“Leave it!” Sharpe bellowed. “Leave it!”

Mrs Parker’s head appeared at the window of the coach to countermand his orders. “Push! Push!”

“Get out!” Sharpe floundered in the road’s mud. “Get out!” If the coach was to be rescued then the horses would have to be coaxed backwards, slewed, then whipped forward, and that would take time which he did not have, so it must be abandoned.

But Mrs Parker was in no mood to sacrifice the carriage’s comfort. She ignored Sharpe, instead leaning perilously from the opened window to threaten her coachman with a furled umbrella. “Whip them harder, you fool! Harder!”

Sharpe seized the door handle and tugged it down. “Get out! Out!”

Mrs Parker flailed the umbrella at him, knocking his mildewed shako over his eyes, but Sharpe seized her wrist, tugged, and heard her scream as she fell in the mud. “Sergeant Williams?”

“Sir?”

“Two men to get those packs off the roof!” They contained all Sharpe’s spare ammunition. Gataker and Dodd scrambled up, slashed at the ropes with their sword-bayonets, and tossed the heavy packs down to the waiting riflemen. George Parker tried to speak with Sharpe, but the officer had no time for his nervousness. “You’ll have to run, sir. To the farm!” Sharpe physically turned the tall man and pointed him towards the stone house and barn which were the only refuges left in this bare country.

There was nervous excitement in Louisa’s eyes, then the girl was pushed aside by Mrs Parker who, muddied by her fall and made incoherent by the loss of her carriage and luggage, tried to reach Sharpe, but he shouted at the family to start running. “You want to die, woman? Move! Sergeant Williams! Escort the ladies! Get into the farmhouse!” Mrs Parker screamed for her valise that Mr Parker, shaking like a leaf, rescued from inside the carriage. Then, surrounded by Riflemen, the family and their coachman fled uphill.

“Sir?” Harper checked Sharpe. “Block the road?” He gestured at the coach.

Sharpe did not have the time to be astonished at the Irishman’s sudden willingness. He did, however, recognize the value of the suggestion. If the road was blocked then the French would be forced to negotiate the stone walls which barred the fields on either side. It would not buy much time, but even a minute would help in this desperate plight. He nodded. “If we can.”

“No trouble at all, sir.” Harper unhooked the chain-traces, splinter bars, and lead bars while other men slashed at the harness and reins. The Irishman slapped the horses’ rumps to drive the loosened team uphill. “Right, lads! We’re going to tip the bastard!”

The Riflemen gathered on the coach’s right side. Sharpe was staring at the trees, waiting for the enemy picquet, but he could not resist turning to watch as the Irishman commanded the men to lift.

For a moment the coach refused to budge, then Harper seemed to take all the carriage’s weight into his own huge body and thrust it skywards. The wheels shifted in the mud and the axle boss scraped against the stone where it was stuck. “Heave!” Harper drew the word out into a long bellow as the coach rose ever higher into the air. For a second it threatened to collapse back, crushing the greenjackets, and Sharpe ran and put his own weight into the huge vehicle. It teetered for a second, then, with a splintering thump, collapsed onto its side in the road. Luggage and seat cushions tumbled inside, and Spanish testaments were strewn thick into the road’s mud.

“Cavalry, sir!” Hagman shouted.

Sharpe turned north to see the six enemy horsemen curbing in at the edge of the trees. He aimed swiftly, too swiftly, and his shot missed. Hagman, firing a second later, made one of the horses rear in pain. The other Dragoons wrenched their reins about. Two more shots were fired before the enemy picquet was safe among the pines.

“Run!” Sharpe shouted.

The Riflemen ran. Their scabbards flapped and their packs thumped on their backs as they scrambled up the road. A carbine bullet, fired at long range, fluttered above Sharpe’s head. He could see Mrs Parker being bodily dragged by two greenjackets and the sight made him want to laugh. It was ludicrous. He was trapped by cavalry and he wanted to double over in laughter.

Sharpe caught up with Sergeant Williams’s group. Mrs Parker, furious, was too breathless to shout at him, but she was equally too fat to move fast. Sharpe looked for Harper. “Drag her!”

“You can’t mean it, sir!”

“Carry her if you must!”

The Irishman pushed Mrs Parker in the rump. Louisa laughed, but Sharpe yelled at the girl to run. He himself, with the remainder of his squad, filed into the field beside the road where, sheltered by a stone wall, they watched for the pursuit.

Sharpe could hear the cavalry trumpets talking with each other. The picquets had sent the call that the enemy was in sight and running, so now the other Dragoons would be spurring forward, exchanging forage caps for canvas-covered helmets. Swords would be rasping out of scabbards, carbines would be unslung. “They’ll have to come through the trees, so we’ll give the bastards a volley, then run! Aim where the road comes through the trees, lads!” Sharpe hoped to delay the Dragoons by at least a minute, maybe more. When the head of the enemy column appeared beneath the trees he would hammer it with one well-aimed volley, and it would take time for the cavalrymen who followed to negotiate the wounded horses.

Hagman was carefully reloading his rifle with the best powder and shot. He eschewed the ready-made cartridges which were made with coarser powder, charging his rifle instead with the best fine powder which each Rifleman carried in a horn. He wrapped the ball in the greased leather patch which, when the weapon was fired, would grip the seven spiralling grooves and lands which imparted spin to the bullet. He rammed the leather-patched ball down past the resistance of the lands’ quarter turn, then primed the lock with a pinch of good powder. It took a long time to load a rifle thus, but the resultant shot could be wickedly accurate. When Hagman was done he levelled the gun across the top of the stone wall and spat a stream of tobacco-stained spittle. “Aim a pace left for the wind.”

A spot of rain landed on the wall beside Sharpe. He prayed it would hold off long enough to let his rifles fire. He paced behind the men. “Make this shot hurt! One volley, then we run like hell.”

“Sir?” A man at the end of the line pointed to the trees east of the road and, staring there, Sharpe wondered if he saw movement among the pines. He unbuttoned the pocket in which his telescope was stored, but before he could even draw the glass from its protective case, the enemy burst in a great line from the trees.

Sharpe had expected them to file in column through the gap where the road pierced the pines, but instead the Dragoons had spread left and right in the woodland and now, helmeted and carrying drawn swords, the enemy’s whole strength erupted into the light.

“Fire!”

It was a puny volley. If the rifles had been able to concentrate their bullets into the head of a packed column of cavalry, they might have turned the road into a charnel of screaming horses and bleeding men. But against a whole spread of horsemen, coming in single line abreast, the bullets were scarcely more of a nuisance than horseflies. Only one horse, struck by Hagman’s careful bullet, staggered and fell.

“Run!” Sharpe shouted.

The Rifles ran as if the devil was on their heels. The French had foreseen that volley, guarded against it, and now were in the open and hullooing forward like hunters smelling blood. Ahead of Sharpe the other Riflemen were angling towards the farm. Louisa, he saw was carrying the wounded Cameron’s pack and pulling the man along by his hand.

“Bastards on the right!” Hagman called the warning and Sharpe twisted to see that the horsemen to the east were on the firmest ground and thus the likeliest to catch his small group. The Dragoons were riding like steeple chasers, victory in their nostrils, and a gap in a stone wall lent them speed, just as it made them bunch together like men racing for a turn. Sharpe saw the water spray up from their hooves as the cavalry charged through a damp patch, then, extraordinarily, he saw red blood appear on two of the horses, a sword circle through the air, then he saw a man twisting in the saddle, falling, and being dragged by a screaming, frightened horse. Only then did Sharpe hear the crack of the rifles ahead.