And now he was late. The snow had held him up and he feared he was too late. He had met Teresa coming from the pass and he had listened to her message, charmed her, and then taken her along with his troops who struggled against the snow. Next came Sir Augustus Farthingdale, icy and angry, who insisted that there were complaints, serious complaints, that he wished to make against Major Richard Sharpe, but Nairn politely declined to listen, then rudely insisted, and finally ordered Sir Augustus and Lady Farthingdale on their way. On the evening of December 26th the wind brought more snow and the grumble of guns.
They marched before dawn and Nairn heard a mighty explosion in the hills, and the light showed a great pall of smoke that blew towards him, yet still the guns sounded. March to the guns, always to the guns, and he sent his best troops ahead with orders to climb fast and Teresa went with a Spanish Battalion of light troops that could climb the hills beside the pass and come down on the French flank. She would guide them, and they struggled through the cold, the snow, listening always to the guns that told them the battle still lived, that their help was needed, and then the guns stopped.
A seeming silence in the hills. The guns rested.
The French were in the courtyard. They were cheering, running, swarming over the stones of the eastern wall and there was no enemy.
The French officers had their swords drawn. They looked at ramparts and turrets for targets for their men, but the Castle seemed empty and silent, and then a shout from a Frenchman and they could see the Fusiliers crammed in the archway behind their low barricade of stone. ‘Charge!’
‘Fire!’ The Fusilier volley drove an avenue of musket fire into the courtyard.
‘Fire!’ The second rank pushed past the first.
‘Fire!’ The third was at the front, two more behind it, while the ranks that had fired reloaded and came up behind.
‘Fire!’ The archway was safe.
‘Doors!’ French officers led their men to the doorways into the gatehouse and north-western turret, but the doors had been blocked solid with stone, as had the steps to the northern ramparts, and still the French infantry piled into the courtyard and believed they had victory.
‘Now!’ Sharpe snarled at the bugler. ‘Now!’
Dubreton had foreseen this. He had known that the courtyard would be a deathtrap, a cul de sac, unless the men could fight their way into the keep.
French officers shouted at their men. ‘Fire! Fire at the archway!’
And then the bugle sounded. The notes climbed the full octave once, twice, three times. ‘Open fire’.
The sticks had been taken from the remaining rockets much to Gilliland’s disgust and now the Rocket Troop put fire to the fuses, waited to see the fire catch, and then tossed the stickless cylinders out of arrow-slits, through gaps in the stones, over ramparts, and down to the courtyard crammed with French.
The cylinders tumbled, smoke intricate behind them, and then they coughed and roared into life and without the sticks they could not fly but hurled themselves in aimless frantic patterns in the yard. ‘Come on! Throw!’
More came, more rockets, shells beginning to explode in their heads, and still more came, their tails flaying the French with fire, the rockets whipping erratically about the stones, breaking ankles, lodging in bodies, exploding, burning, and Sharpe yelled at the men to throw more. Some snaked their way to the stables where they added to the fire and pumped smoke at the disorganized French, while most carved gaps in the crowded ranks and exploded their iron fragments in circles of death, while the solid-tipped rockets hurled their weight against feet and legs and wounded bodies and the French shouted in alarm, in confusion, and still more came.
‘Downstairs!’ Sharpe led Harper and the bugler down to where the Fusiliers waited for this moment. Two hundred of them waited with their Colours and Sharpe pushed the bugler forward. ‘Sound the cease-fire!’ He looked at the Fusiliers, those who were not guarding the archway. ‘Fix bayonets!’