The Lieutenant shouted at his men, led them into one of the winding paths, and the lances were held high so that the red and white pennons were bright against the blackness of the thorns. Dubreton watched them climb, saw how slow progress was in the thick bushes, and he feared for them. A Company of Voltigeurs came running from the village, French skirmishers sent to reinforce the climbing horsemen, and Dubreton wondered whether Sharpe had decided, after all, only to defend the two great buildings at the crest of the pass. Perhaps the German Colonel was right. Perhaps Sharpe did not have the men to hold all this ground, and the watchtower hill was horribly far from the Castle. Further, indeed, than the village was from the Castle gate.
The Voltigeurs, red epaulettes bright on blue uniforms, disappeared into the thorns, bayonets fixed on their muskets. Sixty men took a half dozen paths and Dubreton saw them climb. The Lieutenant was almost at the top. ‘We should have put a Battalion in there.’
The German Colonel spat, not at Dubreton’s words, but at the Riflemen who stopped the French fetching their wounded. ‘Bastards.’
‘They’ll make us carry a white flag. He’s buying time.’ Dubreton shook his head. Sharpe was a hard enemy.
The Lancer Lieutenant broke clear of the last thorns and grinned at the aide-de-camp. ‘You’ve taken the hill, sir!’ His French was broken.
Pierre shrugged. ‘They’ve gone!’
‘Let’s make certain, sir.’
The Lancers spread out, blades dropped, but this was no place for a heart-stopping cavalry charge, hooves thundering on turf and blades searing at an enemy. This was a cramped, pocked hilltop surrounded by dark thorn and the horses walked slowly forward so the cavalry could peer into the deep wet spines.
Frederickson watched them. A pity, this. He had hoped for a Company, at least, not such few men, but a man must take what fate gives him. ‘Fire!’
Only the Rifles fired, Rifles that outnumbered the Lancers nearly seven to one, and the big horses fell, screaming, and the lance blades toppled, and Frederickson tore himself clear of the thorns. ‘Forward!’
One Lancer was alive, miraculously alive, and he stood with his lance extended and shook his head as Frederickson shouted at him in German. Then more German voices called to him, Riflemen, and the Lancer still obstinately refused to surrender but challenged them with his long weapon. He lunged at Frederickson, but the sabre easily turned the lance aside, and Sergeant Rossner hooked the Lancer’s feet from underneath him, sat on the man’s chest, and bellowed at him in angry German.
‘Come on!’ Frederickson rushed the hilltop, waving his men left and right, listening to the curses and shouts and they pulled themselves from the thorns. ‘Skirmishers in front!’ A musket bullet flattened itself on the tower. ‘Kill those bastards!’
Frederickson was not worried by a Company of French Skirmishers. He spent his life fighting Voltigeurs, as his men did, and he left his Lieutenants to push them back while he walked to the gun facing north and pulled the nail out of the touch-hole. A sketch-book had fallen under the trail of the gun and he stooped, wiped the mud from the open page, and saw the drawing of the tower doorway.
‘Captain?’ A grinning Fusilier came round the tower, bayonet in the back of the aide-de-camp. The Frenchman looked terrified. He had run at the first bullets, dived into the gunpit, and then the hilltop was swarming with British troops. Now he faced the most villainous man he had ever seen, a man with one eye, the other socket raw and shadowed, a man whose top front teeth were missing, and a man who smiled wolfishly at him.
‘Yours?’ Frederickson asked, holding the sketch pad out.
‘Oui, monsieur.’
The vile looking Rifleman looked at the sketch, looked back to the Frenchman, and this time Frederickson spoke in French. ‘Have you been to Leca do Balio?’
‘No, monsieur.’
‘A very similar doorway. You’d like it. And some fine lancet windows in the clerestory. And below it, too. A Templar’s church, which might explain the foreign influence.’ But Frederickson could have saved his breath. The aide-de-camp had fainted clean away, and the Fusilier grinned at Frederickson. ‘Shall I kill him, sir?’