Bernard Cornwell Box Set: Sharpe's Triumph , Sharpe's Tiger , Sharpe's Fortress

by Bernard Cornwell

  Castenschiold’s hopes rose in the afternoon when his cavalry patrols reported that the British troops under Sir Arthur Wellesley had withdrawn from Køge. No one knew why. They had come, stayed for a night and marched away again and the road to Copenhagen was evidently open. Castenschiold’s dream of slicing into the soft belly of the British troops was still alive, and it grew even stronger when his small army reached Køge that evening and discovered the cavalry’s reports were true. The British were gone and the road was indeed open. The commander of the local militia, an energetic chandler, had spent the time since the British departure digging entrenchments all about the small town. “If they come back, sir, we’ll pepper them, pepper them proper!”

  “You have evidence that they’ll come back?” Castenschiold inquired, wondering why else the chandler had dug such impressive trenches.

  “I hope they come back! We’ll pepper them!” The chandler said he had only seen three British regiments, two in red coats and one in green. “Hardly more than two thousand men, I should think.”

  “Cannon?”

  “They had some, but so do we now.” The chandler beamed at the Danish guns trundling into the town.

  Castenschiold’s men bivouacked that night at Køge. There were reports of horsemen in the fields to the west, but by the time the General reached the place where the strange riders had been seen, they were gone. “Were they in uniform?” he asked, but no one was sure. Perhaps they had been local men? Castenschiold feared it was an enemy patrol, but the pickets saw no more such horsemen. Most of the army camped in the fields where a small stream twisted between woods and fields of stubble or turnips, while the luckier troops found shelter in the town and the General himself was billeted in the pastor’s house behind Saint Nicholas’s church where he tried to reassure his host that all would be well. “God will not desert us,” Castenschiold claimed, and his pious optimism seemed justified when, at midnight, he was woken by a returning cavalry patrol who had succeeded in riding as far as Roskilde where they had discovered that town’s garrison to be intact. The General decided he would send a message to Roskilde in the morning, demanding that its defenders march east toward Copenhagen. That might divert the British while he lunged up the open coast road. He forgot the vague reports of unidentified horsemen in the previous dusk because the dream was again taking shape.

  The General’s breakfast of cold herrings, cheese and bread was taken long before dawn. The army was stirring, readying to march. One of the militia colonels came to the pastor’s house with a gloomy report that his men had been issued with ammunition of the wrong calibre. “It will fit,” the Colonel reported, “but the balls rattle in the barrels. Too much windage, I think it’s called.” The Colonel was a cheese-maker from Vordingborg and was not entirely sure he wanted to lead his wooden-clogged soldiers against British regulars.

  Castenschiold ordered an aide to sort out the problem, then strapped on his sword belt and listened to the gulls crying on the long beach. Today, he thought, he would either become famous or infamous. Today he must march his men up that long coast road, ever flanked by the sea with its threat of the British navy, and he must hope to pierce deep into the enemy troops that were wrapped about the capital. “Hammers and nails,” he told an aide.

  “Hammers and nails, sir?”

  “To spike the British guns, of course,” Castenschiold snapped, wondering if he had to do all the thinking in the army. “Soft nails, if you can find them. And search the town for axes. To break the wheel spokes of the gun carriages,” he added quickly before the aide could ask why he wanted axes.

  “You have time for prayers?” the pastor asked him.

  “Prayers?” Castenschiold had been wondering if the water anywhere along the coast was deep enough to allow the big British ships close enough inshore to use their terrible broadsides against the road.

  “You would be most welcome at our family prayers,” the pastor explained.

  “I must be moving,” Castenschiold said hurriedly, “but pray for us, do pray for us.” He mounted his horse and, followed by a half-dozen aides, rode north in the thinning mist. The dawn was just showing above the eastern sea when he reached the northern edge of his encampment and there summoned his commanders. “I want your men on either flank today,” he told the two cavalry officers. “Push patrols forward, of course, but keep the bulk of your men close. And there’ll be no stopping today. Carry forage if you need it, and tell your men to put dinner in their saddlebags. Speed, gentlemen!” He spoke now to all the officers. “Speed is essential. We have to reach the enemy before they know we are coming!”

