The battalions dropped, making themselves a smaller and lower target for the enemy gunners, but leaving the officers on horseback feeling horribly exposed. Sharpe stared at the ridge and feared its muscle-sapping steepness. The sun, just rising above the summit, was suddenly dazzling.
“Wait here, Sharpe!” Nairn was excited. “I’ll discover what’s happening. You wait here!”
Sharpe waited. After breakfast he had pushed some bread and beef into a saddle bag and now, suddenly hungry, he gnawed at a lump of the meat.
“They’ve cocked it up!” Colonel Taplow, his red face as bad-tempered as ever, rode to Sharpe’s side. “The Spanish have cocked it up, Sharpe!”
“So it seems, sir.” A cannonball thumped the earth to Sharpe’s left. Sycorax skittered sideways until Sharpe soothed her.
“Seems?” Taplow was incensed by the mild word. “They’ve cocked it up, that’s what they’ve done. Cocked it up!” He gestured to the north where a new sound erupted as French musketry began flaying the Spaniards. The crackle of musketry was a thick, splintering sound that gave witness to just how many defenders had been waiting for the Spanish. “They went too early.” Taplow seemed to revel in the Spanish mistake. “They couldn’t keep their breeches up, could they? Too much damned eagerness, Sharpe. No whippers-in, that’s their problem. No bottom. Not like the English. It’ll be up to us now, Sharpe, you mark my words. It’ll be up to us!“
“Indeed it will, sir.”
The musketry was unending; a sustained terror of sound just like a million snapping rails of wood. And every snap meant another lead bullet flicking down the slope to strike home in the bunched Spanish ranks.
“Ah ha! Told you so! No bottom!” Taplow crowed triumphantly for the Spanish had begun to retreat. The movement was slow at first, merely a slight edging backwards, but it swiftly turned into a quick scramble to escape the flailing bullets. Sharpe was astonished that the Spaniards had climbed as far as they had, and he doubted whether any troops in the world could have gone further, but Colonel Taplow was not so generous. “All priming and no charge, that’s the Dago’s problem. No bottom, Sharpe, no bottom. Have a boiled egg.”
Sharpe accepted a hard-boiled egg which he ate as Beresford’s column patiently waited. The sun’s warmth was detectable now, and the small mist that had cloaked the western marshes was quite gone. A heron flapped clumsily into the air and flew southwards. A cannonball struck into Taplow’s bandsmen and Sharpe watched a blood-spattered trumpet fly into the air.
“It’ll be up to us now!” Taplow said with immense satisfaction. “It’s no good relying on foreigners, Sharpe, they only cock things up. Let me salute you.”
Sharpe suddenly realized that the irascible Taplow was offering a hand. He shook it.
“Good man!” Taplow said. “Proud to know you! Sorry you didn’t take communion, though. A fellow ought to square things with the Almighty before he kills the King’s enemies. Only decent thing to do. Had you realized that your servant forgot to shave you this morning? Flog the fellow. Let me wish you well of the day now!” Taplow galloped southwards towards his men while Sharpe sighed. The egg had taken the edge from his hunger, so he pushed the lump of salt beef back into his pouch. Sycorax dropped her head to crop at the trampled grass.
New orders came. The southwards march was to resume, for there was clearly no advantage to be gained in assaulting the ridge’s centre now that the Spanish attack had been repulsed. Nairn said there was a hope that the Spanish would re-form and attack again, but he could offer no explanation as to why their first attack had been premature. “Perhaps they wanted to end the war without us?”
Beresford’s column re-formed and trudged onwards. The French long-range cannonade continued. The men marched silently, not even singing, for they all knew that they would soon have to turn eastwards and assault the ridge. They had seen one attack bloodily repulsed, and they could guess that Marshal Soult was even now reinforcing the ridge’s southern slopes. From the city’s north and east came the dull crump of gunfire as allied cannon fired at the defences, but it was doubtful if the French would be fooled by such obvious feints. They knew the importance of the ridge, which was doubtless why its summit would prove a hellish place of trenches and batteries. The fears writhed in Sharpe, made worse by the cannonade that echoed in the sky like giant hammer blows.
Beresford’s infantry marched for one more hour before they turned to their right to face the-ridge’s southern slopes. The long march across the enemy’s front had at least brought Beresford’s men to a place that the French had not fortified. No cannons faced down these southern slopes which stretched invitingly up to the bright, pale sky. What lay beyond the horizon, though, was another matter.
The brigades were ordered to form into three vast lines; each line consisting of two brigades arrayed just two men deep. Nairn’s men would form the right hand end of the second line. It took time to make the formation, which was a job best left to Sergeants, and so the officers stared at the empty skyline and pretended they felt no fear. The only enemy in sight, besides the occasional glimpse of an officer riding forward to stare down the slope, was a force of cavalry that spilt right down the ridge’s centre. The enemy cavalry had been sent to threaten the right flank of Beresford’s assault, but an even larger cavalry force of British and German horsemen rode to block them.
“Skirmishers forward!” An aide cantered down the first line.
“I think we’ll put our light chaps on the flank,” Nairn said. “Will you see to it, Sharpe?”
“Can I stay with them, sir?”
Nairn hesitated, then nodded. “But let me know if anything threatens.” He held out his hand. “Remember you’re dining with me tonight, so take care. I don’t want to write a sad letter to Jane.”
“You take care as well, sir.”
Sharpe collected the brigade’s three Light Companies and sent them running to the right flank where they would join Frederickson’s Riflemen. As the attack advanced those skirmishers would scatter to fight their lonely battles with the French light troops. Sharpe, a skirmisher by nature, wanted to fight with them and, as ever, he wanted to fight on foot. He summoned a headquarters’ clerk and gave the man Sycorax’s reins. “Keep her out of trouble.”
“Yes, sir.”
A drummer made a flurry of sound as Taplow uncased his battalion’s colours. Sharpe, walking past the colour party, took his shako off in salute to the two heavy flags of fringed silks. A French roundshot, fired blind and at extreme range from one of the ridge’s centre batteries, smacked into the wet ground and, instead of bouncing, drove a slurry-filled furrow across Sharpe’s front. He wiped the mud from his face and unslung his rifle.
The rifle was another of Sharpe’s eccentricities. Officers might be expected to carry a pistol into battle, but not a longarm, yet Sharpe insisted on keeping the ranker’s weapon. He loaded it as he walked, tested the flint’s seating in its leather-lined doghead, then slung it back on his shoulder.
“A nice day for a battle.” Frederickson greeted Sharpe cheerfully.
“You think Easter is an appropriate day?”
“It has an implicit promise that we’ll rise from the grave. Not that I have any intention of testing the promise.” Frederickson turned his one eye to the skyline. “If you were Marshal Soult, what would you have waiting up there?”
“Every damned field gun in my army.” The knot was tying itself in Sharpe’s belly as he imagined the efficient French twelve-pounders lined wheel to wheel.
“Let us hope he doesn’t have sufficient guns.” Frederickson did not sound hopeful. He, like Sharpe, could imagine the horse-teams dragging the field guns from where the Spanish had been repulsed to where they could decimate this new attack.