Sharpe gazed at the far hill. "If there"s b.l.o.o.d.y cavalry about," he said, "then I don"t want to be caught on the road." It was the one place in a nightmare landscape where hors.e.m.e.n would have an advantage.
So to avoid enemy hors.e.m.e.n they struck north into the wilderness. It meant crossing the Cavado which they managed at a deep ford which led only to the high summer pastures. Sharpe continually looked behind, but saw no sign of the hors.e.m.e.n. The path climbed into a wild land. The hills were steep, the valleys deep and the high ground bare of anything except gorse, ferns, thin gra.s.s and vast rounded boulders, some balanced on others so precariously that they looked as if a child"s touch would send them bounding down the precipitous slopes. The gra.s.s was fit only for a few tangle-haired sheep and scores of feral goats on which the mountain wolves and wild lynx fed. The only village they pa.s.sed was a poor place with high rock walls about its small vegetable gardens. Goats were hobbled on pastures the size of inn yards and a few bony cattle stared at the soldiers as they pa.s.sed. They climbed still higher, listening to the goat bells among the rocks and pa.s.sing a small shrine heaped with faded gorse blossom. Vicente crossed himself as he pa.s.sed the shrine.
They turned eastward again, following a stony ridge where the great rounded boulders would make it impossible for any cavalry to form and charge, and Sharpe kept watching southwards and saw nothing. Yet there had been hors.e.m.e.n, and there would be more, for he was making a rendezvous with a desperate army that had been bounced from imminent success to abject defeat in one swift day.
It was hard traveling in the hills. They rested every hour, then trudged on. All were soaked, tired and chilled. The rain was relentless and the wind had now gone into the east so that it came straight into their faces. The rifle slings rubbed their wet shoulders raw, but at least the rain lifted that afternoon, even if the wind stayed brisk and cold. At dusk, feeling as weary as he ever had on the terrible retreat to Vigo, Sharpe led them down from the ridge to a small deserted hamlet of low stone cottages roofed with turf. "Just like home," Harper said happily. The driest places to sleep were two long, coffin-shaped granaries that protected their contents from rats by being raised on mushroom-shaped stone pillars, and most of the men crammed themselves into the narrow s.p.a.ces while Sharpe, Hogan and Vicente shared the least damaged cottage where Sharpe conjured a fire from damp kindling, and brewed tea.
"The most essential skill of a soldier," Hogan said when Sharpe brought him the tea.
"What"s that?" Vicente asked, ever eager to learn his new trade.
"Making fire from wet wood," Hogan said.
"Aren"t you supposed to have a servant?" Sharpe asked.
"I am, but so are you, Richard."
"I"m not one for servants," Sharpe said.
"Nor am I," Hogan said, "but you"ve done a grand job with that tea, Richard, and if His Majesty ever decides he doesn"t want a London rogue to be one of his officers then I"ll give you a job as a servant."
Picquets were set, more tea brewed and moist tobacco coaxed alight in clay pipes. Hogan and Vicente began an impa.s.sioned argument about a man called Hume of whom Sharpe had never heard and who turned out to be a dead Scottish philosopher, but, as it seemed the dead Scotsman had proposed that nothing was certain, Sharpe wondered why anyone bothered to read him, let alone argue about him, yet the notion diverted Hogan and Vicente. Sharpe, bored with the talk, left them to their debate and went to inspect the picquets.
It started to rain again, then peals of thunder shook the sky and lightning whipped into the high rocks. Sharpe crouched with Harris and Perkins in a cave-like shrine where some faded flowers lay in front of a sad-looking statue of the Virgin Mary. "Jesus b.l.o.o.d.y wept," Harper announced himself as he splashed through the downpour, "and we could be tucked up with those ladies in Oporto." He crammed himself in beside the three men. "I didn"t know you were here, sir," he said. "I brought the boys some picquet juice." He had a wooden canteen of hot tea. "Jesus," he went on, "you can"t see a b.l.o.o.d.y thing out there."
"Weather like home, Sergeant?" Perkins asked.
"What would you know, lad? In Donegal, now, the sun never stops shining, the women all say yes and both the gamekeepers have wooden legs." He gave Perkins the canteen and peered into the wet dark. "How are we going to find your fellow in this, sir?"
"G.o.d knows if we do."
"Does it matter now?"
"I want my telescope back."
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Harper said, "you"re going to wander into the middle of the French army and ask for it?"
