agreed, “The rest has suited them, sir.”
“You know what to do?”
“Yes, sir.”
Hogan wiped his forehead. The noonday sun was searing the city. He repeated his orders despite Sharpe’s answer. “Go behind the assault, Richard. And no one’s to leave, understand? No one, unless you’ve seen their face, and when you’ve found the bastard, bring him to me. If I’m not here, I’ll be at Headquarters.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Company filed into the new trench that led, in safety, down the gorge towards the Tormes. Overhead the shot still rumbled, still crashed into the fortresses, and the attacking troops were cheerful and confident. This time they could not fail. The San Cayetano had been so battered that one wall was virtually gone and that was the first fort which was to be attacked. It would be a daylight attack, hard on the echoes of the siege guns, and the troops were happy because the French guns were mostly silent. A Rifle Lieutenant was to lead the Forlorn Hope, but neither he nor his men wore the strained and hopeless look of other Forlorn Hopes. A Forlorn Hope expected to die. Their job was to draw the enemy’s fire, to empty the defending guns before the main attack erupted into the breach. The volunteers grinned at Sharpe. They recognised him and envied the laurel wreath badge on his arm. “Won’t be like Badajoz, sir.”
“No, you’ll be fine.”
Sharpe could see at the far end of the ravine the silver waters of the Tormes sliding quietly towards the far off sea. His men had fished the waters in their long, restful afternoons and they would miss the trout. Sharpe saw Harper staring at the water. “Sergeant?”
“Sir?”
“What’s this I hear about Doris? Something you said to Major Hogan?”
“Doris, sir?” Harper looked innocent, then gauged that Sharpe was not upset. “You mean Dolores, sir. I might have said something.”
“How did you hear about it?”
Harper pulled back the flint of his seven-barrelled gun. “Me, sir? I think Lord Spears was looking for you one day. He might have mentioned it.” He grinned at Sharpe conspiratorialy. “Legless, I hear, sir.”
“You hear wrong. It’s not true.”
“No, sir. Course not, sir.” Harper whistled tunelessly and stared up at the cloudless sky.
There was a stirring in the trench, groans as men got to their feet and fixed long bayonets onto muskets, and Sharpe realised that the cannonade had stopped. This was the moment of attack, yet it had none of the tension of the previous attack, when these same Battalions had been shredded by the French guns. Today it would be easy, instinct told them that, easy because the vicious heated shot from the great guns had turned the fortresses into hell for their garrisons. The Rifle Lieutenant drew his sabre, waved at his Forlorn Hope, and climbed the side of the trench. At the summit, with no fire coming from the enemy, he halted. He gestured his men down. “Stop! Stop!”
“What the devil?” A Lieutenant Colonel pushed his way down the trench. His neck was constricted by a tight, leather stock, and his face was red and glistening in the heat. “Go on, man!”
“They’re surrendering, sir! A white flag!”
“Good God!” The Colonel clambered up the trench side and stared at the San Cayetano, then at the San Vincente. “Good God!”
The British troops in the trench jeered at the French and shouted insults. “Fight, you buggers! Are you afraid?”
The Colonel bellowed at them. “Quiet! Quiet!”
Only the San Cayetano showed a white flag, the other forts were silent, no defenders apparent in their casements. Sharpe wondered if this were a trick, some convoluted plot by Leroux to gain his freedom, but he could not understand it if it was. Whether they were defeated by bayonets, or simply surrendered, the French garrisons would still be at the mercy of their captors and Sharpe would still be able to search their ranks for the tall, cold-eyed man with the long Kligenthal sword. The Company settled down in the trench. Rumours worked their way up and down the excavation, that the French merely wanted to send out their wounded, then that the enemy wanted time to negotiate their surrender. Some of the men slept, snoring gently, and the quiet of the afternoon, without the gunfire, seemed remarkably peaceful to Sharpe. He looked to his left and could see, over the roofs, the dark lattice of the mirador. There was a square black hole that showed where La Marquesa would be watching through her telescope. He wanted this afternoon done, the prisoners paraded, and Leroux safely chained at Headquarters. Then he could go back to the small doorway, climb the stone stairway, and have the last Salamantine night in the Palacio Casares.
