Another growing crescendo of the noise that was like no other noise on earth, like a great waterfall that hissed and seethed and roared, and the flames drove sparks and smoke backwards and Sharpe saw the glows going far into the smoke fog, some rising, and the red glows did not stop as they struck men, but went on out of sight and he called the cease fire.
The order was repeated by officers and sergeants. ‘Cease fire! Cease fire!’
Silence. No, not silence. A seeming silence because the death was not sounding now, just the dying. Moans, cries, sobbing, calls for help, curses for a life ended, and in the wash of that pain Sharpe felt the anger of fighting ebb from him. ‘Captain Brooker?’
‘Sir?’
‘Two ranks on the rubble. You may attend to your wounded.’
‘Sir.’ Brooker’s face seemed appalled. He had not wanted to fight here, he had thought Sir Augustus Farthingdale a man of prudence and sense, and he could not believe that they had fought and won.
Sharpe’s voice was irritable. ‘There’s more to come, Captain! Get on with it!’
‘Sir!’
More to come. But the smoke cleared slowly, lifted by the breeze that carried it over the British dead and wounded, and as the smoke went Sharpe saw the fruits of his work. The scorch marks that fanned out from the shallow earthwork, and then the blood. It hardly looked like bodies after battle, it looked as if a giant hand had squeezed the enemy to death, had scattered fragments of flesh and blood on the winter grass beneath the lowering clouds, and then he saw distinct bodies, broken and burned, and the wounded stirred in the carnage like creatures heaving up from a pall of blood.
The Rocket Troop had burned hands and faces, scorched marks on their uniforms, but they grinned as they stood up in their trench, grinned because they had lived, and they beat soil from their greatcoats and trousers and then turned to look at their enemy.
Sharpe looked too, looked where the rockets had pierced and twisted through the ranks. Flames showed where the sticks burned, one giving fire to a wounded Frenchman’s uniform and the man could not struggle free and his ammunition pouch exploded, gouting more smoke on the grass, and the dead seemed to stretch halfway back to the village, and Sharpe had not seen a field after battle like it. It sounded like a field after battle, the noise, the small noise usually, of men who are dying.
‘Captain Gilliland?’
‘Sir?’
‘I thank you for your efforts. Tell your men so.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Gilliland’s voice was subdued, like Sharpe’s. The Rifle officer still stared at the field. He could see two horsemen halfway to the village, horsemen who stared as he stared, while beyond them the French infantry was slowly ordered into ranks before the village. Sharpe shook his head. Fifteen cannons firing canister would have caused more destruction, but there was something about the scorch marks, the burned dead, the spread of the wounded and corpses that was unlike anything he had seen. ‘I suppose one day all battlefields will look like this.’
‘Sir?’
`Nothing, Captain Gilliland. Nothing.’ He shook the mood off him, turned, and saw the Bugler still had his rifle on one skinny shoulder. Sharpe took the rifle from him, dragging the sling free of the left arm, tears stinging his eyes because the boy had a musket ball buried in his brain. It would have been quick, but the boy would never be a Rifleman.
The first flake of snow fell as Sharpe walked away. It fell soft as love, seemed to hesitate, then settled on the bugler’s forehead. It melted, turning red, and disappeared.
CHAPTER 24
The second truce in a day, a truce that would last till four o’clock. This time the General had ridden forward with Dubreton so he could see this Sharpe for himself, and he had agreed to the four hour truce because he knew there would be no passage of the pass this day. He needed time to draw up new orders to get round the delay imposed on him by the tall, scarred, grim looking Rifleman. He needed time to collect the wounded from in front of the Castle, to take them from that place of roasted flesh and scorched grass.
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