Not, Sharpe thought bitterly, that the Spanish would have to do too much of the actual killing. Wellesley had drawn his army back to create a defensive line next to Talavera itself. The right-hand end of the line was made up of the town walls, olive groves, tangled fields and woods, all made impregnable by Hogan’s hard work. He had felled trees, thrown up earthworks, strengthened walls, and in the tangle of barricades and obstacles the Spanish troops took up their positions. No French infan-tryman could hope to fight his way across Hogan’s breastworks as long as the defenders stayed at their posts; instead the French army would swing north to the left side of Wellesley’s line, where the British would wait for the attack. Sharpe looked at the northern plain. There were no obstacles there that an engineer could make more formidable; there was just the Portina stream that a man could cross without the water coming over his boot-tops, and rolling grassland that was an invitation for the massed French Battalions and their long lines of splendid cavalry. In the distance was the Medellin, the hill which dominated the plain, and Sharpe had walked the grass often enough to know what would happen tomorrow. The French columns would cross the stream and attack the gentle slopes of the Medellin. That was the killing place. The Spanish troops, thirty thousand of them, could stay safely behind their breastworks and watch as the Eagles stormed the British in the open northern plain and the smoke covered Medellin.
“How are you?” Hogan asked.
“I’m fine.” Sharpe grinned.
The Irishman turned to watch the Spanish filling up the positions he had prepared. On the plain beyond, hidden by the trees where the Alberche River emptied itself into the Tagus, came the crackle of musketry. It had gone on all afternoon like a distant forest fire, and Sharpe had seen dozens of British wounded carried through the gate into town. The British had covered the last mile of the Spanish retreat and the wounded men said that the French skirmishers had won the day. Two British Battalions had been mauled badly; there was even a rumour that Welles-ley himself had just escaped capture; the Spanish looked nervous, and Sharpe wondered what kind of troops the French had found to hurl against the allied army. He looked down at Harper. The Sergeant, with a dozen men, was guarding the gate of the town, not against the enemy, but to stop any British or Spanish soldiers who might be tempted to lose themselves in Talavera’s dark alleyways and avoid the fight that was inevitable. The Battalion itself was on the Medellin, and Sharpe waited for the orders that would send his company up the shallow Portina stream to find the patch of grass they would defend in the morning.
“And how’s the girl?” Hogan was sitting on the powdery stone.
“She’s happy. Bored.”
“That’s the way of women. Never content. Will you be needing more money?”
Sharpe looked at the middle-aged Engineer and saw the concern in his eyes. Already Hogan had lent Sharpe more than twenty guineas, a sum that was impossible for him to repay unless he was lucky on the battlefield. “No. I’m all right for the moment.”
Hogan smiled. “You’re lucky.” He shrugged. “God knows, Richard, she’s a beautiful creature. Are you in love?”
Sharpe looked over the parapet where the Spanish had filled Hogan’s makeshift fortresses. “She won’t let me be.”
“Then she’s more sensible than I thought.”
The afternoon passed slowly. Sharpe thought of the girl, bored in her room, and watched the Spanish soldiers chop at the beeches and oaks to build their evening fires. Then, with a suddenness that Sharpe had been waiting for, there were flashes of light far away in the hazy trees and bushes that edged the plain to the east. It was the sun, he knew, reflecting from muskets and breastplates. Sharpe nudged Hogan and pointed. “The French.”
Hogan stood up and stared at them. “My God.” He spoke quietly. “There’s a good few of them.”
The infantry marched onto the far plain like a spreading dark stain on the grass. Sharpe and Hogan watched Battalion after Battalion march into the pale fields, squad-ron after squadron of cavalry, the small squat shapes of guns scattered in the formations, the largest army Sharpe had ever seen in the field. The galloping figures of staff officers could be seen as they directed the columns to their places ready for the next morning’s advance and battle. Sharpe looked left to the British lines that waited beside the Portina. The smoke from hundreds of camp fires wound into the early evening air; crowds of men clustered by the stream and on the Medellin for a far glimpse of their enemy, but the British force looked woefully small beside the massive tide of men, horses and guns that filled the plain to the east and grew by the minute. Napoleon’s brother was there, King Joseph, and with him two full Marshals of France, Victor and Jourdan. They were leading sixty-five Battalions of infantry, a massive force of the men who had made Europe into Napoleon’s property, and they had come to swat this small British army and send it reeling to the sea. They planned to break it for ever to ensure that Britain never again dared to challenge the Eagles on land.