Sharpe's Christmas

PART TWO

GENERAL Maximillien Picard was an unhappy man. His brigade was late. He had expected to be at Irati by midday, but his men had marched like a herd of lame goats. By nightfall, they still had one steep-sided valley to cross and a precipitous hill to climb, and so he punished them by making them bivouac in the valley.

He knew they would hate him for that, but let them. Most were conscripts who needed to be toughened, and a night among the cold rocks would help scour the mother's milk from their gullets.

The only fuel for fires was a few stunted trees in the hollows where the winter's first snow had drifted, but most of the conscripts had no idea how to light a fire from damp, tough wood, and so they suffered. Their only food was rings of hard bread they carried on strings about their necks, but at least the stream offered plenty of clean, cold water.

"Another fortnight and it'll be frozen, " said Picard.

"As bad as Russia, " consented Major Santon, his chief of staff.

"Nothing was as bad as Russia, " Picard said, though in truth he had rather enjoyed the Russian campaign. He was among the few men who had done well, but he was accustomed to success. Not like Colonel Gudin, whose garrison he now marched to rescue. "Gudin's a useless piece of gristle, " Picard said.

"I never met him."

'Let's hope you meet him tomorrow, but knowing Gudin he'll mess things up."

Picard leaned to his fire and lit a pipe. "I knew him way back. He promised well then, but ever since India." Picard shrugged. "He's unlucky, that's what Gudin is, unlucky, and you knew what the Emperor says about luck, it's the only thing a soldier needs."

"Luck can turn, " Santon observed.

"Not for Gudin, " Picard said. "The man's doomed. If the 75th hadn't taken refuge with him, we'd have left him to rot in Spain."

Santon looked up the dark northern slope. "Let's hope the British aren't waiting for him up there."

Picard sneered. "Let them. What will they send? One battalion? You think we can't blast our way through a battalion? We'll put our grenadiers up front and let them shoot some rosbifs for breakfast. Then, we'll occupy Irati. What's there?"

«Nothing,» Santon said. "A few shepherds."

"So it's mutton and shepherd girls for Christmas, " Picard said. "A last taste of Spain, eh?"

The general smiled in anticipation. Irati might be a miserable hovel on the frontier, but it was an enemy hovel and that meant plunder. And Picard rather hoped there would be rosbifs guarding the small village, for he reckoned his conscripts needed a fight. Most were city boys too young to shave and they needed a taste of blood before Wellington's army spilled across the Pyrenees into the fields of France. Give a young soldier the taste of victory, Picard reckoned, and it gave him a hunger for more.

That was the trouble with Colonel Gudin. He had become used to defeat, but Picard was a winner. He was a short man, like the Emperor, and just as ruthless; a soldier of France who had led a brigade through the slaughter-snows of Russia and left a trail of Cossacks to mark his passing.

In the morning, if any rosbifs dared oppose him, he would show them how a veteran of the Russian campaign made war. He would give them a Christmas to remember, a Christmas of blood in a high, hard place, for he was General Maximillien Picard, and he did not lose.

"DOESN'T seem right somehow, " Sharpe said, "fighting at Christmas."

"Tomorrow's Christmas, sir, " Harper said, as if that made today's fight more acceptable.

"If we do fight today, keep an eye on young Nicholls. I don't want to lose another ensign, " Sharpe said.

"He's a nice, wee lad, " Harper said, "and I'll keep an eye on him, so I will."

Ensign Nicholls was standing at the centre of Sharpe's line beneath the regiment's twin colours. The Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers were 50 paces back from the frontier that was marked only by a cairn of stones, just far enough back so that any Frenchman coming from the south could not see them beyond the crest. Behind them, on the Spanish side of the frontier, the pass ran gently down towards the village, while in front of the battalion the slope fell away steeply. The road zig-zagged up that slope and the enemy brigade would have a foul time climbing into Sharpe's muskets.

"It'll be like shooting rats in a pit, " Harper said happily, and so it would, but the enemy brigade could still be a nuisance. Its very presence meant Sharpe had to keep his battalion on the frontier, leaving only a picquet to guard the road south of the village.

Captain Smith commanded that picquet and he would give Sharpe warning if the escaping French garrison came into sight. But what would Sharpe do then? If he marched his men south the French brigade would climb the slope and take him in the rear, while if he stayed on this high crest the garrison troops would appear in the valley behind him. He just had to hope that the garrison did not come today.

There was still no sign of the French who had camped in the deep valley beyond the frontier. They would be bitterly cold by now, cold and scared and damp and unhappy, while Sharpe's men were as comfortable as they could be in this miserable place. Except for the sentries, they had spent the night inside Irati's fire-warmed houses where they had made a decent breakfast from twice-baked bread and sour salt beef.

