Sharpe's Havoc (42 page)

Hogan was watching the French bunched behind the bridge through his telescope which he
constantly wiped clear of water. “Where are you, Mister Christopher?” he asked
bitterly.

“Maybe the bastard’s gone ahead,” Harper said tonelessly. “If I was him, sir, I’d be in
the front. Get away, that’s what he wants to do.”

“Maybe,” Sharpe acknowledged, “maybe.” He thought Harper was probably right and that
Christopher might already be in Spain with the French vanguard, but there was no way of
knowing that.

“We’ll watch till nightfall, Richard,” Hogan suggested in a flat voice that could not hide
his disappointment.

Sharpe could see a mile back down the road which was crammed thick as the men, women, horses
and mules shuffled toward the bottleneck of the Saltador. Two stretchers were carried over
the bridge, the sight of the wounded men prompting shouts of triumph from the orde-nanqa on
the bluff. Another man, his leg broken, limped over on a makeshift crutch. He was in agony,
but it was better to struggle on with blistered hands and a bleeding leg than fall behind
and be caught by the partisans. His crutch slipped on the bridge’s stone and he fell heavily,
and his predicament provoked another flurry of curses from the ordenanqa. A French
infantryman aimed his musket up at the taunting Portuguese, but when he pulled his trigger
the spark fell on damp powder and nothing happened except that the jeering became
louder.

And then Sharpe saw him. Saw Christopher. Or rather he saw Kate first, recognized the oval
of her face, the contrast of her pale skin and jet-black hair, her beauty apparent even in
this dark, wet horror of an early dusk, and he saw, surprised, that she was wearing a French
uniform which was strange, he thought, but then he saw Christopher and Williamson beside her
horse. The Colonel was dressed in civilian clothes and was trying to edge and bully and force
his way through the crowd so that he could get across the bridge and so know himself to be safe
from his pursuers. Sharpe snatched up Hogan’s telescope, wiped its lens and stared.
Christopher, he thought, looked older, almost aged with something gray about his face. Then
he edged the lens to the right and saw Williamson’s sullen face and felt a surge of pure
anger.

“Have you seen him?” Hogan asked.

“He’s there,” Sharpe said, and he put the glass down, slid his rifle from its new leather
case and eased the barrel forward across a lip of rock.

“That’s him, so it is.” Harper had seen Christopher now.

“Where?” Hogan wanted to know.

“Twenty yards back from the bridge, sir,” Harper said, “beside the horse. And that’s Miss
Kate on the horse’s back. And, Jesus!” Harper had seen Williamson. “Is that -”

“Yes,” Sharpe said curtly, and he was tempted to aim the rifle at the deserter rather
than at Christopher.

Hogan was gazing through the telescope. “A good-looking girl,” he said.

“She makes the heart beat faster, right enough,” Harper said.

Sharpe kept the rifle’s lock covered, hoping to keep the powder dry, and now he took off
the scrap of cloth, pulled back the flint and aimed the gun at Christopher, and just then the
heavens bellowed with thunder, and the rain, which was already heavy, increased in
malevolence. It crashed in torrents to make Sharpe curse. He could not even see Christopher
now! He jerked the rifle up and stared down into the blurred air which was filled with silver
streaks, a cloud-bursting rain, a deluge fit to make a man build an ark. Jesus! And he could
see nothing! And just then a slash of lightning sliced the sky in two and the rain drummed like
the devil’s hoofbeats and Sharpe pointed the barrel toward the heavens and pulled the
trigger. He knew what would happen, and it did. The spark died, the rifle was useless and so
he threw the weapon down, stood up and drew his sword.

“What the hell are you doing?” Hogan asked.

“Going to fetch my damn telescope,” Sharpe said.

And went toward the French.

The 4th Leger, counted as one of the best infantry units in Soult’s army, broke and the two
cavalry regiments broke with them. The three regiments had been well posted, dominating a
slight ridge that ran athwart the road as it approached the Ponte Nova, but the sight of the
Brigade of Guards and the constant smack of rifle bullets and the stinging blows of the twin
three-pounders had finished the French rearguard.

Their task had been to halt the British pursuit, then withdraw slowly and destroy the
repaired Ponte Nova behind them, but instead they ran.

