After a couple more shots he knew that the thirst would be raging in him because of the powder’s salty taste. He spat the bullet into the rifle’s muzzle and rammed it down on the wadding. He pushed the ramrod home and primed the pan.
“Sir! Sir!” It was Dodd, one of the men covering the street which led west. He fired. “Sir!”
“Steady! Steady!” Sharpe ran to the corner and saw a single French officer on horseback. Dodd’s bullet had missed the man who was seventy paces away. “Steady now!” Sharpe called. “Hold your fire!”
The French officer, a cuirassier, pushed back the edges of his cloak in a gesture that was as disdainful as it was brave. His steel breastplate shone pale in the misty light. The man drew his long sword. Sharpe cocked his rifle. “Harvey! Jenkins!”
“Sir?” Both Riflemen answered at once.
“Take that bastard when he comes.”
Sharpe twisted, wondering where the hell Vivar’s Cazadores were. The sound of hooves turned him back, and he saw that the officer had begun to trot down the street. Other cuirassiers joined him from the side alleys. Sharpe counted ten horsemen, then ten more. It was all the enemy could muster. The other cavalrymen in the city must still be saddling their horses or waiting for orders.
The Frenchman, who was as brave a man as any Sharpe had seen, barked a command. ‘Casques en tete!“ The plumed helmets were pulled on. The street was only wide enough for three horsemen to ride abreast. The cuirassiers’ swords were drawn. ”Stupid bastard,“ Harper said in savage condemnation of the French officer who, in his bid for fame, led men to destruction.
“Take aim!” Sharpe almost hated the moment. There were half a dozen rifles for each of the leading Frenchmen who, when they died, would block the street for those behind. “Steady, lads! We’re going to take all these bastards! Aim low!”
The rifles were levelled. Swan-necked cocks were pulled back. Hagman knelt on his right knee, then rocked back to squat on his ankle so that his left hand, supported by his left knee, could better take the weight of the rifle and bayonet. Some of the Riflemen were similarly posed, while others propped their guns against door lintels. Remnants of the scattered watch-fire smoked in the street, hazing their view of the horsemen who now spurred into a canter.
The French officer raised his sword. ‘Vive rEmpereurT He lowered the sword to the lunge.
“Fire!”
The rifles spat. Sharpe heard the strike of bullets on the breastplates. It sounded like pebbles thrown hard against a sheet of tin. A horse screamed, reared, and its rider fell in the path of a tumbling horse. Sword clanged on cobbles. The officer was on the ground, jerking in spasms, and retching blood. A riderless horse clattered into an alleyway. A cuirassier turned and fled. Another, unseated, limped towards an open door. The cavalrymen at the rear did not try to force their way through, but slewed round and fled.
“Reload!”
Smoke spurted from windows down the street. A bullet smacked with horrid force into the stone beside Sharpe, while another snicked up from the cobbles to thump into a Rifleman’s leg. The man hissed with the pain, fell, and clutched at the blood which spread thick on his black trousers. It was hard to spot the Frenchmen behind the windows with their black grilles, and harder still to pick such men off. More of them appeared as shadows at the street’s far end, and from those shadows musket flames stabbed towards the Riflemen. It was light enough now for Sharpe to see a French tricolour flying from the cathedral’s high dome, and he saw that it was going to be a clear and cold day, a day for killing, and unless Vivar threw in his main force soon, it would be the Riflemen who did the dying. Then the trumpet sounded behind.
The Cazadores did not just fight for pride, nor just for their country, though either cause would have driven them through the gates of hell itself, they fought for the patron saint of Spain. This was Santiago de Compostela, where the angels had sent a cloud of stars to light a forgotten tomb, and the Spanish cavalry charged for God and Santiago, for Spain and Santiago, for Bias Vivar and Santiago.
They came like a terrible flood. Hooves struck sparks from the road as their horses plunged past Sharpe. Their swords struck shards of light in the grey dawn. They lunged into the city’s heart, led by Bias Vivar who shouted an incomprehensible thanks as he galloped past the Riflemen.
