Their muskets were held ready for the killing thrust of the bayonet.
'On! On! Farthingdale was up in his stirrups, sabre flailing the air, and Sharpe cursed the man for he knew that this display had been put on for Josefina. Musket bullets struck in the columns, making a flurry like a stone dropped into a water-current, the men reclosing about the disturbed patch. 'On! On!
They ran at the rubble, packing it, spreading up it, cheering as they breasted it and saw the courtyard in front of them, and again Sharpe prayed he was wrong, and then he saw that the first men were over the stones and he felt a flood of relief because they would not die in the flaming horror of an exploding mine on Christmas Day in the morning.
The jet of smoke seemed to leap from the base of the stones towards Farthingdale and his horse, leaping like a striking snake, and the horse reared, throwing Farthingdale backwards, and then the smoke was coming from every crevice of the stones and Sharpe shouted in helpless warning.
The broken wall heaved upwards, turned into flame and boiling dark smoke so that it was like premature night where the Fusiliers were hurled up and back by the packed powder beneath the stones. The explosion rumbled, then cracked into defiant thunder that rolled between the thorn-clad hills, and the wall heaved up, out, and the men who had not reached the broken barrier stopped in fear.
The gun on the wall fired again and then there was cheering from the Castle, from the hill by the watchtower, and Pot-au-Feu unleashed every musket onto the motionless columns. Flames licked among the smashed barrier beneath the smoke. Musket flashes showed where the enemy was hunting the survivors who had been first into the courtyard.
'Back! Back! Someone shouted it, all accepted it, and the two columns went back from the smoke, the musket noise, and then Price screamed at Sharpe. 'Sir!
Men were filing down between the thorn bushes to attack the stricken Battalion on its flank.
'Form on the column! Sharpe bellowed. Cross's bugler blew the three notes that meant 'form' and Sharpe pushed men towards the red-coated ranks.
A Fusilier Captain, wild-eyed and confused, was shouting at his men to go back. Sharpe yelled at him to stand fast. Six companies at least were unaffected by the mine, and there was still a chance of hurling them into the courtyard, but the Fusiliers obeyed the voices of their own officers. 'Back!
The men from the thorn, bushes were making a rough skirmish line to attack the retreating Battalion and there was some satisfaction, not much, in seeing the Riflemen hurl them back with well-aimed shots, and then Sharpe heard the clash of steel from beyond the smoke, the sound of more shots, and he knew that there were Fusiliers trapped in the courtyard of the Castle. Those men must not die, or worse, become new hostages to Hakeswill's cruel vices. Sharpe threw his unfired Rifle at Hagman, drew his sword, and turned to where the dark smoke still clung to the blood-streaked stones. He would get those men out, and then they would take this Castle in the proper way, the professional way, and he turned as he heard footsteps beside him on the grass. 'What are you doing?
'Coming with you. Harper's voice brooked no argument. It was Christmas Day, and they were going to war.
CHAPTER 12
Going through the acrid curtain of smoke, between the licking flames that consumed the scraps of powder barrel, was like passing into a different world. Gone was the clean air and cold grass of the valley, instead it was a world of broken stone, slick with blood, littered by scraps of unrecognizable burned flesh; a courtyard where the survivors of the mine were being hunted across a cobbled yard.
Sharpe saw Harper go down and he checked in fear for the Sergeant, then saw the huge Irishman tugging the shaft of a halberd clear from a body. The blade swung up into the smoke, a great axe of silver light, and Harper screamed his war shout in his native Gaelic. Sharpe had seen this moment before, the instant when the normally placid Sergeant seethed with the anger of Irish heroes, careless of his safety, caring only to fight in a manner that might be enshrined in the plaintive Irish songs that kept alive the heroism of a nation.
Within the courtyard was a new, low wall, easily jumped, that was Pot-au-Feu's defence line inside the Castle. Men were running to the wall, laughter on their faces, muskets ready to fire at the Fusiliers who were dazed in the smoke. Some of Pot-au-Feu's men had leaped the wall and hunted survivors with bayonets. A few of the Fusiliers had bunched together, a Sergeant commanding them, and they held their bayonets out and died as the musket balls flamed across the puny wall.
Then Harper came out of the smoke.
To the defenders in the courtyard it must have seemed as if a creature from myth had come out of the explosion's darkness, a huge man, drunk with battle, an axe head swinging from his hands, and he ran at the wall, jumped, and the steel blade clove the smoke and bit wet into the defenders.
'Fusiliers! Fusiliers! Sharpe shouted. He slipped, his right heel greased by a smear of blood, and the fall saved him from a Frenchman's bayonet that came from his left. Sharpe rolled on the ground, swung the huge sword and saw a sliver of wood slice from the musket above him. He lashed out with his left foot, caught the man on his kneecap, and then the man was staggering and Sharpe was on his feet, and the sword finished the Frenchman off. 'Fusiliers! To me!
He tugged at the sword blade, kicked the body, and the weapon came reluctantly free. 'Fusiliers!
God, this was a bad place! It was only the presence of some of the enemy around the survivors that stopped Pot-au-Feu's muskets sweeping the courtyard clean. Four men lay at Harper's feet, others had gone back from the fury in the huge man, from the great blade that swung from his powerful arms, and Sharpe saw a man take careful aim with his musket. 'Patrick!
The halberd was thrown, the fluke of its axe head burying itself in the man's forehead, and Harper came back over the wall unslinging his seven-barrelled gun.
'Save it, Patrick! To me! To me!
The Sergeant was hustling his men towards Sharpe. Three wounded were being helped, another man had both Colours of the Fusiliers bundled carelessly under his arm. The shafts were broken and splintered.
'This way! Sharpe turned and kept the movement going in a backswing of his sword that drove back a man in Portuguese uniform who was charging from the rubble. The man seemed crazed, mad with fighting, and Sharpe saw other figures on the broken wall where the smoke clung and was thick with the smell of roasted flesh. Sharpe concentrated on the one man, letting all his anger flow into the lunge of the twisting sword, and he saw the brown uniform fold over the great blade and he was twisting it free even as he knew that they were surrounded.
A musket ball slammed into the stones by his left foot, another plucked at the tail of his jacket, and a third spun a Fusilier clear round, dying before he hit the ground, and Sharpe could see men thick on the stones, scrambling towards them, and he knew that he could never get the wounded across the barrier. He twisted round again. He would not die here! Not at the hands of these scum on this day!
They expected him to stand and fight or else to run over the stones, so he must do something else, and he must decide in an instant or else they would all be dead or worse. Pot-au-Feu did believe he could win! He was proving it to his men, and they were rewarding him by fighting with a fanaticism that was partly born of the knowledge that they were doomed if defeated.
To his right was the gate-tower, huge and massively turreted. There had to be a doorway into it and Sharpe was moving, yelling, and the Fusiliers changed direction and Sharpe led them with his sword and the deserters backed off because they had not expected this and the sword swept at them. He stepped over a red-jacketed body, its mouth open and red, and then the sword took a man in the back and Harper seized the fallen musket, squeezed the trigger, and Sharpe was on the low wall, across it, yelling as if the fiend was inside him, beginning to enjoy this crazy charge into the heart of the enemy's defence, and there was the doorway, small and black, off to his right. 'There! Go! Go! Go!
The Sergeant led them, dragging a wounded man despite his screams of pain, and Sharpe seized Harper's elbow, turned him, so the two of them would be the rearguard as the Fusiliers scrambled into the desperately small doorway. A backswing to knock a musket and bayonet into the air, withdraw, lunge, and shout in triumph because another bastard was down, and then the shout across the courtyard.
