Bernard Cornwell – 1809 01 Sharpe’S Rifles

Because, like gold heated to incandescence, the helmets of the enemy flared in the dying sun. Because three hundred Frenchmen had ridden around the city, Sharpe was trapped, and the day of miracles was done.

CHAPTER 17

The Dragoons, who had menaced the west of the city, had ridden around its southern margins to block the eastern escape route. Now they filled the valley to the south where their helmets glowed bright in the day’s last light. They were led by the horseman who wore de l’Eclin’s red pelisse, but who carried a sabre in his right hand.

The refugees began to run, but the boggy ground made their panicked flight clumsy and slow. Most tried to cross the stream, some went north, while a few ran towards the dubious safety of Sharpe’s Riflemen.

“Sir?” Harper asked.

But there was nothing helpful that Sharpe could say in answer. It was over. No safety lay in the tumult which still echoed within the city, nor was there time to cross the stream or retreat northwards. The Rifles were in open ground, trapped by cavalry, and Sharpe must form a rally square and fight the bastards to the end. A soldier might be beaten, but he never grovelled. He would take as many of the triumphant bastards as he could and, in years to come, when French soldiers crouched by camp fires in some remote land, a few would shudder to remember a fight in a northern Spanish valley. “Form up! Three ranks!” Sharpe would fire one volley, then contract into the square. The hooves would thunder past, the blades slash and glitter, and slowly his men would be cut down.

Sharpe cut at a weed patch with his sword. “I’m not going to surrender, Sergeant.”

“Never thought you would, sir.”

“But once we’re broken, the men can give up.”

“Not if I’m watching them, sir.”

Sharpe grinned at the big Irishman. “Thank you for everything.”

“I still say you punch harder than any man I’ve ever known.”

“I’d forgotten that.” Sharpe laughed. He saw that some of the dismounted Cazadores and volunteers had run to form crude extensions of his three ranks. He wished they had not come, for their clumsiness would only make his final stand more vulnerable, but he would not turn them away. He slashed his sword left and right as though practising for the last moments. The French Dragoons had checked their slow, menacing advance. Their front rank stood motionless a quarter-mile away. It looked a long distance, but Sharpe knew with what cruel speed cavalry could cover the ground when their trumpeter hurled them forward.

He turned his back on the enemy and looked at his men. “What we should have done, lads, is gone north.”

There was a moment’s silence, then the greenjackets remembered the argument that had driven Harper to try and kill Sharpe. They laughed.

“But tonight,” Sharpe said, “you have my permission to get drunk. And in case I don’t have another chance to tell you, you’re the best damned troops I’ve ever fought with.”

The men recognized the apology for what it was, and cheered. Sharpe thought what a long time it had taken him to earn that cheer, then turned away from the Riflemen so they would not see his pleasure and embarrassment.

He turned in time to see a knot of horsemen ride from the city. One of them was the Count of Mouromorto, distinctive in his long black coat and tall white boots. Another, in a red dolman jacket and with hair as gold as the Dragoons’ helmets, rode a big black horse. The waiting French Dragoons cheered as Colonel de l’Eclin took his pelisse and colback from the man who had worn them. The Count rode to the rear squadron, the French reserve, while the chasseur took his proper place at the very front of the charge. Sharpe watched as he adjusted the scarlet pelisse on his shoulder, as he crammed the big fur colback on his head, and as he drew the sabre with his left hand. Sharpe prayed that he would see de l’Eclin dead before he himself went down under the hooves and blades of the enemy.

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