Sharpe, concealed by the darkness beneath the pines, stood a few paces behind his men. He drew out his telescope and steadied its long barrel against a pine trunk.
He saw pale green coats, pink facings, and pigtails. The telescope foreshortened the advancing French column so that the lens seemed filled with men rising and falling in their saddles. Scabbards, carbines, pouches, and sabretaches Jiggled. At this distance the French faces, dark beneath their forage caps, were expressionless and menacing. There were curious bundles strapped behind the saddles which Sharpe realized were netfuls of fodder for the horses. The French halted.
Sharpe swore softly.
He panned the telescope left and right. The Dragoons had left the worst of the marshland behind and had spread lr»to a line that was now quite motionless. Horses lowered their heads to crop at the damp grass.
“Sir?” Hagman called. “On the road, sir? See the buggers?”
Sharpe jerked the telescope back to the centre of the enemy line. A group of officers had appeared there, their aiguillettes and epaulettes a dark gold in the wintry light, and in their midst were the chasseur in his red pelisse, and the civilian in his black coat and white boots. Sharpe wondered by what weird skill those two men followed his scent across the winter land.
The chasseur opened his own telescope and it seemed to Sharpe that the Frenchman stared directly into the betraying circle of his own lens. He kept his glass motionless until the other telescope was snapped shut. Then he watched as the chasseur gave an order to a Dragoon officer, apparently an aide, who galloped his horse westward.
The result of the order was that a small detachment of Dragoons lifted the heavy helmets which hung from their saddles’ pommels. The six men pulled the helmets onto their heads; a sure sign they had been ordered to advance. Sensible to the fact that the pines could hide an ambush, the chasseur was sending a picquet ahead. Sharpe had lost surprise, for even though the enemy did not know that he waited for them, they were prepared for trouble. He slammed his glass shut, and cursed the French commander’s caution that now imposed a delicate choice on him.
Sharpe could kill the six men, but would that stop the other Dragoons? Or would they, judging his strength from the paucity of shots fired, spur into an instant gallop that would bring the mass of horsemen into the trees long before the Riflemen could reach the southern crest? Instead often minutes, he might have five.
He hesitated. But if he had learned one thing as a soldier it was that any decision, even a bad one, was better than none. “We’re pulling back. Fast! Keep hidden!”
The Riflemen slithered backwards, stood when the trees shielded them from the French, then followed Sharpe onto the road. They ran.
“Jesus!” The imprecation came from Harper and was caused by the sight of the Parkers’ carriage which, just two hundred yards ahead, was stuck fast. The coachman, in his haste, had rammed a wheel against a stone wall at a bend in the road. Williams and his men were vainly trying to free the vehicle.
“Leave it!” Sharpe bellowed. “Leave it!”
Mrs Parker’s head appeared at the window of the coach to countermand his orders. “Push! Push!”
“Get out!” Sharpe floundered in the road’s mud. “Get out!” If the coach was to be rescued then the horses would have to be coaxed backwards, slewed, then whipped forward, and that would take time which he did not have, so it must be abandoned.
But Mrs Parker was in no mood to sacrifice the carriage’s comfort. She ignored Sharpe, instead leaning perilously from the opened window to threaten her coachman with a furled umbrella. “Whip them harder, you fool! Harder!”
Sharpe seized the door handle and tugged it down. “Get out! Out!”
Mrs Parker flailed the umbrella at him, knocking his mildewed shako over his eyes, but Sharpe seized her wrist, tugged, and heard her scream as she fell in the mud. “Sergeant Williams?”
“Sir?”
“Two men to get those packs off the roof!” They contained all Sharpe’s spare ammunition. Gataker and Dodd scrambled up, slashed at the ropes with their sword-bayonets, and tossed the heavy packs down to the waiting riflemen. George Parker tried to speak with Sharpe, but the officer had no time for his nervousness. “You’ll have to run, sir. To the farm!” Sharpe physically turned the tall man and pointed him towards the stone house and barn which were the only refuges left in this bare country.