Sharpe's Fortress Part 6

"Fire!" Swinton shouted.

The two Highland regiments fired together, close to a thousand muskets flaming to make an instant hedge of thick smoke in front of the battalions. The Arabs vanished behind the smoke as the redcoats reloaded. Men bit into the grease-coated cartridges, tugged ramrods that they whirled in the air before rattling them down into the barrels. The churning smoke began to thin, revealing small fires where the musket wadding burned in the dry gra.s.s.

"Platoon fire!" Major Swinton shouted.

"From the flanks!"

"Light Company!" Captain Peters called on the left flank.

"First platoon, fire!"

"Kill them! Your mothers are watching!" Colonel Harness shouted. The Colonel of the y8th was mad as a hatter and half delirious with a fever, but he had insisted on advancing behind his kilted Highlanders. He was being carried in a palanquin and, as the platoon fire began, he struggled from the litter tojoin the battle, his only weapon a broken riding crop. He had been recently bled, and a stained bandage trailed from a coat sleeve.

"Give them a flogging, you dogs! Give them a flogging."

The two battalions fired in half companies now, each half company firing two or three seconds after the neighbouring platoon so that the volleys rolled in from the outer wings of each battalion, met in the centre and then started again at the flanks. Clockwork fire, Sharpe called it, and it was the result of hours of tedious practice. Beyond the battalions' flanks the six-pounders bucked back with each shot, their wheels jarring up from the turf as the canisters ripped apart at the muzzles. Wide swathes of burning gra.s.s lay under the cannon smoke. The gunners were working in shirtsleeves, swabbing, ramming, then ducking aside as the guns pitched back again Only the gun commanders most of them sergeants, seemed to look at the enemy, and then only when they were checking the alignment of the cannon. The other gunners fetched shot and powder, sometimes heaved on a handspike or pushed on the wheels as the gun was re laid then swabbed and loaded again.

"Water!" a corporal shouted, holding up a bucket to show that the swabbing water was gone.

"Fire low! Don't waste your powder!" Major Swinton called as he pushed his horse into the gap between the centre companies. He peered at the enemy through the smoke. Behind him, next to the 74th's twin flags, General Wellesley and his aides also stared at the Arabs beyond the smoke clouds. Colonel Wallace, the brigade commander, trotted his horse to the battalion's flank. He called something to Sharpe as he went by, but his words were lost in the welter of gunfire, then his horse half spun as a bullet struck its haunch. Wallace steadied the beast, looked back at the wound, but the horse did not seem badly hurt. Colonel Harness was thrashing one of the native palanquin bearers who had been trying to push the Colonel back into the curtained vehicle. One of Wellesley's aides rode back to quieten the Colonel and to persuade him to go southwards.

"Steady now!" Sergeant Colquhoun shouted.

"Aim low!"

The Arab charge had been checked, but not defeated. The first volley must have hit the attackers cruelly hard for Sharpe could see a line of bodies lying on the turf. The bodies looked red and white, blood against robes, but behind that twitching heap the Arabs were firing back to make their own ragged cloud of musket smoke. They fired haphazardly, untrained in platoon volleys, but they reloaded swiftly and their bullets were striking home. Sharpe heard the butcher's sound of metal hitting meat, saw men hurled backwards, saw some fall. The file-closers hauled the dead out of the line and tugged the living closer together.

"Close up!

Close up!" The pipes played on, adding their defiant music to the noise of the guns. Private Hollister was. .h.i.t in the head and Sharpe saw a cloud of white flour drift away from the man's powdered hair as his hat fell off.

Then blood soaked the whitened hair and Hollister fell back with gla.s.sy eyes.

"One platoon, fire!" Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He was so shortsighted that he could barely see the enemy, but it hardly mattered.

No one could see much in the smoke, and all that was needed was a steady nerve and Colquhoun was not a man to panic.

"Two platoon, fire!" Urquhart shouted.

"Christ Jesus!" a man called close to Sharpe. He reeled backwards, his musket falling, then he twisted and dropped to his knees.

"Oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d, oh G.o.d," he moaned, clutching at his throat. Sharpe could see no wound there, but then he saw blood seeping down the man's grey trousers. The dying man looked up at Sharpe, tears showed at his eyes, then he pitched forward.

Sharpe picked up the fallen musket, then turned the man over to unstrap the cartridge box. The man was dead, or so near as to make no difference.

"Flint," a front rank man called.

"I need a flint!"

Sergeant Colquhoun elbowed through the ranks, holding out a spare flint.

"And where's your own spare flint, John Hammond?"

"Christ knows, Sergeant."

"Then ask Him, for you're on a charge."

A man swore as a bullet tore up his left arm. He backed out of the ranks, the arm hanging useless and dripping blood.

Sharpe pushed into the gap between the companies, put the musket to his shoulder and fired. The kick slammed into his shoulder, but it felt good. Something to do at last. He dropped the b.u.t.t, fished a cartridge from the pouch and bit off the top, tasting the salt in the gunpowder. He rammed, fired again, loaded again. A bullet made an odd fluttering noise as it went past his ear, then another whined overhead. He waited for the rolling volley to come down the battalion's face, then fired with the other men of six company's first platoon. Drop the b.u.t.t, new cartridge, bite, prime, pour, ram, ramrod back in the hoops, gun up, b.u.t.t into the bruised shoulder and haul back the dog-head, Sharpe did it as efficiently as any other man, but he had been trained to it. That was the difference, he thought grimly. He was trained, but no one trained the officers. They had b.u.g.g.e.r all to do, so why train them? Ensign Venables was right, the only duty of a junior officer was to stay alive, but Sharpe could not resist a fight. Besides, it felt better to stand in the ranks and fire into the enemy's smoke than stand behind the company and do nothing.

The Arabs were fighting well. d.a.m.ned well. Sharpe could not remember any other enemy who had stood and taken so much concentrated platoon fire. Indeed, the robed men were trying to advance, but they were checked by the ragged heap of bodies that had been their front ranks. How many d.a.m.ned ranks had they? A dozen? He watched a green flag fall, then the banner was picked up and waved in the air.

Their big drums still beat, making a menacing sound to match the redcoats' pipers. The Arab guns had unnaturally long barrels that spewed dirty smoke and licking tongues of flame. Another bullet whipped close enough to Sharpe to bat his face with a gust of warm air.

He fired again, then a hand seized his coat collar and dragged him violently backwards.

"Your place, Ensign Sharpe," Captain Urquhart said vehemently, 'is here! Behind the line!" The Captain was mounted and his horse had inadvertently stepped back as Urquhart seized Sharpe's collar, and the weight of the horse had made the Captain's tug far more violent than he had intended.

"You're not a private any longer," he said, steadying Sharpe who had almost been pulled off his feet.

"Of course, sir," Sharpe said, and he did not meet Urquhart's gaze, but stared bitterly ahead. He was blushing, knowing he had been reprimanded in front of the men. d.a.m.n it to h.e.l.l, he thought.

"Prepare to charge!" Major Swinton called.

"Prepare to charge!" Captain Urquhart echoed, spurring his horse away from Sharpe.

The Scotsmen pulled out their bayonets and twisted them onto the lugs of their musket barrels.

"Empty your guns!" Swinton called, and those men who were still loaded raised their muskets and fired a last volley.

'74th!" Swinton shouted.

"Forward! I want to hear some pipes! Let me hear pipes!"

"Go on, Swinton, go on!" Wallace shouted. There was no need to encourage the battalion forward, for it was going willingly, but the Colonel was excited. He drew his claymore and pushed his horse into the rear rank of number seven company.

"Onto them, lads! Onto them!"

The redcoats marched forward, trampling through the scatter of little fires started by their musket wadding.

The Arabs seemed astonished that the redcoats were advancing.

Some drew their own bayonets, while others pulled long curved swords from scabbards.

"They won't stand!" Wellesley shouted.

"They won't stand."