A second gun fired, but high, and the shot crashed low overhead to tear into the trees on the southern bank. A third ball smashed into the water, drenching McCandless. Fletcher’s mare bolted upstream, but was checked by a fallen tree and so she stood, quivering, and still the trooper’s decapitated body was in the saddle and Diomed’s rein in his dead hand. The grey horse’s left flank was reddened with Fletcher’s blood. The trooper had slumped now, his headless trunk leaning eerily to drip blood into the river.
To Sharpe it seemed as if time had stopped. He was aware of someone shouting, aware of the blood dripping from the dragoon’s collar, aware of his small horse shivering, but the sudden violence had immobilized him. Another gun fired, this one of smaller calibre, and the ball struck the water a hundred yards upstream, ricocheted once, then vanished in a plume of white spray.
“Sharpe!” a voice snapped. Horsemen were wheeling in the river’s shallows and reaching for the dead man’s bridle.
“Sharpe!” It was Wellesley who shouted. The General was in the middle of the river where the water did not even reach his stirrups, so there was a ford after all and the river could be crossed, but the enemy was hardly going to be taken by surprise now.
“Take over as orderly, Sharpe!” Wellesley shouted.
“Hurry, man!” There was no one else to replace Fletcher, not unless one of Wellesley’s aides took over his duties, and Sharpe was the nearest man.
“Go on, Sharpe!” McCandless said.
“Hurry, man!”
Captain Campbell had secured Fletcher’s mare.
“Ride her, Sharpe!” the Captain called.
“That little horse won’t keep up with us. Just let her go.
Let her go.”
Sharpe dismounted and ran to the mare. Campbell was trying to dislodge Fletcher’s blood-soaked body, but the trooper’s feet were caught in the stirrups. Sharpe heaved Fletcher’s left boot free, then gave the booted leg a tug and the corpse slid towards him. He jumped back as the bloody remnants of the neck, all sinew and flesh and tattered scraps, slapped at his face. The corpse fell into the edge of the river and Sharpe stepped over it to mount the General’s mare.
“Get the General’s canteens,” Campbell ordered him, and an instant later another eighteen-pounder shot hammered low overhead like a clap of thunder.
“The canteens, man, hurry!” Campbell urged Sharpe, but Sharpe was having trouble untying the water bottles from Fletcher’s belt, so instead he heaved the body over so that a gush of blood spurted from the neck to be instantly diluted in the shallow water. He tugged at the trooper’s belt buckle, unfastened it, then hauled the belt free with its pouches, canteens and the heavy sabre. He wrapped the belt over his own, hastily buckled it, then clambered up into the mare’s saddle and fiddled his right foot into the stirrup. Campbell was holding out Diomed’s rein.
Sharpe took the rein.
“Sorry, sir.” He apologized for making the aide wait.
“Stay close to the General,” Campbell ordered him, then leaned over and patted Sharpe’s arm.
“Stay close, be alert, enjoy the day, Sergeant,” he said with a grin.
“It looks as if it’s going to be a lively afternoon!”
“Thank you, sir,” Sharpe said. The first infantry were in the ford now and Sharpe turned the mare, kicked back his heels and tugged Diomed through the water. Campbell was spurring ahead to catch up with Wellesley and Sharpe clumsily kicked the mare into a canter and was almost thrown as she stumbled on the riverbed, but he somehow clung to her mane as she recovered. A round shot thrashed the water white to his left, drenching him with spray. The musket had fallen off his shoulder and was dangling awkwardly from his elbow and he could not manage both it and Diomed’s rein, so he let the firelock drop into the river, then wrenched the sword and the heavy canteens into a more comfortable position. Bugger this, he thought. Lost a hat, a horse and a gun in less than an hour!
The pioneers were hacking at the bluff on the northern bank to make the slope less steep, but the first galloper guns, those that accompanied the picquets of the day, were already in the Kaitna. Galloper guns were drawn by horses and the gunners shouted at the pioneers to clear out of their way. The pioneers scattered as the horses came up from the river with water streaming from the leading gun’s spinning wheels; a whip cracked over the leader’s head and the team galloped up the bluff with the gun and limber bouncing erratically behind. A gunner was thrown off the limber, but he picked himself up and ran after the cannon. Sharpe kicked his horse up the bluff once the second gun was safely past and suddenly he was in low ground, protected from the enemy’s cannonade by the rising land to his left.