But what two thousand men could not do, one hundred might, and Herault’s old elite company of hussars, the men with the black fur colbacks, were mounted on the best horses Herault had been able to find. He had pampered that troop, not just because it was his old company, but because he always needed at least one squadron of cavalry that was mounted as well as any enemy horsemen. And he had foreseen this crisis. He had hoped it would not happen, he had hoped that a miracle might take place and that his two thousand horses would all have the stamina of Bucephalus, but that miracle had not happened, and so it was time for the elite hussars to ride ahead.
Herault summoned the commander of the elite company to his side and gestured back down the struggling column. “You see?”
Captain Pailleterie, his blond pigtails and moustache looking almost white in the moonlight, nodded. “I see, my General, yes.”
“So you know what to do.”
Pailleterie drew his sabre and saluted Herault. “When can we expect you, my general?”
“Midday.”
“I shall have a hot meal ready,” Pailleterie said.
Herault leaned across and embraced the Captain, who was only a year younger than himself. “Bonne chance, mon brave!”
“Who needs luck against a company of dozy Spaniards, eh?” Pailleterie asked, and then he pointed his sabre forward and the elite company rode on alone. And God help them, Herault thought, if any partisans still lingered on the road. “I wish I was going with you,” he called after the company, but they had already vanished. The best of the best, Herault’s elite, was riding to snatch victory. “Onwards!” Herault ordered the rest of the cavalry, “onwards!”
The lucky ones of the three hundred infantrymen were dead. The unlucky had been captured. Some would be roasted over slow fires, some would be skinned alive, some would suffer still worse, and the only mercy for them was that, eventually, they would all die. Herault regretted their fate, but they had served their purpose, for the cavalry were loose in the hills and the partisans were far away.
And the remaining French infantry, all three thousand seven hundred of them, were following fast. The ruse had worked, and the back door of Castile lay ahead.
The moon touched the walls of the farmhouse beyond the river ghostly white. Sharpe had twenty riflemen behind those walls, put there to hold up any French advance down the road. The riflemen could probably stop an attacking column for ten minutes and after that Harper would have to bring them running back to the river where the rest of Sharpe’s riflemen and all his redcoats manned the fort’s parapet or were lined behind the cart which served as a barricade. Sharpe had been tempted to add to the barricade by taking carts and furniture from the villagers, but he had resisted the temptation. The villagers had suffered enough from the war, and they had been welcoming to his men by shyly bringing gifts of olives, eggs and freshly caught fish. The single cart would have to suffice.
“Why would the French come here?” Teresa asked. They were standing on the fort’s parapet.
“If they can retake Salamanca,” Sharpe said, “they cut Wellington off from his supplies. They don’t even need to take the city to do that! Just sit on the road to Ciudad Rodrigo. In a couple of days the supplies will dry up, and Nosey will have to turn round and come back to deal with the buggers. He won’t be best pleased.”
“So we must stop them?”
Sharpe nodded.
“So why don’t you send for reinforcements?”
Sharpe shrugged.
“Because you’re not sure they’re coming?” Teresa asked.
“I can’t be sure,” he said.
“And you’re frightened of looking like a fool?”
“If I raise an alarm,” Sharpe said, “and no crapauds come, they’ll string my guts out and hang their washing on them. I’ll be a quartermaster for the rest of my days! They’ll never trust me again.”
Teresa shook her head. “Richard, you took a French eagle! You crossed the breach at Badajoz! You have pride to spare! So write a request now,” she said.