Sharpe's Rifles (17 page)

“You think so?”

“Know so.”

Sharpe squatted. The clouds seemed endless, black and grey, rolling from the invisible sea.
“Why did you join the army?” he asked.

Hagman, whose toothless mouth gave his already ugly face a nutcracker profile, grinned.
“Caught poaching, sir. Magistrate gave me a choice, sir. Clink or the ranks.”

“Married?”

“That’s why I chose the ranks, sir.” Hagman laughed, then spat a stream of yellow spittle into
a puddle. “God-damned sawny-mouthed bitch of a sodding witch she was, sir.”

Sharpe laughed, then went utterly still.

“Sir!” Hagman said softly.

“I see them.” Then Sharpe was standing, turning, shout-lrig, for on the southern skyline,
silhouetted against the dark clouds, were cavalry.

The French had caught up.

  
I
t was a bad place to be caught; a stretch of open
country where cavalry could manoeuvre almost at will. It was true that there were patches of bog
at the edges of the fields which, like the road, were lined with low stone walls, but Sharpe knew
he would be hard put to extricate his men from the enemy.

“You’re certain it’s the French?” Parker asked.

Sharpe did not even bother to answer. A soldier who could not recognize enemy silhouettes did
not deserve to live, but neither did a soldier who hesitated. “Go! Go!” This was to the coachman
who, jarred by Sharpe’s sudden anger, cracked his long whip at his lead pair. Traces jangled,
splinter bars jerked with the strain, and the carriage lunged forward.

The Riflemen tore rags from their weapon locks. Sharpe said a silent prayer of thanks to
whichever deity looked after soldiers that, on the day when they had been cut off from the army,
these men had been issued with so much ammunition. They would need it, for they were horribly
outnumbered and their only hope lay in the ability of the rifle to delay the enemy’s
pursuit.

Sharpe estimated it would take the French horsemen ten minutes to reach the stand of pines
which presently shrouded the Riflemen. There was no escape to east or west, where only empty
fields lay; instead he needed to reach the southern crest where the farm stood and hope that,
beyond the crest and by some miracle, he would find an obstacle impassable to horsemen. If there
was no escape, then the farmhouse must be barricaded into a fortress. But ten minutes was not
enough time to reach the farm, so Sharpe held back a dozen men at the pines. The rest, under
Williams’s command, went with the coach.

Sharpe kept Hagman, for the old poacher had an uncanny skill with his rifle, and he retained
Harper with his closest cronies, for Sharpe suspected that they were his best fighters. “We can’t
hold them up for long,” he told the few men, “but we can buy some time. But when we do move,
we’ll have to run like the devil.”

Harper crossed himself. “God save Ireland.” There were at least two hundred Dragoons now
filing along the boggy road that had mired the coach an hour earlier.

The Riflemen lay at the edge of the trees. To the French, still half a mile off, they would be
invisible. “Lie still,” Sharpe warned his men. “Aim at the horses. It’s going to be a very long
shot.” He would have liked to have waited till the enemy was just two hundred yards away before
opening fire, but that would let the horsemen come far too close. Instead he would be forced to
fire at the very limit of the rifle’s killing range in the hope that the bullets created enough
surprise and panic to check the French advance for a few precious moments.

Sharpe, concealed by the darkness beneath the pines, stood a few paces behind his men. He drew
out his telescope and steadied its long barrel against a pine trunk.

He saw pale green coats, pink facings, and pigtails. The telescope foreshortened the advancing
French column so that the lens seemed filled with men rising and falling in their saddles.
Scabbards, carbines, pouches, and sabretaches Jiggled. At this distance the French faces, dark
beneath their forage caps, were expressionless and menacing. There were curious bundles strapped
behind the saddles which Sharpe realized were netfuls of fodder for the horses. The French
halted.

Sharpe swore softly.

He panned the telescope left and right. The Dragoons had left the worst of the marshland
behind and had spread lr»to a line that was now quite motionless. Horses lowered their heads to
crop at the damp grass.

“Sir?” Hagman called. “On the road, sir? See the buggers?”

Sharpe jerked the telescope back to the centre of the enemy line. A group of officers had
appeared there, their aiguillettes and epaulettes a dark gold in the wintry light, and in their
midst were the chasseur in his red pelisse, and the civilian in his black coat and white boots.
Sharpe wondered by what weird skill those two men followed his scent across the winter
land.

