Sharpe’s Rifles. Bernard Cornwell
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for the charge but broke and fled.
Bullets hissed from the Dragoons positioned on the far side of the gorge. A Rifleman spun, fell, then spat blood as he struggled to his hands and knees.
‘Sergeant Williams! Kill those bastards!’ Sharpe pointed across the canyon. ‘Get their bloody heads down!’
‘Sir!’
The trumpet sounded again and Sharpe veered back towards the slope he had climbed. At its foot Vivar had formed his men, but the French had expected it. Their main force had been barricaded on the road and now, from the Spaniard’s left flank, a company of Dragoons was lined for the charge. ‘You!’ Sharpe grabbed a greenjacket. ‘You!’ Another. ‘Kill those buggers.’
The rifles snapped at the horsemen. ‘Aim low!’ His voice was snatched by the wind. ‘Low!’ A horse went down. A man fell back from his saddle. Sharpe found a rifle among the rocks, loaded it, and fired downwards. Sergeant Williams had a dozen men sniping over the canyon, but the rest of the greenjackets were now pouring fire at the cavalry. They could not stop the charge, but they could unsettle it. A riderless horse stampeded in the snow, while another dragged a bleeding man across the charge’s face.
Vivar retreated. His thin line of men would have been turned into carrion by the Dragoon’s swords, and so the Major took shelter in the gorge. The French commander must have realized that his own charge was doomed, for the horsemen were pulled back. If the cavalry had funnelled themselves into the rocks, and done so without the help of cover from above, they would have been massacred by rifle fire.
Stalemate. Somewhere a wounded man sobbed in a terrible wailing voice. A limping horse tried to rejoin the cavalry’s ranks, but fell. Cartridge wadding smoked in the snow. Sharpe did not know whether two minutes or two hours had passed. He felt the cold seep back into his bones; a cold that had been vanquished by the sudden emergency. He grinned to himself, proud of his greenjackets’ achievement. It had been done with a ruthless speed which had unbalanced the enemy and taken away their advantage, and now there was stalemate.
The French still barred the road, but Sharpe’s Riflemen could harass those sheltering behind the low barricade, and they did so with the grim enjoyment of men revenging themselves. Two French prisoners had been taken on the heights; two miserable Dragoons who were shoved into a hollow of the rocks and guarded by a savage-looking Rifleman. Sharpe guessed there had never been more than three dozen Dragoons on each side of the chasm, and he could see no more than sixty or seventy either behind the barricade or in the ranks of the aborted charge. This could only be a detachment of Dragoons, a handful sent into the mountains.
‘Lieutenant!’ Vivar shouted from beneath Sharpe. The Spaniard was hidden by the loom of the rocks.
‘Major?’
‘If I reach the barricade, can you give me fire?’
‘You’ll never make it!’ If Vivar attacked the barricade, then his flank would again be open to the horsemen. Sharpe had seen what Dragoons could do to scattered infantry, and he feared for Vivar’s dismounted Cazadores. The carbine was not the Dragoons’ real weapon; they relished the power of their long straight swords and they prayed for rash fools on whom to wield the killing blades.
‘Englishman!’ Vivar shouted again.
‘Major?’
‘I spit on your opinion! Give me fire!’
‘Fool,’ Sharpe muttered, then shouted at his men, ‘Keep their heads down!’
Vivar’s men broke cover in a column of threes. The first time he had attacked, Vivar had made a line, but now he aimed his men like a human battering ram at the road’s obstruction. The Galicians did not march forward, but ran. Smoke puffed from the barricade and Sharpe’s men opened fire.
The mounted Dragoons, just forty strong, saw the scarlet-coated enemy come into the open. The horses wheeled and were spurred into a trot. Vivar ignored them. A Spaniard fell, and his comrades swerved round his body and reformed beyond. A trumpet sounded high and shrill, then at last the Major stopped his men and turned them towards the threatened flank.
Sharpe now saw what Vivar planned, and saw that it was brave to the point of idiocy. Ignoring the Dragoons behind the barricade he would pour all his fire into the horsemen. He was trusting the Riflemen to keep the dismounted Dragoons occupied, and Sharpe paced along his line of marksmen and shouted their targets to them. ‘That bugger by the tree. Kill him!’ He saw a man fire in a hurry and he kicked his leg. ‘Aim properly, you bastard!’ Sharpe looked for the telltale scatter of discarded powder which would betray a man who only half-charged his rifle to spare his shoulder the mule-hard kick of the butt, but none of the Riflemen were using that cheap expediency.
Two men at Vivar’s right file were down. They were the price Vivar had to pay. The cavalry was galloping at speed now, their hooves flinging up great gobs of dirty snow and soil.
‘Take aim!’ Vivar stood on the exposed right flank, the one closest to the barricade and where the greatest danger lay. He raised his sword. ‘Wait for it, wait for it!’
The snow was thin on the flat ground beside the road. The horses’ hooves thrummed the turf, and the long swords reflected the pale light. The trumpet hurled them on, faster, and the horsemen shouted the first challenge. The Spaniards had not formed a square, but were risking all on one crushing volley from men in line. Only disciplined troops could stand in line against a cavalry charge.
‘Fire!’ Vivar’s sword flashed down.
The Spanish carbines flamed. Horses tumbled. Blood, men and snow made a whirling chaos. Something screamed, but whether man or horse, Sharpe could not tell. Then, over the scream, came Vivar’s war shout. ‘Santiago! Santiago!’
The Galicians cheered, then charged. Not at the barricade, but towards the broken horsemen.
‘Jesus Christ!’ a Rifleman close to Sharpe muttered, then lowered his weapon. ‘They’re bleeding mad!’
But it was a magnificent madness. Sharpe’s men watched and he barked at them to keep firing at the enemy behind the barricade. He permitted himself to watch as the tough Galician soldiers discarded their firearms and drew their own long swords. They climbed over the dead horses and stabbed down at dazed Dragoons. Others seized bridles or dragged at riders.
The Frenchmen behind the barricade stood to make their own charge and Sharpe shouted a warning at Vivar, but one which he knew the Spaniard would never hear. He turned. ‘Sergeant Williams! Keep your men here! The rest of you! Follow!’
The Riflemen ran in a frenzied scramble down the hill. They made a ragged charge that would take the last Dragoons in the flank, and the French saw them coming, hesitated, then fled. Vivar’s men were taking prisoners or rounding up riderless horses, while the surviving Frenchmen scrambled away to safety. The battle was over. The ambushed, outnumbered, had snatched an impossible victory, and the snow stank of blood and smoke.
Then gunfire sounded from the canyon behind Sharpe.
Vivar turned, his face ashen.
A rifle fired, its sound amplified by the echo of rock walls.
‘Lieutenant!’ Vivar gestured desperately towards the canyon. ‘Lieutenant!’ There was a genuine despair in his voice.
Sharpe turned and ran towards the chasm. The gun-fire was sudden and brusque. He could see Sergeant Williams firing downwards, and he knew there must have been more Frenchmen hidden at the canyon’s far end; men who would have blocked the panicked retreat they had expected to provoke. Instead those men must be advancing up the canyon to take Vivar and Sharpe in the rear.
Except they had been stopped by one man. Rifleman Harper had found the rifle of a fallen man and, using the corpse of the mule as a bastion, was holding off the handful of Dragoons. He had cut the bonds from his wrists, using a bayonet that had slashed deep wounds into his hands, but, despite the bleeding cuts, he still loaded and fired his rifle with a fearful precision. A dead French horse and a wounded Dragoon witnessed to the