Sharpes Havoc   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

„How longwill that take?” Hogan asked.

„As long as it takes,” Sharpe said. „We don’t have a choice.”

The musketry grew in intensity, crackling like burning thorn, then fading before bursting back into life. The dragoons were crowding the southern bank to swamp the defenders with fire, but Sharpe could do nothing to help.

So, for the moment, he walked away.

In the valley of the Cavado, just twelve miles from the advance guard that fought the ordenanqa across the ravine of the Misarella, the first British troops caught up with Soult’s rearguard which protected the men and women still crossing the Ponte Nova. The British troops were light dragoons and they could do little more than exchange carbine fire with the French troops who were drawn across the road to fill the valley between the river and the southern cliffs. But not far behind the dragoons the Brigade of Guards was marching, and behind them was a pair of three-pounder cannons, guns that fired shot so light that they were derided as toys, but on this day, when no one else could deploy artillery, the two toys were worth their weight in gold.

The French rearguard waited while, a dozen miles away, the vanguard readied to attack the Saltador. Two battalions of infantry would assault the bridge, but it was plain that they would become mincemeat if the thick barrier of thorn were not removed from the bridge’s far end. The abattis was four feet high and just as thick and made from two dozen thorn bushes that had been tied together and weighted down with logs, and it made a formidable obstacle and so a Forlorn Hope was proposed. A Forlorn Hope was a company of men who were expected to die, but in doing so they would clear a path for their comrades, and usually such suicidal bands were deployed against the heavily defended breaches of enemy fortresses, but today’s band must cross the narrow remnant of a bridge and die under the flail of musket fire, and as they died they were to clear away the thorn abattis. Major Dulong of the 31st Leger, the new Legion d’Honneur medal still bright on his chest, volunteered to lead the Forlorn Hope. This time he could not use darkness, and the enemy was far more numerous, but his hard face showed no apprehension as he pulled on a pair of gloves and then twisted the loops of his saber cords about his wrist so that he would not lose the weapon in the chaos he anticipated as the thorns were wrenched aside.