Seven o’clock. A half-hour only left and Sharpe and the other guides – all except the Rifleman were Engineers -joined their battalions. The Forlorn Hope of the Light Division was half composed of Riflemen, hoping for the laurel-wreath badge. They grinned at Sharpe and joked with him. They wanted the thing done and over in the way that a man facing the surgeon’s knife hastened the fatal clock. They would move at half-past seven and by half-past nine the issue would be decided. Those that lived would be drunk by ten and the wine would be free. They waited, sitting on the ground with their rifles between their knees, and prayed the clock on. Let it be over, let it be over, and darkness came and the guns boomed on, and the orders had to come.
Half-past seven, and the orders still not given. There was a delay and no one knew why. The troops fidgeted, grew angry against unseen staff officers, cursed the bloody army and the bloody Generals because in the darkness the French would be swarming on the breaches, preparing traps for the British! The guns stopped firing, as they should have done, but there were still no orders and the men waited and imagined the French working on the new breach. Eight o’clock sounded, and then the half, and horses galloped in the darkness. Men shouted for information. There were still no orders, but rumored explanations. The ladders had been lost. The hay bags were missing and they cursed the Engineers, the lousy army, and the French worked on.
Nine o’clock, and murder was being prepared in the breaches. Delay it, Sharpe thought, let it be tomorrow! The attack should go in on the heels of the guns, in the minutes of darkness when there was a trace of light so that the battalions would not get lost on the glacis. Still the time ticked away and still they waited and still the enemy were given precious minutes to work on the defences. Then there was a stir in the darkness. Orders, at last, and there would be no delay.
Go, go, go, go, go. The ranks moved with the clinking of metal and thumping of rifle and musket stocks. There was a sense of relief to be moving in the darkness, in the bleak, total darkness, and the six thousand five hundred men, English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Portuguese moved against the city. The guides ordered quiet and the orders went back, but they were moving at last and no one could silence the thousands of boots that scraped and scuffed by the road that led between the flood and the Pardaleras Fort. Far to the north, the Third Division filed over the bridge by the broken mill that spanned the Rivillas and the air was filled with the croaking of frogs and the fears of men. The city waited in darkness. Silence in Badajoz.
The Lieutenant who was leading the Forlorn Hope touched Sharpe’s elbow. ‘Are we too far to the left?’
They had lost all touch with the Fourth Division. It was dark, utterly dark, and there was no sound from the fort or from the city. Sharpe whispered back. ‘We’re all right.’
Still there was no firing, no sound from the city or from the Pardaleras that was now behind them. Silence. Sharpe wondered if the attack would be a surprise to the French. He wondered if perhaps the enemy had been fooled by the delay, perhaps the troops had relaxed, were waiting for another day and if the greatest gift the gods can give a soldier, surprise, had been given to the British. They were close now. The dim, dark shadow of the fortress blotted out half the sky. It was huge in the night, vast, unimaginably strong, and the slope of the glacis was beneath Sharpe’s feet and he paused as the sixty men of the Forlorn Hope aligned themselves and thrust their ladders and hay-bags to the front. The Lieutenant scraped his sword from the scabbard. ‘Ready.’
There was firing from the right, far off, where the Third Division had been spotted. It sounded miles away, like someone else’s battle, and it was difficult to believe that the sound had anything to do with the dark glacis leading to the fortress in front. Yet the sound would alert all the French sentries and Sharpe hurried up the slope, angling to his left, and still there was no sound from walls or bastions. He tried to make sense of the shadows, to recognize the shapes he had seen just three nights before, and his footsteps sounded loud on the grass and he could hear the panting of men behind him. Surely the French would hear! At any moment, he almost cringed at the reality of the imagination, the grapeshot would stab down from the walls. He saw the corner of a bastion, recognized the Santa Maria, and a relief went through him as he knew he had brought the Hope to the right place.