Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe’s Revenge, Sharpe’s Waterloo, Sharpe’s Devil - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 16

The battle, as if by mutual consent, stopped to draw breath.

Beresford used the lull to divide his attack. His left hand division would now slant away to threaten the land between the ridge and the city, while the right division, in which Nairn’s Brigade marched, would advance northwards along the ridge’s summit. Horse artillery was being dragged up the slope to thicken Beresford’s attack. The morning passed. Many of the waiting men fell asleep with their heads pillowed on their packs and their faces shaded by mildewed shakoes. Some ate, and a few just stared emptily at the sky. Some men gazed along the ridge towards the fearful French defences. Every few minutes a random French cannonball bounded through the somnolent lines, provoking an irritated scramble from its bouncing path. Sometimes a howitzer shell banged a sharp explosion on the turf, but the fire was sporadic and allowed most of the waiting men to ignore the enemy. Sharpe watched one fusilier patiently hammer the soft lead of a musketball into a perfect cube, then prick its faces with a touch-hole spike to make a dice. No one would gamble with the man who, disgusted, hurled the lead cube away.

In the early afternoon the battalions which had broken the twin French columns were moved to the rear of Beresford’s new formations. Nairn’s brigade now formed the right flank of the first line. He had his two English battalions forward, and his Highlanders in reserve. The horse gunners stacked their ready ammunition alongside the advanced positions, while the skirmishers deployed as a protective screen even further forward.

Sharpe strolled forward to join Frederickson who offered a piece of French garlic sausage. ‘I suppose,’ Frederickson was staring at the ridge’s plateau, ‘that this would be a good moment to resign from the army?’

Sharpe smiled at the grim joke, then drew out his telescope which he trained on the nearest French fortification. He said nothing, and his silence was ominous.

‘The bloody French must know the war’s lost,’ Frederickson said irritably, ‘so why prolong the killing?’

‘Pride,’ Sharpe said curtly, though why, for that matter, were his own countrymen insisting on taking Toulouse if it was really believed that the Emperor was doomed? Perhaps peace was a chimera. Perhaps it was just a rumour that would fade like the stench of blood and powder-smoke from this battlefield.

And, as Sharpe well knew, there would be much blood and smoke on this high ridge. The French were waiting, prepared, and Beresford’s infantry must now advance through a series of strong fortifications that ran across the ridge’s spine. There were gun batteries and entrenchments, all bolstered by earthen redoubts which, topped by palisades, stood like small fortresses athwart the line of attack. One redoubt, larger than the rest, dominated the ridge’s centre and, like its smaller brethren, was faced with a ditch above which its wooden palisade was embrasured for artillery. It was no wonder that Beresford’s climb up the southern slope had not been opposed by French gunfire, for all the enemy cannons were now dug safe into the small forts.

Frederickson borrowed Sharpe’s glass and stared for a long time at the awesome defences. ‘Easter’s meant to be a day for miracles, is it not?’

Sharpe smiled dutifully, then turned to greet Sergeant Harper. ‘We’ll be earning our crust today, Sergeant.’

‘Aye, sir, we will.’ Harper accepted Frederickson’s offer of the telescope and made a quick scrutiny of the great redoubt in the ridge’s centre. ‘Why don’t we just beat the bastards to jelly with gunfire?’

‘Can’t get the big guns up here,’ Frederickson answered cheerfully. ‘We’ve only got galloper guns today.’

‘Peashooters.’ Harper spat scornfully, then handed the telescope to Sharpe. ‘Do you know where our boys are, sir?’

‘Our boys’ were the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, the battalion that Sharpe and Harper had fought in for so many years. ‘They’re off to the east.’ Sharpe vaguely waved in that direction. He could still not see the city of Toulouse, which was hidden by a shoulder of the ridge, but gunsmoke showed in the far distance to betray where Wellington’s feint attacks threatened Toulouse’s eastern suburb.

‘They shouldn’t be taking much of a beating today, then,’ Harper said hopefully.

‘I suppose not.’ Sharpe suddenly wished he was back with the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers who, under their new Colonel, did not have to face this devil’s ridge of forts, trenches and guns. They would be safe, while Sharpe was foully aware of the symptoms of terror. He could feel his heart thumping, sweat was chill on his skin, and a muscle in his left thigh was twitching. His throat was parched, his belly felt hollow, and he wanted to vomit. He tried to smile, and sought for some casual words that would demonstrate his lack of fear, but he could think of nothing.

Hooves sounded behind, and Sharpe turned to see Major-General Nairn cantering towards the skirmish line. The General curbed his horse, then grimaced at the landscape ahead. ‘We’ve got the right flank, so we’ll be attacking the batteries.’

That was a brighter prospect than assaulting the larger redoubts. The batteries, constructed on the edge of the ridge, were the positions from which the long approach march had been cannonaded, and they had been built purely to defend the gunners from counter-battery fire. Thus there were no fortifications facing the ridge’s centre, so Nairn’s brigade would only have to deal with the flanking trenches and the batteries’ guns which had been dragged from their embrasures and arrayed like ordinary field artillery. Those nearest guns were supported by at least two battalions of French infantry who waited in three deep lines to add their volley fire to the gunnery.

Nairn seemed to shiver as he stared at the ridge’s summit, then he asked to borrow Sharpe’s glass through which he gazed long and hard at the enemy positions. He said nothing when he closed the tubes, except to express surprise at the evident quality of the spyglass. ‘Where did you get it?’

‘Vitoria,’ Sharpe said. The telescope had been a gift from the Emperor Napoleon to his brother, King Joseph of Spain, who had lost it when his baggage had been captured by the British after the battle at Vitoria. A small brass plate, let into the ivory of the barrel, recorded the gift.

Nairn held the glass out to Sharpe. ‘I hate to spoil your enjoyment, Major, but I need you.’

