to countermand Hakeswill’s authority, and Hakeswill was determined to change that. The Sergeant’s face twitched. There was nothing he could do at this moment, but Mister Fitzgerald, he told himself, would be taught his lesson, and the sooner it was taught the better.
‘You see those trees ahead?’ Fitzgerald explained to Garrard. ‘We’re going to clear the Tippoo’s boys out of them.’
‘How many of the bastards, sir?’
‘Hundreds!’ Fitzgerald answered cheerfully. ‘And all of them quaking at the knees to think that the Havercakes are coming to give them a thrashing.’
The Tippoo’s boys might be quaking, but they could clearly see the three battalions approaching and their rocketmen sent up a fiery barrage in greeting. The missiles climbed through the darkening sky, their exhaust flames unnaturally bright as they spewed volcanoes of sparks into the smoke trails that mingled as the rockets reached their apogee and then plunged towards the British and Indian infantry. ‘No breaking ranks!’ an officer shouted, and the three battalions marched stolidly on as the opening barrage plunged down to explode all around them. Some jeers greeted the barrage’s inaccuracy, but the officers and sergeants shouted for silence. More rockets climbed and fell. Most screamed erratically off course, but a few came close enough to make men duck, and one exploded just a few feet from the 33rd’s Light Company so that the sharp-edged scraps of its shattered tin nose cone whistled about their ears. Men laughed at their narrow escape, then someone saw that Lieutenant Fitzgerald was staggering. ‘Sir!’
‘It’s nothing, boys, nothing,’ Fitzgerald called. A scrap of the rocket’s cylinder had torn open his left arm, and there was a gash on the back of his head that was dripping blood from the ends of his hair, but he shook off any help. ‘Takes more than a black man’s rocket to knock down an Irishman,’ he said happily. ‘Ain’t that right, O’Reilly?’
‘It is, sir,’ the Irish Private answered.
‘Got skulls like bloody buckets, we have,’ Fitzgerald said, and crammed his tattered shako back on his head. His left arm was numb, and blood had soaked his sleeve to the wrist, but he was determined to keep going. He had taken worse injuries on the hunting field and still been in his saddle at the death of the fox.
Hakeswill’s resentment of Fitzgerald seethed. How dare a mere lieutenant overrule him? A bloody child! Not nineteen years old yet, and still with the bog water wet behind his ears. Hakeswill slashed at a cactus with his halberd, and the savagery of the gesture dislodged the musket that was slung on his left shoulder. The Sergeant never usually carried a musket, but tonight he was armed with the halberd, the musket, a bayonet and a brace of pistols. Except for the brief fight at Malavelly it had been years since Hakeswill had been in a battle and he was not sure he wanted to fight another this night, but if he did then he would make damned sure that he carried more weapons than any heathen enemy he might meet.
The sun had long gone by the time Wellesley halted the three battalions, though a lambent light still suffused the western sky and, under its pale glow, the 33rd formed line. The two sepoy battalions waited a quarter of a mile behind the 33rd. The rocket trails seemed brighter now as they climbed into a cloudless twilight sky where the first few stars pricked the dark. The missiles hissed as they streaked overhead, their smoke trails made lurid by the spitting flames. Spent rockets lay on the ground with small pale flames flickering feebly from their exhausts. The weapons were spectacular, but so inaccurate that even the inexperienced 33rd no longer feared them, but their relief was tempered by a sudden display of bright sparks at the lip of the aqueduct’s embankment. The sparks were instantly extinguished by a cloud of powder smoke, and the sound of musketry followed a few seconds
later, but the range was too great and the balls spent themselves harmlessly.
Wellesley galloped his horse to Major Shee’s side, spoke briefly, then spurred on. ‘Flank companies!’ the Colonel shouted. ‘Advance in line!’