The Sun Over Breda

“Very slow. The sappers have run into mud that’s too soft, and water is seeping in from the river. They have a lot of shoring up to do, and that takes time. We fear that the heretics will get to us first and relieve us of our bollocks.”

They heard shots at the far end of the trench, out of view, a heavy volley that lasted only an instant, then everything was calm again. Alatriste looked at his captain, waiting for him to get to impart the other bad news. Bragado never visited them just for the pleasure of stretching his legs.

“Gentlemen,” he said finally, “you have been assigned to the caponnieres.”

“God’s bones!” Garrote blasphemed.

The caponnieres were narrow tunnels excavated by sappers who, protected overhead by blankets, wood, and gabion baskets, dug below the trenches. These burrows were used both for aborting the advance of enemy works and for tunneling deeper in order to reach fosses, saps, and ditches where the men could then explode petards and smoke out the adversary with sulfur and wet straw. It was a grisly way to fight: below ground, in the dark, in passageways so narrow that often the men could move only by crawling along, one by one, choked by heat, dust, and sulfur fumes, engaging opponents like blind moles. The caponnieres near the Cemetery ravelin twisted and turned around the Spaniards’ main tunnel and were very close to those of the Dutch, attempting to counter the enemies’ efforts with their own; often when the soldiers collapsed a wall with a pick or a petard, they came face to face with the sappers on the other side in a melee of flashing daggers and point-blank pistol shots and, of course, the short-handled spades that, for this very reason, were sharpened with whetstones until the edges were keen as knives.

“It is time,” said Diego Alatriste.

He was crouched at the entrance of the main tunnel with his band, and Captain Bragado was watching from a short distance away in the sap, kneeling with the rest of Alatriste’s squad and a dozen more from his bandera, ready to lend a hand if the occasion demanded. Alatriste was accompanied by Mendieta, Copons, Garrote, the Galician Rivas, and the two Olivares brothers. Manuel Rivas was an extremely trustworthy and courageous youth, a fine-boned, blue-eyed lad who spoke a less-than-exemplary Spanish with the strong accent of Finisterre. As for the Olivareses, they looked like twins, though they weren’t. They had very similar features, with Gypsy-like faces and hair, and thick black beards edging up to generous Semitic noses that from a league away shouted the presence of great-grandparents who would have balked at eating bacon. That mattered not one whit to their comrades, for questions of purity of blood never arose in the tercios; it was believed that if a man spilled his blood in battle, that blood had circulated through pure hidalgo veins. The two brothers were always together: They slept back to back, shared every last crumb of bread, and watched out for each other in battle.

“Who will go first?” asked Alatriste.

Garrote did not step forward, apparently absorbed in running his finger along the edge of his dagger blade. Pale, and with a grimace, Rivas made as if to move forward, but Copons, economical as usual in both actions and words, picked up some straws from the ground and offered them to his comrades. It was Mendieta who drew the shortest. He looked at it for a long time and then without a word adjusted his dagger, laid his hat and sword on the ground, picked up the small primed pistol Alatriste handed him, and entered the tunnel, carrying a short, very sharp spade in the other hand. Behind him went Alatriste and Copons, they too removing hats and swords and tightening their leather buffcoats. The others followed in single file as Bragado and those staying behind watched in silence.

The beginning of the main gallery was lit by a pitch torch, its oily light illuminating the sweat on the naked torsos of the German sappers who had taken a break in their labors and were leaning on their picks and spades as they watched the men pass. The Germans were as good at digging as they were at fighting, especially when they were sober and well paid. Even their women, who, laden like mules, were coming and going with provisions from the camp, did their part by carrying large baskets and tools. Their corporal, a red-bearded fellow with arms like Alpujarras hams, guided the group through the labyrinth of passages. The tunnel grew lower and narrower the closer they came to the Dutch lines. Finally the sapper stopped at the mouth of a caponniere no more than three feet high. Light from a hanging oil lamp fell on a slow fuse that disappeared into the darkness, sinister as a black serpent.

“Eine vara, one,” said the German, indicating with spread hands the width of the earthen wall that separated the end of the caponniere from the Dutch passageway.