“Bugger deserves it.”
Behind Sharpe the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers were white-faced and scared. Even the veterans who had endured the worst of the Spanish battles stood silent and bitter. They were frightened, not of the enemy, but of their own officers’ incompetence. Colonel Ford would not go near Sharpe, but just sat his horse under the trees and wondered why his right hand was shaking like a leaf.
D’Alembord, his sword still drawn, walked up to the two Riflemen. He stared past them at the captured colour of the 69th, then shook his head. “I came to thank you. If you hadn’t given the order to run, we’d be dead. And I’ve just been made a major.”
“Congratulations.”
“I’m pleased too.” D’Alembord spoke with a bitter sarcasm. He had wanted promotion, indeed it was the prime reason he had stayed with the battalion, but he resented the sudden price of his majority.
“You’re alive, Peter,” Sharpe consoled his friend, “you’re alive.”
“The bloody man.” D’Alembord stared savagely towards Ford. “The bloody, bloody man. Why didn’t he form square?”
Then, to the north, a bugle sounded. Fresh troops were visible at the crossroads, a mass of men who marched forward to make a new line across the battlefield. The horse artillery was among the infantry and, to their left, there was an impressive nia.ss of horsemen. The British cavalry had at last arrived.
“I suppose we’ve won this battle!” D’Alembord slowly sheathed his sword.
“I suppose we have,” Sharpe said.
But it felt horribly like a defeat.
Drums sounded, bayonets were levelled, and the newly formed British line marched forward. The infantry trod across the scorched straw, over the smears of blood, and around the dead and the dying bodies of horses and men.
From the southern end of the wood, where Saxe-Weimar’s men had held through the day, the Guards division attacked the western farms. The French infantry fought back, but could not hold. In the centre the redcoats marched through the stream, recaptured Gemioncourt farm, and went on up the slope. At the far left of the battlefield the Rifles drove the French back to recapture the eastern farms.
Every inch of ground that Marshal Ney had taken during the afternoon was regained. The British line, supported by guns and cavalry, ground on like a behemoth. The French, suddenly outnumbered, were forced to retreat towards Frasnes. Quatre Bras had held and the road to the Prussians was still open. The battle between Napoleon and Blcher still sounded loud in the summer’s evening, but that too faded away as the shadows of the western clouds lengthened dark across the landscape.
Lord John Rossendale, riding behind the British light cavalry, stopped where a Cuirassier’s body was sprawled beside the road. The man’s guts had been flayed clean from his belly and now lay in a blue-red dribble across fifteen feet of the highway’s churned surface. Lord John wanted to vomit, but only choked. He gasped for breath and twisted his horse away. A dead British skirmisher lay in the trampled rye. his skull laid open by a bullet. Flies were thick on the exposed brains. Next to the dead man was a French Voltigeur, blood thick in his belly and lap. The man was alive, but shivering with the trauma of his wound. He stared up at Lord John and asked for water. Lord John felt faint with shock. He turned his horse and galloped towards the crossroads where his servants were preparing supper.
In the barns behind the crossroads the surgeons were at their grisly work with knives and saws and probes. The amputated arms, hands, and legs were tossed into the farmyard. Lanterns were hung from the barn beams to light the operations. A Highlander, his right calf shattered by a French cannon-ball, refused to bite the leather gag and made not a sound as a surgeon took his leg off at the knee.
Sharpe and Harper, knowing they were not welcome to stay near the brooding Lieutenant-Colonel Ford, walked their horses back down the flank of the wood, but stopped well short of the crossroads. “I suppose I’m out of work,” Sharpe said.
“The bugger’ll want you back in the morning.”