A French-speaking officer took a speaking trumpet onto the trench parapet and shouted at the San Cayetano. Rough translations were passed in the trench. The French wanted to get orders from the fortress commander in the San Vincente, but Wellington was denying them the chance. The British would attack in five minutes and the garrison had a choice. Fight or surrender. As if to reinforce the message the eighteen pounders fired a last volley and Sharpe heard flames roar and crackle behind him as the San Vincente laught fire again. The San Cayetano officer shouted at the British, the French-speaking British officer shouted back, and then another messenger came down the trench and shouted up at the man with the speaking trumpet. The order was plainly heard in the trench. The enemy had wasted enough time in argument. They were to remove the white flag because the assault was now coming. The command was passed on in French, the Lieutenant Colonel drew his sword, turned to the packed trench, and shouted for them to go.
They cheered. Their bayonets were fixed, they wanted revenge, and the men hurled themselves up the side of the ravine, ignoring the Forlorn Hope that was now just part of the main attack, and Sharpe went with them. No guns fired from the French embrasures. The San Vincente, when Sharpe turned to look at it, was blazing fiercely. The gunners in the biggest French fort were fighting the flames, not serving the guns, and the assault was untroubled by canister. The white flag had gone from the San Cayetano, withdrawn into the shattered defences, and in its place was a rank of French infantrymen. The enemy were filthy, smeared by smoke and dust, and they levelled their muskets at the attack. They glanced at each other, not certain if they had surrendered or not, but the sight of the attackers, swarming in loose order over the rubble, decided them. They fired.
It was a small volley, hardly effective, and it only served to wound a handful of men and goad the others on. There was a ragged cheer, the first redcoats were in the ditch that was half filled with fallen masonry, and then they climbed the crude breach towards the fort.
The French had no fight in them. The infantrymen threw down their muskets before the attackers reached them. They were ignored, shoved aside, and the troops poured into the convent’s interior. The building still smoked, showing where the fires had been, and now it filled with cheering British, intent on loot, and Sharpe stopped at the glacis lip ahd looked behind him. Sergeant McGovern’s squad were there, where they should be, and Sharpe cupped his hands. “Stop anyone leaving! Understand!”
“Yes, sir!”
Sharpe grinned at Harper. “Let’s go hunting.” He drew his sword, wondering if this would be the last time he ever used this sword, and jumped into the ditch. The climb onto the defences was easy, thanks to the collapse of the convent wall into the ditch, and Sharpe ran up the stones, hoping against hope that Leroux would be in this first building. He could be in any of the three. The French had not been able to leave the forts, thanks to the ring of Light Companies, but there had been no way of stopping them moving between the buildings in the dark of night.
“God save Ireland!” Harper paused at the top. The San Cayetano resembled a charnel house whose corpses had been crushed and burned. The unwounded prisoners were gathering in the central courtyard, but they left on the ramparts, on firesteps, beside guns, a grisly remnant of the garrison. The eagerness of the attackers for revenge was checked by the horror. The redcoats were kneeling by the wounded, giving them water, and every soldier could imagine what life had been like, these last few burning hours, under the close bombardment of the guns. One man was close to the breach, on a stretcher where Sharpe presumed he had been laid so he could be taken swiftly to the hospital, and the screaming, horrid figure seemed to sum up the garrison’s suffering. He was an artillery officer and the plain, blue uniform reminded Sharpe of the man he had killed at Badajoz. This man would not live long. His face was half masked in blood, a shapeless mass where one eye had been, and his belly appeared to have been torn open by a splinter of wood or shattering iron that had left his guts, blue-sheened