  He talked to his officers atop a small ridge. To his right, surprisingly close, was the long beach, and ahead of him the road to Copenhagen led between wide fields that sloped toward a shadowed tangle of hedgerows and trees. The sun was still below the horizon, but far off, silhouetted against the blanching east, he could see a ship of the line. “The regular infantry will lead the march,” Castenschiold decreed, “artillery next and then the militia. I want to be fighting by midday!” By noon he should be close to Copenhagen and he planned to keep his cavalry and regular infantry to fight any redcoats who might oppose him, but release his militia loose among the batteries. They would spike the guns, break the carriage wheels and burn the powder charges. He could see it now, see the smoke whirling up from shattered batteries, see himself a hero. “Right, gentlemen! Let us make ready! We march in thirty minutes!” He pointed dramatically northward, a gesture in keeping with his grand ambitions. Some of the officers turned to stare where he pointed and saw a dark patch of shadow move where the road vanished among some trees. Castenschiold also saw the shadow and thought it was a deer, or perhaps a cow, then he saw it was a man on horseback. “Who sent out patrols?” he demanded.

  “Not one of ours, sir,” a cavalryman answered.

  There were six horsemen on the road now and they had stopped, probably because they had seen the faint glow of the Danish campfires showing above the ridge where Castenschiold had tried to inspire his men. Castenschiold took his telescope from his saddlebag. The light was still bad so he dismounted and had an aide stand in front of him so he could use the man’s shoulder as a rest for the glass.

  Cavalrymen. He could see saber scabbards, but the men were not Danes, their hats were the wrong shape. He stooped slightly, letting the glass go beyond the cavalrymen to where the road ran up beside the distant beach. For a time he could only see gray and black, mist and shadow, then the hidden sun’s light grew and the General saw men marching. It was darkness moving, a mass of men, columns of men and they were trampling on his dream. He collapsed the telescope. “We’re staying here,” he said quietly.

  “Sir?” One of the aides thought he must have misheard.

  “Regular infantry here,” Castenschiold said, indicating the low crest that dominated the road. “Dragoons on the beach, light dragoons to the left flank. The militia will form a reserve between here and the town. Artillery right here, on the road.” He spoke decisively, knowing that any sign of uncertainty would destroy his men’s morale.

  Because the British were coming. There would be no attack on the siege works about Copenhagen, instead fate had decreed that General Castenschiold must fight in front of Køge. So let them attack us here, Castenschiold decided. It was not a bad position. His regular troops domi-nated the road, his right flank was secured by the sea, and the newly dug entrenchments were at his back if he should need to retreat.

  The six enemy cavalry scouts had vanished, carrying the news of the Danish presence to the advancing British. The sun flared on the horizon to flood the wrinkling sea with gold. It would be a beautiful day, Castenschiold thought, a beautiful day for a killing. His gloomy thoughts were interrupted by the arrival of a small cart from Køge. The cart was pulled by a shaggy pony and escorted by a cheerful aide. “Hammers and nails, sir!” the aide reported. “And forty-three axes.”

  “Take them back,” Castenschiold said, “just take them
back.”

  “Sir?”

  “Take them back!” he snarled. For the dream was dead. Castenschiold extended his telescope again and saw the enemy infantry coming from the woods. Some were in red jackets and some in green. Green? He had never heard of any British infantry wearing green. The enemy was spreading along his front now, too far away for any cannon to reach, but waiting for their own guns to arrive and for a few moments Castenschiold was tempted to attack them. He outnumbered the British, he could see that, and he toyed with the thought of releasing his men down the slope, but resisted the temptation. Inexperienced troops fought better when they defended a position, so he would let the outnumbered enemy climb the long hill into the teeth of his guns and perhaps, even if he could not raise Copenhagen’s siege, he could give Denmark a victory.

  The Danish guns unlimbered, the flag was raised and the infantry formed line.

  They were ready to fight.

