Sharpe's Escape s-10 Page 4

  The British and Portuguese had a bird's-eye view of the enemy who came from a wooded defile in the lower hills, then marched past a windmill before turning south to take up their positions. They, in turn, could look up the high, bare slope and see a handful of British and Portuguese officers watching them. The army itself, with most of its guns, was hidden from the French. The ridge was ten miles long, a natural rampart, and General Wellington had ordered that his men were to stay well back from its wide crest so that the arriving French would have no idea which part of the high ground was most heavily defended. "Quite a privilege," Knowles said reverently.

  "A privilege?" Sharpe asked sourly.

  "To see such a thing," Knowles explained, gesturing at the enemy, and it was, in truth, a fine sight to see so many thousands of men at one time. The infantry marched in loose formations, their blue uniforms pale against the green of the valley, while the horsemen, released from the discipline of the march, galloped beside the stream to leave plumes of dust. And still they came from the defile, the might of France. A band was playing close to the windmill and, though the music was too far away to be heard, Sharpe fancied he could hear the thump of the bass drum like a distant heartbeat. "A whole army!" Knowles enthused. "I should have brought my sketching pad. It would make a fine picture."

  "What would make a fine picture," Sharpe said, "is to see the buggers march up this hill and get slaughtered."

  "You think they won't?"

  "I think they'd be mad to try," Sharpe said, then frowned at Knowles. "Do you like being Adjutant?" he asked abruptly.

  Knowles hesitated, sensing that the conversation was approaching dangerous ground, but he had been Sharpe's Lieutenant before becoming Adjutant and he liked his old company commander. "Not excessively," he admitted.

  "It's always been a captain's job," Sharpe said, "so why is he giving it to you?"

  "The Colonel feels the experience will be advantageous to me," Knowles said stiffly.

  "Advantageous," Sharpe said bitterly. "It ain't your advantage he wants, Robert. He wants that piece of gristle to take over my company. That's what he wants. He wants bloody Slingsby to be Captain of the light company." Sharpe had no evidence for that, the Colonel had never said as much, but it was the only explanation that made sense to him. "So he had to get you out of the way," Sharpe finished, knowing he had said too much, but the rancor was biting at him and Knowles was a friend who would be discreet about Sharpe's outburst

  Knowles frowned, then flapped at an insistent fly. "I truly believe," he said after thinking for a moment, "that the Colonel believes he's doing you a favor."

  "Me! A favor? By giving me Slingsby!"

  "Slingsby has experience, Richard," Knowles said, "much more than I do."

  "But you're a good officer and he's a jack-pudding. Who the hell is he anyway?"

  "He's the Colonel's brother-in-law," Knowles explained.

  "I know that," Sharpe said impatiently, "but who is he?"

  "The man who married Mrs. Lawford's sister," Knowles said, refusing to be drawn.

  "That tells you everything you bloody need to know," Sharpe said grimly, "but he doesn't seem the kind of fellow Lawford would want as a brother-in-law. Not enough tone."

  "We don't choose our relatives," Knowles said, "and I'm sure he's a gentleman."

  "Bloody hell," Sharpe grumbled.

  "And he must have been delighted to get out of the 55th," Knowles went on, ignoring Sharpe's moroseness. "God, most of that regiment died of the yellow fever in the West Indies. He's much safer here, even with those fellows threatening." Knowles nodded down at the French troops.

  "Then why the hell didn't he purchase a captaincy?"

  "Six months short of requirements," Knowles said. A lieutenant was not allowed to purchase a captaincy until he had served three years in the lower rank, a newly introduced rule that had caused much grumbling among wealthy officers who wanted swifter preferment.

  "But why did he join up so late?" Sharpe asked. If Slingsby was thirty then he could not have become a lieutenant before he was twenty-seven, by which age some men were majors. Most officers, like young Iliffe, joined long before they were twenty and it was odd to find a man coming to the army so late.

  "I believe… " Knowles said, then reddened and checked his words.

