Sharpe's Rifles

CHAPTER 8

It was a bad place to be caught; a stretch of open country where cavalry could manoeuvre almost at will. It was true that there were patches of bog at the edges of the fields which, like the road, were lined with low stone walls, but Sharpe knew he would be hard put to extricate his men from the enemy.

“You’re certain it’s the French?” Parker asked.

Sharpe did not even bother to answer. A soldier who could not recognize enemy silhouettes did not deserve to live, but neither did a soldier who hesitated. “Go! Go!” This was to the coachman who, jarred by Sharpe’s sudden anger, cracked his long whip at his lead pair. Traces jangled, splinter bars jerked with the strain, and the carriage lunged forward.

The Riflemen tore rags from their weapon locks. Sharpe said a silent prayer of thanks to whichever deity looked after soldiers that, on the day when they had been cut off from the army, these men had been issued with so much ammunition. They would need it, for they were horribly outnumbered and their only hope lay in the ability of the rifle to delay the enemy’s pursuit.

Sharpe estimated it would take the French horsemen ten minutes to reach the stand of pines which presently shrouded the Riflemen. There was no escape to east or west, where only empty fields lay; instead he needed to reach the southern crest where the farm stood and hope that, beyond the crest and by some miracle, he would find an obstacle impassable to horsemen. If there was no escape, then the farmhouse must be barricaded into a fortress. But ten minutes was not enough time to reach the farm, so Sharpe held back a dozen men at the pines. The rest, under Williams’s command, went with the coach.

Sharpe kept Hagman, for the old poacher had an uncanny skill with his rifle, and he retained Harper with his closest cronies, for Sharpe suspected that they were his best fighters. “We can’t hold them up for long,” he told the few men, “but we can buy some time. But when we do move, we’ll have to run like the devil.”

Harper crossed himself. “God save Ireland.” There were at least two hundred Dragoons now filing along the boggy road that had mired the coach an hour earlier.

The Riflemen lay at the edge of the trees. To the French, still half a mile off, they would be invisible. “Lie still,” Sharpe warned his men. “Aim at the horses. It’s going to be a very long shot.” He would have liked to have waited till the enemy was just two hundred yards away before opening fire, but that would let the horsemen come far too close. Instead he would be forced to fire at the very limit of the rifle’s killing range in the hope that the bullets created enough surprise and panic to check the French advance for a few precious moments.

Sharpe, concealed by the darkness beneath the pines, stood a few paces behind his men. He drew out his telescope and steadied its long barrel against a pine trunk.

He saw pale green coats, pink facings, and pigtails. The telescope foreshortened the advancing French column so that the lens seemed filled with men rising and falling in their saddles. Scabbards, carbines, pouches, and sabretaches Jiggled. At this distance the French faces, dark beneath their forage caps, were expressionless and menacing. There were curious bundles strapped behind the saddles which Sharpe realized were netfuls of fodder for the horses. The French halted.

Sharpe swore softly.

He panned the telescope left and right. The Dragoons had left the worst of the marshland behind and had spread lr» to a line that was now quite motionless. Horses lowered their heads to crop at the damp grass.

“Sir?” Hagman called. “On the road, sir? See the buggers?”

Sharpe jerked the telescope back to the centre of the enemy line. A group of officers had appeared there, their aiguillettes and epaulettes a dark gold in the wintry light, and in their midst were the chasseur in his red pelisse, and the civilian in his black coat and white boots. Sharpe wondered by what weird skill those two men followed his scent across the winter land.

The chasseur opened his own telescope and it seemed to Sharpe that the Frenchman stared directly into the betraying circle of his own lens. He kept his glass motionless until the other telescope was snapped shut. Then he watched as the chasseur gave an order to a Dragoon officer, apparently an aide, who galloped his horse westward.

The result of the order was that a small detachment of Dragoons lifted the heavy helmets which hung from their saddles’ pommels. The six men pulled the helmets onto their heads; a sure sign they had been ordered to advance. Sensible to the fact that the pines could hide an ambush, the chasseur was sending a picquet ahead. Sharpe had lost surprise, for even though the enemy did not know that he waited for them, they were prepared for trouble. He slammed his glass shut, and cursed the French commander’s caution that now imposed a delicate choice on him.

Sharpe could kill the six men, but would that stop the other Dragoons? Or would they, judging his strength from the paucity of shots fired, spur into an instant gallop that would bring the mass of horsemen into the trees long before the Riflemen could reach the southern crest? Instead often minutes, he might have five.