And behind the Cazadores, scrambling up from the ravine where Sharpe should have been at first light, the volunteer infantry followed. They too shouted the saint’s name as their warcry. Despite their makeshift uniforms of brown tunics and white sashes, they looked more like an avenging mob armed with muskets, picks, swords, knives, lances, and scythe-blades.
As they ran past, Sharpe thrust the captured French muskets towards the men who had no firearms, but the volunteers were too intent on reaching the city’s centre. For the first time Sharpe saw they might win, not through skilled tactics, but by harnessing a nation’s hate.
“What do we do, sir?” Harper came from the guardhouse with a bundle of captured bayonets.
“Follow them! Forward! Watch your flanks! Keep an eye on the upper windows!”
Not that any advice would be heeded now. The Riflemen were infected by the madness of the morning, and all that mattered was to take the city. The fears of the long cold night were gone, replaced with a surging and extraordinary confidence.
They advanced into chaos. Frenchmen, waking to slaughter, ran into alleys where vengeful Spaniards hunted and killed them. Inhabitants of the cityjoined the chase, abetting Vivar’s men who were spreading into the arcaded mediaeval streets which made a labyrinth about the central buildings. Screams and shots sounded everywhere. Cazadores, split into squads, clattered from street to street. A few Frenchmen still fought from the upper windows of their billets, but one by one they were killed. Sharpe saw his erstwhile guide, the blacksmith, smashing a lancer’s skull with a hammer. The gutters were slick with blood. A priest knelt by a dying volunteer.
“Stay together!” Sharpe was fearful that in the horror of the moment, a dark-uniformed Rifleman might be mistaken for a Frenchman. He came to a small square, chose a turning at random, and led his men along a street where three Frenchmen lay dead in pools of trickling blood. A woman was stripping one man of his uniform on the steps of a church. A fourth Frenchman lay dying as two children, neither over ten years old, stabbed at him with kitchen knives. A legless cripple, eager for plunder, swung on calloused knuckles to a corpse’s side.
Sharpe turned left into another street and shrank aside as Spanish cavalrymen clattered past. A Frenchman fled from a house into the horseman’s path, he screamed, then a sword cut into his face and he went down under the iron-shod hooves. Somewhere in the city a volley of musketry crashed like thunder. A French infantryman came from an alleyway, saw Sharpe, and fell to his knees; literally begging to be taken prisoner. Sharpe pushed him behind, into the keeping of the Riflemen, as more Frenchmen came from the alley. They threw away their muskets, only wanting to be under protection.
There was light and space ahead now, a contrast to the dank shadow of the tiny streets, and Sharpe led his men towards the wide plaza which surrounded the cathedral. There was the incongruous smell of bread in a bakery, then that homely smell was instantly overlaid by the stench of powder smoke. The Riflemen advanced cautiously towards the plaza from which another huge volley jarred the morning. Sharpe could see bodies lying among the weeds which grew between the plaza’s flagstones. There were dead horses and a score of dead men, most of them Spanish. Musket smoke was thicker than the mist. “Bastards are making a stand,” Sharpe shouted to Harper.
He edged forward to the street corner. To his left was the cathedral. Three men in brown tunics lay on the cathedral steps with blood trickling from their bodies. To Sharpe’s right, and directly opposite the cathedral, was a richly decorated building. A tricolour hung above its central door, while every window was wreathed in powder smoke. The French had turned the huge building into a fortress that dominated the plaza.
This was not the time to fight a battle against a cornered band of desperate Frenchmen, but rather to determine that the rest of city was taken. The Riflemen used back alleys to circumvent the plaza. The prisoners stayed with them, terrified of the vengeance which the townspeople were exacting on other captured Frenchmen. The city had spawned a vengeful mob, and Sharpe’s soldiers had to use their rifle butts to keep the prisoners safe.
Sharpe led his men south. They passed a dying horse which Harper shot. Two women immediately attacked the corpse with knives, sawing off great joints of warm meat. A hunchback with a bleeding scalp grinned as he cut off a dead Dragoon’s pigtails, and it occurred to Sharpe that the dead man was the first Dragoon he had seen in
