Sharpe gave a half smile, half grimace. “We can hold one attack, William. But after that?”

“Yes.” Frederickson knew exactly how bad things were. And this damned rain, he thought, would not help.

After one attack, Sharpe knew, he must think of the unthinkable. Of surrender. Pride demanded that they defended the breach at least one time, but French anger might not allow a surrender after that one defence. Sharpe had seen men, their blood-lust goaded beyond endurance, put a captured fortress to the sack. Frenchmen, beyond sense, would hunt with sharpened bayonets through the stone corridors to take revenge on the defenders. The butchery would be vile, but pride was still pride and they would fight at least one more time. Sharpe tried to imagine what Wellington might do, he tried to think back over all the sieges he had fought to see if there was something left undone that he could do, he tried to think of some clever move to unsettle the enemy. He thought of nothing useful. “I’ll bet their general’s telling the poor buggers that we’ve got a hundred women in here,” Sharpe laughed.

Frederickson grinned. “He’ll give every man a half pint of wine, tell them they can rape every woman inside, then point them at the breach. It never fails. You should have seen us at San Sebastian.”

“I missed that.” Sharpe had been in England when the British had captured San Sebastian.

Frederickson smiled. “It wasn’t pretty.”

An howitzer shell exploded in the courtyard. “You’d think the buggers would run out of ammunition,” Sharpe said. It was oddly pleasant to sit here, sharing a friendship’s intimacy, knowing that nothing could now be done to diminish the slaughter that would come in the dawn. The French twelve-pounders still fired, even though the breach was formed, but now they sprayed the fallen stones with canister to prevent working parties from steepening the face up which their troops would swarm in the morning.

“If they capture us,” Frederickson said, “perhaps they’ll send us to Paris on our way to Verdun. I’d like to see Paris.”

The words reminded Sharpe of Jane’s wish to see the French capital when the war ended. He thought of his wife dead, of her body taken for a hasty burial. Damn Cornelius Killick, he thought, for taking away his hope.

Frederickson unexpectedly broke into song. „Ein schifflein sah ichfahren.“

Sharpe recognized the tune that was popular among the Germans who fought in Wellington’s Army. “Meaning?”

Frederickson gave a rueful smile. “”I saw a small ship sailing.“ Pray for a frigate to come in the morning, sir. Think of its broadside raking the Frog camp.”

Sharpe shook his head. “I don’t think God listens to soldiers.”

“He loves them,” Frederickson said. “We’re the fools of the Lord, the last honest men, creation’s scapegoats.”

Sharpe smiled. In the morning, he thought, they would give this General Calvet a fight to remember, and afterwards, when it was over, but that did not bear thinking about. Then, suddenly, he stared at his friend. ‘Ein schiff?“ Sharpe asked, ”what was it again?“

„Ein schifflein sah ich fahren,“ Frederickson said slowly. ”I saw a small ship sailing.“

“God damn it!” Sharpe’s helplessness suddenly vanished with the burgeoning of an idea as bright as a shell’s explosion. “I’m a fool!” He faced defeat for want of a ship, and a ship existed. Sharpe scrambled to his feet and shouted into the yard for a rope to be fetched. “You’re to stay here, William. Prepare for an assault on the gate, you understand?”

“And you?”

“I’m going out. I’ll be back by dawn.”

“Out? Where?”

But Sharpe had gone to the ramparts. A rope was fetched so he could climb down to the sand where the French corpses still lay, and so that, in a wet night, he could make a devil’s pact that might bring deliverance to the fools of the Lord.

CHAPTER 18

In the morning the rain fell in a sustained cloudburst. It hammered and seethed and bounced on the fort and ran from the ramparts to slop in bucketfuls on to the puddled courtyard. It seemed impossible for rain to be so savage, yet it persisted. It drummed on men’s shakoes, it flooded into the galleries carved into the ramparts, and its noise made even the firing of the twelve-pounders seem dull. It was like the rains before the great flood; a deluge.

It doused the cooking fires of the French and flooded the hovels where Calvet’s men had tried to sleep. It turned the powder in musket pans to gritty mud. The fire-rate of the artillery was slowed because each serge bag of powder had to be protected from the rain and each vent had to be covered until the last second before the portfire was touched. The artillery colonel cursed that the damned British had burned out the mill’s roof with their sortie, and cutsed again because his howitzers had to give up the unequal struggle when their pits filled with yellow-coloured floodwater.

“Bacon for breakfast!” Calvet spoke with delighted anticipation.

His cooks, working under a roof, fried bacon for the general. The smell tormented those poor souls who huddled against hovel walls and cursed the rain, the mud, the god-damns, and the war.

The cavalry, who had vainly cast south for Sharpe’s force, had been sent north in the dawn. A cavalry sergeant, his cloak plastered wet to his horse’s rump, splashed back with news that, because the wind was so small this morning, the

Thuella was being towed down the Arcachon channel by two longboats.

“Bugger the wind,” Calvet said, “and bugger the rain.” He stumped through mud to the sand-dunes and stared north. Far off, drab, black, and with wet sails dropping from her yards, the big schooner was just visible. “We won’t attack,” Calvet growled, “till the damn thing’s in place.”

“Perhaps,” Favier ventured cautiously, “Captain Killick’s guns won’t fire in this weather?”

“Don’t be a damned fool. If anyone can make guns fire in the wet it has to be a sailor, doesn’t it?” Calvet took out his glass, wiped the lenses, and stared at the fortress. The gate was a heap of rubble, a mound of wet stone, a causeway to victory. He went back to his bacon with confidence that this morning’s business would not take long. The British rifles would be useless in this rain and their lime would be turned into whitewash.

Calvet looked at his orderly who was putting an edge on to his sword. “Make sure the point’s wicked!”

“Yes, sir.”

“Won’t be a day for the edge, Favier.” Calvet knew that wet uniforms resisted a sword cut much better than dry. “It’ll be a day for stabbing. In and out, Favier, in and out!” Calvet, feeling far better for his breakfast, glanced at the door where Ducos had suddenly appeared. “You look damp, Ducos, and I ate your bacon.”

Ducos did not care that the general goaded him. Today he would capture Richard Sharpe and it would be a consolation to Pierre Ducos amidst the tragedies that beset France. “There’s a wind stirring.”

“Splendid.”

“The schooner should be anchored soon.”

“God bless our allies,” Calvet said. “It might have taken them twenty damned years to join the war, but better late than never.” He went to the doorway and saw that the Thuella had indeed used the freshening wind to hasten her progress. A splash of water showed as the forward anchor was let go. “I think,” Calvet said as the schooner’s gunports opened, “that we are at last ready.” He called for his horse and, from its saddle,“ saw his wet, dispirited troops forming into their attack column. ”We shall give our gallant allies twenty minutes of target practice,“ Calvet said, ”then advance.“

Ducos was staring at the Thuella. ‘If Killick opens fire at all,“ he said. The schooner lay silent in the channel. Her wet sails were being furled on to the yards, but otherwise there was no sign of movement on the sleek vessel. ”He’s not going to fire!“ Ducos said savagely.