The northernmost part of the column was escaping the rockets. They heard the noise, the screams, saw the explosions that seemed to come twenty yards inside the ranks, but they pressed ahead and Sharpe called the target to Brooker’s Company. ‘Fire!’
A small volley, but it checked them, put a barrier of dead on the grass, and then Gilliland pushed past Sharpe, hammered a trough into the grass with his boot, and an artilleryman laid a rocket into the trough. Another man struck fire onto a linstock with his pistol-grip steel and flint, and Sharpe stepped away from the terror of flame. ‘How many more launchers have you got?’
‘Four!’
‘Get them!’
The close-packed bodies of the French soaked up the terrible force of the rockets. The missiles slammed home, slowed as they ploughed through the ranks, and then they would stop, lodged in flesh, and the flames of the propellant would make a swathe of scorching space, and then the shell, its fuse hidden in the metal tube, would spatter blood and iron fragments into the French.
No man could go into that flame-lanced cloud. The noise of the drums was drowned utterly, obliterated by the howling rush of the rockets, by the coughing explosions, and still the rockets came, still they searched further into the ranks, gouging new channels of destruction, exploding, and the French could see nothing but smoke, flames to left and right, and their ears were filled by the noise, by screams that came from dying comrades, and they went back.
More rockets had risen over the heads of the column, one drove through at head height and slammed into the open valley, over the trampled grass, and it veered left, climbed, and the French staff watched it in awe. The noise filled the valley, the smoke was stretched behind the long flame, and then the shell exploded north of the village and the fragments smashed outwards from the black smoke and the stick, burning, tumbled to earth.
Ducos watched the smoke of the explosion as if mesmerized. ‘Colonel Congreve.’
‘What?’
`Congreve’s rocket system.’ He snapped the telescope shut.
The General shook his head, looked back at the column. Its rear seemed unshaken, the ranks still formed, but he could see the explosions now, and the front of his huge column seemed to be buried in a writhing flame-filled cloud. ‘They’re not moving.’
Two more rockets arced over the column, struck the ground, bounced, cartwheeled, and exploded in the valley. Two more went north, climbing insanely over the Convent, but mosc were burying themselves in the column, twisting and flaming their way into the human target, searing noise and fire, exploding in the ranks, and the Fusiliers still fired.
‘Alexandre!’ The General put spurs to his horse. He could not watch while his men died, and he spurred into a gallop down the road and shouted at Dubreton. ‘What the hell are rockets?’
‘Artillery!’
The General swore, again and again. He could hear the weapons now, and he could hear, too, that the drums had stopped. He could hear shouting and screams, the sound of panic, and he knew that at any second the carefully disciplined ranks would dissolve into a panicked mob. ‘Why in God’s name would they bring them here?’
Dubreton shouted the horrid truth back. ‘They knew we were coming!’
‘Keep firing!’ Sharpe yelled at his men. ‘You’re beating the bastards! Fire! Fire!’
Science at war. Death pushed by fire, and still the rockets shook themselves clear of the troughs, dropped to the grass, slid in front of the flame, faster and faster, rose a few inches and leaped towards the enemy. Some went at knee height, cutting down file after file, others cannoned off men and angled through the French mass, and the French ran. They broke, the explosions and the flames seemingly filling the valley so that they lived in a place that was mysterious death and thick smoke and jagged shell fragments and always the roaring things from hell that came at them faster than lightning and dinned the eardrums and killed and killed and killed.
‘Keep firing!’
Frederickson’s men were out of the thorns now, loading and firing, aiming at any officer who seemed to be controlling a group of men, and the Fusiliers hammered their volleys into the obscuring smoke, and ahead there were screams, more screams, but the drums had stopped.