De l’Eclin nodded. “I shall give you ten minutes to make up your mind about surrender. Au revoir, Lieutenant.”
“And go to hell yourself.”
Sharpe went back to the farmhouse. The wild goose was trapped, and would now be killed and plucked. That, in a way, was Vivar’s revenge for Sharpe’s abandonment and Sharpe laughed at it, for there was nothing else to do. Except fight.
“What did the bugger want, sir?” Harper asked.
“He wants us to surrender.”
“Bugger would.” Harper spat towards the fire.
“If we don’t surrender now, they won’t let us do it later.”
“So he’s got the wind up his backside, has he? He’s scared of the night?”
“He is, yes.”
“So what are you going to do, sir?”
“Tell him to go to hell. And make you a Sergeant.”
Harper grimaced. “No, sir.”
“Why the hell not?”
The big man shook his head. “I don’t mind telling the lads what to do in a fight, sir. Captain Murray always let me do that, so he did, and I’ll do it whether you wanted me to or not. But I’ll go no further. I won’t run your punishments for you or take a badge from you.”
“For Christ’s sake, why not?”
“Why the hell should I?”
“Why the hell did you save my life out there?” Sharpe gestured beyond the farmhouse to where, in the panicked scramble to escape the Dragoons, he had been rescued by Harper’s volleys.
The big Irishman looked embarrassed. “That would be Major Vivar’s fault, sir.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Well, sir, he told me that, with one exception, you were the best man in a fight he’d ever seen. And that so long as the heathen English were fighting for a free Catholic Spain, sir, that I was to keep you alive.”
“The best?”
“With the one exception.”
“Who is?”
“Me, sir.”
“The Major’s a lying bastard,” Sharpe said. He supposed he must accept what was offered, which was Harper’s support on the battlefield. Even that would be better than no support at all. “So if you are such a God-damned good fighter, tell me how we get out of this God-damned hole?”
“We probably don’t, sir, and that’s the truth. But we’ll give the buggers a hell of a damned fight, and they won’t be so cocksure the next time they meet the Rifles.”
A carbine bullet whiplashed through the kitchen window. De l’Eclin’s ten minutes were over, and the fight had started again.
From one of the holes in the roof, Sharpe saw the wooded gully of which de l’Eclin had spoken. Just to its north, in a walled paddock, most of the Dragoon’s horses were pastured. “Hagman!”
The old poacher climbed the ladder. “Sir?”
“Make yourself a firing position and start killing horses. That’ll keep the buggers busy.”
Downstairs the farm wife was busy with food. She produced a cask of salted mackerel and whiting, evidence of how close the sea lay, which she distributed among the soldiers. Her husband, his loophole completed, had charged a fowling piece with powder and shot that he discharged deafeningly towards the east.
The French moved their horses further north. From the barn came the tantalizing smell of pork being cooked. The rain seethed harder, then stopped. The carbine fire never stopped, but neither did it do much damage. One Rifleman suffered a flesh wound in the arm and, when he yelped, was scornfully jeered by his colleagues.
In the late afternoon a few Dragoons made a half-hearted charge through the orchard which lay to the north, but they were easily discouraged. Sharpe, going from window to window, wondered what devilry de l’Eclin plotted. He also wondered what Bias Vivar was doing with the time he had gained by sending de l’Eclin on this wild goose chase. The strongbox was clearly of even more importance than Sharpe had suspected; so important that the Emperor himself had sent the chasseur to capture it. Sharpe supposed he would never know what it contained. Either he would be captured or killed here, or else, when the French tired of this vigil, they would leave and Sharpe would continue south. He would find a ship home, rejoin the mainstream of the army and he supposed, with a sudden lurch of his heart, once again become a Quartermaster. He had not realized until this second just how much he loathed that God-damn job. “Sir!” The voice was scared. “Sir!” Sharpe ran to the front kitchen window. “Fire!” The French had made screens from the sheep hurdles.
They had lashed them together to make heavy mats of birch-wattle that were large enough to hide half a dozen men and resilient enough to stop rifle bullets. The cumbersome shields were being inched across the yard, coming ever closer, and Sharpe knew that, once they reached the house, the French would use axes and bars to break down the doors. He fired his own rifle, knowing that the bullet was wasted against the supple wood. The carbine fire rose to a new pitch.
Sharpe twisted about the table to the northern window. Powder smoke spurted from the orchard, showing that Dragoons barred that escape, yet it was his only hope. He shouted up the ladder. “Come down!”
He turned to Harper. “We’ll take the Spaniards with us. We’re breaking southwards.”
“They’ll catch us.”
“Better that than dying like rats in a pit. Fix swords!” He looked up the ladder to the bedroom. “Hurry!”
“Sir!” It was Dodd who called back; quiet Dodd who stared out of the loophole in the roof and who sounded most unnaturally excited. “Sir!”
Because a new trumpet challenged the sky.
Major Bias Vivar scraped his sword free of its scabbard. He raised it high, then, as the trumpet reached its screaming high note, he lashed the blade down.
The horses spurred forward. There were a hundred of them; all that Lieutenant Davila had brought from Orense. They scrambled up from the gully, found firm footing on the pasture, and charged.
The crimson-uniformed Galician who held the guidon on its lance-like stave lowered the point. The flag snapped in the wind. Dismounted French Dragoons turned in shock.
“Santiago! Santiago!” Vivar drew out the last syllable of his war cry as his Cazadores pounded behind him. The remnants of his scarlet-clad elite company were here, reinforced by their blue-coated comrades who had come north with Lieutenant Davila. Clods of earth were flung high into the air from the horses’ hooves. “Santiago!” There was a ditch ahead, lined with Dragoons who had been firing at the farmhouse and who now rose, twisted, and aimed at the Spanish cavalry. A bullet hissed past Vivar’s face. “Santiago!” He came to the ditch, jumped it, and his blade hissed down to slice blood from a Frenchman’s face.
The lance slammed into a Dragoon, burying the guidon flag in his chest. The standard-bearer rode the staff free, screaming his own challenge, then was hit in the neck by a carbine bullet. A horseman coming behind seized the toppling staff and raised the blood-soaked flag high again.
“Santiago!”
Dismounted Dragoons were fleeing in the farmyard. The Spanish cavalry crashed into them. Blades chopped down. Frightened horses twisted, snapped with yellow teeth and lashed with their hooves. Swords clashed, ringing like blacksmith’s hammers. A Spaniard fell from the saddle, a Frenchman screamed as a sword pinned him against the barn. The hurdle screens were abandoned in the mud.
The charge had scoured the French clean out of the farmyard, and had made carnage of the eastern ditch. The trumpeter was sounding the call to reform as Vivar reined in, turned his horse, and started back. A French Dragoon, reeling from the first attack, made a feeble thrust at the Major and was rewarded with a cut throat. “Rifles! Rifles!” Vivar shouted.
Some French officers ran from the barn and Vivar slewed his horse towards them, his men close behind him. The Frenchmen turned and fled. The Cazadores rode right into the barn, ducking under the lintel, and screams sounded inside. Mounted Dragoons appeared and Vivar shouted at his men to form a line, to charge home, to fight for Santiago.