Sharpe’s Rifles: The French Invasion of Galicia, January 1809. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ in a hurry and he kicked his leg. ‘Aim properly, you bastard!’ Sharpe looked for the telltale scatter of discarded powder which would betray a man who only half-charged his rifle to spare his shoulder the mule-hard kick of the butt, but none of the Riflemen were using that cheap expediency.

      Two men at Vivar’s right file were down. They were the price Vivar had to pay. The cavalry was galloping at speed now, their hooves flinging up great gobs of dirty snow and soil.

      ‘Take aim!’ Vivar stood on the exposed right flank, the one closest to the barricade and where the greatest danger lay. He raised his sword. ‘Wait for it, wait for it!’

      The snow was thin on the flat ground beside the road. The horses’ hooves thrummed the turf, and the long swords reflected the pale light. The trumpet hurled them on, faster, and the horsemen shouted the first challenge. The Spaniards had not formed a square, but were risking all on one crushing volley from men in line. Only disciplined troops could stand in line against a cavalry charge.

      ‘Fire!’ Vivar’s sword flashed down.

      The Spanish carbines flamed. Horses tumbled. Blood, men and snow made a whirling chaos. Something screamed, but whether man or horse, Sharpe could not tell. Then, over the scream, came Vivar’s war shout. ‘Santiago! Santiago!’

      The Galicians cheered, then charged. Not at the barricade, but towards the broken horsemen.

      ‘Jesus Christ!’ a Rifleman close to Sharpe muttered, then lowered his weapon. ‘They’re bleeding mad!’

      But it was a magnificent madness. Sharpe’s men watched and he barked at them to keep firing at the enemy behind the barricade. He permitted himself to watch as the tough Galician soldiers discarded their firearms and drew their own long swords. They climbed over the dead horses and stabbed down at dazed Dragoons. Others seized bridles or dragged at riders.

      The Frenchmen behind the barricade stood to make their own charge and Sharpe shouted a warning at Vivar, but one which he knew the Spaniard would never hear. He turned. ‘Sergeant Williams! Keep your men here! The rest of you! Follow!’

      The Riflemen ran in a frenzied scramble down the hill. They made a ragged charge that would take the last Dragoons in the flank, and the French saw them coming, hesitated, then fled. Vivar’s men were taking prisoners or rounding up riderless horses, while the surviving Frenchmen scrambled away to safety. The battle was over. The ambushed, outnumbered, had snatched an impossible victory, and the snow stank of blood and smoke.

      Then gunfire sounded from the canyon behind Sharpe.

      Vivar turned, his face ashen.

      A rifle fired, its sound amplified by the echo of rock walls.

      ‘Lieutenant!’ Vivar gestured desperately towards the canyon. ‘Lieutenant!’ There was a genuine despair in his voice.

      Sharpe turned and ran towards the chasm. The gun-fire was sudden and brusque. He could see Sergeant Williams firing downwards, and he knew there must have been more Frenchmen hidden at the canyon’s far end; men who would have blocked the panicked retreat they had expected to provoke. Instead those men must be advancing up the canyon to take Vivar and Sharpe in the rear.

      Except they had been stopped by one man. Rifleman Harper had found the rifle of a fallen man and, using the corpse of the mule as a bastion, was holding off the handful of Dragoons. He had cut the bonds from his wrists, using a bayonet that had slashed deep wounds into his hands, but, despite the bleeding cuts, he still loaded and fired his rifle with a fearful precision. A dead French horse and a wounded Dragoon witnessed to the Irishman’s skill. He screamed his Gaelic challenge at the others, daring them to come closer. He turned, wild-eyed, as Sharpe appeared, then turned scornfully back to face the French.

      Sharpe lined his Rifles across the road. ‘Take aim!’ The chasseur in his red pelisse and black fur hat was in the gorge. Next to him rode the tall man in a black riding coat and white boots.

      ‘Fire!’ Sharpe shouted.

      A dozen rifles flamed. Bullets whined in ricochet, and two more horsemen fell. The man in red and the man in black were safe. They seemed to stare directly into Sharpe’s eyes for an instant, then a fusillade from above made them turn their horses and spur away to safety. The Riflemen jeered, and Sharpe snapped them into silence. ‘And reload!’

      The French had gone. Water dripped from thawing icicles that hung from rocks. A wounded horse whinnied. The filthy smoke of gunfire drifted in the gorge. A Rifleman vomited blood, then sighed. Another man wept. The wounded horse was silenced by a rifle shot, and the sound slammed in brutal echoes from the rock walls.

      Footsteps sounded behind Sharpe. It was Blas Vivar who walked past him, past the greenjackets, and knelt by the mule. He carefully unstrapped the strongbox from the dead beast’s harness. Then, standing, he looked up at Harper. ‘You saved it, my friend.’

      ‘I did, sir?’ It was clear the Irishman had no idea what value Vivar placed on the chest.

      The Spaniard reached up to the huge man and kissed both his cheeks. One of Sharpe’s Riflemen sniggered, then was shamed to silence by the moment’s solemnity.

      ‘You saved it,’ Vivar said again, and there were tears in his eyes. Then he lifted the strongbox and carried it back up the canyon.

      Sharpe followed. His men, silent and cold, came down to the roadway. There was no exultation in victory for, unnoticed until this moment, and far beyond the abandoned French barricade, a smear of grey smoke rose into the winter air. It rose from the village, and the smoke was grey as a pauper’s shroud and carried the stench of death and fire.

      And from it, like dark snow, ashes fell on a bloodied land.

      CHAPTER FIVE

      The villagers could have sent no warning of the French presence for there was no village any more, nor villagers.

      The fires must have been set just as the ambush was sprung, for the houses still burned fiercely. The corpses, though, had frozen hard. The French had killed the people, then sheltered in their houses as they waited for Vivar’s small column to reach the high canyon.

      It had never been much of a village; a poor place of goats and sheep, and of people who made a living from high pastures. The houses lay in a hollow sheltered by dwarf oaks and chestnut trees. Potatoes had grown in a few small fields that were edged with wild mulberries and furze. The houses had been mere thatched huts with dungheaps at their doors. They had been shared by men and animals alike, just as the houses Sharpe’s own Riflemen had known in England had been, and that nostalgic resemblance added to the poignancy of the day.

      If anything could add to the poignancy of children and babies killed, of women raped, or of men crucified. Sergeant Williams, who had known his share of horror in a bad world, vomited. One of the Spanish infantrymen turned in silence on a French captive and, before Vivar could utter a word, disembowelled the man. Only then did the Cazador utter a howl of hatred.

      Vivar ignored the killing and the howl. Instead, with an odd formality, he marched to Sharpe. ‘Would you …’ he began, but found it hard to continue. The stench of those bodies which burned inside the houses was thick. He swallowed. ‘Would you place picquets, Lieutenant?’

      ‘Yes, СКАЧАТЬ