Sharpe's Skirmish s-14 Read online

  "And what does the infantry do?"

  "It stays at San Miguel, of course. To protect our retreat."

  Ducos approved. Madrid would be saved, Marmont's retreat could end, and the British would be forced back to the Portuguese border, only to discover that their enemy had vanished into the hills. It was an audacious plan, brilliant even, and proof to Ducos that a few brave men could change the course of a war. Herault, he thought, must be recommended to the Emperor, and he wrote the general's name in his small black notebook and added a star which was Ducos's code for a man who might well deserve swift promotion.

  "We leave at dawn, " Herault said, then smiled, "and tonight my men will spread rumours that we intend to sack Avila. By tomorrow night, Major, every partisan within fifty miles will be waiting on the Avila road."

  And Herault would be miles away, spurring towards a fortress that thought itself safe.

  It was uncanny how news spread in the Spanish countryside. Sharpe could see no one in the fields, olive groves and vineyards across the river, other than a few old men who tended the oxen turning the wheels that pumped the river water into the irrigation ditches, but by midday a rumour had reached Teresa's partisans that a French column had marched from Toledo to sack Avila. The rumour enraged Teresa. "It is a special place!»

  she claimed.

  "Avila?" Sharpe asked, "special?"

  "St Teresa lived there."

  "Must be special then." Sharpe said sarcastically.

  "What would you know? Protestant pig."

  "I'm not any sort of pig. Not protestant, not nothing."

  "Heathen pig, then, " Teresa said angrily. She stared eastwards. "I should ride there, " she added.

  "I won't stop you, " Sharpe said, "but I won't be happy."

  "Who cares about your happiness?"

  "Your men are my best sentries." Sharpe said. "If anything does come up that road, " he pointed southwards, "they'll see it first." Teresa's partisans were keeping watch in the foothills, ready to ride back and warn San Miguel of any threat coming out of the Sierra de Gredos. "How far is Avila, anyway?"

  Teresa shrugged. "Fifty miles."

  "And why would the frogs go there?"

  "For plunder, of course! There are rich convents, monasteries, the cathedral, the basilica of Santa Vicente."

  "Why would they go after plunder?" Sharpe asked.

  Teresa frowned at him, wondering why he asked such a seemingly stupid question. "Because they are crapauds, of course! " she said. "Because they are scum. Because they are slime-toads that crawled from the devil's backside when God was not watching."

  "But everywhere else, " Sharpe said, "the church treasures are hidden!»

  Sharpe had marched through countless Spanish towns and villages, and everywhere the church plate had been taken away and buried or concealed behind walls or hidden in caves. He had seen precious altar screens, too large to be moved, daubed with limewash in hope that the French would not realise there was treasure behind the white covering. What he had never seen was a church flaunting its treasures when the French were within a week's march. "Why would Avila keep its treasures?"

  "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 p
assing. 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.

  And the remaining French infantry, all three thousand seven hundred of them, were following fast. The ruse had worked, and the back door of Castile lay ahead.

  The moon touched the walls of the farmhouse beyond the river ghostly white. Sharpe had twenty riflemen behind those walls, put there to hold up any French advance down the road. The riflemen could probably stop an attacking column for ten minutes and after that Harper would have to bring them running back to the river where the rest of Sharpe's riflemen and all his redcoats manned the fort's parapet or were lined behind the cart which served as a barricade. Sharpe had been tempted to add to the barricade by taking carts and furniture from the villagers, but he had resisted the temptation. The villagers had suffered enough from the war, and they had been welcoming to his men by shyly bringing gifts of olives, eggs and freshly caught fish. The single cart would have to suffice.

  "Why would the French come here?" Teresa asked. They were standing on the fort's parapet.

  "If they can retake Salamanca, " Sharpe said, "they cut Wellington off from his supplies. They don't even need to take the city to do that! Just sit on the road to Ciudad Rodrigo. In a couple of days the supplies will dry up, and Nosey will have to turn round and come back to deal with the buggers. He won't be best pleased."

  "So we must stop them?"

  Sharpe nodded.

  "So why don't you send for reinforcements?"

  Sharpe shrugged.

  "Because you're not sure they're coming?" Teresa asked.

  "I can't be sure, " he said.

  "And you're frightened of looking like a fool?"

  "If I raise an alarm, " Sharpe said, "and no crapauds come, they'll string my guts out and hang their washing on them. I'll be a quartermaster for the rest of my days! They'll never trust me again."

  Teresa shook her head. "Richard, you took a French eagle! You crossed the breach at Badajoz! You have pride to spare! So write a request now, " she said.

  "You don't understand, " he said stubbornly. "I could snatch a thousand French eagles and I'm still the bugger who came up from the ranks. I'm still an upstart. They can smell me a hundred yards off, and they're just waiting, Teresa, just waiting for me to make a mistake. One mistake!

