely believe his ears.

  “Sha
ve it off,” Sharpe said. “You’d look older. Less like a lawyer. Luis would do it for you.” He had successfully taken Vicente’s mind off his worries, and now he looked east where a mist hung over the low ground. No threat from there, he reckoned, and he had four of his riflemen watching the southern path, but only four because he was fairly certain that the French would concentrate their troops on one side of the hill and, once he was absolutely certain of that, he would bring those four back across to the northern side and let a couple of Vicente’s men guard the southern path. “When you’re ready, lads!” Sharpe called. “But don’t fire high!”

  Sharpe did not know it, but the French were late. Dulong had wanted his men closed up on the summit approach before the horizon turned gray, but it had taken longer than he anticipated to climb the dark slope and, besides, his men were befuddled and tired after a night of chasing phantoms. Except the phantoms were real and had killed one gunner, wounded three more and put the fear of God into the rest of the artillery crew. Dulong, ordered to take no prisoners, felt some respect for the men he faced.

  And then the massacre began.

  It was a massacre. The French had muskets, the British had rifles, and the French had to converge on the narrow ridge that climbed to the small summit plateau and once on the ridge they were easy meat for the rifles. Six men went down in the first few seconds and Dulong’s response was to lead the others on, to overwhelm the fort with manpower, but more rifles cracked, more smoke drifted from the hilltop, more bullets thumped home and Dulong understood what he had only appreciated before through lectures: the menace of a rifled barrel. At a range where a full battalion musket volley was unlikely to kill a single man, the British rifles were deadly. The bullets, he noticed, made a different sound. There was a barely detectable shriek in their whiplike menace. The guns themselves did not cough like a musket, but had a snap to their report, and a man struck by a rifle bullet was thrown back further than he would have been by a musket ball. Dulong could see the riflemen now, for they stood up in their rock pits to reload their damned guns, ignoring the threat of the howitzer’s shells that sporadically arced over the French infantry’s heads to explode on the crest. Dulong shouted at his men to fire at the green-jacketed enemy, but the musket shots sounded feeble and the balls went wide and still the rifle shots slashed home and his men were reluctant to climb onto the narrow part of the ridge so Dulong, knowing that example was all, and reckoning that a lucky man might possibly survive the rifle fire and reach the redoubts, decided to set an example. He shouted at his men to follow, drew his saber and charged. “For France,” he cried, “for the Emperor!”