  “WHAT THE devil are you doing here?” Captain Warren Dunnett inquired of the battalion’s quartermaster. He had never liked the man. He was up from the ranks and, in Dunnett’s opinion, had an inflated idea of his own competence and, worse, had served in India and believed, therefore, that he knew something of soldiering.

  “The Colonel sent me, sir. He told me you were a lieutenant short.”

  “And where the hell have you been anyway?” Captain Dunnett stooped to the hand mirror that he had wedged in the split top of a fence post. He scraped a razor down his cheek, carefully avoiding the tip of his wiry mustache. “Haven’t seen you in weeks.”

  “I was on detached service, sir.”

  “Detached service?” Dunnett inquired acidly. “What the hell’s that?”

  “I was working for General Baird.”

  And what the hell would Sir David Baird want with a man like Sharpe? Dunnett was not going to ask. “Just don’t get in the way,” he said curtly. He shook water off his razor and ran a hand over his chin. Bloody quartermaster, he thought.

  The riflemen chopped wood from a thicket and made small fires so they could brew their tea. The greenjackets were spread along a series of hedgerows and fences that straggled either side of the coast road. Behind them, in fields where the harvest was shocked, two battalions of redcoats waited. Every now and then an officer from one of those two battalions would come to the riflemen’s positions and stare up the shallow slope to where a Danish army was arrayed on the crest. The enemy flag, a white cross on a red field, stirred in the small wind that brought the smell of the sea. There were blue-coated cavalry on both Danish flanks and a battery of field guns in their center. Men made guesses about the enemy’s strength, most reckoning there were ten to twelve thousand Danes on the hill while the British numbered about three thousand and most of the redcoats and greenjackets were happy with those odds. “What are we waiting for?” a man grumbled.

  “We are waiting, Hawkins, because General Linsingen is marching about their flank,” Captain Dunnett answered.

  That, at any rate, was the plan. General Wellesley would pin the enemy down by threatening an attack and Linsingen, of the King’s German Legion, would march around their backside to trap them. Except that a bridge had collapsed and Linsingen’s men were still three miles away on the wrong side of a stream and no message had come and thus no one knew that the plan had already broken down.

  A rumbling series of crashes announced the arrival of a battery of British nine-pounders that unlimbered on the road. “Fires out!” a gunner officer snapped at the men crouched about the small campfires. He was worried because he was about to stack powder bags beside his guns.

  “Bloody gunners,” a rifleman complained.

  A captain of the 43rd, red-eyed and pale, begged a mug of tea from a group of riflemen. The 43rd was a Welsh regiment that had trained with the greenjackets at Shorncliffe barracks and the two battalions were friendly. “I shall give you boys some advice,” the Captain said.

  “Sir?”

  “Avoid akvavit. Avoid it. The devil brews it and the Danes drink it, God knows how. It looks like water.”

  The riflemen grinned and the Captain flinched as a kilted piper from the 92nd began taming his instrument to produce a series of moans, yelps and squeals. “Oh God,” the Captain moaned, “not that, please God, not that.”

  Sharpe heard the pipes and his mind flashed back to India, to a dusty field swirling with men, horses and painted guns where the Highlanders had ripped an enemy to ruin. “I don’t know if that noise frightens the Danes,” a voice behind him said, “but it terrifies me.”

  Sharpe turned to see that Sir Arthur Wellesley was examining the enemy through his telescope. The General was on horseback and had not been talking to Sharpe, but addressing two of his aides. Wellesley swept the glass left and right, then collapsed the tubes and found himself looking down at a Rifle officer. A look of mingled surprise and embarrassment showed on his face. “Mister Sharpe,” he said flatly, unable to avoid acknowledging Sharpe’s presence.

  “Sir.”

  “Still with us, I see?”

  Sharpe said nothing. He had not seen the General in three years, not since India, and he did not detect the General’s embarrassment, for he was too acutely aware of his disapproval. Grace had been a cousin of Wellesley’s. True, she had been a very distant cousin, but her family’s enmity had spread wide and Sharpe was certain Sir Arthur must share it.

