“Fire!” Rebecque shouted angrily at the gunners.
The artillery Colonel jerked round, stared at Rebecque for an instant, then bellowed his own orders, but instead of ordering a killing volley into the tall rye, he commanded his men to retreat. The drivers whipped the horse teams onto the road while the gun crews manhandled the weapons back to hook them on to their limbers. The huge ammunition wagons set off for the crossroads, their massive iron-rimmed wheels digging great gouges into the road’s surface. The gun teams began to follow, but two teams collided, their limber wheels locked, and there was a sudden tangle of cursing drivers, stalled cannon and frightened horses.
Sharpe had spurred forward. “Where are you going?” he shouted in French across the chaos.
“Back!” the gunner Colonel shouted over the noise of an exploding howitzer shell.
“Stop at the farm! Stop at Gemioncourt!” Sharpe knew the panic could not be controlled here, where the French columns filled the air with menace, but perhaps the sturdy walls of Gemioncourt would give these gunners some necessary reassurance.
“Back! Back the gun away!” The Colonel slashed with his riding crop as he tried to disentangle the trapped limbers. Another volley of French howitzer-fire miraculously missed the melee of gunners and horses which, stung by the shells’ threat, magically disentangled itself. The fleeing Dutch guns crashed up onto the road, their chains and buckets swinging. Those gunners who had no riding place on the guns or limbers were running down the verges in an undisciplined retreat.
“Stop at the farm!” Sharpe bellowed after the gunner Colonel.
An howitzer shell screamed down to smash the wheel of the last gun limber. For a second the shell lay with a smoking fuse amidst the wreckage of the wheel, then it crashed apart in a deafening explosion. One horse died instantly, its guts flung red and wet across the road. Another screaming beast collapsed on broken hind legs. The rest of the team, panicking, tried to gallop free and only slewed the broken limber round. A gunner fell off his seat on the ammunition box and was crushed by the limber’s scraping violence. He clawed at the broken wheel that first dragged him across, then pinned him to the road. The other gunners ignored him; instead they slashed at the traces with swords or knives, eventually freeing the four live horses which galloped wild-eyed towards Gemioncourt. The dying horse was mercifully shot by an officer who then took off after his men, abandoning the gun.
The man under the limber was also abandoned. He was left screaming in a terrible wailing sob that made the nearest infantry look nervously round. Harper rode up to the man and saw the broken wheel spokes impaled in his belly and groin. He took the rifle off his shoulder, aimed it, and shot once.
The French skirmishers cheered their victory over the panicked gun teams, then turned their muskets on the nearest Belgian battalions. The Prince of Orange was shouting at his men to stand fast, to wait, but the attrition of the skirmishers was fraying their nerves. They began to edge backwards.
“They’ll not stand!” Harper warned Sharpe.
“The buggers bloody well will.” Sharpe spurred towards the nearest Belgians, but before he could even get close to the battalion a French column burst out of the rye and the Belgians, without even firing a volley, turned and ran. One moment they were a formed battalion and the next they were a mob. Sharpe reined in. Two howitzer shells exploded a few paces from his horse, both blasts beginning small fires among the rye. The French were cheering. The Prince was hitting at the running men with the flat of his sabre, but they feared an emperor far more than they feared a prince and so they kept on running. The other battalions were infected by the panic and also fled. The French skirmishers turned their force on the Prince’s staff.
Rebecque, his eyes red and swollen from hay fever, reined his horse alongside Sharpe. “This isn’t a very impressive beginning, is it?”
“Get out of here, sir!” Sharpe could hear the hiss and whiplash of musket bullets all around them.