"Something like that," Sharpe said. All day he had been besieged by a sense of the futility of the effort, but that was no reason not to make the effort. And it seemed right to him that Christopher should be punished. Sharpe believed that a man"s loyalties were at his roots, that they were immovable, but Christopher evidently believed they were negotiable. That was because Christopher was clever and sophisticated. And, if Sharpe had his way, he would soon be dead.
The dawn was cold and wet. They climbed back up to the boulder-strewn heights, leaving behind the valley which was filled with mist. The rain was soft now, but still in their faces. Sharpe led and saw n.o.body, and still saw n.o.body even when a musket banged and a cloud of smoke blossomed beside a rock and he dived for cover as the bullet smacked on a boulder and whined into the sky. Everyone else sheltered, except for Hogan who was stranded on his ugly mule, but Hogan had the presence of mind to shout. "Ingles," he called, "ingles!" He was half on and half off the mule, fearing another bullet, but hoping his claim to be English would prevent it.
A figure in ragged goatskins appeared from behind the rock. The man had a vast beard, no teeth and a wide grin. Vicente called to him and the two had a rapid conversation at the end of which Vicente turned to Hogan. "He calls himself Javali and says he is sorry, but he did not know we were friends. He asks you to forgive him."
"Javali?" Hogan asked.
"It means wild boar." Vicente sighed. "Every man in this countryside gives himself a nickname and looks for a Frenchman to kill."
"There"s just one of him?" Sharpe asked.
"Just the one."
"Then he"s either b.l.o.o.d.y stupid or b.l.o.o.d.y brave," Sharpe said, then succ.u.mbed to an embrace from Javali and a gust of foul-smelling breath. The man"s musket looked ancient. The wooden stock, which was bound to the barrel by old-fashioned iron hoops, was split and the hoops themselves were rusted and loose, but Javali had a canvas bag filled with loose powder and an a.s.sortment of differently sized musket b.a.l.l.s and he insisted on accompanying them when he learned there might be Frenchmen to kill. He had a wicked-looking curved knife stuck into his belt and a small axe hanging by a fraying piece of string.
Sharpe walked on. Javali talked incessantly and Vicente translated some of his story. His real name was Andrea and he was a goatherd from Bouro. He had been an orphan since he was six, and he thought he was now twenty-five years old though he looked much older, and he worked for a dozen families by protecting their animals from lynx and wolves, and he had lived with a woman, he said proudly, but the dragoons had come and they had raped her when he was not there, and his woman had possessed a temper, he said, worse than a goat"s, and she must have drawn a knife on her rapists for they had killed her. Javali did not seem very upset by his woman"s death, but he was still determined to avenge her. He patted the knife and then tapped his groin to show what he had in mind.
Javali at least knew the quickest ways through the high ground. They were traveling well to the north of the road they had left when Harris spotted the hors.e.m.e.n, and that road led through the wide valley that now narrowed as it went eastward. The Cavado twisted beside the road, sometimes vanishing in stands of trees, while streams, fed by the rain, tumbled from the hills to swell the river.
Vicente"s estimate of two days was ruined by the weather and they spent the next night high in the hills, half protected from the rain by the great boulders, and in the morning they walked on and Sharpe saw how the river valley had nearly narrowed to nothing. By mid-morning they were overlooking Salamonde and then, looking back up the valley where the last of the morning mist was vanishing, they saw something else.
They saw an army. It came in a swarm along the road and in the fields either side of the road, a great spread of men and horses in no particular order, a horde that was trying to escape from Portugal and from the British army that was now pursuing them from Braga. "We"ll have to hurry," Hogan said.
"It"ll take them hours to get up that road," Sharpe said, nodding toward the village that was built where the valley finally narrowed into a defile from where the road, instead of running on level land, twisted beside the river into the hills. For the moment the French could spread themselves in fields and march with a broad front, but once past Salamonde they were restricted to the narrow and deep-rutted road. Sharpe borrowed Hogan"s good telescope and stared down at the French army. Some units, he could see, marched in good order, but most were straggling loosely. There were no guns, wagons or carriages, so that if Marshal Soult did manage to escape he would have to crawl back into Spain and explain to his master how he had lost everything of value. "There must be twenty, thirty thousand down there," he said in wonderment as he handed back Hogan"s gla.s.s. "It"ll take them the best part of the day to get through that village.
"But they"ve got the devil on their heels," Hogan pointed out, "and that encourages a man to swiftness."
They pressed on. A weak sun at last lit the pale hills, though gray showers fell to north and south. Behind them the French were a great dark ma.s.s pressing up against the valley"s narrow end where, like grains of sand trickling through an hourgla.s.s, they streamed through Salamonde. Smoke rose from the village as the pa.s.sing troops plundered and burned.
