Sharpe's Rifles

Major Du

Yet if the army had been broken on the rack of ice-storms and a frozen wind that cut like a chasseur’s sabre, there were still some men who marched in good formation and who, when ordered, turned to keep the French pursuit at bay. Those were the hard men, the good men; the Guards and the Light Infantry, the elite of Sir John Moore’s army that had marched into the centre of Spain to cut off Napoleon’s supply roads. They had marched expecting victory, but the Emperor had turned on them with a savage speed and overwhelming numbers, so now this small British army retreated towards the ships that would take them home.

Du

An hour from the village they reached a stream crossed by a stone bridge. British cavalry waited there with news that some artillery was floundering on a slope two miles ahead. The cavalry’s commander suggested that Du

“How long?” Du

“An hour? No longer.”

The Riflemen waited. They had done this a score of times in the last two weeks, and doubtless they would do it a score of times again. They were the sting in the army’s tail. If they were lucky this day no Frenchman would bother them, but the probability was that, sometime in the next hour, the enemy vanguard would appear. That vanguard would be cavalry on tired horses. The French would make a token attack, the Riflemen would fire a couple of volleys; then, because neither side had an advantage, the French would let the greenjackets trudge on. It was soldiering; boring, cold, dispiriting, and one or two Riflemen and one or two Frenchmen would die because of it.

The Riflemen formed in companies to bar the road west of the bridge. They shivered and stared east. Sergeants paced behind their ranks. The officers, all of whom had lost their horses to the cold, stood in front of their companies. No one spoke. Perhaps some of the men dreamed of the Navy’s ships that were supposed to be waiting for them at the end of this long road, but more likely their thoughts were of nothing but cold and hunger.

The Lieutenant who had been made into the Battalion’s Quartermaster wandered aimlessly onto the stone bridge and stared into the stinging sleet. He was now the closest man to the enemy, twenty paces ahead of the greenjacketed line, and that piqued Major Warren Du

“He’s harmless.” Murray spoke with his customary mildness.

“He’s a jumped-up bloody nothing.”

Murray smiled. “He’s a damned efficient Quartermaster, Warren. When did your men last have so much ammunition?”

“His job is to arrange my bed for tonight, not loiter here in the hope of proving how well he can fight. Look at him!” Du

“I really couldn’t say.”

The rifle was the Quartermaster’s eccentricity, and an unfitting one, for a Quartermaster needed lists and ink and quills and tally-sticks, not a weapon. He needed to be able to forage for food or ferret out shelters in apparently overcrowded billets. He needed a nose to smell out rotten beef, scales to weigh ration flour, and stubbor

Du

“Yes, sir. Do we wait for our horse?”

“Bugger the cavalry.” Du

“No, sir.” The Lieutenant took off his shako and pushed a hand through hair that was long, black, and made greasy by days of campaigning. His greatcoat hung open and he wore neither scarf nor gloves. Either he could not afford them, or else he was boasting that he was too tough to need such comforts. That arrogance made Du

Except there were no enemy horsemen in sight. Perhaps the rain and the wind and the God-damned bloody cold had driven the French to shelter in the last village. Or perhaps the drunken women had proved too irresistible a lure. Whichever it was, there were no Frenchmen in sight, just sleet and low clouds driven to turmoil by a freshening wind.

Maj’r Du

Whistles blew. The two flank companies turned and, like the walking dead, shambled up the road. The two centre companies stayed at the bridge under Captain Murray’s. command. In five minutes or so, when the flank companies had stopped to provide cover, it would be Murray’s turn to withdraw.

The Riflemen liked Captain John Murray. He was a proper gentleman, they said, and it was a fly bastard who could fool him; but if you were straight with him, then the Captain would treat you fair. Murray had a thin and humorous face, quick to smile and swift with a jest. It was because of officers like him that these Riflemen could still shoulder arms and march with an echo of the elan they had learned on the parade ground at Shorncliffe.

“Sir!” It was the Quartermaster who still stood on the bridge and drew Murray’s attention to the east where a figure moved in the sleet. “One of ours,” he called after a moment.

The single figure, staggering and weaving, was a redcoat. He had no musket, no shako, nor boots. His naked feet left bloodstains on the road’s flint bed.

“That’ll learn him,” Captain Murray said. “You see, lads, the perils of drink?”

It was not much of a joke, merely the imitation of a preacher who had once lectured the Battalion against the evils of liquor, but it made the Riflemen smile. Their lips might be cracked and bloody with the cold, but a smile was still better than despair.

The redcoat, one of the drunks abandoned in the last village, seemed to flap a feeble hand towards the rearguard. Some instinct had awoken and driven him onto the road and kept him travelling westwards towards safety. He stumbled past the flensed and frozen carcass of a horse, then tried to run.