There were only just over fifty men, but they were Vivar’s elite company, the crimson-coated Cazadores, who burst from the city to charge downhill. It was a tired squadron, wearied by a night and day of fighting, but above them, like a ripple of glory in the dark sky, flew the gonfalon of Santiago Matamoros. The scarlet cross was bright as blood.
“Santiago!” Vivar led them. Vivar spurred them on. Vivar screamed the war cry that could snatch a miracle from defeat. “Santiago!”
The slope gave the Cazadores’s charge speed, while the banner gave them the courage of martyrs. They struck the edge of the first French line like a thunderbolt and the swords carved bloody ruin into the Dragoons. De l’Eclin was shouting, turning, trying to realign his men, but the banner of the saint was driving deep into the French squadron. The gonfalon’s long tail was already flecked with an enemy’s blood.
“Charge!” Sharpe was running. “Charge!”
The second French squadron spurred forward, but Vivar had foreseen it and swerved right to take his men into their centre. Behind him was a chaos of milling horses. Cavalry hacked at cavalry.
“Halt!” Sharpe held both arms out to bar his men’s mad rush. “Steady, lads! One volley. Aim left! Aim at the horses! Fire!”
The Riflemen fired at the untouched horsemen on the right of the French charge. Horses fell screaming to the mud. Dragoons kicked boots from stirrups and rolled away from their dying beasts. “Now kill the bastards!” Sharpe screamed the incantation as he ran. “Kill! Kill!”
A rabble of men ran to the broken French line. There were Riflemen, Cazadores, and country men who had left -their homes to carry war against an invader. Dragoons hacked down with long swords, but the rabble surrounded them and slashed at horses and clawed men from their saddles. This was not how an army fought, but how an untutored people took terror to an enemy.
Colonel de l’Eclin swivelled his horse to keep the rabble at bay. His sabre hissed to kill a Cazador, lunged to drive a Spaniard back, and sliced to parry a Rifleman’s sword-bayonet. The Dragoons were being driven to the boggy ground where the horses slithered and slipped. A trumpeter was dragged from his grey horse and savaged with knives. Knots of Frenchmen tried to hack through the mob. Sharpe used both hands to hack down at a horse’s neck, then swung back to send its rider clean from the saddle. A woman from the city sawed with a knife at the fallen Frenchman’s neck. Fugitives were running back from the stream’s eastern bank, coming to join a slaughter.
A trumpet drove the third French squadron into the chaos. The field was bloody, but still the white gonfalon floated high where Bias Vivar drove his crimson elite like a blade into the enemy. A Spanish Sergeant held the great banner that had been hung from a cross-staff on a pole. He waved it so that the silk made a serpentine challenge in the dusk.
The Count of Mouromorto saw the challenge and despised it. That streamer of silk was everything he hated in Spain; it stood for the old ways, for the domination of church over ideas, for the tyranny of a God he had rejected, and so the Count raked back his spurs and drove his horse into the men who guarded the gonfalon.
“He’s mine!” Vivar yelled again and again. “Mine! Mine!”
The brothers’ swords met, scraped, disengaged. Vivar’s horse turned into the enemy as it was trained to, and Vivar lunged. The Count parried. A Cazador rode to take him in the rear, but Vivar shouted at the man to stay clear. “He’s mine!”
The Count gave two quick hard blows that would have driven a weaker man from the saddle. Vivar parried both, back-cut, and turned the cut into a lunge that drew blood from his brother’s thigh. The blood dripped onto the white boots.
The Count touched his horse with a spur; it went sideways, then, to another touch, lunged back. Mouromorto snarled, knowing that this battle was won as his long sword lunged at his brother.
But Vivar leaned back in the saddle, right back, so that his brother’s blade hissed past him and could not be brought back fast enough as he straightened and speared his own sword forward. The steel juddered into Mouromorto’s belly. Their eyes met, and Vivar twisted the blade. He felt pity, and knew he could not afford pity. “Traitor!” He twisted the blade again, then raised his boot to push the horse away and disengage his long sword. The steel shuddered free, blood gushed onto the Count’s pommel, and his scream was an agony that died as he fell onto the blood-soaked mud.