Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Havoc

Sharpe shrugged off the ordenanqa who wanted to welcome him and threw himself down on the bluff’s lip. Rain thrashed the rocks, poured down the cliff’s face and drummed on his shako. A crash of thunder sounded overhead to be echoed by another from the southwest, and Sharpe recognized the second peal as the sound of guns. It was cannon fire, and the noise meant that Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army must have caught up with the French and that his artillery had opened fire, but that fight was miles away, back beyond the Ponte Nova, and here, at the final obstacle, the French were escaping.

Hogan, panting from the exertion of climbing the bluff, dronned beside Sharpe. They were so close to the bridge they could see the mustaches on the faces of the French infantry, see the striped brown-and-black pattern of a woman’s long skirt. She walked beside her man, carrying his musket and his child, and had a dog tied to her belt by a length of string. Behind them an officer led a limping horse. „Is that cannon I’m hearing?” Hogan asked.

„Yes, sir.“

„Must be the three-pounders,” Hogan guessed. „We could do with a couple of those toys here.”

But they had none. Only Sharpe, Vicente and their men. And an army that was escaping.

Back at the Ponte Nova the gunners had manhandled their two toy cannon to the crest of a knoll that overlooked the French rearguard. It was not raining here. An occasional flurry whipped down from the mountains, but the muskets could still fire and the Brigade of Guards loaded their weapons, fixed bayonets and then formed to advance in column of companies.

And the guns, the despised three-pounders, opened on the French and the small balls, scarcely bigger than an orange each, whipped through the tight ranks and bounced on rock to kill more Frenchmen, and the band of Coldstream Guards struck up „Rule Britannia” and the great colors were unfurled to the damp air, and the three-pound balls struck again, each shot leaving a long spray of blood in the air as though a giant unseen knife were slashing through the French ranks. The two light companies of the Guards and a company of the green-jacketed 60th, the Royal American Rifles, were advancing among a jumble of rocks and low stone walls on the French left flank and the muskets and Baker rifles began taking their toll of French officers and sergeants. French skirmishers, men from the renowned 4th Leger, a regiment chosen by Soult to guard his rear because the 4th was famous for its steadiness, ran forward to drive the British skirmishers back, but the rifles were too much for them. They had never faced such long-range accurate fire before and the voltigeurs backed away.

„Take them forward, Campbell, take them forward!” Sir Arthur Wellesley called to the brigade’s commander and so the first battalion of the Coldstreamers and the first battalion of the 3rd Foot Guards marched toward the bridge. Their bearskins made them seem huge, the band’s drummers thumped for all they were worth, the rifles snapped and the two three-pounders crashed back onto their trails to cut two more bloody furrows through the long lines of Frenchmen.

„They’re going to break,” Colonel Waters said. He had served as Sir Arthur’s guide all day and was watching the French rearguard through his glass. He could see them wavering, see the sergeants dashing back and forth behind the ranks to push men into file. „They’re going to break, sir.”

„Pray they do,” Sir Arthur said, „pray they do.” And he wondered what was happening far ahead, whether the French escape route had been blocked. He already had a victory, but how complete would it be?

The two battalions of Guards, both twice the size of an ordinary battalion, marched steadily and their bayonets were two thousand specks of light in the cloud-dimmed valley and their colors were red, white, blue and gold above them. And in front of them the French shivered and the cannons fired again and the blood mist flickered in two long lines to show where the round shots ploughed the files.

And Sir Arthur Wellesley did not even watch the Guards. He was staring up into the hills where a great black rainfall blotted the view. „God grant,” he said fervently, „that the road is cut.”

„Amen,” Colonel Waters said, „amen.”

The road was not blocked because a leaping strip of stone spanned the Misarella and a seemingly endless line of French made their way across the hump-backed arch. Sharpe watched them. They walked like beaten men, tired and sullen, and he could see from their faces how they resented the handful of engineer officers who chivvied them across the bridge. In April these men had been the conquerors of northern Portugal and they had thought they were about to march south and capture Lisbon. They had plundered all the country north of the Douro: they had ransacked houses and churches, raped women, killed men and strutted like the cocks of the dunghill, but now they had been whipped, broken and chased, and the distant sound of the two cannon told them that their ordeal was not yet over. And above them, on the rock-strewn hill crests, they could see dozens of bitter men who just waited for a straggler and then the knives would be sharpened, the fires lit, and every Frenchman in the army had heard the stories of the horribly mutilated corpses found in the highlands.

Sharpe just watched them. Every now and then the bridge arch would be cleared so that a recalcitrant horse could be coaxed over the narrow span. Riders were peremptorily ordered to climb down from their saddles and two hussars were on hand to blindfold the horses and lead them across the stone remnant. The rain eased and then became heavy again. It was getting dark, an unnatural dusk brought by black cloud and veils of rain. A general, his uniform heavy with sodden braid, followed his blindfolded horse across the bridge. The water seethed white far below him, bouncing off the rocks of the ravine, twisting in pools, foaming on down to the Cavado. The General hurried off the bridge and then had trouble remounting his horse. The ordenanqa jeered him and hurled a volley of rocks, but the missiles merely bounced on the bluff’s lower slopes and rolled harmlessly toward the road.

Hogan was watching the French bunched behind the bridge through his telescope which he constantly wiped clear of water. „Where are you, Mister Christopher?” he asked bitterly.

„Maybe the bastard’s gone ahead,” Harper said tonelessly. „If I was him, sir, I’d be in the front. Get away, that’s what he wants to do.”

„Maybe,” Sharpe acknowledged, „maybe.” He thought Harper was probably right and that Christopher might already be in Spain with the French vanguard, but there was no way of knowing that.

„We’ll watch till nightfall, Richard,” Hogan suggested in a flat voice that could not hide his disappointment.

Sharpe could see a mile back down the road which was crammed thick as the men, women, horses and mules shuffled toward the bottleneck of the Saltador. Two stretchers were carried over the bridge, the sight of the wounded men prompting shouts of triumph from the orde-nanqa on the bluff. Another man, his leg broken, limped over on a makeshift crutch. He was in agony, but it was better to struggle on with blistered hands and a bleeding leg than fall behind and be caught by the partisans. His crutch slipped on the bridge’s stone and he fell heavily, and his predicament provoked another flurry of curses from the ordenanqa. A French infantryman aimed his musket up at the taunting Portuguese, but when he pulled his trigger the spark fell on damp powder and nothing happened except that the jeering became louder.

And then Sharpe saw him. Saw Christopher. Or rather he saw Kate first, recognized the oval of her face, the contrast of her pale skin and jet-black hair, her beauty apparent even in this dark, wet horror of an early dusk, and he saw, surprised, that she was wearing a French uniform which was strange, he thought, but then he saw Christopher and Williamson beside her horse. The Colonel was dressed in civilian clothes and was trying to edge and bully and force his way through the crowd so that he could get across the bridge and so know himself to be safe from his pursuers. Sharpe snatched up Hogan’s telescope, wiped its lens and stared. Christopher, he thought, looked older, almost aged with something gray about his face. Then he edged the lens to the right and saw Williamson’s sullen face and felt a surge of pure anger.