Sharpe's Havoc

but Hogan would not hear of it. The enemy, he said, would put dragoons across the Cavado as soon as the bridge was repaired and the road was no place to be caught by horsemen, and so they stayed in the high ground that became ever more rugged, stony and difficult. Their progress was painfully slow because they were forced to make long detours when precipices or slopes of scree barred their way, and for every mile they went forward they had to walk three, and Sharpe knew the French were now advancing up the valley and gaining fast, for their progress was signaled by scattered musket shots from the hills about the Misarella’s defile. Those shots, fired at too long a range by men activated by hatred, sounded closer and closer until, at mid-morning, the French came into view.

A hundred dragoons led, but not far behind them was infantry, and these men were not a panicked rabble, but marching in good order. Javali, the moment he saw them, growled incoherently, grabbed a handful of powder from his bag, half of which he spilled as he tried to push it into his musket’s barrel. He rammed down a bullet, primed his musket and shot into the valley. It was not apparent that he hit an enemy, but he gave a small joyful shuffle and then loaded the musket again. „You were right, Richard,” Hogan said ruefully, „we should have used the road.” The French were overtaking them now.

„You were right, sir,” Sharpe said. „People like him”-he jerked his head toward the wild-bearded Javali-”would have been taking shots at us all morning.”

„Maybe,” Hogan said. He swayed on the mule’s back, then glanced down again at the French. „Pray the Saltador has been broken,” he said, but he did not sound hopeful.

They had to clamber down into a saddle of the hills, then climb again to another hog-backed ridge littered with the massive rounded boulders. They lost sight of the fast-flowing Misarella and of the French on the road beside it, but they could hear the occasional flurry of musket shots which told of partisans sniping into the valley.

„God grant the Portuguese have got to the bridge,” Hogan said for the tenth or twentieth time since dawn. If all had gone well then the Portuguese forces advancing northward in parallel to Sir Arthur Wellesley’s army should have blocked the French at Ruivaens, so cutting the last eastward road to Spain, and then sent a brigade into the hills to plug the final escape route at the Saltador. If all had gone well the Portuguese should now be barring the mountain road with cannon and infantry, but the weather had slowed their march as it had slowed Wellesley’s pursuit and the only men waiting for Marshal Soult at the Saltador were more ordenanqa.

There were over a thousand of them, half trained and ill armed, but an English major from the Portuguese staff had ridden ahead to give them advice. His strongest recommendation was to destroy the bridge, but many of the ordenanga came from the hard frontier hills and the soaring arch across the Misarella was the lifeline of their commerce and so they refused to heed Major Warre’s advice. Instead they compromised by knocking off the bridge’s parapets and narrowing its roadway by breaking the roadway’s stones with great sledgehammers, but they insisted on leaving a slim strip of stone to leap the deep ravine, and to defend the ribbon-like arch they barricaded the northern side of the bridge with an abattis made from thorn bushes, and behind that formidable obstacle, and on either side of it, they scraped earthworks behind which they could shelter as they fired at the French with ancient muskets and fowling guns. There was no artillery.

The strip of bridge that remained was just wide enough to let a farm cart cross the river’s ravine. It meant that once the French were gone the valley’s commerce could resume while the roadway and parapets were rebuilt. But to the French that narrow strip would mean only one thing: safety.

Hogan was the first to see that the bridge was not fully destroyed. He climbed off the mule and swore viciously, then handed Sharpe his telescope and Sharpe stared down at the bridge’s remnants. Musket smoke already shrouded both banks as the dragoons of the French vanguard fired across the ravine and the ordenanga in their makeshift redoubts shot back. The sound of the muskets was faint.

„They’ll get across,” Hogan said sadly, „they’ll lose a lot of men, but they’ll clear that bridge.”

