rifle to Harper. 'Let him be,' Sharpe said to the redcoats, 'let him be.' He unbuckled his sword belt and threw the weapon to Bullen. 'Keep a watch out of the windows, Mister Bullen!'
'Yes, sir.'
'A good watch! Make sure the men are looking out there, not in here.'
'Let me murder him, sir,' Harper suggested.
'Let's not be unfair to Mister Ferreira, Pat,' Sharpe said. 'He couldn't cope with you. And the last time he tried to deal with me he had to have help. Just you and me, eh?' Sharpe smiled at Ferragus who was flexing his right hand. Sarah was behind the big man and she cocked the musket, grimacing with the force needed to drag back the doghead. The sound of the ratchet made Ferragus glance behind and Sharpe stepped forward and drove his right knuckles into Ferragus's left eye. He felt something give there, the big head jerked back and Sharpe was out of range by the time he had recovered. 'I know you'd like to kill him,' Sharpe said to Sarah, 'but it's not very ladylike. Leave him to me.' He went forward again, aimed a blow at Ferragus's closing left eye and stepped back before he delivered it, moving to his left, making sure Ferragus followed him, and pausing just a heartbeat too long because Ferragus, faster than Sharpe expected, delivered a straight left. It did not travel far, it did not even look particularly powerful, but it struck Sharpe in his bandaged ribs and was like a cannonball's strike, and if he had not already decided to step back he would have been floored by the blow, but his legs were already moving as the pain seared up his ribs. He flicked out his own left hand, aiming again at the swollen eye, but Ferragus swatted it aside, released his left hand again, but Sharpe was safely back now.
Ferragus could see nothing from his left eye, and the pain of it was a flaring red agony in his skull, but he knew he had hurt Sharpe and knew if he could get close he could do more than just hurt the rifleman, who was now stepping back between the wounded redcoats and the big hearth. Ferragus hurried, reckoning to take Sharpe's best blows and then get close enough to murder the English bastard, but Slingsby, drunk as a judge and sitting in the hearth, stuck out his right leg and Ferragus tripped on it and Sharpe was back in his face, the left fist again pulping Ferragus's damaged eye and ramming the heel of his right hand into Ferragus's nose. Something broke there and Ferragus, swatting at Slingsby with his left hand, threw out his right to stop Sharpe, but Sharpe had stepped back again. 'Let him be, Mister Slingsby,' Sharpe said. 'Are your men watching out the windows, Mister Bullen?'
'They are, sir.'
'Make damn sure they are.'
Sharpe was past the wounded men now, in the open space between the front and back windows where no one dared stand for fear of the French bullets, and he backed towards the window facing the yard, heard a bullet whack into the window frame, stabbed a quick left at Ferragus who swayed to let it pass and rushed at Sharpe. Sharpe stepped back, going to Ferragus's left because that was his blind side, and Ferragus turned to face Sharpe who knew he had to take the punishment now and he stepped into the big man's range and drove his fists one after the other into his enemy's belly and it was like punching an oak board. Sharpe knew those blows would not hurt and he did not care because all he wanted to do was drive Ferragus backwards. He rammed his head forward, banging his forehead into the bloody mess of Ferragus's face, and he heaved forward and his head rang as a blow struck him on the side of the skull. His vision went red and black. He pushed again and Ferragus's left hand hit him on the other side of the head and Sharpe knew he could not take more than one other such blow, and he was not even sure he would survive that for his senses were reeling and he gave a last heave, and felt Ferragus jar up against the window sill. Sharpe ducked then, trying to avoid the next blow, which glanced off the top of his head, but even that glancing blow was enough to send a stab of pain down through his skull, but then he felt Ferragus quiver. And quiver again, and now Sharpe staggered back and saw that Ferragus's remaining eye was dull. The big man was looking astonished and Sharpe, through his half daze, slashed out his left hand to hit Ferragus in the throat. Ferragus tried to respond, tried to plant two hammer-like blows into Sharpe's vulnerable ribs, but his broad back was filling the window and it was the first easy target the French had been given since the siege of the farm had begun, and two musket balls struck him and he shook again, then opened his mouth and the blood spilled out. 'Your men aren't watching outside, Mister Bullen!' Sharpe said. A last bullet hit Ferragus, this one at the nape of his neck and he pitched forward like a felled tree.
