Sharpe's Fury

A squad of Portuguese infantrymen followed Sir Thomas who curbed his horse beside the stricken ca

“There seems to be a culvert down here, sir,” a lieutenant said. He was clinging to the drowned wheel and plainly feared the whole heavy weapon would tip onto him. “The wheel’s caught in the culvert, sir,” the lieutenant added. A sergeant and three gu

Sir Thomas unbuckled his sword belt and threw it with his scabbard and pouches to Lord William who had dutifully followed his master onto the causeway. Sir Thomas gave the aide his cocked hat too, so that the small wind stirred his white hair. Then he slid from the saddle, plunging up to his chest into the gray water. “Not nearly as cold as the River Tay,” he said. “Come on, boys.”

The water was now up to Sir Thomas’s armpits. He put his shoulder to the wheel while gri

“Put your backs into it!” the general shouted to the men around him. “Heave on it! Come on now!”

The gun moved. The breech reappeared, then the top of its right wheel showed above water. A rifleman lost his footing, slipped under, flailed his way back, and hauled on a wheel spoke. The gu

“Here she comes!” Sir Thomas shouted triumphantly, and the ca

“You’ll catch your death, sir,” Lord William said with genuine concern.

“Aye, well, if I do, Major Hope knows what to do with my corpse,” Sir Thomas said. He was wet through, but gri

The dragoons had swerved northward, never coming within a mile of the troops crossing the causeway, and when the light cavalry of the King’s German Legion trotted toward them the dragoons galloped fast away. The rest of the Spanish infantry crossed, still going with painful slowness, so that it was dusk before Sir Thomas’s two brigades came across the causeway, and full dark before the army marched again. The road climbed steadily and undramatically toward the lights of Vejer that flickered and twinkled on the hilltop beneath the stars. The army marched north of the town, following a road that led to a midnight bivouac in a spread of olive groves where Sir Thomas at last rid himself of his damp clothes and crouched over a fire to get warm.

Foraging parties went out the next day, returning with a herd of ski

“That’s their job,” Sir Thomas answered in Spanish. He had taken care to learn the language when he was first posted to Cádiz.

“Captain Sarasa.” The Spaniard named himself, then took a cigar from his saddlebag. One of his men struck a light with a tinderbox and Sarasa bent over the flame until the cigar was drawing properly. “I have orders,” he said, “not to engage the enemy.”

Sir Thomas heard the sullen tone and understood that Sarasa was frustrated. He wanted to take his men up to the crests of the low hills and match them against the French vedettes. “You have orders?” Sir Thomas inquired tonelessly.

“General Lapeña’s orders. We are to protect the forage parties, no more.”

“You would rather fight?”

“Is that not why we are here?” Sarasa asked truculently.

Sir Thomas liked Sarasa. He was a young man, probably not yet thirty, and he had a belligerence that encouraged Sir Thomas, who believed that the Spaniards would fight like devils if they were given a chance and, perhaps, some leadership. At Bailén, three years before, a Spanish force had outfought a whole French corps and forced a surrender. They had even taken an eagle so they could fight well enough and, if Captain Sarasa was an example, they wanted to fight, but for once Sir Thomas found himself agreeing with Lapeña. “What’s across the hill, Captain?” he asked.

Sarasa stared at the nearest crest where two vedettes were visible. A vedette was a sentry post of cavalrymen who were posted to watch an enemy. There were twelve men in the two vedettes while Sir Thomas, reinforced now by Sarasa’s swordsmen, had more than sixty. “We don’t know, Sir Thomas,” he admitted.

“There’s probably nothing across the hill,” Sir Thomas said, “and we could chase those fellows off, and if we did we’d see them on a farther hill and we’d think there’s no harm in chasing them off that, and so it would go on until we’re five miles north of here and the forage parties are dead.”

Sarasa drew on his cigar. “They offend me,” he said vehemently.

“They disgust me,” Sir Thomas said, “but we fight them where we choose or where we must, not always when we want.”

Sarasa gave a quick smile as if to say he had learned his lesson. He tapped ash from his cigar. “The rest of my regiment, Sir Thomas,” he said, “is ordered to reco

“Conil?” Sir Thomas asked and Sarasa nodded. The Spaniard was still watching the distant dragoons, but he was very aware as Sir Thomas took a folded map from his saddlebag. It was a bad map, but it did show Gibraltar and Cádiz, and between them it marked Medina Sidonia and Vejer, the town which lay just to the south. Sir Thomas drew a finger westward from Vejer until he reached the Atlantic coast.

“Conil?” he asked again, tapping the map.

“Conil de la Frontera.” Sarasa confirmed the location by giving the town its full name. “Conil beside the sea,” he added in an angrier voice.

Beside the sea. Sir Thomas stared at the map. Conil was indeed on the shore. Ten miles north of it was a village called Barrosa, and from there a road led east to Chiclana, which was the base of the French siege lines, but Sir Thomas already knew that General Lapeña had no intention of using that road, because, just a couple of miles north of Barrosa was the Rio Sancti Petri where, supposedly, the Spanish garrison was making a pontoon bridge. Cross that bridge and the army would be back on the Isla de León, and another two hours’ marching would have Lapeña’s men back in Cádiz and safe from the French. “No,” Sir Thomas said angrily and his horse stirred nervously.