Sharpes assassin, p.26
Sharpe's Assassin, page 26
Sharpe was kneeling behind the crude barricade. He took out his short knife and cut the fuses of the rockets as short as he dared, then opened his tinderbox. He struck the steel with the flint, blew on the charred linen to encourage a flame, and lit the first fuse. He waited a heartbeat, then tossed the rocket’s carcass over the balustrade down into the hallway. The rocket ignited halfway down, but without its long stick it had no guidance. Instead it spun crazily, bouncing off men and walls, searing a four-foot tail of flame, and then exploded.
Sharpe reckoned there had been at least thirty men in the lower hallway, but now there were only a dozen still standing, and two of those fled back through the front door. An officer shouted at a sergeant to lock the door, and the man threw the two heavy bolts before a rifle shot took him down. The stone floor glittered with blood. Sharpe fired his rifle down into the smoke-wreathed horror, then heard a crash of musketry coming from somewhere inside the house. “Pat! Find out what’s happening!”
Before Harper could leave, Rifleman McGurk returned and knelt beside Sharpe, who was crouching behind the upper balustrade. “Mister Price has blocked the back stairs, sir.”
“Does he need help?”
“He says not, sir. He stuffed a bed down the stairwell. No one can get up now.”
Or get down, Sharpe thought, and cursed himself. He had led his men upstairs so they could look down on the fight outside, and now he could not see a way out. More of Lanier’s men had come to reinforce the men in the lower hallway, and Sharpe reckoned there was the best part of a company summoning the courage to assault up the staircase. Kippen, as far as Sharpe knew, was in the warehouse, but he too was trapped there by the companies out on the forecourt, and the one man who could destroy those companies was bloody Morris, who would not fight.
There was no sign of Lanier, and Sharpe assumed the Frenchman was on the forecourt where his men were dominating the fight with their disciplined musketry. And that was where Sharpe should have been. If his Light Company had attacked Lanier’s men from the rear, using the rockets to create chaos and their muskets and rifles to kill as many as possible, then the rest of the battalion could have advanced up through the vineyard while Lanier’s men were distracted. If Morris would have led them, Sharpe thought, but surely even Morris would see the opportunity? None of that had happened because Sharpe had climbed the stairs so his riflemen could deal with the two cannon. And now he was trapped.
Long ago he had suffered a recurrent nightmare. It had started after the battle at Fuentes de Oñoro, which had been a nasty fight in a small village on the Spanish frontier, a fight in tight alleyways where men had clawed at each other like animals, screamed like devils, and died like beasts.
In the dream, which often left him awake, sweating and shaking, he had been trapped in a narrow alleyway. Behind him and to either side were high stone walls, while in front was a mass of French soldiers. He had told Lucille of the dream and she had smiled. “Dreams mean things, Richard,” she had said.
“So what does that one mean?”
“Stay out of blind alleys, of course.”
The vestibule below him was now apparently empty except for the growing pile of broken furniture to which his men were still enthusiastically adding tables, chairs, chamber pots, paintings, and chests of drawers. The French had pulled back so they could not be seen from above, but Sharpe could hear them, and when he took a few exploratory steps down the wide staircase he was greeted with a blast of musketry, most of which ricocheted off the marble banisters. “They’re not giving up, the buggers,” Harper commented.
“There’s at least a company back there,” Sharpe said ruefully. Any attempt to reach the front door would expose him to their volleys, yet every instinct told him he needed to escape the house and reach the rest of his battalion that was somewhere in the vineyard. Damn it, he thought, but he should have led the main attack, but he had been seduced by the thought of using the tunnel to erupt into his enemy’s rear. Now he was trapped upstairs in this damned house and Lanier controlled the night.
“Keep them busy, Pat,” he told Harper, and went along the corridor into the farthest bedroom, where two riflemen were making sure none of the French tried to use the cannon at the right-hand end of Lanier’s line. The bedroom was dark except for what small moonlight came through the shattered windows. Sharpe peered over a sill.
“Bastards are good, Mister Sharpe,” Rifleman Godwin said.
“They’re well trained,” Sharpe muttered. Lanier had advanced his line to the forecourt’s edge, from where they still fired platoon volleys down into the vines. The response from his men was desultory, which angered him. Was there no officer there who saw what needed to be done? “Where are the Prussians?”