Sharpe retrieved his horse. His task, once the advance began, would be to relay Nairn’s orders. The junior aides would be doing the same thing, but Sharpe’s rank and reputation would give him an authority that could be useful to Nairn. At times, Sharpe knew, he would have to use his own judgement, then claim that his decision was a verbal order from Nairn himself.

It was another hour before the order to advance was given. The French had spasmodically shelled the waiting men during the prolonged delay, but the very sparseness of the cannonade was evidence that the real artillery effort would wait until the British and Portuguese troops had marched closer to the guns. Some men grumbled at the wait, others averred that it was necessary so that the Spanish could regroup and attack again from the ridge’s far end. Two chaplains led mules loaded with spare water canteens around the waiting troops. The Irishmen in the ranks crossed themselves. The loudest noise on the ridge, apart from the occasional bang of a French gun, were the pipes of the Highland Regiments.

‘It’s going to be a bloody business, right enough. A bloody, bloody business,’ Nairn said for the fourth or fifth time to Sharpe. The Scotsman was nervous. He knew this would be his one chance to fight his brigade in battle, and he feared he would be found wanting.

Yet the true responsibility did not lie with Nairn, nor even with Wellington who commanded the battle from its northern flank, but with the ordinary soldier. It was the redcoat and greenjacket who had to march forward in the certain knowledge that the best artillery in Europe waited to decimate his ranks. A shilling, a third of a pint of rum and two pounds of twice baked bread each day were the wages for this moment, and in return they must march into hell and come out victors.

‘It won’t be long now,’ Nairn said, as if to comfort the aides who bunched around him.

Divisional aides were galloping across the ridge’s southern spur. Bands were forming into ranks and colours were being hoisted. The British gunners gave their cannon trails a last adjustment.

‘The General’s compliments, sir,’ a cavalry Captain reined in close to Nairn, ‘and if you are ready?’

‘My compliments to the General.’ Nairn drew his sword. No actual order to advance had been given, nor was it necessary, for as soon as the leading battalions saw the arrival of the Divisional aide, they were ordered to their feet. What waited for them on the ridge was a foretaste of hell, so it seemed best to get it done fast.

‘My compliments to Colonel Taplow,’ Nairn said to Sharpe, ‘and tell him not to let his men fall off to the right.’

‘Indeed, sir.’ Sharpe put his spurs to Sycorax’s flanks. Nairn’s concern about the right flank was justified for, as the attack met opposition, there would be a temptation for the right-hand men to seek safety down the ridge’s western slope.

Taplow did not wait for Sharpe’s arrival, but had already ordered his men forward. They advanced in two lines behind their chain of skirmishers. The front line was composed of five companies, and the rear of four. The battalion’s bayonets were fixed, and their colours lofted between the two lines. Sharpe found Taplow on a grey horse just in front of the colour party. ‘The General’s compliments, sir.’

‘He’ll not find us wanting!’ Taplow interrupted Sharpe. ‘I told you it would be up to us!’ Taplow was in high spirits.

‘He’s eager, sir, that your men don’t deviate too far to the right.’ Sharpe phrased Nairn’s warning as tactfully as he could.

‘Damn your eyes! Does he think we’re amateurs?’ Taplow’s rage was instant and overwhelming. ‘Tell him we shall march to the guns. Direct to the guns! We’ll die like Englishmen, not like skulking Scotchmen. Damn your eyes, Major, and good day to you.’

The other English battalion of Nairn’s brigade marched on Taplow’s left, while behind came the Highlanders who advanced to the eerie skirl of their pipers. They were a secretive, proud battalion who followed their clan chief to war. Many spoke no English, just the Gaelic. In battle they could be terrifying, while off the battlefield they had a grave courtesy. To the left of Nairn’s brigade, and straddling the spine of the ridge’s summit, another brigade advanced.

Frederickson, with the skirmishers of the two English battalions, was far ahead of the leading battalions. The French gunners, waiting with smoking linstocks, ignored the skirmish line. They would wait till the plumper targets of the close-formed battalions were nearer.

The wait was not long. Sharpe, back at Nairn’s side just a few paces ahead of the Highlanders, saw a French gunner give the elevating screw of his cannon one last turn, then jump clear as the linstock came down to hover near the portfire.

‘God help us,’ said the agnostic Nairn, then, much louder, ‘steady, lads, steady!’

‘Tirez!’ shouted the battery’s commander.

The ridge erupted with gunfire. Flames lanced from barrels to pump smoke thick as fog over the hilltop. The roundshot slashed through the advancing battalions. Sharpe saw one ball carve a bloody hole in Taplow’s first line, kill another man in his second, then graze the turf and, on its upward rebound, strike down a file of Highlanders. The one ball had turned four men to meat and blood and splintered bone. The screams of the wounded began to rival the music of the bands and the crashing of the enemy guns. It was not just the closest battery that fired, but the gunners in the central redoubt, and other gunners too, further and higher up the ridge, who could launch their missiles over the heads of their own infantry to plunge and bounce and tear among the British troops.

‘Those poor lads.’ Nairn watched Taplow’s battalion that was dropping dead and wounded behind its ranks.

‘Close up! Close up!’ the Sergeants shouted. An Ensign, fifteen years old, and proud to be in his first battle, was disembowelled. A Sergeant, marching behind and to the dead boy’s flank, filched six guineas from the corpse’s tail pocket without even breaking step. ‘Close up, you bastards! Close up!’

A howitzer shell landed just in front of Taplow’s rear line and, because its fuse still smoked, the closest men scattered. The shell exploded harmlessly as Taplow berated the men for cowards.

Frederickson’s Riflemen had advanced far forward and were now trying to pick off the enemy gunners, but the cannon smoke made a perfect screen to hide the enemy. The smoke also served to obscure the aim of the French gunners, but so long as they fired level and ahead, they could scarcely miss. French skirmishers, armed with muskets, were threatening Frederickson’s men, though even the bravest enemy was loath to come too close to the deadly rifles. Harper was calling targets to his men. ‘See that officer, Marcos? Kill the bugger.’

