Sharpe twisted, heaved, and rolled the dog over on to its wounded companion. He still had his right hand hooked and clawed into the animal’s throat. He screamed at it in impotent rage, then wrenched his grip as if he would tear the windpipe clean out. The wounded dog snarled at him. Another musket fired and in its burst of flame Sharpe saw the sheen of dark-light on his fallen sword blade. He picked up the weapon in his left hand, holding it by the blade, and stabbed it down. The force of the blow rammed his hand down the edge, slicing his palm open, but he hurt one of the dogs badly for it whined and Sharpe felt the steel jerk as the beast tried to twist free of the blade. He let go of the dog’s throat with his right hand, seized the sword hilt, and stood up. Both dogs wrenched towards him, but he hacked down as if the sword was an axe, then went on hacking till there was nothing but bloodied pelts and butchered flesh.
“Sir!” Harper shouted from the ruins. “Where are you, sir?”
“What’s happening, for Christ’s sake?”
“Two dead ‘uns here, sir.”
“Get into the ruins!” Sharpe clenched his slashed left hand to stem the blood that poured from his palm. His right leg and left shoulder were hurting like the devil. Beneath him he could see Calvet’s men desperately climbing towards the ruins. Sharpe could not see his rifle. He knelt again and felt around the slope, finally discovering the weapon’s stock beneath the still warm gobbets of dogflesh. He dragged the blood-sticky weapon free, then limped up to the hilltop.
Frederickson found him there. “Harper shot one man, I killed the other. Are you all right?”
“No, I’m not. Bloody dogs.” Sharpe still shivered with the remembered fear of the dogs. He ripped a scrap of torn cloth from his left sleeve and wrapped it round his cut hand. A man shouted from the villa’s corner, telling Sharpe that other picquets had come to join the fight. He would ignore them. Calvet’s Imperial Guardsmen could suffer and deal with their threat because the important thing, the only thing, was to get deep inside the building. “Come on!”
Harper had already found a way across the outer broken wall and now waited for Sharpe in the crumbling remains of an old courtyard. In some places the ancient masonry reached up two storeys, while in others it was just a few weed-grown feet high.
“Quick! Move!” Sharpe was hissing with pain, but it had to be suppressed. Surprise was gone, so now the attack must lunge like a blade as fast and deep as it could before the enemy rallied. He led the two Riflemen into a maze of broken walls and collapsed arches, dodging from shadow to shadow, always heading west towards the intact part of the house. At every step Sharpe expected a musket’s muzzle blast as greeting, but each corner turned and each wall jumped revealed nothing but silence and motionless ruin. Stone columns lay fallen over roofless corridors, and beams were half buried in fallen walls. It was a place for birds, lizards, snakes and silence.
“This way!” Harper called. He had found an undamaged cloister that seemed to offer a way through to the western end of the building. Sharpe followed the Irishman. One of Calvet’s men shouted from behind, but Sharpe ignored the call. Muskets suddenly crashed from the eastern face of the ruins. Sharpe stumbled on a broken piece of masonry, then fell into the deep shadow of the intact cloister. Frederickson followed and the three Riflemen, temporarily hidden, stopped to draw breath.
“Is everyone loaded?” Sharpe asked.
All three rifles were charged. Sharpe sheathed his sword and cocked his own rifle. His left arm and hand were ripped with pain, but he had to forget that agony if the night was not to end in ignominious defeat. The cloister was pitch dark. It led west to where, surely, Ducos must be waiting. Sharpe expected Ducos’s men to appear at any moment and pointed his rifle towards the threatening dark shadows.
“Major!” Calvet roared from the eastern wall. “Where the hell are you, you bastard?”
Sharpe was about to reply, but any sound he might have made was drowned by a new explosion of musketry. It seemed to come from the sky, and Sharpe sidled to the cloister’s edge and looked up to see a dark mass of men crowning the intact wall which marked the edge of the ruined part of the building and the beginning of the living quarters. They were firing down at Calvet’s men who now sought desperate shelter among the broken stones.
Sharpe raised his rifle.
“No!” Frederickson hissed.
“No?”
“The bastards probably don’t know we’re this deep in the building! Come on!” Frederickson felt his way down the black cloister. Calvet’s men were returning the fire now, but the musketry duel was dreadfully one sided. Ducos’s men were hidden by the roofs parapet and could plunge their fire down into the ruins, while Calvet’s men could only fire blindly upwards.
“Major!” Calvet bellowed again. “Where in Christ’s name are you?”
Sharpe had reached the cloister’s end, and found it blocked by a heavy timber door. Frederickson, crouching at the door’s foot, calmly produced his tinder box, struck flint to steel, and blew on the charred linen to make a tiny flame. The small light revealed ancient blackened timber. The door was constructed from five vertical baulks, studded with iron nails, but the long years and the desiccating heat had shrunk the wood to leave finger wide gaps between the heavy timbers. There was a rusted latch which, try as he might, Frederickson could not shift. “Bastard’s locked.”
“Give me room.” Harper pushed the two officers aside, then rammed his bayonet’s stout blade into one of the gaps. He levered the steel, grunting with the effort, and Sharpe was certain that the thick blade would snap before the ancient wood gave way. The noise of the muskets drowned any sounds Harper made.
Frederickson blew on the tinder’s flame to keep it alight as Sharpe drew his sword and rammed the blade alongside Harper’s. He twisted the sword so that the strain would be taken from edge to edge, then added his weight to the Irishman’s. The feeble flame went out, then, with a crash and a gout of dust, the timber cracked and split. Harper ripped the board away, then used Sharpe’s sword to attack the next heavy timber. The fire from the rooftop was persistent while that from the eastern ruins was sporadic, suggesting that Calvet’s men were trapped among the fallen stones.
“We’re through!” Harper had made the hole large enough, and now pushed the sword back to Sharpe. The Irishman went first through the gap, Frederickson followed, and Sharpe went last. They went into an utter darkness, bereft of stars, and it seemed to Sharpe as though they had stumbled into some capacious dungeon with a smooth stone floor, sheer stone walls, and a high echoing ceiling. Sharpe groped his way forward. The sound of the musketry was muffled now. The villa’s defenders doubtless believed they were winning the battle, but were still unaware that one tiny group of attackers had managed to reach deep into the huge building.
“Door!” Frederickson had found the way out of the dark room and, miraculously, the new door was unlocked. It grated and squealed as Frederickson thrust it ajar. It led into a passage that was suffused with the faintest pre-dawn light from north-facing windows. No enemy waited in the passage, only a black cat which hissed at them, then fled.
A winding stairway climbed from a jet black arch in the passage’s left wall. Sharpe knew this was no moment to be cautious, speed was all, and so he hefted his bloodied sword and climbed. He did not try to be silent, but just blundered up the winding stair two steps at a time. The stairway opened into a stone-walled room where a flickering tallow candle revealed two terrified girls clutching each other in the remnants of their beds. Men’s clothes were on the floor, though doubtless the men themselves were among the defenders on the roof. One of the girls opened her mouth to scream and Sharpe instinctively threatened her with the sword. She went very still.