Sharpe's Devil s-21

by Бернард Корнуэлл

  The rest of Cochrane's assault force scrambled ashore. The boats landed within seconds of each other and the men shook themselves free of the sucking breakers to charge the enemy in the maddened rush of men who wanted to revenge themselves for the terrors of the recent moments. The last of the light gleamed dully on the steel of swords and cutlasses and bayonets and boarding pikes. One man carried a great axe that was designed to cut away the wreckage of fallen rigging, but which now, like some ancient Viking berserker, he whirled over his head as he ran toward the Spanish company.

  The Spaniards, seeing Cochrane's devils erupt from the sea like avenging fiends, turned and fled. God, Sharpe thought, but this was how pirates had assaulted the Spanish dominions for centuries; desperate men, armed with steel and stripped of scruples, erupting from small ships to shatter the perilous crust of civilized discipline that Madrid had imposed on the new world's golden lands.

  "Form here! Form here!" Cochrane, tall and huge in the dusk, stood at the edge of the sand dunes behind the beach. "Let them go! Let them go!" Sharpe would have kept pursuing the fleeing Spaniards, but Cochrane wanted to make order out of the chaos. "Form here! Major Miller! You'll make the left of the line if you please!" As if in answer, one of Miller's drummers gave a rattle, then a flute sounded feebly in the twilight.

  Harper, safely ashore and carrying a cutlass, ran behind the attackers to join Sharpe. "This is a rare business, so it is!" But the big Irishman seemed pleased, as though all the uncertainties of the last few weeks had dropped away.

  Cannons roared from the fortress above them. Sharpe saw the flames stab pale across the sandy slope, then writhe and shrivel away inside the smoke. The roundshot crashed past Cochrane's men to spew sand up from the beach. The abandoned longboats and their clumsy oars rolled and jerked at the surfs edge, while out to sea the skeleton crews left aboard the two warships had abandoned the boats' anchors and, with just their foresails set, were taking the two boats out of range of the fort's guns.

  "Down!" Cochrane would shelter his men behind the dunes while he organized his assault. "Get down!" He paced along the front of his ragged attackers. "Did anyone bring ladders? Did anyone bring ladders?"

  No one had brought ladders. Three hundred wet and frightened men clung to a beach beneath a fort and all they had to fight with were their hand weapons: muskets, pistols, swords, pikes and cutlasses.

  "Did you bring a ladder?" Cochrane asked Sharpe.

  "No."

  Cochrane slashed his sword at the dune grass. "We're rather buggered. Damn!"

  The gunfire from the fort changed sound. Instead of the short percussive crack that denoted roundshot, there was suddenly the more muffled sound betraying that the defenders were loaded with canister or grape. Now each of the fort's cannons was like a giant shotgun, spraying a lethal and expanding fan of musket balls toward the attackers. Cochrane, as the rain of shot whistled overhead, ducked down. "Shit!" He peered over the sand dune. Even through the smoke, and in the last of the daylight, it was plain that the earthen and wooden facade of Fort Ingles could not be assaulted without ladders, and even with ladders it would be suicidal for men to rise and walk into that gale of grapeshot. "Shit!" Cochrane said again, even more angrily.

  "They'll only have guns on this face of the fort!" Sharpe shouted.

  Cochrane nodded confirmation. "Facing the sea, yes!"

  "We'll flank them! Give me some men!"

  "Take the starboard Kittys," Cochrane ordered. The 'Kittys' were the men from the Kitty who were divided into two companies, port and starboard.

  "Keep them busy here!" Sharpe told Cochrane. "Fire at them, make a noise, let them see you here. And when I shout for you, charge like hell!"

  Sharpe called for the starboard Kittys, then ran right, along the beach, under cover of the dunes. Fifty men followed him. Harper was there, Lieutenant Cabral was there. The rest of Cochrane's attackers fired a volley up toward the fort as Sharpe, safely out of the cannons' line of fire, turned uphill. The moon was bright on the sand, bleaching it to look like heaped snow. The sea was crashing loud behind.

  “Jesus, we're mad," Harper said.