Sharpe stamped his feet and blew on his cold hands. When would the French come? He was not really in any hurry, for the longer they delayed, the more hope he had of keeping them out of the village all day, but he had a soldier's impatience to get the grim business done. Grim, at least, for the French, for Sharpe had set them a trap on the road.

The road twisted down from the frontier into a small hanging combe that overlooked the deeper valley where the French had spent their uncomfortable night. In that smaller valley which the dawn now touched with a grey, damp light, there were twenty-one big wine barrels. The barrels were arranged in several groups of three and each group blocked the narrow track up which the French must come.

Above the barrels, hidden among the rocks, were fifteen riflemen. The French hated riflemen. They did not use the rifle, reckoning that it took too long to load, but Sharpe had learned to love the weapon. It might be slow in battle, but it could kill at give times the range of a smoothbore musket and he had more than once seen a handful of riflemen turn a battle's fate.

Sharpe turned and stared south. He could not see Irati, for the village was well over a mile away and his picquet a half-mire further away still, and he suddenly worried that he would not hear Captain Smith's warning shots. But it was too late to change the arrangements. So stop worrying, he told himself. No point in fretting about what you cannot change.

"Enemy, sir, " Harper said softly, and Sharpe wheeled around to gaze down the road.

The French had come. Not many yet, just a half company of grenadiers, the elite of the enemy infantry, because they wore high bearskin hats with a yellow grenade badge, though none, he saw through his telescope, flaunted the high red plume on their hats. French grenadiers were very protective of that plume and on campaign they liked to keep it in a leather tube attached to their bayonet sling.

«Thirty,» he counted the men as they appeared, "forty, forty-five. All grenadiers, Pat."

"Sending their best up front, are they?"

"Got them worried, we have, " Sharpe said. The grenadiers had stopped at the sight of the barrels. Some of them gazed up the steep slope beyond, but the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers were well hidden, and Sharpe and Harper were concealed behind the frontier cairn.

An officer came to the front of the grenadiers, stared at the barrels for a minute, then shrugged and walked forward. "It's his lucky day, " Sharpe said.

The grenadiers hung back as their officer approached the strange obstacle. He was cautious, as any man would be on the Spanish frontier, but the barrels looked innocent enough.

He stooped to the nearest, sniffed at the bung, then drew his sword and worked the tip of its blade into the cork plug. He levered the tight bung free and then stooped to sniff again. "He's found the wine, " Sharpe said.

"Let's hope they stop and drink it, sir."

The grenadiers, assured that only barrels of cheap Spanish tinto barred their path, surged forward. More soldiers were appearing over the lower crest and they too rushed to join the unexpected booty. Men tipped the first three barrels over and stabbed at their lids with drawn bayonets, while a group of grenadiers ran to take possession of the second line of barrels.

"For what they are about to receive, " Sharpe said.

Two of the second line of barrels contained nothing but stones. But the third, the middle barrel, was half-filled with gunpowder from Sharpe's spare ammunition. It was mixed with small, sharp stones and, above it, balanced on a stave that Rifleman Hagman had carefully nailed into place, was a coiled strip of burning slow-match.

None of the grenadiers noticed the small holes that had been drilled into the barrel to feed oxygen to the fuse, they just smelt wine and so kicked over the barrel.

For a second Sharpe thought the trap had failed, then suddenly the narrow valley vanished in a cloud of grey-white powder smoke pierced with livid flame.

The smoke churned in the small combe, hiding the carnage made by the explosion. Then, as the damp wind began to carry the powder smoke northwards, the sound rolled up the slope. It was like a clap of thunder magnified by the echo that beat back from the valley's far side. Once the echo had gone there was just a strange silence in the hills.

"Poor bastards, " Harper said, for the smoke was clearing and he could see the bodies scattered on the road. Some were still, some crawled blindly, some just twitched. Then the rifles opened fire. Sharpe's riflemen did not miss their mark at that close range. They fired from behind the rocks high on either side of the small valley. First, they picked off the surviving officers, then the sergeants. By the time each greenjacket had fired two rounds, the French had vanished from the small valley. They had fled back over its lip, leaving behind a dozen dead and a score of wounded men. The battle for Irati had begun.

IN ONE way, Colonel Jean Gudin had been untypically lucky, for not one partisan had troubled his column on its dark road north, but in every other way his usual ill fortune had prevailed.

First, one of the dragoon horses had stumbled on a frozen rut in the road and broken its leg. By itself, it was no great accident, and the poor beast was put out of its misery swiftly enough, but in the dark the commotion caused a long delay. The carcass was finally hauled from the road and the column had trudged on, only to have the dragoon vanguard take a wrong turning a few kilometres further on.

