But one Mahratta officer had been stalking Sharpe and he now saw his opportunity as Sharpe was held by the half-blinded man. The officer came from behind Sharpe and he swung his tulwar at the back of the redcoat’s neck.
The stroke was beautifully aimed. It hit Sharpe plumb on the nape of his neck, and it should have cut through his spine and dropped him dead to the bloody ground in an instant, but there was a dead king’s ruby hidden in the leather bag around which Sharpe’s hair was clubbed and the big ruby stopped the blade dead. The jolt of the blow jerked Sharpe forward, but he kept his feet and the man who had been clutching him at last released his grip and Sharpe could turn. The officer swung again and Sharpe parried so hard that the Sheffield steel slashed clean through the tulwar’s light blade and the next stroke cut through the blade’s owner.
“Bastard!” Sharpe shouted as he tugged the blade free and he whirled around to kill the next man who came near, but instead it was Captain Campbell who was there, and behind him were a dozen troopers who spurred their horses into the enemy and hacked down with their sabres.
For a second or two Sharpe could scarcely believe that he was alive.
Nor could he believe that the fight was over. He wanted to kill again.
His blood was up, the rage was seething in him, and there was no more enemy and so he contented himself by slashing the sabre down onto the Mahratta officer’s head.
“Bastard!” he shouted, then booted the man’s face to jolt the blade free. Then, suddenly, he was shaking. He turned and saw that Wellesley was staring at him aghast and Sharpe was certain he must have done something wrong. Then he remembered what it was.
“Sorry, sir,” he said.
“You’re sorry?” Wellesley said, though he seemed scarcely able to speak. The General’s face was pale.
“For pushing you, sir,” Sharpe said.
“Sorry, sir. Didn’t mean to, sir.”
“I hope you damn well did mean to,” Wellesley said forcibly, and Sharpe saw that the General, usually so calm, was shaking too.
Sharpe felt he ought to say something more, but he could not think what it was.
“Lost your last horse, sir,” he said instead.
“Sorry, sir.”
Wellesley gazed at him. In all his life he had never seen a man fight like Sergeant Sharpe, though in truth the General could not remember everything that had happened in the last two minutes. He remembered
Diomed falling and he remembered trying to loosen his feet from the stirrups, and he remembered a blow on the head that was probably one of Diomed’s flailing hooves, and he thought he remembered seeing a bayonet bright in the sky above him and he had known that he must be killed at that moment, and then everything was a dizzy confusion. He recalled Sharpe’s voice, using language that shocked even the General, who was not easily offended, and he remembered being thrust back against the gun so that the Sergeant could face the enemy alone, and Wellesley had approved of that decision, not because it spared him the need to fight, but because he had recognized that Sharpe would be hampered by his presence.
Then he had watched Sharpe kill, and he had been astonished by the ferocity, enthusiasm and skill of that killing, and Wellesley knew that his life had been saved, and he knew he must thank Sharpe, but for some reason he could not find the words and so he just stared at the embarrassed Sergeant whose face was spattered with blood and whose long hair had come loose so that he looked like a fiend from the pit.
Wellesley tried to frame the words that would express his gratitude, yet the syllables choked in his throat, but just then a trooper came trotting to the gun with the reins of the roan mare in his hand. The mare had survived unhurt, and now the trooper offered the reins towards Wellesley who, as if in a dream, walked out of the sheltered space inside the gun’s tall wheel to step across the bodies Sharpe had put onto the ground. The General suddenly stooped and picked up a stone.