Sharpe stared at the dark profile. ‘Is that a warning?’
‘Hell, no! I’m just spreading a little gloom in the night.’ There was a trampling of feet in the trench and the two officers had to squeeze in to the side to let stretcher bearers pass, carrying the wounded from the Picurina. The men moaned on the stretchers; one sobbed. Leroy watched them pass and then clapped Sharpe on the shoulder. ‘Our turn next, Sharpe, our turn next.’
CHAPTER 18
‘What do you think?’ Hogan sounded worried.
‘It’s too complicated.’ Sharpe shrugged. ‘Fifty men could do it. You don’t need a whole battalion.’
Hogan nodded, but whether the nod meant agreement was impossible to tell. He looked up at the thick clouds.’ At least the weather’s on our side.’
‘If it doesn’t rain.’
‘It won’t rain.’ Hogan made the statement as if he controlled the weather. ‘But it will be dark.’ He looked over the parapet at the fort which protected the dam. ‘You’re right. It’s too complicated, but the Colonel insists. I wish you were going.’
‘So do I, but the Colonel insists.’ Windham had refused Sharpe’s request. The Rifleman was not to go with the Light Company, but, instead, he was to stay with Colonel Windham. Sharpe grinned at Hogan. ‘I’m his aide-de-camp.’
‘His aide-de-camp?’ Hogan laughed. ‘I suppose that’s a promotion of a sort. What are you supposed to do? Run messages for him?’
‘Something like that. He didn’t want me with the Light Company. He said my presence would embarrass Captain Rymer.’
Hogan shook his head. ‘I just hope your Captain Rymer’s up to it. I really do.’ He looked at his watch, snapped the lid shut. ‘Two hours to darkness.’
The plan sounded simple enough. One Company, the Light Company, was to escort twenty sappers to the dam. The rest of the Battalion was to create a diversion by making a false attack on the fort and, under the cover of the noise, the sappers were to stack their twenty kegs of powder at the dam’s base. It sounded simple, but Sharpe did not trust it. Night attacks, as the army had discovered only four nights before, could lead to confusion, and the whole of Windham’s plan depended on the Light Company reaching the foot of the dam by precisely eleven o’clock. If they were late, and the Colonel would have no way of knowing their progress, the false attack would merely wake up the garrison and put sentries on the alert. Sharpe had suggested to Windham that the false attack was unnecessary, that the Light Company should go alone, but the Colonel had shaken his head. He wanted to lead the Battalion into action, was looking forward to the night’s events, and seemed unworried by Sharpe’s doubts. ‘Of course they’ll make it on time!’
There seemed little reason why not. The Light Company and their sappers did not have far to go. In the darkness they would leave the first parallel and head north for the river. Once on the bank of the Guadiana they would turn to their left and follow a path that led to the Rivillas stream below the castle walls. Their faces would be blackened, their equipment muffled, and they would move silently down into the ravine of the Rivillas and turn left. The most difficult moments would be the approach, upstream, towards the dam. It would be a journey of a hundred and fifty yards, within earshot of Badajoz’s walls, till the men were between the San Pedro bastion and the dam’s fort. It was not a long journey, they had plenty of time to make it, but it would be slowed by the need for absolute silence. Hogan fidgeted with the lid of his watch. It was he who had convinced Wellington that the dam could be blown up, but his scheme was at the mercy of Windham’s implementation. He exchanged his watch for his snuffbox and forced a smile on his face. ‘At least everything else is going well!’
The second parallel was being dug. It was much closer to the walls of Badajoz and, from its cover, new batteries were being made that would bring the siege guns within four hundred yards of the city’s south-east corner where, on the Trinidad bastion, the chipped dent had become a hole exposing the rubble at the wall’s core. The French were sending out work parties at night to repair the damage, while the British kept firing in the hope of killing the workmen. All day and all night the guns fired.