The hillside to the left, to the south, offered more cover, but he knew, with a terrible certainty, that the Light Company was outnumbered by the enemy and almost certainly outflanked as well. He blew his whistle, waved to the south, and the Company moved along the side of the hill while Sharpe and Harper, quietly and slowly, warned the Riflemen of the enemy skirmishers above.
Kearsey climbed up from the Redcoats. ‘What are we doing, Sharpe?’
Sharpe told him about the skirmishers above. Kearsey looked triumphant, as if he had been proved right.
‘Told you, Sharpe. Pastureland, village. They’re locking up the country and the food. So what do you do now?’
‘What we do now, sir, is get out of this.’
‘How?’
‘I have no idea, Major, no idea.’
‘Told you, Sharpe! Capturing Eagles is all very well, but out here in enemy country things are different, eh? El Catolico didn’t get caught! Must have smelt the French and vanished. We’re sitting ducks.’
‘Yes, sir.’
There was no point in arguing. If El Catolico had the gold he would not even have come this far, but as Sharpe worked his way round the hill he knew that at any moment the journey could end, die men with the gold caught between voltigeurs and cavalry, and in a month’s time someone at the army headquarters would wonder idly whatever happened to Captain Sharpe and the Light Company that was sent on the impossible job of bringing back Spanish gold. He turned on Kearsey.
‘So where is El Catolico?’
‘I doubt if he’ll help you, Sharpe.’
‘But he won’t give up the gold, will he, Major? I suppose he’s happy to let the French ambush us and then he’ll ambush them, right?’
Kearsey nodded. ‘It’s his only hope.’
Rifleman Tongue, educated and argumentative, spun round. ‘Sir!’
The shout was his last; the bang of a musket muffled it, the smoke hanging in front of a rock just twenty yards from him, and Tongue went on spinning and falling, and Sharpe ignored Kearsey and ran ahead. Harper was crouching and searching for the man who had fired at Tongue. Sharpe raced past, knelt by the Rifleman, and lifted up the head. ‘Isaiah!’
The head was heavy; the eyes were sightless. The musket ball had gone cleanly between two ribs and killed him even as he shouted the warning. Sharpe could hear the ramrod rattle as the enemy skirmisher pushed his next round into die barrel; then the unseen enemy’s partner fired, the ball missing Sharpe by inches because the Frenchman had suddenly seen Harper. The Sergeant’s rifle bullet lifted the Frenchman up off the ground; he opened his mouth to scream, but only blood came out and he dropped back. Sharpe could still hear the scraping of the iron ramrod; he stood up with Tongue’s rifle and ran forward. The voltigeur saw him coming, panicked, and scrambled backwards, and Sharpe shot him in the base of the spine and watched the man drop his musket and fall in agony to the hillside.
Parry Jenkins, Tongue’s partner, seemed almost in tears. The Welshman stooped over Tongue’s body, unbuckling the ammunition pouch and canteen, and Sharpe threw him the dead man’s rifle. ‘Here!’ A French ball thudded into his pack, pushing him forward, and he knew that the enemy skirmish line had bent down the hill, cutting their southward advance, and he waved his men down and ran back to Jenkins.
‘Have you got everything?’
‘Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. God, I’m sorry, sir.’
Sharpe hit him on the shoulder. ‘Come on, Parry. Not your fault. Down!’
They went down the hill, the musket balls over their heads, and found cover in the rocks. Tongue’s body would have to stay there, another Rifleman lost in Spain, or was this Portugal? Sharpe did not know, but he thought of the school in the Midlands where Tongue had once taught, appropriately enough, languages, and he wondered if anyone would remember the clever young man with the friendly eyes who took to drink.
‘Sir!’
Knowles was pointing behind and Sharpe rolled over and looked back the way they had come. French skirmishers in faded bluejackets with red epaulettes were angling down the hill behind them. He stayed on his back, facing his men.