‘Tell Taplow to double forward at the battery!’ Nairn shouted to Sharpe over the noise of the enemy guns. ‘I’ll put the Highlanders in behind him!’

Sharpe spurred Sycorax forward again. The mare was nervous of the horrid noises. The guns made a deep percussive, ear-thumping bang, while the passage of the roundshot overhead sounded just like heavy barrels being rolled across a wooden floor. A cannonball that came too close sounded like the tearing of cloth, but much more sudden and overwhelming, making a man flinch in the wake of its air-splitting astonishment. Behind all the noises was the sound of the bands and the gut-wrenching music of the pipes. Men screamed, Sergeants shouted, then a new ingredient joined the cacophony: the crackling thunder of an infantry volley. It was a French volley. The enemy battalion was hidden by the cannon smoke, but Sharpe, as he rode towards Taplow, saw the smoke twitch as the bullets flicked through from the ridge’s centre.

‘Steady now! Steady!’ Taplow was riding immediately behind his front line. His horse sheered away from a wounded man who vomited blood, and Taplow slashed his crop down on to the animal’s rump to keep it steady and obedient. Behind him the battalion’s colours twitched from the strike of musket bullets.

‘Major-General Nairn’s compliments, sir …’ Sharpe began.

‘Damn Nairn!’

‘If you’d double, sir, towards the battery …’

‘In my own time, sir, in my own time. Damn you.’ Taplow twisted his horse away from Sharpe. ‘Well done!’ he exhorted his men. ‘Close up, my lads! Be steady now! Our turn will come! We’ll kill the bastards in a minute! Close up! Steady now, steady!’

When the attacking line was a hundred paces from the French guns, the enemy changed from roundshot to canister. The tin- encased canisters split apart in the muzzle-flames to scatter a charge of lead-balls like birdshot. Now, instead of the surgical strike of a roundshot, each discharge tore a ragged and gaping red hole in the advancing ranks. Taplow’s line was shrinking fast and littering its wide path with a scatter of dead and injured. The carnage and the noise at last made the advancing battalion check, and that evidence of his men’s fear spurred Taplow to ram his horse through the ranks. ‘Charge, you buggers! Charge for England!’

Released, the battalion charged. They screamed in fear, but they ran forward, and the smoke of the guns served to hide them from their enemies. A small dip in the ground helped to save them from the worst of the canister as they scrambled towards the smoke and the enemy’s gun line.

‘Come on, you bastards! Kill the buggers!’ Taplow was ahead of his men, charging like a cavalryman with his sword aloft, when two canisters exploded full in his face so that man and horse were turned instantly into scraps of bloody flesh that ribboned back in the guns’ gale to spatter the ranks behind.

‘Charge!’ It was a Colour Sergeant who took up the cry.

There was nothing left of Taplow, except blood, bones and gobbets of flesh spread across the ridge. His men charged over the ragged ruin of their Colonel and his horse then plunged into the smoke. A shell, fired from further up the ridge, exploded ten yards behind Sycorax and the mare, terrified, bolted forward into the thick fog of gunsmoke.

The smoke was acrid. Sharpe wanted to draw his sword, but he needed both hands to curb Sycorax’s panic. She burst through the smoke and Sharpe saw a mass of snarling redcoats hacking and thrusting at the French gunners. This was revenge, and none of the Fusiliers would take an enemy’s surrender. The gunners would pay for the damage they had done, and so the bayonets ripped and thrust.

Sycorax stopped, quivering, because a French trench blocked her path. The trench was shallow, as if it had only been half finished. A redcoat and two Frenchmen lay dead inside. Sharpe scraped his sword free and tried to make sense of the chaos beyond the trench. Taplow’s men were brawling, stabbing and clawing their way through the battery while, just seventy paces to their left, a fresh enemy battalion was marching through the gunsmoke. The only man to have seen that threat was Frederickson, who had spread his skirmishers in a tenuous line to block the enemy’s approach, but a handful of Riflemen could not hope to stop a determined charge by a whole battalion. Taplow’s men were in utter disorder, seeking only vengeance, yet at any moment the enemy’s counter-attack would come on them like thunder.

‘Form companies!’ Sharpe shouted at the fusiliers. He spurred Sycorax over the shallow trench, then used the flat of his sword on men hunting down the last gunners who were trying to find refuge beneath the hot barrels of their guns. ‘Form companies!’ He found a Major. ‘Are you in command now?’

‘Command?’ The man was dazed.

‘Taplow’s dead.’

‘Good God!’ The Major gaped at Sharpe.

‘For Christ’s sake, form your men! You’re about to be attacked.’

‘We are?’

Sharpe twisted to his left and saw that the French battalion had checked their advance while they fixed bayonets yet, despite the small delay, there could not be more than half a minute before the French advanced into the captured battery where they would make mincemeat of the redcoats. Sharpe shouted for the men to form, and a few Sergeants saw the danger and took up the cry, but Sharpe knew it was hopeless. Taplow’s men were oblivious of everything but the captured battery and its small plunder. In less than a minute they would be overwhelmed. He swore under his breath. No one had even thought to spike the enemy guns, and Sharpe wished he had remembered to put a hammer and a few nails in his saddlebag.

Then, blessedly, he heard a crashing volley and he saw the Highlanders coming out of the smoke bank. Nairn had brought them in to the left of Taplow’s charge, and now the Scots fell on the flank of the advancing French battalion. It took just two Scottish volleys before the French gave up the counter-attack.

Sharpe found Taplow’s senior Major. ‘Form your battalion!’

‘I can’t …’

‘Do it. Now! Or else I’ll have you arrested! Move!’

