And ten minutes later woke to gunfire.
As the wolf, at last, attacked.
The first Sharpe knew of the attack was when Miranda, the girl rescued from the high border settlement, screamed like a banshee and for a second Sharpe thought he was dreaming, then he became aware of the gunshot that had preceded the scream by a split second and he opened his eyes to see that Rifleman Thompson was dying, shot in the head and bleeding like a stuck pig. Thompson had been hurled clear down the flight of ten steps that led from the magazine's crooked entrance and now lay twitching as a flood of gore spurted from his matted hair. He had been carrying his rifle when he was shot and now the weapon skidded over the floor to stop beside Sharpe.
Shadows loomed at the stairhead. The magazine's main entrance led into a short tunnel which would have been equipped with two doors when the fort had been properly garrisoned and its magazine filled with shot and powder. Where the second door should have hung the tunnel turned in an abrupt right angle, then reversed back to the stairhead. The pair of turns had been designed to baffle any enemy shell that might have breached the magazine's entrance and in the bleak darkness the double angle had succeeded in slowing down Thompson's killers who now erupted into the tiny rushlight that burned in the great underground chamber.
Grey uniforms. This was not a dream, but a nightmare for the grey killers had come.
Sharpe seized Thompson's rifle, pointed the muzzle and pulled the trigger.
An explosion crashed through the cellar as a cluster of flames speared through a smoke cloud towards the French at the top of the stair. Patrick Harper had fired his seven-barrelled gun and the volley of pistol balls slammed into the attackers to throw them back into the angle of the corridor's last turn where they went down in a welter of blood and pain. Two more riflemen fired. The magazine echoed with the shots and the air was stinking and thick with the choking smoke. A man was screaming, so was a girl. "Back way! Back way!" Sharpe shouted. "Shut that bloody girl up, Perkins!" He seized his own rifle and fired it up the stairs. He could see nothing now except for the small shining spots where the tiny rushlights glimmered in the smoke. The French seemed to have vanished, though in truth they were merely trying to negotiate the barricade of screaming, bleeding, twitching men who had been hurled back by Harper's volley and the fusillade of rifle bullets.
There was a second stair at the magazine's end, a stair that twisted up to the ramparts and was designed to let ammunition be delivered direct to the firestep rather than be carried through the fort's courtyard. "Sergeant Latimer!" Sharpe shouted. "Count them up! Thompson's out of it. Go, go!" If the French already held the ramparts, Sharpe reflected, then he and his riflemen were already trapped and doomed to die like rats in a hole, but he dared not abandon hope. "Go!" he shouted at his men. "Out! Out!" He had been sleeping with his boots on, so all he needed to do was snatch up his belt, pouches and sword. He slung the belt over his shoulder and began reloading the rifle. His eyes were smarting from the smoke. A French musket coughed more smoke at the top of the stairs and the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the back wall.
"Just you and Harps, sir!" Latimer called from the back stair.
"Go, Pat!" Sharpe said.
Boots clattered on the stairs. Sharpe abandoned his attempt to load the rifle, reversed the weapon instead and hammered its butt at the shadow that appeared in the smoke. The man went down silently and hard, felled instantly by the brass-weighted blow. Harper, his rifle reloaded, fired blindly up the stairs, then grabbed Sharpe's elbow. "For the love of God, sir. Come on!"
Grey attackers were pouring down the stairs into the smoky darkness. A pistol fired, a man shouted in urgent French and another tripped over Thompson's corpse. The damp cave-like space stank of urine, rotted eggs and sweat. Harper pulled Sharpe through the cloying smoke to the foot of the back stairs where Latimer crouched. "Go on, sir!" Latimer had a loaded rifle that would serve as the parting shot.
Sharpe pounded up the stairs towards the cool and blessedly clean night air. Latimer fired into the chaos, then followed Harper up the crooked stair. Cresacre and Hagman were waiting at the stairhead with pointed rifles. "Don't shoot!" Sharpe called as he neared the stairhead, then pushed past the two riflemen and ran to the inner edge of the firestep to try and understand the night's full horror.
