Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe’s Sword - The Salamanca Campaign, June and July 1812

Hogan stared at the numbers. ‘It’s one thing to decode these messages, Richard, it’s another to understand them. This one’s the Emperor’s own code! How about that?’ He smiled in understandable triumph at Scovell’s victory. ‘It was sent from the man himself to Marshal Marmont and I’ll tell you what it says.’ He read from the numbers as if they were words. ‘“I send you Colonel Leroux, my own man, who works for me. You are to afford him whatever he requests.” That’s all, Richard! I can read it, but I can’t understand it. I know that a Colonel Leroux is here to do a special job, a job for the Emperor himself, but what’s the job? Then I hear more things. Some Spaniards have been tortured, skinned alive, and the bastard signed them with his name. Why?’ Hogan folded the paper. ‘There was something else. Leroux got Colquhoun Grant.’

That shocked Sharpe. ‘Killed him?’

‘No, captured him. We’re not exactly trumpeting that failure about.’

Sharpe could understand Hogan’s misery. Colquhoun Grant was the best of the British Exploring Officers, a colleague of Lord Spears who rode brazenly on the flanks of the French forces. Grant was a severe loss to Hogan, and a triumph for the French.

Sharpe said nothing. To his right he could see, half a mile away, the General and his staff bunched on the skyline. An aide-de-camp had just left the small group and was spurring back down the ridge towards the British forces. Sharpe wondered if something was about to happen.

The French were making a move, yet not a particularly forceful one. Directly ahead of Sharpe and Hogan, at the foot of the ridge scarp, was a small knoll that disturbed the smoothness of the plain where the French were gathered. Two enemy Battalions had come slowly forward and now lined the knoll’s crest. They were no threat to the ridge and, having taken the tiny summit, they seemed content to stay there. Two field guns had come with them.

Hogan ignored them. ‘I have to stop Leroux, Richard. That’s my job. He’s taking my best people and he’s killing them if they’re Spanish and capturing them if they’re British, and he’s too bloody clever by half.’ Sharpe was surprised by the gloom in his friend’s voice. Hogan was not usually downcast by setbacks, but Sharpe could tell that Colonel Philippe Leroux had the Irish Major desperately worried. Hogan looked up at Sharpe again. ‘You searched him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Tell me again what you found. Tell me everything.’

Sharpe shrugged. He took off his shako to let the small breeze cool his forehead. He spoke of that day in the wood, of the prisoner’s seeming arrogance. He mentioned the sword, he spoke of his suspicion that Leroux pretended not to understand English. Hogan smiled at that. ‘You were right. He speaks English like a bloody native. Go on.’

‘There isn’t any more. I’ve told you everything!’ Sharpe looked behind the ridge to see where the aide-de-camp had ridden, and an urgency suddenly came over him. ‘Look! We’re moving! Christ!’ He crammed his shako back on.

The South Essex, together with another Battalion, had been stirred into activity. They had stood up, dressed their ranks, and now they were climbing the hill in companies. They were going to attack! Sharpe looked north, at the small knoll, and he knew that Wellington was meeting the French move with a move of his own. The French would be pushed off the small hill, and the South Essex was to be one of the two Battalions that did the pushing. ‘I must go!’

‘Richard!’ Hogan held his elbow. ‘For God’s sake. Nothing else? No papers? No books? Nothing hidden in his helmet, I mean, God, he must have had something!’

Sharpe was impatient. He wanted to be with his men. The Light Company would be first into the attack and Sharpe would lead them. Already he was forgetting Leroux and thinking only of the enemy skirmishers he would face in a few minutes. He snapped his fingers. ‘No, yes. Yes. There was one thing. Jesus! A piece of paper, he said it was horse dealers or something. It was just a list!’

‘You have it?’

‘It’s in my pack. Down there.’ He pointed to the place the South Essex had left. The Battalion was halfway up the slope now, the Light Company already stretching ahead. ‘I must go, sir!’

‘Can I look for the paper?’

‘Yes!’ Sharpe was running now, released by Hogan, and his scabbard and rifle thumped as he hurried towards his men. The leather casings were being stripped from the colours so that the flags, unfurled, spread in the small breeze, their tassels bright yellow against the Union Flag. He felt the surge of emotion because the Colours were a soldier’s pride. They were going to fight!

‘Are they going to fight?’ La Marquesa de Casares el Grande y Melida Sadaba had come to San Christobal hoping for a battle. Lord Spears was with her, his horse close to the elegant barouche, while La Marquesa herself was chaperoned by a dowdy, middle-aged woman who was wilting of the heat in a thick serge dress. La Marquesa wore white and had her filmy parasol raised against the sun.

Lord Spears tugged at his sling to make it comfortable. ‘No, my dear. It’s just a redeployment.’

‘I do believe you’re wrong, Jack.’

‘Ten guineas says I’m not.’

‘You owe me twice that already.’ La Marquesa had taken out a small, silver telescope that she trained on the two British Battalions. They were marching towards the crest. ‘Still, I’ll take you, Jack. Ten guineas.’ She put the telescope in her lap and picked up a folding ivory fan with which she cooled her face. ‘Everyone ought to see a battle, Jack. It’s part of a woman’s education.’

‘Quite right, my dear. Front row for the slaughter. Lord Spears’ Academy for Young Ladies, battles arranged, mutilations our speciality.’

The fan cracked shut. ‘What a bore you are, Jack, and just a tiny bit amusing. Oh look! Some of them are running! Do I cheer?’

Lord Spears was realising that he had just lost another ten guineas that he did not have, but he showed no regret. ‘Why not? Hip, hip …’

‘Hooray!’ said La Marquesa.

Sharpe blew his whistle that sent his men scattering into the loose skirmish chain. The other nine companies would fight in their ranks, held by discipline, but his men fought in pairs, picking their ground and being the first to meet the enemy. He was on the crest now, the grass long beneath his boots, and his skirmish line was going down towards the enemy. Once again he forgot Leroux, forgot Hogan’s concern, for now he was doing the job for which the army paid him. He was a skirmisher, a fighter of battles between the armies, and the love of combat was rising in him, that curious emotion that diluted fear and drove him to impose his will on the enemy. He was excited, eager, and he led his men at a swift pace down the hillside to where the enemy skirmishers, the Voltigeurs, were coming out to meet him. This was his world now, this small saddle of land between the escarpment and the knoll, a tiny piece of grassland that was warm in the sun and pretty with flowers. There he would meet his enemy and there he would win. ‘Spread out! Keep moving!’ Sharpe was going to war.

Wellington did not want to attack. He saw little sense in sending his army down into the plain, but he was frustrated by the French reluctance to attack him. He had sent two Battalions against the two enemy Battalions on the knoll in the hope that he could provoke Marmont into a response. Wellington wanted to entice the French up onto the ridge, to force their infantry to climb the steep slope and face the guns and muskets that would suddenly appear to blast the tired enemy in chaos and horror back the way they had come.