A French gunner, wounded from a dozen blades, collapsed beside Sharpe’s horse. Redcoats were drinking the powder-stained water from the gun-buckets in which the cannon swabs were soaked between shots. The English wounded were propped against the wicker baskets filled with earth that made the cannon embrasures. One such basket seemed to explode into dirty shreds under the impact of a roundshot and Sharpe realized that French guns, further up the ridge, had begun to fire into the captured battery.

‘You’re the reserve now!’ Sharpe shouted at the Major. ‘Form your men and fall in behind the Highlanders!’

He did not wait to see if he was obeyed, but spurred after the Scots who were marching onwards. To their left, beyond Nairn’s second battalion, another brigade was going forward. The attack seemed to have broken the outer French crust, but as the British advanced so they would squeeze the French into an ever thicker and more impenetrable defence.

Sharpe rode past a dead Rifleman and was relieved to see it was not Harper. Nairn’s attack, spirited and bloody, was going well. The Highlanders’ Grenadier Company was in an enemy trench, led by a group of officers and sergeants who used their massive claymore swords to scour the French out. Frederickson’s sharpshooters picked off the fleeing enemy. Two pipers, apparently oblivious of the horror, calmly played their instruments. There was something about that music, Sharpe thought, that suited a battlefield. The noise was like that which a man might make if he was being skinned alive, but it seemed to fill the enemy with fear just as it inspired the Scots to savagery. A riderless horse, its neck sheeted with blood, galloped in panic towards the enemy lines.

‘Taplow’s dead!’ Sharpe found Nairn.

Nairn stared at Sharpe as though he had not heard, then he sighed. ‘So much for prayer before battle. Poor man.’

The neighbouring brigade had stormed a small redoubt and Sharpe could see its ramparts swarming with British and Portuguese infantry. Bayonets rose and fell. The attack, Sharpe decided, had gone beyond the ability of any one man to control it; now it was just a mass of maddened men released to battle, and so long as they could be kept moving forward, then so long was victory possible.

Sharpe lost sense of time. The fear was gone, as it always seemed to vanish once the danger was present. Nairn’s men, thinned out and bloodied, pushed forward into gunfire. Smoke thickened. Knots of men lay in blood where canister had struck. The wounded crawled for help, or vomited, or cried, or just lay softly to let death come. Order seemed to have gone. Instead of battalions marching proudly to the attack, it now seemed to Sharpe that the assault consisted of small groups of men who dashed a few yards forward, then summoned up the courage for another quick advance. Some men sought shelter and had to be rousted back into the advance. Somewhere a Colour showed through the smoke. Sometimes a cheer announced an enemy trench taken. A British galloper gun unlimbered and fired fast into the blinding fog.

The defence thickened. The enemy gunfire, which had been shattering at the start of the assault, seemed to double in its intensity. Nairn’s men, broken into leaderless units, went to ground. Nairn tried to force them on, but the brigade was exhausted, yet Division judged the moment to perfection for, just as Nairn knew he could ask no more of his men, a reserve brigade came up behind and swept through the scattered remnants of his three battalions.

The Scotsman had tears in his eyes; perhaps for the dead, or perhaps for pride. His men had done well.

‘Congratulations, sir,’ Sharpe said, and meant it, for Nairn’s men had driven deep into the horrid defences.

Nairn shook his head. ‘We should have gone further.’ He frowned, listening to the battle. ‘Some poor bastard’s fetching it rough, though.’

‘The big redoubt, sir.’ Sharpe pointed forward and left to where, amidst the shifting scrim of gunsmoke, there was a thicker patch of white smoke which betrayed the position of the large central redoubt. Musketry cracked about its earthen walls.

‘If we take that fort,’ Nairn said, ‘the battle’s won.’

But other men would have to take the redoubt. They were fresh men, Highlanders of the reserve brigade who marched into the maelstrom with their pipes playing. Nairn could only watch. He sheathed his sword as though he knew it would not be wanted again in this battle, nor, indeed, in this war. ‘We’ll advance behind the attack, Sharpe.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Sharpe rode to reorganize the shattered battalions. Bullets hissed near him, a shell dropped just over his head, and once he seemed to be bracketed by a shrill whistling of canister, yet he somehow led a charmed existence. Around him an army bled, but Sharpe lived. He thought of Jane, of Dorset, and of all the pleasures that waited with peace, and he prayed that victory would come soon, and safely.

The French gunners ripped bloody gaps in the Highlanders who charged the redoubt. Canister coughed at point-blank range, reinforced by the musketry of infantry who lined the palisade to fire down into the swarm of men who scrambled across the dry ditch and over the bodies of their clansmen.

‘Rather them than me.’ Sergeant Harper stood beside Sharpe’s horse.

Frederickson’s company had come well through the horror. They’d lost six men only. Taplow’s battalion had suffered far worse and, when Sharpe had re-formed it, there seemed only to be half as many men as had started on the attack, and that half so dazed as to be in a trance. Some of the men wept because Taplow was dead. ‘They liked him,’ the Light Company’s Captain had explained to Sharpe. ‘He flogged them and swore at them, but they liked him. They knew where they were with him.’

‘He was a brave man,’ Sharpe said.

‘He was frightened of peace. He thought it would be dull.’

The Highlanders scrabbled at the earth wall. French muskets clawed at them, but somehow the Scotsmen hauled themselves up and thrust their bayonets over the barricade. One man dragged himself to the top, fell, another took his place, and suddenly the Scots were tearing the palisade to scrap and flooding through the gaps. The cheers of the attackers sounded thin through the smoke. The supporting companies were crossing the ditch of dead men, and the redoubt was taken.

Sharpe sheathed his sword. He noted, with some surprise, that it was unbloodied. Perhaps, he thought, he would not have to kill in this last battle, then a superstitious certainty suggested that he would only survive if he did not try to kill. He touched his unshaven chin, then forgot the auguries of life and death as a massive volley hammered from the far side of the captured redoubt.

