“Many French veterans have tried to kill me,” Sharpe said mildly, “and I’m still here.”
“That’s just the luck of the devil.” Calvet spotted some movement at the villa and went silent as he gazed through the glass. “How did you learn French?” he asked after a while.
“From Madame Castineau.”
“In her bed?”
“No,” Sharpe protested.
“Is she beautiful?” Calvet asked greedily.
Sharpe hesitated. He knew he could deflect Calvet’s impudent enquiries by describing Lucille as very‘ plain, but he suddenly found that he could not so betray her. “I think so,” he said very lamely.
Calvet chuckled at the answer. „I’ll never understand women. They’ll turn down a score of prinked-up thoroughbreds, then flop on to their backsides when some chewed-up mongrel like you or me hangs out his tongue. Mind you, I’m not complaining. I bedded an Italian duchess once, and thought I’d shock her by telling her I was the son of a ditch-digger, but it only made her drag me back to the sheets.“ He shook his head at the memory. ”It was like being mauled by a troop of Cossacks.“
“I told you,” Sharpe lied with fragile dignity, “that I didn’t go to Madame Castineau’s bed.”
“Then why should she try to protect you?” Calvet demanded. He had already confessed to Sharpe that it was Madame Castineau’s unwitting letter that had alerted Napoleon to Ducos’s treachery, and he now described how that letter had tried to exonerate the Riflemen. “She was insistent you were as innocent as a stillborn baby. Why would she say that?”
“Because we are innocent,” Sharpe said, but he felt a thrill of gratitude at such evidence of Lucille’s protective care. Then, to change the subject, he asked whether Calvet was married.
“Christ, yes,” Calvet spat out a shred of chewing tobacco, “but the good thing about war, Englishman, is that it keeps us away from our own wives but very close to other men’s wives.”
Sharpe smiled dutifully, then reached out and took the General’s telescope. He stared at the villa for a long time, then slid the tubes shut. “We’ll have to attack from this side.”
“That’s bloody obvious. A schoolboy with a palsied brain could have worked that one out.”
Sharpe ignored the General’s sarcasm. He was beginning to like Calvet, and he sensed that the Frenchman liked him. They had both marched in the ranks, and both had endured a lifetime of battles. Calvet had risen much higher in rank, but Calvet had a devotion to a cause that Sharpe did not share. Sharpe had never fought for King George in the same fanatic spirit that Calvet offered to the Emperor. Calvet’s devotion to the fallen Napoleon was absolute, and his alliance with Sharpe a mere expedience imposed by that forlorn allegiance. When Calvet attacked the Villa Lupighi he would do it for the Emperor, and Sharpe suspected that Calvet would cheerfully march into hell itself if the Emperor so demanded it.
Not that attacking the Villa Lupighi should be hellish. It had none of the defensive works of even a small redoubt of the late wars. There was no glacis to climb, no ravelins to flank, no embrasures to gout cannon-fire. Instead it was merely a ragged and fading building that decayed on its commanding hilltop. During the night Calvet and Sharpe had circled much of that hill and had seen how the lantern-light glowed in the seaward rooms while the eastern and ruined half of the building was an inky black. That dark tangle of stone offered itself as a hidden route to the enemy’s heart.
The only remaining question was how many of that enemy waited in the rambling and broken villa. During the morning Sharpe and Calvet had seen at least two dozen men around the villa. Some had just lounged against an outer wall, staring to sea. Another group had walked with some women towards the village harbour. Two had exercised large wolf-like dogs. There had been no sight of Pierre Ducos. Calvet was guessing that Ducos had about three dozen men to defend his stolen treasure, while Calvet, less his three boat-snatchers, would be leading just ten. “It’ll be a pretty little fight,” Calvet now grudgingly allowed.
“It’s the dogs that worry me.” Sharpe had seen the size of the two great beasts which had strained against the chains of their handlers.
Calvet sneered. “Are you frightened, Englishman?”
“Yes.” Sharpe made the simple reply, and he saw how the honesty impressed Calvet. Sharpe shrugged. “It used not to be bad, but it seems to get worse. It was awful before Toulouse.”
