enemy still possessed the parapet. They clubbed down at the British in the trench, jabbed with long bayonets, and, every once in a while, succeeded in making a musket fire down into the parallel. Sharpe knew they had to be forced away. He hacked at the feet of the men nearest him, clawed at the side, and a boot kicked him back to the trench floor.
The French were recovering, drawing their forces together, and the parallel was an unhealthy place. There was a ragged volley of shots as a rank of the enemy uncovered their flintlocks, men fell into the water that poured like a small stream down the trench. Sharpe swung again at the enemy’s legs, dodged a bayonet, and knew that the sensible thing was to retreat. He ran down the trench, the mud fouled and slippery beneath his boots, and then a massive hand checked him and Sergeant Harper grinned at him. ‘This is better than digging, sir.’ He was holding a captured musket, the bayonet bloodied and bent.
Sharpe turned. The French still held a portion of the trench in the centre of the parallel, but the British were attacking from the hill. Only to the north, where Sharpe and Harper caught their breath in the bloodied trench, were the French undisturbed. They were not planning to stay long. Already their officers were sending back half companies, loaded with captured tools, and the sight made Sharpe climb up on the parapet of the French side of the trench. About half of his old Company were with Harper, some with captured muskets, most with spades. He grinned at them, glad to be back. ‘Come on, lads. Up here.’
One Company of Frenchmen formed a guard facing north and the officer watched nervously as Sharpe’s ragged band, their uniforms plastered with wet mud, came towards them. They would not attack. The British were not properly armed, under-strength, but suddenly a sword was raised and the small group burst on him, and it was bayonets against spades, and two tall devils were hacking at his men. No one likes hand-to-hand combat, but Sharpe and Harper hurled themselves at the Company and the South Essex came with them. They snarled at the French, clubbed them with spades, and Harper used his captured musket like a mace. The French went backwards, stumbling on the slick mud, blinded by rain, and still the madmen came at them. Sharpe pushed with the sword, going for faces and throats, once having to parry a Sergeant’s efficient bayonet. He knocked the blade aside, the Frenchman slipped, the sword was up and falling like an axe into the man’s head. Sharpe tried to stop the blow, the Sergeant was defenceless, and the sword swerved and thudded into the wet earth of the parapet. The French were running, back to their main body, and the half-company of the South Essex were left with a dozen prisoners who had fallen on the slippery ground. The French Sergeant, his single arm-stripe bloodied in the fight, looked round his own dead and then at the sword which had so nearly killed him. He had seen the tall officer change the death-stroke, swerve the blow, and he nodded to him. ‘Merci, Monsieur.’
Harper looked at the dozen men. ‘What do we do with them, sir?’
‘Let them go.’ It was no place to take prisoners. They took their weapons and hurled them across the parallel, out of reach, and searched each Frenchman for wine or brandy. Ahead of Sharpe the battle still raged. The main body of the French had fought their way to within fifty yards of the first battery, but had been held. Scattered parties of men, some armed, some with nothing more than lengths of timber, were charging the French and starting vicious fights in the mud. Officers on horseback galloped at the fringe of the fight, trying to restore order to chaos, but the British soldiers did not want order. They wanted a break from the tedium of digging and the drowning rain, and they wanted a fight. It was like a street brawl. There was no smoke because the muskets would not fire; the noise of the fight was metal clashing on metal, wood on metal, the screams of the wounded and sobs of the dying. From the side, where Sharpe and his half-company shared brandy with their prisoners, it looked like hundreds of swamp monsters grappling in grotesque slow motions.
Sharpe pointed the French Sergeant towards the city. ‘Go!’
The Frenchman grinned, gave Sharpe a friendly salute, and led his small band away. Twenty yards from the trench they stopped, picked up six spades. Harper shouted. ‘Bring them back!’ The French Sergeant made a rude gesture and began running towards Badajoz.
‘Let them go.’ Sharpe turned back to the fight. ‘Come on.’
They trudged up beside the parapet, the rain sweeping across them and down on to the dead in the trench. Broken spades and shattered muskets littered the slope. The sound of the fight, the sound of men clawing each other to death in the mud, was muffled by the rain. A French officer had organized a small group with spades and was trying to fill in the parallel. Sharpe began to hurry, the ground treacherous, and he turned to see his men strung out as they followed him, but Harper was beside him and the French turned and saw them coming. It was the turn of the French to use spades. A huge man swung at them, forced them back, parried Harper’s thrust and Sharpe flailed his sword at the brute, cutting through the spade-handle, and still the Frenchman came at them. Harper bayoneted him, and still he came on, and Sharpe cut at the back of the man’s neck until he finally collapsed. ‘Come on!’
There was a stinging pain in his back, he whipped round and the French officer, white-faced, was going back from the sword lunge. ‘You bastard!’ Sharpe went forward, blade level, and the Frenchman came at him. The blades rattled, Sharpe twisted his wrist so that the heavy sword went from the Frenchman’s left to his right, under his guard, and Sharpe stamped his right foot forward, ignored his opponent’s blade and caught him in the ribs. The French officer tried to back away, slipped on blood and mud but Sharpe kept on going forward, feeling the steel scrape on ribs. His men swept past him with their bayonets held out, their captured bayonets, and Sharpe watched them drive the enemy back.
Bugles called the French back to the city and, within seconds, the hillside was a mass of retreating enemy carrying their wounded and bundles of captured shovels and picks. They were heading straight for the city as if frightened of cavalry pursuit and Sharpe watched as men waded into the floodwater rather than go the long way round by the dam. For ten, twenty yards it was fine, the water came up to their thighs and then, with horrid suddenness, the bottom dropped away. French officers shouted at their men, ordered them away from the water, shepherded them to the Rivillas dam. The sortie was over.
The French cannon opened fire, the roundshot ploughing into mud-soaked red, and the British leaped for the damaged trench. Harper looked at Sharpe’s drawn and gory sword. ‘Like old times, sir.’
Sharpe looked round his small group. All his Riflemen were there, grinning at him, and a good number of the rest of the Light Company. He grinned at them, then picked up a piece of wet sacking and wiped the sword blade. ‘You’d better get back to the Company.’
‘Rather stay here, sir.’ Sharpe could not see who had spoken. He looked at Harper.
‘Take them back, Sergeant.’
‘Sir.’ Harper grinned at him. ‘And thank you, sir.’
‘For nothing.’ He was left alone. Small groups wandered the area of fighting and picked up the wounded and stacked the dead. There were a lot of bodies, more, he guessed, than had been in the breach at Ciudad Rodrigo. A spade brought down on a man’s head is a vicious instrument and the British troops had been frustrated and ready for a fight, for a savage brawl in the mud. A dead Frenchman was curled at Sharpe’s feet and the Rifleman crouched and ran his hands through the corpse’s pockets and pouches. There was nothing worth taking. A letter folded into quarters which smeared as soon as Sharpe pulled it into the rain, a copper coin, and a loose musket ball that may have been the dead man’s talisman. Round the neck, thick with blood, was a cheap metal crucifix. He had tried to grow a moustache, to look like a veteran, but the hairs were wispy and thin. He was hardly more than a boy. One of his boot soles had come loose, was hanging free and vibrating fitfully as the rain struck it. Had that killed him? Had the sole come loose in the fight and, as his comrades ran, had he limped, or stumbled, and had a British bayonet sliced
