He bellowed at the crowd, pushed at them, and they broke free of the crush around the wounded and ran on, down the hill, and ahead of them Sharpe could see the other carts standing empty at the steps of the College. Sentries barred the door, ignoring the pleas of civilians who seemed to want to get in to finish off what the British bombardment had begun. Apart from the civilians, young men mostly with long, slim knives, there was no excitement at the college. No shouts, no chase, no sign that a wounded man had suddenly sprung to full life and hacked his way to a dubious freedom among the vengeful Salamantine streets.
Sharpe took the steps two at a time and pushed into the crowd that filled the small terrace in front of the great gate. A sentry challenged him, saw the sword and rifle, and made a space for the two men to push through. They hammered on the gate.
Harper looked blown. He shook his head, pounded the studded wood again, and looked at Sharpe. “I hope you’re bloody right, sir.” The Company had been left at the San Vincente, ignorant of where their Captain and senior Sergeant had gone.
Sharpe hammered with the steel guard of his sword. “Open up!”
A wicket door opened in the gate and a face peered out. “Who is it?”
Sharpe did not answer. He pushed through, stooping through the small entrance, and a courtyard opened up before him. It would have been a beautiful place, a haven of peace in a peaceful city, a well surrounded by a lawn which, in turn, was surrounded by two storeys of carved cloisters. Today, though, it was the collecting place for the dying, the courtyard filled with the first French wounded who had come to join the men they had wounded four nights before. The courtyard was choked with bleeding men, with orderlies, and Sharpe paused at the archway and looked desperately for the artillery officer who had seemed so terribly wounded.
“What do you want?” A truculent Sergeant came from the gate lodge. “Who are you?”
„French officer, wounded. Where is he?“ Sharpe’s tone told the Sergeant he was speaking to an officer.
The Sergeant shrugged. “Surgeons are straight ahead, sir, across the yard. Officers’ wards upstairs. What does he look like?”
“Had his lights hanging out. On a stretcher.”
“Try the surgeons, sir.”
Sharpe glanced at the top cloister. It was in deep shadow, but he could see two or three bored British guards, muskets slung, and doubtless there were wounded officer prisoners in the shadows. He looked at Harper with his huge gun. “Try upstairs, Patrick. And be careful. Get one of those guards to help you.”
Harper grinned and hefted the huge gun. “I don’t think your man will try anything stupid.” He crossed to one of the curved staircases that led to the officers’ wards. Sharpe threaded his way through the wounded towards the sound of screams that indicated where the surgeons worked.
Awnings had been rigged over patches of the lawn to keep the sun from roasting the wounded. A constant trickle of men drew water from the well, ladling from the bucket that was suspended by an intricate iron cage. Sharpe zig-zagged, looking at the men on stretchers, searching the faces of men in the deeper shadow of the cloisters, and going to the unshaded patch of lawn where the first dead, failures from the scalpel or men who died before they could reach the blood-stained table, had been laid out. His instinct told him that Leroux was in this place, yet he could not be sure, and he half expected to find the wounded artillery officer lying in the courtyard. Sharpe could not find him and turned, instead, to the surgeons’ rooms.
Colonel Leroux waited on the upper cloister. He needed now only two things, a horse and a long plain cloak to hide the charnel house appearance of his uniform, and both were due to be waiting for him at three o’clock in the alley behind the Irish College. He wished he had asked for them earlier, but he had never suspected that the surrender negotiations would be cut short by the British, and now he peered through the stone pillars of the balustrade and recognised the tall figure of the dark-haired Rifle Officer. Sharpe had no jacket, yet still he was easily identified because of the long sword and the slung rifle. Leroux had heard a clock in the town strike the half hour, he guessed it was now ten minutes short of the hour, and he would have to risk that the horse and cloak had been brought early. So far, at least, things had worked well. It had been a nuisance to be trapped in the forts instead of being with one of his agents in the city, but the escape had been planned with meticulous care, and it had worked thus far. He had been one of the first to enter the hospital and the surgeon waiting in the courtyard had hardly glanced at him. The man had gestured upstairs because it was obvious that no surgeon could save the desperately wounded artillery officer. He could be left to die in the shade of the upper cloister where the officers’ wards waited. Leroux watched Sharpe go into the surgeons’ rooms and smiled to himself; he had a few moments.