Calvet laughed. “I had too much to do at Toulouse to be frightened. They gave me a brigade of wet-knickered recruits who would have run away from a schoolmistress’s cane if I hadn’t put the fear of God into the bastards. I told them I’d kill them myself if they didn’t get in there and fight.”
“They fought well,” Sharpe said. “They fought very well.”
“But they didn’t win, did they?” Calvet said. “You saw to that, you bastard.”
“It wasn’t my doing. It was a Scotsman called Nairn. Your brigade killed him.”
“They did something right, then,” Calvet said brutally. “I thought I was going to die there. I thought you were going to shoot me in the back, and I thought to hell with it. I’m getting too old for it, Major. Like you, I find myself pissing with fright before a battle these days.” Calvet was returning honesty with honesty. “It became bad for me in Russia. I used to love the business before that. I used to think there was nothing finer than to wake in the dawn and see the enemy waiting like lambs for the sword-blades, but in Russia I got scared. It was such a damned big country that I thought I’d never reach France again and that my soul would be lost in all that emptiness.” He stopped, seemingly embarrassed by his confession of weakness. “Still,” he added, “brandy soon put that right.”
“We use rum.”
“Brandy and fat bacon,” Calvet said wistfully, “that makes a proper bellyful before a fight.”
“Rum and beef,” Sharpe countered.
Galvet grimaced. “In Russia, Englishman, I ate one of my own corporals. That put some belly into me, though it was very lean meat.” Calvet took his telescope back and stared at the villa which now seemed deserted in the afternoon heat. “I think we should wait till about two hours after midnight. Don’t you agree?”
Sharpe silently noted how this proud man had asked for his opinion. “I agree,” he said, “and we’ll attack in two groups.”
“We will?” Calvet growled.
“We go first,” Sharpe said.
“We, Englishman?”
“The Rifles, General. The three of us. The experts. Us.”
“Do I give orders, or you?” Calvet demanded belligerently.
“We’re Riflemen, best of the best, and we shoot straighter than you.” Sharpe knew it was only a soldier’s damned pride that had made him insist on leading the assault. He patted the butt of his Baker rifle. “If you want our help, General, then we go first. I don’t want a pack of blundering Frenchmen alerting the enemy. Besides, for a night attack, our green coats are darker than yours.”
“Like your souls,” Calvet grumbled, but then he grinned. “I don’t care if you go first, Englishman, because if the bastard’s alert then you’re the three who’ll get killed.” He laughed at that prospect, then slid back from the skyline. “Time to get some sleep, Englishman, time to get some sleep.”
On the far hill a dog raised its muzzle and howled at the blinding sun. Like the hidden soldiers, it waited for the night.
Calvet’s infantrymen, like the three Riflemen, wore their old uniforms. The twelve Grenadiers were all survivors of Napoleon’s elite corps, the Old Guard; the Imperial Guard.
Just to join the Imperial Guard a man must have endured ten years of fighting service, and Calvet’s dozen Grenadiers must have amassed more than a century and a half of experience between them. Each of the men, like Calvet, had abandoned royal France to follow their beloved Emperor into exile, and they now wore the uniforms which had terrified the Emperor’s enemies across Europe. Their dark blue coats had red turnbacks and tails, and their b
earskins were faced with brass and chained with silver. Each man, in addition to his musket, was armed with a short, brass-hiked sabre-briquet. The Grenadiers, as they assembled in the olive grove, made a formidable sight, yet it was also a very noticeable sight for their white breeches reflected very brightly in the moonlight, so brightly that Sharpe’s earlier proposal that the Greenjackets should go first made obvious good sense.
At midnight Calvet led the small force out of the olive grove, across the ilex ridge, and down to the valley at the foot of the villa’s hill. The three men who would secure the fishing boat had already left for the small harbour. Calvet had threatened the three with death if they made even the smallest noise on their journey, and he reiterated the warning now to his own party, which thereafter advanced at an agonisingly slow pace. It was thus not till well after two o’clock that they reached a stand of cypress trees that was the last available concealment before they climbed the steep, scraped hillside towards the villa’s eastern ruins. The inconveniently bright moon shone above the sea to silhouette the ragged outline of the high building.
