Sharpe's Rifles s-6

by Бернард Корнуэлл

  Feeling shriven, Sharpe went back to the fortified hilltop where, behind a brushwood breastwork strung between tree stumps, two dozen Riflemen waited. They had a fine view from the hill-crest, but Sharpe had no doubt that, once the enemy committed himself to the attack, this strong picquet would go down to the houses where the rest of his men waited. The attack would be from the south, not the west. “You heard the Major!” he warned his Riflemen. “The bastards are coming! They’ll be here in another hour.”

  In fact it took nearer three hours. Three hours of increasing worry that the Dragoons were hatching wickedness, and three hours during which the first clinking sacks of caltrops were delivered to the hilltop. Only then did the two-man picquet of Cazadores which had been posted at the brink of the dead ground rowel their horses back to the city. ”Dragons! Dragons!“ They made gestures over their heads to imitate the shape of the French helmets, and pointed west to the dead ground.

  ”Si!“ Sharpe shouted, ”Cronos!”

  The Riflemen, some of whom had been laughing over the wicked small spikes of the caltrops, went back to their barricades. The landscape stayed empty. Sharpe looked south, expecting to see the other close picquet withdrawing, but there was no sign of the Cazadores who had been posted to guard the southern approach to the city.

  “Bloody hell!” Hagman spat in horror at the sudden smell which came across the grassland. It was the rancid stench of saddle and crupper sores that came on the chill west wind from the dead ground. The Riflemen wrinkled their noses against the foul odour.

  Sharpe watched the innocent and empty scene which hid the attackers. Doubtless the French officers, concealed by the ragged bushes at the valley’s edge, were watching the city. Behind those officers the Dragoons would be preparing for battle. He imagined helmets being crammed onto pig-tailed heads, and long swords scraping out of metal scabbards. The horses, knowing what was to come, would be pawing the ground. Men would be nervously shortening stirrup leathers or wiping sweat from their reins. Sharpe wondered if he had been wrong; if, instead of feinting from the west and attacking from the south, the French would simply charge to the barricades and then just claw at the defences.

  “Jesus Christ!” The blasphemy was torn from Hagman as the hidden valley suddenly sprouted a line of cavalry; a great line of Dragoons who trotted forward with billowing cloaks and drawn swords. They had taken the cloth covers from their helmets so that the gold-coloured metal shone in the afternoon light. “There’s thousands of the buggers!” Hagman pushed his rifle forward.

  “Don’t fire!” Sharpe called. He did not want the Riflemen to fire for fear that they would trigger the fingers of the

  Cazadores behind the barricades. The Spanish muskets and carbines, being smooth-bored, were far less accurate than the rifles, and a volley fired at this distance was a volley wasted.

  Sharpe could have saved his breath for, within seconds of the cavalry’s appearance, the first muskets fired. He swore, turned, and saw that the city’s roofs were crammed with civilians who wanted to kill the French. Immediately the first shots sounded, so all the men behind the barricades began to fire. A huge volley crackled and spat flames, smoke belched to hide the city’s flank, and scarce a single Frenchman fell. The range, over three hundred yards, was hopelessly long. Even if a bullet struck it was likely to be spent, and would bounce harmlessly off a thick uniform coat or a horse’s winter pelt.

  The horsemen checked their slow advance. Sharpe looked for de l’Eclin’s red pelisse and could not see it. He mentally divided the line into quarters and made a swift count of one quarter, then multiplied the result by four to reach a total of three hundred. This was not the attack. This was a display of strength, spread into an impressive line, but only meant to draw eyes westward. “Watch the south!” Sharpe called to his men. “Watch the south!”

  The firing from the city had drawn Sergeant Harper up from the buildings that guarded the southern approach. He stared at the line of Dragoons and whistled. “That’s a rare lot of mischief, sir.”

  “Only three hundred men,” Sharpe said calmly.

  “Is that all, now?”

  A French officer drew his sword and cantered forward. After a few strides he spurred his horse into a gallop and curved its path so that he would swoop within a hundred yards of the city’s defence. Muskets crackled from the barricades, but he galloped safe through the wild shots. Another officer started forward, and Sharpe guessed the Frenchmen would keep tantalizing the defenders until the real attack erupted.

