Colonel de l’Eclin swivelled his horse to keep the rabble at bay. His sabre hissed to kill a Cazador, lunged to drive a Spaniard back, and sliced to parry a Rifleman’s sword-bayonet. The Dragoons were being driven to the boggy ground where the horses slithered and slipped. A trumpeter was dragged from his grey horse and savaged with knives. Knots of Frenchmen tried to hack through the mob. Sharpe used both hands to hack down at a horse’s neck, then swung back to send its rider clean from the saddle. A woman from the city sawed with a knife at the fallen Frenchman’s neck. Fugitives were running back from the stream’s eastern bank, coming to join a slaughter.
A trumpet drove the third French squadron into the chaos. The field was bloody, but still the white gonfalon floated high where Bias Vivar drove his crimson elite like a blade into the enemy. A Spanish Sergeant held the great banner that had been hung from a cross-staff on a pole. He waved it so that the silk made a serpentine challenge in the dusk.
The Count of Mouromorto saw the challenge and despised it. That streamer of silk was everything he hated in Spain; it stood for the old ways, for the domination of church over ideas, for the tyranny of a God he had rejected, and so the Count raked back his spurs and drove his horse into the men who guarded the gonfalon.
“He’s mine!” Vivar yelled again and again. “Mine! Mine!”
The brothers’ swords met, scraped, disengaged. Vivar’s horse turned into the enemy as it was trained to, and Vivar lunged. The Count parried. A Cazador rode to take him in the rear, but Vivar shouted at the man to stay clear. “He’s mine!”
The Count gave two quick hard blows that would have driven a weaker man from the saddle. Vivar parried both, back-cut, and turned the cut into a lunge that drew blood from his brother’s thigh. The blood dripped onto the white boots.
The Count touched his horse with a spur; it went sideways, then, to another touch, lunged back. Mouromorto snarled, knowing that this battle was won as his long sword lunged at his brother.
But Vivar leaned back in the saddle, right back, so that his brother’s blade hissed past him and could not be brought back fast enough as he straightened and speared his own sword forward. The steel juddered into Mouromorto’s belly. Their eyes met, and Vivar twisted the blade. He felt pity, and knew he could not afford pity. “Traitor!” He twisted the blade again, then raised his boot to push the horse away and disengage his long sword. The steel shuddered free, blood gushed onto the Count’s pommel, and his scream was an agony that died as he fell onto the blood-soaked mud.
“Santiago!” Vivar shouted in triumph, and the shout was carried across the small valley as the Cazadores rallied to the banner of the dead saint and raised their swords against the third French squadron.
The Riflemen were hunting among the remnants of the first two squadrons. Dragoons were turning their horses to flee, knowing they had been beaten by the savagery of the attack. A Cazador’s sword opened the throat of the French standard bearer, and the Spaniard seized the enemy guidon and raised it high in celebration of victory. Colonel de l’Eclin saw the capture of the small flag and knew that he was beaten; beaten by the great white gonfalon of Matamoros.
“Back!” The chasseur knew when a fight was hopeless, and knew when it was better to save a handful of men who could fight again.
“No!” Sharpe saw the Colonel order the retreat, and he ran towards the Frenchman. “No!” His ankle still hurt from his jump from the cathedral platform, the pain made his run ungainly and the soggy ground half tripped him, but he forced himself on. He outstripped his Riflemen and still shouted in frustrated anger. “You bastard! No!”
De l’Eclin heard the insult. He turned, saw Sharpe was isolated from the greenjacketed men and, as any cavalry officer would, he accepted the challenge. He rode at Sharpe, remembering when he had fought the Rifleman before that he had used the simple ruse of switching his sabre from right to left hand. That stratagem could not be repeated, instead the Colonel would rowel his horse at the last moment so that the black stallion surged into a killing speed that would put all its momentum behind his sabre stroke. Sharpe waited with his sword ready to swing at the horse’s mouth. Someone shouted at him to jump aside, but the Rifleman held his ground as the big black horse bore down on him. De l’Eclin was holding his sabre so that its point would spear into Sharpe’s ribs, but in the very last second, just as the spurred horse surged for the kill, the Frenchman changed his stroke. He did it with the quickness of a snake striking, raising and turning the blade so that it would slash down onto Sharpe’s bare head. De l’Eclin shouted in triumph as his sabre came down and as the Rifleman, whose sword had missed his horse, crumpled beneath that stroke.
