Sharpe's Battle

by Bernard Cornwell

  Dick, you and I have eaten some bad meals in our time, but this was really bad. And all because that damned cathedral exploded. I'd like to meet the

  French gunner who did that and wring his bloody neck."

  In truth it had been Sharpe who had caused the magazine in the cathedral's crypt to explode, but it did not seem a politic admission to make. "It was a bad business," Sharpe agreed mildly.

  "You got out next morning, didn't you?" Garrard asked. "Cox wouldn't let us go. We wanted to fight our way out, but he said we had to do the decent thing and surrender." He shook his head in disgust. "Not that it matters now," he went on. "The Crapauds exchanged me and Oliveira asked me to join his regiment and now I'm a captain like you."

  "Well done."

  "They're good lads," Garrard said fondly of his company which was bivouacking in the open space inside the northern ramparts where the Portuguese campfires burned bright in the dusk. Oliveira's picquets were on every rampart save the gate tower. Such efficient sentries meant that Sharpe no longer needed to deploy his own riflemen on picquet duty, but he was still apprehensive and told Garrard his fears as the two men strolled round the darkening ramparts.

  "I've heard of Loup," Garrard said. "He's a right bastard."

  "Nasty as hell."

  "And you think he's coming here?"

  "Just an instinct, Tom."

  "Hell, ignore those and you might as well dig your own grave, eh? Let's go and see the Colonel."

  But Oliveira was not so easily convinced of Sharpe's fears, nor did Juanita de

  Elia help Sharpe's cause. Juanita and Lord Kiely had returned from a day's hunting and, with Father Sarsfield, Colonel Runciman and a half-dozen of the

  Real Companïa Irlandesa's officers, were guests at the Portuguese supper.

  Juanita scorned Sharpe's warning. "You think a French brigadier would bother himself with an English captain?" she asked mockingly.

  Sharpe suppressed a stab of evil temper. He had been speaking to Oliveira, not to Kiely's whore, but this was not the time or the place to pick a quarrel.

  Besides, he recognized that in some obscure way his and Juanita's dislike of each other was bred into the bone and probably unavoidable. She would talk to any other officer in the fort, even to Runciman, but at Sharpe's very appearance she would turn and walk away rather than offer a polite greeting.

  "I think he'll bother with me, ma'am, yes," Sharpe said mildly.

  "Why?" Oliveira demanded.

  "Go on, man, answer!" Kiely said when Sharpe hesitated.

  "Well, Captain?" Juanita mocked Sharpe. "Lost your tongue?"

  "I think he'll bother with me, ma'am," Sharpe said, stung into an answer,

  "because I killed two of his men."

  "Oh, my God!" Juanita pretended to be shocked. "Anyone would think there was a war happening!"

  Kiely and some of the Portuguese officers smiled, but Colonel Oliveira just stared at Sharpe as though weighing the warning carefully. Finally he shrugged. "Why would he worry that you killed two of his men?" he asked.

  Sharpe hesitated to confess to what he knew was a crime against military justice, but he could hardly withdraw now. The safety of the fort and all the men inside depended on him convincing Oliveira of the genuine danger and so, very reluctantly, he described the raped and massacred village and how he had captured two of Loup's men and stood them up against a wall.

  "You had orders to shoot them?" Oliveira asked presciently.

  "No, sir," Sharpe said, aware of the eyes staring at him. He knew it might prove a horrid mistake to have admitted the executions, but he desperately needed to persuade Oliveira of the danger and so he described how Loup had ridden to the small upland village to plead for his men's lives and how, despite that appeal, Sharpe had ordered them shot. Colonel Runciman, hearing the tale for the first time, shook his head in disbelief.

  "You shot the men in front of Loup?" Oliveira asked, surprised.

  "Yes, sir."

  "So this rivalry between you and Loup is a personal vendetta, Captain Sharpe?" the Portuguese Colonel asked.

  "In a way, sir."

