“No trouble at all, sir.” Harper unhooked the chain-traces, splinter bars, and lead bars while other men slashed at the harness and reins. The Irishman slapped the horses’ rumps to drive the loosened team uphill. “Right, lads! We’re going to tip the bastard!”
The Riflemen gathered on the coach’s right side. Sharpe was staring at the trees, waiting for the enemy picquet, but he could not resist turning to watch as the Irishman commanded the men to lift.
For a moment the coach refused to budge, then Harper seemed to take all the carriage’s weight into his own huge body and thrust it skywards. The wheels shifted in the mud and the axle boss scraped against the stone where it was stuck. “Heave!” Harper drew the word out into a long bellow as the coach rose ever higher into the air. For a second it threatened to collapse back, crushing the greenjackets, and Sharpe ran and put his own weight into the huge vehicle. It teetered for a second, then, with a splintering thump, collapsed onto its side in the road. Luggage and seat cushions tumbled inside, and Spanish testaments were strewn thick into the road’s mud.
“Cavalry, sir!” Hagman shouted.
Sharpe turned north to see the six enemy horsemen curbing in at the edge of the trees. He aimed swiftly, too swiftly, and his shot missed. Hagman, firing a second later, made one of the horses rear in pain. The other Dragoons wrenched their reins about. Two more shots were fired before the enemy picquet was safe among the pines.
“Run!” Sharpe shouted.
The Riflemen ran. Their scabbards flapped and their packs thumped on their backs as they scrambled up the road. A carbine bullet, fired at long range, fluttered above Sharpe’s head. He could see Mrs Parker being bodily dragged by two greenjackets and the sight made him want to laugh. It was ludicrous. He was trapped by cavalry and he wanted to double over in laughter.
Sharpe caught up with Sergeant Williams’s group. Mrs Parker, furious, was too breathless to shout at him, but she was equally too fat to move fast. Sharpe looked for Harper. “Drag her!”
“You can’t mean it, sir!”
“Carry her if you must!”
The Irishman pushed Mrs Parker in the rump. Louisa laughed, but Sharpe yelled at the girl to run. He himself, with the remainder of his squad, filed into the field beside the road where, sheltered by a stone wall, they watched for the pursuit.
Sharpe could hear the cavalry trumpets talking with each other. The picquets had sent the call that the enemy was in sight and running, so now the other Dragoons would be spurring forward, exchanging forage caps for canvas-covered helmets. Swords would be rasping out of scabbards, carbines would be unslung. “They’ll have to come through the trees, so we’ll give the bastards a volley, then run! Aim where the road comes through the trees, lads!” Sharpe hoped to delay the Dragoons by at least a minute, maybe more. When the head of the enemy column appeared beneath the trees he would hammer it with one well-aimed volley, and it would take time for the cavalrymen who followed to negotiate the wounded horses.
Hagman was carefully reloading his rifle with the best powder and shot. He eschewed the ready-made cartridges which were made with coarser powder, charging his rifle instead with the best fine powder which each Rifleman carried in a horn. He wrapped the ball in the greased leather patch which, when the weapon was fired, would grip the seven spiralling grooves and lands which imparted spin to the bullet. He rammed the leather- patched ball down past the resistance of the lands’ quarter turn, then primed the lock with a pinch of good powder. It took a long time to load a rifle thus, but the resultant shot could be wickedly accurate. When Hagman was done he levelled the gun across the top of the stone wall and spat a stream of tobacco-stained spittle. “Aim a pace left for the wind.”
A spot of rain landed on the wall beside Sharpe. He prayed it would hold off long enough to let his rifles fire. He paced behind the men. “Make this shot hurt! One volley, then we run like hell.”
“Sir?” A man at the end of the line pointed to the trees east of the road and, staring there, Sharpe wondered if he saw movement among the pines. He unbuttoned the pocket in which his telescope was stored, but before he could even draw the glass from its protective case, the enemy burst in a great line from the trees.
