“I didn’t see you panic.”
“Seeing enemies where there aren’t any,” he admitted.
She squeezed his arm. “At least you are ready for them if they come.”
He grimaced. “But they’re not out there, are they? They’re bloody miles away, tucked up in their beds and I’ve had a sleepless night because of it.”
“You can sleep today,” Teresa said. The eastern sky was ablaze now, banded with clouds that reflected the first sunlight. The olive groves, still in night’s shadows, were dark, but in another few minutes the sun would rise over the hills and Sharpe would stand the company down. Give them an easy day, he thought, for they deserved it. A make and mend day in which they could sew up their uniforms, or just sleep, or perhaps fish in the river.
“Perhaps I will go back to Salamanca today,” Teresa said.
“Leaving me?”
“Just for the day. To visit Antonia.”
Antonia was their daughter, a baby, but she might as well have been an orphan, Sharpe reckoned, her parents were both so busy killing frogs. “If the weather stays nice,” he said, “and the frogs don’t come, you can bring her out here?”
“Why not?” Teresa asked.
The sun slipped above the hills and Sharpe flinched from its dazzling light. The shadows of trees and hedgerows stretched long across the road where no Frenchmen stirred. Mister MacKeon strolled out from the fort and went to the riverbank where he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed into the Tormes. “All that good wine,” Teresa said softly.
Then there was a shout from the bridge, and Sharpe turned, and he heard the hooves and he was unslinging his rifle, but he could not see a damn thing because the sun was so low and it was filling the eastern sky with dazzling light, but coming from the heart of the blinding light were horsemen.
Not from the road, but from the east, from among the gnarled olive trees that had hidden them, and Sharpe shouted a warning, but it was already too late. “Mister Price!”
“Sir!”
“Let them get close!”
But Price misheard, or else panicked, and shouted at the redcoats to fire and the muskets flamed towards the olive groves, but at much too long a range. Then the first rifles fired from the parapet, jetting smoke a dozen feet from the stonework. Sharpe aimed at a horseman close to the bank, pulled the trigger and his target was immediately hidden by smoke as the rifle hammered back into his shoulder. “Teresa,” he shouted, but Teresa was already running down the courtyard stairs to fetch her horse. Sharpe began to reload the rifle and heard the sound of hooves on the bridge stone. Christ, he thought, I’m in the wrong place. Can’t do a damn thing up here! “Daniel!” he shouted at Hagman, the senior rifleman on the parapet.
“Sir?” Hagman was ramming his rifle.
“I’m going down! Don’t get trapped up here!”
“We’ll be all right, sir,” Hagman said stoically. The old poacher had a face like a grave-digger and hair down to his shoulder blades, but he was the best man Sharpe and Harper had.
Sharpe took the stairs four at a time. He had been right all along, but he had also been wrong. He had expected the damned French to come straight down the road, straight into his rifles like lambs to the slaughter, and the buggers had fooled him. The buggers had fooled him!
Muskets banged on the bridge, then other guns sounded. Pistols, Sharpe thought, recognising the crisper tone of the smaller weapons. Someone screamed. Men were shouting. Sharpe landed heavily at the foot of the stairs and ran through the arch.
And saw instantly that the fort was lost. He had failed.
Captain Pailleterie had not even reckoned on the sun’s help, but the God of War was on his side that morning and just before the hussar captain released his men from the concealment of the olive trees the sun slid across the horizon to slash its blinding light into the defenders’ faces.
“Charge!” Pailleterie shouted, and rowelled back his spurs to drive his big black horse straight for the bridge that was now less than a quarter mile away. One last effort from the horse, that was all he wanted, and he spurred her again and saw puffs of smoke appear at the fort’s high parapet, then more smoke showed at the bridge. Bullets flecked the turf, hitting no one. A wagon made a crude barricade on the bridge itself.