“Only three hundred men,” Sharpe said calmly.
“Is that all, now?”
A French officer drew his sword and cantered forward. After a few strides he spurred his horse into a gallop and curved its path so that he would swoop within a hundred yards of the city’s defence. Muskets crackled from the barricades, but he galloped safe through the wild shots. Another officer started forward, and Sharpe guessed the Frenchmen would keep tantalizing the defenders until the real attack erupted.
Hagman pulled back his rifle cock as the second French officer spurred to full speed. “Can I teach the bugger a lesson, sir?”
“No. Let them be. This is just a fake. They think it’s working, so let them play.”
Minutes passed. A whole squadron of Dragoons trotted down the front of the line, then reversed their path to gallop derisively back. Their defiance prompted another huge volley to ripple down the city’s western buildings, and Sharpe saw the ground flecked by the strike of the balls and knew that the Spaniards’ shots were falling short. A second squadron, holding a guidon high, trotted northwards. Some of the stationary Frenchmen sheathed their swords and fired carbines from the saddle, and every French shot provoked an answering and wasteful volley from the city.
Another officer displayed his bravery by galloping as close as he dared to the city’s defences. This one had less luck. His horse went down in a flurry of blood and mud. A great cheer went up from the barricades, but the Frenchman slashed his saddle free and ran safely back towards his comrades. Sharpe admired the man, but schooled himself to keep watching the south.
South! That was where the attack would come, not here! De I’Eclin’s absence from the west meant that the chasseur must be with the men who crept about the city’s southern flank. Sharpe was sure of it now. The French were waiting for the sun to sink even lower so that the shadows would be long in the broken southern ground. In the meantime this western diversion was calculated to stretch the defenders’ nerves and waste the city’s powder, but the attack would come from the south; Sharpe knew it, and he stared obsessively south where nothing moved among the falling ground. Somewhere beyond that ground was the southern picquet of mounted Cazadores, and he became obsessed that the Spaniards had been overwhelmed by a French attack. There could be seven hundred Dragoons hidden to the south. He wondered whether to send a patrol of Riflemen to explore the shadows.
“Sir?” Harper had stayed on the hilltop and now called urgently. “Sir?”
Sharpe turned back to the west, and swore.
Another squadron of Dragoons had come from the dead ground, and this one was led by a horseman wearing a red pelisse and a black fur colback. A horseman on a big black horse. De l’Eclin. Not to the south, where the bulk of Sharpe’s Riflemen were deployed, but to the west where the Frenchman could wait until the sinking sun was a dazzling and blinding ball of fire in the defenders’ eyes.
“Do I pull the lads out of the buildings?” Harper asked nervously.
“Wait.” Sharpe was tempted by the thought that de l’Eclin was clever enough to make himself a part of the deception.
The French waited. Why, Sharpe wondered, if this was their main attack, would they signal it so obviously? He looked south again, seeing how the shadows darkened and lengthened. He stared at the rutted road and scanned the hedgerows. Something moved in a shadow; moved again, and Sharpe clapped his hands in triumph. “There!”
The Riflemen twisted to look.
“Cazadores, sir.” Harper, knowing that he disappointed Sharpe’s expectations, sounded subdued.
Sharpe pulled open his telescope. The approaching men were in Spanish uniform, suggesting that they were either the southern picquet bringing news or else one of the parties that had gone south-east to break down the bridges over the river. Or perhaps they were disguised Frenchmen? Sharpe looked back at the chasseur, but de l’Eclin was not moving. There was something very threatening in his utter stillness; something that spoke of a rampant and chilling confidence.
Sharpe obstinately clung to his certainty. He knew that his men no longer believed him, that they prepared themselves to fight the enemy who paraded so confidently in the west, but he could not surrender his obsession with the south. Nor could he rid himself of the conviction that de l’Eclin was too subtle a soldier to put all his hopes in a straightforward and unsubtle attack.