Sharpe looked again at the distant dust cloud, but the horses had turned onto the smaller track that led to Vila Real de Zedes and, head on, he could not see whether they escorted any vehicle so he trained the glass on the howitzer’s crew and saw they were ramming a new shell down the stubby barrel. „Get under cover!”
Hagman alone stayed in the open. He was loading his rifle, first pouring powder from his horn into the barrel. Most of the time he would have used a cartridge which had powder and ball conveniently wrapped in waxed paper, but for this kind of shot, at seven hundred yards, he would use the high-quality powder carried in the horn. He used slightly more than was provided in a cartridge and, when the barrel was charged, he laid the weapon aside and took out the handful of loose bullets that nestled among the tea leaves at the bottom of his cartridge pouch. The enemy shell went just wide of the watchtower and exploded harmlessly over the steep western slope and, though the noise buffeted the eardrums and the broken casing rattled angrily against the stones, Hagman did not even look up. He was using the middle finger of his right hand to roll the bullets one by one in the palm of his left hand, and when he was sure he had found the most perfectly shaped ball, he put the others away and picked up his rifle again. At the back of the stock there was a small cavity covered with a brass lid. The cavity had two compartments; the larger held the rifle’s cleaning tools while the smaller was filled with patches made of thin and flexible leather that had been smeared with lard. He took one of the patches, closed the brass lid and saw Vicente was watching him closely. He grinned. „Slow old business, sir, isn’t it?”
Now he wrapped the bullet in the patch so that, when the rifle fired, the expanding bullet would force the leather into the barrel’s lands. The leather also stopped any of the gasses escaping past the bullet and so concentrated the powder’s force. He pushed the leather-wrapped ball into the barrel, then used the rammer to force it down. It was hard work and he grimaced with the effort, then nodded his thanks as Sharpe took over. Sharpe put the butt end of the steel ramrod against a rock and eased the rifle slowly forward until he felt the bullet crunch against the powder. He took out the ramrod, slid it into the hoops under the barrel and gave the gun back to Hagman who used powder from his horn to prime the pan. He smoothed the priming with a blackened index finger, lowered the frizzen and grinned again at Vicente. „She’s like a woman, sir,” Hagman said, patting the rifle, „take care of her and she’ll take care of you.”
„You’ll notice he let Mister Sharpe do the ramming, sir,” Harper said guilelessly.
Vicente laughed and Sharpe suddenly remembered the horsemen and he snatched up the small telescope and trained it on the road leading into the village, but all that was left of the newcomers was the dust thrown up by their horses’ hooves. They were hidden by the trees around the Quinta and so he could not tell whether the horsemen had brought a mortar. He swore. Well, he would learn soon enough.
Hagman lay on his back, his feet toward the enemy, then pillowed the back of his neck against a rock. His ankles were crossed and he was using the angle between his boots as a rest for the rifle’s muzzle and, because the weapon was just under four feet long, he had to curl his torso awkwardly to bring the stock into his shoulder. He settled at last, the rifle’s brass butt at his shoulder and its barrel running the length of his body and, though the pose looked clumsy, it was favored by marksmen because it held the rifle so rigidly. „Wind, sir?”
„Left to right, Dan,” Sharpe said, „very light.”
„Very light,” Hagman repeated softly, then he pulled back the flint. The swan-neck cock made a slight creaking noise as it compressed the mainspring, then there was a click as the pawl took the strain and Hagman hinged the backsight up as high as it would go, then lined its notch with the blade-sight dovetailed at the muzzle. He had to lower his head awkwardly to see down the barrel. He took a breath, let it half out and held it. The other men on the hilltop also held their breath.