He hesitated. But if he had learned one thing as a soldier it was that any decision, even a bad one, was better than none. “We’re pulling back. Fast! Keep hidden!”

The Riflemen slithered backwards, stood when the trees shielded them from the French, then followed Sharpe onto the road. They ran.

“Jesus!” The imprecation came from Harper and was caused by the sight of the Parkers’ carriage which, just two hundred yards ahead, was stuck fast. The coachman, in his haste, had rammed a wheel against a stone wall at a bend in the road. Williams and his men were vainly trying to free the vehicle.

“Leave it!” Sharpe bellowed. “Leave it!”

Mrs Parker’s head appeared at the window of the coach to countermand his orders. “Push! Push!”

“Get out!” Sharpe floundered in the road’s mud. “Get out!” If the coach was to be rescued then the horses would have to be coaxed backwards, slewed, then whipped forward, and that would take time which he did not have, so it must be abandoned.

But Mrs Parker was in no mood to sacrifice the carriage’s comfort. She ignored Sharpe, instead leaning perilously from the opened window to threaten her coachman with a furled umbrella. “Whip them harder, you fool! Harder!”

Sharpe seized the door handle and tugged it down. “Get out! Out!”

Mrs Parker flailed the umbrella at him, knocking his mildewed shako over his eyes, but Sharpe seized her wrist, tugged, and heard her scream as she fell in the mud. “Sergeant Williams?”

“Sir?”

“Two men to get those packs off the roof!” They contained all Sharpe’s spare ammunition. Gataker and Dodd scrambled up, slashed at the ropes with their sword-bayonets, and tossed the heavy packs down to the waiting riflemen. George Parker tried to speak with Sharpe, but the officer had no time for his nervousness. “You’ll have to run, sir. To the farm!” Sharpe physically turned the tall man and pointed him towards the stone house and barn which were the only refuges left in this bare country.

There was nervous excitement in Louisa’s eyes, then the girl was pushed aside by Mrs Parker who, muddied by her fall and made incoherent by the loss of her carriage and luggage, tried to reach Sharpe, but he shouted at the family to start running. “You want to die, woman? Move! Sergeant Williams! Escort the ladies! Get into the farmhouse!” Mrs Parker screamed for her valise that Mr Parker, shaking like a leaf, rescued from inside the carriage. Then, surrounded by Riflemen, the family and their coachman fled uphill.

“Sir?” Harper checked Sharpe. “Block the road?” He gestured at the coach.

Sharpe did not have the time to be astonished at the Irishman’s sudden willingness. He did, however, recognize the value of the suggestion. If the road was blocked then the French would be forced to negotiate the stone walls which barred the fields on either side. It would not buy much time, but even a minute would help in this desperate plight. He nodded. “If we can.”

“No trouble at all, sir.” Harper unhooked the chain-traces, splinter bars, and lead bars while other men slashed at the harness and reins. The Irishman slapped the horses’ rumps to drive the loosened team uphill. “Right, lads! We’re going to tip the bastard!”

The Riflemen gathered on the coach’s right side. Sharpe was staring at the trees, waiting for the enemy picquet, but he could not resist turning to watch as the Irishman commanded the men to lift.

For a moment the coach refused to budge, then Harper seemed to take all the carriage’s weight into his own huge body and thrust it skywards. The wheels shifted in the mud and the axle boss scraped against the stone where it was stuck. “Heave!” Harper drew the word out into a long bellow as the coach rose ever higher into the air. For a second it threatened to collapse back, crushing the greenjackets, and Sharpe ran and put his own weight into the huge vehicle. It teetered for a second, then, with a splintering thump, collapsed onto its side in the road. Luggage and seat cushions tumbled inside, and Spanish testaments were strewn thick into the road’s mud.

“Cavalry, sir!” Hagman shouted.

Sharpe turned north to see the six enemy horsemen curbing in at the edge of the trees. He aimed swiftly, too swiftly, and his shot missed. Hagman, firing a second later, made one of the horses rear in pain. The other Dragoons wrenched their reins about. Two more shots were fired before the enemy picquet was safe among the pines.

“Run!” Sharpe shouted.

The Riflemen ran. Their scabbards flapped and their packs thumped on their backs as they scrambled up the road. A carbine bullet, fired at long range, fluttered above Sharpe’s head. He could see Mrs Parker being bodily dragged by two greenjackets and the sight made him want to laugh. It was ludicrous. He was trapped by cavalry and he wanted to double over in laughter.

