I will die here, he thought, just at the foot of the slope, and then he hated the bastards who would kill him and the anger drove him up, slipping on the rubble, unable to fight, only to climb, to carry the sword to the French flesh. There were men around him, screaming unintelligibly, and the air was thick with smoke, grapeshot, and flame. Harper was passing him, the huge axe held easily, and Sharpe, refusing to be second, drove his legs towards the dark sky beyond the row of shining blades.
‘Sharpe! Sharpe! Sharpe!’
Private Cresacre was dying, his guts strung blue on his lap, his tears for himself and for his wife, who he would suddenly miss though he had beat her cruelly. And Sergeant Read, the Methodist, the quiet man who never swore, or drank, was blind, and could not cry because the guns had taken his eyes. And past them, mad with lust, a battle madness, went the dark horde who followed Sharpe and tore their hands on the rough stone, going up the slope, up, where they had never dreamed to go, and some went back, torn by the guns, piling the new ditch as the other was piled, but the fine madness was on them.
‘Sharpe! Sharpe! Sharpe!’
You save your breath for climbing, but shouting dulls the fear, and who needs breath when death waits at the summit? A bullet clanged on Sharpe’s sword, jerking it in his hand, but it was whole, and the blades were near. He went to the right, his whole brain singing with the scream of death, and a stone moved beneath his left hand, throwing him, and a huge hand pushed at him, heaved him, and Sharpe grabbed at the thick chain that anchored the Chevatix de Frise. The top, death’s peak.
‘Sharpe! Sharpe! Sharpe!’
The French fired once more, the guns slamming backwards, and the new breach was ‘taken, two vast men standing at its crest, untouched by fire, and the French ran with nowhere to run, and Harper screamed at the sky because he had done a great thing.
Sharpe leaped, downhill, into the city, and the sword was a live thing in his hand. A breach was taken, death cheated, and death wanted a payment. The sword chopped down on the blue uniforms, and he did not see men, just enemy, and he ran, slipping, falling, down the breach until the ground was firm beneath him and he was inside. Inside! Badajoz. And he snarled at the bastards, killed them, found a gun crew cowering by a wall and remembered the song of death, the leaping flames. The sword hacked at them, cut them, chopped them, and an axe was whirled at them, and the French abandoned the new, low wall behind the breaches, because the night was lost.
A dark tide flowed over the breach, over the other breaches, a tide that made now no coherent sound. It was terrifying in its incoherence, the sound of the banshee, the keening of too much sorrow, too much death, and the madness turned to insensate rage, and they killed. They killed till their arms were tired, till they were soaked with blood, and there were not enough men to kill and they turned into the streets, a scrabbling, dark flood, up into Badajoz.
Harper leaped the wall built behind the breaches. A man cowered there, pleading, but the axe dropped and Harper’s lips were drawn back around his teeth and he was sobbing an anger at the city. There were more men ahead, blue-uniformed, and he ran at them, the axe circling, and Sharpe was there, and they killed because so many were dead, so much blood, an army had nearly died, and these were the bastards who had jeered at it. Blood and more blood. An account to be balanced with a ditch full of blood. Badajoz.
Sharpe was crying. Venting an anger that had waited for this moment. He stood, the sword dark red, and he wanted more Frenchmen to come to his. sword, and he stalked them, teeth bared, screaming at the night, and a body moved, a blue arm lifted, and the blade whirled, bit, was lifted again, and bit down once more, clean to the pavement.