A second road, running north and south, ran this side of the river, but it, too, was empty. By God! They had done it!
'Come on! He clapped his hands, pulled men up and pushed them on. 'To the river! We cross tonight! Well done!
The rain still fell, blinding the men as they stumbled down the slope, but they had made it! They could see their goal, feel pride in an achievement, and tomorrow they would wake up on the west bank of the Agueda and march to the Coa. There were British patrols on the far bank, to be sure not as many as there were French, but the river Agueda marked some kind of limit, and after a day's effort like this they needed that limit. They almost ran the last part of the slope, splashed through the stream, boots crunching on its gravel bed, and then stamped on to the wet track as if it were a paved highway in the centre of London. The ford was a mile ahead, trees on both banks, and the Company knew that once they crossed they could rest, let the tiredness flow, and shut their eyes against the grey horror of the day and its journey.
'Sir. Harper spoke quietly, with a desperate resignation. 'Sir. Behind.
Horsemen. Bloody horsemen. Partisans who had ridden not over the plateau but up the direct road from Casatejada and who now appeared on the track behind them. Teresa smiled, gave Sharpe a look of victory, and he ignored it. He called wearily to the Company to halt.
'How many, Sergeant?
There was a pause. 'Reckon it's just a small party.
Sharpe could see no more than twenty or thirty horsemen, standing in the rain just three hundred yards behind the Company. He took a deep breath.
'They can't hurt us, lads. Bayonets. They won't charge bayonets!
There was something strangely comforting about the sound of the blades scraping from the scabbards, the sight of the men crouching with bent knees as they fixed on the long blades, to be doing something that was aimed at their enemy instead of the muscle-racking tramp through the rain. The band of horsemen came forward, spurred into a trot, and Sharpe stood with his men in the front rank.
'We'll teach them to respect the bayonet! Wait for it! Wait for it!
The Partisans had no intention of charging the small Company. The horsemen split into two groups and galloped either side of the bedraggled soldiers, almost ignoring them. El Catolico was there, a smile of triumph on his face, and he swept off his hat in an ironic gesture as he went past, thirty yards away and untouchable. Teresa jerked towards him, but Harper held her firm, and she watched as the horsemen went on towards the fortress and the river. Sharpe knew what they were doing. The Company would be blocked in, trapped in the valley, and El Catolico would wait until the rest of the Partisans, summoned from the south, came to his support.
He wiped rain from his face. 'Come on. There was nowhere to go, so the best thing was to go on. Perhaps El Catolico could be threatened, a bayonet at Teresa's throat, but in Sharpe's mind he could envisage only failure, defeat. El Catolico had never been fooled. They must have known Sharpe had gone north, and while the Company struggled over the foul uplands the Spaniard had brought his followers along the easy road. Sharpe cursed himself for a fool, for an optimistic fool, but there was nothing to be done. He listened to the boots scuffing on the wet surface, the hiss of the rain, the splashing of the ever-rising stream, and he let his eyes look at the far, shrouded hills across the river, then at the stone of the small fort that had been built, centuries before, to protect the upland valleys from marauders crossing from Portugal, and then he looked right, farther north, at the spur of the hills that almost reached the river, and saw, on the blurred horizon, the shape of a horseman who had a strange, square hat.
'Down! Down! Down!
Something, an instinct, a half-perceived blur, told him the French patrol had only just arrived on the skyline. He forced the men down, into the streambed, burying the Light Company into cover. They scrambled behind the shallow turf-bank, wet faces looking to him for explanation, receiving none as he pushed them down.
El Catolico was much, much slower. Sharpe, lying next to Harper and the girl, watched the Partisans ride towards the ford, and it was not until the French lancers were moving, trotting almost sedately down the slope, that the grey figure wheeled, waved his arm, and the Partisans urged their tired mounts into a gallop. The Spaniards rode back into the valley, scattering as they picked their own course, and the lancers, a different regiment from the Poles', chose their targets and went for them with levelled blades and spurts of bright water from their hooves. Sharpe, peering between tufts of grass, could see twenty lancers, but, looking back to the northern skyline, he saw more appear, and then a group at the place where the hills almost met the river, and he realized that a full French regiment was there, coming south, and as he tried to find rhyme or reason in their presence he saw the girl jerk the rope free, scrabble backwards, and she was up, white dress brilliant in the murk, and running south towards the hills, to where El Catolico and his men were desperately fleeing. He pushed Harper down.
'Stay there!
The girl stumbled on the far bank of the stream, lost her balance, turned and saw Sharpe coming. She seemed to panic, for she ran downstream, past a wide bend in the water, and turned south again. They must see her! Sharpe shouted at her to get down, but the wind snatched away the words and he forced himself on, getting closer, and leapt at her. He crashed into her as she turned to look where he was and his weight drove her into the gravel beside the stream. She fought at him, snarling, her fingernails scratching at his eyes, but he bore" her down, his weight crushing her, took her wrists and forced them apart, ground them into the small sharp stones, and used all his strength to keep them still. She kicked at him and he hooked his legs over hers, hammered them down, not caring if he hurt her, thinking only of the eight feet ten inches of lance that could pin them both like wriggling insects. The stream ran cold round his ankles and he knew that Teresa must be lying in water to her waist, but there was no time to care about that because there were hooves near, and he thrust down his head, cracking her forehead, as a horse splashed by them in the stream.
He looked up, saw Jose, the man who had escorted them to the river, shouting down at the girl, his words lost in the whipping rain; then the Partisan's elbows and heels moved, the horse spurred into a frantic gallop, and Sharpe saw three lancers, their mouths open in the gaping, silent scream of a cavalry charge, galloping across to trap the Spaniard.
