Those staff officers who still lived, and they were not many, had sensibly retreated from the ravaged tree and now stood their horses well back from the ridge’s summit. Sharpe could not see the Duke, but he found the Prince in his fur-edged uniform. The Prince was two hundred paces off, close to the highway and surrounded by his Dutch staff. It was a long shot for a rifle loaded with common cartridge instead of the extra-fine powder, and it would be a tricky shot because of the men who crowded close to the Prince.
“Not here!” Harper insisted.
A shattered gun limber and two dead horses lay not far away and Sharpe crouched in the wreckage to see whether it gave him the cover he needed.
“You’ll never hit the bastard from this distance,” Harper said. “They don’t call him Slender Billy for nothing.”
“I will if God’s on my side.”
“I wouldn’t rely on God today.” The Irishman stared about the ridge top, seeking an idea, then saw a file of green-jacketed Riflemen running towards the valley. The Prince had spurred his horse to follow the Riflemen, thus taking himself closer to the embattled crest of the ridge.
“Where are those lads going?” Harper asked.
Sharpe saw the Greenjackets, and understood. The Duke must have gathered the remnants of his Riflemen and ordered them to stop the French guns firing from La Haye Sainte. It was a desperate throw, but Riflemen alone might succeed in silencing the murderous guns. Fifty Greenjackets were preparing to charge over the crest, and the Prince, who had never lacked bravery, could not resist going forward to watch their fight.
Sharpe suddenly upped and ran towards the Riflemen who had stopped just short of the crest and now crouched in a group as they fixed their long, brass-handled sword-bayonets onto their rifle muzzles. “You’re not coming,” he shouted at Harper who had begun to follow him.
“And how will you stop me?”
“You bloody deserve to die.” Sharpe dropped at the back of the squad of Riflemen, all of whose faces were blackened by the powder scraps exploded from their rifles’ pans. Their commanding officer was Major Warren Dunnett whose face showed understandable resentment when he recognized Sharpe. “Are you taking over?” he asked stiffly.
“It would be a great honour to serve under your command once again, Dunnett.” Sharpe could be very tactful when he wished.
Dunnett, pleased with the compliment, smiled grimly. “We make` this very quick!” he spoke to his fifty men. “Use the blades to clear the slope, then make your shots count! Once you’ve fired, tap reload and hold off the Voltigeurs. You understand?” The men nodded, and Dunnett waited. He waited so long that Sharpe wondered whether Dunnett had lost his nerve, but instead it seemed that there was another identical group of Riflemen who were attacking from the far side of the highway and Dunnett’s men merely waited for their signal so that the two groups crossed the ridge crest at the same moment.
Sharpe looked behind him. The Prince was fifty yards away, but staring over the Riflemens’ heads towards La Haye Sainte. Sharpe, to lessen his chances of being recognized, smeared mud on his scarred face and shoved his tricorne hat into his belt.
From somewhere beyond the high-road a bugle called the familiar running triplets of the order to open fire. “That’s the signal, my boys! Let’s go!” Dunnett had waited six years to avenge himself on the French and now, his sabre drawn, he led the Riflemen over the crest.
The appearance of the Rifles was so sudden that the closest French skirmishers were trapped. The sword-bayonets rammed down, were kicked free, then carried on. Dunnett shouted an incoherent challenge and slashed madly with his sabre, not striking anyone, but hissing the blade so fiercely through the smoky air that the French scrambled to escape such an apparent maniac. The fifty Riflemen on the far side of the road attacked with the same sudden and vicious desperation, driving the panicked Voltigeurs down the long slope. The mad charge stopped a hundred yards short of La Haye Sainte as the Riflemen abandoned the pursuit of the French to take up their firing positions. First, before aiming, they undipped their sword-bayonets so that the heavy blades would not unbalance their rifles.