“Sharpe?” A senior officer was looking at him. Sharpe struggled to his feet and saluted.

“Sir?”

“Brigadier General Bowes. I’m in command tonight, but I gather you have your own orders?” Sharpe nodded. Bowes looked curiously at the strange figure, dressed half as an officer and half as a Rifleman. The Brigadier seemed satisfied. “Glad you’re with us, Sharpe.”

“Thank you, sir. I hope we can be useful.”

Bowes gestured abruptly towards the hidden fort. “There’s a crude trench for the first seventy yards. That’ll cover us. After that it’s up to God.” He looked with frank admiration at the wreath on Sharpe’s sleeve. “You’ve done this sort of thing before.”

“Badajoz, sir.”

“This won’t be as bad.” Bowes moved on. The attackers were standing up, straightening their jackets, obsessively checking the last few details before the fight. Some touched their private talismans, some crossed themselves, and most wore the look of forced cheerfulness that hid the fear.

Bowes clapped his hands. He was a short man, built strongly and he climbed on a mounting block set beside one of the houses. “Remember, lads! Quiet! Quiet! Quiet!” This was the Sixth Division’s first battle in Spain and the men listened eagerly, wanting to impress the rest of the army. “Ladders first. After me!”

Sharpe cautioned his own men to wait. Harper would lead the first squad, then Lieutenant Price, while Sergeant McGovern and Sergeant Huckfield had the others. He grinned at them. Huckfield was new to the Company, since Badajoz, promoted from one of the other companies. Sharpe remembered when, as a private, Huckfield had tried to lead the mutiny before Talavera. Huckfield owed his life to Sharpe, but the bargain had been good. He was a conscientious, solid man, good with figures and the Company books, and the memory of that distant day, three years before, when Huckfield had nearly led the Battalion into mutiny was faded and unreal.

The street emptied, the attackers filing into the wasteland, and Sharpe still waited. He did not want his Company mixed with the others. He almost held his breath, listening for the first shot, but the night was silent. “All right, lads. Keep yourselves quiet.”

He went first, through the passage between the houses, and the ground dropped into a steep pit that had been made when the sappers threw up one of the flanking batteries. The nine-pounders were silent behind their fascines.

He could see the other companies ahead, crammed into the shallow trench. It had not been made for the attack, instead it was the remnants of a small street and it gave cover because the destroyed houses either side were banks of rubble. He dared not raise his head to look at the San Cayetano. There was a hope that the French were dozing, not expecting trouble, but he had no reason to suppose that their sentries would be any the less watchful because the night was quiet.

A ladder, far ahead, banged on rubble and there was the sound of loose stones falling. He froze, his senses acute for an enemy reaction, but still the night was quiet. There was a soft background noise, unceasing, and he realised it was the wash of water against the piles of the bridge arches. An owl sounded, south of the river. The light was pearl grey, the west soaked in crimson, the air warm after the day’s heat. The people of Salamanca, he knew, would be walking the stately circles in the great Plaza, sipping wine and brandy, and it would be a night of rich beauty in the city. Wellington was waiting, fearing surprise was lost, and Sharpe suddenly thought of La Marquesa, up on her roof or balcony, staring at the darkening shadows of the wasteland. A bell struck the half-hour past nine.

He heard a scraping and clicking ahead and knew that the attackers were fixing bayonets ready to run from the cover and rush the jumbled waste ground towards the San Cayetano. Lieutenant Price caught Sharpe’s eye and gestured at one of his men’s bayonets. Sharpe shook his head. He did not want the blades to betray the position of his company, far back, and they had no business, anyway, in attacking the fort.

“Go!” Bowes’ voice broke the silence, there was a scramble of feet and the sunken road ahead of Sharpe heaved with bodies that clambered over and through the rubble. This was the moment of danger, the first appearance, for if the French were ready, expecting them, the guns would fire now and decimate the attack.

They fired.

They were small guns in the forts, some were old and captured four pounders, but even a small gun, loaded with canister, can destroy an attack. Sharpe knew the figures well enough. A four pound canister was a tin can, packed with balls, sixty or eighty to a can, and when it was fired the tin burst apart at the gun’s muzzle and the balls spread, like duckshot, in a widening cone. Three hundred yards from the muzzle the cone would be ninety feet across, good odds for a single man in the line of fire, but not if several guns’ cones intersected. The San Cayetano, ahead of the attack, had only four guns, but the San Vincente, across the gorge, the biggest fort, could bring twenty to bear on the flank of the British attack.

They all fired. One first, followed in a handful of seconds by the rest, and the noise of the guns was different, deeper than usual, somehow more solid and Sharpe looked aghast at Harper. “They’re double shotted!”

Harper nodded, shrugged. Two canisters to a gun, say seventy balls in each, and twenty four guns firing. Sharpe listened to the metal hell that was criss-crossing the rubble and tried to work out the figures. Three thousand musket balls, at least, had greeted the attack, ten to each man, and in the silence after the volley he could hear the screams of wounded and then the rattle of muskets from the French embrasures. He could see nothing. He looked at the Company. “Stay there!”

He climbed the rubble side of the street, rolled over its crest and found cover behind a timber baulk. Bowes was alive, sword drawn, and ahead of the attack. “On! On!”

Ladder parties, miraculously alive, came off the ground where they had dived for shelter and began struggling over the jumbled stones. Each ladder was thirty feet, cumbersome on the shadowed ground, but the men were moving and, behind them, more figures advanced towards the dark bulk of the San Cayetano.

The attackers cheered, still confident despite the first, shattering discharge, and it was a miracle to Sharpe that so many had lived through the screaming cones. He slid his rifle forward, leafed up the sight, and then the second shots sounded from the French.

This volley was more ragged than the first. The gunners were loading as fast as they could, single canister only, and the faster crews would fire first. The balls bellowed from the embrasures, clattered on the stones, whirled the dead and wounded in limp disarray, and Sharpe cursed the French. They had known! They had known! There had been no surprise! They had double shotted the guns, had the matches ready for the fuses, and the attack stood no chance. The canisters burst and spread their death over the attackers, gun after gun, the shots coming singly or in small groups, and the lead balls hammered like hard rain on the stones, timber and bodies in the wasteland.

The two forts were ringed with smoke. The third, off to Sharpe’s left, was silent as if its guns, insultingly, were not needed. He could hear the French now, cheering their work as the gunners heaved at their weapons, loaded and fired, loaded and fired, and their flames sprang across the ditch, split the smoke, and licked behind the shredding canister.

“Rifles!”

There was not much they could do, but anything was better than being a spectator of this slaughter. He shouted again. “Rifles!”

His Riflemen poured over the lip of the rubble. He had trained a half dozen of the redcoats to use the Bakers, weapons left by men killed in the last three years, and they came, too. Harper dropped beside him, eyebrows raised, and Sharpe gestured at the nearest fort. “Go for the embrasures!”