  New troops," he said instead, pointing down the slope to where a French regiment, its blue coats unnaturally bright, marched past the windmill. "I hear the Emperor has sent reinforcements to Spain," Knowles went on. "The French have nowhere else to fight these days. Austrians out of the war, Prussians doing nothing, which means Boney only has us to beat."

  Sharpe ignored Knowles's summation of the Emperor's strategy. "You believe what?" he asked.

  "Nothing. I said too much."

  "You didn't say a bloody thing," Sharpe protested and waited, but Knowles still remained silent. "You want me to slit your skinny throat, Robert," Sharpe asked, "with a very blunt knife?"

  Knowles smiled. "You mustn't repeat this, Richard."

  "You know me, Robert, I never tell anyone anything. Cross my heart and hope to die, so tell me before I cut your legs off."

  "I believe Mrs. Lawford's sister was in trouble. She found herself with child, she wasn't married and the man concerned was apparently a rogue."

  "Wasn't me," Sharpe said quickly.

  "Of course it wasn't you," Knowles said. He could be pedantically obvious at times.

  Sharpe grinned. "So Slingsby was recruited to make her respectable?"

  "Exactly. He's not from the topmost drawer, of course, but his family is more than acceptable. His father's a rector somewhere on the Essex coast, I believe, but they're not wealthy, and so Lawford's family rewarded Slingsby with a commission in the 55th, with a promise to exchange into the South Essex as soon as there was a vacancy. Which there was when poor Herrold died."

  "Herrold?"

  "Number three company," Knowles said, "arrived on a Monday, caught fever on Tuesday and was dead by Friday."

  "So the idea," Sharpe said, watching a French gun battery being dragged along the track by the stream below, "is that bloody Slingsby gets quick promotion so that he's a worthy husband for the woman what couldn't keep her knees together."

  "I wouldn't say that," Knowles said indignantly, then thought for a second. "Well, yes, I would say that. But the Colonel wants him to do well. After all, Slingsby did the family a favor and now they're trying to do one back."

  "By giving him my bloody job," Sharpe said.

  "Don't be absurd, Richard."

  "Why else is the bugger here? They move you out of the way, give the bastard a horse and hope to God the French kill me." He fell silent, not only because he had said too much, but because Patrick Harper was approaching.

  The big Sergeant greeted Knowles cheerfully. "We miss you, sir, we do."

  "I can say the same, Sergeant," Knowles responded with real pleasure. "You're well?"

  "Still breathing, sir, and that's what counts." Harper turned to look down into the valley. "Look at those daft bastards, just lining up to be murdered."

  "They'll take one look at this hill," Sharpe said, "and find another road."

  Yet there was no sign that the French would take that good advice for the blue-uniformed battalions still marched steadily from the east and French gun batteries, dust flying from their big wheels, continued to arrive at the lower villages. Some French officers rode to the top of a spur which jutted east from the ridge and gazed through their telescopes at the few British and Portuguese officers visible where the better road crossed the ridge top. That road, the farther north of the two, zigzagged up the slope, climbing at first between gorse and heather, then cutting through vineyards beneath the small village perched on the slope. That was the road which led to Lisbon and to the completion of the Emperor's orders, which were to hurl the British out of Portugal so that the whole coastline of continental Europe would belong to the French.

  Lieutenant Slingsby, his red coa
t newly brushed and his badges polished, came to offer his opinion of the enemy, and Sharpe, unable to stand the man's company, walked away southwards. He watched the French cutting down trees to make fires or shelters. Some small streams fell from the far hills to join and make a larger stream that flowed south towards the Mondego River which touched the ridge's southern end, and the bigger stream's banks were being trampled by horses, some from the gun teams, some cavalry mounts and some the officers' horses, all being given a drink after their march.

  The French were concentrating in two places. One tangle of battalions was around the village from which the better road climbed to the northern end of the ridge, while others were two miles to the south, gathering at another village from which a track, passable to packhorses or men on foot, twisted to the ridge's crest. It was not a proper road, there were no ruts from carts, and in places the track almost vanished into the heather, but it did show the French that there was a route up the steep slope, and French batteries were now deploying either side of the village so that the guns could rake the track ahead of their advancing troops.

