Sharpe's Rifles (30 page)

“Load! Load!” Sharpe was kicking the watch-fire aside, trying to make a passage for Vivar’s
horsemen. He booted flaming debris into an alley, scorching his boots and trousers. The Riflemen
took shelter in doorways, spitting bullets into muzzles and thrusting down with their iron
ramrods. There were shouts from the street and the first Riflemen to be reloaded sniped at the
enemy. Sharpe turned and saw the cathedral’s three belltowers just two hundred yards away. The
narrow street went uphill, turning slightly to the right after fifty paces. The misted light was
growing, though the dawn proper had not yet come. A few Frenchmen in breeches, boots, and shirts
still ran from houses with weapons and helmets clutched in their hands. One enemy cuirassier,
panicking, ran towards the greenjackets and was thumped on the head by a rifle butt. Others took
cover in doorways to fire at the invaders.

“Fire!” Sharpe called. More rifles snapped to drive the disorganized enemy further into the
city. Sharpe’s rifle kicked his shoulder like a mule and the flaming powder from the pan stung
his cheek. Harper was dragging French corpses aside, pulling the bodies through the frosted
nightsoil in the central gutter.

There was a curious silence. The Rifles had achieved surprise, and the silence marked the
precious, and precarious moments as the French tried to make sense of the sudden alarm. Sharpe
knew a counterattack would come, but now there was just the eerie, unexpected, and menacing
silence. He broke it by shouting his men into their places. He put one squad to cover the western
street, a second to watch eastwards, while he held the largest number of Riflemen to guard the
narrow way which led to the city’s centre. His voice echoed back from the stone walls. He
suddenly felt the impertinence of what he had done, of what Bias Vivar had dared to order done,
of this chilling moment in the dawn. A French bugle sounded the reveille, then, in betrayal of
the spreading warnings, slurred into the alarm. A bell began an urgent clamour and a thousand
pigeons clattered up from the cathedral’s pinnacled roof to fill the air with panicked wings.
Sharpe turned to stare north and wondered when Vivar’s main force would arrive.

“Sir!” Harper had kicked in the door of the closest house where half a dozen Frenchmen, scared
half-witless, cowered in the guardroom. A fire flickered in the hearth, and their bedding lay in
confusion on the bare wood floor. They had been sleeping, and their muskets were still racked
beside the door. “Get the guns out!” Sharpe ordered. “Sims! Tongue! Cameron!”

The three Riflemen ran to him.

“Cut their belts, braces, bootlaces, belts and buttons. Then leave the bastards where they
are. Take their bayonets. Take anything you damn well want, but hurry!”

“Yes, sir.”

Harper crouched beside Sharpe in the street outside the guardroom. “That was all easier than I
thought.”

Sharpe had imagined the big Irishman to have felt no fear, and the words hinted at a relief
which he shared. They were also true words. As he had run uphill from the church, Sharpe had
expected an overwhelming defence to blaze and crash from the line of buildings; instead a
half-dazed picquet had fired two volleys, then crumpled. “They weren’t expecting us,” he offered
in explanation.

Another enemy bugle snatched its urgent summons to rival the barking of dogs and the clangour
of the bells. The closest streets were empty now but for the shredding mist and the humped shapes
of two Frenchmen killed as they came from their billets. Sharpe knew that this was the moment for
the enemy to counterattack. If one French officer had his wits and could find two companies of
men, then the Riflemen were beaten. He looked to his right, but there was still no sign of the
Cazadores. “Load! Then hold your fire!”

Sharpe loaded his own rifle. When he bit the bullet from the cartridge the saltpetre tasted
bitter and foul. After a couple more shots he knew that the thirst would be raging in him because
of the powder’s salty taste. He spat the bullet into the rifle’s muzzle and rammed it down on the
wadding. He pushed the ramrod home and primed the pan.

“Sir! Sir!” It was Dodd, one of the men covering the street which led west. He fired.
“Sir!”

“Steady! Steady!” Sharpe ran to the corner and saw a single French officer on horseback.
Dodd’s bullet had missed the man who was seventy paces away. “Steady now!” Sharpe called. “Hold
your fire!”

The French officer, a cuirassier, pushed back the edges of his cloak in a gesture that was as
disdainful as it was brave. His steel breastplate shone pale in the misty light. The man drew his
long sword. Sharpe cocked his rifle. “Harvey! Jenkins!”

