powder smoke gouted by the defenders’ cannon and muskets and it was
that smoke which protected Kenny’s men as they hurried up the last few
yards to the broken gate.
“Protect the sappers!” Kenny shouted and then, his sword in his hand,
he clambered over the broken timbers and led his attackers into the
entrance passage.
Facing Kenny was a stone wall. He had expected it, but even so he was
astonished by the narrowness of the passage that turned sharply to his
left and then climbed steeply to the second unbroken gate.
“There it is!”
he shouted, and led a surge of men up the cobbled road towards the
iron-studded timbers.
And hell was loosed.
The fire steps above the gateway passage were protected by the outer
wall’s high rampart, and Dodd’s men, though they could hear the musket
balls beating against the stones, were safe from the wild fire that
lashed across the deep ravine. But the redcoats beneath them, the men
following Colonel Kenny into the passage, had no protection. Musket
fire, stones and rockets slashed into a narrow space just twenty-five
paces long and eight wide. The leading axe men were among the first to
die, beaten down by bullets. Their blood splashed high on the walls.
Colonel Kenny somehow survived the opening salvo, then he was struck on
the shoulder by a lump of stone and driven to the ground. A rocket
slashed past his face, scorching his cheek, but he picked himself up
and, sword in numbed hand, shouted at his men to keep going. No one
could hear him. The narrow space was filled with noise, choking with
smoke in which men died and rockets flared. A musket ball struck Kenny
in the hip and he twisted, half fell, but forced himself to stand and,
with blood pouring down his white breeches, limped on. Then another
musket ball scored down his back and threw him forward. He crawled on
bloodslicked stones, sword still in his hand, and shuddered as a third
ball hit him in the back. He still managed to reach the second gate
and reared up to strike it with his sword, and then a last musket ball
split his skull and left him dead at the head of his men. More bullets
plucked at his corpse.
Kenny’s surviving men tried to brave the fire. They tried to climb the
slope to the second gate, but the murderous fire did not cease, and the
dead made a barrier to the living. Some men attempted to fire up at
their tormentors on the fire step but the sun was high now and they
aimed into a blinding glare, and soon the redcoats began to back down
the passage. The weltering fire from above did not let up. It flayed
the Scotsmen, ricocheted between the walls, struck dead and dying and
living, while the rockets, lit and tossed down, seared like great
comets between the stone walls and filled the space with a sickening
smoke.
The dead were burned by rocket flames which exploded their cartridge
boxes to pulse gouts of blood against the black walls, but the smoke
hid the survivors who, under its cover, stumbled back to the hill
outside the fortress. They left a stone-walled passage filled with the
dying and the dead, trickling with blood, foul with smoke and echoing
with the moans of the wounded.
“Cease fire!” Colonel Dodd shouted.
“Cease fire!”
The smoke cleared slowly and Dodd stared down at a pit of carnage in
which a few bodies twitched.
“They’ll come again soon,” Dodd warned his Cobras.
“Fetch more stones, make sure your muskets are loaded. More rockets!”
He patted his men on the shoulders, congratulating them. They grinned
at him, pleased with their work. It was like killing rats in a barrel.
Not one Cobra had been hit, the first enemy assault had failed and the
others, Dodd was certain, would end in just the same way. The Lord of
Gawilghur was winning his first victory.
Major Stokes had found Sharpe shortly before Kenny made his assault,
and the two men had been joined first by Syud Sevajee and his
followers, then by the dozen cavalrymen who accompanied Eli Lockhart.