  “Enjoying the Rifles, are you, Sharpe?” Wellesley asked. He was looking up the road as he spoke.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thought you would,” Wellesley said, “thought you would. And we shall see how useful your new weapons are today, eh?” The General, like most officers in the British army, had never seen the rifles in action. “Where the devil is Linsingen? Not even a damned message!” He looked at the Danes through his glass. “Would you say they’re readying to move?” He had asked his aides the question and one of them said he thought he could see a baggage cart behind the enemy guns. “Then damn it,” Wellesley said, “we’ll manage without Linsingen. To your regiments, gentlemen.” He was talking to the red-coated infantry officers who had gathered near the guns. “Good day, Sharpe!” He turned his horse and spurred away.

  “Know him well, do you?” Captain Dunnett was jealous that the General had spoken to Sharpe and could not resist asking the question.

  “Yes,” Sharpe said curtly.

  Damn you, Dunnett thought, while Sharpe was thinking he did not really know the General at all. He had spoken to him often enough, he had saved his life once and he had received the telescope as a reward for that favor, but he did not know him. There was something too cold and frightening about Sir Arthur, but Sharpe was still glad he was in charge today. He was good, simple as that, just plain good.

  “Stay on the right,” Dunnett ordered him, “with Sergeant Filmer.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dunnett wanted to ask why Sharpe was carrying a rifle, but managed to resist the question. The man probably still thought he was in the ranks. Sharpe, as an officer, should not have carried a longarm, but he liked the Baker rifle and so he had collected one from the regimental surgeon who had a small armory of weapons that belonged to his patients. The rifle was much less cumbersome than a musket, was far more accurate and had a squat, brutal efficiency that appealed to Sharpe.

  Sergeant Filmer nodded a greeting to Sharpe. “Glad you’re back, sir.”

  “Captain Dunnett sent me to look after you.”

  Filmer grinned. “Going to make us tea, sir, are you? Tuck us up in bed?”

  “Just going for a walk with you, Lofty. Straight up the hill.”

  Filmer glanced at the distant enemy. “Any good, are they?”

  “God knows. The militia aren’t, but those look like regulars to me.”

  “Find out soon enough,” Filmer said. He was a very short man and was thus known throughout the regiment as Lofty. He was also very competent. He scraped out the bowl of a clay pipe, then opened his pouch and offered Sharpe
a scrap of honeycomb. “Fresh, sir. Found some hives in that last village.”

  Sharpe sucked the honey. “They’ll hang you if they catch you, Lofty.”

  “Hung a couple of fellows yesterday, didn’t they? Silly bastards got caught.” He spat wax onto the grass. “Is it right there’s a town over the skyline, sir?”

  “Called Køge,” Sharpe said, thinking that he must have been very near this place when he had escaped from Lavisser.

  “Bloody daft names they’ve got here, sir.” Filmer held his rifle’s trigger and worked the cock back and forth. “I put some oil on her,” he explained, “’cos I reckon she got a bit damp at sea.” He glanced at his men. “Don’t be bloody sleeping, you dozy bastards, there’ll be work for you in a minute.”

  The artillerymen had loaded their guns and now stood ready to fire while the 92nd, over by the beach, was forming in line. The 43rd, immediately behind Sharpe, was doing the same. Two regiments of redcoats and one of greenjackets. It was a small force, much smaller than the enemy, but Sharpe knew what these regular soldiers could do and felt pity for the Danes. He gazed at their white cross on its red field. We should not be doing this, he thought. We should be fighting the French, not the Danes. He thought of Astrid and then felt guilty because of Grace. “We’ll see if it all works now, sir,” Filmer said cheerfully.

  “We will,” Sharpe agreed. They would see if the months of hard training at Shorncliffe had been worthwhile. The army had always employed skirmishers, men who ran ahead of the rigid formations to harry and weaken the waiting enemy, but now the army was employing riflemen to make those skirmishers more deadly. There were plenty who said the experiment was a waste of time and money, for rifles were much harder to reload than the smoothbore muskets and so a greenjacket could only fire one shot to a musket’s three or even four. The sceptics claimed that the riflemen would be slaughtered while they recharged their expensive weapons, but those weapons could kill at four times the distance of a musket. It was accuracy against quantity.