and a new high-tide mark of blood was marked on the breach. Once a man even reached the Chesaux de Frise, he swept at the sabre blades with a musket, bellowing defiance, and then he was hit by an unseen French infantryman and he fell, twisting like a rag doll, down the slope and the French jeered him and poured fire down.
Sharpe went right, looking for the Fourth Division and the South Essex, but the ditch was a massive sink of death, of weird shadows cast by the fires, and he could make out no faces in the packed crowd that was filling the space between the ravelin and glacis. Men sheltered behind parapets made from the dead, others clumsily reloaded muskets and fired them uselessly at the towering stone that crushed them with fire. He ran for a minute, right on the edge of the glacis, stumbling on the uneven paving and hearing the canister above him, in front of him, yet he was untouched. Small groups of men were on the glacis lip, Light Companies mostly, who rammed and fired, rammed and fired, hoping that their bullets might ricochet from an embrasure and kill a Frenchman. The canister flung them backwards, ragged down the slope, and beyond the bodies, in the darkness, more men waited for the orders that would send them running to the light, to the ditch, to the hundreds of dead. Sharpe had never seen so many dead.
He was still fifty yards from the Trinidad, but he could see that its breach was no better than the Santa Maria. The foot of the breach was smeared with bodies, its approaches bare of the living, though small groups of men dashed from the shadows of the ravelin and screamed defiance as they clawed at the stones and were blasted away. Bugles sounded to the right, the shouts of officers and Sergeants, and there was the South Essex! He saw them flowing up the glacis in close column and his Company, Rymer's Company, lined the ditch and fired their ineffectual muskets at the wall's height while the other men scrambled at the ladders, flung themselves on hay-bags, frantic in their haste. Men bunched at the ditch's edge, the guns hammered from the wall, their hot breath hard on the glacis, and Sharpe saw the Battalion shudder like a wounded thing, reform, smash itself under new impacts. But they were over, scrambling in the ditch and he saw Windham, his cocked hat gone, scything his sword towards the breach, and new guns fired until the sound of the city was like a weight of solid thunder.
They died in dozens, but still they went towards the breach, and more men came from the ditch, from other Regiments, and they tried, and pushed, and fought, and scrambled up the stone till it seemed they had to win for there was not enough shot in the world to kill so many men. The gunners rammed and fired, loaded and fired, and the powder kegs banged down the slope, and the shells were thrown, fuses lit, so the dark explosions splintered the men, and they died and it was done. The dead choked the living, the breach had won. A few men, very few, still lived and struggled upwards, shredding their hands on the nailed boards laid down the upper slope, and Sharpe saw Leroy, sword in hand, cigar inevitably between his teeth, look up into the night, so slow, and then he fell, tumbling, fell, screaming into the ditch. A last man reached the sword blades, the very top, he clawed at them, blood on his hands, and then he shook, quivered, filled with a dozen bullets and the highest man, dead on the Trinidad, slid down, blood on stone, till he was caught.
The survivors were behind the ravelin, digging into the dead, and the French mocked them. 'Come to Badajoz, English.
Sharpe had not been with them. He knelt, fired once at the wall, and watched the death of the Battalion; Collett, Jack Collett, neck severed by a round shot, even Sterritt, poor, worried Sterritt, a hero now, killed in the ditch at Badajoz.
'Sir? A voice curiously calm in the torment of sound. 'Sir?
He looked up. Daniel Hagman, strange in red coat, stood over him. He stood up. 'Daniel?
'You'd better come, sir.’
He went towards the Light Company, close to him now and still on the glacis, and he saw in the ditch where men had drowned in the deep water. The black humps of their bodies broke up the ripples in red and dark patterns. The guns were quieter now, saving their anger for the fools who would come from behind the ravelin. The breaches were empty of all but the dead. The huge fires roared, greedy for the lumber that was tossed from the walls, and an army was dying between their flames.
'Sir? Lieutenant Price, his eyes stark with the horror, ran to Sharpe. 'Sir?
'What?
'Your Company, sir.
'Mine?
Price pointed. Rymer was dead, a tiny wound, an insignificant wound, red on his pale forehead. He lay backwards on the slope, arms wide, staring at nothing, and Sharpe shuddered when he remembered how he had wanted this Company, and thus this man's death, and now it was given to him.
So easy. It was all done? Out of the horror, the pulverizing fire and iron that smothered the south-east corner of Badajoz, death had given Sharpe back what had once been his. He could stay on the glacis, firing at the night, safe from the carnage, a Captain again, the Company his, and men would account him a hero because he had lived throughBadajoz.
A musket ball whirred past his head, making him jerkback, and there was Harper, the red jacket discarded, huge in a blood-stained shirt, and the Irish face was stone hard 'What do we do, sir?
Do? There was only one thing to do. A man did not go into a breach to fight for a company, not even a Captaincy. Sharpe looked over the ditch, over the scoured ravelin and there, untouched by blood, was the third breach, the new breach, the unattacked breach. A man went first into a breach for pride, nothing else, just pride. A poor reason, paltry even, but enough, perhaps, to win a city. He looked up at Harper. 'Sergeant. We're going to Badajoz.
CHAPTER 25
Captain Robert Knowles crossed the bridge by the ruined mill and wondered at the calmness of the night. Beneath him the Rivillas stream whispered from the dam, ahead the huge castle blotted out the sky and, in the darkness, it seemed impossible that men could dare hope escalade the giant bastion. Wind rustled the new foliage in the trees that grew precariously on the steep hill that led up to the castle. Behind Knowles came his Company, carrying two ladders, and they paused with him at the foot of the slope, their excitement suppressed, and peered up at the looming walls. 'Bloody high! A voice came from the rear rank.
'Quiet!
The Engineer officer who was guiding the Battalion was nervous and Knowles became annoyed at the man's fidgeting. 'What's the matter?
'We're too far over. We must go right.
They could not go right. There were too many troops crowding at the hill's base, and it would cause chaos if the battalions tried to re-align themselves in the darkness. Knowles shook his head irritably. 'We can't. What's the problem?
'That. The Engineer pointed to his left. A huge shadow sprang from the dark rock, high over them, a shadow with a crenellated outline. The bastion of San Pedro. Knowles's Colonel appeared beside him. 'What's the problem?
Knowles pointed to the bastion, but the Colonel dismissed it. 'We must do what we can. Are you all right, Robert?
'Yes, sir.
The Colonel turned to the Light Company and raised his voice a little above a whisper. 'Enjoy yourselves, lads!
There was a growling from the ranks. They had been told that this attack was merely a diversion, not intended to succeed, but then General Picton had damned Wellington's eyes and said that the Third Division did not make fake attacks. The Third Division would go all the way, or not at all, and the men were determined to prove Picton right. Knowles, for the first time, felt the seeds of doubt. They must climb a hundred feet of almost sheer rock, and then put ladders against a wall that looked forty feet high, and all the time under the guns of the defenders. He thrust the doubts away, trying, as he always did, to emulate Sharpe, but it was difficult, faced with the enormity of the castle, to feel confident. His worries were interrupted by hurrying footsteps and one of Picton's aides was calling for the Colonel.
