`Sir?’
`Skirmish line out!’
`Sir!’
Then the Colonel of the centre Battalion waved his hat, the band of that Battalion struck into a jauntier tune, and the Light Companies were going forward. Leroy looked at his watch. It was one o’clock. He closed the watch’s lid, thrust it into a pocket, and shouted the orders that would march the South Essex’s line towards the enemy. Leroy was taking them into battle for the first time.
The Colours had been unsheathed. The silk looked crumpled after its long confinement in the leather tubes, but the Ensigns shook the flags out so that the tassels danced and the great emblems spread out above their heads. On -the right was the King’s Colour, a huge Union Flag that was embroidered with the badge of the South Essex at its centre. The badge showed a chained eagle, commemorating Sharpe and Harper’s capture of the French standard at Talavera.
On the left was the Regimental Colour, a yellow flag that listed the South Essex’s battle honours about the badge at its centre and with the Union flag sewn into its upper corner. Both flags were holed, both scorched, both had been in battle before, arid it was to the flags, more than to King or country, that a man gave his love and allegiance. Around the two Ensigns who carried the standards were the Sergeants, halberd-blades shining in the sun. If the French wanted to take the flags they would have to get past the men with the long, savage, axe-headed spears.
The Battalion marched with bayonets fixed and muskets loaded. They trampled the wheat flat.
Ahead of them, spread out like beaters, was the Light Company. Sergeant Patrick Harper shouted at them to spread out more. He had waited all morning for an officer to come with black hair and a scar on his left cheek, but there had been no sign of Sharpe. Yet Harper refused to give up hope. He stubbornly insisted that Sharpe was alive, that he would come today, that Sharpe would never let the South Essex fight without being present. If Sharpe had to come out of the grave, he would come.
Captain d’Alembord listened to the thunder of guns to his right. British guns were on the plain now, firing from the Arinez Hill at the second French line. D’Alembord, who was at his first great battle, thought the sound was more terrible than any he had ever heard. He knew that soon the six French guns across the river would open fire. It seemed to Peter d’Alembord, as he marched ever closer to the silent, barricaded village, that each of the French guns was pointing directly at him. He glanced at Harper, taking comfort from the apparent stolidity of the huge Irishman.
Then the guns disappeared in smoke.
Lieutenant Colonel Leroy saw a pencil line go up and down in the sky and knew that a roundshot was coming towards him. He kept his horse going straight, held his breath, and watched with relief as the ball thumped into the grass ahead of the Battalion, bounced overhead and rolled behind them.
The shots came over the village and plunged onto the meadow that the British Battalions crossed. The first volley did no damage, except for the ball that had bounced over Leroy’s head. It bounced again, once more, and rolled towards the South Essex’s bandsmen who waited at the rear for the wounded. A drummer boy, seeing the ball roll slow as a cricket ball that might not make the boundary, ran to check it with his foot.
`Stop!’ A Sergeant shouted at the boy, but he was too late. The drummer put his foot in the ball’s path, it seemed to roll so innocuously, so slowly, and, as the boy grinned, it took his foot off in blood and pain.
`You stupid bastard!’ The Sergeant slapped him and hauled him upright. `You stupid god-damned bastard! How many god-damn times have you been told?’ The other drummer boys watched silently as their comrade was carried sobbing back to the surgeons. The drummer’s foot, still in the boot that he had polished in honour of the battle, lay in the grass.