Sharpe 3-Book Collection 3: Sharpe's Trafalgar, Sharpe's Prey, Sharpe's Rifles (63 page)

“We are a careful nation,” she said with a smile. “When it is over . . .” She stopped.

“I shall come and look for you.”

She nodded. “I’d like that.” She held out a hand. “I am sorry it is like this. My father? He has not been happy since Mother died. And Aksel?” She shrugged as if she could find no explanation for Bang.

Sharpe ignored her hand. He leaned forward and kissed her cheek instead. “I’ll see you soon.”

She nodded again, then abruptly turned and hurried away. Sharpe stared after her, and to anyone watching it must have just seemed like another man saying farewell to his woman. She turned when she was twenty paces away and saw him gazing at her and he knew she did not want him to go, but what choice was there? He walked to the gate where his weapons made him look like any other militiaman. He turned a last time to look for Astrid, but she was gone. The crowd jostled him on and he emerged from the gate’s tunnel to see a dirty cloud above the roofs and trees of the western suburbs. It was powder smoke.

He stopped outside and stared back through the tunnel, hoping for one last glimpse of Astrid. He was confused. He was in love with a woman he did not know, except he knew her loyalty was to the enemy. Yet Denmark did not feel like an enemy, though it was. And he was a soldier still, and soldiers, he reckoned, fought for those who could not fight for themselves, and that meant he should be fighting for Astrid’s folk and not his own. But that was too great a wrench to contemplate.

So he was simply confused.

A
SERGEANT
grabbed Sharpe’s elbow and shoved him toward a growing band of men who were being hurriedly assembled close to the moat-like lake. Sharpe let himself be pushed. An officer was standing on a low wall and haranguing around three hundred men, most of them confused militiamen though there was a core of sailors armed with heavy sea-service muskets. Sharpe did not understand a word, but from the officer’s tone and from the man’s gestures he gathered that the British were threatening some place to the southwest and this makeshift half-battalion was being asked to throw the invaders out. A roar of approval rewarded whatever the officer had said, then the whole group, Sharpe among them, streamed across the causeway. Sharpe made no effort to leave the group. He had no choice but to rejoin the British army and every step took him closer.

The officer led them across the moat, past a cemetery, a church, a hospital and then through streets of new houses. The sound of musketry grew louder. Bigger guns hammered to the north, clouding the sky with powder smoke. The officer stopped beside a high brick wall and waited as his ragtag followers gathered around him, then he spoke urgently, and whatever he said must have roused the men for they gave a growl of agreement. A man turned to Sharpe and asked him a question. “American,” Sharpe said.

“You’re American?”

“Sailor.”

“You are welcome I think. You know what the Captain said?”

“No.”

“The English are in the garden”—the man nodded toward the wall—“but there are not many of them and we shall throw them out. We are making a new battery here. You have fought before, perhaps?”

“Yes,” Sharpe said.

“Then I shall stay with you.” The man smiled. “I am Jens.”

“Richard,” Sharpe introduced himself. He took out one of the pistols and pretended to check its priming. The weapon was unloaded and he had no intention of charging it. “What do you do?” he asked Jens, who was a pleasant-faced, fair-haired young man with a snub nose and lively eyes.

Jens flourished his ancient musket. The lock was rusted, the stock was split and one of its barrel hoops was missing. “I kill Englishmen.”

“And when you’re not killing them?” Sharpe asked.

“I am a . . . what is it called? I make ships?”

“A shipwright.”

“A shipwright,” Jens agreed. “We work on a new warship, but we have left her unfinished. We do this first.”

The Captain peered through the gate, then gestured that his men should follow him. They jostled through the gate and Sharpe found himself in a wide parklike garden. Gravel paths led to groves of trees, and an elegant white summerhouse, a confection of gables, verandahs and pinnacles, stood on a small hillock. The garden looked to be a more genteel version of the Vauxhall Gardens in London. A company of regular Danish soldiers was crouching by the summerhouse, but there was no musketry sounding nearby and no sign of any British soldiers. The militia Captain, unsure what to do, ran to consult the regular officer, and his men sat on the grass. Far off to the north smoke trails whipped across the sky. Shells, Sharpe assumed. A dull explosion sounded in the distance. “Even if they take these places,” Jens said, waving his hand to show he meant the suburbs, “they will never get into the city.”

