Sharpe's Enemy

CHAPTER 12

Going through the acrid curtain of smoke, between the licking flames that consumed the scraps of powder barrel, was like passing into a different world. Gone was the clean air and cold grass of the valley, instead it was a world of broken stone, slick with blood, littered by scraps of unrecognizable burned flesh; a courtyard where the survivors of the mine were being hunted across a cobbled yard.

Sharpe saw Harper go down and he checked in fear for the Sergeant, then saw the huge Irishman tugging the shaft of a halberd clear from a body. The blade swung up into the smoke, a great axe of silver light, and Harper screamed his war shout in his native Gaelic. Sharpe had seen this moment before, the instant when the normally placid Sergeant seethed with the anger of Irish heroes, careless of his safety, caring only to fight in a manner that might be enshrined in the plaintive Irish songs that kept alive the heroism of a nation.

Within the courtyard was a new, low wall, easily jumped, that was Pot-au-Feu's defence line inside the Castle. Men were running to the wall, laughter on their faces, muskets ready to fire at the Fusiliers who were dazed in the smoke. Some of Pot-au-Feu's men had leaped the wall and hunted survivors with bayonets. A few of the Fusiliers had bunched together, a Sergeant commanding them, and they held their bayonets out and died as the musket balls flamed across the puny wall.

Then Harper came out of the smoke.

To the defenders in the courtyard it must have seemed as if a creature from myth had come out of the explosion's darkness, a huge man, drunk with battle, an axe head swinging from his hands, and he ran at the wall, jumped, and the steel blade clove the smoke and bit wet into the defenders.

'Fusiliers! Fusiliers! Sharpe shouted. He slipped, his right heel greased by a smear of blood, and the fall saved him from a Frenchman's bayonet that came from his left. Sharpe rolled on the ground, swung the huge sword and saw a sliver of wood slice from the musket above him. He lashed out with his left foot, caught the man on his kneecap, and then the man was staggering and Sharpe was on his feet, and the sword finished the Frenchman off. 'Fusiliers! To me!

He tugged at the sword blade, kicked the body, and the weapon came reluctantly free. 'Fusiliers!

God, this was a bad place! It was only the presence of some of the enemy around the survivors that stopped Pot-au-Feu's muskets sweeping the courtyard clean. Four men lay at Harper's feet, others had gone back from the fury in the huge man, from the great blade that swung from his powerful arms, and Sharpe saw a man take careful aim with his musket. 'Patrick!

The halberd was thrown, the fluke of its axe head burying itself in the man's forehead, and Harper came back over the wall unslinging his seven-barrelled gun.

'Save it, Patrick! To me! To me!

The Sergeant was hustling his men towards Sharpe. Three wounded were being helped, another man had both Colours of the Fusiliers bundled carelessly under his arm. The shafts were broken and splintered.

'This way! Sharpe turned and kept the movement going in a backswing of his sword that drove back a man in Portuguese uniform who was charging from the rubble. The man seemed crazed, mad with fighting, and Sharpe saw other figures on the broken wall where the smoke clung and was thick with the smell of roasted flesh. Sharpe concentrated on the one man, letting all his anger flow into the lunge of the twisting sword, and he saw the brown uniform fold over the great blade and he was twisting it free even as he knew that they were surrounded.

A musket ball slammed into the stones by his left foot, another plucked at the tail of his jacket, and a third spun a Fusilier clear round, dying before he hit the ground, and Sharpe could see men thick on the stones, scrambling towards them, and he knew that he could never get the wounded across the barrier. He twisted round again. He would not die here! Not at the hands of these scum on this day!

They expected him to stand and fight or else to run over the stones, so he must do something else, and he must decide in an instant or else they would all be dead or worse. Pot-au-Feu did believe he could win! He was proving it to his men, and they were rewarding him by fighting with a fanaticism that was partly born of the knowledge that they were doomed if defeated.

To his right was the gate-tower, huge and massively turreted. There had to be a doorway into it and Sharpe was moving, yelling, and the Fusiliers changed direction and Sharpe led them with his sword and the deserters backed off because they had not expected this and the sword swept at them. He stepped over a red-jacketed body, its mouth open and red, and then the sword took a man in the back and Harper seized the fallen musket, squeezed the trigger, and Sharpe was on the low wall, across it, yelling as if the fiend was inside him, beginning to enjoy this crazy charge into the heart of the enemy's defence, and there was the doorway, small and black, off to his right. 'There! Go! Go! Go!

The Sergeant led them, dragging a wounded man despite his screams of pain, and Sharpe seized Harper's elbow, turned him, so the two of them would be the rearguard as the Fusiliers scrambled into the desperately small doorway. A backswing to knock a musket and bayonet into the air, withdraw, lunge, and shout in triumph because another bastard was down, and then the shout across the courtyard.

'Get them!

Hakeswill’s voice. The musket balls flattened on the gate-tower, pecked at the cobbles, and Sharpe went backwards. 'Get inside! Thank God for the smoke in the courtyard, the hiding smoke, but then there was a crude line visible that came towards them, mouths open, bayonets ahead of them and Harper went onto one knee and the great gun was in his shoulder. 'Get back, sir!