“All in that big building.” Godwin jerked his head toward the warehouse. “A company of Crapauds followed them.”
Which meant, Sharpe thought, that the Prussians were safe enough in the warehouse, but faced by a well-trained company of French Light Infantrymen who guarded the one door.
Sharpe used the hilt of his sword to knock out shards of glass sticking up from the window’s frame, then leaned out into the night. He could drop to the ground, but reckoned the chance of a broken or turned ankle was too high. He was in enough pain already, and landing behind Lanier’s battalion with a broken ankle was suicidal. He swore.
“You’re bleeding, Mister Sharpe,” Godwin said, worried.
“I’ve had worse.” He pulled back from the window, troubled by what he had seen. The French were in two ranks and he had counted one company, then multiplied it by the six companies he could see. Lanier had over five hundred men on the forecourt! “Just make sure none of the bastards get that cannon working. And try to pick off the officers and sergeants in their line.”
“A pleasure, Mister Sharpe,” Godwin said, ramming a ball down his rifle’s barrel.
Sharpe went back to the stairhead. Nothing had changed. If any man crept down the stairs he was greeted with a fusillade of musketry. Harry Price was still guarding the back stairs, and Butler and O’Farrell were still hurling Madame Delaunay’s furniture into the vestibule, making a crude barricade across the wide space. “We still have one rocket?” Sharpe asked.
“Here.” Harper held up the cylinder. The rocket’s stick had been tossed down onto the shattered furniture.
Sharpe turned and looked at his men. He had thirty, and what he planned was insane, yet he was deep in the alley, the walls were high, and the enemy winning. “Load,” he told them, “then fix swords.”
Two men staggered from the right-hand corridor somehow carrying a gilded wardrobe. Sharpe let them tip it over the balustrade. It crashed into the furniture heap, turning valuable chairs and tables into matchwood. “Is there another like that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fetch it.”
He loaded his rifle, pushing two balls down the barrel. “We’re going down, lads,” he told his men, pitching his voice low so no one below could hear him. “Save your shot till we get outside the house, and when we go we go like the devil’s on our heels.”
“Where?” Harper asked.
“Straight through Lanier’s line,” Sharpe said. He could think of no other way to reach the rest of his battalion, and his whole godforsaken idea had been to attack Lanier from behind, so damn it, that’s what he would do. Five hundred Frenchmen against his thirty men, four of whom staggered into sight again with another huge wardrobe on their shoulders. “Just put it on the balustrade and wait for my order. Pat? Give me the last rocket. And send for Captain Price, tell him to bring his men.” Sharpe had crept four steps down the stairs, hugging the wall and staying low so that he would not be a target for the mass of Frenchmen crowded behind the crude barrier of splintered furniture. He could see the front door, which was locked by two iron bolts. The dead French sergeant lay on the mat just inside the door, his blood still slowly spreading across the marble floor. “Private Bee?”
“Sir?”
“When we go down, your job is to pull that dead Frog out of our way.”
“Yes, sir,” Bee said nervously.
“Don’t worry, lad,” Sharpe said, “he’s too dead to fight back. And where’s the monkey?”
“He’s safe in a crate in the museum, sir.”
“I daresay he’ll be glad to see you.”
“He will, sir. He’s a good monkey, sir.”
A Frenchman had heard the mutter of voices and shot his musket up from the lower hall. The ball slammed into the wall just over Sharpe’s head, then ricocheted up to the ceiling, where it knocked a lump out of the molded plasterwork. Sharpe retreated up two steps. “Ready?” he asked.
“What are we doing?” Harry Price asked.
“Attacking the bloody Frogs out front,” Sharpe said, “and listen lads, we go fast! We go through them and join the battalion! Just run like the devil, kill anyone who tries to stop you, and follow me!”
He struck the flint on the steel and puffed the tinderbox into a flame. “When I throw this thing,” he spoke to Rifleman O’Farrell, “push that thing over the edge.”
“Pleasure, Mister Sharpe.” The wardrobe teetered dangerously on the balustrade. “Not yet,” Sharpe said, then held the rocket’s shortened fuse to the flame. The paper caught light. He waited two heartbeats, then tossed it toward the crowded Frenchmen at the back of the vestibule, and at the same moment O’Farrell heaved and the wardrobe slammed down with another almighty crash. “Now, lads!” Sharpe said, and started down the stairs, his rifle slung on his shoulder.
