attack on the enemy’s flank. Thank God, he was thinking as he rode out of the trees, that the hill was his.
Except it was not. The Cerro del Puerco had been abandoned and, even as Sir Thomas had ridden south, the first French battalions were climbing the hill’s eastern slopes. The enemy now held the Cerro del Puerco and the only allied troops in sight were the five hundred men of the Gibraltar Flankers. Instead of holding the high ground, they were forming into a column of march at the hill’s foot. “Browne! Browne!” Sir Thomas shouted as he cantered toward the column. “Why are you here? Why?”
“Because I’ve got half the French army climbing the damned hill, Sir Thomas.”
“Where are the Spaniards?”
“They ran.”
Sir Thomas stared at Browne for a heartbeat. “Well, it’s a bad business, Browne,” he said, “but you must instantly turn around again and attack.”
Major Browne’s eyes widened. “You want me to attack half their army?” he asked incredulously. “I saw six battalions and a battery of artillery coming! I’ve got only five hundred thirty-six muskets.” Browne, deserted by the Spaniards, had watched the mass of infantry and cannon approaching the hill, and had decided that retreat was better than suicide. There were no other British troops within sight, he had no promises of reinforcement, and so he had led his Gibraltar Flankers north, off the hill. Now he was being told to go back, and he took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for the ordeal. “If we must,” he said, stoically accepting his fate, “then we will.”
“You must,” Sir Thomas said, “because I need the hill. I’m sorry, Browne, I need it. But General Dilkes is coming. I’ll bring him up to you myself.”
Browne turned to his adjutant. “Major Blakeney! Skirmish order! Back up the hill! Drive the devils away!”
“Sir Thomas?” an aide interrupted, then pointed to the hill’s summit, where the first French battalions were already appearing. Blue coats were showing at the skyline, a great array of blue coats ready to come down the slope and scour their way along the pinewood.
Sir Thomas gazed at the French. “Light bobs won’t stop them, Browne,” he said. “You’ll have to give them volley fire.”
“Close order!” Browne shouted at his men who had started to deploy into skirmish order.
“They have a battery of cannon up there, Sir Thomas,” the aide said quietly.
Sir Thomas ignored the news. It did not matter if the French had all the emperor’s artillery on the hilltop, they still had to be attacked. They had to be thrown off the hill, and that meant the only available troops must climb the slope and make an assault that would hold the French in place until General Dilkes’s guardsmen came to assist them. “God be with you, Browne,” Sir Thomas said too quietly for the major to hear. Sir Thomas knew he was sending Browne’s men to their deaths, but they had to die to give the Guards time to arrive. He sent an aide to summon Dilkes’s men. “He’s to ignore my last order,” Sir Thomas said, “and to bring his men here with the utmost speed. The utmost speed! Go!”
Sir Thomas had done what he could. The coastline between the villages of Barrosa and Bermeja was two miles of confusion into which two French attacks were developing, one against the pinewood while the other had already captured the crucial hill. Sir Thomas, knowing that the enemy was on the brink of victory, must gamble everything on his men’s ability to fight. Both his brigades would be outnumbered, and one must attack uphill. If either failed, the whole army would be lost.
Behind him, in the open heath beyond the pinewood, the first rifles and muskets fired.
And Browne marched his men back up the hill.
CHAPTER 11
SHARPE AND HIS RIFLEMEN, still accompanied by Captain Galiana, walked through the Spanish army that mostly seemed to be resting on the beach. Galiana dismounted when they reached the village of Bermeja and led his horse through the hovels. General Lapena and his aides were there, sheltering from the sun under a framework on which fishing nets hung to dry. There was a watchtower in the village, and its summit was crowded with Spanish officers staring south with telescopes. The sound of musketry came from that direction, but it was very muffled, and no one in the Spanish army seemed particularly interested. Galiana remounted when they left the village. “Was that General Lapena?” Sharpe asked.
“It was,” Galiana said sourly. He had walked the horse to avoid being noticed by the general.
“Why doesn’t he like you?” Sharpe asked.
“Because of my father.”
“What did your father do?”
“He was in the army, like me. He challenged Lapena to a duel.”
“And?”
“Lapena wouldn’t fight. He is a coward.”
“What was the argument about?”
“My mother,” Galiana said curtly.
South of Bermeja the beach was empty except for some fishing boats drawn up on the sand. The boats were painted blue, yellow, and red and had large black eyes on their bows. The musketry was still muffled, but Sharpe could see smoke rising beyond the pine trees that ran thick behind the dunes. They walked in silence until, perhaps half a mile beyond the village, Perkins claimed to have seen a whale.
“What you saw,” Slattery said, “was your bloody rum ration. You saw it and drank it.”
“I saw it, I did sir!” He appealed to Sharpe, but Sharpe did not care what Perkins had or had not seen and ignored him.
“I saw a whale once,” Hagman put in. “It were dead. Stinking.”
Perkins was gazing out to sea again, hoping to see whatever it was he had taken to be a whale. “Maybe,” Harris suggested, “it was backed like a weasel?” They all stared at him.
“He’s being clever again,” Harper said loftily. “Just ignore him.”
“It’s Shakespeare, Sergeant.”
“I don’t care if it’s the Archangel bloody Gabriel, you’re just showing off.”
“There was a Sergeant Shakespeare in the 48th,” Slattery said, “and a proper bastard he was. He choked to death on a walnut.”
“You can’t die from a walnut!” Perkins said.
“He did. His face turned blue. Good thing too. He was a bastard.”
“God save Ireland,” Harper said. His words were not prompted by Sergeant Shakespeare’s demise, but by a cavalcade storming down the beach toward them. The baggage mules, which had been retreating down the beach rather than on the track in the pinewood, had bolted.
“Stand still!” Sharpe said. They stood in a tight group as the mules split to pass on either side. Captain Galiana shouted at passing muleteers, demanding to know what had happened, but the men kept going.
“I didn’t know you were in the 48th, Fergus,” Hagman said.
“Three years, Dan. Then they went to Gibraltar, only I was sick so I stayed at the barracks. Almost died, I did.”
Harris snatched at a passing mule that evaded his grip. “So how did you join the Rifles?” he asked.
“I was Captain Murray’s servant,” Slattery said, “and when he joined the Rifles, he took me with him.”
“What’s an Irishman doing in the 48th?” Harris wanted to know. “They’re from Northamptonshire.”
“They recruited in Wicklow,” Slattery said.
Captain Galiana had succeeded in stopping a muleteer and got from the fugitive a confused tale of an overwhelming French attack. “He says the enemy has taken that hill,” Galiana said, pointing to the Cerro del Puerco.
Sharpe took out his telescope and, again using Perkins as a rest, he stared at the hilltop. He could see a French battery at the crest and at least four blue-coated battalions. “They’re up there,” he confirmed. He turned the glass toward the village between the hill and the sea and saw Spanish cavalry there. There were also Spanish infantry, two or three thousand of them, but they had marched a small way north and were now resting among