The kick of the seven-barrelled gun almost threw Harper into the doorway. The centre of the attacking line was snatched away, the shot echoed huge in the Castle, and Sharpe grabbed Harper's collar and hauled him backwards. The Sergeant rolled clear inside the doorway and shook his head. 'God save Ireland.

'Stairs, sir! The Fusilier Sergeant pointed at a winding stairway.

'Door!

Harper slammed it. It looked rotten and frail, nail heads half falling from the once stout planks. There was a bar for it and Sharpe dropped it into place as a musket ball splintered a hole by his right wrist.

The Fusilier Sergeant was hesitating at the bottom of the curving stairs. 'Buggers are up there, sir.

Sharpe told him what he thought of the defenders upstairs, then led the way with his sword outstretched. Going up the tight, spiral staircase Sharpe understood the cleverness of the old Castle builders for the steps, in this direction, turned in a clockwise direction. Sharpe's sword arm, like most mens', was his right arm, and it was blocked and hampered by the central stone shaft that supported the inner side of each step. A defender, going backwards up the stairs, would have far more freedom for his right arm. So far no one challenged his ascent.

He was going slowly, carefully, scared of each step. Below him he could hear the thumping as musket butts hammered at the door. It could not hold. Then one of his wounded screamed horribly and Sharpe remembered a glimpse of a shattered thigh-bone sticking clean from the torn flesh and he knew the man was being dragged up the steps. Poor bastard, Christmas Day 1812, and the thought gave him such anger that he abandoned his caution and ran up the steps, shouting, and he burst into a spacious room where men, far more frightened than he, waited to see what came out of the doorway. They did not know if it would be friend or foe and they hesitated long enough for the sword to take one and the other two ran back to an open door that looked onto the northern ramparts. Sharpe slammed the door shut, barred it, then turned to look at their refuge.

It was a large, rectangular chamber lit by two arrow slits that looked out at the valley. Two huge and broken windlasses were in the room, long decayed, and a rusted pulley on the ceiling showed where once a portcullis had been raised and lowered by guards in this room. Another circular staircase led upwards from a doorway and Sharpe knew it must lead to the turret's top from which Pot-au-Feu's men had fired on the attack.

Harper was loading his seven-barrelled gun, a long process, while the Fusiliers dragged the wounded into the chamber. Sharpe grabbed the Sergeant's tunic. 'Two men for each doorway, muskets loaded. He looked at the windlasses. The great drums were still there, the wood rotten and dusty. 'Try and block the stairway with one of them.

A shot echoed up the stairway, then another, then a splintering crash as the door was pounded down. Sharpe grinned at the Sergeant. 'Don't worry. They'll be cautious coming up here.

Two Fusiliers tugged at the nearest windlass, snapping bits of wood from its decrepit frame, but achieving nothing. Harper gave one his seven-barrelled gun and a handful of the pistol cartridges he fed it with. 'Load that, son. Just like a bloody musket. Now stand back.’

He wrapped the huge arms about the vast wooden drum, tested his strength tentatively against the force of the anchors that held the axle to the huge beam beneath, and then the arms tightened, the legs pushed, his face was distorted with the effort, and still the drum would not move. One of the men guarding the staircase primed his musket, hastily levelled it, and fired down into the winding stair. A shout from below. That would slow them.

Harper tugged at the drum, swore at it, jerked it rhythmically so that his muscles tore at the ancient brackets. He pulled again, sinews like the ropes that had once raised the portcullis through the slit in the floor, and Sharpe saw a rusted angle-iron snap, heard the splintering of dry wood, and Harper's legs straightened as the drum rose ponderously clear, shedding old dust, and the Irishman carried it, gait as clumsy as a dancing bear, the burden looking like a hogshead of beer in his grasp and he grunted at the two guards to stand aside. He let it go into the stairway, it fell, crashing and bouncing, and then jammed itself into the bend. He wiped his hands and grinned. 'A present from the Irish. They'll have to burn the bastard out of there. He went back to his seven-barrelled gun, finished the loading, and grinned at Sharpe. 'Next floor, sir?

'Did I ever tell you you're a useful man to have around?

'Tell my Ma, sir. She wanted to throw me back. I was so little. One of the Fusiliers laughed almost hysterically. His jacket was fresh and bright, a recruit, and Harper grinned at him. 'Don't worry, lad, they're far more scared of you than you are of them. The boy was guarding the door onto the northern rampart, a rampart that had been clear of the enemy for no attack threatened from that side.

Sharpe went to the doorway that led to the turret's top and peered cautiously inside. An empty stair going up. A voice swore in the other staircase, a bayonet scraped on the wood of the blockage, but Sharpe had no fears now of an attack from below. He was frightened of this stairway, though. The men at the top would know by now that there was an enemy below. He was tempted to leave them there, but he knew that he could defend the summit of the gate-tower far more easily than this room. 'I'll go first.

'With respect, sir, the gun's handier. Harper hefted the seven barrels. It was true, but Sharpe could not let someone else lead.