  Hagman pulled back his rifle cock as the second French officer spurred to full speed. “Can I teach the bugger a lesson, sir?”

  “No. Let them be. This is just a fake. They think it’s working, so let them play.”

  Minutes passed. A whole squadron of Dragoons trotted down the front of the line, then reversed their path to gallop derisively back. Their defiance prompted another huge volley to ripple down the city’s western buildings, and Sharpe saw the ground flecked by the strike of the balls and knew that the Spaniards’ shots were falling short. A second squadron, holding a guidon high, trotted northwards. Some of the stationary Frenchmen sheathed their swords and fired carbines from the saddle, and every French shot provoked an answering and wasteful volley from the city.

  Another officer displayed his bravery by galloping as close as he dared to the city’s defences. This one had less luck. His horse went down in a flurry of blood and mud. A great cheer went up from the barricades, but the Frenchman slashed his saddle free and ran safely back towards his comrades. Sharpe admired the man, but schooled himself to keep watching the south.

  South! That was where the attack would come, not here! De I’Eclin’s absence from the west meant that the chasseur must be with the men who crept about the city’s southern flank. Sharpe was sure of it now. The French were waiting for the sun to sink even lower so that the shadows would be long in the broken southern ground. In the meantime this western diversion was calculated to stretch the defenders’ nerves and waste the city’s powder, but the attack would come from the south; Sharpe knew it, and he stared obsessively south where nothing moved among the falling ground. Somewhere beyond that ground was the southern picquet of mounted Cazadores, and he became obsessed that the Spaniards had been overwhelmed by a French attack. There could be seven hundred Dragoons hidden to the south. He wondered whether to send a patrol of Riflemen to explore the shadows.

  “Sir?” Harper had stayed on the hilltop and now called urgently. “Sir?”

  Sharpe turned back to the west, and swore.

  Another squadron of Dragoons had come from the dead ground, and this one was led by a horseman wearing a red pelisse and a black fur colback. A horseman on a big black horse. De l’Eclin. Not to the south, where the bulk of Sharpe’s Riflemen were deployed, but to the west where the Frenchman could wait until the sinking sun was a dazzling and blinding ball of fire in the defenders’ eyes.

  “Do I pull the lads out of the buildings?” Harper asked nervously.

  “Wait.” Sharpe was tempted by the thought that de l’Eclin was clever enough to make himself a part of the deception.

  The French waited. Why, Sharpe wondered, if this was their main attack, would they signal it so obviously? He looked south again, seeing how the shadows darkened and lengthened. He stared at the rutted road and scanned the hedgerows. Something moved in a shadow; moved again, and Sharpe clapped his hands in triumph. “There!”

  The Riflemen twisted to look.

  “Cazadores, sir.” Harper, knowing that he disappointed Sharpe’s expectations, sounded subdued.

  Sharpe pulled open his telescope. The approaching men were in Spanish uniform, suggesting that they were either the southern picquet bringing news or else one of the parties that had gone south-east to break down the bridges over the river. Or perhaps they were disguised Frenchmen? Sharpe looked back at the chasseur, but de l’Eclin was not moving. There was something very threatening in his utter stillness; something that spoke of a
rampant and chilling confidence.

  Sharpe obstinately clung to his certainty. He knew that his men no longer believed him, that they prepared themselves to fight the enemy who paraded so confidently in the west, but he could not surrender his obsession with the south. Nor could he rid himself of the conviction that de l’Eclin was too subtle a soldier to put all his hopes in a straightforward and unsubtle attack.

  Sharpe opened his telescope to inspect the horsemen who came slowly from the south. He swore softly. They were Spaniards. He recognized one of Vivar’s Sergeants who had white side-whiskers. The mud on the horses’ legs and the picks strapped to the Cazadores’ saddles showed that they were a returning bridge-breaking party.

  “Damn. Bloody hell and bloody damnation!” He had been wrong, utterly wrong! The Spaniards who approached from the south had just ridden clean through an area which should have been rife with de l’Eclin’s seven hundred missing men. Sharpe had been too clever by half! “Fetch the men out of the houses, Sergeant.”

