gatehouse. The few defenders who had manned the wall above the ravine
had fled, but as soon as the redcoats breasted the slope of the hill to
see the gatehouse ahead, the enemy musketry began.
“Keep running!” Sharpe shouted, though it was hardly a run. They
staggered and stumbled, their scabbards and haversacks banging and
flapping, and the sun burned down relentlessly and the dry ground
spurted puffs of dust as enemy musket balls flicked home. Sharpe was
dimly aware of a cacophony of musketry from his left, the fire of the
thousands of redcoats on the other side of the ravine, but the
gatehouse defenders were sheltered by the outer parapet. A group of
those defenders was manhandling a cannon round to face the new
attack.
“Just keep going!”
Sharpe called, the breath rasping in his throat. Christ, but he was
thirsty.
Thirsty, hungry and excited. The gatehouse was fogged by smoke as its
defenders fired their muskets at the unexpected attack that was coming
out of the west.
Off to his right Sharpe could see more defenders, but they were not
firing, indeed they were not even formed in ranks. Instead they
bunched beside a low wall that seemed to edge some gardens and supinely
watched the confrontation. A building reared up beyond that, half
obscured by trees. The place was huge! Hilltop after hilltop lay
within the vast ring of Gawilghur’s Inner Fort, and there had to be a
thousand places for the enemy to assemble a force to attack Sharpe’s
open right flank, but he dared not worry about that possibility. All
that mattered now was to reach the gatehouse and kill its defenders and
so let a torrent of redcoats through the entrance.
The cannon fired from the gatehouse. The ball struck the dry ground
fifty yards ahead of Sharpe and bounced clean over his head. The smoke
of the gun spread in front of the parapet, spoiling the aim of the
defenders, and Sharpe blessed the gunners and prayed that the smoke
would linger. He had a stitch in his side, and his ribs still hurt
like hell from the kicking that Hakeswill had given him, but he knew
they had surprised this enemy, and an enemy surprised was already half
beaten.
The smoke thinned and the muskets flamed from the wall again, making
more smoke. Sharpe turned to shout at his men.
“Come on!
Hurry!” He was crossing a stretch of ground where some of the garrison
had made pathetic little lodges of thin branches propped against half
dead trees and covered with sacking. Ash showed where fires had
burned. It was a dumping ground. There was a rusting iron cannon
carriage, a stone trough that had split in two and the remains of an
ancient windlass made of wood that had been sun-whitened to the colour
of bone. A small brown snake twisted away from him. A woman, thin as
the snake and clutching a baby, fled from one of the shelters. A cat
hissed at him from another. Sharpe dodged between the small trees,
kicking up dust, breathing dust. A musket ball flicked up a puff of
fire ash, another clanged off the rusting gun carriage.
He blinked through the sweat that stung his eyes to see that the gate
passage’s inner wall was lined with white-coated soldiers. The wall
was a good hundred paces long, and its fire step was reached by
climbing the flight of stone steps that led up beside the innermost
gate.
Campbell and his men were running towards that gate and Sharpe was now
alongside them. He would have to fight his way up the stairs, and he
knew that it would be impossible, that there were too many defenders,
and he flinched as the cannon fired again, only this time it belched a
barrelful of canister that threw up a storm of dust devils all about
Sharpe’s leading men.
“Stop!” he shouted.
“Stop! Form line!” He was close to the wall, damned close, not more
than forty paces.
“Present!” he shouted, and his men raised their muskets to aim at the
top of the wall. Smoke still hid half the rampart, though the other
half was clear and the defenders were firing fast. A Scotsman