‘God save Ireland.’ Harper’s voice had awe in it.

A French counter-attack, as desperate as the Highland assault, had been launched on the redoubt and Sharpe saw with horror how the blue-coated enemy was clearing the newly taken ramparts. Men fought hand to hand, but the French had the advantage of numbers and they were winning by sheer weight alone.

Survivors of the Scottish regiments jumped down to escape from the fort, French cheers scorned them, then the reserve battalions, more Scotsmen, were snarling forward with bayonets outstretched.

‘We’ll form as a reserve!’ Nairn shouted at Sharpe.

‘Skirmishers forward!’ Sharpe shouted.

Nairn’s brigade had marched three battalions strong, but now it formed in only two. The shrunken Highlanders were on the left, and the remains of the two English battalions paraded as one on the right. The men crouched, praying they would not be needed. Their faces were blackened by powder residue through which sweat carved dirty white lines.

The second Scottish attack clawed its way into the redoubt. Once again the bayonets rose and fell on the parapet, and once again the Scots drove the French out. Smoke drifted to obscure the fight, but the pipes still played and the cheers were again in Gaelic.

Sharpe kept his sword sheathed as he rode Sycorax towards Nairn. Above him, incongruous on this day of struggle, two larks climbed high above the smoke. Sycorax shied away from a dead Scottish Sergeant. The battle had become quiet, or at least it seemed so to Sharpe. Men fought and died not two hundred paces northwards, and all around the guns still thundered their gut-thumping menace into the smoke-cloud, but it seemed unthreatening to Sharpe. He remembered the remains of the salt beef in his pouch, and was astonished to find that a French musket bullet had lodged in the tough, gristly meat. He prised the ball free, then bit hungrily into the food.

‘There’s another brigade a quarter mile behind us,’ Nairn said. ‘They’ll go on to the end of the ridge if the fort falls.’

‘Good.’

‘Thank you for all you did,’ Nairn said.

Sharpe, embarrassed by the praise, shook his head. ‘I didn’t even get my sword wet, sir.’

‘Nor me.’ Nairn stared up into the sky.

A French cannonball, fired blind from the left flank, and aimed at the Scotsmen who had captured the redoubt, flew wide. It took off the head of Sharpe’s horse in an eruption of warm blood. For a second Sharpe sat on the headless mare, then the body tipped forward and he frantically kicked his feet out of the stirrups and threw himself sideways as the animal’s corpse threatened to roll on to him. ‘God damn it!’ Sharpe sprawled in a puddle of warm horse blood, then clambered to his feet. ‘God damn it!’

Nairn governed his impulse to laugh at Sharpe’s undignified fall. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said instead.

‘She was a present from Jane.’ Sharpe stared at the charnel mess that had been Sycorax. The headless body was still twitching.

‘She was a good horse,’ Nairn said. ‘Save the saddle.’ He turned in his own saddle to see if one of his spare horses was in sight, but a sudden volley of musketry turned him back.

Another French counter-attack was sweeping forward, this one outflanking and assaulting the redoubt, and again the Scots were being forced backwards by a superior number of men. Blue-coated infantry swarmed at the redoubt’s walls, muskets crashed, and for the second time the French retook the fort. Screams sounded as Highlanders were hunted down inside the courtyard. ‘The bloody French are fighting well today.’ Nairn sounded puzzled.

The enemy scrambled along the palisade, bayoneting wounded Scotsmen. These Frenchmen were, indeed, fighting with a verve that the earlier attack, in column, had not displayed. An eagle standard shone among the smoke and, beneath its brightness, Sharpe saw a French General. The man was standing with legs straddled wide on the fort’s southern parapet. It was an arrogant pose, suggesting that the Frenchman was lord of this battlefield and more than equal to anything the British could throw against him. Frederickson’s Riflemen must have seen the enemy General, for a dozen of them fired, but the Frenchman had a charmed life this day.

‘That’s Calvet!’ Sharpe had trained his glass on the Frenchman and recognized the short, squat figure of the man he had fought at the Teste de Buch. ‘It’s bloody Calvet!’

‘Let’s teach the bastard a lesson.’ Nairn drew his sword. It was evident that with the last repulse of the Scots there were no fresh troops to launch against the recaptured redoubt. If Calvet was given more than a few minutes he would reorganize his defences and the fort would be doubly hard to take. Now was the moment to counter-attack, and Nairn’s was the closest brigade. ‘Quick, Sharpe! Let’s get it over!’

Calvet turned imperiously away. On either flank of the redoubt his men were marching forward. The fort’s ditch was heaped with dead and dying men.

‘On your feet!’ Nairn had ridden to the space between his two battalions. ‘Fix bayonets!’ He waited till the blades were fixed, then waved his cocked hat. ‘Forward! Let me hear the pipes!’

The two battalions went forward. So far they were unnoticed. The French were clearing their embrasures and firestep, while one of Calvet’s battalions was being formed in three ranks in front of the shattered palisade and blood-drenched ditch. It was an officer of that battalion who first saw Nairn’s threat and shouted a warning up to the fort’s parapet.

No one had thought to spike the guns, and now the French artillerymen charged them with canister and crashed death out at Nairn’s attack. Sharpe, hurrying to keep up with the mounted Scotsman, saw Nairn fall, but it was only Nairn’s horse that had been wounded. The old Scotsman, his hat gone and his white hair disarrayed, picked himself up and brandished his sword. ‘Forward!’

The fort had been captured twice, and twice recaptured. The crude earthen square, with its battered palisades, seemed to be sucking men into its horror, almost as if by mutual consent the two armies had agreed that whoever won the fort would gain the day. Sharpe could see open ground to his right, ground that would outflank the smoking redoubt, but cool sense, which might have suggested occupying the ground, had been replaced by a savage pride that would not permit General Calvet the satisfaction of holding the redoubt. Nairn, so long denied the chance to show his skills, would now prove himself the master of this battle’s heart. He had more than the redoubt’s guns to contend with, for the battalion of French infantry were loading their muskets in readiness for Nairn’s assault.