  Sharpe saved his breath. The hillside was steep and the tough grass stems slippery. He was working his way to his right, trying to stay well out of sight of the fort's defenders. With any luck the Spaniards would be mesmerized by the shrieking crowd of men crammed with Cochrane on the beach. Why had the Spaniards not charged down with more infantry? That question made Sharpe wonder whether the signal rockets were intended to summon infantry from the other forts. Behind him the defenders' cannons crashed their loads of canister and the attackers' muskets crackled a feeble reply. More muskets fired from the fort and Sharpe tried to gauge how many infantrymen were defending its ramparts from the noise of those muskets. He reckoned two hundred men, say three thin companies? That was more than enough to finish Cochrane's two hundred fifty invaders, many of whom had damp powder and whose muskets were therefore useless for anything except clubbing men to death. One good bayonet charge by three companies of Spanish infantry would finish Cochrane. The whole affair could be over in fifteen minutes, and the Chilean rebels would be bereft of their Admiral, and probably of their navy. Valdivia would be safe, Cochrane could be carried back to Madrid for a humiliating trial and a public execution, the Royalist provinces in Chile could be reinforced, the Spanish Navy would blockade the northern ports to starve out O'Higgins, and in two years, maybe less, the whole of Chile, and probably Peru as well, would be Spanish again. For Captain-General Bautista it would be total triumph, a vindication of all his theories of defensive warfare, and for Bias Vivar, if indeed he still lived and was a prisoner in the Angel Tower, it would mean death, for no one in Madrid would dare punish Bautista for a mere murder if, in exchange, he won them back their God-given empire. And all it would take for all those things to happen—for Vivar to die, for Bautista to triumph, for Cochrane to be humiliated, for Spain to win this war and for the whole history of the world to be nudged into a new course—was three companies of infantry. Just three! And surely, Sharpe thought, those three companies, and more, were being assembled for the charge at this very minute.

  “Jesus, look at that!" Harper, panting beside Sharpe, was staring at a wooden fence that had been built across the headland and which now lay between Sharpe's small force and Fort Ingles. The fence was as tall as a man and made of split palings that formed a solid barrier, but what purpose such a fence served Sharpe could not understand. It hardly seemed defensive, for he could see no loopholes and no embrasures.

  "Come on!" Sharpe said. There was nothing to be gained by gaping at the fence. It had to be approached, and a reconnaissance made of the ground beyond.

  The strange fence lay on the far side of a crude ditch. It seemed to have been built to stop a flanking attack like the one Sharpe was making, but as no defenders manned the fence it had been a waste of effort constructing it. Sharpe's men rested at the bottom of the ditch while he peered through a chink between two palings. The fort lay two hundred yards away across open ground. There were no cannon embrasures on this western wall of the fort, though there was a deep ditch and the wall itself was steep enough to require ladders. A sentry was visible in the moonlight, standing on the wall's flat top.

  Sharpe slid down to the ditch's bottom and stared up at the fence. It seemed to have been prefabricated in sections twenty feet long which had been fastened to thick posts sunk into the turf. Each section of fence would make, if not a ladder, at least a ramp. "Patrick? When I give the word I want you to knock out two sections of fence. They'll be our assault ladders." Sharpe was speaking in Spanish, loud enough for all the fifty men to hear him. "There's just one sentry on this side, everyone else is looking at the beach. The Spanish are scared. They're terrified of Cochrane and terrified of you because you're Cochrane's men. They think you're demons from hell! If we attack them hard and fast, they're going to crumple! They're going to run! We can take this fort! Your war cry is Cochrane! Cochrane!
Now get your breath, make sure your guns are loaded, and be ready."

  The men whose powder had been soaked when their boats overturned at the sea's edge were denoted to carry the fence sections. Those men would lead the charge. The rest would follow behind and, once the twin makeshift bridges were in place, stream across to bring terror to a fort. It would be a desperate throw, but better than being trapped on the beach by three companies of infantry. And, despite Cochrane's avowed intention to carry every fort tonight, Sharpe knew that just this single strong point would save the expedition. If Cochrane possessed just one fort then he would have guns and walls with which to defeat a Spanish counterattack, and so make a stand till the men left on the ships could arrange a rescue. Lord Cochrane might yet live, if this one fort would fall.

