“Now you understand, Lieutenant?”
Sharpe stared at the horizon. Only one gun? It was probably a small four-pounder, so why only one? Were there more coming or had the French bent all their effort into getting one gun into action? If they were short of horses then it was possible that the others were miles behind. Presumably the Chasseurs had sent a message back to their main force that they were faced with two Regiments of infantry, and the French had sent the gun as fast as they could to help break the squares. There was an idea far back in his head. He looked at the Captain.
“It makes no difference, M’sieu.” He held up his sword. “Today you are the second person who has demanded my sword. I give you the same answer. You must come and take it for yourself.”
The Frenchman smiled, raised his own sword, and bowed. “It will be my pleasure, M’sieu. I trust you will survive the encounter and do me the honour of dining with me afterwards. It is poor food.”
“Then I am glad I shall not have the honour of tasting it.”
Sharpe grinned to himself as the Captain rattled orders in French and the three men turned their horses back up the slope. For a bastard risen from the ranks he fancied he had played the diplomatic game like a master. Then the thought of Lennox came to him, and he hurried back, all the time trying to pin the thought in his head. There was so much to be done, so many arrangements to make, and so little time, but he had promised Lennox. He glanced backwards. The gun, with its limber, was coming slowly down the hill. He had a half hour yet.
Lennox was still alive. He spoke softly and quickly to Sharpe and Harper, who looked at each other, then back at the Scotsman, but promised him his last request. Sharpe remembered the moment on the battlefield when he had watched the French drag away the King’s Colour, he remembered now the nature of that fleeting idea which had eluded him, and he squeezed Lennox’s hand.
“I had already promised that to myself.”
Lennox smiled. “You’ll not let me down, I know. And Harper and you can do it, I know you can.”
They had to leave him to die alone, there was no choice, but the Scotsman’s only other request was that he should die with a sword in his hand. They walked reluctantly away and the big Sergeant looked at Sharpe.
“Can we do it, sir?”
“We promised, didn’t we?”
“Aye, but it’s never been done.”
“Then we’ll be the first!” Sharpe spoke fiercely. “Now come on, we’ve got work to do!” He stared at the gun. It crept closer and closer, and he knew now that his idea could work. It had loose ends, there always were unanswered questions, and he put himself in the place of his enemies and tracked the answers down. Harper saw the excitement on his Lieutenant’s face, watched his hand grip and regrip the sword hilt, and waited patiently for the orders.
Sharpe measured distances, angles, lines of fire. He was excited, the elation returning; there was hope despite the field gun. He summoned the Lieutenants, the Sergeants, faced them and slammed a fist into his open palm.
“Listen… “
CHAPTER 9
The time for regrets would come later, the time to be saddened by the carnage, to reflect on being alive and unwounded, most of all to regret that he could not have spent more time with the dying Lennox. Sharpe drew the great sword, hefted his rifle in his left hand, turned to the one hundred and seventy men who paraded in three ranks across the road.
“Forward!”
As they marched Sharpe let his thoughts dwell briefly on the conversation with Lennox. Had he convinced the dying man? He thought so. Lennox was a soldier, he understood that Sharpe had so little time, and the Rifleman was convinced he had seen relief in the Scotsman’s face. Keeping the promise was another matter: first there was this day’s business to complete. Forrest marched beside him, the two of them a few paces in front of the solitary colour that once again waved over the small formation; the Major was distinctly nervous.
“Will it work, Sharpe?”
The tall Rifleman grinned. “So far it has, Major. They think we’re mad.”
Forrest had insisted on coming along rather than stay with the wounded by the bridge. He was still a little dazed, shaken by the blow on his head, and he had refused Sharpe’s offer to command the survivors in the face of the new French onslaught. “I’ve never been in battle before today, Sharpe,” Forrest had said. “Except that I once suppressed a food riot in Chelmsford, and I don’t think that counts.”
Sharpe could understand the Major’s nervousness, was grateful that Forrest had given his blessing to what seemed to be an act of utter folly, yet Sharpe’s instincts told him the plan would work. To the watching and waiting Chasseurs it looked as if the small British force was intent on committing suicide by a death-or-glory charge that stood no hope of success but would at least save them from the attrition of dying piecemeal from the blows of the French gunners. Forrest had asked, almost plaintively, why the enemy were continuing the fight, had they not already won a big enough victory? Sharpe was now offering them the chance to capture a second British colour that could be paraded in the French camp to persuade the soldiers of the fragility of the new enemy.
“Is it time, Sharpe?” Forrest was anxious.
“No, sir, no. A minute yet.”
They marched straight up the track towards the gun three hundred yards away. Sharpe’s plan had depended on two things, and the enemy had obliged by doing both. First they had brought the small four-pounder as close to the British as safety allowed. They would not want to use solid round shot against the infantry; instead Sharpe knew they would load the gun with canister, the deadly metal container of musket balls and scrap iron that shattered as soon as it left the barrel and sprayed its lethal mixture like bent nails fired from a coachman’s blunderbuss. No doubt the French expected the British to lie down in the broken ground by the waterside, sheltered by the falling river-bank, but the canisters would have sought them out even there and killed them two by two, three by three. Instead the British were marching straight for the gun, like sheep walking into a slaughterhouse, and the French gunners would probably need no more than three rounds to tear them apart and let the cavalry finish the dazed survivors off. Sharpe’s second guess was about the cavalry. He had felt an enormous relief when they paraded to the British right. He had expected that, but if they had gone to the left the plan could never have been started, and they would have had no option but to die by the bridge. The ground to the right was thinly strewn with bodies, unlike the left which was an obstacle course of dead men and horses, and Sharpe had guessed that the French Colonel, charging obliquely to the fire of his cannon, would want an unobstructed path for the horsemen who now waited for the gun to open fire.
He watched the French gunners. They were unhurried, there was no need for haste, and they glanced constantly at the British force, which marched conveniently towards their gun. It was pointing directly at Sharpe. He could see the dirty green-painted carriage, the dulled brass barrel, and the blackened muzzle. He had watched the efficient gun crew lever the three-quarters of a ton until the four and a half feet of barrel pointed straight down the road. Now a blue-coated gunner was putting the serge bag with its one and a half pounds of black powder in the cannon. A second man rammed it down, and Sharpe saw a third man lean over the touch-hole and thrust down with a spike so that the serge bag was pierced and the powder could be set off by the fuse. Another gunner was walking forward with the metal canister. It was only seconds now before the gun would be ready to fire. He lifted his rifle into the air and pulled the trigger.
“Now!”
His one hundred and seventy men began to run, a shambling lung-bursting run in their broken shoes. Each soldier carried three loaded muskets, two slung on their shoulders, one carried in their hands. They kept roughly aligned; if the cavalry moved they could close ranks in seconds, form the impenetrable wall of bayonets. The French gunners heard the rifle shot, paused to watch their enemy break into their cumbrous run, and grinned at the futility of the men who thought they could charge a field gun. Then everything changed.
In the twenty minutes after the visit of the Chasseur Captain the British had continued to collect their wounded. Sharpe was certain the French had noticed nothing odd about the stream of men who went to and from