Sharpe did not answer. Hogan was right, he thought. The French were making no effort to take the bridge now, but doubtless they were assembling an assault party and that meant he would have to find a place from where his riflemen could shoot at Christopher as he crossed the narrow stone arch. There was nowhere on this side of the river, but on the Misarella’s opposite bank there was a high stone bluff where a hundred or more ordenanqa were stationed. The bluff had to be less than two hundred paces from the bridge, too far for the Portuguese muskets, but it would provide a perfect vantage for his rifles, and if Christopher reached the center of the bridge he would be greeted by a dozen rifle bullets.

The problem was reaching the bluff. It was not far away, perhaps a half-mile, but between Sharpe and that enticing high ground was the Misarella. „We have to cross that river,” Sharpe said.

„How long will that take?” Hogan asked.

„As long as it takes,” Sharpe said. „We don’t have a choice.”

The musketry grew in intensity, crackling like burning thorn, then fading before bursting back into life. The dragoons were crowding the southern bank to swamp the defenders with fire, but Sharpe could do nothing to help.

So, for the moment, he walked away.

In the valley of the Cavado, just twelve miles from the advance guard that fought the ordenanqa across the ravine of the Misarella, the first British troops caught up with Soult’s rearguard which protected the men and women still crossing the Ponte Nova. The British troops were light dragoons and they could do little more than exchange carbine fire with the French troops who were drawn across the road to fill the valley between the river and the southern cliffs. But not far behind the dragoons the Brigade of Guards was marching, and behind them was a pair of three-pounder cannons, guns that fired shot so light that they were derided as toys, but on this day, when no one else could deploy artillery, the two toys were worth their weight in gold.

The French rearguard waited while, a dozen miles away, the vanguard readied to attack the Saltador. Two battalions of infantry would assault the bridge, but it was plain that they would become mincemeat if the thick barrier of thorn were not removed from the bridge’s far end. The abattis was four feet high and just as thick and made from two dozen thorn bushes that had been tied together and weighted down with logs, and it made a formidable obstacle and so a Forlorn Hope was proposed. A Forlorn Hope was a company of men who were expected to die, but in doing so they would clear a path for their comrades, and usually such suicidal bands were deployed against the heavily defended breaches of enemy fortresses, but today’s band must cross the narrow remnant of a bridge and die under the flail of musket fire, and as they died they were to clear away the thorn abattis. Major Dulong of the 31st Leger, the new Legion d’Honneur medal still bright on his chest, volunteered to lead the Forlorn Hope. This time he could not use darkness, and the enemy was far more numerous, but his hard face showed no apprehension as he pulled on a pair of gloves and then twisted the loops of his saber cords about his wrist so that he would not lose the weapon in the chaos he anticipated as the thorns were wrenched aside. General Loison, who commanded the French vanguard, ordered every available man to the river bank to swamp the ordenanga with musket, carbine and even pistol fire and when the noise had swelled to a deafening intensity Dulong raised his saber then swung it forward as a signal to advance.

The skirmishing company of his own regiment ran across the bridge. Three men could just go abreast on the narrow ribbon of stone and Dulong was in the very first rank. The ordenanqa roared their defiance and a volley blasted from the closest earthwork. Dulong was hit in the chest, he heard the bullet strike his new medal and then distinctly heard the snap as a rib broke and he knew the bullet must be in his lung, but he felt no pain. He tried to shout, but his breath was very short, yet he began hauling at the thorns with his gloved hands. More men came, cramming themselves on the bridge’s thin roadway. One slipped and fell screaming into the white tumult of the Misarella. Bullets smacked into the Forlorn Hope, the air was nothing but smoke and splintering noise and hissing bullets, but then Dulong managed to pitch a whole section of the abattis into the river and there was a gap wide enough to let a man through and big enough to save a trapped army, and he staggered through it, saber raised, spitting bubbles of blood as his breath labored. A huge shout came from behind him as the first of the support battalions ran toward the bridge with fixed bayonets. Dulong’s surviving men cleared away the last of the thorn abattis, a dozen