Sharpe shook his head. He understood, but his pride was hurt. ‘I want the Hope, sir, I want it. Ask for me.’
Hogan took Sharpe’s elbow and turned him so they were both looking eastwards along the river towards the city. ‘Do you know what it’s like, Richard? It’s bloody impossible!’ He pointed to the great stone bridge that carried the road to the city. ‘We can’t attack there. Anyone trying to cross that bridge will be shredded. So, try the east wall. They’ve damned the stream and it’s one bloody great lake. We’d need the navy to cross that, unless we can blow up the dam and they’ve built a fort to stop us doing that. There’s the castle, of course.’ Hogan’s words were urgent, almost bitter. ‘If you feel like climbing a hundred feet of rock and then scaling a forty foot wall, and all the time dodging the grapeshot, you’re welcome.’ He pointed again. ‘So there’s the west wall. Looks easy enough, doesn’t it?’ It did not look easy. Even at four miles Sharpe could see the huge bastions, jutting like miniature castles, that protected the wall. Hogan’s accent was becoming more pronounced as it always did when the Engineer spoke with passion. ‘It looks too easy! They want us to attack there. Why? My guess is that it’s mined. There’s more bloody powder under that glacis than Guy Fawkes dreamed of. We attack there and we give St Peter his busiest day since Agincourt!’ He was really angry now, seeing with his Engineer’s eye the problems, turning the problems into blood. ‘That leaves the south wall. We have to take at least one outlying fort, perhaps two, and then get through the walls. Do you know how thick they are? What was the distance from the brink of the ditch to the back of the walls at Ciudad Rodrigo?’
Sharpe thought back. “Thirty yards? Fifty in some places.’
‘Aye.’ Hogan pointed back to Badajoz. ‘A hundred yards, at least, and more in some places. And that ditch is a bastard, Richard, a real bastard. It’ll take a minute to cross it, at least, and they have all the flank fire they’ll ever need, and more. That wall, Richard, is big. Big! You could put Ciudad Rodrigo’s wall in that ditch and you wouldn’t even see it. Don’t you understand? It is a killer.’ He said the words distinctly, trying to convince Sharpe. Hogan sighed, ‘Jesus! We can starve them out. We can hope they die laughing, we can hope they get the plague, but I tell you, Richard, I don’t know if we can get through a breach.’
Sharpe stared at the great fortress in the slanting, hissing rain. ‘We’ll have to.’
‘And do you know how? By throwing so many poor bastards into the fight that the French simply can’t kill them all. It’s the only way and I don’t like it.’
Sharpe turned back. ‘The poor bastards will still need a Forlorn Hope.’
‘And there has to be a bloody fool to lead it, I suppose, and you’re proving a fool! For God’s sake, Richard, why do you want the Hope?’
Sharpe’s anger flared. ‘Because it’s better than this humiliation! I’m a soldier, not a bloody clerk! I fetch bloody, forage, count bloody shovels, and take punishment drills. It’s yes, sir, no, sir, can I dig your latrine, sir, and it’s not bloody soldiering!’
Hogan glared at him. ‘It is bloody soldiering! What the hell else do you think soldiering is?” The two men were facing each other across the mud. ‘Do you think we can win a war without forage? Or without shovels? Or, God help us, without latrines? That is soldiering! Just because you’ve been allowed to swan about like a bloody pirate for years doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take your turn at the real work.’
‘Listen, sir. ‘ Sharpe was close to shouting. ‘When they tell us to climb those bloody walls, you’ll be glad there are some bloody pirates in the ditch and not just bloody clerks!’
‘And what will you do when there are no more wars to fight?’
‘Start another bloody one.’ Sharpe began to laugh. ‘Sir.’
‘If you survive this one.’ Hogan shook his head, his anger dying as quickly as it had flared. ‘Good God, man! Your woman’s inside. And your child.’