Sharpe turned and stared south into Spain. He could not see Irati, for the village was well over a mile away and his picquets were a half mile further off still, and he suddenly worried that he would not hear Captain Smith’s warning shots. But it was too late to change the arrangements now. So stop worrying, he told himself. No point in fretting what you cannot change.
“Enemy, sir,” d’Alembord said softly and Sharpe wheeled back to gaze down the road.
The French had come. Not many yet, just a half company of grenadiers, the elite of the enemy infantry. Sharpe could tell they were grenadiers because they wore high bearskin hats with a yellow grenade badge, though none, he saw through his telescope, flaunted the high red plume on their hats. French grenadiers were very protective of that plume and on campaign they liked to keep it in a leather tube attached to their bayonet sling. It was only brought out for formal parades or to impress women, and they fought without it, just as, curiously, they fought without grenades. Sharpe had only ever seen grenades aboard warships, and no wonder, for they were fiddly to light and, being mostly made of glass, fragile to transport. These grenadiers would fight with muskets and bayonets, but they were up against fifteen rifles and twenty-one wine barrels. “Thirty,” he counted the enemy as they appeared, “forty, forty-five, sixty. All grenadiers, Dally.”
“Sending their best up front, are they?”
“Seems that way,” Sharpe said, still gazing through the captured telescope. The Frenchmen had seen the barrels now and they were puzzled by them. They had stopped and seemed to be arguing amongst themselves. “Got them worried, we have,” Sharpe said.
“They’ll be hoping it’s free wine for Christmas,” d’Alembord said.
Some of the French grenadiers stared up the hill, but they could see no enemy for the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers were well hidden behind the crest and Sharpe and d’Alembord were concealed by the frontier cairn. The enemy still did not advance, but at last an officer, a sword scabbard slim at his side, walked towards the waiting puncheons. “It’s his lucky day,” Sharpe said.
The grenadiers stayed back as the officer approached the strange obstacle. He was cautious, as any man would be on the Spanish frontier, but the barrels looked innocent enough. He stooped to the nearest, sniffed at the bung, then drew his sword and worked the tip of its blade into the cork plug. He levered the tight bung free then stooped to sniff again. “He’s found the wine,” Sharpe said.
The officer turned and called to the waiting grenadiers who, assured that only barrels of cheap Spanish tinto barred their path, surged forward. More soldiers were appearing over the lower crest now, and they too rushed to join in the unexpected booty. Men stabbed their bayonets at the bungs of the barrels, then tipped them over so the wine poured into their empty canteens. A small crowd gathered round the first three barrels and another group, even larger, went to take possession of the second line of barrels. “For what they are about to receive,” Sharpe said.
Two of the barrels in the second group contained nothing but stones. But the third, the middle barrel, held gunpowder from Sharpe’s spare ammunition. That powder half filled the puncheon and was mixed with scraps of iron and small sharp stones, while above it, balanced on a stave that Rifleman Hagman had carefully nailed into place, was a coiled strip of burning slow match. None of the grenadiers noticed the small holes that had been drilled into the barrel to feed air to the fire, nor did they see the tiny wisps of smoke sifting from the burning fuse. They just anticipated wine and so they prised out the loosened bung and kicked the barrel over.
For a second Sharpe thought the trap had failed, then suddenly the narrow valley vanished in a cloud of grey-white powder smoke that was pierced with livid flame. The smoke churned in the small combe, hiding the awful carnage made by the explosion. Then, as the damp wind began to carry the powder smoke northwards, the thunder rolled up the slope. The sound was like the slamming of hell’s gates, and it was magnified by the echo that beat back from the valley’s far side. A half dozen grenadiers were dead. One, gutted to the backbone, was sprawled on the road where a score of other men were bleeding and staggering. Then the sound faded and there was just a strange silence in the hills broken by the screams of the wounded.
“Poor fellows,” d’Alembord said, for the smoke was clearing and he could see the bodies scattered on the road, and then the riflemen opened fire.
