Sharpe, his rifle reloaded, ran a few paces to his right, dropped to his knee, and looked for an enemy officer.
D’Alembord gave the smallest gasp. “Oh, God!”
“What is it?”
“Jesus Christ!” The blasphemy was uttered more in anger than in pain. D’Alembord had been hit, and the force of the blow had knocked him backwards, but he had somehow kept his footing even though the bullet had struck his right thigh. Now he staggered with his right hand clamped over the wound. Blood was seeping through his fingers. “It’s all right,” he said to Sharpe, “it doesn’t hurt.” He tried to take a pace forward, and almost fell. “It’s all right.” His face had gone pale with shock.
“Here!” Sharpe put an arm under d’Alembord’s shoulder and half carried him and half walked him up the slope.
D’Alembord was hissing with every step. “I’ll be all right. Leave me!”
“Shut up, Dally!”
Harper saw them as they crossed the ridge’s crest and galloped forward with Sharpe’s horse. “Take him back to the surgeons!” Sharpe called up to the Irishman, then gave d’Alembord a mighty heave that swung him painfully into the empty saddle. “Wrap your sash round the wound!” Sharpe told d’Alembord, then slapped the mare’s rump to speed her out of range of the skirmishers’ fire.
Sharpe turned back to the heated, choking air in the valley. The French were pressing everywhere. More frightening still, a column of enemy troops was marching towards La Haye Sainte, but that was not Sharpe’s business. His business was the enemy immediately in front and, reduced to being a Rifleman again, he knelt and searched for an officer or sergeant. He saw a man with a scabbard not a hundred yards away and fired. When the smoke cleared, the man was gone.
Harry Price backed nervously up the slope. “Where’s Peter?”
“He got one in the leg! It’s not serious.”
“This is bloody serious, sir! I’ve lost ten men, probably more.”
“Pull back. What’s the name of the new light company man?”
“Matthew Jefferson.”
Sharpe cupped his hands. “Captain Jefferson! Pull back!”
Jefferson waved a hand in reply, then ordered Huckfield to sound the whistle that recalled the skirmishers. The redcoats ran back to the crest, dropped again, and fired a last feeble volley at the French Voltigeurs. A shell exploded behind the crest, showering Jefferson with earth. A roundshot crashed past Sharpe, its sound like a sudden overwhelming wind. Musket-balls whip-cracked too close. Sharpe waited till Harry Price’s company was safely past him, then shouted at Price to run.
They ran back together, but Price tumbled, then gasped as the breath was knocked out of him by his fall. Sharpe twisted back to help him, but it was only a pair of ridiculous spurs that had tripped the younger man. “Take the damn things off, Harry!”
“I like them.” Price stumbled on. To their right and left other battalions were reluctantly climbing to their feet, then forming lines of four ranks. They could not fight off skirmishers lying down, nor did they dare risk a charge of the French cavalry that had reached the bottom of the slope, and a four rank line offered more protection against horsemen than a two rank formation. It also meant that every cannon-ball that hit could take as many as four men with it.
But there was nothing to be done, except suffer.
The French skirmishers, thick along the crest of the ridge, raked the battalions with musket-fire. The surviving British cannons hammered canister at the Voltigeurs, but their scattered formation saved the French from heavy casualties. The enemy Voltigeurs now ruled the ridge’s crest, while the British skirmishers, overwhelmed by the French mass, could only form on their battalions. Every few moments, when the enemy skirmishers became too insistent or advanced too far, a battalion would charge forward and drive them back. A single battalion volley also had the effect of clearing the enemy skirmishers off the crest, but they always returned, their losses made up from reinforcements despatched from the valley.
Cavalry could scour the Voltigeurs away, but the Duke had lost his heavy cavalry and was keeping his best remaining horsemen, the Germans and British light cavalry, to cover his retreat if disaster struck. He still had a Dutch cavalry brigade and the Prince of Orange was ordered; to bring it forward. They came, curb chains jingling and sabres drawn. “They’re just to clear the ridge face!” the Duke’s aide ordered. “No damned heroics. Just gallop along the face and sabre the skirmishers!”