  Harper, relieved at the order, ran down the slope and Sharpe turned his glass back to the west. Just as he settled the long tube and adjusted the barrels to focus the image, Colonel de l’Eclin drew his sabre and Sharpe was momentarily dazzled by the reflection of sunlight from the curved steel.

  He blinked the brightness away, remembering the moment when de l’Eclin had so nearly cut him down by the bridge. It seemed so long ago now; before he had met Vivar and Louisa. Sharpe remembered the black horse charging and his astonishment as the superbly trained beast had swerved right to allow the Colonel to hack down with a left-handed stroke. A man did not expect to face a cack-handed swordsman, and perhaps that explained why so many soldiers were superstitious of fighting against a left-handed opponent.

  Sharpe peered through the telescope again. Colonel de l’Eclin was resting his curved blade on his saddle pommel, waiting. The horses behind him moved restlessly. The sun was sinking and reddening. Soon a flag would be unfurled in Santiago’s cathedral, and the faithful would plead with a dead saint to come to their country’s aid. Meanwhile, a soldier of the Emperor’s favourite elite waited for the charge that would break the city’s defences. The feint and the attack, Sharpe realized, would both come from the west. These three hundred horsemen would draw the defenders‘

  fire while the rest of the Dragoons, hidden in the dead ground, prepared a sudden lunge that would burst from the fog of powder smoke like a thunderbolt.

  Harper was urging the Riflemen uphill. “Where do you want them, sir?”

  But Sharpe did not answer. He was watching Colonel de l’Eclin who cut the sabre in flashing practice strokes, as though he was bored. The sun’s reflection from the gleaming blade provoked a ragged and inaccurate volley from the city’s defenders. De l’Eclin ignored it. He was waiting for the sun to become a weapon of awesome power, dazzling the defenders, and that moment was very close.

  “Sir?” Harper insisted.

  But still Sharpe did not answer for, at that very instant, he had a new certainty. He knew at last what the French planned. He had been wrong about the southern attack, but if he was wrong now then the city, the gonfalon, and all his own men would be lost. All would be lost. He felt the temptation to ignore the new knowledge, but to hesitate was fatal and the decision must be taken. He slammed the telescope shut and pushed it into his pocket. He kicked the sacks of caltrops. “Bring them, and follow me. All of you!”

  “On your feet!” Harper bawled at the Riflemen.

  Sharpe began to run. “Follow me! Hurry! Come on!” He cursed himself for not seeing the truth earlier. It was so God-damned simple! Why had the French moved the supplies into the palace? And why had Colonel Coursot stacked grain and hay in the cellars? A cellar was no place to store forage a day or so before it was to be distributed! And there was the business of a thousand horsemen. Even a soldier as experienced as Harper had stared at the Dragoons and been impressed by their numbers. Men often saw a horde where there was only a small force, and how much easier it was for a civilian to make that mistake in the middle of the night. Sharpe ran even harder. “Come on! Hurry!”

  For the city was almost lost.

  The cathedral’s nave was plainer than the exterior of the building might suggest, but the plainness did not detract from the magnificence of its pillared height. Beyond the long nave, the domed transepts, and the screen was a sanctuary as sumptuous as any in Christendom, and still sumptuous even though the French had torn away the silverwork, wrenched down the statues, and ripped the triptychs from their frames. Behind the altar was an empty void, the space of God, that this dusk was lit by the scarlet rays of the setting sun which slashed through the cathedral’s dusty and smoky interior.

  Beneath the altar and above the crypt where the saint lay buried, the opened strongbox stood before the altar.

  From the top of the dome which covered the meeting of transepts and aisle, a great silver bowl hung from ropes. It smoked with incense that filled the huge church with a sweet and musty smell. A thousand candles added their smoke to make the shrine a place of mystery, scent, shadows and hope; a place for a miracle.

  Two hundred people knelt in the transepts. There were priests and soldiers, monks and merchants, scholars and friars; the men who could carry a message throughout Spain that Santiago Matamoros lived. They would tell an invaded people that the due obeisance had been made, the proper words said, and that the great gonfalon, which had once flared above the massacre of pagans, had been unfurled again.

