“He’s been annoying me, that one, so he has. Been jumping around like a regular little Napoleon.”
Sharpe stared at the hilltop. It was like the paintings of hell he had seen in Portuguese and Spanish churches. Smoke rolled redly in weird patches across the hilltop, thickly where the column was pushing deeper through the fires that marked the British lines, and thinly where small groups fought the skirmishers who tried to clear the hilltop. Hundreds of small fires lit the battle, muskets pumped smoke and flame into the night, the whole accompanied by the shouts of the French and the cries of the wounded. The French skirmishers had suffered badly from the Riflemen. Harper had lined them in the shadows on the hill’s edge and they picked off the blue figures who ran through the fires long before the French were close enough to use their muskets with any accuracy. Sharpe pulled his own rifle forward and reached down for a cartridge.
“Any problems?”
Harper shook his head and grinned. “Target practice.”
“The rest of the company?”
The Sergeant jerked his head backwards. “Most of them are down below with Mr. Knowles, sir. I told him they weren’t needed here.”
For an instant Sharpe wondered whether anyone had seen him murder Berry but he dismissed the thought. He trusted his instinct, an instinct that warned him of the enemy and on this night every man had been his enemy until Berry had died. No-one had seen him. Harper grunted as he rammed another bullet into his rifle.
“What happened, sir?”
Sharpe grinned wolfishly and said nothing. He was reliving the instant of Berry’s death, feeling the satisfac-tion, the relief of the pain of Josefina’s ordeal. Who had said revenge was stale and unprofitable? They were wrong. He primed the rifle, cocked it, and slid it forward but no Voltigeurs were in sight. The battle had passed off to the left, where it flashed and thundered in the darkness.
“Sir?”
He turned and looked at the Sergeant. He told him, flatly and simply, what had happened and watched the broad Irish face turn bleak with anger.
“How is she?”
Sharpe shook his head. “She lost a lot of blood. They beat her.”
The Sergeant searched the ground in front of him, sifting through the firelight and the humped shadows, the far musket flashes that could be French or English. When he spoke his voice was soft. “And the two of them? What will you do?”
“Lieutenant Berry died in tonight’s battle.”
Harper turned and looked at his Captain, at the blade which lay red beside him, and smiled slowly. “The other one?”
“Tomorrow.”
Harper nodded and turned back to the batde. The French had been held, judging by the position of the musket flashes, as if in pushing ever deeper into the lines they had marched into a thickening opposition they at last could not break. Sharpe searched the darkness to his right. The French must have sent more troops, but there was no sign of them. The ground in front was bare of movement. He turned round.
“Lieutenant Knowles!”
“Sir!” The voice came from the darkness but was fol-lowed by Knowles’ anxious face coming up the slope. “Sir? You’re all right, sir?”
“Like a dog with a bone, Lieutenant.” Knowles could not understand Sharpe’s seeming content. Rumours had run through the company since Harper and the Riflemen had returned without the Captain. “Tell the men to fix bayonets and come up here. It’s time we joined in.”
Knowles grinned. “Yes, sir.”
“How many men do we have?”
“Twenty, sir, not counting the Rifles.”
“Good! To work then.”
Sharpe stood up and walked onto the hilltop. He waved the Riflemen forward and waited for Knowles and his group to climb into the light. Sharpe waved left and right with the sword.
“Skirmish order! Then slowly forward. We’re not trying to take on the column but let’s flush out their skirmishers.”
The bayonets gleamed red in the firelight, the line walked steadily forward, but the enemy skirmishers had disappeared. Sharpe took them to a hundred yards from the enemy column and waved the men down. There was nothing they could do except watch a demonstration of British infantry at its best. The French had ploughed their way almost to the end of the hill but had been checked by a Battalion that Sharpe guessed must have marched from the foot of the hill and now stretched itself ahead of the French like an impassable barrier. The Battalion was in line and firing in controlled platoon volleys. It was superb. No infantry could stand against Britain’s best, and the Battalion was shredding the column with musketry that rolled up and down the Battalion’s line, the ramrods flashing in unison, the platoons firing in sequence, an irresistible hammering of close range musket fire that poured into the tight French ranks. The enemy wavered. Each volley decimated the column’s leading ranks. Their commander tried to deploy into line but he was too late. The men at the back of the column would not go forward into that hail of lead that rippled methodically and murderously from the British muskets. Groups of blue-coated French began to melt into the dark; a mounted British officer saw it and raised his sword, the red ranks cheered and went forward with levelled bayonets and, as suddenly as it had begun, the battle was done. The French went backwards, stepping over the dead, retreating ever faster from the reaching blades. The enemy had done well. A single column had so nearly captured the hill, even without another two columns that had never arrived, but now the French Colonel had to go back, had to take his men from the musket fire that overwhelmed them. As they drew level with the skirmish line some of Sharpe’s Rifle-men lifted their weapons, but Sharpe shouted to let them go. There would be killing enough tomorrow.