Sharpe’s Riflemen did not miss their mark at that close range. They fired from behind the rocks high on either side of the small valley and first they picked off the surviving officers, then they shot at the sergeants and by the time each Greenjacket had fired two rounds the French had vanished from the small valley. They had fled back over its lip, leaving behind a dozen dead and two score of wounded men.
The battle for Irati had begun.
In one way Colonel Jean Gudin had been untypically lucky, for not one partisan had troubled his column on its dark road north, but in every other way his usual ill fortune had prevailed. First, one of the dragoon horses had stumbled on a frozen rut in the road and broken its leg. By itself it was no great accident and the poor beast was put out of its misery swiftly enough, but in the dark the commotion caused a long delay. The carcass was finally hauled from the road and the column had trudged on, only to have the dragoon vanguard take a wrong turning a few kilometres further on. That, at least, was not Gudin’s fault, any more than the injured horse had been his fault, but it was typical of his luck and it was almost dawn by the time the column had turned itself about and found the right track winding up towards the high pass. By then Gudin had surrendered his horse to one of his lieutenants who had a fever and could hardly walk.
Colonel Caillou was fuming at the delay. He had never, he claimed, in all his service as a soldier, seen such ineptitude! A halfwit could do better than Gudin! “We are supposed to be at the pass by midday,” he insisted, “and we shall be lucky to be there by nightfall!”
Gudin ignored the Colonel’s ranting. There was nothing to be done except press on and be thankful that the guerilleros were asleep in their beds. In three days time, Gudin reflected, he would be back at a depot in France. He would be safe. And so long as no British troops waited at the frontier he should save Caillou’s Eagle and so spare himself the firing squad.
It was just after dawn that the next accident occurred. The column was dragging two wagons, one carrying the heavily pregnant Maria and the second loaded with what small baggage the garrison had managed to rescue from the fort. The front axle of that second wagon broke, and suddenly the horses were dragging stumps of splintering wood across the rutted road. Gudin sighed. There was nothing for it but to abandon the wagon with all its precious possessions; small things—but the property of men who owned little. He did let his men rifle the baggage to retrieve what they could carry, and all the while Caillou cursed him and said that time was wasting, and Gudin knew that was true, but again it was not his fault. So he rescued what he could, then ordered the vehicle to be shoved off the road. With it went his books, not many, but all of them dear to Gudin, but too heavy to carry. He did manage to salvage his diaries, including the two volumes he had written when he was in India and had believed he could drive the British out of Mysore. But the redcoats had won and nothing had been the same since.
Gudin often thought of India. When he had been there he had often cursed the flies and the heat, but since returning to Europe he had come to regret leaving. He missed the smells, the colour, the mystery. He missed the gaudy panoply of Indian armies marching, he missed the sun and the savagery of the monsoon. Most of all he missed his youthful optimism. In India he had possessed a future, but after it, none. And sometimes, when he was feeling sorry for himself, he blamed it all on one young man whom he had liked, an Englishman called Sharpe. It had been Sharpe who caused that first great defeat, though Gudin had never blamed Sharpe, for he had recognised that Private Richard Sharpe had been a natural soldier. How the Emperor would have loved Sharpe! So much luck!
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Now there was another Sharpe, an officer in Spain whose name haunted the French, and Gudin sometimes wondered if it was the same man, though that seemed unlikely, for few British officers came from the ranks and, besides, this Sharpe was a rifleman and Gudin’s Sharpe had been a redcoat. Yet sometimes Gudin secretly hoped that it was the same man, for he had liked young Richard Sharpe, though in truth he suspected that young Sharpe was long dead. Not many Europeans survived India. The fever got them if an enemy did not.
Gudin walked on, musing on India and trying to ignore Colonel Caillou’s insults. The pregnant girl was in pain and crying, and the garrison surgeon, a fastidious Parisian who had hated serving in the Pyrenees, told Gudin the girl was doomed. “She can’t give birth naturally,” he asserted, “so it’s better just to shoot her now. Her bawling just upsets men.”