Panicked shouts sounded at the back of the hallway as the rocket began searing its crazy way among the Frenchmen’s legs. Some muskets fired at the men following Sharpe down the stairs, but most of the Frenchmen had been scared by the splintering crash of the wardrobe and now by the fizzing mad rocket that spewed its flame tail until it lodged in the heap of broken furniture and exploded just as Sharpe reached the door. He pulled back the two bolts as Pat Bee hauled the corpse to one side.
“Fast, lads,” Sharpe said, and drew his sword. “Fire at them as we run! Now come on!”
The oak wreath had been sewn back onto his old faded jacket and he remembered the Duke saying it had been given for insanity rather than bravery, and now he was doing something equally insane. Lanier had over five hundred men on the forecourt, and Sharpe was attacking them with just thirty, but as he erupted from the portico he saw that the company immediately in front of him was still reloading their muskets. So maybe there was a god who looked after lunatics.
Pat Bee was shouting in a high voice, though Sharpe could not make out any words. Pat Harper was beside Sharpe, the volley gun held at his waist. Sharpe had his sword drawn, his loaded rifle banging against his hip as he ran. “Kill them!” he shouted, and Pat Harper pulled the volley gun’s trigger and the balls hit the two-deep French line like a blast of canister. Bee’s musket hammered. The French were turning, some falling as more shots hit them, then Sharpe backswung the sword at an officer who just stood with mouth open in surprise. A man with his ramrod halfway down a barrel stopped to unsheathe his bayonet and Sharpe rammed the sword at him, twisted the blade, and was past him. There was a strip of flower bed at the vineyard’s edge and Sharpe leaped it and started running down one of the alleys between the vines. “South Essex!” he bellowed as he ran. “On your feet!” He kept running. Shots came at him from the left, the balls making a flickering noise as they whipped through the vines. None hit him and he was still shouting. “South Essex! On your feet! Stand! Fix swords!”
He saw them standing and saw too that they were a long way down the shallow slope, but at least they were on their feet and forming into companies, though the files were too far apart because of the vines. Another French volley gouted smoke and balls that snatched some of the men back from the crude line. “To me!” Sharpe bellowed. “South Essex! To me!”
A voice shouted from behind the ragged line, though Sharpe could neither identify who had shouted nor make out the words, but he suspected it was Morris ordering them to stay where they were because he saw men look around uncertainly, saw them hesitate. “To me, now! Move your bloody selves!”
He turned left and forced his way across the vines, tearing and trampling the plants from their chestnut stakes. “Captain Jefferson!”
The Light Company, having broken through the French battalion, had stopped where Sharpe had turned to his left. “Fire at the bastards!” Harper shouted, unslinging his rifle. The shout reminded Sharpe that he had a loaded rifle and he slid it from his shoulder, pointed it up the slope, and pulled the trigger. “Captain Jefferson!” he bellowed again, and suddenly Jefferson was in front of him. The French had started their platoon volleys again, and the balls shredded the vines or whipped overhead. “What the hell is happening?” Sharpe snarled.
“Those volleys are happening, sir,” Jefferson said.
“So? We can fire just as fast, if not faster. Beat the buggers down.”
“The cannon didn’t help,” Jefferson muttered. “My company took a full load of canister.”
“I told you to attack fast. If you stand around and give the buggers targets they’ll fillet us. Get up there and kill them!”
“The major thought that was a bad idea, sir.”
“Morris said that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, bugger Morris, I’m in charge now.” He slung the rifle on his shoulder and drew the sword again. “South Essex!” he shouted. “We’re going to kill those bastards. We’ll do it fast! Follow me! Now!”
The old anger had come back to him, the same anger that had driven him through Flanders, India, Portugal, and Spain. For a time he had thought the anger was gone, calmed by Normandy and Lucille, by having a place he could call home, but it was still there. It was a fighting anger that went back to the streets of East London, to the callous brutes who had run the foundling home, who had called him a common bastard, unwanted, a guttersnipe. Well, the unwanted guttersnipe would show the bastards who could fight harder, and at the top of the vineyard was a man who reckoned he was Sharpe’s equal as a soldier, if not his better, and Sharpe would bloody well show him that a decent county regiment from England led by a guttersnipe could hammer the Emperor’s precious devils into bloody ruin. “Come on!” he bellowed and began to run. He did not look around to see if the battalion was following him, he did not need to, he could hear they were behind him, trampling up the slope, some shouting incoherently, and he could see Harper leading the Light Company to his left.