  That's all it takes."

  "Write a request now, " she said patiently, "and as soon as the first Frenchman shows, I will ride to Salamanca. As soon as we hear the first gunshot in the hills, I will ride. So then you will not have to hold for long, Richard."

  He thought about it, and knew she was right, and so he went down to the mess and lit a candle and then woke Ensign Hickey because the Ensign had gone to a proper school and would know what words to use, and then Sharpe penned the words in his clumsy handwriting. 'I have reason to believe, he wrote, 'that a French column is approaching this fort which I have the honour to command. My command being perilously small in numbers, I request reinforcements as quickly as may be possible. Richard Sharpe, Capt'.

  "Shouldn't I date it?" he asked, "put a time on it?"

  "I will convince them you were in a hurry, " Teresa said.

  Hickey, shy to be seen in front of Teresa in his undershirt, pulled a blanket over his bare legs. "Are the French really coming, sir?" He asked Sharpe.

  "I reckon so. Why? Does that worry you?"

  Hickey thought about it for a heartbeat, then nodded. "Yes, sir, it does,»

  "It's why you joined the army, isn't it?"

  "I joined the army, sir, because my father wanted me to."

  "He wanted you dead?"

  "I pray not, sir."

  "I was an Ensign once, Hickey, " Sharpe said, "and I learned one lesson about being an Ensign."

  "And what lesson was that, sir?"

  "That ensigns are expendable, Hickey, expendable. Now go to sleep."

  Sharpe and Teresa climbed back to the parapet. "You were cruel, Richard, " she said.

  "I was honest."

  "And were you expendable? As an ensign?"

  "I climbed a cliff, love. I climbed a cliff. And they reckoned I would die, and none, I reckon, would have cared much if I had."

  And who would be climbing the cliff in the morning, he wondered, who? And where? And how? And what had he forgotten? And would the bastards come?

  And could he stop them? And Jesus, he was nervous. He had listened to his instinct, and he was ready for the French, but it still felt all wrong. It felt like defeat, and it had not even started yet.

  Teresa's men, three miles south of San Miguel in the foothills of the Sierra de Gredos, roasted a hare over an open fire. They lit the fire in a grove of trees, deep in a rocky cleft, and were sure that its light could not be seen on the road which lay white beneath their position. If one Frenchman dared breathe on that road the partisans would fire their muskets and so warn the fort that the enemy was coming.

  But Captain Pailleterie saw a gleam of their fire. It was tiny, merely a reflection of a leaping flame on a high rock, but only two kinds of men had fires in the hills; partisans or soldiers, and both kind were his enemies. He held up his hand and checked the company.

  The gleam had been to the left of the road, at least he thought so, for he was still not in sight of the stretch of road that ran directly beneath the rocky bluff where he had seen t
he faint glimmer. Off to his right there was a dark valley and it seemed to him that it curled around to the north and so might offer a way to the river and the bridge which would be hidden from whoever had carelessly lit a fire in this dark night.

  His men all had muffled scabbards so that the metal did not clash against a buckle or stirrup. Pailleterie could do little about the sound of their hooves, so that was a risk that must be taken. "We go slowly now, " he told his men, "slow and quiet."

  They swerved off to the right, walking their tired horses through the gentle grassy valley that did indeed turn to the north. Then the land rose to a crest and Pailleterie sweated as he led the hundred horsemen up to that skyline for it would be a perfect place for an ambush, and the saddle of moonlit land was scattered with grey rocks that could hide a hundred partisans, but no musket fired.

  He curbed his horse just south of the crest, gave its reins to a sergeant, then dismounted and walked uphill until he could just see over the hill's top.

  Peace. That was all he could see, peace. A wide, moonlit land, though the moon was paling now as dawn came around the world, and in the grey white light of night's ending he could see the sheen of a river, and black trees, and then the white streak of the road and the black square shape of the fort. No fires there, and for a moment Pailleterie dared to hope that San Miguel would be unguarded, but he put that hope aside as he moved forward another few paces and realised there was a god after all. There was a god, and He was a Frenchman, for a spur of hill jutted out to hide his men all the way from the crest down to the plain, and once there they would be hidden from San Miguel's garrison by the olive groves. He edged back from the crest, straightened and walked down his column. "Load your pistols now, but don't cock them. You hear me? Load, but don't cock them.

  If anyone fires before we reach the bridge I will personally drown that man! But I will geld him first! You hear me? I will geld him! " He watched as his men loaded the long-barrelled pistols. The weapons were not accurate, but at close quarters they were as deadly as any musket. "We shall ride slowly down the hill. Very slowly! We shall move like a morning mist, and then we shall stay among the trees. We go slowly, you hear me?