On the watchtower hill Pierre accepted a drink from Captain Frederickson’s canteen and nodded towards the valley. ‘I think you’re about to lose.’
Frederickson grinned. ‘Would you want to bet on it?’
A smile and shrug from the Frenchman. ‘I am not a betting man.’
Frederickson looked at the top of the tower. ‘Anything for us?’ He shouted.
‘No, sir.’
He looked back to the valley. The skirmishers were in loose order in front of the huge column, hundreds of damned skirmishers, and Frederickson did not like the look of them. They would threaten the fragile earthwork in which, he knew, Sharpe had hidden the rockets. He had watched the strange weapons being carried forward, watched fascinated through his telescope as the troughs were aligned, and he could see now the weak line of Riflemen who would have to fight off the Voltigeurs. They would be hard-pressed. ‘Lieutenant Wise!’
‘Sir?’
Frederickson sent half his Riflemen, forty men, westward. The Lieutenant was to take them until they were almost abreast of the trench and then, from the edge of the thorns, was to fire across the Voltigeurs’ advance. Frederickson shouted them on their way way. ‘And, kill their bastard officers!’
In the Castle Sharpe was giving the same orders to his Riflemen, and especially to the marksmen on the gatehouse. ‘Officers! Go for the officers!’
Captain Gilliland, trying to control his nervousness, stood beside Sharpe on the northern end of the rubble. ‘We could fire now, sir.’
‘No, no, no.’ The column was three hundred yards away, its noise filling the valley with the thunder of drums, and Sharpe had no faith in the accuracy of the rockets. At this range at least three quarters would miss, probably more, and he would wait. He would wait till the weapon could not miss.
But God! The Voltigeurs worried him. They outnumbered his defenders by themselves! He would wait, but while he waited the Voltigeurs would press close, and then a Rifle cracked from the gatehouse and the shot provoked a ragged volley from the French, a volley fired too far away, but the musket balls worried the air about the eastern wall and Sharpe glanced to his right and saw the fear on the faces of the Fusiliers.
And no wonder, by God. The column was marching south-west, direct at the Castle, a massive hammerblow of men driven by drums, a great block of troops a hundred feet wide and eighty yards deep, and to the watchers on the hill it seemed as if they had trampled a great swathe of pasture land flat leaving a mark like a heavy roller across the valley.
The Rifles were firing now, their smoke over the trench, their bullets snatching at the Frenchmen with swords, but still the Voltigeurs came forward. They fought in pairs, one man kneeling and firing, the other reloading, and the Riflemen were hopelessly outnumbered. The Greenjackets had to lie flat, to avoid the volleys of the Fusiliers, and a rifle was a hard weapon to load lying down. Sharpe watched the men bracing the butts on their feet, thrusting down with the ramrods, then rolling onto their bellies to aim and fire again.
And the musket balls plucked at the Fusiliers. A man screamed, his cheekbone shattered, another fell backwards in silence, his body still on the rubble, and the Sergeants began to close the files. The field was thick with skirmishers, the flashes of their muskets constant, the smoke like clouds above the grass.
‘Fusiliers will advance to the trench!’ Sharpe bellowed at them. To move was better than to suffer in immobility, and it would take them twenty yards nearer the enemy and give their muskets a better chance of scouring these damned skirmishers from his front.
The officers gave the orders. Not that they could march on the broken stone, but they scrambled forward and Sharpe yelled at them to dress the ranks properly, kept them busy with his orders, and then he looked left and saw the first Voltigeurs were just forty yards from the trench. ‘Captain Brooker?’
‘Sir?’
‘You will open fire!’
‘Sir! ‘Talion! Level!’ A pause. The slim sword swept down. ‘Fire!’
Thank God for the hours of training, thank God that, for all its sometimes stupidity, the British army was the only army that trained its infantry with real ammunition. The first volley jerked four French skirmishers backwards, startled the others, and the Fusiliers went into the motions that were second nature to a soldier. Fire, load, fire, load, fire, four times a minute, biting the bullets from the paper cartridges, ignoring the enemy, seeing nothing beyond the dirty smoke that spread ragged over the trench, pouring in powder, ramming the bullet and wadding down the thirty-nine inch barrel, propping the ramrod against the body, bringing the heavy musket to the shoulder and waiting for the officer’s order to fire. There was nothing to aim at, just a smoke cloud that hid God knows what horrors, a smoke cloud that sometimes twitched as an enemy bullet sprang through it, and then the platoon next in the line fired, the officer shouted, and the butt crashed back into the shoulder, the powder in the pan stung the face, and the three-quarter inch ball of lead slammed into the smoke and down the field.