‘Steady, lads, steady!’ Nairn had launched his attack on an impulse, now he had to slow it down so that his men did not become ragged with fear or eagerness. ‘Watch your dressing! Steady, lads!’ He smiled as Sharpe joined him. ‘One last effort, Sharpe, just one last effort!’

One of the Highlander’s Colours fell, was retrieved, and hoisted again. A Sergeant’s leg was sliced off at the knee by a cannonball. The pipes whipped fervour into flagging hearts.

The French infantry was loaded and their muskets were raised. There was no sign of Calvet who must have stayed inside the redoubt. Sharpe watched the Frenchmen cock their muskets. ‘We’ll break the bastards!’ Nairn shouted. ‘We’ll break them!’

The French infantry fired and the air was filled with the splintering volley and the whiplash hiss of its bullets. Smoke gouted thick as blood from the cannon embrasures and Sharpe saw the ground ahead of him churn with the strike of canister. Nairn staggered backwards and Sharpe turned to him in alarm.

‘It’s only my leg, man! It’s nothing! Go on! Go on!’ Nairn was wounded, but still exultant. He limped, but would not let Sharpe stay with him. ‘Give them a volley, Richard, now’s your moment!’

‘Brigade!’ Sharpe’s voice was huge. ‘Brigade will halt! Present!’

The redcoats stopped. They raised their heavy muskets. The French battalion knew what was coming and frantically tried to reload. Sharpe raised his sword, paused a heartbeat, then swept it down. ‘Fire!’

A crashing thunderous volley, a spew of acrid smoke, and no time to wonder what damage the bullets had done. ‘Charge!’

‘Take the boys home, Richard!’ Nairn called. ‘Take them home!’

‘Charge!’ Sharpe felt the rage rising, the unreasonable rage of battle, the anger that would only be slaked by victory. It was this same pride and rage that had made Taplow spur ahead of his men to certain death, and which had made Nairn lead his men into the cauldron that was the redoubt’s killing ground. ‘Charge!’ A musket ball slapped past his face. Sharpe could see the faces of the French infantry now, and they looked desperately young and desperately frightened.

‘Charge!’ That was Nairn, behind Sharpe now, and the word seemed to hurl the remnants of the brigade into the stench of bodies and blood among which the enemy stood. The Highlanders ran at the French infantry who had nowhere to retreat. The enemy hesitated, and were lost. Nairn’s English battalion was coming at their flank.

Scottish bayonets went forward and came back bloody. The clansmen were old in war, fighting conscripts. Sharpe, on their flank, watched the enemy run, but, in their panic, the French ran towards the closing English. One youngster ran straight towards Sharpe, then, seeing the English officer, the boy raised his bayonet to strike. Sharpe disdainfully stepped to one side and tripped the boy. He left him on the ground for one of Frederickson’s men to disarm or kill.

A cannon crashed canister into the mass of struggling men, killing both Scot and Frenchmen alike.

‘Give them fire!’ Frederickson shouted, and his skirmishers fired up at the French embrasures. A gunner was flung backwards. A voice bellowed in French from the palisade. Nairn’s Highlanders were already clawing at the sloping earth wall of the fort’s southern face.

‘Come right! Come right!’ Sharpe shouted at the makeshift English battalion to angle their advance and follow him to the redoubt’s western wall.

Sharpe jumped the ditch and reached for the palisade. A musket flamed at him. His foot slipped on the wet earth and he fell back to the ditch’s foot as Frederickson’s men leaped past him. Sergeant Harper had his seven-barrelled gun unslung. He fired it blindly upwards and three Frenchmen were thrown back to make a space where the Riflemen could reach the top. Sharpe went after them. A man’s blood soaked his face, a body fell on him, but he pushed it aside and helped another man tug at the palisade. A splinter of wood ripped his palm open as he tugged, but then the parapet cracked outwards to make a space through which a man could pass. A French bayonet reached for them, but Sharpe stabbed with his sword and raked the man’s forearm so that the musket and blade dropped.

A Greenjacket went into the gap, was shot, then another man pulled him aside. Harper was wrenching at another part of the barricade, pulling out an earth-filled wicker basket that collapsed a whole section of the defences on to a wounded redcoat. Harper was screaming his own Gaelic challenge. Redcoats were mixed with the Greenjackets, the whole mass of men scrabbling and tearing at the mud bank and timber palisade. They trampled over the wounded and fought their way up to where French muskets hammered and bayonets stabbed down. One Frenchman stabbed too far, his arm was seized, and the man screamed as he was tugged down to the waiting blades. Sharpe was wedged in a gap of the palisade now, desperately trying to fend off a bayonet, when suddenly a whole section of the wall behind him collapsed inwards under the weight of attackers. There were shouts of victory, and the British were suddenly spilling on to the narrow firestep, then leaping down into the courtyard where General Calvet tried to line his men into a solid mass, but Nairn’s Highlanders had already pierced the southern wall, and the first of those Scots now carried their bayonets towards Calvet’s frightened men. The courtyard had been left like a slaughterhouse from the two previous attacks.

‘Close on them! Close!’ Sharpe shouted, then jumped down to the courtyard.

Now it was blood and stench and blades in a very small place. A French officer tried to duel with Sharpe, but the Rifleman had no time for such heroics and simply threw himself forward, past the man’s lunge, and punched the heavy sword’s guard into the man’s face. The Frenchman fell backwards and Sharpe kicked him in the ribs. Sharpe would have left the man there, but the French officer fumbled at his belt to draw a pistol and Sharpe forgot his superstition about killing, reversed his sword, and thrust the blade down once. A man came at Sharpe with a bayonet, but two Rifle sword-bayonets caught the Frenchman first. A Highland officer disembowelled a gunner with a sweep of the claymore, then hacked at the dead man’s head to make certain of his death.

