Sharpe primed his rifle. “You want to walk out there, sir?”
“A flag of truce, man!” Parker flinched as another carbine bullet ricocheted over his head.
“If that’s what you want, sir…“ But before Sharpe could finish his sentence, there was a panicked shout from Sergeant Williams upstairs, then a rattling crash as a massive enemy volley flogged the front of the house. A Rifleman was jerked back from the window with blood spurting from his head. Two rifles fired, more shot from upstairs, then the northern window was darkened as French Dragoons, who had charged about the blind western angle of the house, filled the frame. Sharpe and several other men fired; but the Dragoons were dragging at the chairs which blocked the window. They were repulsed only when the farmer’s wife, screaming with despair and using a strength that seemed remarkable in so scrawny a woman, snatched the cauldron from the pothook and threw it at the enemy. The scalding lye snatched the French back as though a cannon had fired at them.
“Sir!” Harper was by the kitchen door. A crash sounded in the passage as the French broke down the southern door which the Irishman had not blocked as securely as the northern. A group of Dragoons had taken advantage of the larger attack to make a charge at the other side of the house and were now within the central passage. Harper fired his rifle through the kitchen door, which instantly splintered in two places as the French replied. Both bullets struck the table.
The kitchen filled with powder smoke. Men were taking turns to fire through the windows, then reloading with frantic haste. The coachman emptied his huge pistol through the door and was rewarded with a shout of pain.
“Open it!” Sharpe said.
Harper obeyed. An astonished Frenchman, levelling his carbine, found himself facing Sharpe’s sword which skewered forward so savagely that the blade’s tip jarred against the far wall of the passage after it had gone clean through the Dragoon’s body. Harper, screaming his weird battle-shouts, followed Sharpe with an axe he had plucked from the kitchen wall. He hacked down at another man, making the passage slithery with blood.
Sharpe gouged and twisted his sword free. A Frenchman’s blade scraped up his forearm, springing warm blood, and he threw himself onto the man, forcing him against the passage wall and hammering the sword hilt at his face. A rifle exploded beside his head to throw another Dragoon back from the door. The pigs squealed in terror, while Sharpe tripped over a crawling Frenchman who was bleeding from the belly. Another rifle hammered in the passage, then Harper shouted that the enemy was gone.
A carbine bullet slammed into the passage, ricocheted from the walls, and buried itself in the far door. Sharpe pushed into the room where the animals were kept and saw a wooden trough that would serve as some kind of barricade in the passage. He dragged it out, and the pigs took the opportunity to escape before he could slam the damaged outer door closed and ram the trough under its cross-members. “Lucky bloody French,” Harper said. “Pork for supper.”
The action lulled again. Dreadful squeals announced the death of the pigs; squeals which momentarily stilled .the fusillade of carbine shots which raked the farmhouse. No more Frenchmen appeared as targets. One Rifleman was dead in the kitchen, another wounded. Sharpe went to the ladder. “Sergeant Williams?”
There was no answer.
“Sergeant Williams! How are those loopholes?”
It was Dodd who answered. “He’s dead, sir. Got one in the eye, sir.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“He was looking out the roof, sir.”
“Make sure someone keeps looking out!”
Williams was dead. Sharpe sat at the foot of the ladder and stared at Patrick Harper. He was the obvious replacement, the only choice, but Sharpe suspected the big Irishman would scathingly reject the offer. So, he thought, the rank should not be offered but simply imposed. “Harper?”
“Sir?”
“You’re a Sergeant.”
“I’m bloody not.”
“You’re a Sergeant!”
“No, sir! Not in this damned army. No.”
“Jesus Christ!” Sharpe spat the blasphemy at the huge man, but Harper merely turned to stare out of the window to where puffs of smoke betrayed the position of some Dragoons in a ditch.