Free Sharpe's Escape by Bernard Cornwell Page B

with assaulting a rifleman."
    "If we lose tomorrow," Sharpe said, "we'll have to retreat through Coimbra. That's where he lives."
    "So we'll find him there," Harper said grimly, "and give him what he deserves. But what if we win tomorrow?"
    "God only knows," Sharpe said, and nodded down the hill to the misted firelight. There were thousands of fires. "Follow those bastards back to Spain, I suppose," he went on, "and fight them there." And go on fighting them, he thought, month after month, year after year, until the very crack of doom. But it would begin tomorrow, with sixty thousand Frenchmen who wanted to take a hill. Tomorrow.

    * * *
    MARSHAL NEY, second in command of l'Armée de Portugal, reckoned the whole of the enemy army was on the ridge. There were no fires in the high darkness to betray their presence, but Ney could smell them. A soldier's instinct. The bastards were laying a trap, hoping the French would stroll up the hill to be slaughtered, and Ney reckoned they should be obliged. Send the Eagles up the hill and beat the bastards into mincemeat, but Ney was not the man to make that decision and so he summoned an aide, Captain D'Esmenard, and told him to find Marshal Masséna. "Tell his highness," Ney said, "that the enemy's waiting to be killed. Tell him to get back here fast. Tell him there's a battle to be fought."
    Captain D'Esmenard had a journey of more than twenty miles and he had to be escorted by two hundred dragoons who clattered into the small town of Tondella long after nightfall. A tricolor flew above the porch of the house where Masséna lodged. Six sentries stood outside, their muskets tipped by bayonets that reflected the firelight of the brazier that offered a small warmth in the sudden cold.
    D'Esmenard climbed the stairs and hammered on the Marshal's door. There was silence.
    D'Esmenard knocked again. This time there was a woman's giggle followed by the distinct sound of a hand slapping flesh, then the woman laughed. "Who is it?" the Marshal called.
    "A message from Marshal Ney, your highness." Marshal André Masséna was Duke of Rivoli and Prince of Essling.
    "From Ney?"
    "The enemy has definitely stopped, sir. They're on the ridge."
    The girl squealed.
    "The enemy has what?"
    "Stopped, sir," D'Esmenard shouted through the door. "The Marshal believes you should come back." Masséna had been in the valley beneath the ridge for a few moments in the afternoon, given his opinion that the enemy would not stand and fight, and ridden back to Tondela. The girl said something and there was the sound of another slap followed by more giggling.
    "Marshal Ney believes they are offering battle, sir," D'Esmenard said.
    "Who are you?" the Marshal asked.
    "Captain D'Esmenard, sir."
    "One of Ney's boys, eh?"
    "Yes, sir."
    "Have you eaten, D'Esmenard?"
    "No, sir."
    "Go downstairs, Captain, tell my cook to give you supper. I shall join you."
    "Yes, sir." D'Esmenard paused. He heard a grunt, a sigh, then the sound of bedsprings rhythmically squeaking.
    "Are you still there, Captain?" the Prince of Essling shouted.
    D'Esmenard crept downstairs, timing his steps on the creaking stair treads to the regular bounce of the bedsprings. He ate cold chicken. And waited.

    * * *
    PEDRO AND LUIS FERREIRA had always been close. Luis, the oldest, the rebel, the huge, uncontrollable boy, had been the brighter of the two, and if he had not been exiled from his family, if he had not been sent to the nuns who beat and mocked him, if he had not run away from Coimbra to see the world, he might have secured an education and become a scholar, though in truth that would have been an unlikely fate for Luis. He was too big, too belligerent, too careless of his own and other men's feelings, and so he had become Ferragus. He had sailed the world, killed men in Africa, Europe and America, had seen the sharks eat the dying slaves thrown overboard off the Brazilian coast, and then he had come home to his younger brother and the two of them, so