And they were late, for the mist was being silvered by the first hint of the false dawn. Sharpe could see Harper beside him, he could even see the beads of moisture on the peak of Harper’s shako. He had lost his own shako in the battle at the farm, and now wore a Cazador’s forage cap instead. The cap was a pale grey and Sharpe was seized with the sudden irrational knowledge that the light-coloured cloth would make his head a target for some French marksman on the hill above. He snatched it off and threw it into some brambles. He could feel the thump of his heart. His belly was tender and his mouth dry.
The blacksmith, going very cautiously now, led the Riflemen across a rough pasture and into a grove of elm trees that grew at the hill’s summit. The bare branches dripped and the mist wavered in the darkness. Sharpe could smell a fire, though he could not see it. He wondered if it belonged to one of the French guardposts and the thought of the waiting sentries made him feel horribly alone and vulnerable. The dawn was coming. This was the moment when he should be attacking, but the mist masked the landmarks which Vivar had coached him to expect. To his right there should be a church, to his left the loom of the city, and he should not be on a hilltop, but in a deep ravine which would hide the Riflemen’s approach.
Sharpe, lacking those landmarks, supposed there was still further to go, that they yet had to drop down into the ravine, but the blacksmith checked under the trees and, in dumbshow, indicated that the city lay to their left. Sharpe did not respond, and the guide plucked again at the Rifleman’s green sleeve and pointed to the left. “Santiago! Santiago!”
“Jesus bloody wept.” Sharpe dropped to one knee.
“Sir?” Harper knelt beside him.
“We’re in the wrong bloody place!”
“God save Ireland.” The Sergeant’s voice was scarce above a whisper. The guide, unable to gain an understandable response from the greenjackets, disappeared into the darkness.
Sharpe swore again . He was in the wrong place. That mistake worried and irritated him, but what angered him more was the knowledge that Vivar would say it was because the spirits of the stream, the xanes, had been slighted. God damn it, but that was nonsense! All the same Sharpe had gone astray, he was late, and he did not know where Vivar’s other troops were. The fears took hold of him. This was not how an attack should start! There should be bugles and banners in the mist! Instead he was alone, lost, far ahead of the Cazadores and volunteers. He told himself he had known this would happen! He had seen it happen before, in India, where good troops, forced to a night attack, had become lost, frightened, and beaten.
“What do we do, sir?” Harper asked.
Sharpe did not answer, because he did not know. He was tempted to say they would pull back in an abandonment of the whole attack, but then a shape moved to his left, boots rustled the frosted grass, and the blacksmith re-appeared in the mist with Bias Vivar at his side. “You’ve come too far,” Vivar whispered.
“God damn it, I know!”
The blacksmith was evidently trying to explain how the Riflemen had risked the mischief of the xanes, but Vivar could spare no time for such regrets. He waved the man away and knelt beside Sharpe. “It’s two hundred paces to the church. That way.” Vivar pointed to his left. The church should have been to their right.
Vivar’s force had curled around the city in the night and now approached from the north. The city’s northern wall had long been destroyed, its stone taken to build the newer houses which spread beyond the line of mediaeval fortifications along the road which led to Corunna. He had chosen that road for his approach, not only because it lacked the barrier of a mediaeval wall, but also because the guards might think that any approaching troops were Frenchmen coming from Soult’s army.
The church, which served the newer suburb, had been turned into a French guardpost. It lay three hundred yards outside the main defence line that was composed of barricades. Every road into the city had such a guardhouse, intended to give an early alarm should Santiago be assaulted. The sentries of such posts might be killed in an attack, but the noise of their sacrifice would serve as a warning to the city’s main defences. “I think,” Vivar whispered to Sharpe, “that God is with us. He’s sent the mist.”