Beside him now, screaming and shouting like men possessed of devils, the Grenadier Company was sweeping forward. Their blood was up now. They had endured the first blow, found they had survived, and now they were racing ahead of him, oblivious of the death which, just minutes before, had terrified them. The air was humming with musket balls, screams, the smoke thick as fog. The new men, Sharpe saw, their first terror conquered, were in the front ranks of the attack. The veterans, more cautious because more knowledgeable, let them lead.
Sharpe went left. The Colour party, trying to stay with him, followed. He heard the rifles again, then saw men busy with bayonets, driving the blades down into a trench while, beyond them, number three Company had outflanked d’Alembord to the left and supported his attack from that flank. That was what the supporting Companies were supposed to do, but three Company was led by Carline and Sharpe chalked up a good mark to the new officer.
Another stone wall, then another. The French lined them, but the attacks came first from the left, then the right, and the French reeled backwards. A splinter of stone hit Sharpe’s cheekbone, a bayonet grazed his thigh, and a musket ball snatched and shattered his canteen. They were the moments that he would remember with terror later, but for now he kept the Battalion moving even closer towards the last defences, the walls that ringed the pinnacle. His men were fighting in deep trenches now, cornering the enemy in rock traps, driving on in the strange exultation of battle that will not let a man feel fear or mercy or anything but the anger to kill and survive.
He saw redcoats with white facings on his right, and knew that men from the other Battalions were following through the gap that had been punched in the hill’s defences. No one had told them to come, no officers organised them, but this was Wellington’s army and this was how they fought. The South Essex, Sharpe thought, could have held this hill against the legions of hell themselves, and then a crash spun him round and his hand flew to his face which had been punched by the air of a passing cannon-ball. The mountain guns, at the foot of the pinnacle, hammered a volley at the attackers and drove Sharpe, with his Colour party, into a trench. There was no sign of Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood.
He stepped over the dead and dying. He saw a British musket abandoned, its bayonet bent almost double by the force of a lunge that had struck rock. There were puddles of slippery blood. A dog licked at one, then ran on to catch up with its master. The French musket balls were thick overhead, the sound of the volleys like a raging fire among thorns, the crashes of the mountain guns deafening.
The attack was stalled. The trenches led to the pinnacle, zigzagging through the walls and were blocked, where they crossed the outer defences, by transverse stone barriers. As the French had been driven back their defences were thickened and strengthened by the fugitives from the captured positions. ‘Move! Move!’ Sharpe forced his way to the front where men, kneeling in the trench, fired uselessly at the obstacles. Three bodies lay further up the trench, showing that the French, hidden by the upper walls, had the approach blanketed by guns.
The men seemed to be shivering, not with fear but impatience. They stared at him from eyes rimmed with powder stains, blood-smeared, and Sharpe knew they were still keen to attack, but that no man could go through the trench and live while the mountain guns, firing from the heart of the enemy position, made the upper ground a death trap. Sharpe heaved himself to the trench parapet to look right. The ground dropped precipitately away towards the road. There could be no outflanking that way. He wondered where d’Alembord’s men were and was ashamed because he detected in himself a hope that the other column might lever the enemy out of this position and save him the necessity of attacking.
‘Load!’ He waited as those men who had empty muskets loaded. ‘We’re going up there!’ He pointed to the left of the trench. ‘Then straight at the buggers! One effort, lads, just one bloody effort.’ They grinned. Their knuckles were white where they gripped their weapons.