'There are never enough horses!' Massena snapped. 'So use men. Use these damned peasants.' He waved at the window, indicating the town. 'Harness them, whip them, make them work!'
'And the wounded?' Junot asked in alarm. Wagons would be needed to carry the wounded southwards if they were to stay with the army and thus be protected from the Portuguese irregulars.
'They can stay here,' Massena decided.
'And who guards them?'
'I shall find men,' Massena said, impatient with such quibbles. What mattered was that he had food, the enemy was retreating, and Lisbon was only a hundred miles to the south. The campaign was half complete, but from now on his army would be marching on good roads, so this was no time for caution, it was time to attack.
And in two weeks, he thought, he would have Lisbon and the war would be won.
Sharpe had no sooner gone into the street than a man tried to snatch Sarah away from his side. She hardly looked beguiling for her crumpled black dress was torn at the hem, her hair had come loose and her face was dirty, yet the man seized her arm, then protested wildly as Sharpe pinned him against the wall with his rifle butt. Sarah spat at the man and added a couple of words which she hoped were rude enough to shock him. 'You speak French?' Sharpe asked Sarah, careless that the French soldier could overhear him.
'French, Portuguese and Spanish,' she said.
Sharpe thumped the man in the groin for a remembrance, then led his companions past the bodies of two men, both Portuguese, who lay on the cobbles. One had been eviscerated and his blood trickled ten feet down the gutter from his corpse which was being sniffed by a three-legged dog. A window broke above them, showering them with glittering shards. A woman screamed, and the bells in one of the churches began a terrible cacophony. None of the French soldiers took any notice of them other than to ask if they had finished with the two girls, and only Sarah and Vicente understood those questions. The street became more crowded as they went uphill and got closer to where, rumor said, there was food enough for a multitude. Sharpe and Harper used their size to bully past soldiers, then, reaching the houses that stood opposite Ferragus's warehouse, Sharpe went into the first door and climbed the stairs. A woman, blood on her face and clutching a baby, shrank from them on the landing, then Sharpe was up the last flight of stairs and discovered, to his relief, that the attic here was like the first, a long room that overlaid the separate houses beneath. There had been a score of students living up here, now their beds were overturned, all except one on which a French soldier slept. He woke as their footsteps sounded loud on the boards and, seeing the two women, rolled off the bed. Sharpe was opening a window onto the roof and turned as the man held out his hands to Sarah who smiled at him and then, with surprising force, rammed the muzzle of her French musket into his belly. The man let out his breath in a gasp, bent over, and Joana hit him with the stock of her musket, swinging it in a haymaker's blow to crack the butt onto his forehead, and the man, without a sound, collapsed backwards. Sarah grinned, discovering abilities she had not suspected.
'Stay here with the women,' Sharpe told Vicente, 'and be ready to run like hell.' He was going to attack the dragoons from above, and he reckoned the cavalrymen would come after their assailants by using the stairs closest to the warehouse, ignorant that the attic gave access to four separate stairwells in the four houses. Sharpe planned to go back the way he had come, and by the time the dragoons reached the attic he would be long gone. 'Come on, Pat.'
They clambered out onto the roof, the same roof that they had reconnoitered earlier, and, by following the gutter behind the parapet, they reached the gable end from which, leaning over, Sharpe could again see the horsemen three floors below him. He took the volley gun from Harper. 'There's an officer down there, Pat,' he said. 'He's on the left, mounted on a gray horse. When I give the word, shoot him.'
Harper put some pigeon dung into his rifle's barrel and rammed it down to hold the bullet in place, then he edged forward and peered down into the street. There were dragoons at either end of the short roadway, using their horses' weight and the threat of their long swords to hold the hungry infantry at bay. The officer was just behind the left-hand group, easily distinguished because of the fur-lined pelisse that hung from his left shoulder and because his green saddle cloth had no pouch attached. None of the dragoons looked upwards, why should they? Their job was to guard the street, not watch the rooftops, and Harper aimed the rifle downwards and pulled back the cock.
