„Cease fire!” a Coldstreamer officer shouted.
A dying horse whinnied. The smoke of muskets and cannon was lost in the rain and the bed of the river was pitiful with the moans of men and beasts who had broken their bones when they fell from the roadway. The dam of dying and dead, of soldiers and horses, was so high that the Cavado was piling up behind them and drying up downstream of them, though a trickle of blood-reddened water escaped from the human spillway. A wounded Frenchman tried to drag himself up from the river and died just as he reached the top of the bank where the Coldstreamer bandsmen were collecting their wounded enemies. The doctors stropped their scalpels on leather belts and took fortifying slugs of brandy. The Guards took the bayonets from their muskets and the gunners rested beside their three-pound cannon.
For the pursuit was over and Soult was gone from Portugal.
Sharpe went headlong down the bluff’s steep escarpment, leaping recklessly between rocks and praying that he would not lose his footing on the soaking grass. The rain was hammering down and thunder was drowning the distant noise of the guns at the Ponte Nova. It was getting darker and darker, twilight and storm combining to throw a hellish gloom across Portugal’s wild northern hills, though it was the sheer intensity of the rain that did most to obscure the bridge, but as Sharpe neared the foot of the bluff, where the ground began to level, he saw that the Saltador was suddenly empty. A riderless horse was being led across the narrow span and the beast had held back the men behind, and then Sharpe saw a hussar leading the horse and Christopher, Williamson and Kate were just behind the saddled beast. A group of infantrymen were walking away from the bridge as Sharpe came from the rain with his drawn sword and they stared at him, astonished, and one man moved to intercept him, but Sharpe told him in two short words what to do and the man, even if he did not speak English, had the good sense to obey.
Then Sharpe was on the Saltador and the hussar leading the horse just gaped at him. Christopher saw him and turned to escape, but more men were already climbing the roadway and so there was no way off the bridge’s other side. „Kill him!” Christopher shouted at both Williamson and the hussar, and it was the Frenchman who obediently began to draw his saber, but Sharpe’s sword hissed in the rain and the man’s sword hand was almost cut off at the wrist and then Sharpe rammed the blade at the hussar’s chest and there was a scream as the cavalryman fell into the Misarella. The horse, terrified by the lightning and by the uncertain footing on the bridge, gave a great whinny and then bolted past Sharpe, almost knocking him off the roadway. Its horseshoes made sparks from the stones, then it was gone and Sharpe faced Christopher and Williamson on the Saltador’s thin crest.
Kate screamed at the sight of the long sword. „Get up the hill!” Sharpe shouted at her. „Move, Kate, move! And you, you bastard, give me my telescope!”
Christopher reached out to stop Kate, but Williamson darted past the Colonel and obstructed his hand, and Kate, seeing safety a few feet away, had the sense to run past Sharpe. Williamson tried to grab her, then saw Sharpe’s sword swinging toward him and he managed to parry the cut with his French musket. The clash of sword and gun drove Williamson back a pace and Sharpe was already following, snarling, the sword flickering out like a snake’s tongue to force Williamson another pace backward and then Christopher shoved the deserter forward again. „Kill him!” he screamed at Williamson and the deserter did his best, swinging the musket like a great club, but Sharpe stepped back from the wild blow, then came forward and the sword seared through the rain to catch Williamson on the side of his head, half severing his ear. Williamson staggered. The wide-brimmed leather hat had taken some of the blade’s sting, but the sheer force of the blow still sent Williamson lurching sideways toward the roadway’s ragged edge and Sharpe was still attacking, this time lunging, and the point of the blade pierced the deserter’s green jacket, jarred on a rib and sent Williamson over the edge. He screamed, then Christopher was alone with Sharpe on the high arched summit of the Saltador.