But Sharpe had not cut at de l’Eclin’s horse. Instead, with a speed to match the chasseur’s own, he had raised the strong blade above his head and held it there like a quarterstaff to take the sabre’s impact. That impact drove Sharpe down, almost to his knees, but not before his right hand released the sword’s hilt and snatched for the chasseur’s sword arm. Sharpe’s sword thumped on his own shoulder, driven by the deflected sabre-blade, but his fingers had seized de l’Eclin’s wrist strap. He released the sword blade from his left hand and hooked his fingers about the Frenchman’s wrist.
It took de l’Eclin a second to realize what had happened. Sharpe was clinging on like a hound that had sunk its teeth into a boar’s neck. He was being dragged along the boggy ground. The horse twisted and tried to bite the Rifleman. The chasseur hammered at him with his free hand, but Sharpe hung on, tugged, and tried to find a purchase on the soggy ground. His naked right leg was smeared with mud and blood. The horse tried to shake him loose, just as Sharpe tried to drag the Frenchman out of the saddle. The sabre’s wrist strap was cutting like wire into his fingers.
De I’Eclin tried to unholster a pistol with his right hand. Harper and a group of greenjackets ran to help. “Leave him! Don’t touch him!” Sharpe shouted.
“Bugger him!” Harper slammed his rifle butt at the black horse’s mouth and it reared so that de I’Eclin lost his balance and, with Sharpe’s weight pulling him backwards, fell from the saddle.
Sword-bayonets rose to slash down at the Frenchman. “No!” Sharpe screamed desperately. “No! No!” He had fallen with de I’Eclin and, thumping onto the ground, had lost his grip on his wrist. The Frenchman twisted away from Sharpe, staggered to his feet, and slashed his sabre at the Riflemen who surrounded him. Sharpe’s sword was lost. De I’Eclin glanced to find his horse, then lunged to kill Sharpe.
Harper fired his rifle.
“No!” Sharpe’s protest was drowned by the hammer of the gun’s report.
The bullet took de I’Eclin clean in the mouth. His head jerked back as though yanked by an invisible string. The Frenchman fell, the blood fountaining up into the darkening sky, then his body flopped onto the mud, jerked once more like a newly landed fish, and was still.
“No?” Harper said indignantly. “The bastard was going to fillet you!”
“It’s all right.” Sharpe was flexing the fingers of his right hand. “It’s all right. I just didn’t want a hole in his overalls.” He looked at the dead man’s leather-reinforced overalls and tall, beautifully made boots. They were items of great value, and now they were Sharpe’s. “All right, lads. Get his bloody trousers off, and his boots.” The Riflemen stared at Sharpe as though he was mad. “Get his bloody trousers off! I want them. And his boots! Why do you think we came here? Hurry!” Sharpe, though Louisa and a dozen other women watched, stripped off his ojd boots and trousers where he stood. The last of the light was draining from the sky. The remnants of Dragoons had fled. The wounded moaned and scrabbled at the damp grass, while the victors moved among the dead in search of plunder. One of the Riflemen offered Sharpe the glorious pelisse, but he declined it. He did not need such frippery, but he had desperately wanted the red-striped overalls which fitted him as though they had been tailored just for him. And with the overalls came the most precious of all things to any infantryman: good boots. Tall boots of good leather that could march across a country, boots to resist rain, snow, and spirit-haunted streams, good boots that fitted Sharpe as if the cobbler had known this Rifleman would one day need such luxuries. Sharpe prised away the razor-edged spurs, tugged the boots up his calves, then stamped his heels in satisfaction. He buttoned his green jacket and strapped on his sword again. He smiled. An old flag, made new, flaunted a miracle of victory, a red pelisse lay in the mud, and Sharpe had found himself some boots and trousers.