  The fence sections had been nailed to their posts, and each nail needed nothing more than a strong wrench with a bayonet to be wrested free. Sharpe experimented on a couple of naiW, then, satisfied, he slid down into the ditch's bottom where he reloaded the pistol he had fired from the boat. He checked that his other pistol was primed, then nodded at the men standing by the posts. "Go!" he said.

  The men ripped the fence nails free. There was a splintering sound, the wavering of two great sections of wood, then the fence was falling. "Take hold of it!" Harper shouted. "Together now! Lift it, turn! Now go!"

  "Charge!" Sharpe shouted, and he stumbled up the ditch side into the moonlight. Behind him the sea was a flicker of silver and black, while ahead of him the fortress walls were shadowed dark. The two pistols were in his belt, the sword in his hand. "Cochrane!" he shouted, "Cochrane!"

  The men carrying the fence sections were lumbering across the tangle of ferns and grasses. The charge was slow, much slower than Sharpe had anticipated, made so by the weight of the cumbersome timber ramps. The carrying parties were advancing at scarcely more than a walking pace, but without the ramps the attack must fail, and so Sharpe knew he must hold his patience.

  The single sentry on the fort's western wall gaped for a second, unslung his musket, decided that there were too many attackers for his single cartridge to destroy, and so turned to shout for help. His cry was drowned as the cannons cracked the night apart, slitting the moonlit darkness with their sharp stabs of flame. The wind carried the smoke toward Cochrane, away from Sharpe. The sentry shouted again, and this time he was heard.

  "Cochrane!" Sharpe shouted, "Cochrane!" And suddenly men began to appear at the wall ahead. "Spread out!" Sharpe called. The first stabs of flame showed dark red on the ramparts. A ball fluttered near Sharpe, another flicked through the grass, a third cracked off one of the fence sections. The men carrying the makeshift ramps were running faster now, but the other men, unencumbered with the heavy burdens, were outstripping them, sprinting across the headland as though there would be security in the deep black shadows of the fort's ditch. i Sharpe ran with them. There were just fifty yards to go. The muskets crashed from the wall ahead. A man fell cursing to Sharpe’s left, his hands clutching at his thigh. Sharpe could smell blood in the night—blood and powder smoke, the old and too familiar smells. Thirty yards, twenty, and another volley whipped overhead. The Spanish were firing high—the error of all inexperienced troops. The first of Sharpe's men were at the ditch. "Take aim!" Sharpe shouted at them, "Aim for their bellies!"

  He put his sword into his left hand as he dragged one of his two pistols free. He cocked it, dropped to one knee beside the ditch, and took aim. The defenders were silhouetted against the moonlit sky while the attackers were dark shapes against the darker ground. Sharpe found a target, lowered the muzzle to the man's belly, fired. Sparks jetted bright and the recoil jarred up Sharpe's arm. The smoke blossomed, but when it was snatched away by the wind the man was gone, plucked off the fort's ramparts. Those ramparts were ten feet above Sharpe and twelve feet away. Then the first of the fence sections arrived and Harper was yelling at the men to plant its leading edge at the side of the ditch, then to lever the whole thing up and over, like a giant trapdoor that swung in the night to crash sickeningly against the sloping earth wall. The makeshift ramp lodged some three feet below the parapet, but that was close enough. "Come on!" Sharpe shouted. "Follow me!"

  He ran across the makeshift bridge. The wooden palings bounced under Sharpe's boots. A musket flamed ahead, then with men on either side of him, he leaped for the rampart's top and the Spaniards were backing away, terrified of this sudden assault. Sharpe was screaming like a wild thing, his sword chopping down hard, and a defender was at his feet, squirming and screaming. Harper swung his cutlass like a bullock-killer, almost decapitating a man. The second bridge thumped into place and yet more men swarmed up its palings. Sharpe was leading the assault toward the cannon. An infantryman lunged with his bayonet, and Sharpe knocked it aside and rammed the hilt of his sword into the man's face. The rest of the defenders, terrified by this horror that had sprung from their flank, were running away, leaving the ramparts open for Sharpe and his assault party to reach the fort's northern bastions where the guns faced out to sea.

  "Cochrane! Cochrane!" the attackers shouted, and to Sharpe their ragged chorus of voices sounded desperately thin, but it was enough to terrify the gunners who turned and bolted from their embrasures. The defending infantry, swept off the wall's top, were milling uncertainly in the courtyard beneath, and now the gunners added to the panic. Sharpe dragged his second pistol free, aimed it down into the melee, and pulled the trigger.

