Then the lighter’s bows ran softly onto the mud.
“Let’s kill some bastards,” Sir Thomas said vengefully.
And the first troops went ashore.
CHAPTER 5
SHARPE JUMPED FROM THE lighter into water that came over his boot tops. He waded ashore, following Ensign Keogh whose cocked hat looked as though it had belonged to his grandfather. It had exaggeratedly hooked points from which hung skimpy tassels and at its crown was a massive blue plume that matched the facings of the 87th’s red coats. “Follow, follow, follow,” Keogh hissed, not at Sharpe, but at a big sergeant and a score of men who were evidently his responsibility this night. The sergeant had become entangled in a wicker fish trap and was cursing as he tried to kick it free of his boots. “Do you need help, Sergeant Masterson?” Keogh asked.
“Jesus no, sir,” Masterson said, trampling on the trap’s remnants. “Bloody thing, sir.”
“Fix bayonets, boys!” Keogh said. “Do it quietly now!”
It seemed extraordinary to Sharpe that four or five hundred men could disembark so close to the twin encampments on the creek’s banks and not be noticed, but the French were still oblivious of the attackers. Sharpe could see small tents in the firelight, and among the tents were crude shelters made of branches thatched with reeds. A stand of muskets stood outside one sagging tent and Sharpe wondered why in God’s name the French had provided tents. The men were supposed to be guarding the rafts, not sleeping, but at least a few of the sentries were still awake. Two men wandered slowly across the encampment, muskets slung, suspecting nothing as a second lighter disgorged another company of redcoats alongside the men of the 87th. Two more companies were wading ashore on the northern bank.
“For a balla, boys,” Major Gough appeared to say softly and urgently just behind Keogh’s men, “for a balla!”
“For a what?” Sharpe whispered to Harper.
“Faugh a ballagh, sir. Clear the way, it means. Get out of our path because the Irish are coming.” Harper had drawn his sword bayonet. He was evidently reserving the seven bullets in the volley gun for later in the fight. “We bloody well are coming too,” he said, and clicked the sword’s brass hilt over his rifle’s muzzle so that the barrel now held twenty-three inches of murderous steel.
“Forward now!” Major Gough reverted to English, but still spoke quietly. “And slaughter the bastards. But do it softly, boys. Don’t wake the little darlings till you have to.”
The 87th started forward, their bayonets glinting in the small light of the fires. Clicks sounded as men cocked their muskets and Sharpe was certain the French must hear that noise, but the enemy stayed silent. It was a sentry on the northern bank who first realized the danger. Perhaps he saw the dark shape of the lighters in the creek, or else he glimpsed the glimmering blades coming from the west, but whatever alarmed him prompted a strangled cry of astonishment followed by a bang as he fired his musket.
“Faugh a ballagh!” Major Gough yelled. “Faugh a ballagh! Hard at them, boys, hard at them!” Gough, now that surprise was lost, had no intention of keeping his advance slow and disciplined. Sharpe remembered the battalion from Talavera, and he knew them to be a steady unit, but Gough wanted speed and savagery now. “Run, you rogues!” he shouted. “Take them fast! And give tongue! Give tongue!”
The men responded to this hunting command by screaming like banshees. They began running through the marsh, stumbling on tussocks, and jumping small ditches. Ensign Keogh, lithe and young, ran ahead with his slender-bladed infantry officer’s sword held aloft. “Faugh a ballagh!” he shouted. “Faugh a ballagh!” Then he leaped a ditch, all sprawling legs and flapping scabbard, while his left hand clutched at his oversized hat to keep it from falling off. He stumbled, but Sergeant Masterson, who was almost as big as Harper, snatched the frail-looking ensign back to his feet. “Kill them!” Keogh screamed. “Kill them!” Muskets sparked among the campfires, but Sharpe neither heard a ball pass nor saw anyone fall. The French, scattered and dozy, were scrambling out of their tents and shelters. An officer, his sword reflecting the firelight, tried to rally his troops, but the screams of the attacking Irish were enough to drive the newly woken men into the farther darkness. There was a smattering of musket fire from Gough’s Irishmen, but most of the work was done by the mere threat of their seventeen-inch bayonets. A woman, bare-legged, scooped up her bedding and sprinted after her man. Two dogs were running in circles, barking. Sharpe saw a pair of mounted men vanishing into the darkness behind him. He whirled, rifle raised, but the horsemen had galloped past the Irish flank into the dark toward the place where the lighters had grounded. Keogh had vanished ahead, followed by his men, but Sharpe held Harper back. “We’ve got green coats, Pat,” he warned. “Someone will mistake us for Crapauds if we’re not careful.”
He was right. A half dozen men with yellow facings on their red jackets suddenly appeared among the fires and Sharpe saw a musket swing toward him. “Ninety-fifth!” he shouted. “Ninety-fifth! Hold your fire! Who are you?”
“Sixty-seventh!” a voice shouted back. The 67th was a Hampshire regiment and they had advanced more slowly than the Irishmen, but kept closer order. A captain now took them east and south to guard the captured camp’s inland perimeter, while Major Gough was shouting at his Irishmen to move back through the tents and make a similar cordon on the bay side. Sharpe was thrusting his sword into the small tents as he and Harper walked toward Gough, and one such thrust elicited a yelp. Sharpe pulled the canvas flaps aside and saw two Frenchmen cowering inside. “Out!” he snarled. They crawled out and waited at his feet, shaking. “I don’t even know if we’re taking prisoners,” Sharpe said.
“We can’t just kill them, sir,” Harper said.
“I’m not going to kill them,” Sharpe snarled. “Get up!” He prodded the men with his sword, then drove them toward another band of prisoners being escorted by the Hampshire redcoats. One of those Hampshires was stooping by a French boy who did not look more than fourteen or fifteen. He had taken a bullet in his chest and was choking to death, his heels beating a horrid tattoo on the ground. “Be easy, boy,” the Hampshire man said as he stroked the dying boy’s cheek. “Be easy.” The far bank sparked with a sudden flurry of musket shots that died away as quickly as they had risen, and it was evident that the redcoats there had been just as successful as the men on the southern shore.
“Is that you, Sharpe?” It was Major Gough’s voice.
“It is, sir.”
“That was damnably quick,” Gough said, sounding disappointed. “The fellows just ran! Didn’t put up a fight at all. Will you do me the honor of reporting to General Graham that this bank is secure and that there’s no counterattack in sight? You should find the general by the rafts.”
“A pleasure, sir,” Sharpe said. He led Harper back through the captured encampment.
“I thought we’d get some fighting,” Harper said, sounding as disappointed as Gough.
“Buggers were asleep, weren’t they?”
“I come all this way just to watch a bunch of Dubliners wake up some Crapauds?”
“Are Gough’s men from Dublin?”
“That’s where the regiment’s raised, sir.” Harper spotted a discarded French pack, scooped it up, and filleted inside. “Bugger all,” he said and threw it away. “So how long do we stay here?”
“Long as it takes. An hour?”
“That long!”
“Engineers have a lot of work to do, Pat,” Sharpe said, and suddenly thought of poor Sturridge who had trusted that Sharpe would keep him alive on the Guadiana.
They found General Graham on the bank where the fire rafts were moored. The fifth lighter, the one containing the engineers, had tied up on the nearest raft where two Frenchmen lay dead.