The chasseur opened his own telescope and it seemed to Sharpe that the Frenchman stared
directly into the betraying circle of his own lens. He kept his glass motionless until the other
telescope was snapped shut. Then he watched as the chasseur gave an order to a Dragoon officer,
apparently an aide, who galloped his horse westward.

The result of the order was that a small detachment of Dragoons lifted the heavy helmets which
hung from their saddles’ pommels. The six men pulled the helmets onto their heads; a sure sign
they had been ordered to advance. Sensible to the fact that the pines could hide an ambush, the
chasseur was sending a picquet ahead. Sharpe had lost surprise, for even though the enemy did not
know that he waited for them, they were prepared for trouble. He slammed his glass shut, and
cursed the French commander’s caution that now imposed a delicate choice on him.

Sharpe could kill the six men, but would that stop the other Dragoons? Or would they, judging
his strength from the paucity of shots fired, spur into an instant gallop that would bring the
mass of horsemen into the trees long before the Riflemen could reach the southern crest? Instead
often minutes, he might have five.

He hesitated. But if he had learned one thing as a soldier it was that any decision, even a
bad one, was better than none. “We’re pulling back. Fast! Keep hidden!”

The Riflemen slithered backwards, stood when the trees shielded them from the French, then
followed Sharpe onto the road. They ran.

“Jesus!” The imprecation came from Harper and was caused by the sight of the Parkers’ carriage
which, just two hundred yards ahead, was stuck fast. The coachman, in his haste, had rammed a
wheel against a stone wall at a bend in the road. Williams and his men were vainly trying to free
the vehicle.

“Leave it!” Sharpe bellowed. “Leave it!”

Mrs Parker’s head appeared at the window of the coach to countermand his orders. “Push!
Push!”

“Get out!” Sharpe floundered in the road’s mud. “Get out!” If the coach was to be rescued then
the horses would have to be coaxed backwards, slewed, then whipped forward, and that would take
time which he did not have, so it must be abandoned.

But Mrs Parker was in no mood to sacrifice the carriage’s comfort. She ignored Sharpe, instead
leaning perilously from the opened window to threaten her coachman with a furled umbrella. “Whip
them harder, you fool! Harder!”

Sharpe seized the door handle and tugged it down. “Get out! Out!”

Mrs Parker flailed the umbrella at him, knocking his mildewed shako over his eyes, but Sharpe
seized her wrist, tugged, and heard her scream as she fell in the mud. “Sergeant
Williams?”

“Sir?”

“Two men to get those packs off the roof!” They contained all Sharpe’s spare ammunition.
Gataker and Dodd scrambled up, slashed at the ropes with their sword-bayonets, and tossed the
heavy packs down to the waiting riflemen. George Parker tried to speak with Sharpe, but the
officer had no time for his nervousness. “You’ll have to run, sir. To the farm!” Sharpe
physically turned the tall man and pointed him towards the stone house and barn which were the
only refuges left in this bare country.

There was nervous excitement in Louisa’s eyes, then the girl was pushed aside by Mrs Parker
who, muddied by her fall and made incoherent by the loss of her carriage and luggage, tried to
reach Sharpe, but he shouted at the family to start running. “You want to die, woman? Move!
Sergeant Williams! Escort the ladies! Get into the farmhouse!” Mrs Parker screamed for her valise
that Mr Parker, shaking like a leaf, rescued from inside the carriage. Then, surrounded by
Riflemen, the family and their coachman fled uphill.

“Sir?” Harper checked Sharpe. “Block the road?” He gestured at the coach.

Sharpe did not have the time to be astonished at the Irishman’s sudden willingness. He did,
however, recognize the value of the suggestion. If the road was blocked then the French would be
forced to negotiate the stone walls which barred the fields on either side. It would not buy much
time, but even a minute would help in this desperate plight. He nodded. “If we can.”

“No trouble at all, sir.” Harper unhooked the chain-traces, splinter bars, and lead bars while
other men slashed at the harness and reins. The Irishman slapped the horses’ rumps to drive the
loosened team uphill. “Right, lads! We’re going to tip the bastard!”

