Sharpe's Skirmish (3 page)

"He was drunk," Sharpe said.

"And he says you should tell me the story."

Sharpe grimaced. "That's just what you need, Pat, another war story. What time are you being relieved?"

"Two in the morning, sir." Harper said, then watched as Sharpe turned and went down the ladders. "And good night to you too, sir," he said, and just then Sharpe came back up again.

"I don't like it, Pat."

"Don't like what, sir?"

"This." Sharpe crossed to the parapet and frowned southwards. "I just don't like it."

Harper shrugged. "The Crapauds can't come from Salamanca, sir, because it's in our hands, so it is, and they can't come through those big hills,"

he pointed south, "because they're full of guerilleros, and that means they can't come at all, sir."

Sharpe nodded. Everything the big Irish sergeant said made sense, but even Sharpe could not shake his unease. "There was a fellow called Manu Bappoo in India, Pat."

"Mannie who, sir?"

"Manu Bappoo," Sharpe repeated the name, "and he was a good soldier.

Better than most of them, but we still beat the bugger somewhere or other, can't remember the name of the place, and Bappoo went running back to Gawilghur. It was a fortress, see? Great big place it was, not like this.

And high up, high in the bloody sky, and Manu Bappoo reckoned he was safe there. He couldn't be beaten up there, Pat, because no one had ever taken that fortress, and no one even reckoned it could be took." Sharpe paused, remembering Gawilghur's dark walls and the sheer cliffs that protected them. Hell in a high place. "He was over-confident, see? Just like us here."

"So what happened?" Harper asked.

"Some daft bugger in a red coat climbed a cliff," Sharpe said, "and that was the end of Manu Bappoo."

"No cliffs here, sir."

"But keep your eyes peeled. I just don't like it."

"Goodnight, Mister Sharpe," Harper said when Sharpe had disappeared a second time down the makeshift staircase. Then the Irishman turned back to the south where nothing moved, except a falling star that blazed briefly in the sky and then was gone.

He's got the shakes, Harper thought. He's seeing enemies where there are none. But the Irishman kept his eyes peeled anyway.

PART TWO

General Herault was just thirty years old. He was a cavalryman, an hussar, and he wore the cadenettes of the hussars; the twin pigtails that hung beside his face. His jacket was a dolman, a Hungarian fashion because the first hussars had all been from Hungary, and Herault's dolman was brown with pale blue cuffs and thick white loops of lace sewn across its breast.

His breeches were pale blue and had more lace twisting and looping down the thighs towards the tasselled tops of his black leather boots. The general had once been the captain of an elite company, and he still wore their mark; the thick fur colback hat with its tall red plume. The colback was hot in summer, but it stopped a sabre better than any metal helmet.

From his left shoulder hung a fur-trimmed pelisse that was even more thickly decorated with white lace than his coat, while a blue and white sash crossed his chest and a white leather belt held the silver chains from which his sabre scabbard hung. A sabretache, decorated with the eagle of France, hung by the scabbard.

A very handsome man, Jean Herault, and made even more handsome by his gorgeous uniform. There were girls across Europe who sighed at the memory of Herault, the slim cavalryman who had ridden into town, broken their hearts and ridden out, but Herault was much more than a handsome young hero on a horse. He was also clever. And he was lucky. And he was brave.

Herault had led a charge at Albuhera that had destroyed a British battalion, and even though that battle had been lost, Herault had emerged covered in glory. It was a glory that had been enhanced in the battles against Ballesteros's Spaniards, and Soult had promoted the young cavalry officer to command all the Army of the South's horsemen, and Herault had led them brilliantly. He had done the dull work well, and that was an even more impressive achievement than doing the brave work gloriously. Any fool could be a hero if he had daring enough, but it took a clever man to do war's day-to-day chores well, and Herault's cavalry patrolled and scouted and manned an outpost line that was forever under assault by partisans, and Herault had made sure they did it aggressively and efficiently. He had even persuaded his men not to treat every Spanish peasant as an enemy, for doing so only made them into enemies, and for the first time in Spain Soult was beginning to receive information from civilians, information that was freely given instead of extracted by torture. Herault had achieved that.

Now Herault had to capture the bridge at San Miguel de Tormes, and even before he left Toledo he had given the problem a deal of thought. He had even managed to impress Pierre Ducos, and that was quite an achievement, for Ducos believed most soldiers were pig-headed fools. "The danger,"

Herault explained to the Major who was not really a Major, "is going through the mountains."

"Because of the guerilleros?" Ducos asked, "so travel at night."

"But however fast we travel, Major, they will still outrun us and so give warning to this fortlet at San Miguel," Herault tapped the map, "and the fort's garrison will send to Salamanca for reinforcements, and we shall arrive and find a small army waiting for us." He frowned, staring at the map and tapping his teeth with a pencil. "Avila," he said after a while, prodding the town with the pencil. It lay well to the east of San Miguel, high in the hills.

"Avila?" Ducos asked.

"If I march towards Avila it will draw the guerilleros like flies to a corpse. And I shall send a vanguard, say three hundred infantry? We give the bastards a victory, Major, by sacrificing those three hundred men on the Avila road, and when the guerilleros are busy destroying them, the rest of us will go straight across the hills." He slashed the pencil over the map. "My two thousand cavalrymen will go first, and we shall ride like demons, Major. Any horse that falls will be left, its rider abandoned. We will ride straight for San Miguel, and you will follow with the infantry.

It will take the footsoldiers two days, less if General Michaud forces them hard, and we shall hold the bridge at San Miguel until you come."

Michaud would force the infantry hard. Ducos would see to that, using all the Emperor's surrogate authority to make Michaud crack the whip. "But what about the British reinforcements from Salamanca?" Ducos asked.

"Suppose they arrive before Michaud?"

"They won't know where to go, Major," Herault said, "because I won't just wait for Michaud to catch up. I shall send cavalry all across the plain, right to the gates of Ciudad Rodrigo. We shall burn supplies, ambush convoys, kill every small garrison. We shall set southern Castile afire, Major, and the British will march in circles trying to find us." He let the map roll up.

"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 passing. 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.