Six men cowered in a corner of the turret, weapons discarded, hands held up in supplication. Those the Riflemen ignored. Three men still fought, and those three died. Two with the sword, the third Harper picked up bodily and heaved into the courtyard, his dying scream being the first sound that penetrated Sharpe’s fuddled, deafened ears.
He lowered the sword, his eyes grim on the terrified men who pressed back against the castellations. He breathed deep, shook his head. ‘Jesus.’
Harper took the two bodies at the stairhead, one at a time, and hurled them after the other man. He looked at his officer. ‘Stairways cleared and Castles taken. We should go into business, sir.’
‘I didn’t enjoy that.’
‘Nor did they.’
Sharpe laughed. They had done it, they had taken the turret’s top and he wondered who had last climbed those stairs in a fight and how many years before. Had it been before gunpowder? Had the last man to come into the sunlight of this rampart been in uncomfortable armour, swinging a short mace that would crush in the confined deathtrap of the winding stair? He grinned at Harper, slapped his arm. ‘Well done.’ Whoever had been last up these stairs, fighting up, had done exactly what Sharpe did now. He shouted down the stairway, shouted loud, and waited for the man to bring what he wanted. Bullets fluttered about their heads from the Castle’s keep, but Sharpe ignored them. He shouted again, impatient, and here they were, staffs broken, but it did not matter.
On the old battlements, facing east, facing the Fusiliers and the Rifle Companies, Sharpe hung the Colours. They were discoloured by smoke, torn by explosion and bullet, but they were the Colours. Banners hanging from a Castle wall, the boast of a fighting man, banners hung by Sharpe and Harper. The gatehouse was taken.
CHAPTER 13
It had been a piece of pure bravado to hang the Colours on the gate-tower, each one fixed by driving an enemy bayonet through the flag and into the crumbling mortar of the battlements. It crossed Sharpe’s mind that he and Harper had saved these Colours from Sir Augustus’ impetuosity, from the man’s stupidity, and Sharpe looked down at the place where Farthingdale had fallen. Smoke still drifted there, and then Sharpe swore and ducked as a bullet from the valley chipped at the stone by the flags. Someone down there thought the Colours had been captured, that the enemy was flaunting them.
‘Sir?’ Harper pointed north towards the Convent.
The Rocket Troop had arrived. The fight at the eastern wall had meant their passage of the pass, close to the Castle’s northern wall, had been undisturbed. Now the wagons were parked on the road leading to the Convent, the troopers watching curiously the confusion of the failed attack.
Who was in charge down there? Was Sir Augustus alive? Sharpe had assumed Kinney’s death, certainly the Welshman was hard hit, so who was giving the orders to the Companies that had escaped the explosion? Bullets made the air above the gate-tower a deadly place, bullets fired from both sides, from keep and from valley. Sharpe sat down and watched Harper load the seven-barrelled gun. ‘We wait.’ There was nothing Sharpe could do from the high turret. He had plucked some Fusiliers from the chaos, saved the Colours, and now they would have to sit it out until the Castle fell. He wished he had eaten some breakfast.
Sharpe had raised the Colours in bravado, but to the Fusiliers they were a taunt of failure. They did not see that it was Riflemen on the high battlement, they only saw their pride, their Colours, tacked to an enemy fortress. Men did not fight for King and Country so much as they fought for those squares of fringed silk, and the Fusiliers, recovering their order, saw the flags and no power on earth was going to stop them attempting to recover them. Six Companies had been untouched by the explosion, two others hardly affected, and now they turned, charged, and Frederickson launched his Riflemen ahead of them.
No one noticed that the guns in the watchtower had ceased firing. The battle was no longer being directed, it was now an expression of anger.