The Riflemen gathered on the coach’s right side. Sharpe was staring at the trees, waiting for
the enemy picquet, but he could not resist turning to watch as the Irishman commanded the men to
lift.

For a moment the coach refused to budge, then Harper seemed to take all the carriage’s weight
into his own huge body and thrust it skywards. The wheels shifted in the mud and the axle boss
scraped against the stone where it was stuck. “Heave!” Harper drew the word out into a long
bellow as the coach rose ever higher into the air. For a second it threatened to collapse back,
crushing the greenjackets, and Sharpe ran and put his own weight into the huge vehicle. It
teetered for a second, then, with a splintering thump, collapsed onto its side in the road.
Luggage and seat cushions tumbled inside, and Spanish testaments were strewn thick into the
road’s mud.

“Cavalry, sir!” Hagman shouted.

Sharpe turned north to see the six enemy horsemen curbing in at the edge of the trees. He
aimed swiftly, too swiftly, and his shot missed. Hagman, firing a second later, made one of the
horses rear in pain. The other Dragoons wrenched their reins about. Two more shots were fired
before the enemy picquet was safe among the pines.

“Run!” Sharpe shouted.

The Riflemen ran. Their scabbards flapped and their packs thumped on their backs as they
scrambled up the road. A carbine bullet, fired at long range, fluttered above Sharpe’s head. He
could see Mrs Parker being bodily dragged by two greenjackets and the sight made him want to
laugh. It was ludicrous. He was trapped by cavalry and he wanted to double over in
laughter.

Sharpe caught up with Sergeant Williams’s group. Mrs Parker, furious, was too breathless to
shout at him, but she was equally too fat to move fast. Sharpe looked for Harper. “Drag
her!”

“You can’t mean it, sir!”

“Carry her if you must!”

The Irishman pushed Mrs Parker in the rump. Louisa laughed, but Sharpe yelled at the girl to
run. He himself, with the remainder of his squad, filed into the field beside the road where,
sheltered by a stone wall, they watched for the pursuit.

Sharpe could hear the cavalry trumpets talking with each other. The picquets had sent the call
that the enemy was in sight and running, so now the other Dragoons would be spurring forward,
exchanging forage caps for canvas-covered helmets. Swords would be rasping out of scabbards,
carbines would be unslung. “They’ll have to come through the trees, so we’ll give the bastards a
volley, then run! Aim where the road comes through the trees, lads!” Sharpe hoped to delay the
Dragoons by at least a minute, maybe more. When the head of the enemy column appeared beneath the
trees he would hammer it with one well-aimed volley, and it would take time for the cavalrymen
who followed to negotiate the wounded horses.

Hagman was carefully reloading his rifle with the best powder and shot. He eschewed the
ready-made cartridges which were made with coarser powder, charging his rifle instead with the
best fine powder which each Rifleman carried in a horn. He wrapped the ball in the greased
leather patch which, when the weapon was fired, would grip the seven spiralling grooves and lands
which imparted spin to the bullet. He rammed the leather-patched ball down past the resistance of
the lands’ quarter turn, then primed the lock with a pinch of good powder. It took a long time to
load a rifle thus, but the resultant shot could be wickedly accurate. When Hagman was done he
levelled the gun across the top of the stone wall and spat a stream of tobacco-stained spittle.
“Aim a pace left for the wind.”

A spot of rain landed on the wall beside Sharpe. He prayed it would hold off long enough to
let his rifles fire. He paced behind the men. “Make this shot hurt! One volley, then we run like
hell.”

“Sir?” A man at the end of the line pointed to the trees east of the road and, staring there,
Sharpe wondered if he saw movement among the pines. He unbuttoned the pocket in which his
telescope was stored, but before he could even draw the glass from its protective case, the enemy
burst in a great line from the trees.

Sharpe had expected them to file in column through the gap where the road pierced the pines,
but instead the Dragoons had spread left and right in the woodland and now, helmeted and carrying
drawn swords, the enemy’s whole strength erupted into the light.

“Fire!”

It was a puny volley. If the rifles had been able to concentrate their bullets into the head
of a packed column of cavalry, they might have turned the road into a charnel of screaming horses
and bleeding men. But against a whole spread of horsemen, coming in single line abreast, the
bullets were scarcely more of a nuisance than horseflies. Only one horse, struck by Hagman’s
careful bullet, staggered and fell.