Calvet stood with Sharpe and stared at the silhouette. “If they’re awake and ready, my friend, then you’re a dead Englishman.”
Sharpe noted the ‘mon ami’, and smiled. “Pray they’re asleep.”
“Damn prayer, Englishman. Put your faith in gunpowder and the bayonet.”
“And brandy?”
“That, too.” Calvet offered his flask. Sharpe was tempted, but refused. To have accepted, he decided, would be to demonstrate the fear which he had earlier confessed, but which now, on the verge of battle, must be hidden. It was especially important to hide it when he was being observed by these hardened men from Napoleon’s own Guard. Tonight, Sharpe vowed, three Riflemen would prove themselves more than equal to these proud men.
Calvet had no qualms about displaying a fondness for brandy. He tipped the flask to his mouth, then, to Sharpe’s astonishment, gave the Rifleman a warm embrace. „Vive I’Empereur, mon ami.“
Sharpe grinned, hesitated, then tried the unfamiliar war cry for himself. „Vive I’Empereur, mon General.“
The Imperial Guardsmen smiled, while a delighted Calvet laughed. “You get better, Englishman, you get better, but you’re also late, so go! Go!”
Sharpe paused, stared up the hill and wondered what horrors might wait at its black summit. Then he nodded to Frederickson and Harper, and led the way into the moonlight. The long journey at last was ending.
It was simple at first, merely a tough upwards climb of a weed-strewn hillside that was more trying on the leg-muscles than on the nerves. Once Sharpe stepped on a loose stone that tumbled back in a stream of smaller stones and earth, and he froze, thinking of the scorn Calvet would be venting in the trees below. Harper and Frederickson watched the great building above, but saw no movement except for the bats that flickered about the broken walls. No lights showed. If there were guards in the ruins they were very silent. Sharpe thought of the great wolf-like dogs, but, if the beasts waited, they too were silent. Perhaps, as Frederickson had dared to hope, they were nothing but pets which, at this moment, slept in some deep recess of the silent villa.
The three Riflemen pushed on, angling to their right so that they could take the greatest advantage of the building’s mooncast shadow that spread its blackness a quarter way down the eastern slope. Still no one challenged them. They moved like the skirmishers they were; spread apart with one man always motionless, a rifle at his shoulder, to cover the other two.
It took fifteen minutes to reach the shrouding darkness of the building’s shadow. Once in that deeper darkness they could move faster, though the slope had now become so steep that Sharpe was forced to sling his rifle and use his hands to climb. A small wind had begun to stir the air, travelling from the inland hills and olive groves towards the sea.
“Down!” Harper hissed the word from the left flank and Sharpe and Frederickson obediently flattened themselves. Harper edged his rifle forward, but left his seven-barrelled gun slung across his back. Sharpe pulled his own rifle free, then heard a scraping sound from the hilltop. The sound resolved itself into footsteps, though no one was yet visible. Very slowly Sharpe turned his head to stare down the long slope. He could see no sign of Calvet or his Grenadiers beneath the ink dark cypresses.
“Sir!” Harper’s voice was as soft as the new small wind.
Two men strolled unconcernedly around the corner of the ruined building. The men were talking. Both had muskets slung on their shoulders, and both were smoking. Once they were in the shadow of the eastern wall the only sign of their progress was the intermittent glow of the two cheroots. Sharpe heard a burst of laughter from the two guards. The sound confirmed what the men’s casual attitude had already suggested: that Ducos had not been warned. Men who expected an attack would be far more wary and silent. The two guards were clearly oblivious to any danger, but they posed a danger themselves for they stopped halfway down the eastern flank and seemed to settle themselves at the base of the ruined wall. Then, from somewhere deep inside the black tangle of ruins, a dog growled. One of the two guards shouted to quieten the animal, but in the ensuing silence Sharpe’s fear surged like a great burst of pain in his belly. He feared those dogs.
