And again and again and again and memories of standing in the line with sweating, mad-eyed comrades and going through the motions as if in a nightmare. Ignoring the billows of smoke, the screams, edging left and right to fill up the gaps left by the dead, just loading and firing, loading and firing, letting the flames spit out into the fog of powder smoke, the lead balls to smash into the unseen enemy and hope they are falling back. Then the command to cease fire and you stop. Your face is black and stinging from the explosions of the powder in the pan just inches from your right cheek, your eyes smarting from the smoke and the powder grains, and the cloud drifts away leaving the dead and wounded in front and you lean on the musket and pray that the next time the gun would not hang-fire, snap a flint, or simply refuse to fire at all.
He pulled the trigger for the fifth time, the ball hammered away down the field, and the musket was down and the powder in the barrel before Knowles called `Time’s up!”
The men cheered, laughed and clapped because an officer had broken the rules and showed them he could do it. Harper was grinning broadly. He at least knew how difficult it was to make five shots in a minute, and Sharpe knew that the Sergeant had noticed how he had cunningly loaded the first shot before the timed minute began. Sharpe stopped the noise. “That is how you will use a musket. Fast! Now you’re going to do it.”
There was silence. Sharpe felt the devilment in him; had not Simmerson told him to use his own method? “Take off your stocks!” For a moment no-one moved. The men stared at him. “Come on! Hurry! Take your stocks off!”
Knowles, Denny, and the Sergeants watched, puzzled, as the men gripped their muskets between their knees and used both hands to wrench apart the stiff leather collars.
“Sergeants! Collect the stocks. Bring them here.”
The Battalion had been brutalised too much. There was no way he could teach them to be fast-shooting soldiers unless he offered them an opportunity to take their revenge on the system that had condemned them to a flogger’s Battalion. The Sergeants came to him, their faces dubious, their arms piled high with the hated stocks.
,Put them down here.” Sharpe made them heap the seventy-odd stocks about forty paces in front of the company. He pointed to the glistening heap. “That is your target! Each of you will be given just three rounds. Just three. And you will have one minute in which to fire them! Those who succeed, twice in a row, will drop out and have a lazy afternoon. The rest will go on trying and go on trying until they do succeed.”
He let the two officers organise the drill. The men were grinning broadly, and there was a buzz of conversation in the ranks that he did not try to check. The Sergeants looked at him as though he were committing treason but none dared cross the tall, dark Rifleman with the long sword. When all was ready Sharpe gave the word and the bullets began smashing their way into the pile of leather. The men forgot their old drill and concentrated on shooting their hatred into the leather collars that had given them sore necks and which represented Simmerson and all his tyranny. At the end of the first two sessions only twenty men had succeeded, nearly all of them old soldiers who had re-enlisted in the new Battalion, but an hour and three-quarters later, as the sun reddened behind him, the last man fired his last shot into the fragments of stiff leather that littered the grass.
Sharpe lined the whole company in two ranks and watched, satisfied, as they shot three volleys to Harper’s commands. He looked through the white smoke that lingered in the still air towards the eastern horizon. Over there, in the Estremadura, the French were waiting, their Eagles gathering for the battle that had to come, while behind him, in the lane that led from the town, Sir Henry