Sharpe's Havoc

were those used in the rat pit, the instruction shouted to a terrier trying to kill a rat that was already dead. „Drop ‘em! Keep going!” There was French infantry close behind, there were more cavalrymen in Oporto and Sharpe’s priority now was to get as far away from the city as he possibly could. „Sergeant!”

„I hear you, sir!” Harper shouted and he waded down the alley and hauled Rifleman Tongue away from a Frenchman. „Come on, Isaiah! Move your bloody bones!”

„I’m killing the bastard, Sergeant, I’m killing the bastard!”

„The bastard’s already dead! Now move!” A brace of carbine bullets rattled in the alleyway. A woman screamed incessantly in one of the nearby houses. A fleeing dragoon stumbled over a pile of woven wicker fish traps and sprawled in the house’s backyard where another Frenchman was lying among a pile of drying washing that he had pulled from a line as he died. The white sheets were red with his blood. Gataker aimed at a dragoon officer who had managed to mount his horse, but Harper pulled him away. „Keep running! Keep running!”

Then there was a swarm of blue uniforms to Sharpe’s left and he turned, sword raised, and saw they were Portuguese. „Friends!” he shouted for the benefit of his riflemen. „Watch out for the Portuguese!” The Portuguese soldiers were the ones who had saved him from an ignominious surrender, and now, having ambushed the French from behind, they joined Sharpe’s men in their headlong flight to the east.

„Keep going!” Harper bawled. Some of the riflemen were panting and they slowed to a walk until a flurry of carbine shots from the surviving dragoons made them hurry again. Most of the shots went high, one banged into the road beside Sharpe and ricocheted up into a poplar, and another struck Tarrant in the hip. The rifleman went down, screaming, and Sharpe grabbed his collar and kept running, dragging Tarrant with him. The road and river curved leftwards and there were trees and bushes on its bank. That woodland was not far away, too close to the city for comfort, but it would provide cover while Sharpe reorganized his men.

„Get to the trees!” Sharpe yelled. „Get to the trees!”

Tarrant was in pain, shouting protests and leaving a trail of blood on the road. Sharpe pulled him into the trees and let him drop, then stood beside the road and shouted at his men to form a line at the wood’s edge. „Count them, Sergeant,” he called to Harper, „count them!” The Portuguese infantry mingled with the riflemen and began reloading their muskets. Sharpe unslung his rifle and fired at a cavalryman who was wheeling his horse on the river bank, ready to pursue. The horse reared, throwing its rider. Other dragoons had drawn their long straight swords, evidently intent on a vengeful pursuit, but then a French officer shouted at the cavalrymen to stay where they were. He at least understood that a charge into thick trees where infantry was loaded and ready was tantamount to suicide. He would wait for his own infantry to catch up.

Daniel Hagman took out the scissors that had cut Sharpe’s hair and sliced Tarrant’s breeches away from the wounded hip. Blood spilled down as Hagman cut, then the old man grimaced. „Reckon he’s lost the joint, sir.”

„He can’t walk?”

„He won’t walk never again,” Hagman said. Tarrant swore viciously. He was one of Sharpe’s troublemakers, a sullen man from Hertfordshire who never lost a chance to become drunk and vicious, but when he was sober he was a good marksman who did not lose his head in battle. „You’ll be all right, Ned,” Hagman told him, „you’ll live.”

„Carry me,” Tarrant appealed to his friend, Williamson.

„Leave him!” Sharpe snapped. „Take his rifle, ammunition and sword.”

„You can’t just leave him here,” Williamson said, and obstructed Hagman so that he could not unbuckle his friend’s cartridge box.

Sharpe seized Williamson by the shoulder and hauled him away. „I said leave him!” He did not like it, but he could not be slowed down by the weight of a wounded man, and the French would tend for Tarrant better than any of Sharpe’s men could. The rifleman would go to a French army hospital, be treated by French doctors and, if he did not die from gangrene, would probably be exchanged for a wounded French prisoner. Tarrant would go home, a cripple, and most likely end in the parish workhouse. Sharpe pushed through the trees to find Harper. Carbine bullets pattered through the branches, leaving shreds of leaf sifting down the shafts of sunlight behind them. „Anyone missing?” Sharpe asked Harper.