Sharpe caught up with Sergeant Williams’s group. Mrs Parker, furious, was too breathless to shout at him, but she was equally too fat to move fast. Sharpe looked for Harper. “Drag her!”

“You can’t mean it, sir!”

“Carry her if you must!”

The Irishman pushed Mrs Parker in the rump. Louisa laughed, but Sharpe yelled at the girl to run. He himself, with the remainder of his squad, filed into the field beside the road where, sheltered by a stone wall, they watched for the pursuit.

Sharpe could hear the cavalry trumpets talking with each other. The picquets had sent the call that the enemy was in sight and running, so now the other Dragoons would be spurring forward, exchanging forage caps for canvas-covered helmets. Swords would be rasping out of scabbards, carbines would be unslung. “They’ll have to come through the trees, so we’ll give the bastards a volley, then run! Aim where the road comes through the trees, lads!” Sharpe hoped to delay the Dragoons by at least a minute, maybe more. When the head of the enemy column appeared beneath the trees he would hammer it with one well-aimed volley, and it would take time for the cavalrymen who followed to negotiate the wounded horses.

Hagman was carefully reloading his rifle with the best powder and shot. He eschewed the ready-made cartridges which were made with coarser powder, charging his rifle instead with the best fine powder which each Rifleman carried in a horn. He wrapped the ball in the greased leather patch which, when the weapon was fired, would grip the seven spiralling grooves and lands which imparted spin to the bullet. He rammed the leather-patched ball down past the resistance of the lands’ quarter turn, then primed the lock with a pinch of good powder. It took a long time to load a rifle thus, but the resultant shot could be wickedly accurate. When Hagman was done he levelled the gun across the top of the stone wall and spat a stream of tobacco-stained spittle. “Aim a pace left for the wind.”

A spot of rain landed on the wall beside Sharpe. He prayed it would hold off long enough to let his rifles fire. He paced behind the men. “Make this shot hurt! One volley, then we run like hell.”

“Sir?” A man at the end of the line pointed to the trees east of the road and, staring there, Sharpe wondered if he saw movement among the pines. He unbuttoned the pocket in which his telescope was stored, but before he could even draw the glass from its protective case, the enemy burst in a great line from the trees.

Sharpe had expected them to file in column through the gap where the road pierced the pines, but instead the Dragoons had spread left and right in the woodland and now, helmeted and carrying drawn swords, the enemy’s whole strength erupted into the light.

“Fire!”

It was a puny volley. If the rifles had been able to concentrate their bullets into the head of a packed column of cavalry, they might have turned the road into a charnel of screaming horses and bleeding men. But against a whole spread of horsemen, coming in single line abreast, the bullets were scarcely more of a nuisance than horseflies. Only one horse, struck by Hagman’s careful bullet, staggered and fell.

“Run!” Sharpe shouted.

The Rifles ran as if the devil was on their heels. The French had foreseen that volley, guarded against it, and now were in the open and hullooing forward like hunters smelling blood. Ahead of Sharpe the other Riflemen were angling towards the farm. Louisa, he saw was carrying the wounded Cameron’s pack and pulling the man along by his hand.

“Bastards on the right!” Hagman called the warning and Sharpe twisted to see that the horsemen to the east were on the firmest ground and thus the likeliest to catch his small group. The Dragoons were riding like steeple chasers, victory in their nostrils, and a gap in a stone wall lent them speed, just as it made them bunch together like men racing for a turn. Sharpe saw the water spray up from their hooves as the cavalry charged through a damp patch, then, extraordinarily, he saw red blood appear on two of the horses, a sword circle through the air, then he saw a man twisting in the saddle, falling, and being dragged by a screaming, frightened horse. Only then did Sharpe hear the crack of the rifles ahead.

Harper had abandoned Mrs Parker and formed a line of Riflemen at the edge of the farm’s outer wall. Their volley had scattered the easternmost cavalry to give Sharpe’s group a ghost of a chance. “Run! Run!”

The men slung their rifles and ran. Sharpe could hear the enemy hooves behind. He could hear the creak of the saddles and the shout of the officers and Sergeants. More rifle bullets flicked past, firing from the farm to give him cover. Louisa stared, eyes wide.