  The sound of axes and falling trees came from behind Sharpe. One company from each battalion had been detailed to make a road just behind the ridge's crest, a road that would let Lord Wellington shift his forces anywhere along the hill's ten-mile length. Trees were being felled, bushes uprooted, rocks being rolled away and the soil smoothed so that British or Portuguese guns could be pulled swiftly to any danger point. It was a huge piece of work and Sharpe suspected it would all be wasted for the French would surely not be mad enough to climb the hill.

  Except some were already climbing. A score of mounted officers, wanting a closer view of the British and Portuguese position, had ridden their horses along the summit of the spur which jutted out from the long ridge. The spur was less than half the height of the ridge, but it provided a platform on which troops could gather for an assault and the British and Portuguese gunners had plainly marked it as a target for, as the French horsemen neared the place where the spur joined the ridge, a cannon fired. The sound was flat and hard, startling a thousand birds up from the trees which grew thick on the ridge's reverse slope. The gun's smoke roiled in a gray-white cloud that was carried east on the small wind. The shell left a trace of powder smoke from its burning fuse as it arced down to explode a few paces beyond the French horsemen. One of the horses panicked and bolted back the way it had come, but the others seemed unworried as their riders took out telescopes and stared at the enemy above them.

  Then two more guns fired, their sound echoing back from the eastern hills. One was evidently a howitzer for the smoke of its burning fuse went high in the sky before dropping towards the French. This time a horse was flung sideways to leave a smear of blood on the dry, pale heather. Sharpe was watching through his telescope and saw the unsaddled and evidently unwounded Frenchman get to his feet. He brushed himself down, drew a pistol and put his twitching horse out of its misery, then struggled to release the precious saddle. He trudged back eastwards, carrying saddle, saddlecloth and bridle.

  More French, some mounted and some on foot, were coming to the spur. It seemed a madness to go where the guns were aiming, but dozens of French were wading through the stream and then climbing the low hill to stare up at the British and Portuguese. The gunfire continued. It was not the staccato fire of battle, but desultory shots as the gunners experimented with powder loads and fuse lengths. Too much powder and a shot would scream over the spur to explode somewhere above the stream, while if the fuse was cut too long the shell would land, bounce and come to rest with the fuse still smoking, giving the French time to skip out of the way before the shell exploded. Each detonation was a puff of dirty smoke, surprisingly small, but Sharpe could not see the deadly scraps of broken shell casing hiss away from each blast.

  No more French horses or men were struck. They were well spread out and the shells obstinately fell in the gaps between the small groups of men who looked as carefree as folk out for a walk in a park. They stared up at the ridge, trying to determine where the defenses lay thickest, though it was surely obvious that the places where the two roads reached the summit would be the places to defend. Another score of cavalrymen, some in green coats and some in sky blue, splashed through the stream and spurred up the lower hill. The sun glinted on brass helmets, polished scabbards, stirrups and curb chains. It was, Sharpe thought, as though the French were playing cat and mouse with the sporadic shell fire. He saw a shell burst close by a group of infantrymen, but when the smoke cleared they were all standing and it seemed to him, though they were very far away, that they were laughing. They were confident, he thought, sure they were the best troops in the world, and their survival of the gunfire was a taunt to the defenders on the ridge's top.

  The taunting was evidently too much, for a battalion of brown-jacketed Portuguese light troops appeared on the crest and, scattered in a

  I Bernard Cornwell

  double skirmish chain, advanced down the ridge's slope towards the spur. They went steadily downhill in two loose lines, one fifty paces behind the other, both spread out, giving a demonstration of how skirmishers went to war. Most troops fought shoulder to shoulder, but skirmishers like Sharpe went ahead of the line and, in the killing ground between the armies, tried to pick off the enemy skirmishers and then kill the officers behind so that when the two armies clashed, dense line against massive column, the enemy was already leaderless. Skirmishers rarely closed ranks. They fought close to the enemy where a bunch of men would make an easy target for enemy gunners, and so the light troops fought in loose formation, in pairs, one man shooting and then reloading as his comrade protected him.