“Sir?” Both Riflemen answered at once.

“Take that bastard when he comes.”

Sharpe twisted, wondering where the hell Vivar’s Cazadores were. The sound of hooves turned
him back, and he saw that the officer had begun to trot down the street. Other cuirassiers joined
him from the side alleys. Sharpe counted ten horsemen, then ten more. It was all the enemy could
muster. The other cavalrymen in the city must still be saddling their horses or waiting for
orders.

The Frenchman, who was as brave a man as any Sharpe had seen, barked a command. ‘Casques en
tete!“ The plumed helmets were pulled on. The street was only wide enough for three horsemen to
ride abreast. The cuirassiers’ swords were drawn. ”Stupid bastard,“ Harper said in savage
condemnation of the French officer who, in his bid for fame, led men to destruction.

“Take aim!” Sharpe almost hated the moment. There were half a dozen rifles for each of the
leading Frenchmen who, when they died, would block the street for those behind. “Steady, lads!
We’re going to take all these bastards! Aim low!”

The rifles were levelled. Swan-necked cocks were pulled back. Hagman knelt on his right knee,
then rocked back to squat on his ankle so that his left hand, supported by his left knee, could
better take the weight of the rifle and bayonet. Some of the Riflemen were similarly posed, while
others propped their guns against door lintels. Remnants of the scattered watch-fire smoked in
the street, hazing their view of the horsemen who now spurred into a canter.

The French officer raised his sword. ‘Viver Empereur" He lowered the sword to the
lunge.

“Fire!”

The rifles spat. Sharpe heard the strike of bullets on the breastplates. It sounded like
pebbles thrown hard against a sheet of tin. A horse screamed, reared, and its rider fell in the
path of a tumbling horse. Sword clanged on cobbles. The officer was on the ground, jerking in
spasms, and retching blood. A riderless horse clattered into an alleyway. A cuirassier turned and
fled. Another, unseated, limped towards an open door. The cavalrymen at the rear did not try to
force their way through, but slewed round and fled.

“Reload!”

Smoke spurted from windows down the street. A bullet smacked with horrid force into the stone
beside Sharpe, while another snicked up from the cobbles to thump into a Rifleman’s leg. The man
hissed with the pain, fell, and clutched at the blood which spread thick on his black trousers.
It was hard to spot the Frenchmen behind the windows with their black grilles, and harder still
to pick such men off. More of them appeared as shadows at the street’s far end, and from those
shadows musket flames stabbed towards the Riflemen. It was light enough now for Sharpe to see a
French tricolour flying from the cathedral’s high dome, and he saw that it was going to be a
clear and cold day, a day for killing, and unless Vivar threw in his main force soon, it would be
the Riflemen who did the dying. Then the trumpet sounded behind.

The Cazadores did not just fight for pride, nor just for their country, though either cause
would have driven them through the gates of hell itself, they fought for the patron saint of
Spain. This was Santiago de Compostela, where the angels had sent a cloud of stars to light a
forgotten tomb, and the Spanish cavalry charged for God and Santiago, for Spain and Santiago, for
Bias Vivar and Santiago.

They came like a terrible flood. Hooves struck sparks from the road as their horses plunged
past Sharpe. Their swords struck shards of light in the grey dawn. They lunged into the city’s
heart, led by Bias Vivar who shouted an incomprehensible thanks as he galloped past the
Riflemen.

And behind the Cazadores, scrambling up from the ravine where Sharpe should have been at first
light, the volunteer infantry followed. They too shouted the saint’s name as their warcry.
Despite their makeshift uniforms of brown tunics and white sashes, they looked more like an
avenging mob armed with muskets, picks, swords, knives, lances, and scythe-blades.

As they ran past, Sharpe thrust the captured French muskets towards the men who had no
firearms, but the volunteers were too intent on reaching the city’s centre. For the first time
Sharpe saw they might win, not through skilled tactics, but by harnessing a nation’s
hate.

“What do we do, sir?” Harper came from the guardhouse with a bundle of captured
bayonets.

“Follow them! Forward! Watch your flanks! Keep an eye on the upper windows!”

Not that any advice would be heeded now. The Riflemen were infected by the madness of the
morning, and all that mattered was to take the city. The fears of the long cold night were gone,
replaced with a surging and extraordinary confidence.