“That’s your medical opinion?” Gudin asked angrily. “Shoot her?”
“Put her out of her misery.”
“Why can’t she give birth naturally?”
“Because the baby is sideways,” the doctor said. “It isn’t head first. We dive into the world, Colonel, we don’t come sideways.”
“So cut her open.”
“Here?” The doctor laughed. “And if I cut her, she’ll die. And if I don’t cut her, she’ll die. In these circumstances, Colonel, the best medical instrument is a pistol.”
“Just keep her alive as far as Irati,” Gudin said tiredly, “and there you can operate.”
“If she lives that long,” the surgeon muttered, and just then a dull rumble came from the mountains ahead. It sounded like distant thunder, but there were no storm clouds over the peaks and a heartbeat after the rumble had faded the small wind brought the spiteful crackle of musketry.
“You see?” Caillou spurred back down the column with a look of triumph. “There’s enemy ahead!”
“We don’t know that,” Gudin said. “That sound could have come from anywhere.”
“They’re waiting for us,” Caillou said, pointing dramatically towards the hills. “And if we’d abandoned the women, we’d be there already. It’s your doing, Gudin! I promise, if my Eagle is lost, the Emperor will know it’s your doing.”
“You must tell the Emperor whatever you wish,” Gudin said in resignation.
“So leave the women here now! Leave them!” Caillou insisted. “March to the guns, Colonel! Get there before dark!”
“I will not leave the women,” Gudin said, “I will not leave them. And we shall be at Irati long before nightfall. It is not so far now.”
Caillou spat in disgust and spurred ahead. Colonel Gudin sighed and walked on. His heels were blistering, but he would not retrieve his horse for he knew the Lieutenant’s need was greater than his. Nor would he abandon his mens’ women, and so he just kept going and tried to blot out the awful haunting moans of the pregnant girl. He was not a prayerful man, but as he climbed towards the distant sound of the guns, Colonel Gudin did pray. He prayed that God would send him a victory, just one small victory so that his career would not end in failure or a firing squad. A Christmas miracle, that was all he asked, just one small miracle to set against a lifetime of defeat.
General Maximilien Picard bulled his way through the panicked troops to stand at the mouth of the small valley. He could see the dead grenadiers, the smashed barrels and, beyond them, more barrels waiting in the road. A rifle bullet snapped past his head, but Picard ignored the threat. He was charmed. There was no one alive who could spoil that luck.
“Santon!” he snapped.
“Sir?” Major Santon resisted the urge to crouch.
“One company up here. They are to destroy the barrels with volley fire, you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And while they’re doing that, send the voltigeurs up the slopes.” The general pointed to where puffs of grey-white smoke betrayed the position of the Riflemen. He did not know they were riflemen, and if he had known, he might have shown more caution, instead he believed the ambush must have been set by partisans. But whoever it was, they would soon be chased out of their lairs by the French light infantry. “Do it now!” Picard snapped. “We don’t have all day.” He turned away, and a bullet plucked at his cloak, flicking it out like a banner caught by the wind. Picard turned back, looked to find the newest patch of musket smoke and lifted a finger to it. “Bastards,” he said as he walked away, “bastards.” Who would now get a lesson for Christmas.
“Bugler!” Sharpe called, and the thirteen-year-old boy came running out of the batallion to stand behind his Major. “Sound the retreat,” Sharpe ordered and saw Peter d’Alembord lift a quizzical eyebrow. “Any minute now,” Sharpe explained, “the Frogs will send their voltigeurs up the valley sides and there’s no point in our lads hanging around while they do that. They’ve done their damage.”
The bugler took a deep breath, then blew hard. The call was a triple call of nine notes, the first eight stuttering on one note and the last flying high up the scale. The sound of the bugle echoed from the distant hills and Sharpe, gazing through his telescope, saw the cloaked French general turn back.
“Again, lad,” Sharpe told the bugler.
