“The baby is sideways,” he told Gudin. “It should be headfirst.”
“If you cut her, she’ll die,” said Gudin.
“So?” The surgeon despised soldiers’ women. “She’ll die if I don’t cut her.”
“Just keep her alive as far as Irati,” Gudin said, “and there you can operate.”
“If she lives that long,” the surgeon muttered, and just then a dull rumble sounded from the mountains ahead. It sounded like distant thunder, but there were no storm clouds over the peaks and a second after the rumble had faded the small wind brought the crackle of musketry.
“You see,” Caillou spurred back down the column with a look of spiteful triumph. “There’s enemy ahead.”
“We don’t know that,” Gudin said. “That sound could have come from anywhere.”
“They’re waiting for us,” Caillou said, pointing dramatically towards the hills. “And if we’d abandoned the women, we’d be there already. It’s your doing, Gudin. I promise if my Eagle is lost, the Emperor will know it’s your doing.”
“You must tell the Emperor whatever you wish,” Gudin said in resignation.
“So leave the women here now. Leave them,” Caillou insisted. “March to the guns, Colonel. Get there before dark.”
“I will not leave the women,” Gudin said. “I will not leave them. And we shall be at Irati long before nightfall. It is not so far now.”
Colonel Gudin sighed and walked on. His heels were blistering but he would not retrieve his horse, for he knew the lieutenant’s need was greater than his.
Nor would he abandon his men’s women, and so he kept going and tried to blot out Caillou’s nagging voice and the awful, haunting screams of the pregnant girl.
He was not a prayerful man, but as he climbed towards the distant sounds of the guns, Gudin did pray. He prayed that God would send him a victory, just one small victory so that his career would not end in failure or a firing squad. A Christmas miracle, that was all he asked, just one small miracle to set against a lifetime of defeat.
GENERAL Maximillien Picard bulled his way through the panicked troops to stand at the mouth of the small valley. He could see the dead grenadiers, the smashed barrels and, beyond them, the other barrels waiting in the road. A rifle bullet snapped past his head, but Picard ignored the threat. He was charmed. There was no one alive who could spoil that luck.
“Santon!” he snapped.
“Sir?” Major Santon resisted the urge to crouch.
“One company up here. They are to destroy the barrels, with volley fire, you understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And while they’re doing that, send the voltigeurs up the slopes.”
The general waved to where puffs of white smoke betrayed the position of the riflemen. He did not know they were riflemen, and if he had he might have shown more caution, but he believed the ambush had been set by partisans. But whoever it was, they would soon be chased out of their lairs by the French light infantry.
“Do it now!” Picard snapped. “We don’t have all day.”
He turned away and a bullet plucked at his cloak, flicking it out like a banner caught by the wind. Picard turned back, looked to find the newest patch of musket smoke, and lined a finger to it. “Bastards,” he said as he walked away, “bastards.”
Who would now get a lesson for Christmas.
“BUGLER!” Sharpe called, and the thirteen-year-old boy came running out of the battalion to stand behind his major. “Sound the retreat,” Sharpe ordered, and saw Patrick Harper lift a quizzical eyebrow. “The Frogs will send their voltigeurs up the valley sides,” Sharpe explained. “No point in our riflemen hanging around while they do that. The lads have done the damage.”
The bugler took a deep breath, then blew hard. The call was a triple call of nine notes, the first eight stuttering on one note, the last flying high up the scale. The sound of the bugle echoed from the distant hills and Sharpe, gazing through his telescope, saw the cloaked French general turn back.
“Again, lad,” Sharpe told the bugler.
The bugle call was sending two messages. First, it was telling the riflemen to abandon their positions and climb back to the ridge, but it was also telling the French that they faced an enemy more formidable than partisans. They were facing trained infantry, veteran troops, and when Sharpe was certain that the Frenchman was staring up at the ridge in an effort to catch sight of the bugler, he turned and shouted at the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers.