Sharpe was in the doorway, ready to leap inside at the first sign of an attack. He held his sword low, and now, with his left hand, he brought the rifle’into view. `If you want to fight me, Matarife, I am ready. The first bullet will be for you. Now tell me what happens to the woman.’
The bearded man paused. From somewhere in the town came the smell of a kitchen fire. The street was slick and thick with mud from the night’s rain. El Matarife licked his lips. `Nothing happens to her. She goes back to the convent.’
`I don’t believe you.’
El Matarife’s horse pranced in the mud. The bearded man quieted the beast. `She goes back, Englishman, to where she belongs. Our quarrel is not with her, but with a man who dared to frighten nuns.’ Slowly, his eyes not leaving Sharpe, he reached down to his saddle. Sharpe knew what was coming and he did not move.
El Matarife produced a looped chain. He held onto one end of it and tossed the rest towards Sharpe. The chain lay in the mud. The Partisan took from his belt a long knife and that too he threw towards the inn door. `Do you dare, Englishman? Or do you only have courage against nuns?’
Sharpe stepped forward. He had small choice. He remembered the speed of this man, he remembered how he had speared the eyes from the French prisoner, but Sharpe knew he must accept the challenge. He stooped, picked up the last link of the chain, and a musket sounded to his left.
The musket’s report was curiously flat in the chill morning. El Matarife stared up the street, then suddenly threw down the chain and shouted at his men. He rowelled his spurs back and Sharpe was forgotten in the sudden panic.
Hooves galloped. A trumpet was splitting the valley with sudden urgency, and Sharpe heard a whoop of glee from the upstairs room of the inn, a shriek of pure joy from La Marquesa, and then more muskets hammered and he smelt the acrid powder smoke as he ducked into the inn and knelt with his rifle ready.
Lancers swept into the street. French lancers. Some had pennants on their blades that were already stained with blood. A riderless horse galloped with them.
The Partisans were running. They were not ready for the charge, not formed up to meet the shock of the heavy horses. They could only turn and run, but the street was crowded and they could not move as the lancers tore into them.
Sharpe watched the French riders grimace as they leaned into their long spears, as they ripped the enemy from their horses, as they rode over the dying to strip the long blades free in gouts of blood and screams.
The blades came up again, aimed for new targets, and the trumpet drove a second squadron into the street, horses’ teeth bared, hooves slinging the mud high to stain the uniforms of the riders, and Sharpe watched two cornered Partisans raise their muskets, but Frenchmen rode at them, lunged, and a lance pinned one man to the wall of a house with such force that the lancer left the weapon there with the spitted man wriggling and screaming and dying. The lancer drew his sabre to pursue the second man who had leaped from his horse and now fell as the sabre was back-sliced into his face.
Some Partisans had escaped as far as the market place, but now Sharpe heard another trumpet from the plaza’s far side, and more lancers came from the north to drive the fleeing Partisans into a melee of turning horses, shouts and fear. The townsfolk were running for shelter, the children, brought to watch the Partisans, screamed as the lancers rode knee to knee into the panicked mass.
Pistols banged, muskets coughed smoke, and another squadron cantered at the trumpet’s command to take their long blades into the dull press of cloaked Partisans. The lance blades, razor sharp, dipped at the officer’s order, the horses were urged on, and the level blades were driven into the enemy. The green and pink uniforms were darkened by blood. One lancer came running from the melee, his square-topped hat in one hand, his other hand pressed to a running wound in his scalp. Another of the bright uniforms was in the mud, but for every Frenchman down there were a dozen Partisans, and still more lancers thundered towards the marketplace, and still the trumpet urged them on, and still the long blades were rammed home to scrape on ribs and tear the guts from the panicked horsemen.