Harper ran to the door that led into the gate tower, only to find it was barred from the inside. He hammered on the wood with the butt of his volley gun. "Open up!" he shouted. "Open up!"
Hagman fired down the winding stair and a scream echoed up the steps.
"Behind us, sir!" Perkins called. He was sheltering a terrified Miranda in one of the machicolations, "and there's more on the road, sir!"
Sharpe swore. The gatehouse, that he had thought would be the night's salvation, was already captured. He could see that the gate was wide open and being guarded by grey-uniformed soldiers. Sharpe guessed two companies of Loup's voltigeurs, distinguished by the red epaulettes they wore, had led the attack and both were now inside the fort. One company had gone straight to the magazine where Sharpe and his men were bivouacking while most of the second company had spread into a skirmish line that was now advancing fast among the barracks blocks. Another squad of the grey-clad infantry was running up a ramp which led to the wall's wide firestep.
Harper kept trying to break the door down, but no one inside the gatehouse responded. Sharpe shouldered his half-loaded rifle and drew his sword. "Leave it, Pat!" he shouted. "Rifles! Line on me!" The real danger now was the section of men coming up to the wall. If those men got a lodging in the gun platforms then Sharpe's riflemen would be trapped while the rest of Loup's men swarmed into the San Isidro. That main enemy force was now hurrying up the approach road and, from the one quick southward glance that he could spare, Sharpe could see that Loup had sent his whole brigade into this attack which had been spearheaded by two companies of light infantry. God damn it, Sharpe thought, but he had got everything wrong. The French had not attacked from the north, but from the south, and in so doing they had already captured the fort's strongest point, the place Sharpe had planned to turn into an impregnable stronghold. He guessed that the two elite companies had crept up the approach road and rushed the causeway before any sentry called the alarm. And doubtless, too, the gates had been unbarred from inside by the same person who had betrayed where Sharpe, Loup's sworn enemy, was to be found and where Loup, seeking his revenge, had sent one of the two attacking companies.
Now, though, was not the time to analyse Loup's tactics, but to clear the ramparts of the Frenchmen who threatened to isolate Sharpe's riflemen. "Fix swords," he ordered, and waited while his men slotted the long, sword-handled bayonets onto their rifles' muzzles. "Be calm, lads," he said. He knew his men were frightened and excited after being woken to nightmare by a clever enemy, but this was no time for panic. It was a time for very cool heads and murderous fighting. "Let's get the bastards! Come on!" Sharpe called and he led his men in a ragged line down the moonlit battlements. The first Frenchmen to reach the firestep dropped to their knees and took aim, but they were outnumbered, in the dark and nervous and so they fired early and their bullets flew wide or high. Then, fearing to be overwhelmed by the dark mass of riflemen, the voltigeurs turned and ran down the ramp to join the skirmish line that was advancing between the barracks blocks towards Oliveira's caзadores.
The Portuguese, Sharpe decided, must fend for themselves. His duty lay with the Real Companпa Irlandesa whose twin barracks had already been surrounded by the French skirmishers. The voltigeurs were firing at the barracks from the shelter of the other buildings, but they dared not attack, for the Irish guardsmen had opened a brisk return fire. Sharpe assumed the Real Companпa Irlandesa's officers were already either dead or prisoners, though it was possible that a few might have escaped out of the gatehouse's rampart doors as the French streamed into the lower rooms. "Listen, lads!" Sharpe raised his voice so that all his riflemen could hear. "We can't stay here. The buggers will be up from the magazine soon so we're going over to join the Irish boys. We'll barricade ourselves inside and keep firing." He would have liked to split his greenjackets into two groups, one for each of the besieged barracks, but he doubted any man could reach the further barracks alive. The nearer of the two was less infested by voltigeurs, but it was also the barracks where the wives and children were quartered and thus the more in need of extra firepower. "Are you ready?" Sharpe called. "Let's go!"