Бернард Корнуэлл: Sharpe's Skirmish

"How would I know?" Teresa responded indignantly.

"And the frogs know damn well that church treasures are hidden, " Sharpe said, "so why are they going there?"

"You tell me, " Teresa said.

"Because they want you to think they're going there, that's why. And all the time the bastards are going somewhere else. God damn it! " He turned around again to stare south. Was it just nerves? Was he frightened of this small responsibility? To guard a derelict fort in a backwater of the war?

Or was his instinct, that had served him so well through over fifteen years of fighting, telling him to be careful? "Keep your men here, love, " he said to Teresa, "because I think you're going to have frogs to kill."

He turned and ran towards the firestep that looked down onto the bridge.

"Sergeant Harper!»

Harper emerged from the shrine built on the far side of the roadway and blinked up at Sharpe who, standing on the fort parapet, was silhouetted against the sky. "Sir?"

"My compliments to Major Tubbs, Sergeant, and I want his ox-cart on the bridge. As a barricade, got it? And I want you and twenty riflemen up at that damn farm, " he pointed southwards, "and I want it all done now!»

Teresa put a hand on his green sleeve. "You really think the French are coming here, Richard?"

"I don't think it, I know it! I know it! I don't know how I know it, but I do. The buggers have slipped round the side gate and are coming in through the back door."

Major Tubbs, sweating in the day's heat, came lumbering up the stone stairway from the courtyard. "You can't block the bridge, Captain Sharpe!»

Tubbs protested. "You can't! It's a public thoroughfare."

"If I had the powder, Major, I'd blow the bloody bridge up."

Tubbs looked into Sharpe's grim face, then gazed southwards. "But the French aren't coming! Look!»

The southern landscape was wonderfully peaceful. Poppies fluttered in the breeze that rippled the crops and flickered the pale leaves of the olive groves. There was no smoke rising from burning villages to smear the sky, and no plume of dust kicked up by thousands of boots and hooves. There was just a peaceful summer landscape, basking in Castilian heat. God was in his heaven and all was well in the world. "But they're coming, " Sharpe said obstinately.

"Then why don't we warn Salamanca?" Tubbs asked.

It was a good question, a damn good question, but Sharpe did not want to articulate his answer. He knew he should warn Salamanca, but he was scared of raising a false alarm. It was only his instinct that contradicted the peaceful appearance of the landscape, and what if he was wrong? Suppose that the garrison at Salamanca marched out half a battalion of redcoats and a battery of field guns, and with them a supply convoy and a squadron of dragoons, and all of it proved a waste? What would they say? That Captain Sharpe, up from the ranks, was an alarmist. He couldn't be trusted. He might be useful enough in a tight corner when there were frogs to be killed, but he was skittery as a virgin in a barrack's town when left to himself. "We don't warn Salamanca, " he told Tubbs firmly, "because we can deal with the bastards ourselves."

"You can?" Tubbs asked dubiously.

"Have you ever fought a battle, Major?" Sharpe whipped angrily at Tubbs.

"My dear fellow, I wasn't doubting you! " Tubbs held up both hands as though to ward Sharpe off. "My own nerves giving tongue, nothing more.

Tremulous, they are. I ain't a soldier like you. Of course you're right!»

Sharpe hoped to God he was, but he knew he was not. He knew he should summon reinforcements, but he would still stay and fight alone because he was too proud to lose face by looking nervous. "We'll beat the bastards, " he said, "if they come."

"I'm sure they won't, " Tubbs said.

And Sharpe prayed that Tubbs was right.

Three hundred French infantrymen were sacrificed in the defiles of the road that led up to Avila, and from all across the Sierra de Gredos partisans flooded to the fight, hurrying over the hills for this chance to slaughter the hated enemy. The three hundred men seemed to have marched too far ahead of the rest of their column, and they were doomed, for the other Frenchmen did not hurry to their assistance, but made camp in the plain. And there were too many Frenchmen camped on that southern plain, so the partisans concentrated on the doomed three hundred infantrymen who had ventured too far into the hills.

And when night fell, and when the sound of the infantrymen dying still sounded from the Avila road, Herault marched.

He took all his cavalry due west across the plain and, when he had gone some five miles and the sound of the distant musketry was almost inaudible, he turned north onto a track that led across the lower hills of the western sierra. He led hussars, dragoons and lancers, men who had fought all across Europe, men who were feared all across Europe, but Herault knew that the great days of the French cavalry were passing. It was not their bravery that had diminished, but their horses. The animals were weak from poor food, their backs were ulcerated from too much riding and so, gradually but inevitably, Herault's column stretched. There were no guerilleros to slow them, it was the horses that could not keep up, and Herault, who was well mounted himself, paused at one hill crest and looked back in the thin moonlight to see his men faltering. He had planned to be at San Miguel at dawn, when the garrison's spirits would be at their lowest and he could burst from the hills in a monstrous display of steel and uniformed glory, but he now knew that his two thousand men would never reach the river in time. Their horses would not make it. A few beasts had gone lame, others breathed with a hollow whistling, and most hung their weary heads low.

But what two thousand men could not do, one hundred might, and Herault's old elite company of hussars, the men with the black fur colbacks, were mounted on the best horses Herault had been able to find. He had pampered that troop, not just because it was his old company, but because he always needed at least one squadron of cavalry that was mounted as well as any enemy horsemen. And he had foreseen this crisis. He had hoped it would not happen, he had hoped that a miracle might take place and that his two thousand horses would all have the stamina of Bucephalus, but that miracle had not happened, and so it was time for the elite hussars to ride ahead.

Herault summoned the commander of the elite company to his side and gestured back down the struggling column. "You see?"

Captain Pailleterie, his blond pigtails and moustache looking almost white in the moonlight, nodded. "I see, my General, yes."

"So you know what to do."

Pailleterie drew his sabre and saluted Herault. "When can we expect you, my general?"

"Midday."

"I shall have a hot meal ready, " Pailleterie said.

Herault leaned across and embraced the Captain, who was only a year younger than himself. "Bonne chance, mon brave!»

"Who needs luck against a company of dozy Spaniards, eh?" Pailleterie asked, and then he pointed his sabre forward and the elite company rode on alone. And God help them, Herault thought, if any partisans still lingered on the road. "I wish I was going with you, " he called after the company, but they had already vanished. The best of the best, Herault's elite, was riding to snatch victory. «Onwards!» Herault ordered the rest of the cavalry, "onwards!»

The lucky ones of the three hundred infantrymen were dead. The unlucky had been captured. Some would be roasted over slow fires, some would be skinned alive, some would suffer still worse, and the only mercy for them was that, eventually, they would all die. Herault regretted their fate, but they had served their purpose, for the cavalry were loose in the hills and the partisans were far away.