They threw themselves into the trench beside the breach, the trench that protected the gun. It was already filled with men sheltering from the grapeshot. The French gunners, over their heads, would be sponging out and desperately ramming the huge, serge bags of powder into the vast muzzles while other men waited with the lumpy, black bags of grapeshot. Sharpe tried to forget them. He looked up the wall to the casement’s lip. It was high up, far higher than a man’s height, so he braced his back on the wall, cupped his hands and nodded to the Sergeant. Harper put a massive boot into Sharpe’s hands, cocked the seven-barreled gun, and nodded back. Sharpe heaved and Harper pushed up, the Irishman weighed as much as a small bullock. Sharpe grimaced with the effort and then two of the Connaught Rangers, seeing their intention, joined in and pushed up on Harper’s legs. The weight suddenly disappeared. Harper had grasped the casement’s edge with one hand, ignoring the musket bullets that flattened themselves on the wall beside him, threw the huge gun over the edge, aimed blindly, and pulled the trigger.
The recoil slammed him back, cruelly throwing him on the opposite lip of the trench, but he scrambled to his feet, screaming in Gaelic. Sharpe knew he was telling his countrymen to climb the wall and attack the gun crew while they were still dazed by the shattering blast. But it was hopeless trying to climb the steep wall, and Sharpe thought of the surviving gunners loading the huge cannon. ‘Patrick! Throw me!’
Harper seized Sharpe like a bag of oats, took one breath, and threw him bodily upwards. It was like being lifted by a mine explosion. Sharpe flailed, his rifle slipping from his shoulder, but he caught it by the barrel, saw the casement’s edge and desperately threw out his left hand. It held, he had a leg on the stonework; he knew the French muskets were firing at him, but he had no time to think of that for a man was running at him, a rammer raised to strike down, and Sharpe struck out with his rifle. It was a lucky effort. The brass-hiked butt caught the Frenchman on the temple, he staggered back, and Sharpe had dropped over the casement, found his feet, and the huge sword rasped out of the scabbard and the joy was there.
The gunners had been hit hard by the seven bullets that had ricocheted round the stone emplacement. Sharpe could see bodies lying beneath the huge, iron barrel of what he recognized as a siege gun, but there were still men alive and they were coming at him. He swung the long blade at them, drove them back, hacked down with the sword and felt it shudder as it cleaved a skull. He screamed at them, scaring them, slipped on new blood, tugged the blade free and swung again. The French went back. They outnumbered him six to one, but they were gunners more used to killing at a distance than seeing the face of their enemy wild over a naked sword. They cowered back and Sharpe turned, back to the casement’s edge, and found an arm clinging desperately to the stonework. He grabbed the wrist and heaved a Connaught Ranger into the sunken gun-pit. The man’s eyes were bright with excitement. Sharpe yelled at him. ‘Help the others up! Use your sling!’
A musket ball went past his head, clanging off the barrel of the gun, and Sharpe whirled to see the familiar uniforms of French infantry running down the stone stairs to rescue the gun. He went for them, wild with the madness of battle, and the crazy thought whirled in his head that he wished the mean-faced bastard clerk in Whitehall could see him now. Perhaps then Whitehall would know what its soldiers did, but there was no time for the thought because the infantry were coming down the narrow space beside the barrel. He leaped at them, shouting and lunging with the point to drive them back and he knew he was outnumbered.
They checked, let him come, and then countered with their long bayonets. The sword was not long enough! He swung at them, smashing bayonets to the side, but another came past his swing and he felt the blade catch in his greatcoat. He seized the barrel with his left hand, pulled the man off balance and brought the great brass hilt of the sword down on his head. He was forced back. Another bayonet flickered at him, making him dodge wildly so that he slipped against the siege gun, his sword was whirling uselessly, flailing for balance, and he saw the bayonets above him. His anger was useless because he could not parry.