heels. "And you, Sharpe," Lawford smiled now he felt the worst was over, "I think you probably need a rest. That tumble you took did some damage, eh? You look battered. So let Cornelius show us his stuff, eh? And you can use his horse and serve as my eyes. Advise me."
"My advice, sir," Sharpe could not help saying, "is to let your best man command the light company."
"And if I do that," Lawford said, "I'll never know what potential Cornelius has. No, Sharpe, let him have his canter, eh? You've already proved yourself." Lawford stared at Sharpe, wanting his approval of the suggestion, but again Sharpe said nothing. He felt as though the bottom had dropped from his world.
And just then a gun fired from the valley.
The shell screamed through the fog, burst into sunlight above the ridge where, showing as a black ball against a clear sky, it arched over the troops to fall close beside the newly made road which linked the British and Portuguese troops along the ridge. It exploded after its first bounce, doing no harm, but a scrap of shell casing, almost spent, rapped against Lawford's tent, making the taut gray canvas shudder. "Time to go, Sharpe," Lawford said, throwing down his egg-stained napkin.
Because the French were coming.
* * *
THIRTY-THREE FRENCH BATTALIONS formed into four columns were launched across the stream and up the far slope that was thickly obscured by fog. This was only the first attack. The second attack was still assembling, their twenty-two battalions forming into two more great columns which would advance on either side of the better road that led towards the northern end of the ridge while a third, smaller column would follow behind them to exploit their success. Together the two attacks made a hammer and an anvil. The first assault, the heaviest, would follow the lesser road up to the lowest part of the ridge, capture its wide summit, then turn north to drive in the defenders desperately fending off the second blow. Marshal Masséna, waiting close to the troops who would deliver that second thunderous strike, imagined the English and Portuguese troops reduced to panic; he saw them fleeing from the ridge, throwing down packs and weapons, discarding anything that would slow them, and then he would release his cavalry to sweep across the ridge's northern end and slaughter the fugitives. He drummed his fingers against his saddle's pommel in time to the fog-muffled rhythm of the drums that sounded to the south. Those drums were driving the first attack up the slope. "What's the time?" he asked an aide.
"A quarter to six, sir."
"The fog's lifting, don't you think?" Masséna stared into the vapor with his one eye. The Emperor had taken the other in a shooting accident while they were hunting, and, ever since, Masséna had worn a patch.
"Perhaps a little, sir," the aide said doubtfully.
Tonight, Masséna thought, he would sleep in the monastery said to be on the ridge's far slope. He would send a troop of dragoons to escort Henriette from Tondela from where he had been so abruptly summoned the previous night, and he smiled as he recalled her white arms reaching playfully for him as he dressed. He had slept an hour or two with the army, and risen early to find a cold, foggy dawn, but the fog, he reckoned, was France's friend. It would let the troops get most of the way up the slope before the British and Portuguese could see them, and once the Eagles were close to the summit the business should not take long. Victory by midday, he thought, and he imagined the bells ringing out in Paris to announce the triumph of the Eagles. He wondered what new honors would come to him. He was already the Prince of Essling, but by tonight, he thought, he might have earned a dozen other royal titles. The Emperor could be generous in such things, and the Emperor expected great things of Masséna. The rest of Europe was at peace, cowed into submission by the armies of France, and so Napoleon had sent reinforcements into
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