Dulong’s voltigeurs had arrived just seconds before and had taken the watchtower, but they had not had time to occupy the northernmost redoubts where Sharpe’s men now appeared. „Throw them out!” Dulong roared at his men.
„Kill the bastards!” Sharpe shouted and his blade scraped along a bayonet, jarred against the muzzle of the musket and he threw himself forward, driving the man back, and hammered his forehead against the man’s nose and the first riflemen were past him and the blades were ringing in the near dark. Sharpe banged the hilt of his sword into the face of the man he had put down, plucked the musket from him and threw it out into the void then pushed on to where a group of Frenchmen were readying to defend the summit. They aimed their muskets and Sharpe hoped to God he was right and that no flintlock would ever fire in this wet fury. Two men struggled to his left and Sharpe slid the sword into a blue jacket, twisting it in the ribs, and the Frenchman threw himself sideways to escape the blade and Sharpe saw it was Harper hammering at the man with a rifle butt.
„God save Ireland.” Harper, wild-eyed, stared up at the French guarding the watchtower.
„We’re going to charge those bastards!” Sharpe shouted at the riflemen coming up behind.
„God save Ireland.”
„Tirezl” a French officer shouted and a dozen flints fell on steel and the sparks flashed and died in the rain.
„Now kill them!” Sharpe roared. „Just bloody kill them!” Because the French were on his hilltop, on his land, and he felt a rage fit to match the anger of the storm-filled sky. He ran uphill and the French muskets reached down with their long bayonets and Sharpe remembered fighting on the steep breach at Gawilghur and he did now what he had done then, reached under the bayonet and grabbed a man’s ankle and tugged. The Frenchman screamed as he was pulled down the hill to where three sword bayonets chopped at him, and then Vicente’s Portuguese, realizing they could not shoot the French, began hurling rocks at them and the big stones drew blood, made men flinch, and Sharpe bellowed at his riflemen to close with the enemy. He back-swung the sword, driving a bayonet aside, pulled another musket with his left hand so that the man was tugged down onto Harper’s sword bayonet. Harris was flailing with an axe they had used to clear the path through the birch, laurel and oak wood, and the French shrank from the terrible weapon and still the rocks were hurled and Sharpe’s riflemen, snarling and panting, were clawing their way upward. A man kicked Sharpe in the face, Cooper caught the boot and raked his sword bayonet up the man’s leg. Harper was using his rifle as a club, beating men down with his huge strength. A rifleman fell backward, blood pulsing from his throat to be instantly diluted by the rain. A Portuguese soldier took his place, stabbing up with his bayonet and screaming insults. Sharpe rammed his sword two-handed up into the press of bodies, stabbed, twisted, pulled and stabbed again. Another Portuguese was beside him, thrusting his bayonet up into a French groin, while Sergeant Macedo, lips drawn back in a snarl, was fighting with a knife. The blade flickered in the rain, turned red, was washed clean, turned red again. The French were going back, retreating to the patch of bare stone terrace in front of the watchtower ruins and an officer was shouting angrily at them, and then the officer came forward, saber out, and Sharpe met him, the blades clashed and Sharpe just head-butted again and, in the flash of lightning, saw the astonishment on the officer’s face, but the Frenchman evidently came from the same school as Sharpe for he tried to kick Sharpe’s groin as he rammed his fingers at Sharpe’s eyes. Sharpe twisted aside, came back to hit the man on the jaw with the hilt of his sword, then the officer just seemed to vanish as two of his men dragged him backward.
A tall French sergeant came at Sharpe, musket flailing, and Sharpe stepped back, the man tripped, and Vicente reached out with his straight-bladed sword and its tip ripped the Sergeant’s windpipe so he roared like a punctured bellows and collapsed in a spray of pink rain. Vicente stepped back, appalled, but his men went streaming past to spread down into the southern redoubts where they enthusiastically bayoneted the French out of their holes. Sergeant Macedo had left his knife trapped in a Frenchman’s chest and instead was using a French musket as a club and a voltigeur tried to pull the weapon out of his grasp and looked stunned when the Sergeant just let him have it, then kicked him in the belly so that the Frenchman fell back over the edge of the bluff. He screamed as he fell. The scream seemed to last a long time, then there was a wet thump on the rocks far below, the musket clattered, and the sound was swamped as thunder rolled over the sky. The clouds were split by lightning and Sharpe, his sword blade dripping with rain-diluted blood, shouted at his men to check every redoubt. „And search the tower!”