Each man had loaded carefully. They had cleaned their rifle barrels by the old expedient of pissing down the barrels, sluicing the caked powder deposits loose, then pouring out the fouled liquid. Then, when the barrels had dried, and using the extra-fine powder they carried in their horns, the Riflemen had charged their rifles. They had wrapped their bullets in a scrap of greased leather that not only helped the bullet grip the spiralling lands in the barrel, but, when the weapon was fired, expanded to block any of the exploding gas escaping past the bullet through the barrel’s grooves. It took over a minute to load a rifle so meticulously, but the resultant shot would be as accurate as any weapon in the world.
Now, in the brief space and time they had won, the Riflemen aimed at the gunners who were visible above the hedge of La Haye Sainte’s kitchen garden. The range was a hundred yards; a simple rifle shot, but misted by the drifting smoke. The gunners in the garden were too busy serving their guns to be aware of the threat.
Dunnett did not hurry his men. He must have been tempted to urge them to fire quickly, for the French skirmishers were regrouping at the foot of the slope, but instead he trusted his men and they did not disappoint him.
The first rifles crashed their brass butts into shoulders bruised raw by a day’s fighting. White smoke spurted across the slope. The French skirmishers began firing uphill and two Greenjackets lurched backwards. Other Riflemen still took careful aim. A gunner stared over his rammer at the slope and a bullet took him in his open mouth. A French artillery officer spun backwards, half clambered up, then began crawling under his gun’s trail. More rifles fired. The officer slumped flat. A handful of gunners fled to the farmhouse where they crowded and obstructed each other in the narrow door, and where they were struck by a flail of rifle-fire. Those Greenjackets who had already fired reloaded, not with the fine powder and wrapped bullet, but by tap loading with a normal cartridge. Then they turned their weapons on the skirmishers.
“Withdraw!” Dunnett, the executions neatly carried out, shouted at his men.
“Got the bastard!” Harper shouted.
“Where?”
“Look at the tree, then left thirty yards!”
Sharpe was downhill of Harper. “Kneel down. Aim your rifle at the farm.”
Harper, bemused, obeyed. He braced his left leg forward, knelt on his right knee, and aimed his rifle at the kitchen garden which seemed to be filled with dead artillerymen. The first Riflemen were already running uphill. “Hurry, for Christ’s sake!” Harper muttered.
Sharpe lay flat on the ground and thrust his rifle between Harper’s right thigh and left calf. Now Sharpe was effectively hidden from the staff officers close to the Prince who were all staring at the slaughtered gunners in the farm’s garden. The Prince’s horse was sideways on to the valley, presenting the Prince’s left shoulder to Sharpe’s rifle sights.
Sharpe had not had time to load with the good powder, or wrap a ball in leather. Instead he was using the commonplace coarse-powder cartridge, but if God_was good this evening then an ordinary musket cartridge would suffice to avenge a thousand dead men and perhaps to save the lives of a thousand more.
“God save Ireland,” Harper hissed, “but will you bloody hurry yourself?”
“Don’t fire till I do,” Sharpe said calmly.
“We’ll bloody die together if you don’t hurry!” Sharpe and Harper were almost the last Riflemen on the slope. The rest were sprinting back to safety, while the enraged Voltigeurs were hurrying after them. Harper changed his aim to point his rifle at a French officer who seemed particularly lively.
Sharpe aimed at the Prince’s belly. The Young Frog was no more than a hundred paces away, close enough for Sharpe to see the ivory hilt of his big sabre. The rifle bullet would fall a foot over a hundred paces, so Sharpe raised the muzzle a tiny fraction.
“For the love of Ireland, will you bloody kill the bastard?”
“Ready?” Sharpe said. “Fire!”
Both men fired together. Sharpe’s rifle hammered his shoulder as smoke gouted to hide the Prince.