Sharpe bent to recover his shako, took a deep breath and felt the pain in his ribs. 'You want some advice, Mister Bullen?' Sharpe said.
'Of course, sir.'
'Never fight fair.' He took his sword back. 'Detail two men to escort Major Ferreira and another two to help Lieutenant Slingsby. And those four men carry those bags.' He pointed to the bags that had belonged to Ferragus and his men. 'And what's inside, Mister Bullen, belongs to Miss Fry, so make sure the thieving bastards keep the bags buckled.'
'I will, sir.'
'And maybe,' Sharpe said to Sarah, 'you'll be kind enough to give Jorge some coins? He has to pay for that boat.'
'Of course I will.'
'Good!' Sharpe said, then turned to Harper. 'Is everyone changed?'
'Almost, sir.'
'Get on with it!' It took another moment, but finally every rifleman, even Harper, was in a red jacket, though the largest red coat looked ludicrously small on the Irishman. Sharpe changed coats with Lieutenant Bullen and hoped the French would really mistake the riflemen for men with muskets. He had not made the men change their breeches because he reckoned that would take too much time, and a sharp-eyed voltigeur might wonder why the redcoats had dark-green trousers, but he would risk that. 'What we're going to do,' he told the company, 'is rescue a battalion.'
'We're going out?' Bullen sounded alarmed.
'No, they are.' Sharpe pointed to the three Portuguese civilians. He took his rifle from Harper and cocked it. 'Out!'
The three men hesitated, but they had seen what the rifleman had done to their master and they were terrified of him. 'Tell them to run to the square,' Sharpe said to Vicente. 'Tell them they'll be safe there.' Vicente looked dubious, suspecting that what Sharpe was doing was against the rules of war, but then he looked into Sharpe's face and decided not to argue. Nor did the three men. They were taken to the front door and, when they hesitated, Sharpe leveled his rifle.
They ran.
Sharpe had not lied to them. They were fairly safe and the farther they went from the farmhouse, the safer they became. None of the French reacted at first, for the last thing they had expected was for anyone to break from the house, and it was a full four or five seconds before the first musket fired, but the voltigeurs were shooting at running men, men going away up the farm track, and the bullets went wild. After fifty yards the three men cut across the marshland, and the going was much harder for them, but they were also farther away from the French who, frustrated by their escape, tried to close the distance. They moved out from behind the farm buildings, going to the edge of the marsh, aiming their muskets at the three men who were trying to pick a path through the morass. 'Rifles,' Sharpe said, 'start killing those bastards.'
The French, by running from cover, had made themselves easy targets for rifles shooting from the farm windows. There were a few seconds of panic among the voltigeurs, then they ran back to the sides of the farm. Sharpe waited as the riflemen reloaded. 'They won't do that again,' he said, then told them what he planned.
The red-jacketed riflemen were to leave the farm first and, like the three Portuguese, were to run as fast as they could up the track and then angle across the swamp towards the flooded stream. 'Except we're going to stop by the dungheap out front,' Sharpe told them, 'and give the others some covering fire.' Major Ferreira, his escorts, Slingsby, Sarah and Joana would go next, shepherded by Vicente, and finally Lieutenant Bullen would bring the rest of the company out. 'You're our rearguard,' Sharpe told Bullen. 'You hold off the voltigeurs. Proper skirmish work, Lieutenant. Fight in pairs, nice and calm. The enemy will see green jackets so they won't be eager to close, so you should be fine. Just retreat after us, get into the marsh, and go for the battalion. We'll all have to wade the stream and we'll drown if it's too bloody deep, but if those three make it then we know it's safe. That's what they're doing, showing us the way.'
The three Portuguese were halfway across the boggy ground now, splashing into the receding floodwaters, and their flight had proved that once they were away from the farmhouse they were in no real danger from the
