The two aides vanished into the trees. Sir Thomas lingered a moment, watching the approaching French who were now less than half a mile off. He was taking a vast gamble. He wanted to hit them while they were unprepared, but he knew it would take time to bring his battalions through the thick trees, which is why he had asked for the light companies to come first. They could make a skirmish line on the heath, they could begin to kill the French, and Sir Thomas could only hope that the skirmishers would hold the French long enough for the rest of the battalions to arrive and begin their deadly volley fire. He looked at the liaison officer. “Be so good,” he said, “as to ride to General Lapeña and tell him the French are moving on the pinewood and that it is my intention to engage them and would be honored”—he was choosing his words carefully—“if the general could lead men onto the right flank of the enemy.”
The Spaniard rode away and Sir Thomas looked back east. The French were coming in two huge columns. He planned to face the northern column with Wheatley’s brigade, while General Dilkes and his guardsmen would confront the column closest to the Cerro del Puerco. And that made him think of the Spaniards on the hill. The French would surely send their southern column to take that hill and they must not be allowed to do so, or else they could sweep down from its summit to attack the right flank of his hasty defense. He turned south, leading his remaining aides toward the Cerro del Puerco.
That hill, he thought as he rode back into the pines, was his one advantage. There were Spanish cannons on the summit, and those guns could fire down on the French. The hill was a fortress protecting his vulnerable right flank, and if the French could be held on the plain then the brigade on the hill could be used to make an attack on the enemy’s flank. Thank God, he was thinking as he rode out of the trees, that the hill was his.
Except it was not. The Cerro del Puerco had been abandoned and, even as Sir Thomas had ridden south, the first French battalions were climbing the hill’s eastern slopes. The enemy now held the Cerro del Puerco and the only allied troops in sight were the five hundred men of the Gibraltar Flankers. Instead of holding the high ground, they were forming into a column of march at the hill’s foot. “Browne! Browne!” Sir Thomas shouted as he cantered toward the column. “Why are you here? Why?”
“Because I’ve got half the French army climbing the damned hill, Sir Thomas.”
“Where are the Spaniards?”
“They ran.”
Sir Thomas stared at Browne for a heartbeat. “Well, it’s a bad business, Browne,” he said, “but you must instantly turn around again and attack.”
Major Browne’s eyes widened. “You want me to attack half their army?” he asked incredulously. “I saw six battalions and a battery of artillery coming! I’ve got only five hundred thirty-six muskets.” Browne, deserted by the Spaniards, had watched the mass of infantry and cannon approaching the hill, and had decided that retreat was better than suicide. There were no other British troops within sight, he had no promises of reinforcement, and so he had led his Gibraltar Flankers north, off the hill. Now he was being told to go back, and he took a deep breath, as if steeling himself for the ordeal. “If we must,” he said, stoically accepting his fate, “then we will.”
“You must,” Sir Thomas said, “because I need the hill. I’m sorry, Browne, I need it. But General Dilkes is coming. I’ll bring him up to you myself.”
Browne turned to his adjutant. “Major Blakeney! Skirmish order! Back up the hill! Drive the devils away!”
“Sir Thomas?” an aide interrupted, then pointed to the hill’s summit, where the first French battalions were already appearing. Blue coats were showing at the skyline, a great array of blue coats ready to come down the slope and scour their way along the pinewood.
Sir Thomas gazed at the French. “Light bobs won’t stop them, Browne,” he said. “You’ll have to give them volley fire.”
“Close order!” Browne shouted at his men who had started to deploy into skirmish order.
“They have a battery of cannon up there, Sir Thomas,” the aide said quietly.
Sir Thomas ignored the news. It did not matter if the French had all the emperor’s artillery on the hilltop, they still had to be attacked. They had to be thrown off the hill, and that meant the only available troops must climb the slope and make an assault that would hold the French in place until General Dilkes’s guardsmen came to assist them. “God be with you, Browne,” Sir Thomas said too quietly for the major to hear. Sir Thomas knew he was sending Browne’s men to their deaths, but they had to die to give the Guards time to arrive. He sent an aide to summon Dilkes’s men. “He’s to ignore my last order,” Sir Thomas said, “and to bring his men here with the utmost speed. The utmost speed! Go!”
Sir Thomas had done what he could. The coastline between the villages of Barrosa and Bermeja was two miles of confusion into which two French attacks were developing, one against the pinewood while the other had already captured the crucial hill. Sir Thomas, knowing that the enemy was on the brink of victory, must gamble everything on his men’s ability to fight. Both his brigades would be outnumbered, and one must attack uphill. If either failed, the whole army would be lost.
Behind him, in the open heath beyond the pinewood, the first rifles and muskets fired.
And Browne marched his men back up the hill.
CHAPTER 11
SHARPE AND HIS RIFLEMEN, still accompanied by Captain Galiana, walked through the Spanish army that mostly seemed to be resting on the beach. Galiana dismounted when they reached the village of Bermeja and led his horse through the hovels. General Lapeña and his aides were there, sheltering from the sun under a framework on which fishing nets hung to dry. There was a watchtower in the village, and its summit was crowded with Spanish officers staring south with telescopes. The sound of musketry came from that direction, but it was very muffled, and no one in the Spanish army seemed particularly interested. Galiana remounted when they left the village. “Was that General Lapeña?” Sharpe asked.
“It was,” Galiana said sourly. He had walked the horse to avoid being noticed by the general.
“Why doesn’t he like you?” Sharpe asked.
“Because of my father.”
“What did your father do?”
“He was in the army, like me. He challenged Lapeña to a duel.”
“And?”
“Lapeña wouldn’t fight. He is a coward.”
“What was the argument about?”
“My mother,” Galiana said curtly.
South of Bermeja the beach was empty except for some fishing boats drawn up on the sand. The boats were painted blue, yellow, and red and had large black eyes on their bows. The musketry was still muffled, but Sharpe could see smoke rising beyond the pine trees that ran thick behind the dunes. They walked in silence until, perhaps half a mile beyond the village, Perkins claimed to have seen a whale.
“What you saw,” Slattery said, “was your bloody rum ration. You saw it and drank it.”
“I saw it, I did sir!” He appealed to Sharpe, but Sharpe did not care what Perkins had or had not seen and ignored him.
“I saw a whale once,” Hagman put in. “It were dead. Stinking.”
Perkins was gazing out to sea again, hoping to see whatever it was he had taken to be a whale. “Maybe,” Harris suggested, “it was backed like a weasel?” They all stared at him.