Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Enemy

'Fire! Sharpe shouted, and the remaining Rifles spat flame over the Castle ramparts and the bullets cracked on stone or whirred in the air about the heads of the French.

'Tirez!’ Cold Frenchmen fumbled with locks, picked at the rags that some had not taken from their guns, and the giant Rifleman was running further and the smoke of the first muskets was obscuring the target. 'Tirez!’ More smoke and flames decorated the Convent's cornice and the bullets jerked at the shallow snow at the lip of the pass.

'Run! Sharpe yelled. He thought for one awful moment that Harper was hit for the big man fell, rolled down the slope, but then the Irishman was up, legs pumping, and the Riflemen on the Castle wall were reloaded and they slid the barrels across the stone and gave him covering fire.

The rumble was hardly audible at first, like the first hints of far-away thunder on a summer's night.

The old builders would not have chosen the edge of the pass as a place to build the Convent, but the Virgin Mary had chosen it herself and so the builders had to negotiate the difficulties she had bequeathed them. The granite boulder had to be the centre-piece of the chapel, the Holy Footfall would have its proper, holy place, and so the old masons had built a platform of stone about the tip of the rock and supported the platform on solid arches which, to the west, made rooms for cells, a hall, and the Convent kitchens. To the east, though, there was not space for rooms and so the ground sloped up towards the stone platform and it was in that space, dark and cold, that the barrels of powder took the fire.

Eight caches of barrels, barrels taken from the stack which the Spanish had delivered to Adrados instead of Ciudad Rodrigo, waited in the darkness. Much of their force went sideways, but enough lifted the bed of stone so that, to an astonished gunner, it seemed as if the howitzers were being lifted up from the surface of the cloister, and then the tiles ripped apart, smoke and flame surged upwards, and the noise rose to drown the valley in sound. Flame lanced upwards, flame that for a second seemed like a spike of the sun itself, and then the powder for the howitzers caught the fire and a flame sheet spread sideways as the chapel floor heaved up. The serge bags for the twelve pounder guns added their power and to the watchers in the valley it seemed as if the whole south east corner of the ancient building was melting in fire and smoke.

Harper panted, stopped, and turned to watch his handiwork. He brushed snow from his uniform.

Lieutenant Harry Price was on the gatehouse turret. 'You knew! He was accusing. 'Then why didn't you say?

Sharpe grinned. 'Suppose one of you had been captured and held in the Convent overnight. Could you have kept silent?

Price shrugged. 'But you might have told us when we got back.

'I thought the surprise might cheer you up.

'Jesus. Price sounded disgusted. 'I was worried!

'I'm sorry, Harry.

The Convent was boiling smoke now, flames licking where they found fuel, and men stumbled, blackened and burned, from the wreckage. Most of the building still stood, but the wheels of all but two of the guns were broken, the ammunition was gone, and the Convent was no longer a threat to the Castle.

Patrick Harper was in the courtyard, grinning, demanding breakfast for a big man, while the Fusiliers and Riflemen cheered because their day had begun with another victory.

In the Convent daylight filtered through the smoke and dust, past broken stone and burning beams, and the light touched a polished piece of granite that had not seen daylight in eight hundred years.

Sunday, the 27th of December, 1812, had begun.

The French still had guns and now the gunners were fired by anger and the south of the village was wreathed in ragged smoke while the canister rattled like metal rain on the Castle walls. There were howitzers firing too, and even though they could no longer fire from the flank and thus keep firing until the infantry were at the very brink of the courtyard, they could lob their shells from the protection of the village and make the Castle a place of seething iron.

One hour, two, and the guns still fired, and the canister killed sentries and the cobbles were scorched by the exploding shells where the snow had turned to black slush.

There was no truce this time. The gunner Colonel was dead, crushed by a falling howitzer barrel, and it was still dangerous to go into the Convent's upper part because of the howitzer shells that still exploded and added fresh smoke to the funeral pyre of more than a hundred men. The French General swore his revenge, and ordered the guns to start it. The gunners fought for their dead Colonel.

Two guns doused the watchtower hill in canister, the musket balls flaying through the thorns, jerking snow from the branches, snapping twigs and spines down onto the Riflemen who crouched in their pits. Rabbits know where to dig, and a rabbit hole was a rifle pit that was well started, and Frederickson urged the gunners on. 'Fire, you bastards! We're ready for you! He was too. He expected them to come from the east or the north and his strength was ready for them, strength that would push the attack towards the cleared space on the northern slope of the hill down which he planned to roll his barrels of powder, fuses protected from the snow with sewn leather sheaths, and with the barrels would go the four inch round shells left for the Spanish gun. 'Come on, you bastards! His men grinned, listening to Sweet William's battle cry. He had kept most of the Fusiliers on the reverse slope of the hill, away from the artillery fire, and he would only use them if the French turned his line of hidden Riflemen.

Most of the guns worked on the Castle. They broke open the stable roof, started fire in its rafters and in Gilliland's empty carts that blazed high and melted the slush for yards around. The French dislodged the single gun on the Castle's eastern wall, lifting it in an explosion and sliding it in a tumble of stone, snow, brass and timber down to the rubble. One shell penetrated the inner courtyard, bouncing ofT the walls of the keep, and its blast killed six horses outright and the Fusiliers forced their way through the screaming, panicked beasts, sliding on a mixture of blood and slush and horse urine to finish off the wounded beasts. And still the guns fired.

The Castle filled with the smoke of the explosions, shook with the crash of shot, and the twelve-pounders mixed roundshot with the canister and some of the balls hit ancient, loosened stone and a Rifleman screamed because a slab fell on his legs.

On the snow in front of the eastern wall the howitzer shells that fell short made star-shaped patterns in the snow, stars black and violent, craters of heat in the whiteness, and one shell landed on the gatehouse turret where a Rifleman, old in war, tan to it with the butt of his rifle raised. The fuse smoked crazily as the shell span, the Rifleman paused a second, then struck one glancing blow on the iron ball. The fuse was jerked out clean as a blade, and the shell was harmless. The man grinned at his frightened companions. 'Always come out if you hit 'em right.

The Colours had gone, taken back to the Fusiliers who crouched behind a low barricade that guarded the entrance to the keep. They would fight with their own standards on this last fight and they wondered how long they must endure the blast of the explosions outside, the screaming of the horses behind, the noise of the guns that filled the valley more dreadfully than any file of French drummers.

Sharpe crouched beside Captain Gilliland high in the keep. He had to shout over the noise of the cannonade. 'You know what to do?

'Yes, sir. Gilliland was unhappy. The rest of his rockets would be used in a manner he did not like. 'How long, sir?