That, at least, was not Gudin's fault, any more than an injured horse was his fault, but it was typical of his luck. It was almost dawn by the time the column had turned itself about and found the right track winding up towards the high pass. By then, Gudin had surrendered his horse to one of his lieutenants who had a fever and could hardly walk.

Colonel Caillou was fuming at the delay. He had never, he claimed, in all his service as a soldier, seen such ineptitude. A halfwit could do better than Colonel Gudin. "We are supposed to be at the pass by midday, " he insisted. "We shall be lucky to be there by nightfall."

Gudin ignored the colonel's ranting. There was nothing to be done, except press on and be thankful that the guerilleros were all asleep in their beds.

In three days' time, Gudin reflected, he could be back at a depot in France.

He would be safe. And so long as no British troops waited at the frontier he should save Caillou's Eagle and so spare himself the firing squad.

It was just after dawn that the next accident occurred. The column was dragging two wagons, one carrying the heavily pregnant Maria and the second loaded with what small baggage the garrison had managed to rescue from the fort. The axle of that second wagon broke and suddenly the horses were dragging stumps of splintering wood across the rutted road. Gudin sighed.

There was nothing for it but to abandon the wagon with all its precious possessions; small things, but the property of men who owned little.

He did let his men rifle through the baggage to retrieve what they could carry, and all the while Caillou cursed him and said it was time-wasting.

Gudin knew that was true and so, before all the packs could be hauled off, he ordered the wagon to be shoved off the road. With it went his books, not many, but all of them dear to Gudin. They included his diaries from India, the careful record of those long, hot years when he had thought he could drive the British out of Mysore. But the redcoats had won and nothing had been the same since.

Gudin often thought of India. He missed it; the smells, the heat, the colour, the mystery. He missed the gaudy panoply of Indian armies marching, he missed the sun and the savagery of the monsoon. In India, he thought, I had a future, but after it, none.

And sometimes, when he was feeling sorry for himself, he blamed it all on one young man whom he had liked, an Englishman called Sharpe. It had been Sharpe who had caused that first great defeat, though Gudin had never blamed him, for he had recognised that Private Richard Sharpe had been a natural soldier. How the Emperor would love Sharpe. So much luck.

Now there was another Sharpe, an officer in Spain whose named haunted the French, and Gudin sometimes wondered if it was the same man, though that seemed unlikely for few British officers came from the ranks and, besides, this Spanish Sharpe was a Rifleman and Gudin's Sharpe had been a redcoat. Yet still Gudin hoped it was the same man for he had liked young Richard Sharpe, though in truth he suspected that he was long dead. Not many Europeans had survived India. The fever got them if the enemy did not.

Gudin walked on, his diaries left behind, musing on India and trying to ignore Colonel Caillou's insults. The pregnant girl was crying and the garrison surgeon, a fastidious Parisian who had hated serving in the Pyrenees, claimed she would die if he did not cut her open.

"The baby is sideways, " he told Gudin. "It should be headfirst."

"If you cut her, she'll die, " said Gudin.

"So?" The surgeon despised soldiers' women. "She'll die if I don't cut her."

"Just keep her alive as far as Irati, " Gudin said, "and there you can operate."

"If she lives that long, " the surgeon muttered, and just then a dull rumble sounded from the mountains ahead. It sounded like distant thunder, but there were no storm clouds over the peaks and a second after the rumble had faded the small wind brought the crackle of musketry.

"You see, " Caillou spurred back down the column with a look of spiteful triumph. "There's enemy ahead."

"We don't know that, " Gudin said. "That sound could have come from anywhere."

"They're waiting for us, " Caillou said, pointing dramatically towards the hills. "And if we'd abandoned the women, we'd be there already. It's your doing, Gudin. I promise if my Eagle is lost, the Emperor will know it's your doing."

"You must tell the Emperor whatever you wish, " Gudin said in resignation.

"So leave the women here now. Leave them, " Caillou insisted. "March to the guns, Colonel. Get there before dark."

"I will not leave the women, " Gudin said. "I will not leave them. And we shall be at Irati long before nightfall. It is not so far now."

Colonel Gudin sighed and walked on. His heels were blistering but he would not retrieve his horse, for he knew the lieutenant's need was greater than his.

Nor would he abandon his men's women, and so he kept going and tried to blot out Caillou's nagging voice and the awful, haunting screams of the pregnant girl.

He was not a prayerful man, but as he climbed towards the distant sounds of the guns, Gudin did pray. He prayed that God would send him a victory, just one small victory so that his career would not end in failure or a firing squad. A Christmas miracle, that was all he asked, just one small miracle to set against a lifetime of defeat.

GENERAL Maximillien Picard bulled his way through the panicked troops to stand at the mouth of the small valley. He could see the dead grenadiers, the smashed barrels and, beyond them, the other barrels waiting in the road. A rifle bullet snapped past his head, but Picard ignored the threat. He was charmed. There was no one alive who could spoil that luck.