They advanced into chaos. Frenchmen, waking to slaughter, ran into alleys where vengeful
Spaniards hunted and killed them. Inhabitants of the cityjoined the chase, abetting Vivar’s men
who were spreading into the arcaded mediaeval streets which made a labyrinth about the central
buildings. Screams and shots sounded everywhere. Cazadores, split into squads, clattered from
street to street. A few Frenchmen still fought from the upper windows of their billets, but one
by one they were killed. Sharpe saw his erstwhile guide, the blacksmith, smashing a lancer’s
skull with a hammer. The gutters were slick with blood. A priest knelt by a dying
volunteer.

“Stay together!” Sharpe was fearful that in the horror of the moment, a dark-uniformed
Rifleman might be mistaken for a Frenchman. He came to a small square, chose a turning at random,
and led his men along a street where three Frenchmen lay dead in pools of trickling blood. A
woman was stripping one man of his uniform on the steps of a church. A fourth Frenchman lay dying
as two children, neither over ten years old, stabbed at him with kitchen knives. A legless
cripple, eager for plunder, swung on calloused knuckles to a corpse’s side.

Sharpe turned left into another street and shrank aside as Spanish cavalrymen clattered past.
A Frenchman fled from a house into the horseman’s path, he screamed, then a sword cut into his
face and he went down under the iron-shod hooves. Somewhere in the city a volley of musketry
crashed like thunder. A French infantryman came from an alleyway, saw Sharpe, and fell to his
knees; literally begging to be taken prisoner. Sharpe pushed him behind, into the keeping of the
Riflemen, as more Frenchmen came from the alley. They threw away their muskets, only wanting to
be under protection.

There was light and space ahead now, a contrast to the dank shadow of the tiny streets, and
Sharpe led his men towards the wide plaza which surrounded the cathedral. There was the
incongruous smell of bread in a bakery, then that homely smell was instantly overlaid by the
stench of powder smoke. The Riflemen advanced cautiously towards the plaza from which another
huge volley jarred the morning. Sharpe could see bodies lying among the weeds which grew between
the plaza’s flagstones. There were dead horses and a score of dead men, most of them Spanish.
Musket smoke was thicker than the mist. “Bastards are making a stand,” Sharpe shouted to
Harper.

He edged forward to the street corner. To his left was the cathedral. Three men in brown
tunics lay on the cathedral steps with blood trickling from their bodies. To Sharpe’s right, and
directly opposite the cathedral, was a richly decorated building. A tricolour hung above its
central door, while every window was wreathed in powder smoke. The French had turned the huge
building into a fortress that dominated the plaza.

This was not the time to fight a battle against a cornered band of desperate Frenchmen, but
rather to determine that the rest of city was taken. The Riflemen used back alleys to circumvent
the plaza. The prisoners stayed with them, terrified of the vengeance which the townspeople were
exacting on other captured Frenchmen. The city had spawned a vengeful mob, and Sharpe’s soldiers
had to use their rifle butts to keep the prisoners safe.

Sharpe led his men south. They passed a dying horse which Harper shot. Two women immediately
attacked the corpse with knives, sawing off great joints of warm meat. A hunchback with a
bleeding scalp grinned as he cut off a dead Dragoon’s pigtails, and it occurred to Sharpe that
the dead man was the first Dragoon he had seen in Santiago de Compostela. He wondered whether
Louisa’s deception had truly worked, and the bulk of the green-coated French cavalry had ridden
south.

“In there!” Sharpe saw a courtyard to his left and he pushed his prisoners through the
archway. He left half a dozen greenjackets to guard them, then went back to the medieval maze
that was a confusion of fighting. Some alleys were peaceful, while in others there were brief,
furious fire-fights as desperate Frenchmen were cornered. One cuirassier, trapped in an alley,
laid about with his sword and put six volunteers to flight before a crash of musket bullets
smashed his defiance. Most of the French barricaded themselves in their billets. Spanish muskets
blasted doors open, men died as they charged up narrow stairs, but the French were outnumbered.
Two houses caught fire, and men screamed horribly as they were burned alive.

Most of the surviving enemy, except those who held the great building in the plaza, were to
the south of the city where, in a slew of houses, their officers enjoined them to a sturdy
defence. Sharpe’s men took over two housetops and their rifle fire drove the French from windows
and courtyards. Vivar led a dismounted charge of Cazadores and Sharpe watched the red and
blue-coated cavalry flood into the enemy-held buildings.