  "Either yes or no!" Oliveira snapped. He was a forceful, quicktempered man who reminded Sharpe of General Craufurd, the Light Division's commander. Oliveira had the same impatience with evasive answers.

  "I believe Brigadier Loup will attack very soon, sir," Sharpe insisted.

  "Proof?"

  "Our vulnerability," Sharpe said, "and because he's put a price on my head, sir." He knew it sounded feeble and he blushed when Juanita laughed aloud. She was wearing her Real Companïa Irlandesa uniform, though she had unbuttoned the coat and shirt so that the flamelight glowed on her long neck. Every officer around the fire seemed fascinated by her, and no wonder, for she was a flamboyantly exotic creature in this place of guns and powder and stone. She sat close to Kiely, an arm resting on his knee and Sharpe wondered if perhaps they had announced their betrothal. Something seemed to have put the supper guests into a holiday mood. "How much is the price, Captain?" she asked mockingly.

  Sharpe bit back a retort that the reward would prove more than enough to hire her services for a night. "I don't know," he lied instead.

  "Can't be very much," Kiely said. "Over-age captain like you, Sharpe? Couple of dollars maybe? Bag of salt?"

  Oliveira glanced at Kiely and the glance expressed disapproval of his

  Lordship's drunken gibes. The Colonel sucked on a cigar, then blew smoke across the fire. "I have doubled the sentries, Captain," he said to Sharpe,

  "and if this Loup does come to claim your head then we'll give him a fight."

  "When he comes, sir," Sharpe insisted, "can I suggest, with respect, sir, that you get your men into the gatehouse?"

  "You don't give up, do you, Sharpe?" Kiely interrupted. Before the Portuguese battalion's arrival Sharpe had asked Kiely to move the whole Real Companïa

  Irlandesa into the gatehouse, a request that Kiely had peremptorily turned down. "No one's going to attack us here," Kiely now said, reiterating his earlier argument, "and anyway, if they do, we should fight the bastards from the ramparts, not the gatehouse."

  "We can't fight from the ramparts-" Sharpe began.

  "Don't tell me where we can fight! God damn you!" Kiely shouted, startling

  Juanita. "You're a jumped-up corporal, Sharpe, not a bloody general. If the

  French come, damn it, I'll fight them how I like and beat them how I like and

  I won't need your help!"

  The outburst embarrassed the assembled officers. Father Sarsfield frowned as though he was looking for some emollient words, but it was Oliveira who finally broke the awkward silence. "If they come, Captain Sharpe," he said gravely, "I shall seek the refuge you advise. And thank you for your advice."

  Oliveira nodded his dismissal.

  "Good night, sir," Sharpe said, then walked away.

  "Ten guineas to the price on your head says Loup won't come, Sharpe!" Kiely called after the rifleman. "What is it? Lost your damn nerve? Don't want to take a wager like a gentleman?" Kiely and Juanita laughed. Sharpe tried to ignore them.

  Tom Garrard had followed Sharpe. "I'm sorry, Dick," Garrard said and then, after a pause, "Did you really shoot two Crapauds?"

  "Aye."

  "Good for you. But I wouldn't tell too many people about it."

  "I know, I know," Sharpe said, then shook his head. "Bloody Kiely."

  "His woman's a rare one though," Garrard said. "Reminds me of that girl you took up with at Gawilghur. You remember her?"

  "This one's a bitch, that's the difference," Sharpe said. God, he thought, but his temper was being abraded to a raw bloody edge. "I'm sorry, Tom," he said,

  "it's like fighting with wet powder, trying to shake sense into this bloody place."

  "Join the Portuguese, Dick," Garrard said. "Good as gold they are and no bloody over-born buggers like Kiely making life hard." He offered Sharpe a cigar. The two men bent their heads over Garrard's tinder
box and, when the charred linen caught the spark to flare bright, Sharpe saw a picture chased into the inner side of the lid.

  "Hold it there, Tom," he said, stopping his friend from closing the lid. He stared at the picture for a few seconds. I'd forgotten those boxes," Sharpe said. The tinderboxes were made of a cheap metal that had to be protected from rust by gun oil, but Garrard had somehow kept this box safe for twelve years.