Calvet was swearing at his men; tugging them into line, cursing them for chicken-livered bastards. A Scots officer came close enough to the General to threaten him with a claymore, but Calvet almost casually parried the blow then lunged his own sword into the Scotsman’s belly before turning back to shout at his men to stand fast and fight the God-damn bastards off.

Calvet’s men were mostly young conscripts who had fought like demons this day, but Nairn’s attack had drained their last courage. Despite their General, they edged back.

A few fought on. A French gunner swung a rammer like a great club. Sharpe ducked under the swing, then lunged. The Frenchman looked oddly surprised as the blade punctured his belly. A Highlander finished the job for Sharpe. A piper was on the southern rampart, flaying the Scots on with his wild music.

Sharpe’s sword handle was slippery with blood. Calvet’s men were breaking and running. The first of them were already spilling over the northern wall. Sharpe looked for Calvet and saw him in the centre of a few moustached veterans and beneath the bright eagle standard. ‘Calvet!’ Sharpe shouted the name as a challenge. ‘Calvet!’

The Frenchman saw Sharpe. Oddly, instead of bridling at the challenge, he raised his sword in a mock salute. Sharpe struggled to get close to the man, but a sudden rush of Highlanders came between him and the group of Frenchmen. The Colours of three British battalions were in the redoubt now, the mass of men was overwhelming, and Calvet’s last staunch defenders had to give way. They had fought well, but now they just wanted to be out of this courtyard of blood. They retreated calmly, firing their muskets to hold the Scots at bay, then broke to scramble across the northern parapet.

‘Man the firestep!’ Sharpe ran to the northern parapet.

‘Spike those damned guns!’ That was the Scots Colonel.

Frederickson’s men were on the northern parapet, firing at the retreating French. Sharpe joined them, unslung his rifle and looked for Calvet. He saw the General walking away, not bothering to run, but just slashing at weeds with his sword as though he took a walk in the country. Sharpe aimed his rifle dead at the small of Calvet’s back, but could not bear to pull the trigger. He twitched the barrel up and to one side before firing so that the bullet slapped past the French General’s right ear.

Calvet turned. He saw the Riflemen lining the parapet. None fired at him, for his calm demeanour spoke of a bravery they could admire. He was a beaten man, but a brave one. He stared at the Riflemen for a second, then bowed an ironic bow. As he straightened up he made an obscene gesture, then walked quietly on. He only began to run when British troops, flooding either side of the redoubt, threatened to cut him off. Ahead of Calvet the smoke blossomed as the Spaniards renewed their assault on the ridge’s northern end. That assault, and the fall of the large fort, broke what spirit was left in Marshal Soult’s army.

The French ran. They ran down the ridge’s eastern face and towards the bridges that crossed the canal and led to the city. Sharpe, standing on the captured firestep, could at last stare down at the spires and towers and pinnacles and roofs of Toulouse. He could see the semi-circle of smoke that marked the British positions to the city’s east and south. It was like looking at a woodcut of a siege, taken from some old book about Marlborough’s wars. He stared, oblivious of the sudden silence on the ridge, and all he could think of was that he was alive.

Sharpe turned away from the city and saw Sergeant Harper alive and well. The big Irishman was cutting a canteen off a Frenchman’s belt. A bugle called victory. A wounded Frenchman cursed his pain and tried to stand. A Highland Sergeant was admiring a French officer’s sword which he had taken as a trophy. Men were ladling water from gun-buckets and pouring it down their faces. A dog ran with a length of intestines in its mouth. A British Lieutenant was dying at the base of the empty French flagpole. The man was blinking desperately, as though he knew that if he let his eyelids stay closed he would slip into eternal night.

Frederickson came and stood beside Sharpe and the two Rifle officers turned to stare down into the enemy city. ‘Tomorrow,’ Frederickson said, ‘I suppose we’ll have to assault the damned place?’

‘It won’t be us, William.’ Sharpe knew that bloody business would be given to other battalions. The men who had taken this ridge had earned their pay and the proof of it was in the horror all around. Dead men, wounded men, dying horses, broken gun carriages, smoke, litter; it was a field after battle, the last battle. Surely, Sharpe thought, it had to be the last battle.

Sharpe found a cannon’s cleaning rag and wiped his sword clean. He had wet the blade after all, but soon, he thought, he would hang this long sword on a country wall and let it gather dust. To his north British colours advanced along the ridge as fresh battalions hunted down the last nests of stubborn defenders. The smoke was thinning to a misty haze. There were Spanish colours visible at the ridge’s far crest; proof that this day’s battle was won, even if the city itself had yet to fall. Sharpe suddenly laughed. ‘I had a sudden urge to take Calvet’s eagle. Did you recognize him?’

‘I did.’ Frederickson offered his canteen to Sharpe. ‘Be glad you didn’t try to take his bird. You wouldn’t be alive if you had.’

A bagpipe suddenly sounded, and something plangent in its notes made Sharpe and Frederickson turn.

‘Oh, God,’ Frederickson said softly.

Four Highlanders carried a litter made of enemy jackets threaded on to enemy muskets. On the litter, his white hair hanging, was Nairn.

Sharpe jumped down to the blood-drenched earth of the courtyard. He crossed to the body just as the Highlanders lowered it to the ground. ‘He’s dead, sir.’ One of the men saw Sharpe’s face and offered the bleak news.

‘He said it was his leg.’ Sharpe frowned at the old man who had been his friend.

‘His lung as well, sir.’

‘Oh, Christ!’ Tears came to Sharpe’s eyes, then fell down his bloodied cheek. ‘I was to have had supper with him tonight.’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

They buried Nairn in the centre of the redoubt that the Scotsman had captured. A bagpipe played a lament for him, and a chaplain said a Gaelic prayer for him, and his beloved Highlanders fired a volley towards the northern stars for him.