He was uncomfortable. He had piled a dead man’s intestines on his stomach and had tucked the entrails into the waistband of the borrowed uniform so that the gleaming, wet, jellied mass would stay in place. He had splashed himself with gore, soaked his blond hair in blood until it was matted and stiff, and then put an unrecognisable lump of flesh over his left eye. He had burned patches of the uniform. The Kligenthal was beneath him, unsheathed, and he prayed that Sharpe would be delayed in the surgeons’ rooms. Every minute now was precious. Then he heard the friendly challenge from the sentry at the curved stair’s head. “Sarge, can I help you?”
Leroux heard the newcomer silence the sentry and his instinct told him that this was danger so he moaned, rolled onto his side, and let the guts slide off him. The flies protested. He dug with his hand and twitched the cold entrails free, then reached up and wiped his left eye. It seemed glued shut and he had to spit on his hand, rub again, and then he could see properly. It was time to move.
It all happened terribly quickly. One moment a man seemed to be dying, moaning feebly, and the next he was rising to his feet and in his hand was a long grey blade. He was like something from the pit, something that had rolled and nuzzled and lapped in blood, and he freed the stiffness from his arm with a scythe of the sword and loosed his voice with a great war cry. In the Name of the Emperor!
Harper was looking the other way. He heard the shout, he turned, and the sentry was between him and the demonic figure. Harper shouted at the man to move, tried to force him aside with the squat barrels of the big gun, but the sentry lunged feebly with his bayonet at the ghastly figure and the Kligenthal drove it aside and came back to carve a line diagonally up the sentry’s face. The man screamed, fell backwards, and he fell on the seven barrelled gun and the impact made Harper’s finger pull on the trigger and the huge gun fired. The bullets hammered uselessly on the flagstones, ricocheted into the balustrade, and the recoil of the huge gun, a recoil that could throw a man clear from the fighting top of a battleship, slewed Harper round and backwards.
The Sergeant fought for balance. There was only the staircase behind him and he stood at the very top at the inside of the curve where the steps were steepest. He was falling and his right hand flailed for support and the sentry, screaming because he could not see, fell at Harper’s feet and scrambled for safety and his arm went to the back of the huge Sergeant’s ankles and Harper was falling.
Harper’s hand caught the balustrade, he heaved on it with all his huge strength, and then he saw the French officer coming for him and the sword was reaching for Harper’s chest and the blade seemed to speed up as the Frenchman’s strength went into the lunge.
The blade caught him. The point slammed between the tiny carved thighs on Harper’s crucifix. He let go of the balustrade, shouting in alarm and warning, and his legs were trapped by the sentry, and he lashed uselessly with his arm for balance and then he fell away from the blade. He toppled.
His head hit the eighth stair down. The sound of it could be heard throughout the courtyard and it was a dull crack. The head seemed to bounce up, light brown hair flapping, the blood already dripping, and then the head slumped down again and Harper’s body slipped until it was caught on the stair’s bend and he lay, spreadeagled and bloody, head downwards, on the scrubbed stone stairway.
Leroux turned away and shouted at the French wounded to stay out of his way. He ran to his left, the shortest route to the rear of the college, and two sentries, startled, came together and levelled their muskets. One knelt, pulling back his flint, and Leroux checked. They were too far away for him to charge. The one man fired and the ball went harmlessly past the Frenchman, but the other held his fire, waited, and Leroux turned away. He would go the long way round, hoping no sentries waited, and the sword felt marvellous in his hand, like a live thing, and he laughed at the pleasure of it.
Sharpe was inside the surgeons’ rooms when he heard the bellowing echo of the seven-barrelled gun and he turned and was running, leaping the bodies laid out on the grass, and he saw Harper fall, saw the huge body bounce on the steps, and Sharpe was shouting with an inchoate anger that cleared the hospital orderlies from his
