carelessly.
‘Good God incarnate,’ Moon said, staring after the Frenchman. The brigadier was plainly puzzled, even astonished by Vandal’s ruthlessness. ‘There are rules!’ he protested into thin air.
‘Blow the bridge, sir?’ Sharpe asked stolidly.
Moon was still gazing after Vandal. ‘They invited us to talk! The bloody man invited us to talk! They can’t do this. There are rules!’
‘You want us to blow the bridge, sir?’ Sharpe asked again.
Moon appeared not to hear. ‘He has to return Gillespie and your lieutenant,’ he said. ‘God damn it, there are rules!’
‘He’s not going to return them, sir,’ Sharpe said.
Moon frowned from the saddle. He appeared puzzled, as if he did not know how he was to deal with Vandal’s treachery. ‘He can’t keep them prisoner!’ he protested.
‘He’s going to keep them, sir, unless you tell me to leave the bridge intact.’
Moon hesitated, but then recalled that his future career, with all its dazzling rewards, depended on the bridge’s destruction. ‘Blow the bridge,’ he said harshly.
‘Back!’ Sharpe turned and shouted at his men. ‘Get back! Mister Sturridge! Light the fuse!’
‘Bloody hell!’ The brigadier suddenly realized he was on the wrong side of a bridge that was crowded with men, and that in about half a minute the French planned to open fire and so he turned his horse and spurred it back along the roadway. The riflemen and redcoats were running and Sharpe followed them, walking backwards, keeping his eye on the French, the rifle in his hands. He reckoned he was safe enough. The French company was a long musket shot away and so far they had made no attempt to close the range, but then Sharpe saw Vandal turn and wave to the fort.
‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe echoed the brigadier, and then the world shook to the sound of six guns emptying their barrels of grapeshot. Dark smoke whipped the sky, the balls screamed around Sharpe, slapping onto the bridge and slashing into men and churning the river into foam. Sharpe heard a scream behind him, then saw the French company running towards the bridge. There was an odd silence after the guns fired. No muskets had been used yet. The river settled from the strike of the grapeshot and Sharpe heard another scream and snatched a look behind to see Moon’s stallion rearing, blood seething from its neck, and then the brigadier fell into a knot of men.
Sturridge was dead. Sharpe found him some twenty paces beyond the powder barrels. The engineer, struck in the head by a piece of grapeshot, was lying beside the slow match that had not been lit and now the French were almost at the bridge and Sharpe snatched up Sturridge’s tinderbox and ran towards the powder barrels. He shortened the slow match by tearing it apart just a couple of paces from the charge, then struck the flint on the steel. The spark flew and died. He struck again, and this time a scrap of dried linen caught the spark and he blew on it gently and the tinder flared up and he put the flame to the fuse and saw the powder begin to spark and fizz. The first Frenchmen were obstructed by the women’s abandoned luggage, but they kicked it aside and ran onto the bridge where they knelt and aimed their muskets. Sharpe watched the fuse. It was burning so damn slowly! He heard rifles fire, their sound crisper than muskets, and a Frenchman slowly toppled with a look of indignation on his face and a bright stab of blood on his white crossbelt, then the French pulled their triggers and the balls flew close around him. The damned fuse was slower than slow! The French were just yards away, then Sharpe heard more rifles firing, heard a French officer screaming at his men, and Sharpe tore the fuse again, much closer to the powder barrels, and he used the burning end to light the new stub. That new stub was just inches from the barrel and he blew on it to make sure it burned fiercely, then turned and ran towards the western bank.
Moon was wounded, but a pair of men from the 88th had picked the brigadier off the roadway and were carrying him. ‘Come on, sir!’ Harper shouted. Sharpe could hear the Frenchmen’s boots on the roadway, then Harper levelled the seven-barrel gun. It was a naval weapon, one that had never really worked well. It was supposed to be carried in the fighting tops where its seven bunched barrels could launch a small volley of half-inch balls at marksmen in the enemy rigging, but the recoil of the volley gun was so violent that few men were strong enough to wield it. Patrick Harper was strong enough. ‘Down, sir!’ he shouted, and Sharpe dropped flat as the sergeant pulled the trigger. The noise deafened Sharpe, and the leading rank of Frenchmen was blown apart by the seven balls, but one sergeant survived and he ran to where the fizzing fuse sparked and smoked at the barrel’s top. Sharpe was still sprawled on the roadway, but he wrenched the rifle clear of his body. He had no time to aim, just point the muzzle and pull the trigger and he saw, through the sudden powder smoke, the French sergeant’s face turn to a blossom of blood and red mist, and the sergeant was hurled backwards, the fuse still smoked, then the world exploded.
The worm of fire had eaten into Sturridge’s charge and the powder blew. The sky filled with noise, turned dark. Flame, smoke and timbers erupted into the air, though the chief effect of the exploding powder was to drive the pontoon down into the river. The roadway buckled under the strain, planks snapping free. The French were thrown back, some dead, some burned, some stunned, and then the shattered pontoon reared violently up from the water and its anchor chains snapped from the recoil. The bridge jerked downstream, throwing Harper off his feet. He and Sharpe clung to the planks. The bridge was juddering now, the river foaming and pushing at the broken gap as scraps of burning timber flamed on the roadway. Sharpe had been half dazed by the explosion and now found it hard to stand, but he staggered towards the British held shore and then the pontoon anchor chains began to snap, one after the other, and the more that parted, the more pressure was put on the remaining chains. The French cannon fired again and the air was filled with screaming grapeshot and one of the men carrying Brigadier Moon jerked forward with blood staining the back of his red coat. The man vomited blood and the brigadier bellowed in agony as he was dropped. The bridge began to shake like a bough in the wind and Sharpe had to fall to his knees and hold onto a plank to stop being thrown into the water. Musket balls were coming from the French company, but the range was too long for accuracy. The brigadier’s wounded horse was in the river, blood swirling as it struggled against the inevitable drowning.
A shell struck the bridge’s far end. Sharpe decided the French gunners were trying to hold the British fugitives on the breaking bridge where they could be flayed by grapeshot. The French infantry had retreated to the eastern bank from where they fired musket volleys. Smoke was filling the valley. Water splashed across the pontoon where Sharpe and Harper clung, then it shook again and the roadway splintered and Sharpe feared the remnants of the bridge would overturn. A bullet slammed into a plank by his side. Another shell exploded at the bridge’s far end, leaving a puff of dirty smoke that drifted upstream where white birds flew in panic.
Then suddenly the bridge quivered and went still. The central portion of six pontoons had broken free and was drifting down the river. There was a tug as a last anchor chain snapped, then the six pontoons were circling and floating as a barrel-load of grapeshot churned the water just behind them. Sharpe could kneel now. He loaded the rifle, aimed at the French infantry, and fired. Harper slung his empty volley gun and shot with his rifle instead. Rifleman Slattery and Rifleman Harris came to join them and sent two more bullets, both aimed at the French officers on horseback, but when the rifle smoke cleared the officers were still mounted. The pontoons were travelling fast in the current, accompanied by broken and charred timbers. Brigadier Moon was lying on his back, trying to prop himself up on his elbows. ‘What happened?’
‘We’re floating free, sir,’ Sharpe said. There were six men of the 88th on the makeshift raft and five of Sharpe’s riflemen from the South Essex. The rest of his company had either escaped the bridge before it broke or else were in the river. So now, with Sharpe and the brigadier,