  "Cochrane!" He turned and bellowed the name into the darkness, down toward the white-fretted beach where the abandoned longboats still rolled and crashed in the tumbling surf. "Cochrane!"

  "Sharpe?" Cochrane's voice sounded from the dark dunes.

  "It's ours! Come on!" Christ, Sharpe thought, but they had done it! They had done it! His men were flooding into the first embrasure, hitting the captured gun with their cutlasses so that its barrel rang like a bell. "Come on, Cochrane! We've won!"

  "Reload!" Harper was bellowing. "Reload!" He jumped down into the gunpit beside Sharpe. "Those bastards will counterattack." He nodded toward the fort's courtyard.

  "Let's go for them!" Sharpe said.

  Behind him the slope was suddenly swarming with Cochrane's men. Sharpe did not wait for them to reach the fort, but instead shouted at his men to attack the panicked Spaniards in the fort's courtyard. An officer was trying to rally the fugitives, and if he succeeded, and if the gunners recaptured their weapons, then Cochrane's men would be cut down in swaths. Sharpe had less than fifty men, and there were at least two hundred in the courtyard, but they were demoralized and they must not be allowed to recover their wits. "Come on!" Sharpe screamed. "Finish them off!" He charged.

  Harper and a flood of maddened men came with him. Cutlasses chopped down, swords stabbed, pikes ripped at frightened men, but suddenly the enemy was melting away, running, because the panicked Spaniards had thrown open the fort's gate and were fleeing across the moonlit heath of the headland. They had left the Spanish flag flying on its staff beside the semaphore gallows, had abandoned their guns and were now running toward another fort that was visible from the ramparts of the captured Fort Ingles.

  "After them!" Sharpe screamed, "After them!"

  This was an added madness. One fort had fallen, and one captured fort was enough to guarantee Cochrane's survival. A hundred determined men could hold this fort by manhandling the guns to the land-facing ramparts and blasting away the Spanish counterattacks while Cochrane ferried his men off the beach to the waiting frigates, but suddenly Sharpe saw a chance to take a second fortress and so he took it.

  He took the mad chance because he remembered a horror from long ago, a horror he had witnessed in Spain when, riding with German horsemen, he had seen a French square broken.

  The survivors of that broken square had fled toward a second square which, opening its ranks to let in their fellow Frenchmen, had also opened themselves to the crazed horses and blood-spattered swords of the King's German Legion. The big horsemen
had been riding among the fugitives and had broken that second square. The survivors of the second square, together with the few men who still lived from the first, had run for a third square which, rather than let itself be turned into a slaughterhouse, had opened fire on their own men. They had still gone down, ridden into hell by big horses and screaming cavalrymen.

  Now Sharpe reckoned he could work a similar effect. The demoralized fugitives from Fort Ingles were running toward Fort San Carlos which, not more than four hundred yards away, was opening its gates to receive them. In the moonlight, and in the confusion, he reckoned his men would be indistinguishable from the fugitives. "On!" he shouted at his fifty men, "On!"

  They ran with him. A broad beaten track led from Fort Ingles to Fort San Carlos which, unlike the north-facing Fort Ingles, looked east across the neck of the harbor. Sharpe pushed a running Spaniard in the back, driving the man down into a ditch beside the road. He was among the Spaniards now, but they took no notice of him, nor of any of the other panting seamen who had infiltrated their ranks. The Spanish infantrymen cared only about reaching the safety of Fort San Carlos. The defenders of that second fort were standing on their ramparts, staring into the moonlight and trying to make sense of the confusion that had erupted on the headland's tip.

  Some of the fleeing Spaniards at last understood their danger. An officer shouted and lashed his sword at a seaman who calmly rammed his pike into the man's ribs. Some of the running infantrymen broke off the road, running south toward the headland's farther fortresses. Cochrane had reached the first fort and, understanding what was happening, had already launched his men along the path behind Sharpe. The defenders of Fort San Carlos, seeing that second wave of attackers, assumed them to be their only threat. Muskets stabbed flame into the gathering darkness and the balls whipped over the heads of Sharpe's men.