Sharpe’s Gold. Bernard Cornwell

calmed, and as the lancers thundered in, Kearsey touched the spurs, the horse leaped forward, and the Major had turned the right-hand lance to one side, swivelled his wrist with the speed of a trained swordsman, and one Pole lay beheaded on the ground.

      ‘Beautiful!’ Sharpe was grinning. Once a man got past the razor tip of a lance he was safe.

      Kearsey was through, crouching on Marlborough’s neck, urging the horse on towards the hills, but the first squadron of lancers were close behind their fellows, at full gallop, and the effort was useless. A dust cloud engulfed the Englishman, the silver points disappeared in the storm, and Kearsey was trapped with only his sword to save him. A man reeled out of the fight holding his stomach, and Sharpe knew the sabre had laid open the horseman’s guts. The dust billowed like cannon smoke. The lance points were forced upwards in the press and once – Sharpe was not sure – he thought he saw the slashing light of the lifted sabre. It was magnificent, quite hopeless, one man against a regiment, and Sharpe watched the commotion subside, the dust drift towards the nightjar’s treacherous nest, and the lance points sink to rest. It was over.

      ‘Poor bastard.’ Harper had not been looking forward to company prayers, but he had never wanted lancers to take away the unpleasant prospect.

      ‘He’s alive!’ Knowles was pointing. ‘Look!’

      It was true. Sharpe rested the glass on the rock rim of the gully and saw the Major riding between two of his captors. There was blood on his thigh, a lot, and Sharpe saw Kearsey trying to stem the flow with his two fists where a lance point had gouged into his right leg. It was a good capture for the Poles. An exploring officer whom they could keep for a few months before exchanging for a Frenchman of equal rank. They could well have recognized him. The exploring officers often rode in sight of their enemy, their uniforms distinct, relying on their fast horses to carry them from trouble, and it was possible that the French would decide not to exchange Kearsey for months; perhaps, Sharpe thought with a sinking feeling, till the British had been driven from Portugal.

      The depressing thought made him stare at the hermitage, half hidden by trees, the unlikely place where Wellington’s hopes were pinned. Without Kearsey it was even more important that the Company should try to find the gold that night, but then those hopes, too, were dashed. Half the lancers rode with their prisoner to the village, but the other half, in a curving column, trotted towards the graveyard and its hermitage. Sharpe cursed beneath his breath. There was no hope now of finding the gold that night. The only chance left was to wait until the French had gone, till they had stopped using the village and the hermitage as their base for the campaign against the Partisans in the hills. And when the French did go, El Católico would come, and Sharpe had no doubt that the tall, grey-cloaked Spaniard would use every effort to stop the British from taking the gold. Only one man stood a chance of persuading the Partisan leader, and that man was a prisoner, wounded, in the hands of the lancers. He slid back from the skyline, turned and stared at the Company.

      Harper slid down beside him. ‘What do we do, sir?’

      ‘Do? We fight.’ Sharpe gripped the hilt of the sword. ‘We’ve been spectators long enough. We get the Major out, tonight.’

      Knowles heard him, turned an astonished face on them. ‘Get him out, sir? There’s two regiments there!’

      ‘So? That’s only eight hundred men. There are fifty-three of us.’

      ‘And a dozen Irish.’ Harper grinned at the Lieutenant.

      Knowles scrambled down the slope, looking at them with a disbelieving stare. ‘With respect, sir. You’re mad.’ He began to laugh. ‘Are you serious?’

      Sharpe nodded. There was no other choice. Fifty-three men must take on eight hundred, or else the war was lost. He grinned at Knowles. ‘Stop worrying! It’ll be simple!’

      And how the hell, he thought, do we do it?