“Left, sir!” A man shouted. “Left!” Cavalrymen were coming from the west; men who had ridden around the roadblock and who now put their beasts to jump the stone wall that edged the road. One man, his horse in midflight, was hit by a bullet and slewed sideways. The others came on unscathed and Sharpe knew his squad would be trapped. He dragged the big sword free, planted his feet, and let the first Frenchman ride at him. “Run on!” he shouted at his men. “Run on!”

The first Frenchman was a Dragoon officer who leaned low in his saddle and speared his sword forward so that, like a lance, it would rip into Sharpe’s belly. The Rifleman backswung his own sword, left to right, in a two-handed blow that was aimed at the horse’s mouth. It struck home on bone and teeth, the animal wrenched aside, and Sharpe threw himself against its body so that the Frenchman’s sword went past and outside him. He tried to reach up to drag the rider from the saddle, missed, and his shako went flying as the forage net thumped him down on to the road. The horse’s rear leg struck his hip, then the Dragoon was gone and Sharpe scrambled to his feet.

“Down!” It was Harper’s voice and he instinctively dropped flat as another volley crashed overhead. A horse screamed, then slid and fell in the road’s muck. One of the beast’s flailing hooves missed Sharpe’s skull by an inch.

“Run!” Harper bellowed.

Sharpe caught a glimpse of the carnage on the road. Harper’s volley, aimed at the congestion formed by the constriction of the stone walls, had stopped the horsemen dead. Sharpe ran through the farm gate. There was an open pasture to cross before he was safe. Riflemen were already filing into the farmhouse and he saw the first shutter pushed aside by a rifle barrel.

“Behind you!” Hooves again, this time from the left, and Sharpe snarled as he turned. His sword swung towards the horse which swerved away and forced its rider to try the dificult cross-cut down and across his own body. Lunging, the Rifleman felt his own sword pierce the Dragoon’s left thigh. The impetus of man and horse dragged the rider free of the blade. More rifles fired, one bullet going so close to Sharpe that he felt its passage like a thump of wind.

“Run!” Harper called again.

Sharpe ran. He reached the farmhouse just as the last Rifleman scrambled over its threshold. Harper was ready to shut the door and jam it tight with a chest, “Thank you!” Sharpe gasped as he cannoned through the door. Harper ignored him.

Sharpe found himself in a passage which ran clean through the farmhouse from north to south. Doors barred the passage’s outer entrances, while two other doors led into the house itself. He chose the door on the left which opened into a spacious kitchen where, quivering with fright, a man and a woman crouched beside the hearth in which, suspended from a pothook, a seething cauldron stank of lye. The Parkers’ coachman offered the couple urgent explanation, then began loading a huge horse-pistol. Louisa was trying to prise a small ivory-hilted pistol from its snug-fitting case.

“Where’s your aunt?” Sharpe asked.

“There.” She pointed to a door at the back of the kitchen.

“Get in there.”

“But…“

“I said get in there!” Sharpe closed the pistol case and, despite Louisa’s indignation, pushed her towards the scullery where her aunt and uncle crouched among tall stone jars. He limped to the closest window and saw the Dragoons milling about just beyond the small barn. His men were firing at them. A horse reared, a Frenchman clapped a hand to a wounded arm, and a trumpet screamed.

The Dragoons scattered. They did not go far; only to find shelter behind the stone barn or the field walls, and Sharpe knew it would only be seconds before, dismounted, they began to rattle the farmhouse with their carbine fire. “How many windows are there, Sergeant?”

“Dunno, sir.” Williams was panting from the effort of running uphill.

A bullet lashed through the kitchen from outside. It struck a high beam above Sharpe. “Keep your bloody heads down! And fire back!”

There were three rooms downstairs; the large kitchen which had a window facing north and another south. The small scullery where the Parkers crouched had no windows. Beyond the passage was a much larger, windowless room, this one a byre for the animals. Two pigs and a dozen scared chickens were its only occupants.

A ladder from the kitchen led upstairs where there was a single room for sleeping. The farm’s relative prosperity was witnessed by a massive bed and a chest of drawers. The room had two windows, also facing north and south. Sharpe put Riflemen in both windows, then ordered Sergeant

Williams to take charge of the upstairs room and to make loopholes in the eastern and western walls. “And break through the roof.”

“The roof?” Williams gaped up at the thick beams and the timbers which hid the tiles.

“To keep watch east and west,” Sharpe ordered. Until he could see to his flanks then he was vulnerable to French surprise.

Downstairs again, Sharpe ordered a loophole to be hacked next to the chimney breast. The Spanish farmer, understanding what needed to be done, produced a pickaxe and began to pound at his wall. A crucifix, hanging on the limewashed stone, juddered with the force of the man’s blows.