Sharpe stood beside him with the volley gun. 'Ready?'
'I'm ready.'
'You fire first,' Sharpe said. Harper had to be sure of his aim, but there was no need for Sharpe to aim the volley gun, for it had no accuracy. It was just a slaughtering machine, its seven bullets spreading like canister from the clustered barrels.
Harper lined the sights on the officer's brass helmet which had a brown plume trailing from its crest. The gray horse stirred and the Frenchman calmed it, then looked behind him and just then Harper fired. The bullet cracked open the helmet so that a jet of blood sprayed briefly upwards, then more blood flooded from beneath the helmet's rim as the officer toppled slowly sideways, and just then Sharpe fired into the other dragoons, the noise of the volley gun sounding like a cannon shot as it echoed from the warehouse's facade. Smoke filled the air. A horse screamed. 'Run!' Sharpe said.
They went back the way they had come, through the window and down the far stairs, with Vicente and the women following. Sharpe could hear uproar at the other end of the house. Men were shouting in alarm, horses' hooves were loud on cobbles, and then he was at the front door and, with the two guns slung on his shoulder, he pushed into the crowd. Sarah held on to his belt. The infantrymen were surging forward, but over their heads Sharpe could see dismounted dragoons shoving into the far house. As far as Sharpe could see only one man had stayed in his saddle, and that man was holding a dozen reins, but the horses were being pushed aside by the rush of infantry who suddenly understood that the warehouse was unguarded.
The dragoons had done exactly what Sharpe had wanted, what he thought they would do. Their officer was dead, others of them were wounded and, lacking leadership, their only thought was to take revenge on the men who had attacked them, and so they swarmed into the house and left the warehouse unguarded except for a handful of dragoons who were powerless to stem the surge of men who charged at the doors. A dragoon sergeant tried to stop them by swinging the flat of his sword at leading men, but he was hauled from the saddle, his horse was shoved aside, and the great doors were dragged open. A huge cheer sounded. The remaining dragoons let the men run past, intent only on saving themselves and their horses.
'It's going to be chaos in there,' Sharpe said to Harper. 'I'm going in alone.'
'To do what?'
'What I have to do,' Sharpe said. 'You and Captain Vicente look after the girls.' He pushed them into a doorway. 'I'll join you here.' Sharpe would have preferred to take Harper with him, for the Irishman's size and strength would be huge assets in the crowded warehouse, but the biggest danger would be that the five of them would be separated in the dark, confused interior, and it was better that Sharpe worked alone. 'Wait for me,' Sharpe said, then gave Harper his pack and his rifle and, armed only with his sword and the unloaded volley gun, he bullied and shoved his way up the street, past the dead officer's frightened horse and so, at last, into the warehouse. The entrance was crammed, and, once inside, he found men hauling down boxes, sacks and barrels, making it hard to get through, but Sharpe used the butt of the volley gun, savagely clearing the way. An artilleryman tried to stop him, throwing a wild punch, and Sharpe drove the man's teeth in with the brass-bound stock, then he scrambled across a sprawling mound of sacks pulled down from one of the great heaps, and found himself in a relatively uncrowded area.
From here he could work his way to the edge of the warehouse where he remembered seeing the supplies piled on the two carts parked beside the great timber wall that divided this warehouse from the next. Few men were back here, for the French were interested in food, not candles and buttons and nails and horseshoes.
One man was already at one of the wagons, sorting through the goods on its bed, and Sharpe saw he already had a full sack, presumably stuffed with food, and so he clouted the man on the back of the neck with the volley gun, kicked him when he was down, stamped on his face when he tried to move, then looked inside the sack. Biscuits, salt beef and cheese. He would take that, for all of them were hungry, and so he put the sack aside, then drew his sword and used the blade to break open two barrels of lamp oil. It was whale oil, and it gave off a rank stench as it spilled from the broken staves and dripped down to the wagon bed. There were some bolts of cloth at the far end of the wagon and he climbed up to discover what they were made of and discovered, as he
