filling the air with the nauseous stench of rotted eggs.
The drummers beat on, timing the long march north. For the moment it
was a battle of artillerymen, the puny British six-pounders firing into
the smoke cloud where the bigger Mahratta guns pounded at the advancing
redcoats. Sweat trickled down Sharpe’s belly, it stung his eyes and it
dripped from his nose. Flies buzzed by his face. He pulled the sabre
free and found that its handle was slippery with perspiration, so he
wiped it and his right hand on the hem of his red coat. He suddenly
wanted to piss badly, but this was not the time to stop and unbutton
breeches. Hold it, he told himself, till the bastards are beaten. Or
piss in your pants, he told himself, because in this heat no one would
know it from sweat and it would dry quickly enough. Might smell,
though.
Better to wait. And if any of the men knew he had pissed his pants he
would never live it down. Pisspants Sharpe. A ball thumped overhead,
so close that its passage rocked Sharpe’s shako. A fragment of
something whirred to his left. A man was on the ground, vomiting
blood. A dog barked as another tugged blue guts from an opened belly.
The beast had both paws on the corpse to give its tug purchase. A
file-closer kicked the dog away, but as soon as the man was gone the
dog ran back to the body. Sharpe wished he could have a good wash. He
knew he was lousy, but then everyone was lousy.
Even General Wellesley was probably lousy. Sharpe looked eastwards and
saw the General spurring up behind the kilted 78th. Sharpe had been
Wellesley’s orderly at Assaye and as a result he knew all the staff
officers who rode behind the General. They had been much friendlier
than the 74th’s officers, but then they had not been expected to treat
Sharpe as an equal.
Bugger it, he thought. Maybe he should take Urquhart’s advice. Go
home, take the cash, buy an inn and hang the sabre over the serving
hatch. Would Simone Joubert go to England with him? She might like
running an inn. The Buggered Dream, he could call it, and he would
charge army officers twice the real price for any drink.
The Mahratta guns suddenly went silent, at least those that were
directly ahead of the 74th, and the change in the battle’s noise made
Sharpe peer ahead into the smoke cloud that hung over the crest just a
quarter-mile away. More smoke wreathed the 74th, but that was from the
British guns. The enemy gun smoke was clearing, carried northwards on
the small wind, but there was nothing there to show why the guns at the
centre of the Mahratta line had ceased fire. Perhaps the buggers had
run out of ammunition. Some hope, he thought, some bloody hope. Or
perhaps they were all reloading with canister to give the approaching
redcoats a rajah’s welcome.
God, but he needed a piss and so he stopped, tucked the sabre into his
armpit, then fumbled with his buttons. One came away. He swore,
stooped to pick it up, then stood and emptied his bladder onto the dry
ground. Then Urquhart was wheeling his horse.
“Must you do that now, Mister Sharpe?” he asked irritably.
Yes, sir, three bladders full, sir, and damn your bloody eyes, sir.
“Sorry, sir,” Sharpe said instead. So maybe proper officers didn’t
piss?
He sensed the company was laughing at him and he ran to catch up,
fiddling with his buttons. Still there was no gunfire from the
Mahratta centre. Why not? But then a cannon on one of the enemy
flanks fired slantwise across the field and the ball grazed right
through number six company, ripping a front rank man’s feet off and
slashing a man behind through the knees. Another soldier was limping,
his leg deeply pierced by a splinter from his neighbour’s bone.
Corporal McCallum, one of the file-closers, tugged men into the gap
while a piper ran across to bandage the wounded men. The injured would
be left where they fell until after the battle when, if they still