“What if they bombard it?” Sharpe asked.

Jens frowned. “You mean with guns?” He seemed shocked. “They will not do that! There are women in the city.”

The militia Captain came back, followed by two men on horseback, one a cavalry officer and the other a civilian. Sharpe stood with the others, then saw that the horsemen were Barker and Lavisser. The two men were only a few feet away and Sharpe turned his back as Lavisser began haranguing the civilian soldiers.

“We are to go forward,” Jens translated for Sharpe.

Lavisser, his sword drawn, had taken his place at the head of the militia while Barker was behind them. Sharpe pulled his brown hat down over his eyes and wished he had loaded the pistol. It was too late now, for the militia was hurrying west toward the trees. They went in a bunch and if the British had cannon there would be a massacre.

“We are to attack their side,” Jens said.

“Their flank?”

“I expect so. When it is over you can take an English gun, eh? Better than that little pistol.”

Lavisser led them into the woodland. A twisting path went downhill and Lavisser, evidently confident that no British troops were close by, spurred his horse ahead. There was plainly a battle of sorts going on just to the north for the musketry was crackling in loud bursts, but nothing was happening in this part of the gardens where the militia, confident that they were hooking around the southern flank of the British, followed Lavisser down into a gentle valley where a small stream fed an ornamental pond. Lavisser shouted at the militia, evidently ordering them into ranks. The group of sailors, all in straw hats and pigtails, set an example by forming four ranks and the two sergeants pushed the rest into crude files. Lavisser, his horse pawing great gouts from the turf, shouted excitedly. “He says the enemy is not many,” Jens translated.

“How does he know?” Sharpe wondered aloud.

“Because he is a proper officer, of course,” Jens said.

Lavisser had not looked in Sharpe’s direction and Barker was still trailing the three hundred men who now set off up the western slope where their cohesion was immediately broken by the trees. The sound of musketry was coming from Sharpe’s right, but it was sporadic now. Perhaps this makeshift half-battalion of disorganized enthusiasts really could take the approaching British on the flank, but Sharpe was relieved that he was in the rear rank and at the left-hand side, farthest from both Lavisser and the sound of battle. He was trying to load the pistol as he walked and wondering if he could somehow seize Lavisser and carry him bodily into the British lines.

Then a musket shot sounded directly ahead. The Danes were among the trees still, but there was open ground a hundred paces in front of them. Sharpe saw a drift of musket smoke at the edge of that sunlit space, then more muskets sounded. Lavisser dug in his spurs and the unwieldy mass began to run.

Sharpe ran wide to the left. He could see redcoats now, but only a handful. He guessed there was a British skirmish line at the edge of the wood, and that meant a full battalion was not far away. The Danes were shouting excitedly, then Sharpe saw a redcoat clearly and saw the man’s wing epaulettes. A light company then, so the other nine companies were close at hand, formed and ready to fire. The Danes, knowing nothing of what waited for them, only saw the British skirmishers retreating and mistook that for victory. Lavisser must have thought the same, for he was yelping as though he was on a hunting field and holding his saber ready to strike down a fugitive.

The redcoat light company fired and retreated. One man knelt, aimed and fired while his companion reloaded, then the man who had fired ran back a few paces to let his comrade cover him while reloading. A Dane was sprawling on the ground, twitching, another was leaning against a tree and staring at the blood pouring from a wound in his thigh. Others of the Danes fired their muskets as they ran, the balls going wild and high in the trees. A whistle sounded ahead, calling the skirmishers back to the British battalion’s other nine companies. Lavisser must have seen those companies, for he turned his horse so hard that its eyes went white and its hooves scrabbled in the leaf mold. He frantically shouted for his men to halt at the wood’s edge and level their muskets.

Then the British volley came.

