Vicente’s estimate of two days was ruined by the weather and they spent the next night high in the hills, half protected from the rain by the great boulders, and in the morning they walked on and Sharpe saw how the river valley had nearly narrowed to nothing. By mid-morning they were overlooking Salamonde and then, looking back up the valley where the last of the morning mist was vanishing, they saw something else.
They saw an army. It came in a swarm along the road and in the fields either side of the road, a great spread of men and horses in no particular order, a horde that was trying to escape from Portugal and from the British army that was now pursuing them from Braga. „We’ll have to hurry,” Hogan said.
„It’ll take them hours to get up that road,” Sharpe said, nodding toward the village that was built where the valley finally narrowed into a defile from where the road, instead of running on level land, twisted beside the river into the hills. For the moment the French could spread themselves in fields and march with a broad front, but once past Salamonde they were restricted to the narrow and deep-rutted road. Sharpe borrowed Hogan’s good telescope and stared down at the French army. Some units, he could see, marched in good order, but most were straggling loosely. There were no guns, wagons or carriages, so that if Marshal Soult did manage to escape he would have to crawl back into Spain and explain to his master how he had lost everything of value. „There must be twenty, thirty thousand down there,” he said in wonderment as he handed back Hogan’s glass. „It’ll take them the best part of the day to get through that village.
„But they’ve got the devil on their heels,” Hogan pointed out, „and that encourages a man to swiftness.”
They pressed on. A weak sun at last lit the pale hills, though gray showers fell to north and south. Behind them the French were a great dark mass pressing up against the valley’s narrow end where, like grains of sand trickling through an hourglass, they streamed through Salamonde. Smoke rose from the village as the passing troops plundered and burned.
The French road to safety began to climb now. It followed the defile made by the white-watered Cavado which twisted out of the hills in great loops and sometimes leaped down series of precipices in misted waterfalls. A squadron of dragoons led the French retreat, riding ahead to smell out any partisans who might try to ambush the vast column. If the dragoons saw Hogan and his men high on the northern hills they made no effort to reach them for the riflemen and Portuguese soldiers were too far away and much too high, and then the French had other things to worry about for, late in the afternoon, the dragoons arrived at the Ponte Nova.
Sharpe was already above the Ponte Nova, gazing down at the bridge. It was here that the French retreat might be stopped, for the tiny village that clung to the high ground just beyond the bridge bristled with men and, on first seeing the Ponte Nova from high in the hills, Hogan had been jubilant. „We’ve done it!” he said. „We’ve done it!” But then he trained his telescope on the bridge and his good mood died. „They’re ordenanqa,” he said, „not a proper uniform there.” He gazed for another minute. „There’s not a single bloody gun,” he said bitterly, „and the bloody fools haven’t even destroyed the bridge.”
Sharpe borrowed Hogan’s glass to stare at the bridge. It possessed two hefty stone abutments, one on each bank, and the river was spanned by two great beams over which a wooden roadway had once been laid. The ordenanqa, presumably not wanting to rebuild the bridge entirely once the French were defeated, had removed the plank roadway, but left the two enormous beams in place. Then, at the edge of the village on the bridge’s eastern side, they had dug trenches from which they could smother the half-dismantled bridge with musket fire. „It might serve,” Sharpe grunted.
„And what would you do if you were the French?” Hogan asked.