“Bastards right!” Harper shouted from the window. Rifles cracked. The greenjackets who fired ducked back, letting others take their places. Some dismounted Dragoons had tried to rush the farm, but three of them now lay in a puddle; two scrambled up and limped to safety, the third was still. Sharpe saw the splash of rain in the blood-rippled water.

Then, for a few moments, there was relative peace.

None of Sharpe’s men was wounded. They were breathless and damp, but safe. They stayed crouched low under the threat of carbine fire that flayed at the windows, but the bullets did no harm except to the house. Sharpe, peering out, saw that the enemy was hidden in ditches or behind the dunghill. The farmer’s wife was nervously offering sliced sausage to the greenjackets.

George Parker crept on hands and knees from the scullery. He nervously waited for Sharpe’s attention which, once gained, he used to enquire what course of action Lieutenant Sharpe planned to follow.

Lieutenant Sharpe informed Mr Parker that he intended to wait for darkness to fall.

Parker swallowed. “That could be hours!”

“Five at the most, sir.” Sharpe was reloading his rifle, “unless God makes the sun stand still.”

Parker ignored Sharpe’s levity. “And then?”

“Break out, sir. Not till it’s dead of night. Hit the bastards when they’re not expecting it. Kill a few of them, and hope the others get confused.” Sharpe righted the rifle and primed its pan. “They can’t do much damage to us so long as we stay low.”

“But…“ Parker flinched as a bullet smacked into the wall above his head. ”My dear wife, Lieutenant, wishes your assurance that our carriage will be retrieved?“

“Afraid not, sir.” Sharpe knelt up, saw a flicker of a shadow beyond the dunghill, and fired his rifle. Smoke billowed from the weapon, and a wad of burning paper smoked on the floor. “There won’t be time, sir.” He crouched, took a cartridge from his pouch, and bit the bullet away.

“But my testaments!”

Sharpe did not like to reveal that the testaments, when last seen, had been strewn in the Spanish mud. He spat the bullet into his rifle’s muzzle. “Your testaments, sir, are now in the hands of Napoleon’s army.” He rammed ball, wadding and powder down his rifle barrel. The saltpetre from the powder was rank and dry in his mouth.

“But…“ Again Parker was silenced by a carbine bullet. This one clanged against a saucepan that hung from a beam. The bullet punched a hole in the metal, hit the next beam, and dropped at Sharpe’s feet. He picked it up, juggling it because of its heat, then smelt it. Parker frowned in perplexity.

“There’s a rumour that the Frogs poison their bullets, sir.” Sharpe said it loud enough so that his men, some of whom half-believed the story, could hear. “It ain’t true.”

“It isn’t?”

“No, sir.” Sharpe put the bullet into his mouth, grinned, then swallowed it. His men laughed at the expression on George Parker’s face. Sharpe turned to see how the farmer was progressing with the loophole. The walls of the farm were hugely thick and, though the man’s pick had pierced a foot into the centre rubble, he still had not reached day-‘ight.

A volley of carbine shots crashed through the rear window.

The Riflemen, unharmed, jeered their defiance, but it was a defiance that the grey-haired Parker could not share. “You’re doomed, Lieutenant!”

“Sir, if you’ve nothing better…“

“Lieutenant! We are civilians! I see no reason why we should stay here and share your death!” George Parker had found courage under fire; the courage to assert his timorous soul and demand surrender.

Sharpe primed his rifle. “You want to walk out there, sir?”

“A flag of truce, man!” Parker flinched as another carbine bullet ricocheted over his head.

“If that’s what you want, sir…“ But before Sharpe could finish his sentence, there was a panicked shout from Sergeant Williams upstairs, then a rattling crash as a massive enemy volley flogged the front of the house. A Rifleman was jerked back from the window with blood spurting from his head. Two rifles fired, more shot from upstairs, then the northern window was darkened as French Dragoons, who had charged about the blind western angle of the house, filled the frame. Sharpe and several other men fired; but the Dragoons were dragging at the chairs which blocked the window. They were repulsed only when the farmer’s wife, screaming with despair and using a strength that seemed remarkable in so scrawny a woman, snatched the cauldron from the pothook and threw it at the enemy. The scalding lye snatched the French back as though a cannon had fired at them.

