“He’s finished,” one of the Lancers said, then slid out of his saddle and knelt beside the Englishman. He unsheathed a knife and cut at the straps of Lord John’s sabretache that clinked with coins. He tossed the pouch up to his companion, then slit open the Englishman’s pockets, starting with his breeches. “The dirty bougre pissed himself, see?” The Lancer spoke with a Belgian accent. “Rich as a pig in shit, this one. Here!” He had found more coins in the pockets of Lord John’s breeches. The Lancer ripped away Lord John’s silk stock and tore at his shirt. Lord John tried to speak, but the Lancer slapped his face. “Quiet, shitface!” Under Lord John’s shirt he found a golden chain with a golden locket. He snapped the chain with one jerk of his hand, clicked the locket lid open with his bloody thumb, and whistled when he saw the golden-haired beauty whose picture lay inside. “Have a look at that piece of meat! Last time he’ll screw her, eh? She’ll have to find someone else to warm her up.” He tossed the locket to his companion, pulled the watch from Lord John’s fob, then rolled the wounded man onto his belly to get at the pockets in his coat’s tail. He found a folding spyglass that he shoved into his own pockets. The Hussar who had blinded Lord John was searching the Englishman’s saddlebags, but now shouted a warning that the enemy’s light cavalry was getting dangerously close.
The Lancer stood, put his right boot on Lord John’s back and used his lordship as a makeshift mounting block. He and his companion wheeled away. So far it had been a good day; the two Belgians had set out on their charge with the idea of hunting down a richly dressed officer and, by finding Lord John, they had taken at least a year’s pay in plunder. The Hussar took Lord John’s horse.
Lord John slowly, slowly twisted his burning, bleeding, blinded eyes from the mud. He wanted to cry, but his eyes were like bars of fire that annealed his tears. He moaned. The glory had turned obscene, to an agony that filled his whole universe. The pain burned and racked at his back and leg. The pain tore and filled him. He screamed, but he could not move, he cried but no help came. It was over, all the honour and the excitement and all the gold-bright future, all reduced to a bleeding blind horror face down in the mud.
The survivors of the British charge came home slowly. There were not many. A few riderless horses formed ranks with the survivors as the rolls were taken. One regiment had charged with three hundred and fifty troopers, of whom only twenty one came home. The rest were dead, or dying, or prisoners. The British heavy cavalry had broken a whole French corps, and themselves with it.
Steam rose from the wet fields. The day was hot now.
The Prussians had not come.
CHAPTER 17
“There.” Rebecque pointed at the bodies which lay in the grass east of La Haye Sainte. They were scattered in a fan shape, like men killed as they spread out from a single point of attack. At the centre of the fan, where men had bunched together in desperate defence, the bodies were in heaps. Sharpe glowered while Harper, a few paces behind the Prince’s staff, crossed himself at the horrid sight.
“They were Hanoverians. Good troops, all of them.” Rebecque spoke bleakly, then sneezed. The drying weather was bringing back his hay fever.
“What happened?” Sharpe asked.
“He advanced them in line, of course.” Rebecque did not look at Sharpe as he spoke.
“There were cavalry?”
“Of course. I tried to stop him, but he won’t listen. He thinks he’s the next Alexander the Great. He wants me to have an orange banner made that a man will carry behind him at all times.` Rebecque’s voice tailed away.
“God damn him.”
“He’s only twenty-three, Sharpe, he’s a young man and he means very well.” Rebecque, fearing that his previous words might be construed as disloyal, found excuses for the Prince.
“He’s a Goddamned butcher,” Sharpe said icily. “A butcher with pimples.”