He kicked the roan mare straight at the enemy. He could not reach the General, for Wellesley was still in the saddle of the wounded Diomed who was sliding on the ground and trailing the pikestaff from his bleeding chest, and the threat of the horse’s weight had driven the enemy aside, three to the left and three to the right. One fired his musket at Wellesley, but the ball flew wide, and then, as Diomed slowed, the Mahrattas closed in and it was then that Sharpe struck them. He used the mare as a battering ram, taking her perilously close to where the General had fallen from the saddle, and he drove her into the three gunners on the right, scattering them, and at the same time he kicked his feet from the stirrups and swung himself off the horse so that he fell just beside the dazed Wellesley. Sharpe stumbled as he fell, but he came up from the ground snarling with the sabre sweeping wide at the three men he had charged, but they had been driven back by the mare’s impact, and so Sharpe whipped back to see a gunner standing right over the General with a bayonet raised, ready to strike, and he lunged at the man, screaming at him, and felt the sabre’s tip tear through the muscles of the gunner’s belly. Sharpe pushed the sabre, toppling the gunner back onto Diomed’s blood-flecked flank.
The sabre stuck in the wound. The gunner was thrashing, his musket fallen, and one of his comrades was climbing over Diomed with a tulwar in his hand. Sharpe heaved on the sabre, jerking the dying man, but the blade would not free itself of the flesh’s suction and so he stepped over Wellesley, who was still dizzied and on his back, put his left boot on the gunner’s groin and heaved again. The man with the tulwar struck down, and Sharpe felt a blow on his left shoulder, but then his own sabre came free and he swung it clumsily at his new attacker. The man stepped back to avoid the blade and tripped on one of Diomed’s rear legs. He fell.
Sharpe turned, his sabre sweeping blindly wide with drops of blood flicking from its tip as he sought to drive back any enemies coming from his right. There were none. The General said something, but he was still scarcely conscious of what was happening, and Sharpe knew that he and the General were both going to die here if he did not find some shelter fast.
The big painted eighteen-pounder gun offered some small safety, and so Sharpe stooped, took hold of Wellesley’s collar, and unceremoniously dragged the General towards the cannon. The General was not unconscious, for he clung to his slim straight sword, but he was half stunned and helpless. Two men ran to cut Sharpe off from the gun’s sanctuary and he let go of the General’s stiff collar and attacked the pair.
“Bastards,” he screamed as he fought them. Bugger the advice about straight arm and parrying, this was a time to kill in sheer rage and he went for the two gunners in a berserk fury. The sabre was a clumsy weapon, but it was sharp and heavy and he almost severed the first man’s neck and the subsequent backswing opened the second man’s arm to the bone, and Sharpe turned back to Wellesley, who was still not recovered from the impact of his fall, and he saw an Arab lancer spurring his horse straight at the fallen General. Sharpe bellowed an obscenity at the man, then leaped forward and slashed the sabre’s heavy blade across the face of the lancer’s horse and saw the beast swerve aside. The lance blade jerked up into the air as the Arab tried to control his pain-maddened horse, and Sharpe stooped, took Wellesley’s collar again, and hauled the General into the space between the gun’s gaudy barrel and one of its gigantic wheels.
“Stay there!” Sharpe snapped to Wellesley, then turned around to see that the Arab had been thrown from his horse, but was now leading a charge of gunners. Sharpe went to meet them. He swept the lance aside with the sabre’s blade, then rammed the weapon’s bar hilt into the Arab’s face. He felt the man’s nose break, kicked him in the balls, shoved him back, hacked down with the sabre, then turned to his left and sliced the blade within an inch of a gunner’s eyes.