‘I’m going there. There is one more attack, just one, and then it’s all over. No one’s touched that central breach, and that’s where I’m going. Over the ravelin, down into the ditch, and I’ll probably break my bloody legs because there are no ladders or hay-bags, but that’s where I’m going.’ The faces were pale, staring at him as they squatted on the slope. ‘I’m going because the French are laughing at us, because they think they’ve beaten us, and I’m going to hammer those bastards into pulp for thinking that.’ He had not known how much anger there was inside him. He was not a speechmaker, never had been, but the anger gave him words. ‘I’m going to make those bastards wish they had never been born. They are going to die, and I can’t ask you to come with me, because you don’t have to come, but I’m going, and you can stay here and I won’t blame you.’ He stopped, out of words, unsure even of what he had said. The fires crackled behind him.
Patrick Harper stood up, stretched his huge arms and in one of them, catching the fires of death, was a vast axe, one of the many that had been issued to cut at the obstacles in the ditch. He stepped forward, over the dead, and turned to look at the Company. In the flame light, hard by the terrible ditch, Patrick Harper was like a warrior sprung from a forgotten age. He grinned at the Company. ‘Are you coming?’
There was nothing to make them go. Too often Sharpe had asked the impossible of them, and they had always given, but never in this horror, never like this, but they stood up, the pimps and the thieves, murderers and drunks, and they grinned at Sharpe and looked to their weapons. Harper looked down on his Captain. ‘It was a fine speech, sir, but mine was better. Would you be giving me that?’ He pointed to the seven-barreled gun.
Sharpe nodded, handed it over. ‘It’s loaded.’
Daniel Hagman, the poacher, took Sharpe’s rifle. No man was a better shot.
Lieutenant Price, nervously flexing his sabre, grinned at Sharpe. ‘I think I’m mad, sir.’
‘You can stay.’
‘And let you get to the women first? I’ll come.’
Roach and Peters, Jenkins and Clayton, Cresacre the wife-beater, all were there, and all felt the nervous exhilaration. This was a place fit to go mad in. Sharpe looked at them, counted them, loved them. ‘Where’s Hakeswill?’
‘Buggered off, sir. Haven’t seen him.’ Peters, a huge man, spat on the glacis.
Below them the last battalion was climbing the slope, almost within the firelight, and Sharpe knew that the Company must attack at the same time. ‘Ready?’ ‘Sir.’
A mile’s ride away, unknown to the rest of the army, the Third Division was clearing the last of the castle yards. It had taken nearly an hour’s hard fighting against the Germans and against the French who had pounded up from the central reserve in the Cathedral square. A mile in the other direction, equally unknown, Leith’s Fifth Division had stormed the San Vincente. The ladders had split apart, the wood green, and the men had fallen into a spiked ditch, but other ladders were brought up, the muskets smashed at the battlements, and they had won a second impossible victory. Badajoz had fallen. The Fifth Division were in the city’s streets, the Third possessed the castle, but the men in the ditch and on the dark glacis had no way of knowing. The news traveled faster inside the city. Rumors of defeat raced like a plague through the narrow streets, up on to the Santa Maria and Trinidad bastions and the defenders looked fearfully behind them. The city was dark, the castle silhouette unchanged, and they shrugged and told each other it could not be true. But what if it was? Fear batted at them with grim wings.
‘Make ready!’
By God! Another attack. The defenders turned from the city and looked over the walls. There, from the darkness, from the corpse-littered slope, another attack surged towards the ditch. More meat for the guns, and the fire flashed down the priming tubes, the smoke crashed out, and the mincer turned on.