  There had once been scores like it, all made by a tinsmith in captured

  Seringapatam and all with explicit pictures etched crudely into the lids.

  Garrard's box showed a British soldier on top of a long-legged girl whose back was arched in apparent ecstasy. "Bugger might have taken his hat off first,"

  Sharpe said.

  Garrard laughed and snapped the box shut to preserve the linen. "Still got yours?"

  Sharpe shook his head. "It was stolen off me years ago, Tom. I reckon it was that bastard Hakeswill that had it. Remember him? He was a thieving sod."

  "Jesus God," Garrard said, "I'd half forgotten the bastard." He drew on the cigar, then shook his head in wonder. "Who'd ever believe it, Dick? You and me captains? And I can remember when you were broken down from corporal for farting on church parade."

  "They were good days, Tom," Sharpe said.

  "Only because they're a long way back. Nothing like distant memory for putting green leaves on a bare life, Dick."

  Sharpe held the smoke in his mouth, then breathed out. "Let's hope it's a long life, Tom. Let's hope Loup isn't halfway here already. It would be a damned pity for you all to come up here for an exercise only to be slaughtered by

  Loup's brigade."

  "We're not really here for an exercise," Garrard said. There was a long awkward silence. "Can you keep a secret?" Garrard asked eventually. The two men had reached a dark open space, out of earshot of any of the bivouacked caçadores. "We didn't come here by accident, Richard," Garrard admitted. "We were sent."

  Sharpe heard footfalls on the nearest rampart where a Portuguese officer made his rounds. A challenge rang out and was answered. It was comforting to hear such military efficiency. "By Wellington?" Sharpe asked.

  Garrard shrugged. "I suppose so. His Lordship doesn't talk to me, but not much happens in this army without Nosey's say-so."

  "So why did he send you?"

  "Because he doesn't trust your Spanish Irishmen, that's why. There have been some odd stories going round the army these last few days. Stories of English troops burning Irish priests and raping Irish women, and-"

  "I've heard the tales," Sharpe interrupted, "and they're not true. Hell, I even sent a captain down to the camps today and he found out for himself."

  Captain Donaju, returning from the army's cantonments with Father Sarsfield, had possessed enough grace to apologize to Sharpe. Wherever Donaju and

  Sarsfield had visited and whoever they had asked, even men fresh out of

  Ireland, they could find no confirmation of the stories printed in the

  American newspaper. "No one can believe the stories!" Sharpe now protested to

  Garrard.

  "But true or not," Garrard said, "the stories worry someone high up, and they think the stories are coming from your men. So we've been sent to keep an eye on you."

  "Guard us, you mean?" Sharpe asked bitterly.

  "Keep an eye on you," Garrard said again. "No one's really sure what we're supposed to do except stay here until their Lordships make up their mind what to do. Oliveira thinks your lads will probably be sent to Cadiz. Not you,

  Dick," Garrard hastened to add reassuringly, "you're not one of the Irish, are you? We'll just make sure these Irish lads can't make mischief and then your lads can go back to some proper soldiering."

  "I like these Irish lads," Sharpe said flatly, "and they're not making mischief. I can warrant that."

  "I'm not the one you have to convince, Dick."

  It was Hogan or Wellington, Sharpe supposed. And how clever of Hogan or

  Wellington to send a Portuguese battalion to do the dirty work so that General

  Valverde could not say that a British regiment had persecuted the Royal Irish

  Company of the King of Spain's household guard. Sharpe blew out cigar smoke.

  "So those sentries on the wall, Tom," he said, "they're not looking outwards for Loup, are they, but looking in at us?"

  "They're looking both ways, Dick."

  "Well, make sure they're looking outwards. Because if Loup comes, Tom, there'll be hell to pay."

  "They'll do their duty," Garrard said doggedly.

