‘Fire!’
A Rifleman on the gatehouse pointed. ‘Sir?’
The French Battalion were moving along the northern fringe of the valley, their blue coats dark in the gloom where the smoke rolled over the snow.
‘Fire!’
The last volley, crashing down a carved archway, bringing tiles slipping in an avalanche of clay and snow from the roof, and the Voltigeurs cheered, ran clumsily on the snow, and the first muskets fired at the Convent.
‘Now.’ Sharpe said. ‘Now!’
‘Sir?’
‘Nothing.’ It was nearly dark, so much so that his eyes played tricks in the gloom.
The Convent’s defenders, sheltered in the inner cloister, ran as they had been ordered to run. Up the stairs, up the ramp of the cloister furthest from the guns, and then to their places. One volley, muskets and rifles pricking the dusk, and then they jumped. Some went down rubble into the upper cloister, clambered over the wreckage of the wall, and sprinted towards the Castle. Others jumped from the roof, falling clumsily on the snow covered slope, and they too ran for the safety of the ramparts. Sharpe looked up the valley. There was no cavalry, there was no need to send out the three Companies of Fusiliers to cover the retreat.
The French saw them go, cheered, fired a hasty farewell volley and then the Battalion scrambled over the wreckage made by the guns, and French cheers sounded in the valley for they had their first victory.
‘Limber up!’ The Colonel wanted the guns moved swiftly to the Convent. The howitzers, which had not fired, were already hitched to their horses.
The Battalion spread through the Convent, finding the barrels of liquor that Sharpe had left them, barrels he hoped would make them drunk and helpless. The officers saw them too, levelled pistols, and blew the strakes from the bottom so the liquor flowed into the snow. ‘Move! Move! Move!’ A passage had to be cleared for the guns.
The Convent’s defenders came in through the archway of the Castle. One man limped, his ankle sprained by the fall, another cursed because a French musket bullet was lodged in his buttocks. Laughter greeted his pained announcement.
Sharpe leaned over the turret into the courtyard. ‘Call the roll!’
The Fusiliers reported first. ‘All present!’
Cross’s Riflemen. ‘Present!’
‘Lieutenant Price?’
The Lieutenant’s face was white as he looked up. ‘Harps is missing, sir!’ There was disbelief in his voice. Around him the men of Sharpe’s Company stared up at the turret and on their faces was a hope that Sharpe could bring off a miracle.
Lieutenant Price’s voice was anguished. ‘Did you hear me, sir?’
‘I heard you. Block the gate.’
There was a gasp from below. ‘Sir?’
‘I said block the gate!’ Anger in Sharpe’s voice.
He turned and the snow drifted gentle in the dusk, drifted past the ramparts to settle on the graves, drifted down the long pass where help must come, settled on the shattered east wall of the Convent.
Harper had said that the Irish do not need luck. Sharpe flinched as musket shots sounded deep within the Convent from which only Sergeant Patrick Harper had not escaped.
Lieutenant Price was on the turret, panting from his swift climb up the winding stair. ‘He was with us, sir! I didn’t see anything happen to him!’
‘Don’t worry, Harry.’
‘We can go back in the night, sir!’ Price was eager.
‘I said don’t worry, Harry.’ Sharpe stared northwards into the smoking twilight.
Ich hatt’ einen Kameraden, Einen bess’ renjindst du nicht.
CHAPTER 25
In war, as in love, few campaigns go exactly as planned, and the French General remade his plans before the fire at the inn. ‘The object is still the same, gentlemen, to draw the British north. If we cannot make Vila Nova, then we can still make Barca de Alva. It will have the same effect.’ He turned to the gunner Colonel. ‘How long before your guns are in place?’
‘Midnight, sir.’ The guns had to be manhandled into the Convent, embrasures made in the southern wall, but the work was going fast. They had feared that the British might send Riflemen to harry the progress, but none had come.