And in the morning, when Sharpe awoke with a parched mouth and a heart that lurched with sorrow when he recalled the Scotsman’s death, it was discovered that Marshal Soult had abandoned Toulouse. He had marched through the gap in the British ring, and he had left the city that now was flaunted with white flags to welcome its enemies. Toulouse had surrendered.

Captain William Frederickson, his false teeth and eyepatch restored to give his scarred face a semblance of respectability, discovered Sharpe in a wineshop that lay close to Toulouse’s prefecture. The wineshop was crowded, but something about Sharpe’s scarred face had dissuaded anyone from sharing his table. It was just after dusk and two days after Soult had abandoned the city to the British. ‘Have you taken to drinking alone?’ Frederickson asked.

‘I never abandoned the habit.’ Sharpe pushed the bottle of wine across the table. ‘You’re looking damned cheerful.’

‘I am damned cheerful.’ Frederickson paused because a loud and prolonged huzza sounded from the prefecture next door. Field-Marshal the Lord Wellington was giving a dinner to celebrate his capture of the city. All the prominent citizens of Toulouse were attending, and all wore the white cockade of the French monarchy and were swearing that they had never supported the upstart Corsican tyrant. ‘It makes one wonder just who it is we’ve been fighting all these years.’ Frederickson straddled a back-to-front chair and nodded thanks for the wine. ‘But we’re fighting them no longer because the Emperor has abdicated. The God-damned bloody Emperor has thrown in his hand. Allow me to toast your most excellent, and now quite safe, health.’

Frederickson had spoken in a most matter-of-fact tone, so much so that Sharpe did not really comprehend what his friend had just said.

‘The war, my dear friend, is over,’ Frederickson insisted.

Sharpe stared at Frederickson and said nothing.

‘It’s true,’ Frederickson said, ‘as I live and breathe, and may I be cursed if I lie, but a British officer has come from Paris. Think of that! A British officer from Paris! In fact a whole slew of British officers have come from Paris! Bonaparte has abdicated, Paris has fallen, the war is over, and we have won!’ Frederickson could no longer contain his excitement. He stood and, ignoring the majority of the customers who were French, climbed on to the chair and shouted his news to the whole tavern. ‘Boney’s abdicated! Paris has fallen, the war’s over, and we’ve won! By Christ, we’ve won!’

There was a moment’s silence, then the cheers began. Spanish and Portuguese officers sought a hasty translation, then added their own noise to the celebration. The only men who did not cheer were the civilian-clothed and moustached French veterans who stared sullenly into their wine cups. One such man, the news interpreted to him, wept.

Frederickson shouted to a serving girl that he wanted champagne, cheroots, and brandy. ‘We’ve won!’ he exulted to Sharpe. ‘The damn thing’s over!’

‘When did Boney abdicate?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Christ knows. Last week? Two weeks ago?’

‘Before the battle?’ Sharpe insisted.

Frederickson shrugged. ‘Before the battle, yes.’

‘Jesus.’ Sharpe momentarily closed his eyes. So Nairn’s death had been for nothing? All the blood on the high ridge had been spilt for nothing?

Then, suddenly, he forgot that irony in an overwhelming and astonishing wash of relief. The bells of Europe could ring because the war was over. There would be no more danger. No more summoning the nerve to assault an enemy-held wall, and no more standing rock still as an enemy battalion took aim. No more cannons, no more lancers, no more skirmish line. No more death. It was over. No more waking in the night sheeted with sweat and thinking of a sword blade’s threat. The war was over, and the last ranks had been closed up, and the whole damn thing was done. Europe had been rinsed with blood, and it was over. He would live for ever now, and that thought made Sharpe laugh, and suddenly he was shaking hands with allied officers who crowded about the table to hear the details of Frederickson’s news. Napoleon, the ogre, the tyrant, the scourge of Europe, the damned Corsican, the upstart, the beast, was finished.

Someone began singing, while other officers were dancing between the tables where the Emperor’s veterans sat keeping their thoughts hidden.

Brandy and champagne arrived. Frederickson, without asking, poured the red wine from Sharpe’s cup on to the sawdust covered floor and replaced it with champagne. ‘A toast! To peace!’

‘To peace!’

‘To Dorset!’ Frederickson beamed.

‘To Dorset!’ Sharpe wondered whether a letter had come from England, then forgot the thought to savour this astounding news. It was over! No more canister, no more bayonets, no more shivering on long night marches, no more stench of French cavalry, no more sabres chopping down, no more bullets. Easter had triumphed and death was defeated. ‘I must write to Jane,’ Sharpe said, and he wondered whether she was celebrating the news in some Dorset village. There would be oxen roasting, hogsheads of ale, church bells ringing. It was over.

‘You can write to Jane tomorrow,’ Frederickson ordered, ‘for tonight we get drunk.’

‘Tonight we get drunk,’ Sharpe agreed, and by one o’clock they were on the city’s walls where they sang nonsense and shouted their triumph towards the British bivouac fires that lay to the city’s west. By two o’clock they were searching for another wineshop, but instead found a group of cavalry sergeants who insisted on sharing some plundered champagne with the Rifle officers. At three o’clock, arm in arm to keep themselves upright, Sharpe and Frederickson staggered through the abandoned French fortifications and crossed the wooden bridge over the canal where two friendly sentries prevented them from falling into the water. At four o’clock they arrested Sergeant Harper on a charge of being sober, and at five o’clock they found him not guilty because he no longer was. At six o’clock Major Richard Sharpe was being sick, and at seven o’clock he staggered to Nairn’s vacant tent and gave instructions that he was not to be woken up ever again. Ever.

Because a war was over, and it was won, and at long long last there was peace.