Two thousand men and fourteen hundred horses were converging on the makeshift roadway
across the Cavado. None tried to fight. They turned their backs and they fled, and the whole
dark panicked mass of them was crushed against the river’s bank as the Guards came up
behind.

“Move the guns!” Sir Arthur spurred his horse toward the gunners whose weapons had scorched
two wide fans of grass in front of the barrels. “Move them up!” he shouted. “Move them up! Keep
at them!” It was beginning to rain harder, the sky was darkening and forked lightning
slithered above the northern hills.

The guns were moved a hundred yards nearer the bridge and then rolled up the southern slope
of the valley to a small terrace from where they could slam their round shot into the crowded
French. Rain hissed and steamed on the barrels as the first rounds crashed out and the blood
flickered its red haze above the broken rearguard. A dragoon’s horse screamed, reared and
killed a man with its flailing hooves. More round shots slammed home. A few Frenchmen, those at
the back who knew they would never reach the bridge alive, turned back, threw down their
muskets and held up their hands. The Guards opened ranks to let the prisoners through, closed
ranks and loosed a volley that punched into the rear of the French rabble. The fugitives were
jostling, pushing and fighting their way onto the bridge and the congestion on the
unbalustraded roadway was so great that men and horses were forced off the edge to fall
screaming into the Cavado, and still the two guns kept at them, slamming shots onto the
Ponte Nova itself now, bloodying the rafters and the felled trunks that were the rearguard’s
only escape. The round shots drove more men and horses off the span’s unprotected edges, so
many that the dead and dying made a dam beneath the bridge. The high point of the French
invasion of Portugal had been a bridge at Oporto where hundreds of folk had drowned in
panic, and now the French were on another broken bridge and the dead of the Douro were being
avenged. And still the guns hammered the French, and now and then a musket or rifle would fire
despite the rain and the British were a vengeful line converging on the horror that was the
Ponte Nova. More French surrendered. Some were weeping with shame, misery, hunger and cold
as they staggered back. A captain of the 4th Leger threw down his sword and then, in disgust,
picked it up and snapped the thin blade across his knee before letting himself be taken
captive.

“Cease fire!” a Coldstreamer officer shouted.

A dying horse whinnied. The smoke of muskets and cannon was lost in the rain and the bed
of the river was pitiful with the moans of men and beasts who had broken their bones when they
fell from the roadway. The dam of dying and dead, of soldiers and horses, was so high that
the Cavado was piling up behind them and drying up downstream of them, though a trickle of
blood-reddened water escaped from the human spillway. A wounded Frenchman tried to drag
himself up from the river and died just as he reached the top of the bank where the
Coldstreamer bandsmen were collecting their wounded enemies. The doctors stropped their
scalpels on leather belts and took fortifying slugs of brandy. The Guards took the bayonets
from their muskets and the gunners rested beside their three-pound cannon.

For the pursuit was over and Soult was gone from Portugal.

Sharpe went headlong down the bluff’s steep escarpment, leaping recklessly between
rocks and praying that he would not lose his footing on the soaking grass. The rain was
hammering down and thunder was drowning the distant noise of the guns at the Ponte Nova. It
was getting darker and darker, twilight and storm combining to throw a hellish gloom across
Portugal’s wild northern hills, though it was the sheer intensity of the rain that did most
to obscure the bridge, but as Sharpe neared the foot of the bluff, where the ground began to
level, he saw that the Saltador was suddenly empty. A riderless horse was being led
across the narrow span and the beast had held back the men behind, and then Sharpe saw a
hussar leading the horse and Christopher, Williamson and Kate were just behind the saddled
beast. A group of infantrymen were walking away from the bridge as Sharpe came from the rain
with his drawn sword and they stared at him, astonished, and one man moved to intercept him,
but Sharpe told him in two short words what to do and the man, even if he did not speak English,
had the good sense to obey.

Then Sharpe was on the Saltador and the hussar leading the horse just gaped at him.
Christopher saw him and turned to escape, but more men were already climbing the roadway and
so there was no way off the bridge’s other side. “Kill him!” Christopher shouted at both
Williamson and the hussar, and it was the Frenchman who obediently began to draw his saber,
but Sharpe’s sword hissed in the rain and the man’s sword hand was almost cut off at the wrist
and then Sharpe rammed the blade at the hussar’s chest and there was a scream as the
cavalryman fell into the Misarella. The horse, terrified by the lightning and by the
uncertain footing on the bridge, gave a great whinny and then bolted past Sharpe, almost
knocking him off the roadway. Its horseshoes made sparks from the stones, then it was gone and
Sharpe faced Christopher and Williamson on the Saltador’s thin crest.

