back towards the hill. Behind them Spanish muskets fired, before them the Riflemen were firing down the long length of the bridge between the two huge men who were screaming defiance at them. The four remaining Voltigeurs pulled their triggers, wanting only to retreat to the safety of the fortresses.
Sharpe sensed the wind of the musket balls, knew he was not hit, and he had the huge sword ready for its first strike. The enemy skirmishers were going backwards, retreating after Delmas, but the officer tried to hold them. He shouted at them, pulled at one of them, and when he saw it was hopeless he turned himself with his long, slim sword waiting for Sharpe.
It was the French officer’s bravery that made the four men turn. Their muskets were not loaded, but they still had bayonets which they twisted onto their muskets, but they were too late to save their Lieutenant.
Sharpe could see the fear in the man’s eyes; wished that he would turn and run, but the man insisted on staying. He moved to block Sharpe, bringing his sword up to lunge, but the huge cavalry sword beat it aside in a numbing, ringing blow, and then Sharpe, not wanting to kill the man, shoulder charged and sent the officer flying backwards onto the roadway of the bridge’s entrance.
The four Voltigeurs were coming back, bayonets outstretched. Sharpe turned towards them, teeth bared, sword ready, but suddenly he could not move. The French Lieutenant had grabbed his ankle, was holding on for dear life, and the Voltigeurs, seeing it, suddenly hurried to take advantage of Sharpe’s loss of balance.
It was a fatal mistake. Patrick Harper, the Irishman, counted himself a friend of Sharpe, despite the disparity in rank. Harper was hugely strong, but, as with so many strong men, he had a touching gentleness and even placidity. Harper was mostly content to let the world go by, watching it with wry humour, but never so in battle. He had been raised on the songs and stories of the great Irish warriors. To Patrick Harper, Cuchulain was not an imaginary hero from a remote past, but a real man, an Irishman, a warrior to emulate. Cuchulain died at twenty-seven, Harper’s present age, and he had fought as Harper fought, with a wild battle song intoxicating him. Harper knew that mad joy too, he had it now as he charged the four men and shouted at them in his own, old language.
He was swinging the heavy seven-barrelled gun like a club. The first stroke beat down a musket and bayonet, beat down onto a Frenchman’s head, and the second stroke threw two men down. Harper was kicking now, stamping them down, using the gun as a mace into which he put all his giant strength. The fourth man lunged with his bayonet and Harper, taking one hand from his club, contemptuously pulled the musket towards him and brought his knee up into the stumbling enemy’s face. All four were down.
The French officer, lying on the ground, watched aghast. His hand nervelessly let go of Sharpe’s ankle, saving himself from the downward stab of the huge sword. More Riflemen were coming now, safe on that part of the bridge that could not be reached by the enemy gunners.
Harper wanted more. He was climbing the hillslope, negotiating the rubble of the houses which the French had blown up to give their forts a wide barrier of waste ground. He went past the two wounded men who, like their comrades below, would be prisoners, and Sharpe followed the Sergeant. ‘Go right! Patrick! Go right!’
Sharpe could not understand it. Delmas, safe with the other Voltigeurs, was not going towards the fortresses. Instead he was limping right towards the city, towards the balconied houses from which the Spaniards fired. A Voltigeur officer was arguing with him, but Sharpe saw the big Dragoon officer order the man silent. Two other Voltigeurs were detailed to help Leroux, to almost carry the limping man up the slope and Sharpe did not understand why Delmas would go towards the scattered musket fire of the civilians. It was insane! Delmas was within yards of the safety of the forts, but instead he was aiming to plunge into a hostile city into which, at any moment, the Sixth Division of Wellington’s army would march. Delmas was even risking the Spanish musket fire, the closer to which he limped the more dangerous it became.
Then it was no danger. Sharpe, climbing up behind the Dragoon, saw a tall, grey-haired priest appear on one of the balconies of the houses and, though Sharpe could not make out the words, he could hear the priest bellowing in a huge voice. The man’s arms flapped up and down, unmistakeably telling the civilians to stop firing. Damn the priest! He was letting Delmas get into the tangle of alleys, and the civilians were obeying the grey-haired man. Sharpe swore and redoubled his efforts to catch the group of Frenchmen. Damn the bloody priest!
Then Sharpe had to forget Delmas and the priest. The other Voltigeurs, seeing the speed with which Sharpe and Harper were climbing the hillside, had been sent down to deal with them. The first bullets struck dust from the rubble and Sharpe had to roll into cover because the musket fire was too heavy. He heard Harper swear, looked for him, and saw the Irishman rubbing his thigh where he had bruised it in his own swift fall behind a block of stone. The Sergeant grinned. ‘Didn’t someone say this would be an easy afternoon?’
Sharpe looked behind him. He guessed he was halfway up the slope, a hundred feet above the river, and he could see three of his Riflemen shepherding the prisoners into a huddle. Four more climbed towards them and one of them, Parry Jenkins, was shouting incoherently and pointing beyond Sharpe. At the same instant Harper yelled. ‘In front, sir!’
The Voltigeurs, annoyed perhaps at the impudence of the Riflemen’s charge, were determined to take the two men isolated on the slope. They had fired their volley and now a dozen of them came down with bayonets to either take prisoners or finish Sharpe and Harper off.
Frustration filled Sharpe with anger. He blamed himself for letting Delmas escape. He should have insisted to Colonel Windham that the man could not be trusted, and now Windham was dead. Sharpe had to presume that poor young McDonald was dead too, killed at sixteen by a bastard who had broken his parole and who was now escaping up the hill. Sharpe came up out of his hiding place with a huge anger, with the great, heavy, ill-balanced sword in his hand, and as he went to meet the Frenchmen it seemed to him, as it so often did in battle, that time slowed down. He could clearly see the face of the first man, could see the gapped, yellowed teeth beneath the straggly moustache, and he could see the man’s throat and he knew where his blade would go and he swung, the steel hissing, and the sharpened tip slashed the enemy’s throat and Sharpe was already bringing it back in an upswing that crashed a second man’s musket aside, bit into the man’s forearm so that he dropped the weapon and was helpless as the downswing slammed through shako and skull.
Harper watched for an instant, grinning, because he was used to the fearsome spectacle of Richard Sharpe going fierce into battle and then he joined in. He left the seven-barrelled gun behind and used a length of fire-blackened timber with which he flailed the red-epauletted enemy until, their courage broken, they were scrambling back up the hill. Harper looked at his Captain whose reddened blade had defeated four men in less than half a minute. He bent down to retrieve the big gun. ‘Have you ever thought about joining the army, Mr Sharpe?’
Sharpe was not listening. He was staring at the houses where the priest had stopped the civilians from firing, and now Sharpe was smiling because the priest might be able to order civilians, but he could not order British soldiers about. The Sixth Division had arrived! He could see the red uniforms at the hilltop, he could hear the crackle of muskets, and Sharpe drove himself up the slope so he could find out where Delmas was. Harper followed.
They dropped at the crest. To their right the houses were dotted with red uniforms, to their left were the three forts to which the Voltigeurs were retreating and Delmas was with them! He had been headed off by the Sixth Division and had been forced towards the fortresses. That was a victory of a kind, Sharpe supposed, because now the treacherous Frenchman was trapped in the forts. He looked behind and saw the river bank thick with British troops who marched west along the road beside the Tormes to finish off the cordon about the three strongholds. Delmas was trapped!
The French cannons fired again,
