Bernard Cornwell – 1812 10 Sharpe’s Enemy

The Riflemen followed him, screaming like the devils of hell come to this feast as Sharpe had ordered them to scream, and Sharpe led the way towards the right hand door, all waiting done, all nervousness dispelled because the fight was on and there was nothing now but to win. This was the Sharpe who had saved Wellington’s life at Assaye, who had hacked through the ranks to take the Eagle with Harper, who had gone, maddened, into the breach at Badajoz. This was the Sharpe whom Major General Nairn had only been able to guess at as he looked at the quiet, dark-haired man across the rug in Frenada.

A man appeared in the doorway, startled, his musket raised with bayonet fixed. It was a French musket and the man raised it higher in desperation as he saw the Rifle officer, but he had no hope, and Sharpe shouted his challenge as the right foot stamped forward, the blade followed, twisted, steel running with light reflected from the candles in the passageway beyond, and the sword was in the Frenchman’s solar plexus and Sharpe twisted it again, kicked at his victim, and the blade was free and he could step over the screaming, dying man.

God, but there was joy in a fight. Not often in battle, but in a fight when the cause was good, and Sharpe was in the passageway, the tip of his sword dark, and he could hear the Riflemen behind him, and then a door opened spilling more light and a man peered nervously out, foolishly out, because Sharpe was on him before he understood that revenge had come and the great cavalry sword slid beneath his jawbone and he gagged, jerked back, and Sharpe was in the doorway and again the sword came forward and the man clutched at the blade which was in his throat and Sharpe could smell the foul smell that a sword drew from a man, and then his weapon was free and he was in the room with two men who fumbled with muskets, shook their heads in fear, and Sharpe bellowed at them, jumped the dead man, and the sword was a flail above the table that separated him from his enemies. Blood flew from the sword tip as it circled, and then it bit, and Sharpe could see a Rifleman going the other way about the table, a grin of maniacal joy on his face, and the second enemy backed away, back until he was hard against another door, and the Rifleman drove rifle and sword-bayonet in a blow that would have pierced stone so that the blade tip buried itself hard in the wood of the door. The enemy folded over it, bubbling and crying, and a second Rifleman, a German, finished him off with far less force and more efficiency.

The man Sharpe’s sword had hit in the face screamed beneath the table. Sharpe ignored him. He turned to the room of Riflemen. ‘Load! Load!’.

Three men in a room, armed, guarding a door. This had to be a guardroom. He reached past the pinned, bleeding figure, and tried the handle to the door. It was locked. Behind him he could hear shouts, the banging of muskets, but he ignored it. He pressed the catch, twisted, and the rifle came free of the bayonet that still nailed the dead man to the door, and then he had space to stand in front of the door, raise his heel, and smash it forward. The door shuddered. He did it again, a third time, and then the door banged open, wood splintering at the old lock, and the corpse was still attached to the wood by the twenty-three inch bayonet as it swung open and Sharpe entered.

Screams, screams of fear, and Sharpe stood in the doorway, his sword bloody, his cheek smeared with the blood of the man he had killed in the guardroom door, and he saw the women huddled against the far wall. He lowered his sword. The blood was fresh on his green uniform, glistening in the candlelight, dripping onto the rug that furnished this prison room. One woman was not hiding her face. She was protecting another woman whose face was buried in her side, beneath the encircling, protective arm, and the face was proud, thin, topped by the piled blonde hair. Sharpe made a half bow. ‘Madame Dubreton?’