A chill, damp, hard land, he thought, and no place to send soldiers at Christmas time. “Not a Frog to be seen,” Sharpe said happily, and was about to lower the glass when he saw something move in a cleft of rock on a distant slope. The road ran through the cleft and he held his breath as he stared at the narrow gap.
“What is it?” d’Alembord asked.
Sharpe did not answer. He just gazed at the split in the grey stone from which an army was suddenly appearing. At least it looked like an army. Rank after rank of infantry trudging northwards in dun grey coats. And they were coming from France. He handed the telescope to d’Alembord. “Tell me what you see, Dally.”
D’Alembord aimed the glass, then swore quietly. “A whole brigade, sir.” “Coming from the wrong direction, too,” Sharpe said. Without the telescope he could not see the distant enemy, but he could guess what they were about. The garrison would be escaping on this road and the French brigade had been sent to make sure the frontier was open for them.
“They’ll not make it this far tonight,” Sharpe said. The sun had already sunk beneath the western peaks and the night shadows were stretching fast.
“But they’ll be here tomorrow,” d’Alembord said nervously.
“Aye, tomorrow. Christmas Eve,” Sharpe said.
“An awful lot of them,” d’Alembord said.
“Barrels,” Sharpe answered.
“Barrels, sir?” d’Alembord gazed at Sharpe as though the major had gone mad.
“That tavern in Irati, Dally, has to be full of barrels. I want them here tonight, all of them.”
Because tomorrow there would be an enemy behind and an enemy in front, and a road to hold and a battle to win. At Christmas time.
PART TWO.
GENERAL Maximillien Picard was an unhappy man. His brigade was late. He had expected to be at Irati by midday, but his men had marched like a herd of lame goats. By nightfall, they still had one steep-sided valley to cross and a precipitous hill to climb, and so he punished them by making them bivouac in the valley.
He knew they would hate him for that, but let them. Most were conscripts who needed to be toughened, and a night among the cold rocks would help scour the mother’s milk from their gullets.
The only fuel for fires was a few stunted trees in the hollows where the winter’s first snow had drifted, but most of the conscripts had no idea how to light a fire from damp, tough wood, and so they suffered. Their only food was rings of hard bread they carried on strings about their necks, but at least the stream offered plenty of clean, cold water.
“Another fortnight and it’ll be frozen,” said Picard.
“As bad as Russia,” consented Major Santon, his chief of staff.
“Nothing was as bad as Russia,” Picard said, though in truth he had rather enjoyed the Russian campaign. He was among the few men who had done well, but he was accustomed to success. Not like Colonel Gudin, whose garrison he now marched to rescue. “Gudin’s a useless piece of gristle,” Picard said.
“I never met him.”
‘Let’s hope you meet him tomorrow, but knowing Gudin he’ll mess things up.”
Picard leaned to his fire and lit a pipe. “I knew him way back. He promised well then, but ever since India.” Picard shrugged. “He’s unlucky, that’s what Gudin is, unlucky, and you knew what the Emperor says about luck, it’s the only thing a soldier needs.”
“Luck can turn,” Santon observed.
“Not for Gudin,” Picard said. “The man’s doomed. If the 75th hadn’t taken refuge with him, we’d have left him to rot in Spain.”
Santon looked up the dark northern slope. “Let’s hope the British aren’t waiting for him up there.”
Picard sneered. “Let them. What will they send? One battalion? You think we can’t blast our way through a battalion? We’ll put our grenadiers up front and let them shoot some rosbifs for breakfast. Then, we’ll occupy Irati. What’s there?”
“Nothing,” Santon said. “A few shepherds.”
“So it’s mutton and shepherd girls for Christmas,” Picard said. “A last taste of Spain, eh?”