«Santon!» he snapped.

"Sir?" Major Santon resisted the urge to crouch.

"One company up here. They are to destroy the barrels, with volley fire, you understand?"

"Yes, sir."

"And while they're doing that, send the voltigeurs up the slopes."

The general waved to where puffs of white smoke betrayed the position of the riflemen. He did not know they were riflemen, and if he had he might have shown more caution, but he believed the ambush had been set by partisans. But whoever it was, they would soon be chased out of their lairs by the French light infantry.

"Do it now! " Picard snapped. "We don't have all day."

He turned away and a bullet plucked at his cloak, flicking it out like a banner caught by the wind. Picard turned back, looked to find the newest patch of musket smoke, and lined a finger to it. «Bastards,» he said as he walked away, "bastards."

Who would now get a lesson for Christmas.

«BUGLER!» Sharpe called, and the thirteen-year-old boy came running out of the battalion to stand behind his major. "Sound the retreat, " Sharpe ordered, and saw Patrick Harper lift a quizzical eyebrow. "The Frogs will send their voltigeurs up the valley sides, " Sharpe explained. "No point in our riflemen hanging around while they do that. The lads have done the damage."

The bugler took a deep breath, then blew hard. The call was a triple call of nine notes, the first eight stuttering on one note, the last flying high up the scale. The sound of the bugle echoed from the distant hills and Sharpe, gazing through his telescope, saw the cloaked French general turn back.

"Again, lad, " Sharpe told the bugler.

The bugle call was sending two messages. First, it was telling the riflemen to abandon their positions and climb back to the ridge, but it was also telling the French that they faced an enemy more formidable than partisans. They were facing trained infantry, veteran troops, and when Sharpe was certain that the Frenchman was staring up at the ridge in an effort to catch sight of the bugler, he turned and shouted at the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers.

"'Talion! By the right! Forward, " a pause, "march!»

They stamped forward in perfect order, a line of men two ranks deep beneath their bright colours.

"'Talion! " Sharpe shouted as they reached the ridge's crest. "Halt! Fix bayonets!»

Sharpe was putting on a display for the French. The enemy had been bloodied, they had been panicked, and now they faced a long, steep climb up a bare, cold hill to where they could see the redcoats of Britain and the long glitter of seventeen-inch bayonets.

Ensign Nicholls came to stand by Sharpe. "What are we doing, sir?"

"We're giving the Frogs an invitation, Mr. Nicholls. Seeing if they're brave enough to come up and play."

"Will they?"

"I doubt it, lad, " Sharpe said. "I doubt it."

"Why not, sir?" "Because they're about to be given a demonstration, lad, that's why. Sergeant Major?"

"Sir?" Harper acknowledged.

"Three rounds, Sergeant Major, platoon fire, and I want it fast."

"Yes, sir."

The range was much too great for a smoothbore musket, but Sharpe did not have a mind to kill any more Frenchmen today. He had already killed too many for his liking. Christmas should be peace on earth, not broken bodies on a hard road, so he would show the French exactly what waited for them at the hilltop.

He would show them that they faced veterans who could fire their muskets faster than any other troops on earth. He would show them that to climb the hill was to enter hell and, with any luck, they would decline the invitation.

"Stand back, Mr. Nicholls, " Sharpe said, and steered the ensign back through the waiting ranks. "Now, Sergeant Major!»

Harper ordered the men to remove their bayonets and load their muskets and, when they were ready, he took a deep breath. "Number four company! " he shouted. "Number five company! Fire!»

The two centre companies fired together. The muskets slammed back into their shoulders, and a dirty fill of powder smoke spat across the crest.

No other orders were given, but as soon as the centre companies had fired, the platoons on either side pulled their triggers. Each company was split into two platoons, and each platoon waited for the one inside them to fire before firing themselves. To the watching French it must have looked as though the smoke was rippling out along the high, red line.

But any troops could fire one round in a pretty ripple. What would but fear into the French was the speed with which the second bullet was fired. Sharpe noted with approval that the centre companies were all reloaded before the ripple of musket fire had reached the battalion's outer flanks. Those flanks fired and within a heartbeat the centre companies had fired again, and again the ripple spread outwards as the men in the centre dropped their muskets' heavy butts onto the stony ground and ripped the top from new cartridges with their teeth.

The second staggered volley of musket balls whistled out into the void and then the third followed without a pause. It had been a marvelous display, the best infantry in the world showing what it did best, and if that promise of slaughter did not give the enemy pause, then nothing would.

But Picard was not a man to heed a warning, and Sharpe, watching from the crest, saw the French preparing to come forward again.

And just then, far to the south from where the picquet watched the road leading into Spain, a musket fired and Sharpe spun around. He knew the other enemy was coming.