“For having his head blown off?”
“He’s disqualified, of course, on grounds of extreme carelessness.”
Sharpe laughed. Blackiston’s words were not funny, of course, but the laughter burst out of him, causing Wellesley to turn in his saddle and give him a scowl. In truth Sharpe was fighting a growing fear. For the moment he was safe enough, for the left flank of the attack was now in dead ground and the enemy bombardment was concentrating on the sepoy battalions who had still not reached the valley, but Sharpe could hear the whip-fast rumble of the round shots tearing up the air, he could hear the cannon fire, and every few seconds a howitzer shell would fall into the valley and explode in a puff of flaming smoke. So far the howitzers had failed to do any damage, but Sharpe could see the small bushes bend away from their blasts and hear the scraps of shell casing rip through leaves. In places the dry brush had caught fire.
He tried to concentrate on the small things. One of the canteens had a broken strap, so he knotted it. He watched his mare’s ears flicker at every shell burst and he wondered if horses felt fear. Did they understand this kind of danger? He watched the Scots, stolidly advancing through the shrubs and trees, magnificent in their feathered bearskin hats and their pleated kilts. They were a long way from bloody home, he thought, and was surprised that he did not really feel that for himself, but he did not know where home was. Not London, for sure, though he had grown up there. England? He supposed so, but what was England to him? Not what it was to Major Blackiston, he guessed. He wondered again about Pohlmann’s offer, and thought what it would be like to be standing in sash and sword behind that line of Mahratta guns. Safe as houses, he reckoned, just standing there and watching through the smoke as a thin line of redcoat enemies marched into horror. So why had he not accepted? And he knew the real reason was not some half-felt love of country, nor an aversion to Dodd, but because the only sash and sword he wanted were the ones that would let him go back to England and spit on the men who had made his life miserable. Except there would be no sash and sword. Sergeants did not get made into officers, not often, and he was suddenly ashamed of ever having quizzed McCandless about the matter. But at least the Colonel had not laughed at him.
Wellesley had turned to speak to Colonel Harness.
“We’ll give the guns a volley of musketry, Harness, at your discretion. That should give us time to reload, but save the second volley for their infantry.”
“I’d already worked out the same for myself,” Harness answered with a scowl.
“And I’ll not use skirmishers, not on a Sunday.” Usually the light company went ahead of the rest of the battalion and scattered into a loose line that would fire at the enemy before the main attack arrived, but Harness must have decided that he would rather reserve the light company’s fire for the one volley he planned to unload on the gunners.
“Soon be over,” Wellesley said, not contesting Harness’s decision to keep his light company in line, and Sharpe decided the General must be nervous for those last three words were unusually loquacious. Wellesley himself must have decided he had betrayed his feelings, for he looked blacker than ever. His high spirits had vanished ever since the enemy artillery had started firing.
The Scots were climbing now. They were tramping through stubble and at any minute they would cross the brow of the gentle hill and find themselves back in the gunners’ sights. The first the gunners would see would be the two regimental standards, then the officers on horseback, then the line of bearskins, and after that the whole red, white and black array of a battalion in line with the glint of their fixed bayonets showing in the sun. And God help us then, Sharpe thought, because every buggering gun straight ahead must be reloaded by now and just waiting for its target, and suddenly the first round shot banged on the crest just a few paces ahead and ricocheted harmlessly overhead.