"Let them piss on that fire, eh, sir?" Harper said, nodding towards the hole in the fort wall that now spewed a thick grey smoke.
"Best thing to do with rats, " Mister MacKeon said, "burn them out."
Sharpe cupped his hands. "Harry?"
"Sir?" Lieutenant Price answered.
"Redcoats in two ranks, if you please. Muskets loaded and bayonets fixed.
Pat?"
"Sir?"
"Rifles to follow me. We charge on my command, Mister Price."
"Yes, sir!»
So long as the buggers did not extinguish the fire, Sharpe thought, he still had a chance of winning this fight.
The smoke sifted up through the floorboards, and for a short while no one noticed, but then Sergeant Coignet raised the alarm and by then the lowest wooden floor was thick with smoke, though there were no flames to be seen.
«Water!» Pailleterie shouted. "Get it from the river! Make a chain!
Sergeant Gobel! A dozen men to keep the horses quiet! Make a chain! Use your hats!»
A chain of men could pass colbacks filled with river water up from the bank, through the arch and up the ladder to the first floor, but as soon as the first men reached the bank and leaned down to scoop up water, a rifle fired, and then another, and there were two dead hussars, and a third man was wounded. It took Sergeant Coignet valuable moments to reorganise his human chain to scoop water from the farther side of the bridge, where the stone of the northernmost arch would protect his men, and by then it was already too late.
The fire had not yet broken through the floorboards, but it was feasting on the short dry timbers that supported the floor, and the curved barrel-roof of the store-room made a natural horizontal chimney that filled with air and dying bats to fan the flames and drive the fire around the corner of the fort, and the smoke thickened so that when the first water came up the ladder, and there was precious little of it for the fur hats leaked atrociously, Pailleterie could only throw the water into the choking smoke and hope that it did some good. He could hear the fire roaring like a furnace beneath his feet and he could feel the heat. One of the collapsible canvas buckets with which the hussars watered their horses came up the human chain and Pailleterie hurled its contents into the smoke.
The water hissed, but it did nothing, for the whole floor was now under siege, and in a few seconds the flames broke through in a half dozen places and the draught now whipped the fire up into the tangle of dry timbers that filled the western half of the fort. The flames climbed the ladders, snaked up beams, burned at the thin partitions, and the ever thickening smoke forced the hussars back. The horses were whinnying in panic. «Gobel!» Pailleterie shouted, "get the horses onto the northern bank! Go! Go!»
The horses were led out of the gate and, seeing freedom, they bolted across the bridge towards the olive groves. The flames were crackling and leaping, filling the space inside the fort with an unbearable heat and churning smoke. "Onto the bridge! " Pailleterie shouted, "pistols! Sergeant Coignet! On the bridge! Face north! Lieutenant! Where are the prisoners?
Fetch them!»
Smoke-blackened hussars stumbled out of the arch. The square tower was now one vast chimney and the dry timbers were being consumed in a constant roar that billowed smoke high into the sky. Flames leaped twenty, thirty feet above the parapet. Coignet was thrusting men into ranks, but they were nervous, for the furnace roar was right beside them and smouldering embers were dropping among them, and somewhere inside the fort a man was screaming terribly because he had been trapped. The wounded redcoats were carried out ans placed on the grass beyond the shrine.
And then the rifle fire began. Shot after shot, coming from the north, from a ditch there, and hussars were thrown back or bent over.
"We'll charge them! " Pailleterie pushed into the front rank and drew his sabre. The rifles were not so far away, maybe sixty yards, and he would sabre the bastards into the dry ground. "Draw sabres!»
There were some sixty men on the bridge and they drew their sabres.
It was Pailleterie's last chance to hold the bridge.
And Sharpe shouted "Fire!»
«Fire!» Sharpe shouted, and Lieutenant Price's redcoats who had run from the village to form two ranks across the road, fired a volley southwards into the hussars and there was suddenly blood on the road, and men crumpling and staggering.
«Charge!» Sharpe shouted. "Come on! " And he was running ahead of them, sword drawn, and the tower was belching smoky flames to his right and the hussars were edging backwards, those that still stood, and Sharpe was simply filled with an utter fury. How dare these bastards have defeated him? And all he wanted to do was kill them, to take his revenge, but they were running now, fleeing from the glitter of bayonets. Not one man stood.
The wounded hussars crawled on the road, the dead lay still, but the living fled back to the southern bank to escape the vengeful infantry.
And Captain Pailleterie was also filled with a single-minded rage. How dare these bastards deny him his victory? All night he had ridden, and he had evaded the picquets in the sierra's foothills and defeated the infantry garrison of a fort with cavalrymen. With cavalrymen! Men had received the Legion d'honneur for less, and now the bastards had come back from the dead to cheat him of his glory. "Coignet! Coignet! Come back!
Hussars! Turn! Turn! For the Emperor."
Bugger the Emperor. It was pride that checked them, not the Emperor. They were an elite company, and when they saw the Captain turning back onto the bridge, at least half of them followed. Two bands of angry men, pride at stake, were clashing above the Tormes.
"Now kill the bastards! " Sharpe said, filled with a ridiculous elation that the crapauds were going to fight after all, and he scythed the heavy-cavalry sword down onto the neck of a Frenchman, twisted the blade free as he kicked the falling man in the face, then stabbed the bloody blade forward. It was sabres against bayonets, and wild as a tavern brawl.
Gutter fighting with government issue weapons. Stab and slash and snarl and kick, and in truth the two sides were too close together for either to have an advantage. The redcoats were crammed against hussars and did not have room to bring their bayonets back, and when the hussars cut down with sabres they risked having their sword arms seized. Some men fired pistols, and that would create a small gap, but it would immediately be filled.
Sergeant Coignet tried to reach the tall rifle officer, but he tripped on a dead body and the rifle officer kicked him in the face, then kicked him again, and Coignet tried to roll over, spitting out teeth, to stab his sabre up into the bastard's groin, but Sharpe stabbed down first. The sword blade scraped on ribs, then broke through to splash blood onto Sharpe's boots. Then Pailleterie was carving space for himself by slashing his sabre from side to side, and Sharpe stepped back from Coignet's body and wrenched the sword free, and then leaped back because Pailleterie had lunged, but a sabre is a poor lunging weapon and Sharpe smacked it aside with his sword and ran at the hussar captain, just ran at him, and gripped him in a bear hug and thrust him against the parapet and then pushed.
Pailleterie shouted as he fell into the river, then another voice shouted, much louder. "The hell out the way! Out the way! " And Sergeant Harper had arrived with his seven-barrelled gun, the vicious cluster of barrels held at his hip and the redcoats twisted aside as the big Irishman came straight up the bridge's centre. «Bastards!» He shouted at the hussars, then pulled the trigger and it was as if a cannon had been fired. Blood misted over the Tormes, and Harper was charging into the bloody space he had made, swinging the stubby seven-barrelled gun like a club. He was chanting in Irish, lost in a saga of old when heroes had counted their enemy dead in the scores.