Sharpes Escape   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

The French were huddled on either side of the building, reckoning they were safe because none of the farm's garrison had succeeded in making a loophole in the gable ends, but they made easy targets now and the bullets tore into them as Vicente's group ran past Sharpe. "Keep going!" Sharpe called to Vicente, then looked back to the farm as a musket ball whipcracked past his head. "Mister Bullen! Now!"

Bullen's group, the largest, came out last and Sharpe bellowed at them to form the skirmish chain and start fighting. "Rifles, back! Back!" They were all there, eighteen men in red coats, running back up the track and then following Vicente as he angled into the wetland, behind the three Portuguese who were wading the stream close to the square now. So the stream could be crossed. The square had been retreating, edging away, but Sharpe saw it had stopped now, presumably because they had seen the light company break from the farm. The battalion's red files were edged with smoke that drifted past the two flags. Sharpe looked back, amazed again because time seemed to be slowing and everything was taking on a marvelous clarity. Bullen's men were too slow in making their skirmish chain and one man was down, struck in the knee, squealing with pain. "Leave him!" Sharpe shouted. He had stopped to reload his rifle. "Fight the bastards, Mister Bullen! Drive them in!" The French were starting to move from the shelter of the farmhouse and the muskets had to stop that, had to drive them back. Sharpe saw an officer shouting, gesturing with a sword, evidently encouraging men to come out of the farm buildings and charge down the track and Sharpe aimed, fired and lost the man in his rifle smoke. A ball struck the ground beside him, ricocheted upwards; another hissed past his head. Bullen had his men in hand now, had steadied them, they were fighting properly, retreating slowly, and Sharpe turned and ran after his disguised riflemen. They were in the marsh, waiting for him. "That way!" he shouted, pointing them towards the voltigeurs fighting the north face of the square. Vicente was close to the South Essex now, plunging into the flooded stream.

Sharpe angled into the march to join his riflemen. The going was easy enough at first for he could jump from tussock to tussock, but then his boots began to stick in the glutinous mud. A musket ball splashed near him and he saw, from the spray, that it had been fired from the west, from the voltigeurs harassing the square.

Those were the men Sharpe was heading for. He would let Bullen, Vicente and the rest of the company go towards the square, but he would take his red-jacketed riflemen up onto the flank of the voltigeurs who had been doing so much damage to the battalion. Only a few of those voltigeurs were worrying about him, and they were simply shooting wildly across the stream, firing at too long a range, and Sharpe knew they were seeing redcoats, not riflemen. They reckoned eighteen redcoats could do them no damage, and Sharpe wanted them to think that, and he led his men to the edge of the flooded ground where the range to the voltigeurs was under a hundred paces. "Officers," he told the riflemen, "sergeants. Look for them. Kill them."

This was why God had made rifles. Muskets could fight each other at a hundred paces and it was a miracle if an aimed shot hit, but the rifles were killers at that range, and the voltigeurs, who had thought themselves faced only with muskets, were ambushed. In the first few seconds Sharpe's riflemen had killed three Frenchmen and wounded another seven, then they reloaded and Sharpe edged them to the left, a few paces nearer the square, and they fired again and the voltigeurs, confused because they only saw red coats, fired back. Sharpe knelt, watched an officer running with a hand holding up his saber, waited for the man to stop and point out a target, and pulled the trigger. When the smoke cleared the officer was gone. "Slow and steady!" Sharpe called. "Make the bullets count!" He turned and saw that Bullen was safe in the marshland now, the voltigeurs had followed him up the track, but none was willing to splash into the morass.

He looked back west, loaded the rifle with its stock half submerged in water, saw a man taking aim with his musket and fired at him. The voltigeurs were at last realizing that they were fighting a cruelly unequal battle and they were running back out of the rifles' range, but the cavalry, farther away, saw only a scatter of red coats and a group of the horsemen turned, drove back their spurs, and burst past the retreating voltigeurs. "Back," Sharpe called, "gently back. And edge left!" He was taking his men closer to the square now, wading through water a foot deep. He still had to cross the stream, but so did the cavalry, and those Frenchmen seemed oblivious of the flooded obstacle. Perhaps they thought the sheet of water was all one depth, just a foot or so deep, and so they lowered their sabers, spurred their horses into a canter and rode for the kill. "Wait till they're floundering," Sharpe said, "then kill them."

The front rank splashed into the flooded land on the opposite bank, then one horse went down into the stream, pitching its rider over its head. The other horses slowed, struggling now to find their footing, and

Sharpe shouted at his men to open fire. A hussar, his pigtails hanging either side of his sunburned face, snarled as he wrenched at his reins and tried to force his horse on through the stream and Sharpe put a bullet straight through the sky-blue jacket. A shell exploded in the second rank of horsemen who had pulled up when they saw the first check. Sharpe reloaded, glanced around to make sure none of the voltigeurs from the farm were coming through the swampy ground, then shot a dragoon. This was easy killing and the horsemen understood it and turned their horses and raked back their spurs so that they struggled back to the firmer ground, still pursued by rifle fire.

And there was more rifle fire now, a storm of it from the far side of the South Essex where the cazadores had come to the redcoats' aid and were driving the voltigeurs back, then the north side of the square exploded into smoke as two companies fired a volley into the flank of the horsemen who were spurring away to safety. Sharpe slung his rifle on his shoulder. "Not a bad day's work, Pat," he said, then nodded at the lone cavalry horse that had crossed the stream and marooned itself in the marsh. "They still pay a reward for enemy horses, don't they? He's all yours, Sergeant."

The cavalry were no longer threatening and so the South Essex deployed into a four-rank line, twice as thick as they would use on a normal battlefield, but safer in case any of the hussars or dragoons decided to try one last attack.