The madness was on him, the madness that had driven him at Talavera to snatch an Eagle, or at Badajoz, where he had crossed the ditch of death and climbed the breach in a welter of blood and rage. A hundred paces to go, and a small part of his mind knew that the nearer he went to the French line the greater the risk of death, and he had a sudden vision of Lucille, so kind, so beautiful, so loving and so much a hater of the war that had killed her husband. And Sharpe had a son too, and that thought almost checked him, almost made him stop, but he kept running. “If I die,” he told Jefferson, who had kept pace with him, “tell Lucille she’s the best woman ever.”
“There’s not a Crapaud alive who can kill you, sir.”
Fifty paces to go, and the company immediately in front of Sharpe fired a volley and he sensed the musket balls all around him and heard the thump of them striking men behind him, but somehow they had missed both him and Jefferson. It was the vines, he realized, and that thought gave him a new energy, helped him forget the searing pain in his shoulder and down his back. Volley fire worked against massed troops, but the South Essex was advancing between the vines, in the alleys between the thick rows. One file to an alley, and that meant the battalion was double spaced and the enemy’s muskets, inaccurate at the best of times, were wasting most of their shots on those empty spaces. “We’re going to bloody win,” he said to no one, and watched the company in front start to reload. Lanier had trained them to be fast, as fast as the redcoats, but they were nervous now and he could see men fumbling with cartridges, dropping ramrods. “They’re ours!” he shouted. “Fast, you buggers! Fast!” He tried to run faster, to reach the French while they were still reloading, but his breath was coming hard now, his back was agony, and the ground was uneven. Jefferson saw him stumble and, in the moonlight, saw the blood darkening Sharpe’s back. “Careful, sir.”
But this was no time to be careful. This was the time to let the madness drive him. This, he suddenly thought, was probably the last fight of a long war, a war that had seen both Washington and Moscow burn, that had scorched the fields of India, and soaked the Spanish plains, and drenched the German and Austrian fields with blood, and if this was the last battle, then Sharpe was bloody well going to win it. “Keep going,” he told Jefferson. The company to his front was mostly ramming their musket barrels, so they were close to being ready to fire, but he also noted that none had fixed bayonets. A bayonet fixed on a musket made it slower to load, so Lanier had kept the barrels clear of the obstruction. “We’ll kill them all!” Sharpe shouted, and found a new release of energy that took him up the last few yards, across the dainty flower bed, and the Frenchman immediately to his front dropped his ramrod, pointed the musket, and pulled his trigger.
A misfire. The powder in the pan flared, but the musket did not fire. God had to love a guttersnipe, and Sharpe hammered the musket to one side and lunged with the sword. Captain Jefferson fired a pistol and the ball hit the man just as the sword pierced his belly. Sharpe was still moving forward, twisting the blade so it did not get stuck in the clinging flesh, and using his left shoulder to hit the man in the second rank. The sword came free and Sharpe swept it in an ugly haymaking swing that sliced across a man’s face and let Sharpe stumble into the open space behind. An officer was there, carrying one of the slim elegant swords of the French infantry, and the man lunged at Sharpe, who had tripped and was falling. The blade flashed over Sharpe, who, sprawled on the ground, snatched up a handful of gravel and hurled it into the young officer’s face, then swung the heavy sword onto his assailant’s nearest ankle. The man recoiled from the pain, then lanced his narrow sword at Sharpe’s chest. Sharpe could see the man’s grimace, expressing effort as much as pain, and a regret seared through him. What a stupid way to die, killed by a stripling enemy when the war was as good as over, and he rolled fast toward his attacker, whose sword slid over him to strike the gravel. Sharpe hooked the man’s ankles with his left arm, heaved, and the boy went backward, falling, and Sharpe was on his feet, the sword in his right hand. “Bloody fool,” he told the French officer, and slashed the heavy cavalry blade across his throat.
