fortress. A red-haired lieutenant led them, a claymore in his hand.
The Lieutenant was climbing the centre of the breach, while Sharpe was
trying to clamber up the steeper flank. The Highlanders went past
Sharpe, screaming at the enemy, and the sight of their red coats made
the British gunners cease fire, and immediately the breach summit
filled with robed men who carried curved swords with blades as thick as
cleavers. Swords clashed, muskets crashed, and the red-haired
Lieutenant shook like a gaffed eel as a scimitar sliced into his belly.
He turned and fell towards Sharpe, dropping his claymore. A line of
defenders was now firing down the breach, while a huge Arab, who looked
seven feet tall to Sharpe, stood in the centre with a reddened scimitar
and dared any man to challenge him. Two did, and both he threw back in
a shower of blood.
“Light Company!” Sharpe shouted.
“Give those bastards fire! Fire!”
Some muskets banged behind him and the row of defenders seemed to
stagger back, but they closed up again, rallied by the huge man with
the bloodstained scimitar. Sharpe had his left hand on the broken
shoulder of the wall and he used it to haul himself up, then twisted
aside as the closest Arabs turned and fired at him. The balls
whiplashed past as a naming lump of wadding struck Sharpe on the cheek.
He let go of the wall and fell backwards as a grinning man tried to
stab him with a bayonet. Dear God, but the breach was steep! His
cheek was burnt and his new coat scorched. The Scots tried again,
surging up the centre of the breach to be met by a line of Arab blades.
More Arabs came from inside the fortress and poured a volley of musket
fire down the face of the ramp. Sharpe aimed his musket at the tall
Arab and pulled the trigger. The gun hammered into his shoulder, but
when the smoke cleared the big man was still standing and still
fighting. The Arabs were winning here, they were pressing down the
face of the breach and chanting a blood-curdling war cry as they
killed. A man rammed a bayonet at Sharpe, he parried it with his own,
but then an enemy grasped Sharpe’s musket by the muzzle and tugged it
upwards. Sharpe cursed, but held on, then saw a scimitar slashing
towards him and so he let go of the musket and fell back again.
“Bastards,” he swore, then saw the dead Scottish Lieutenant’s claymore
lying on the stones. He picked it up and swept it at the ankles of the
Arabs above him, and the blade bit home and threw one man down, and the
Scots were charging up the breach again, climbing over their own dead
and screaming a raw shout of hate that was matched by the Arabs’ cries
of victory.
Sharpe climbed again. He balanced on the steep stones and hacked with
the claymore, driving the enemy back. He scrambled up two more feet,
wreathed in bitter smoke, and reached the spot where he could grip the
wall at the edge of the breach. All he could do now was hold onto the
stone with his left hand and thrust and swing with the sword. He drove
men back, but then the big Arab saw him and came across the breach,
bellowing at his comrades to leave the redcoat’s death to his scimitar.
He raised the sword high over his head, like an executioner taking aim,
and Sharpe was off balance.
“Push me, Tom!” he shouted, and Garrard put a hand on Sharpe’s arse
and shoved him hard upwards just as the scimitar started downwards, but
Sharpe had let go of the wall and reached out to hook his left hand
behind the tall man’s ankle. He tugged hard and the man shouted in
alarm as his feet slid out from under him and as he bumped down the
breach’s flank.
“Now kill him!” Sharpe bellowed and a half-dozen redcoats attacked the
fallen man with bayonets as Sharpe hacked at the Arabs coming to the
big man’s rescue.
His claymore clashed with scimitars, the blades ringing like
blacksmith’s hammers on anvils. The big man was twisting and twitching