The hussars grinned. They liked Pailleterie, for he looked after them, he was brave and he gave them victory.
And he was about to give them another.
It was almost dawn and no warning shots had been fired from the hills.
Sharpe felt an immense weariness. It's nerves, he thought. Nerves as tight as a snare drum, and what kind of a soldier was it who got nervous? Damn it, he thought, but maybe he could not be trusted with command.
He walked to the western side of the parapet and leaned over to stare down at the barricade on the bridge. He had all his men awake, all on guard, for it was coming up to dawn and that was the most dangerous time. "Are you alert down there?" He shouted.
"Bright as buttercups, sir, " Lieutenant Price answered. "Can you see anything, sir?"
"Bugger all, Harry."
"That's a relief, sir."
Sharpe went back to the northern parapet and gazed up the road. Nothing moved there. Quiet as the damn grave. A few last bats still flew around the tower, and earlier he had seen an owl come flapping in to a hole in the fort's decaying stonework. Otherwise it was still. The river slid silent beneath a smokelike layer of mist. The bridge's three arches were dark. Sergeant Harper reckoned he had seen some large trout under those arches, but Sharpe had given him no time to try and catch them. It was nerves, he thought again. Jumpy as hell, and he had made everyone else nervous.
Teresa came up the ladder stairs from the living quarters. She yawned, then put her arm into Sharpe's elbow. "All quiet?"
"All quiet." There were four riflemen up on the parapet. Sharpe had thought to put some redcoats up here, but their smoothbore muskets were so inaccurate that they could do little good from this height and so he had merely kept his remaining riflemen here. He moved away from them so they would not overhear him. "I'm thinking I panicked yesterday, " he said to Teresa.
"I didn't see you panic."
"Seeing enemies where there aren't any, " he admitted.
She squeezed his arm. "At least you are ready for them if they come."
He grimaced. "But they're not out there, are they? They're bloody miles away, tucked up in their beds and I've had a sleepless night because of it."
"You can sleep today, " Teresa said. The eastern sky was ablaze now, banded with clouds that reflected the first sunlight. The olive groves, still in night's shadows, were dark, but in another few minutes the sun would rise over the hills and Sharpe would stand the company down. Give them an easy day, he thought, for they deserved it. A make and mend day in which they could sew up their uniforms, or just sleep, or perhaps fish in the river.
"Perhaps I will go back to Salamanca today, " Teresa said.
"Leaving me?"
"Just for the day. To visit Antonia."
Antonia was their daughter, a baby, but she might as well have been an orphan, Sharpe reckoned, her parents were both so busy killing frogs. "If the weather stays nice, " he said, "and the frogs don't come, you can bring her out here?"
"Why not?" Teresa asked.
The sun slipped above the hills and Sharpe flinched from its dazzling light. The shadows of trees and hedgerows stretched long across the road where no Frenchmen stirred. Mister MacKeon strolled out from the fort and went to the riverbank where he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed into the Tormes. "All that good wine, " Teresa said softly.
Then there was a shout from the bridge, and Sharpe turned, and he heard the hooves and he was unslinging his rifle, but he could not see a damn thing because the sun was so low and it was filling the eastern sky with dazzling light, but coming from the heart of the blinding light were horsemen.
Not from the road, but from the east, from among the gnarled olive trees that had hidden them, and Sharpe shouted a warning, but it was already too late. "Mister Price!»
"Sir!»
"Let them get close!»
But Price misheard, or else panicked, and shouted at the redcoats to fire and the muskets flamed towards the olive groves, but at much too long a range. Then the first rifles fired from the parapet, jetting smoke a dozen feet from the stonework. Sharpe aimed at a horseman close to the bank, pulled the trigger and his target was immediately hidden by smoke as the rifle hammered back into his shoulder. «Teresa,» he shouted, but Teresa was already running down the courtyard stairs to fetch her horse. Sharpe began to reload the rifle and heard the sound of hooves on the bridge stone. Christ, he thought, I'm in the wrong place. Can't do a damn thing up here! «Daniel!» he shouted at Hagman, the senior rifleman on the parapet.
"Sir?" Hagman was ramming his rifle.
"I'm going down! Don't get trapped up here!»
"We'll be all right, sir, " Hagman said stoically. The old poacher had a face like a grave-digger and hair down to his shoulder blades, but he was the best man Sharpe and Harper had.
Sharpe took the stairs four at a time. He had been right all along, but he had also been wrong. He had expected the damned French to come straight down the road, straight into his rifles like lambs to the slaughter, and the buggers had fooled him. The buggers had fooled him!
Muskets banged on the bridge, then other guns sounded. Pistols, Sharpe thought, recognising the crisper tone of the smaller weapons. Someone screamed. Men were shouting. Sharpe landed heavily at the foot of the stairs and ran through the arch.
And saw instantly that the fort was lost. He had failed.
Captain Pailleterie had not even reckoned on the sun's help, but the God of War was on his side that morning and just before the hussar captain released his men from the concealment of the olive trees the sun slid across the horizon to slash its blinding light into the defenders' faces.
«Charge!» Pailleterie shouted, and rowelled back his spurs to drive his big black horse straight for the bridge that was now less than a quarter mile away. One last effort from the horse, that was all he wanted, and he spurred her again and saw puffs of smoke appear at the fort's high parapet, then more smoke showed at the bridge. Bullets flecked the turf, hitting no one. A wagon made a crude barricade on the bridge itself.
Behind the wagon were redcoats. British! Not Spanish, but Pailleterie did not care. They were all enemies of France, all better dead. «Charge!» He drew the word out, using it as a war cry, and a flickering thought went through his mind that there was nothing, nothing in the world, not even a woman, who could give a joy like this. A horse at full gallop, an enemy surprised, death at your side and a sabre drawn.
More smoke, this time from the left, from a farmhouse, and Pailleterie was dimly aware of one of his troopers tumbling, of a horse screaming and a sabre skidding along the ground, but then he swerved into the lingering smoke that hung above the bridge's roadway and swung out of the saddle even before his horse had come to a halt. A single musket banged, spewing stinging smoke into Pailleterie's eyes. He stumbled as he dismounted, crashed into the wagon that had been slewed sideways on the bridge, then pulled himself up onto its bed. He was screaming like a madman, expecting a bullet in his belly at any second, but the redcoats were still reloading. He jumped down at them, sabre swinging, and Sergeant Coignet was beside him, and then a swarm of pigtailed hussars was jumping over the wagon with pistols flaming and sabres reflecting the dazzling sun. A redcoat was on his knees, hands at his face and blood seeping between his fingers. Another was dead, slumped on the bridge parapet, and the others were going backwards. They did not even have bayonets fixed, and Pailleterie swept a musket aside with his heavy sabre and chopped down at the redcoat, and the man span away, his cheek laid open, and then the other redcoats broke and ran.
"Into the fort! " Pailleterie shouted at his excited men, "into the fort!»
The redcoats could wait. The fort must be taken and held until Herault arrived, and he saw there were no gates in the big arch and he ran inside and saw a tall man in a green jacket disappearing though a door. «Up!» He shouted, pointing his men at the courtyard staircase, «up!» A gun banged from the sky and a bullet flattened itself on the stones beside Pailleterie who looked up and saw another green jacketed man silhouetted against the sky, then that man vanished as the hussars ran up the stairs.