  And they did. The diligent Portuguese picquets watched from the walls as the night chill spread down into the eastern valley where a ghostly mist worked its way upstream. They watched the long slopes, always alert to the smallest motion in the vaporous dark while in the fort some children of the Real

  Companïa Irlandesa cried in their sleep, a horse whinnied and a dog barked briefly. Two hours after midnight the sentries changed and the new men settled into their posts and gazed down the hillsides.

  At three in the morning the owl flew back to its roost in the ruined chapel, its great white wings beating above the smouldering remnants of the Portuguese fires. Sharpe had been walking the sentries' beat and staring into the long shadowed night for the first sign of danger. Kiely and his whore were in bed, as was Runciman, but Sharpe stayed awake. He had taken what precautions he could, moving vast quantities of the Real Companïa Irlandesa's spare ammunition into Colonel Runciman's day parlour and issuing the rest to the men. He had talked a long while with Donaju, rehearsing what they should do if an attack did come and then, when he believed he had done all he could, he had walked with Tom Garrard. Now, following the owl, Sharpe went to his bed. It was less than three hours till dawn and Loup, he decided, would not come now.

  He lay down and fell fast asleep.

  And ten minutes later woke to gunfire.

  As the wolf, at last, attacked.

  The first Sharpe knew of the attack was when Miranda, the girl rescued from the high border settlement, screamed like a banshee and for a second Sharpe thought he was dreaming, then he became aware of the gunshot that had preceded the scream by a split second and he opened his eyes to see that Rifleman

  Thompson was dying, shot in the head and bleeding like a stuck pig. Thompson had been hurled clear down the flight of ten steps that led from the magazine's crooked entrance and now lay twitching as a flood of gore spurted from his matted hair. He had been carrying his rifle when he was shot and now the weapon skidded over the floor to stop beside Sharpe.

  Shadows loomed at the stairhead. The magazine's main entrance led into a short tunnel which would have been equipped with two doors when the fort had been properly garrisoned and its magazine filled with shot and powder. Where the second door should have hung the tunnel turned in an abrupt right angle, then reversed back to the stairhead. The pair of turns had been designed to baffle any enemy shell that might have breached the magazine's entrance and in the bleak darkness the double angle had succeeded in slowing down Thompson's killers who now erupted into the tiny rushlight that burned in the great underground chamber.

  Grey uniforms. This was not a dream, but a nightmare for the grey killers had come.

  Sharpe seized Thompson's rifle, pointed the muzzle and pulled the trigger.

  An explosion crashed through the cellar as a cluster of flames speared through a smoke cloud towards the French at the top of the stair. Patrick Harper had fired his seven-barrelled gun and the volley of pistol balls slammed into the attackers to throw them back into the angle of the corridor's last turn where they went down in a welter of blood and pain. Two more riflemen fired. The magazine echoed with the shots and the air was stinking and thick with the choking smoke. A man was screaming, so was a girl. "Back way! Back way!"

  Sharpe shouted. "Shut that bloody girl up, Perkins!" He seized his own rifle and fired it up the stairs. He could see nothing now except for the small shining spo
ts where the tiny rushlights glimmered in the smoke. The French seemed to have vanished, though in truth they were merely trying to negotiate the barricade of screaming, bleeding, twitching men who had been hurled back by Harper's volley and the fusillade of rifle bullets.

  There was a second stair at the magazine's end, a stair that twisted up to the ramparts and was designed to let ammunition be delivered direct to the firestep rather than be carried through the fort's courtyard. "Sergeant

  Latimer!" Sharpe shouted. "Count them up! Thompson's out of it. Go, go!" If the French already held the ramparts, Sharpe reflected, then he and his riflemen were already trapped and doomed to die like rats in a hole, but he dared not abandon hope. "Go!" he shouted at his men. "Out! Out!" He had been sleeping with his boots on, so all he needed to do was snatch up his belt, pouches and sword. He slung the belt over his shoulder and began reloading the rifle. His eyes were smarting from the smoke. A French musket coughed more smoke at the top of the stairs and the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the back wall.