  The French watched the Portuguese come. They showed no alarm, nor did they advance any skirmishers of their own. The shells went on arcing clown the slope, their detonations echoing dully from the eastern hills. The vast mass of the French were making their bivouacs, ignoring the small drama on the ridge, but a dozen cavalrymen, seeing easy meat in the scattered Portuguese skirmishers, kicked their horses up the hill.

  By rights the cavalrymen should have decimated the skirmishers. Men in a loose formation were no match for swift cavalry and the French, half of them dragoons and the other half hussars, had drawn their long swords or curved sabers and were anticipating some practice cuts on helpless men. The Portuguese were armed with muskets and rifles, but once the guns were fired there would be no time to reload before the surviving horsemen reached them, and an empty gun was no defense against a dragoon's long blade. The cavalry were curving around to assault the flank of the line, a dozen horsemen approaching four Portuguese on foot, but the ridge was too steep for the horses, which began to labor. The advantage of the cavalry was speed, but the ridge stole their speed so that the horses were struggling and a rifle cracked, the smoke jetting above the grass, and a horse stumbled, twisted away and collapsed. Another two rifles fired and the French, realizing that the ridge was their enemy, turned away and galloped recklessly downhill. The unhorsed hussar followed on foot, abandoning his dying horse with its precious equipment to the Portuguese who cheered their small victory.

  "I'm not sure the cazadores had orders to do that," a voice said behind Sharpe, who turned to see that Major Hogan had come to the ridge. "Hello, Richard," Hogan said cheerfully, "you look unhappy." He held out his hand for Sharpe's telescope.

  "Cazadores?" Sharpe asked.

  "Hunters. It's what the Portuguese call their skirmishers." Hogan was staring at the brown-coated skirmishers as he spoke. "It's rather a good name, don't you think? Hunters? Better than greenjackets."

  "I'll stay a greenjacket," Sharpe said.

  Hogan watched the cazadores for a few moments. Their riflemen had begun firing at the French on the spur, and that enemy prudently backed away. The Portuguese stayed where they were, not going down to the spur where the horsemen could attack them, content to have made their demonstration. Two guns fired, the shells falling into the empty space between the ca
zadores and the remaining French. "The Peer will be very unhappy," Hogan said. "He detests gunners firing at hopeless targets. It just reveals where his batteries are placed and it does no damn harm to the enemy." He turned the telescope to the valley and spent a long time looking at the enemy encampments beyond the stream. "We reckon Monsieur Massena has sixty thousand men," he said, "and maybe a hundred guns."

  "And us, sir?" Sharpe asked.

  "Fifty thousand and sixty," Hogan said, giving Sharpe back the telescope, "and half of ours are Portuguese."

  There was something in his tone that caught Sharpe's attention. "Is that bad?" he asked.

  "We'll see, won't we?" Hogan said, then stamped his foot on the turf. "But we do have this." He meant the ridge.

  "Those lads seem eager enough." Sharpe nodded at the cazadores who were now retreating up the hill.

  "Eagerness in new troops is quickly wiped away by gunfire," Hogan said.

  "I doubt we'll find out," Sharpe said. "The Crapauds won't attack up here. They're not mad."

  "I certainly wouldn't want to attack up this slope " Hogan agreed. "My suspicion is that they'll spend the day staring at us, then go away."

  "Back to Spain?"

  "Good Lord, no. If they did but know it there's a fine road that loops round the top of this ridge," he pointed north, "and they don't need to fight us here at all. They'll find that road eventually. Pity, really. This would be a grand place to give them a bloody nose. But they may come. They reckon the Portuguese aren't up to scratch, so perhaps they'll think it's worth an attempt."

  "Are the Portuguese up to scratch?" Sharpe asked. The gunfire had ended, leaving scorched grass and small patches of smoke on the spur. The French, denied their game of dare, were drifting back towards their lines.