Kate screamed at the sight of the long sword. “Get up the hill!” Sharpe shouted at her.
“Move, Kate, move! And you, you bastard, give me my telescope!”

Christopher reached out to stop Kate, but Williamson darted past the Colonel and
obstructed his hand, and Kate, seeing safety a few feet away, had the sense to run past
Sharpe. Williamson tried to grab her, then saw Sharpe’s sword swinging toward him and he
managed to parry the cut with his French musket. The clash of sword and gun drove Williamson
back a pace and Sharpe was already following, snarling, the sword flickering out like a
snake’s tongue to force Williamson another pace backward and then Christopher shoved the
deserter forward again. “Kill him!” he screamed at Williamson and the deserter did his best,
swinging the musket like a great club, but Sharpe stepped back from the wild blow, then came
forward and the sword seared through the rain to catch Williamson on the side of his head, half
severing his ear. Williamson staggered. The wide-brimmed leather hat had taken some of the
blade’s sting, but the sheer force of the blow still sent Williamson lurching sideways toward
the roadway’s ragged edge and Sharpe was still attacking, this time lunging, and the point of
the blade pierced the deserter’s green jacket, jarred on a rib and sent Williamson over the
edge. He screamed, then Christopher was alone with Sharpe on the high arched summit of the
Saltador.

Christopher stared at his green-jacketed enemy. He did not believe what he saw. He tried
to speak, because words had always been Christopher’s best weapon, but now he found he was
struck dumb and Sharpe walked toward him and then a surge of Frenchmen came up behind the
Colonel and they were going to force him onto Sharpe’s sword and Christopher did not have the
courage to draw his own and so, in sheer desperation, he followed Williamson into the rainy
dark of the Misarella’s ravine. He jumped.

Vicente, Harper and Sergeant Macedo had followed Sharpe down the hill and now
encountered Kate. “Look after her, sir!” Harper called to Vicente and then, with Sergeant
Macedo, he hurried toward the bridge just in time to see Sharpe leap off the roadway. “Sir!”
Harper shouted. “Oh, Jesus bloody God,” he swore, “the daft bloody bastard!” He led Macedo
across the road just as a flood of blue-coated infantrymen spilled off the bridge, but if any
of the Frenchmen thought it strange that enemy soldiers were on the Misarella’s bank they
showed no sign of it. They just wanted to escape and so they hurried north toward Spain as
Harper prowled the bank and stared into the ravine for a sight of Sharpe. He could see dead
horses among the rocks and half submerged in the white water and he could see the sprawling
bodies of a dozen Frenchmen who had fallen from the Saltador’s high span, but of
Christopher’s dark coat and Sharpe’s green jacket he could see nothing.

Williamson had fallen straight into the deepest part of the ravine and by chance had
landed in a swirling pool of the river that was deep enough to break his fall and he had
pitched forward onto the corpse of a horse that had further cushioned him. Christopher was
less fortunate. He fell close to Williamson, but his left leg struck rock and his ankle was
suddenly a mass of pain and the river water was cold as ice. He clung to Williamson and
looked about desperately and saw no sign of any pursuit and he reasoned that Sharpe could
not stay long on the bridge in the face of the retreating French. “Get me to the bank,” he told
Williamson. “I think my ankle’s broken.”

“You’ll be all right, sir,” Williamson said. “I’m here, sir,” and he put an arm round the
Colonel’s waist and helped him toward the neatest bank.

“Where’s Kate?” Christopher asked.

“She ran, sir, she ran, but we’ll find her, sir. We’ll find her. Here we are, sir, we can
climb here.” Williamson hauled Christopher onto rocks beside the water and looked for an easy
way to climb the ravine’s side and instead saw Sharpe. He swore.

“What is it?” Christopher was in too much pain to notice much.

“That bloody jacked-up jack pudding,” Williamson said and drew the saber that he had taken
from a dead French officer on the road near the seminary. “Bloody Sharpe,” he explained.