Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Havoc

„Have you seen him?” Hogan asked.

„He’s there,” Sharpe said, and he put the glass down, slid his rifle from its new leather case and eased the barrel forward across a lip of rock.

„That’s him, so it is.” Harper had seen Christopher now.

„Where?” Hogan wanted to know.

„Twenty yards back from the bridge, sir,” Harper said, „beside the horse. And that’s Miss Kate on the horse’s back. And, Jesus!” Harper had seen Williamson. „Is that — ”

„Yes,” Sharpe said curtly, and he was tempted to aim the rifle at the deserter rather than at Christopher.

Hogan was gazing through the telescope. „A good-looking girl,” he said.

„She makes the heart beat faster, right enough,” Harper said.

Sharpe kept the rifle’s lock covered, hoping to keep the powder dry, and now he took off the scrap of cloth, pulled back the flint and aimed the gun at Christopher, and just then the heavens bellowed with thunder, and the rain, which was already heavy, increased in malevolence. It crashed in torrents to make Sharpe curse. He could not even see Christopher now! He jerked the rifle up and stared down into the blurred air which was filled with silver streaks, a cloud-bursting rain, a deluge fit to make a man build an ark. Jesus! And he could see nothing! And just then a slash of lightning sliced the sky in two and the rain drummed like the devil’s hoofbeats and Sharpe pointed the barrel toward the heavens and pulled the trigger. He knew what would happen, and it did. The spark died, the rifle was useless and so he threw the weapon down, stood up and drew his sword.

„What the hell are you doing?” Hogan asked.

„Going to fetch my damn telescope,” Sharpe said.

And went toward the French.

The 4th Leger, counted as one of the best infantry units in Soult’s army, broke and the two cavalry regiments broke with them. The three regiments had been well posted, dominating a slight ridge that ran athwart the road as it approached the Ponte Nova, but the sight of the Brigade of Guards and the constant smack of rifle bullets and the stinging blows of the twin three-pounders had finished the French rearguard.

Their task had been to halt the British pursuit, then withdraw slowly and destroy the repaired Ponte Nova behind them, but instead they ran.

Two thousand men and fourteen hundred horses were converging on the makeshift roadway across the Cavado. None tried to fight. They turned their backs and they fled, and the whole dark panicked mass of them was crushed against the river’s bank as the Guards came up behind.

„Move the guns!” Sir Arthur spurred his horse toward the gunners whose weapons had scorched two wide fans of grass in front of the barrels. „Move them up!” he shouted. „Move them up! Keep at them!” It was beginning to rain harder, the sky was darkening and forked lightning slithered above the northern hills.

The guns were moved a hundred yards nearer the bridge and then rolled up the southern slope of the valley to a small terrace from where they could slam their round shot into the crowded French. Rain hissed and steamed on the barrels as the first rounds crashed out and the blood flickered its red haze above the broken rearguard. A dragoon’s horse screamed, reared and killed a man with its flailing hooves. More round shots slammed home. A few Frenchmen, those at the back who knew they would never reach the bridge alive, turned back, threw down their muskets and held up their hands. The Guards opened ranks to let the prisoners through, closed ranks and loosed a volley that punched into the rear of the French rabble. The fugitives were jostling, pushing and fighting their way onto the bridge and the congestion on the unbalustraded roadway was so great that men and horses were forced off the edge to fall screaming into the Cavado, and still the two guns kept at them, slamming shots onto the Ponte Nova itself now, bloodying the rafters and the felled trunks that were the rearguard’s only escape. The round shots drove more men and horses off the span’s unprotected edges, so many that the dead and dying made a dam beneath the bridge. The high point of the French invasion of Portugal had been a bridge at Oporto where hundreds of folk had drowned in panic, and now the French were on another broken bridge and the dead of the Douro were being avenged. And still the guns hammered the French, and now and then a musket or rifle would fire despite the rain and the British were a vengeful line converging on the horror that was the Ponte Nova. More French surrendered. Some were weeping with shame, misery, hunger and cold as they staggered back. A captain of the 4th Leger threw down his sword and then, in disgust, picked it up and snapped the thin blade across his knee before letting himself be taken captive.

„Cease fire!” a Coldstreamer officer shouted.

A dying horse whinnied. The smoke of muskets and cannon was lost in the rain and the bed of the river was pitiful with the moans of men and beasts who had broken their bones when they fell from the roadway. The dam of dying and dead, of soldiers and horses, was so high that the Cavado was piling up behind them and drying up downstream of them, though a trickle of blood-reddened water escaped from the human spillway. A wounded Frenchman tried to drag himself up from the river and died just as he reached the top of the bank where the Coldstreamer bandsmen were collecting their wounded enemies. The doctors stropped their scalpels on leather belts and took fortifying slugs of brandy. The Guards took the bayonets from their muskets and the gunners rested beside their three-pound cannon.

For the pursuit was over and Soult was gone from Portugal.

Sharpe went headlong down the bluff’s steep escarpment, leaping recklessly between rocks and praying that he would not lose his footing on the soaking grass. The rain was hammering down and thunder was drowning the distant noise of the guns at the Ponte Nova. It was getting darker and darker, twilight and storm combining to throw a hellish gloom across Portugal’s wild northern hills, though it was the sheer intensity of the rain that did most to obscure the bridge, but as Sharpe neared the foot of the bluff, where the ground began to level, he saw that the Saltador was suddenly empty. A riderless horse was being led across the narrow span and the beast had held back the men behind, and then Sharpe saw a hussar leading the horse and Christopher, Williamson and Kate were just behind the saddled beast. A group of infantrymen were walking away from the bridge as Sharpe came from the rain with his drawn sword and they stared at him, astonished, and one man moved to intercept him, but Sharpe told him in two short words what to do and the man, even if he did not speak English, had the good sense to obey.

Then Sharpe was on the Saltador and the hussar leading the horse just gaped at him. Christopher saw him and turned to escape, but more men were already climbing the roadway and so there was no way off the bridge’s other side. „Kill him!” Christopher shouted at both Williamson and the hussar, and it was the Frenchman who obediently began to draw his saber, but Sharpe’s sword hissed in the rain and the man’s sword hand was almost cut off at the wrist and then Sharpe rammed the blade at the hussar’s chest and there was a scream as the cavalryman fell into the Misarella. The horse, terrified by the lightning and by the uncertain footing on the bridge, gave a great whinny and then bolted past Sharpe, almost knocking him off the roadway. Its horseshoes made sparks from the stones, then it was gone and Sharpe faced Christopher and Williamson on the Saltador’s thin crest.

Kate screamed at the sight of the long sword. „Get up the hill!” Sharpe shouted at her. „Move, Kate, move! And you, you bastard, give me my telescope!”