He left the trees and walked onto the patch of grass that lay beside the river. His boots swished through the dew and warned the sentries of his coming. He was challenged, gave the password, and greeted as he jumped down onto the shingle at the water’s edge.
“Anything happening?”
“No, sir.”
The water slid blackly beneath the tendrils of mist. There was an occasional slap and swirl from the river as a fish twisted and disturbed the surface. Sharpe peered over his cupped hands and blew on his fingers; there was the faintest dot of red light on the far bank that suddenly glowed brighter. The French sentry was smoking a cigar or a pipe. Sharpe looked to his left. The eastern sky at last had a suspicion of colour, a flat silver grey that silhouetted the hills, the first sign of dawn. He clapped one of the sentries on the shoulder. “Not long now.”
He climbed the brief bank between the shingle and the grass and walked back to the trees. From the French lines he could hear a dog barking, the whinny of a horse, and then the sound of bugles. They would start lighting their fires, start cooking a breakfast, and hopefully they would be still eating it when the Spanish bayonets came at them from the west. He suddenly felt a longing for devilled kidneys and coffee, for any food other than the thin stew and the Tommies and the old ship’s biscuits that the Battalion had lived on for a week. He remembered the garlic sausage they had collected from the enemy dead at Rolica and hoped he would find some that morning on the bodies of the men who were grumbling round their fires just across the river.
Back in the grove he took off his greatcoat, rolled it tight, and strapped it to his pack. He shivered. He took the rag off the lock of his rifle that had protected it from the dew and tested the tension of the spring with his thumb. He slung it on his shoulder, slapped his sword, and started moving the Light Company down to the treeline. The skirmishers would go first, the thin line of Riflemen and redcoats wading the Alberche to drive off the sentries and lock up the French Voltigeurs so that they could not blunt the attack of the massed British Battalions which would follow on to the French flank. He made the men lie down a few feet inside the grove where they merged into the shadows of the trees, while behind he could see the other nine companies of the Battalion forming up for the assault that could not be far away.
Dawn crept over the mountains, flooding the valley with a silver-grey light, shrinking the pools of shadow and revealing the shapes of trees and bushes on the far bank. It would still be a few moments, Sharpe decided, before the Spanish would break the silence and start the attack. He walked along the treeline, nodded to the Captain of the Light Company of the 29th who was on his right flank, made the polite small talk, wishing each other luck, and then strolled back to stand beside Harper. They did not speak but Sharpe knew the big Irishman was thinking of the promise Lennox had extracted from them by the bridge. But for Sharpe the Eagle had more urgency. If he could not pluck it from its perch today there might not be another chance for months and that meant no chance at all. In a few weeks, unless he could blunt Simmerson’s letter, he might be on a ship for the West Indies and the inevitable fever that made the posting a virtual death warrant. He thought of Josefina, asleep in the town, her black hair spread on a pillow, and wondered why suddenly his life had been enmeshed in a series of problems that one month ago he had not even suspected existed.
Muskets banged erratically in the distance. The men cocked their ears, murmured to each other, listened to the sporadic firing that rattled up and down the French lines. Lieutenant Knowles came up to Sharpe and raised his eyebrows in a question. Sharpe shook his head. “They’re clearing their muskets, that’s all.” The French sentries had been changed and the men going off duty were getting rid of their charges that might have become damp in the night air. Musket fire would not herald the attack. Sharpe was waiting for the red flashes that would illumine the western sky like summer lightning and show that the Spanish artillery was opening the battle. It could not be far off.