Sharpe had expected them to file in column through the gap where the road pierced the pines, but instead the Dragoons had spread left and right in the woodland and now, helmeted and carrying drawn swords, the enemy’s whole strength erupted into the light.
“Fire!”
It was a puny volley. If the rifles had been able to concentrate their bullets into the head of a packed column of cavalry, they might have turned the road into a charnel of screaming horses and bleeding men. But against a whole spread of horsemen, coming in single line abreast, the bullets were scarcely more of a nuisance than horseflies. Only one horse, struck by Hagman’s careful bullet, staggered and fell.
“Run!” Sharpe shouted.
The Rifles ran as if the devil was on their heels. The French had foreseen that volley, guarded against it, and now were in the open and hullooing forward like hunters smelling blood. Ahead of Sharpe the other Riflemen were angling towards the farm. Louisa, he saw was carrying the wounded Cameron’s pack and pulling the man along by his hand.
“Bastards on the right!” Hagman called the warning and Sharpe twisted to see that the horsemen to the east were on the firmest ground and thus the likeliest to catch his small group. The Dragoons were riding like steeple chasers, victory in their nostrils, and a gap in a stone wall lent them speed, just as it made them bunch together like men racing for a turn. Sharpe saw the water spray up from their hooves as the cavalry charged through a damp patch, then, extraordinarily, he saw red blood appear on two of the horses, a sword circle through the air, then he saw a man twisting in the saddle, falling, and being dragged by a screaming, frightened horse. Only then did Sharpe hear the crack of the rifles ahead.
Harper had abandoned Mrs Parker and formed a line of Riflemen at the edge of the farm’s outer wall. Their volley had scattered the easternmost cavalry to give Sharpe’s group a ghost of a chance. “Run! Run!”
The men slung their rifles and ran. Sharpe could hear the enemy hooves behind. He could hear the creak of the saddles and the shout of the officers and Sergeants. More rifle bullets flicked past, firing from the farm to give him cover. Louisa stared, eyes wide.
“Left, sir!” A man shouted. “Left!” Cavalrymen were coming from the west; men who had ridden around the roadblock and who now put their beasts to jump the stone wall that edged the road. One man, his horse in midflight, was hit by a bullet and slewed sideways. The others came on unscathed and Sharpe knew his squad would be trapped. He dragged the big sword free, planted his feet, and let the first Frenchman ride at him. “Run on!” he shouted at his men. “Run on!”
The first Frenchman was a Dragoon officer who leaned low in his saddle and speared his sword forward so that, like a lance, it would rip into Sharpe’s belly. The Rifleman backswung his own sword, left to right, in a two- handed blow that was aimed at the horse’s mouth. It struck home on bone and teeth, the animal wrenched aside, and Sharpe threw himself against its body so that the Frenchman’s sword went past and outside him. He tried to reach up to drag the rider from the saddle, missed, and his shako went flying as the forage net thumped him down on to the road. The horse’s rear leg struck his hip, then the Dragoon was gone and Sharpe scrambled to his feet.
“Down!” It was Harper’s voice and he instinctively dropped flat as another volley crashed overhead. A horse screamed, then slid and fell in the road’s muck. One of the beast’s flailing hooves missed Sharpe’s skull by an inch.
“Run!” Harper bellowed.
Sharpe caught a glimpse of the carnage on the road. Harper’s volley, aimed at the congestion formed by the constriction of the stone walls, had stopped the horsemen dead. Sharpe ran through the farm gate. There was an open pasture to cross before he was safe. Riflemen were already filing into the farmhouse and he saw the first shutter pushed aside by a rifle barrel.
“Behind you!” Hooves again, this time from the left, and Sharpe snarled as he turned. His sword swung towards the horse which swerved away and forced its rider to try the dificult cross-cut down and across his own body. Lunging, the Rifleman felt his own sword pierce the Dragoon’s left thigh. The impetus of man and horse dragged the rider free of the blade. More rifles fired, one bullet going so close to Sharpe that he felt its passage like a thump of wind.
“Run!” Harper called again.