Jose twisted, slashed at his horse, found level ground and put his head down, but the lancers were too close. Sharpe watched, saw a Frenchman rise in his stirrups, draw back his lance, and lunge forward so the lance had all the rider's weight behind the steel point that rammed into Jose's back. He arched, screamed into the wind, fell with the pelting rain, and his hands fumbled at his spine to pull at the great spear that was ridden over him. The other two lancers leaned into the dying man, thrust down as they slowed their horses, and Sharpe heard the snatch of a laugh on the wind.
Teresa took a breath, twisted violently, and Sharpe knew she was about to scream. She had not seen Jose's death, knew only that El Catolico was near, and there was only one thing for Sharpe to do. His legs were across hers, hooking hers flat, his hands were on her wrists, so he jammed his mouth on top of hers and forced her head down. She bit at him; their teeth clashed jarringly, but he twisted his mouth so that his was at a right angle to hers and, using his teeth, forced her down into the gravel. One eye glared at him, she jerked beneath him, twisted, but his weight smothered her and, very suddenly, she lay still.
The voice was close; it seemed almost on top of them, and she could hear, as he could, the crunch of hooves in the gravel.
'Jean!
There was a shout from further away, more hooves, and the girl lay utterly still. Sharpe could see the sudden fear in her eye, feel her heart beating beneath his chest, her breath suddenly checked in his mouth. He raised his mouth, with its bloodied lip, from hers, turned his head, infinitely slowly, so that he could see all her face, and whispered, 'Lie still. Still.
She nodded, almost imperceptibly, and Sharpe let go of her wrists, though his hands stayed on top of them. The rain seethed down, smashed on his back, dripped from his hair and shako on to her face. The voice came again, still shouting, and Sharpe heard through the hissing rain the creak of saddlery and the snorting of a horse. Her eyes stayed on his. He dared not look up, though he desperately wanted to see how close the lancer was, and he saw her eyes flick upwards and back to his and there was a new fear in them. She must have seen something; the Frenchman could not be far, looking not for a couple lying in a stream but for horsemen who had scattered into the rainstorm. Her hand gripped at his; she jerked with a tiny movement of her head as if to tell him that the Frenchman was close, but he shook his head very slowly, and then, telling himself that a raised head increased the chance of discovery, he lowered his head towards her. The hooves crunched again. The Frenchman laughed, shouted something at his friends, and she kept her eyes open as Sharpe kissed her. She could have moved, but she did not; her eyes still watched as her tongue explored his cut lip, and Sharpe, looking at the huge, dark eyes, thought that she was watching him because what was happening to her was so unbelievable that only the evidence of her eyes could confirm it. He watched her, too.
The lancer shouted again, much closer, and then there was a reply, mocking and imperative, suggesting that the closest lancer had been deceived: a bird, perhaps, in the streambed, or a running rabbit, and he was being called back. Sharpe could hear the horses' hooves crashing in the streambed, and once, by a break in the wind, the sound seemed so close that the girl's eyes widened in fear, and then the sound receded, the voices faded, and she shut her eyes, kissed him fiercely, and, almost in the same movement, thrust his head away. The three lancers were going, their horses' wet rumps glistening, and Sharpe let out a sigh of relief, and of regret.
'They've gone.
She began to move, but he shook his head. 'Wait!
She turned her head, raised it so that her cheek touched his, and she hissed when she saw what was at the end of the valley: a convoy, with rows of ox-carts whose ungreased axles screamed piercingly through the foul weather, and either side of the plodding carts were the shapes of more horsemen, sabres and lances, escorting the carts southwards towards the Almeida road. It could take an hour for the convoy to pass, but at least it had driven away El Catolico and his men, and Sharpe realized, with one of the sudden bursts of elation that had punctuated the sense of growing failure for the last week, that as long as the Light Company was not discovered they should safely reach the ford when the French had gone. He looked at the girl.
'Will you be still?
She nodded. He asked again, she nodded again, and he slowly eased himself off her and lay down beside her. She turned over on to her stomach and the wet dress clung to her and he remembered the sight of her naked body, its shadowed, slim beauty, and he reached out a hand and took the rope at her neck, turning it so he found the knot, and fumbling at it with wet fingers. The tight, sodden rope yielded slowly, but it was off and he dropped it to the gravel.
'I'm sorry.
She shrugged as if it was no matter. There was a chain round her neck and Sharpe, his hand already close, pulled it, to find a square locket, made of silver. She watched, her dark eyes utterly expressionless, as he put a thumbnail under the catch and it sprang open. There was no picture and she gave the hint of a smile because she understood that he had expected one. The inside of the lid was engraved: my love to you. J. It took him a few seconds to realize that Joaquim, El Catolico, would never have inscribed a piece of silver in English, and he knew, with a sick certainty, that it had belonged to Hardy. 'J' for Josefina, and he looked at the silver ring, engraved with an eagle, that she had bought before Talavera, before Hardy, and with a superstition he did not understand he touched the locket on to the ring.
'He's dead, isn't he?
For a moment her face did not move, but then she nodded. Her eyes dropped to the ring on his finger, back to his face.
'The gold?
'Yes?
'You go to Cadiz?
It was Sharpe's turn to think, to watch her eyes through the rain dripping from the peak of his shako. 'No.
'You keep it?
'I think so. But to fight the French, not to take home. I promise.
She nodded and turned to watch the French convoy. Guns, coming from the French Army of the North, and going to Almeida.