The bugle call was sending two messages. First, it was telling Harper’s riflemen to abandon their positions and climb back to the ridge, but it was also telling the French that they faced an enemy more formidable than a handful of partisans. They were facing trained infantry, veteran troops, and when Sharpe was certain that the French general was staring up at the ridge in an effort to catch sight of the bugler, he turned and shouted at the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. “’Talion! By the right! Forward”—a pause—“march!”
They stamped forward in perfect order, a line of men two ranks deep beneath their bright colours. To the right was the King’s Colour, the flag of Britain fringed with yellow tassels, while to the left was the Regimental Colour, yellow as the sun and blazoned with the names of the battles where the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers had fought. In its centre was the regimental badge, a chained French Eagle that boasted of the day when Sharpe and Harper, in a bloody valley wreathed in smoke, had taken an enemy colour. “’Talion!” Sharpe shouted as they reached the ridge’s crest, “halt! Fix bayonets!”
Sharpe was putting on a display for the French. The enemy had been bloodied, they had been panicked and now they faced a long steep climb up a bare cold hill to where they could see the red coats of Britain and the long glitter of seventeen-inch bayonets.
Ensign Nicholls came to stand by Sharpe. “What are we doing, sir?”
“We’re giving the Frogs a formal invitation, Mister Nicholls. Seeing if they’re brave enough to come up and dance.”
“Will they?”
“I doubt it, lad,” Sharpe said, “I doubt it.”
“Why not, sir?”
“Because they’re about to be given a demonstration, lad, that’s why. Sergeant Major?”
“Sir?” Harper acknowledged, breathless from his climb up the hill.
“Three rounds, Sergeant Major, platoon fire, and I want it fast.”
“Yes, sir.”
The range was much too great for a smoothbore musket, but Sharpe did not have a mind to kill any more Frenchmen today. He had already killed too many for his liking. Christmas should be peace on earth, not broken bodies on a hard road, so now he would show the French exactly what waited for them at the hill’s top. He would show them that they faced veterans who could fire their muskets faster than any other troops on earth. He would show them that to climb the hill was to enter hell and with any luck they would decline his invitation.
“Stand back, Mister Nicholls,” Sharpe said, and steered the Ensign back through the waiting ranks. “Now, Sergeant Major!”
Harper ordered the men to remove their bayonets that had only been slotted into place for display and which hampered men loading muskets. “Load!” he called, and the men dropped the musket butts to the ground and tore open cartridges. This was the essenti
al skill: the ability to load a musket fast, and Sharpe had trained his men relentlessly. He counted the seconds in his head and had reached fourteen when Harper called that the batallion was ready.
“Platoon fire!” Sharpe called, “present!” The muskets went up to the mens’ shoulders and, to the French in the valley below, it seemed as if the whole redcoat batallion took a quarter turn to the right. “Number four company,” Sharpe called, “on your command!”
“Four Company!” Captain Bitten called, “Five Company!” He was the senior captain of the two companies and so commanded both when, as now, they worked together. He paused a heartbeat, “fire!”
The two centre companies fired together. The muskets slammed back into their shoulders and a dirty cloud of powder smoke spat across the crest. No more orders were given, but as soon as the centre companies had fired, the platoons on either side pulled their triggers. Each company was split into two platoons, and each platoon waited for the one inside them to fire before firing themselves, and to the watching French it must have looked as though the smoke was rippling out along the high red line.
But any troops could fire one round in a pretty ripple. What would put fear into the French was the speed with which the second bullet was fired and Sharpe noted with approval that the centre companies were all reloaded before the ripple of musket fire had reached the batallion’s outer flanks. Those flanks fired, and within a heartbeat the two inner platoons of the centre companies had fired again, and again the ripple spread outwards as the men in the centre dropped their muskets’ heavy butts onto the stony ground and ripped the top from new cartridges with their teeth.
The second staggered volley of musket balls whistled out into the void, and then the third followed without a pause. It had been a marvellous display, the best infantry in the world showing what they did best, and if that promise of slaughter did not give the enemy pause, then nothing would.
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