The French road to safety began to climb now. It followed the defile made by the white-watered Cavado which twisted out of the hills in great loops and sometimes leaped down series of precipices in misted waterfalls. A squadron of dragoons led the French retreat, riding ahead to smell out any partisans who might try to ambush the vast column. If the dragoons saw Hogan and his men high on the northern hills they made no effort to reach them for the riflemen and Portuguese soldiers were too far away and much too high, and then the French had other things to worry about for, late in the afternoon, the dragoons arrived at the Ponte Nova.
Sharpe was already above the Ponte Nova, gazing down at the bridge. It was here that the French retreat might be stopped, for the tiny village that clung to the high ground just beyond the bridge bristled with men and, on first seeing the Ponte Nova from high in the hills, Hogan had been jubilant. "We"ve done it!" he said. "We"ve done it!" But then he trained his telescope on the bridge and his good mood died. "They"re ordenanqa," he said, "not a proper uniform there." He gazed for another minute. "There"s not a single b.l.o.o.d.y gun," he said bitterly, "and the b.l.o.o.d.y fools haven"t even destroyed the bridge."
Sharpe borrowed Hogan"s gla.s.s to stare at the bridge. It possessed two hefty stone abutments, one on each bank, and the river was spanned by two great beams over which a wooden roadway had once been laid. The ordenanqa, presumably not wanting to rebuild the bridge entirely once the French were defeated, had removed the plank roadway, but left the two enormous beams in place. Then, at the edge of the village on the bridge"s eastern side, they had dug trenches from which they could smother the half-dismantled bridge with musket fire. "It might serve," Sharpe grunted.
"And what would you do if you were the French?" Hogan asked.
Sharpe stared down into the defile, then looked back westward. He could see the dark snake of the French army coming along the road, but further back there was no sign yet of any British pursuit. "Wait till dark," he said, "then attack across the beams." The ordenanqa was enthusiastic, but it was little more than a rabble, ill armed and with scarce any training, and such troops might easily be panicked. Worse, there were not many ordenanqa at the Ponte Nova. There would have been more than enough if the bridge had been fully broken, but the twin beams were an invitation to the French. Sharpe trained the telescope on the bridge again. "Those beams are wide enough to walk on," he said. "They"ll attack in the night. Hope to catch the defenders sleeping."
"Let"s just hope the ordenanga stay awake," Hogan said. He slid off the mule. "And what we do," he said, "is wait."
"Wait?"
"If they are stopped here," Hogan explained, "then this is as good a place as any to watch out for Mister Christopher. And if they get across... ?" He shrugged.
"I should go down there," Sharpe said, "and tell them to get rid of those beams."
"And how will they accomplish it?" Hogan wanted to know. "With dragoons firing at them from the other bank?" The dragoons had dismounted and spread along the western bank and Hogan could see the white puffs of their carbine smoke. "It"s too late to help, Richard," he said, "too late. You stay here."
They made a rough camp in the boulders. Night fell swiftly because the rain had come again and the clouds shrouded the setting sun. Sharpe let his men light fires so they could brew tea. The French would see the fires, but that did not matter for as the darkness shrouded the hills a myriad flames showed in the high grounds. The partisans were gathering, they were coming from all across northern Portugal to help destroy the French army.
An army that was cold, wet, hungry, bone-weary, and trapped.
Major Dulong still smarted from his defeat at Vila Real de Zedes. The bruise on his face had faded, but the memory of the repulse hurt. He sometimes thought of the rifleman who had beaten him and wished the man was in the 31st Leger. He also wished that the 31st Leger could be armed with rifles, but that was like wishing for the moon because the Emperor would not hear of rifles. Too fiddly, too slow, a woman"s weapon, he said. Vive le fusil. Now, at the old bridge called Ponte Nova, where the French retreat was blocked, Dulong had been summoned to Marshal Soult because the Marshal had been told that this was the best and bravest soldier in all his army. Dulong looked it, the Marshal thought, with his ragged uniform and scarred face. Dulong had taken the bright feather plume from his shako, wrapped it in oilcloth and tied it to his saber scabbard. He had hoped to wear that plume when his regiment marched into Lisbon, but it seemed that was not to be. Not this spring, anyway.
Soult walked with Dulong up a small knoll from where they could see the bridge with its two beams, and see and hear the jeering ordenanga beyond. "There are not many of them," Soult remarked, "three hundred?"
"More," Dulong grunted.
"So how do you get rid of them?"