'You follow.

The staircase was like the first, bending inconveniently to the right, and Sharpe pushed away the inconsequential thought that Captains of the past must have sent their left-handed swordsmen first into stairways like this. He was frightened. Each step added to the fear, each step revealing another stretch of dark, blank wall. A single man with a musket would have no difficulty in killing him. He stopped, listening, wishing he had thought to remove his boots so that their ascent would be quieter.

Beneath him he heard muskets, a shout, and then the calm voice of the Fusilier Sergeant. The man could easily defend the chamber for a few minutes, but Sharpe half expected his small party to be marooned in this Castle for hours. He had to have the turret top and he thought of the defenders waiting up these stairs and he wished devoutly that he did not have to climb them. He could hear Harper fidgeting and grunting behind him and he shushed him irritably.

The Irishman pushed something at him. 'Here, sir.

It was his green jacket. Sharpe understood. Hang the jacket on the sword tip because the defenders, nervous themselves, were just waiting for something to appear in the gloom of the stairway. Harper grinned and motioned with his gun, telling Sharpe to stay close to the shaft of the staircase so the Sergeant could fire past him and trust to the ricocheting of the seven bullets. Sharpe pushed the bloody, tip of the sword into the collar of the jacket and, in the half-light, he could see the laurel wreath badge that was sewn onto the sleeve. Sharpe wore one himself, the coveted badge that said a Rifleman had gone first into a defended breach, yet Badajoz seemed so long ago now, the utter fear of it just a dulled memory, while the fear of this moment was so huge and paralysing. Death was so channelled and directed by this staircase, yet Sharpe had learned that the steps a man feared most were the ones that had to be taken. He climbed. The jacket was ahead of him, a dark shape in the gloom, and he tried to remember how tall the gatehouse was, and how many steps it would take to reach the top, but he was confused. The turning of the stair had taken away his sense of direction, the fear turned each scrape of his boots' soles on the cold stone into a jab of alarm as he imagined the bullet striking from above.

The sword blade jarred on the central pillar. The jacket jerked with each step. It was a pathetic ruse, looking nothing like a man, but he told himself that the defenders would be nervous too. They were rehearsing in their minds what kind of attack would burst up these stairs, they were imagining death too on this Christmas Day.

The volley, when it came, was sickeningly close, and the bullets snatched at the jacket, billowed it, tore it, and Sharpe involuntarily ducked for the staircase seemed full of shrieking metal striking stone, and then the seven-barrelled gun exploded next to his ear, deafening him, and Sharpe screamed a challenge that he could not hear, twitched the jacket free of the sword point and charged up the stairs.

The jacket saved his life. He had thought only to discard it, to free the blade, but his right foot stepped on it, threw him painfully forward and tumbled Harper behind him. The Irishman crushed the breath from Sharpe, drove his ribs against the corners of the steps, and as they fell so the second volley, saved for this moment, flamed over their heads. Harper felt the hot breath of the guns, knew that the shots had missed, and he clawed his way forward over Sharpe's body and used the massive gun as a club in the doorway of the small turret that carried the staircase onto the tower's top.

Sharpe followed, his head ringing with the explosion of the seven-barrelled gun, and on the confined roof space his sword was the better weapon. The fear would have its outlet now, like a clawed animal released from a stinking cage, and he killed with the blade. He could hear nothing, only see the enemy who went back before him and he knew these men had drawn his nerves steel tight, had forced fear on him in a small place, and he killed with the efficient skill of his sword arm.

Six men cowered in a corner of the turret, weapons discarded, hands held up in supplication. Those the Riflemen ignored. Three men still fought, and those three died. Two with the sword, the third Harper picked up bodily and heaved into the courtyard, his dying scream being the first sound that penetrated Sharpe's fuddled, deafened ears.

He lowered the sword, his eyes grim on the terrified men who pressed back against the castellations. He breathed deep, shook his head. 'Jesus.

Harper took the two bodies at the stairhead, one at a time, and hurled them after the other man. He looked at his officer. 'Stairways cleared and Castles taken. We should go into business, sir.’

’I didn't enjoy that.’

’Nor did they.

Sharpe laughed. They had done it, they had taken the turret's top and he wondered who had last climbed those stairs in a fight and how many years before. Had it been before gunpowder? Had the last man to come into the sunlight of this rampart been in uncomfortable armour, swinging a short mace that would crush in the confined deathtrap of the winding stair? He grinned at Harper, slapped his arm. 'Well done. Whoever had been last up these stairs, fighting up, had done exactly what Sharpe did now. He shouted down the stairway, shouted loud, and waited for the man to bring what he wanted. Bullets fluttered about their heads from the Castle's keep, but Sharpe ignored them. He shouted again, impatient, and here they were, staffs broken, but it did not matter.

On the old battlements, facing east, facing the Fusiliers and the Rifle Companies, Sharpe hung the Colours. They were discoloured by smoke, torn by explosion and bullet, but they were the Colours. Banners hanging from a Castle wall, the boast of a fighting man, banners hung by Sharpe and Harper. The gatehouse was taken.