Yet, despite the fear, he made himself squirm up the hill. He was on the right flank of the three Riflemen, furthest from the two guards, so he possessed the best chance of reaching the ruins unseen. He inched forwards, dragging himself painfully with his elbows. He estimated he was forty yards from the closest ruins, and perhaps sixty from where the two men crouched among fallen masonry. He ignored the two men, instead trying to see a route into the tangle of broken stone above. If he could work his way round behind the two guards then he might yet be able to silence them without the need to fire a shot. He had sharpened the big sword so that its edge was bright and deadly. The scabbard was wrapped in rags so that the metal did not chink on stone. He listened for the dogs, but heard nothing. His left shoulder was a mass of pain as it took the weight from his elbows. The joint had never healed properly, but he had to ignore the pain. He sensed that Frederickson and Harper were motionless. They would be hearing the tiny noises of Sharpe’s stealthy movements, would have guessed what he planned to do, and would now be waiting with their rifles trained on the two glowing cheroots.
Sharpe could feel his heart thumping. The two guards were still talking softly. He pulled up his right leg, found a foothold, and gingerly pushed himself up. In two minutes, he estimated, he would be inside the ruins. Add ten minutes to stalk the two men, then Calvet could be summoned with the agreed signal of a nightjar’s harsh call. He eased himself another foot up the slope, but then all his hopes of surprise, and all the pent-up fears of the night exploded in a lethal burst of noise.
The two dogs had caught the strangers’ scent on the freshening breeze.
One second there had been silence on the hilltop except for the muttering of the two guards, then, with a horrid abruptness, two dogs howled their cries at the moon as they came scrabbling and desperate over the ruined walls. Sharpe had time for one foul glimpse of their ragged silhouettes as they leaped against the sky.
“Fire!” He shouted the order in panic.
Harper and Frederickson fired at the two sentries. The rifles’ noise was startlingly loud; so loud that thousands of roosting birds shattered up from the ruined masonry. A guard shouted with pain.
The dogs were scenting their closest enemy: Sharpe.
He had just had enough time after his first glimpse of the beasts to rise to one knee and draw the big sword. He could not see the beasts in the dark shadows, but he could hear and smell them. He screamed as he swung the heavy blade. He felt the steel thump into a pelt, jar on bone, then slide free. The animal he had struck howled like a soul in torment. Sharpe knew he must have hurt it badly for it slewed sideways, but then the second animal came straight for him with its teeth bared. Sharpe’s sword arm was unbalanced so he swung his left arm to
ward of the attack. The dog’s teeth closed on the green cloth of his old jacket, then the animal swung all its weight on the fragile cloth that ripped, but not before the impact of the attack had sent Sharpe tumbling down the slope. He was nerveless with fear. He knew how to fight men, but this feral violence was something he could neither anticipate nor understand. He lost both sword and rifle as he fell. The second dog had also lost its balance and spilt sideways on the slope. The first dog, bleeding from its flank and with a broken foreleg, lunged at Sharpe. He scrambled away from it and, in his desperation, sprawled on to his back, but then the second dog, with shreds of green cloth hanging from its teeth, sprang on to his belly. Sharpe smelt its rancid breath and knew the dog was about to rip his windpipe open.
Sharpe desperately lunged up with his right hand, caught the dog’s throat, and squeezed. A musket fired from the hilltop and the dog’s eyes reflected sudden and red in the muzzle’s flash. Calvet was shouting orders at the foot of the hill. Saliva dripped on to Sharpe’s face. The dog was a heavy mass of bone and muscle; nothing but a killing beast. It scrabbled for a foothold on Sharpe’s chest and belly, shook its head to loosen the terrible grip on its sinewy throat, and thrust its weight down so that its teeth could flense the skin from Sharpe’s face. Somewhere on the hilltop a man screamed. Another musket fired, but nowhere near Sharpe. He wanted to shout for help, but he needed all his strength to hold off the dog’s lunges.
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