„No, sir. What happened to Tarrant?”

„Bullet in the hip,” Sharpe said, „he’ll have to stay here.”

„Won’t miss him,” Harper said, though before Sharpe had made the Irishman into a sergeant, Harper had been a crony of the troublemakers among whom Tarrant had been a ringleader. Now Harper was the troublemaker’s scourge. It was strange, Sharpe reflected, what three stripes could do.

Sharpe reloaded his rifle, knelt by a laurel tree, cocked the weapon and stared at the French. Most of the dragoons were mounted, though a handful were on foot and trying their luck with their carbines, but at too long a range. But in a minute or two, Sharpe thought, they would have a hundred infantrymen ready to charge. It was time to go.

„Senhor.” A very young Portuguese officer appeared beside the tree and bowed to Sharpe.

„Later!” Sharpe didn’t like to be so rude, but there was no time to waste on courtesies. „Dan!” He pushed past the Portuguese officer and shouted at Hagman. „Have we got Tarrant’s kit?”

„Here, sir.” Hagman had the wounded man’s rifle on his shoulder and his cartridge box dangling from his belt. Sharpe would have hated the French to collect a Baker rifle, they were trouble enough already without being given the best weapon ever issued to a skirmisher.

„This way!” Sharpe ordered, going north away from the river.

He deliberately left the road. It followed the river, and the open pastures on the Douro’s bank offered few obstacles to pursuing cavalry, but a smaller track twisted north through the trees and Sharpe took it, using the woodland to cover his escape. As the ground became higher the trees thinned out, becoming groves of squat oaks that were cultivated because their thick bark provided the corks for Oporto’s wine. Sharpe led a gruelling pace, only stopping after half an hour when they came to the edge of the oaks and were staring at a great valley of vineyards. The city was still in sight to the west, the smoke from its many fires drifting over the oaks and vines. The men rested. Sharpe had feared a pursuit, but the French evidently wanted to plunder Oporto’s houses and find the prettiest women and had no mind to pursue a handful of soldiers fleeing into the hills.

The Portuguese soldiers had kept pace with Sharpe’s riflemen and their officer, who had tried to talk to Sharpe before, now approached again. He was very young and very slender and very tall and wearing what looked like a brand-new uniform. His officer’s sword hung from a white shoulder sash edged with silver piping and at his belt was a bolstered pistol that looked so clean Sharpe suspected it had never been fired. He was good-looking except for a black mustache that was too thin, and something about his demeanor suggested he was a gentleman, and a decent one at that, for his dark and intelligent eyes were oddly mournful, but perhaps that was no surprise for he had just seen Oporto fall to invaders. He bowed to Sharpe. „Senhor?”

„I don’t speak Portuguese,” Sharpe said.

„I am Lieutenant Vicente,” the officer said in good English. His dark-blue uniform had white piping at its hems and was decorated with silver buttons and red cuffs and a high red collar. He wore a barretina, a shako with a false front that added six inches to his already considerable height. The number 18 was emblazoned on the barretinds brass front plate. He was out of breath and sweat was glistening on his face, but he was determined to remember his manners. „I congratulate you, senhor.”

„Congratulate me?” Sharpe did not understand.

„I watched you, senhor, on the road beneath the seminary. I thought you must surrender, but instead you attacked. It was”-Vicente paused, frowning as he searched for the right word-”it was great bravery,” he went on and then embarrassed Sharpe by removing the barretina and bowing again, „and I brought my men to attack the French because your bravery deserved it.”

„I wasn’t being brave,” Sharpe said, „just bloody stupid.”

„You were brave,” Vicente insisted, „and we salute you.” He looked for a moment as though he planned to step smartly back, draw his sword and whip the blade up into a formal salute, but Sharpe managed to head off the flourish with a question about Vicente’s men. „There are thirty-seven of us, senhor,” the young Portuguese answered gravely, „and we are from the eighteenth regiment, the second of Porto.” He gave Oporto its proper Portuguese name. The regiment, he said, had been defending the makeshift palisades on the city’s northern edge and had retreated toward the bridge where it had dissolved into panic. Vicente had gone