Sharpe angled into the march to join his riflemen. The going was easy enough at first for he could jump from tussock to tussock, but then his boots began to stick in the glutinous mud. A musket ball splashed near him and he saw, from the spray, that it had been fired from the west, from the voltigeurs harassing the square.
Those were the men Sharpe was heading for. He would let Bullen, Vicente and the rest of the company go towards the square, but he would take his red-jacketed riflemen up onto the flank of the voltigeurs who had been doing so much damage to the battalion. Only a few of those voltigeurs were worrying about him, and they were simply shooting wildly across the stream, firing at too long a range, and Sharpe knew they were seeing redcoats, not riflemen. They reckoned eighteen redcoats could do them no damage, and Sharpe wanted them to think that, and he led his men to the edge of the flooded ground where the range to the voltigeurs was under a hundred paces. "Officers," he told the riflemen, "sergeants. Look for them. Kill them."
This was why God had made rifles. Muskets could fight each other at a hundred paces and it was a miracle if an aimed shot hit, but the rifles were killers at that range, and the voltigeurs, who had thought themselves faced only with muskets, were ambushed. In the first few seconds Sharpe's riflemen had killed three Frenchmen and wounded another seven, then they reloaded and Sharpe edged them to the left, a few paces nearer the square, and they fired again and the voltigeurs, confused because they only saw red coats, fired back. Sharpe knelt, watched an officer running with a hand holding up his saber, waited for the man to stop and point out a target, and pulled the trigger. When the smoke cleared the officer was gone. "Slow and steady!" Sharpe called. "Make the bullets count!" He turned and saw that Bullen was safe in the marshland now, the voltigeurs had followed him up the track, but none was willing to splash into the morass.
He looked back west, loaded the rifle with its stock half submerged in water, saw a man taking aim with his musket and fired at him. The voltigeurs were at last realizing that they were fighting a cruelly unequal battle and they were running back out of the rifles' range, but the cavalry, farther away, saw only a scatter of red coats and a group of the horsemen turned, drove back their spurs, and burst past the retreating voltigeurs. "Back," Sharpe called, "gently back. And edge left!" He was taking his men closer to the square now, wading through water a foot deep. He still had to cross the stream, but so did the cavalry, and those Frenchmen seemed oblivious of the flooded obstacle. Perhaps they thought the sheet of water was all one depth, just a foot or so deep, and so they lowered their sabers, spurred their horses into a canter and rode for the kill. "Wait till they're floundering," Sharpe said, "then kill them."
The front rank splashed into the flooded land on the opposite bank, then one horse went down into the stream, pitching its rider over its head. The other horses slowed, struggling now to find their footing, and
Sharpe shouted at his men to open fire. A hussar, his pigtails hanging either side of his sunburned face, snarled as he wrenched at his reins and tried to force his horse on through the stream and Sharpe put a bullet straight through the sky-blue jacket. A shell exploded in the second rank of horsemen who had pulled up when they saw the first check. Sharpe reloaded, glanced around to make sure none of the voltigeurs from the farm were coming through the swampy ground, then shot a dragoon. This was easy killing and the horsemen understood it and turned their horses and raked back their spurs so that they struggled back to the firmer ground, still pursued by rifle fire.
And there was more rifle fire now, a storm of it from the far side of the South Essex where the cazadores had come to the redcoats' aid and were driving the voltigeurs back, then the north side of the square exploded into smoke as two companies fired a volley into the flank of the horsemen who were spurring away to safety. Sharpe slung his rifle on his shoulder. "Not a bad day's work, Pat," he said, then nodded at the lone cavalry horse that had crossed the stream and marooned itself in the marsh. "They still pay a reward for enemy horses, don't they? He's all yours, Sergeant."
The cavalry were no longer threatening and so the South Essex deployed into a four-rank line, twice as thick as they would use on a normal battlefield, but safer in case any of the hussars or dragoons decided to try one last attack. That was unlikely for there were Portuguese cazadores on the battalion's left flank now, and empty marshland on their right, while the French, harassed by the cannon fire, were retreating across the valley. Best of all the light company was back.
"It went well," Lawford said. He had mounted the horse Harper had brought to the battalion. "Very well."
"A nervous moment or two," Major Forrest said.
"Nervous?" Lawford said in a surprised tone. "Of course not! Everything went exactly as I thought. Quite exactly as I thought. Pity about Lightning, though." He looked with disgust at his brother-in-law who, plainly drunk, was sitting behind the color party, then he took off his hat as Sharpe walked down the line. "Mister Sharpe! That was very pretty what you did to those voltigeurs, very pretty. Thank you, my dear fellow."
Sharpe changed jackets with Bullen, then looked up at Lawford who was beaming with happiness. "Permission to rescue our wounded from the farm, sir," Sharpe said, "before I return to duty."
Lawford looked puzzled. "Rescuing the wounded is part of your duty, isn't it?"
"I mean being quartermaster, sir."
Lawford leaned from his captured saddle. "Mister Sharpe," he said softly.
"Sir?"
"Stop being bloody tedious."
"Yes, sir."
"And I'm supposed to send you to Pero Negro after this," the Colonel went on and, seeing Sharpe did not understand, added, "to headquarters. It seems the General wants a word with you."
"Send Mister Vicente, sir," Sharpe said, "and the prisoner. Between them they can tell the General everything he needs to know."
"And you can tell me," Lawford said, watching the French go back into the far hills.
"Nothing to tell, sir," Sharpe said.
"Nothing to tell! Good God, you've been absent for two weeks and you've nothing to tell?"
"Just got lost, sir, looking for the turpentine. Very sorry, sir."
"You just got lost," Lawford said flatly, then he looked at Sarah and Joana who were in muddy breeches and had muskets. Lawford looked as if he was about to say something about the women, then shook his head and turned back to Sharpe. "Nothing to tell, eh?"
"We got away, sir," Sharpe said, "that's all that matters. We got away." And they had. It had been Sharpe's escape.
HISTORICAL NOTE
The French invasion of Portugal in the late summer of 1810 was defeated by hunger, and it marked the last time that the French tried to capture the country. Wellington, by now commander of both the Portuguese and the British armies, adopted a scorched earth policy that brought huge hardship to the Portuguese people. Attempts were made to deny the invaders every scrap of food, while the inhabitants of central Portugal were required to leave their homes, either to take to the hills, go north to Oporto or south to Lisbon, which was to be defended by the extraordinary Lines of Torres Vedras.