“Then we’ll leave them here,” Sharpe said. He delivered the general’s message, then stood beside Collins and watched the cannon flashes. One French round shot struck the remains of a campfire so that embers, sparks, and flames exploded thirty or forty feet into the air. Some burning shards landed on the tents and started small fires that illuminated the cumbersome rafts.
“Don’t like fighting at night,” Collins admitted.
“It’s not easy,” Sharpe said. Every shadow seemed to move and the marshland was full of shadows cast by the fires. He remembered the night before Talavera, and how he had discovered the French coming up the hill. That had been a mad night of confusion, but tonight, at least, the enemy seemed to be supine. The fortress artillery still fired, but the grape and round shot were now going well to Sharpe’s left.
“Two of the buggers came here,” Collins said. “Both on horseback! I know we haven’t got any horses, but I still thought they might have been a pair of our lads who’d captured a couple. They rode up to me, calm as you like, and then galloped off. We never fired a shot. One of them even called good evening as he went, the insolent bastard.”
So the French, Sharpe thought, knew that the lighters were well downstream of the camp, and knew, moreover, that they were lightly guarded by a small picquet of marines. “If you don’t mind me suggesting it,” Sharpe said, “I’d move the lighters upstream.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s a big gap between you and the Irish boys.”
“We had to land here,” Collins said. “We couldn’t row right up to the camp, could we?”
“You could get up there now,” Sharpe said, nodding at the sailors who waited on the thwarts.
“My job is to guard the boats,” Collins said heavily. “I don’t command them.”
“So who does?”
A naval lieutenant commanded the lighters, but he had evidently gone upstream on board the fifth boat and was now with the engineers, and Collins, with no direct orders, would not risk moving the two lighters on his own initiative. He seemed insulted that Sharpe had even suggested it. “I shall wait for orders,” he said indignantly.
“In that case we’ll make a picquet for you,” Sharpe said. “We’ll be out there.” He nodded southward. “Warn your lads not to shoot us when we come back.”
Collins did not reply. Sharpe told Harper to drop the haversack of smoke balls in the general’s lighter, then took him southward. “Keep a lookout, Pat.”
“You think the French will come?”
“They can’t just sit there and let us burn the rafts, can they?”
“They’ve been dozy so far, sir.”
They crouched in the reeds. The small wind was coming from the far ocean and it brought the smell of salt from the pans across the bay. Sharpe could see the reflection of the city’s lights winking and shaking on the water. The gunfire from the forts punctured the night, but from this distance it was hard to tell if the shots were doing any damage in the captured camps. It was hard to see anything. The men from Dublin and Hampshire were lying flat and the engineers were busy in the shadows on the rafts. “If I were the Crapauds,” Sharpe said, “I wouldn’t worry about the rafts. I’d come and take these lighters. That would strand us all here, wouldn’t it? They’ll pick up a couple of hundred prisoners including a lieutenant general. Not a bad night’s work for a dozy pack of bastards, eh?”
“You’re not the Crapauds, are you, sir? They’re probably getting drunk. Letting their gunners do the work.”
“They can afford to lose the fire rafts,” Sharpe went on, “if they capture five lighters. They can use the lighters instead of the rafts.”
“We’ll be gone soon, sir,” Harper said consolingly. “No need to worry.”
“Let’s hope so.”
They fell silent. Marsh birds, woken by the firing, cried forlorn in the dark. “So what are we doing in the city?” Harper asked after a while.
“There’s some bastards that have got some letters and we have to buy them back,” Sharpe said. “Or at least we have to make sure no one does anything nasty while they are bought back, and if it all goes wrong, which it will, we’re going to have to steal the bloody things.”
“Letters? Not gold?”
“Not gold, Pat.”
“And it will go wrong?”
“Of course it will. We’re dealing with blackmailers. They never settle for the first payment, do they? They always come back for more, so we’re probably going to have to kill the bastards before it’s all over.”
“Whose letters are they?”
“Some whore wrote them,” Sharpe said vaguely. He supposed that Harper would learn the truth soon enough, but Sharpe liked Henry Wellesley enough not to spread the man’s shame even wider. “It should be easy enough,” he went on, “except that the Spaniards won’t like what we’re doing. If we get caught they’ll arrest us. Either that or shoot us.”
“Arrest us?”
“We’ll just have to be clever, Pat.”
“That’s all right then,” Harper said. “We don’t have a problem, do we?”
Sharpe smiled. The wind stirred the reeds. The tide was still. The guns were firing steadily, their shots thumping in the marsh or churning the creek. “I wish the bloody 8th was here,” Sharpe said softly.
“The Leather-hats?” Harper asked, thinking Sharpe meant a regiment from Cheshire.
“No. The French 8th, Pat. The bastards we met up the river. The ones that took poor Lieutenant Bullen prisoner. They’ve got to be coming back here, don’t they? They can’t reach Badajoz now, not without a bridge. I want to meet them again. That bloody Colonel Vandal. I’m going to shoot him in the skull, the bastard.”
“You’ll find him, sir.”
“Maybe. But not here. We’ll be gone in a week. But one day, Pat, I’ll find that bastard and murder him for what he did to Lieutenant Bullen.”
Harper did not respond. Instead he laid a hand on Sharpe’s sleeve and Sharpe, at the same instant, heard the rustle of reeds. It was not the sound of the small wind stirring the plants, but more regular. Like footsteps. And it was close. “See anything?” he whispered.
“No. Yes.”
Sharpe saw them then. Or he saw shadows running at a crouch. Then there was the glint of reflected light from a piece of metal, perhaps a musket muzzle. The shadows stopped so that they melded into the darkness, but Sharpe saw more men moving beyond. How many? Twenty? No, double that. He leaned close to Harper. “Volley gun,” he breathed into the sergeant’s ear. “Then we go to the right. We run like hell for thirty paces, then drop.”
Harper raised the volley gun slowly, very slowly. Then, with the stock against his right shoulder, he cocked it. The lock’s pawl made a click as it engaged and the sound carried to the Frenchmen and Sharpe saw the pale faces turn toward him and just then Harper pulled the trigger and the gun flooded the marsh with noise and lit it with the burst of muzzle flashes. Smoke hid Sharpe as he took off running. He counted the paces and, at thirty, dropped flat. He could hear a man moaning. Two muskets fired, then a voice shouted a command, and no more guns sounded. Harper dropped beside him. “Rifles next,” Sharpe said. “Then we go to the boats.”
He could hear the Frenchmen hissing to one another. They had been hit hard by the seven bullets and they were doubtless talking about their casualties, but then they fell silent and Sharpe could see them more clearly now for they were suddenly outlined against the muzzle flames of the cannons firing from the fort. He got to one knee and aimed his rifle. “Ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Fire.”
The two rifles spat toward the shadows. Sharpe had no idea if either bullet struck. All he knew was that the French were trying to take the lighters, they were perilously close to the creek, and the shots would have raised the alarm. He hoped the marine captain would have had the initiative to order the boats upstream. “Come on,” he said, and they ran clumsily, half-tripping on tussocks, and he sensed that the French had cast caution away and were running to his right. “Move the boats!” Sharpe shouted at the marine picquet. “Move the boats!” His head was all pain, but he had to ignore it. French muskets crashed in the night. A bullet thumped into mud close to Harper’s feet just as the marines fired a ragged volley into the dark.