Frederickson looked up from the sketch. ‘Tom?’
‘Two Froggie officers to the south, sir. Poking about. Taylor says they’re in range.’
Frederickson looked at Pierre. ‘The time?’
‘Ah.’ He pulled out his watch. ‘A minute to eleven.’
‘Tell Taylor to fire in one minute. And tell him to kill one of the bastards.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Frederickson turned back to the Frenchman. ‘You’ve seen the stone bull on the bridge at Salamanca?’
‘Ah, that’s fascinating.’
The Sergeant grinned and left them. In one minute Sweet William would be himself again, talking English instead of heathen French, and killing the bastards. He went back into the thorns, trying to work out which other Rifleman should shoot with Taylor and have the best chance of killing the second French officer. Sweet William always gave an extra ration of rum to any man who was proved to have killed an enemy officer.
Sharpe was standing on the rubble of the eastern wall, rubble that ended now by the shallow trench. It was less than three feet deep, too narrow, but the shovelled parapet added a foot to its effective depth. It would do. ‘What’s the time?’
‘Eleven o’clock, sir.’ Captain Brooker was nervous.
Sharpe looked at the men hidden behind the gate-house. The artillerymen were as nervous as Brooker, their bundled rockets looking like quarterstaffs at a country fair. He had made them disguise their blue uniforms with Fusilier greatcoats, and they looked a motley bunch. He grinned at Gilliland and raised his voice. ‘Don’t be too eager! I think they’ll be going for the watchtower before us!’
Two Rifles sounded in the distance, the reports muffled, and Sharpe looked in vain for the tell-tale smoke. ‘That must be on the southern slope.’Looks as if you’re right, sir.’Yes.’ Sharpe sounded distracted.
‘Shall I go?’ Brooker was eager to be away from the exposed rubble. He would take a Company of Fusiliers to the valley that separated Castle from watchtower, a Company reinforced by Captain Cross with twenty Riflemen. They would cover Frederickson’s retreat if the hill was swamped by French infantry.
‘Wait a minute.’ There had been no more firing from the watchtower, no rush of men from the northern to the southern slope. Sharpe looked back to the village. ‘Ah!’
His exclamation came because the single French Battalion in front of the village was moving south, towards the watch-tower, and Sharpe saw the men in the rear Companies splashing through the stream by the road. So it was to be the watchtower! He had toyed with the idea that the French might be in a hurry, and might come straight for Castle and Convent, but time, it seemed, was not their prime concern. They would do this thing properly. He could see the one Battalion moving south, he guessed from the rifle shots that another was out of sight beyond the hill, and soon Frederick-son would have his hands full. He grinned at Brooker. ‘Go! Good hunting!’
Brooker and Cross would leave the Castle by the great hole knocked in the southern side of the keep, the hole through which so many of Pot-au-Feu’s followers had temporarily escaped. Sharpe thought with satisfaction of the presence of Hakeswill, bound in the dungeons, and then wondered what would happen to those prisoners if the French over-ran the Castle. If. It occurred to him that he had wanted to hold out two days, and very nearly a quarter of that time had passed already, yet he also knew that he had yet to be tested by the veterans who massed behind the village.
‘Sir?’ The bugler, still lugging Sharpe’s rifle, pointed at the watchtower.
‘What?’
‘Can’t see him now, sir, but there’s a man running toward us, sir. Running like hell. A Rifleman, sir.’
What could have gone wrong? There was no firing from the hill yet, no smoke drifting on the breeze that was suddenly freezing. He had put his gloves down somewhere in the night and had forgotten where, so he blew on his hands and looked up at the clouds. They bellied low and dark, reaching down again for the summit of the watchtower, bringing a promise of snow that would make the pass treacherous and the journey of a relief force long and slow.