defenders alike, and so throw back the impudent handful of redcoats who
had turned his rear.
Then the attackers outside the fort, who had despaired of making
another charge into the smoke- and blood-stinking alley where so many
had died, heard the fight on the ramparts and so they came back,
flooding into the shadow of the arch and there aiming up at the fire
steps The muskets hammered, more men came, and the Cobras were
assailed from in front and from below.
“Rockets!” Dodd shouted, and some of his men lit the missiles and
tossed them down into the passageway, but they were nervous of the
attackers coming along the top of the rampart. Those attackers were
big men, crazed with battle, slashing with swords and bayonets as they
snarled their way along the wall. Sergeant Green’s men fired from
below, picking off defenders and forcing others to duck.
“Fire across! Fire across!” Captain Campbell, down in the passageway,
had seen the defenders thickening in front of the men attacking along
the tops of the walls and now he cupped his hands and shouted at the
men behind the front ranks of the attackers.
“Fire across!” He pointed, showing them that they should angle their
fire over the passageway to strike the defenders on the opposite wall
and the men,
understanding him, loaded their muskets. It took a few seconds, but at
last the crossfire began and the pressure in front of Sharpe gave
way.
He swung the huge sword backhanded, half severing a man’s head, twisted
the blade, thrust it into a belly, twisted it again, and suddenly the
Cobras were backing away, terrified of the bloody blades.
The second gate was opened. Campbell was the first man through and now
there was only one gate left. His sergeant had brought a score of men
into the passageway and those Scotsmen began to fire up at the walls,
and the Cobras were crumbling now because there were redcoats below
them on both sides, and more were hacking their way along the rampart,
and the defenders were pinned in a small place with nowhere to go. The
only steps to the gateway’s fire step were in redcoat hands, and Dodd’s
men could either jump or surrender. A piper had started playing, and
the mad skirl of the music drove the attackers to a new fury as they
closed on the remnants of Dodd’s Cobras. The redcoats were screaming a
terrible war cry that was a compound of rage, madness and sheer terror.
Sharpe’s tattered white facings were now so soaked in blood that it
looked as if he wore the red-trimmed coat of the 33rd again. His arm
was tired, his hip was a great aching sore, and the wall was still not
clear. A musket ball snatched at his sleeve, another fanned his bare
head, and then he snarled at an enemy, cut again, and Campbell had the
last bar out of its brackets and his men were heaving on the gate, and
the attackers who had come from outside the fort were pulling on it,
while beyond the outermost arch, on the slope above the ravine, an
officer beckoned to all the troops waiting to the north.
A cheer sounded, and a flood of redcoats ran down into the ravine and
up the track towards the Inner Fort. They smelt loot and women.
The gates were open. The fortress in the sky had fallen.
Dodd was the last man on Sharpe’s wall. He knew he was beaten, but he
was no coward, and he came forward, sword in hand, then recognized the
bloody man opposing him.
“Sergeant Sharpe,” he said, and raised his gold-hilted sword in an
ironic salute. He had once tried to persuade Sharpe to join him in the
Cobras, and Sharpe had been tempted, but fate had kept him in his red
coat and brought him to this last meeting on Gawilghur’s ramparts.
“I’m Mister Sharpe now, you bastard,” Sharpe said, and he waved
Lockhart and Garrard back, then jumped forward, cutting with the
claymore, but Dodd parried it easily and lunged at Sharpe, piercing his
coat and glancing the sword point off a rib. Dodd stepped back, nicked