the man up and pushed him on. The file-closers were making sure none
of the enemy bodies left behind the Scottish advance were dangerous.
They kicked swords and muskets out of injured men’s hands, prodded
apparently unwounded bodies with bayonets and killed any man who showed
a spark of fight. Two pipers were playing their ferocious music,
driving the Scots up the gentle slope where the big Arab drums had been
abandoned. Man after man speared the drum skins with bayonets as they
passed.
“Forward on! Forward on!” Urquhart bellowed as though he were on a
hunting field.
“To the guns!” Wellesley called.
“Keep going!” Sharpe bellowed at some laggards.
“Go on, you bastards, go on!”
The enemy gun line was at the crest of the low rise, but the Mahratta
gunners dared not fire because the remnants of the Lions of Allah were
between them and the redcoats. The gunners hesitated for a few
seconds, then decided the day was lost and fled.
“Take the guns!” Wellesley called.
Colonel Wallace spurred among the fleeing enemy, striking down with the
claymore, then reined in beside a gaudily painted eighteen pounder
“Come on, lads! Come on! To me!”
The Scotsmen reached the guns. Most had reddened bayonets, all had
sweat streaks striping their powder-blackened faces. Some began
rifling the limbers where gunners stored food and valuables.
“Load!” Urquhart called.
“Load!”
“Form ranks!” Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He ran forward and tugged
men away from the limbers.
“Leave the carts alone, boys! Form ranks! Smartly now!”
Sharpe, for the first time, could see down the long reverse slope.
Three hundred paces away were more infantry, a great long line of it
massed in a dozen ranks, and beyond that were some walled gardens and
the roofs of a village. The shadows were very long for the sun was
blazing just above the horizon. The Arabs were running towards the
stationary infantry.
“Where are the galloper guns?” Wallace roared, and an aide spurred
back down the slope to fetch the gunners.
“Give them a volley, Swinton!” Wellesley called.
The range was very long for a musket, but Swinton hammered the
battalion’s fire down the slope, and maybe it was that volley, or
perhaps it was the sight of the defeated Arabs that panicked the great
mass of infantry. For a few seconds they stood under their big bright
flags and then, like sand struck by a flood, they dissolved into a
rabble.
Cavalry trumpets blared. British and sepoy horsemen charged forward
with sabres, while the irregular horse, those mercenaries who had
attached themselves to the British for the chance of loot, lowered
their lances and raked back their spurs.
It was a cavalryman’s paradise, a broken enemy with nowhere to hide.
Some Mahrattas sought shelter in the village, but most ran past it,
throwing down their weapons as the terrible horsemen streamed into the
fleeing horde with sabres and lances slicing and thrusting.
“Puckaleesl’ Urquhart shouted, standing in his stirrups to look for the
men and boys who brought water to the troops. There was none in sight
and the 74th was parched, the men’s thirst made acute by the saltpetre
in the gunpowder which had fouled their mouths.
“Where the .. . ?”
Urquhart swore, then frowned at Sharpe.
“Mister Sharpe? I’ll trouble you to find our pucka lees
“Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, not bothering to hide his disappointment at
the order. He had hoped to find some loot when the 74th searched the
village, but instead he was to be a fetcher of water. He threw down
the musket and walked back through the groaning, slow-moving litter of
dead and dying men. Dogs were scavenging among the bodies.
“Forward now!” Wellesley called behind Sharpe, and the whole long line
of British infantrymen advanced under their flags towards the village.
The cavalry was already far beyond the houses, killing with abandon and
driving the fugitives ever farther northwards.
Sharpe walked on southwards. He suspected the pucka lees were still
back with the baggage, which would mean a three-mile walk and, by the
time he had found them, the battalion would have slaked its thirst from
the wells in the village. Bugger it, he thought. Even when they gave