“Sir!” Harper was by the kitchen door. A crash sounded in the passage as the French broke down the southern door which the Irishman had not blocked as securely as the northern. A group of Dragoons had taken advantage of the larger attack to make a charge at the other side of the house and were now within the central passage. Harper fired his rifle through the kitchen door, which instantly splintered in two places as the French replied. Both bullets struck the table.

The kitchen filled with powder smoke. Men were taking turns to fire through the windows, then reloading with frantic haste. The coachman emptied his huge pistol through the door and was rewarded with a shout of pain.

“Open it!” Sharpe said.

Harper obeyed. An astonished Frenchman, levelling his carbine, found himself facing Sharpe’s sword which skewered forward so savagely that the blade’s tip jarred against the far wall of the passage after it had gone clean through the Dragoon’s body. Harper, screaming his weird battle-shouts, followed Sharpe with an axe he had plucked from the kitchen wall. He hacked down at another man, making the passage slithery with blood.

Sharpe gouged and twisted his sword free. A Frenchman’s blade scraped up his forearm, springing warm blood, and he threw himself onto the man, forcing him against the passage wall and hammering the sword hilt at his face. A rifle exploded beside his head to throw another Dragoon back from the door. The pigs squealed in terror, while Sharpe tripped over a crawling Frenchman who was bleeding from the belly. Another rifle hammered in the passage, then Harper shouted that the enemy was gone.

A carbine bullet slammed into the passage, ricocheted from the walls, and buried itself in the far door. Sharpe pushed into the room where the animals were kept and saw a wooden trough that would serve as some kind of barricade in the passage. He dragged it out, and the pigs took the opportunity to escape before he could slam the damaged outer door closed and ram the trough under its cross-members. “Lucky bloody French,” Harper said. “Pork for supper.”

The action lulled again. Dreadful squeals announced the death of the pigs; squeals which momentarily stilled.the fusillade of carbine shots which raked the farmhouse. No more Frenchmen appeared as targets. One Rifleman was dead in the kitchen, another wounded. Sharpe went to the ladder. “Sergeant Williams?”

There was no answer.

“Sergeant Williams! How are those loopholes?”

It was Dodd who answered. “He’s dead, sir. Got one in the eye, sir.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“He was looking out the roof, sir.”

“Make sure someone keeps looking out!”

Williams was dead. Sharpe sat at the foot of the ladder and stared at Patrick Harper. He was the obvious replacement, the only choice, but Sharpe suspected the big Irishman would scathingly reject the offer. So, he thought, the rank should not be offered but simply imposed. “Harper?”

“Sir?”

“You’re a Sergeant.”

“I’m bloody not.”

“You’re a Sergeant!”

“No, sir! Not in this damned army. No.”

“Jesus Christ!” Sharpe spat the blasphemy at the huge man, but Harper merely turned to stare out of the window to where puffs of smoke betrayed the position of some Dragoons in a ditch.

“Mister Sharpe?” A tentative hand touched Sharpe’s wounded arm. It was George Parker again. “My dear wife and I have discussed it, Lieutenant, and we would appreciate it if you would communicate with the French commander.” Parker suddenly saw Sharpe’s blood on his own fingers. He blanched and stuttered on: ‘Please don’t think we wish to desert you at this time, but…“

“I know,” Sharpe cut him short, “you think we’re doomed.” He spoke savagely, not because he disapproved of Parker’s wish to be safe, but because, if the Parkers went, he would lose Louisa. He could have left the Parkers on the road, safe in their carriage, but he had panicked them into flight because he did not want to lose the girl’s company. Yet now Sharpe knew he had no choice, for the two women could not be expected to endure the French assault, nor the danger of a ricocheting bullet. Louisa must go.

On the table, where the dead Rifleman lay among shattered crockery with the blood still dripping from his sopping hair, there was a piece of cheesecloth which, though grey and dirty, might pass for a flag of truce. Sharpe speared the flimsy material onto the tip of his sword, then shuffled over to the window. The Riflemen made way for him.

He reached up and pushed the sword clear of the window frame. He waved it left and right, and was rewarded with a shout from outside. There was a pause in which, tentatively, Sharpe stood upright.

“What do you want, Englishman?” a voice shouted.

“To talk.”

“Come out then. Just one of you!”

Sharpe plucked the cheesecloth from his sword, sheathed the blade, and went into the passage. He stepped over a dead Dragoon, pulled the chest clear of the northern door, then, feeling oddly naked and exposed, walked into the rain.

To talk to the man in the red pelisse.