  It was as if Drake’s Drum was at last beaten, or the soil of Avalon erupted in a violent darkness to release a band of woken knights, or as if Charlemagne, roused from his sleep of centuries, drew his battle-sword again to drive away the enemies of Christ. All nations had their legend, and this night, in the great ringing vault of the cathedral, Spain’s legend would be stirred from a thousand years of silence. The candles shivered in a cold wind as the robed priests bowed before the altar.

  As they bowed, one of the cathedral’s western doors banged open as though a violent wind had snatched the wood and crashed it against stone. Feet pounded on paving. The soldiers who knelt before the altar twisted towards the sound and reached for their swords. Louisa, kneeling veiled beside Bias Vivar, gasped. The priests checked their words to see who had dared to interrupt the invocations.

  Vivar stood. Sharpe had burst into the cathedral and now appeared beneath the Gate of Glory. The Spaniard ran down the long nave. “Why are you here?” There was outrage in his voice.

  Sharpe, wild-eyed, did not reply. He stared about the cathedral as though expecting to find enemies. He saw none, and turned back to the western doors.

  Vivar reached out a hand to stop the Rifleman. “Wh| aren’t you at the barricades?” /

  “He was holding his sabre in his right hand!” Sharpe said. “Don’t you understand? His right hand! Colonel de l’Eclin’s left-handed!”

  Vivar stared uncomprehendingly. “What are you talking about?”

  “There are three hundred of the bastards out there,” Sharpe’s voice rose to echo from the tall stone of the nave, “only three hundred! And none to the south. So where are the rest? Did you look behind the sacks in the cellars?”

  Vivar said nothing. He did not need to.

  “Did you search the cellars?” Sharpe insisted.

  “No.”

  “That’s why your brother’s there! That’s why they wanted a truce! That’s why they saved the supplies! That’s why they had the place prepared! Don’t you see? De l’Eclin is in the palace! He’s been there all day, laughing at us! And he’s coming here!”

  “No!” Vivar’s tone did not imply disagreement, only horror.

  “Yes!” Sharpe pulled himself from Vivar’s grasp. He ran back through the Gate of Glory, oblivious of its majesty, and tore open the cathedral’s outer doors.

  A shout of triumph and a trumpet’s peal of victory turned him back. Sharpe saw, dim through the smoke and incense, a flag unfurl. Not an old, t
hreadbare, motheaten flag which crumbled to the air, but a new and glorious white banner of shining silk, crossed with red; the gonfalon of Santiago, and as it spread, so the bells began to ring.

  And, at the same instant, the sledgehammers drove down the planking which had locked the French into the palace. The bells rang for a miracle, and the French, as they had always intended, broke their truce.

  French Dragoons attacked from either side of the palace. They must have come from the rear gates of the building, where the stables lay, and as the infantry debouched from the central door, the horsemen burst into the western plaza. The only obstacle to their charge was the low barricade where a handful of dismounted Cazadores fired a ragged volley, then fled.

  “Sergeant! Caltrops!” Sharpe shoved Harper towards the cathedral’s southern flank and, seizing two of the sacks himself, shouted at his men to follow him to the northern plaza.

  Cavalry could not climb the intricate flights of steps at the cathedral’s western front. Instead the Dragoons planned to surround the shrine, so that no one inside could escape. “Rifles! Hold your fire! Hold your fire!” Sharpe knew there was no point in wasting a volley. Instead the caltrops must hold up this first French onslaught.

  It was a threateningly high jump from the platform on the cathedral’s facade to the plaza, but Sharpe had no time to use the steps. He jumped, falling so heavily that a stab of pain shot up from his left ankle. The pain had to be ignored for defeat was as close as a Dragoon’s sword reach. His men followed him, grunting as they dropped to the flagstones.

  Sharpe dragged the sacks north. He could see the horsemen to his left.and he knew he had only seconds to spread the vicious spikes across the gap beneath the bridge which led to the bishop’s palace. “That way! Wait for me!” he shouted at his Riflemen, then swung the first sack so that the caltrops clattered and fanned across the narrow space. “Join me, Sergeant!” Sharpe shouted at Harper, but his voice was drowned by the shouts of the French and the scream of their war trumpets. He seized the second sack and shook it loose. The metal spikes rolled and fell, scattering to block the narrow passage.