The battalion had waited till the Danes were at the edge of the trees and then nine companies let fly. The balls splintered bark, ripped through leaves, thumped men down and hammered on musket stocks. Lavisser himself was miraculously untouched. “Fire!” he shouted in English, forgetting himself. “Fire!”

Most of the Danes ignored him. They still thought they were winning and so they ran farther into the open ground only to find there was a red line of men behind a ditch some fifty yards ahead. That line was reloading. Ramrods turned in the air and came scraping down. There were flickers of tiny flames in the grass where the British musket wadding had set fires. A red-jacketed officer, cocked hat low over his eyes, was riding straight-backed behind the line. Sharpe watched the muskets come up into the redcoats’ shoulders. The militia was at last realizing its predicament and those who still had loaded muskets aimed at the British. Others kept running, then saw they were isolated and so hesitated. Lavisser’s charge was already in chaos and the British had yet to loose their second volley.

“Platoon, fire!” Sharpe heard the British order clearly and he grabbed Jens by the shoulder and dragged him down to the ground.

“What!” Jens protested.

“Head down!” Sharpe snarled, then the first platoon fired and the next followed immediately. The noise was deafening as the dirty gray smoke rolled down the battalion’s front and the balls whacked into the disorganized militia. Sharpe pressed his face into the grass and listened to the volleys, one after the other, each spitting about fifty bullets at the bewildered Danes. It was the first time Sharpe had been on the receiving end of British musketry and he flinched under it. Jens fired his musket, but his eyes were closed as he fired and the ball went wild and high.

Jens knelt to reload, but just then another regiment of British appeared from some trees on the right and they let loose a battalion volley that sounded like the splintering of hell’s gates. One of the balls snatched the musket from Jens’s hands, shattering the stock, then the new battalion settled into the machine-like platoon fire and the Danes could only cower under the twin flails. Sharpe scrambled backward, staying low, getting out of the tangling fire of the two battalions. He looked for Barker, but the man had vanished, though Lavisser was visible enough. The renegade was galloping his horse up and down behind the ragged militia, shouting at them to close ranks and fire back at the British. He fired both his own pistols at the cloud of smoke shrouding the nearest redcoat battalion, then Sharpe saw Lavisser’s horse lurch and slew sideways as a bullet struck deep into its rump. The beast tried to stay on all fours, but more bullets flecked its glossy coat red and it sank onto its haunches as Lavisser kicked his feet free of the stirrups. Another bullet twitched the horse’s head sideways in a spray of blood. Lavisser managed to throw himself clear of the dying beast, then dropped to the grass as a flight of bullets hissed overhead. Sharpe still slithered back, found himself in a small dip and so ran for the trees. He would take cover, wait for the fight to end, then join the redcoats.

Jens had followed Sharpe. The shipwright looked dazed. He flinched at the sound of each volley. “What happened?” he asked.

“They’re real soldiers,” Sharpe answered sourly. He saw the Danish sailors try to organize a rank that could return the British fire, but the second British battalion had marched ten paces forward and poured their platoon fire into the sailors’ flank and the seamen crouched as though they sheltered in a storm. One man fired back, but he had left his ramrod in the barrel and Sharpe saw it cartwheeling across the grass. A wounded man crawled back, trailing a shattered leg. Two battalions of red-coated regulars were giving an undisciplined group of amateurs a ruthless lesson in soldiering. They made it look easy, but Sharpe knew how many hours of practice it had taken to make them so efficient.

Then Jens shoved Sharpe sideways. “What the hell—” Sharpe began, then a pistol fired close by and the bullet smacked into a tree beside Sharpe, who turned and saw it was Barker, behind him and on horseback. Sharpe leveled his own pistol, pulled the trigger and the weapon did not fire. He had still not primed it. He threw the gun down, whipped the saber from its scabbard and ran at Barker who turned his horse and spurred down the hill. The big man ducked beneath tree branches, then suddenly sawed on the reins to turn the horse back and Sharpe saw he had a second pistol. He twisted sideways, expecting a shot, but Barker held his fire.