column, twisting and flaming their way into the human target, searing noise and fire, exploding in the ranks, and the Fusiliers still fired.
'Alexandre! The General put spurs to his horse. He could not watch while his men died, and he spurred into a gallop down the road and shouted at Dubreton. 'What the hell are rockets?
'Artillery!
The General swore, again and again. He could hear the weapons now, and he could hear, too, that the drums had stopped. He could hear shouting and screams, the sound of panic, and he knew that at any second the carefully disciplined ranks would dissolve into a panicked mob. 'Why in God's name would they bring them here?
Dubreton shouted the horrid truth back. 'They knew we were coming!
'Keep firing! Sharpe yelled at his men. 'You're beating the bastards! Fire! Fire!
Science at war. Death pushed by fire, and still the rockets shook themselves clear of the troughs, dropped to the grass, slid in front of the flame, faster and faster, rose a few inches and leaped towards the enemy. Some went at knee height, cutting down file after file, others cannoned off men and angled through the French mass, and the French ran. They broke, the explosions and the flames seemingly filling the valley so that they lived in a place that was mysterious death and thick smoke and jagged shell fragments and always the roaring things from hell that came at them faster than lightning and dinned the eardrums and killed and killed and killed.
'Keep firing!
Frederickson's men were out of the thorns now, loading and firing, aiming at any officer who seemed to be controlling a group of men, and the Fusiliers hammered their volleys into the obscuring smoke, and ahead there were screams, more screams, but the drums had stopped.
Another growing crescendo of the noise that was like no other noise on earth, like a great waterfall that hissed and seethed and roared, and the flames drove sparks and smoke backwards and Sharpe saw the glows going far into the smoke fog, some rising, and the red glows did not stop as they struck men, but went on out of sight and he called the cease fire.
The order was repeated by officers and sergeants. 'Cease fire! Cease fire!
Silence. No, not silence. A seeming silence because the death was not sounding now, just the dying. Moans, cries, sobbing, calls for help, curses for a life ended, and in the wash of that pain Sharpe felt the anger of fighting ebb from him. 'Captain Brooker?
'Sir?
'Two ranks on the rubble. You may attend to your wounded.
'Sir. Brooker's face seemed appalled. He had not wanted to fight here, he had thought Sir Augustus Farthingdale a man of prudence and sense, and he could not believe that they had fought and won.
Sharpe's voice was irritable. 'There's more to come, Captain! Get on with it!
'Sir!
More to come. But the smoke cleared slowly, lifted by the breeze that carried it over the British dead and wounded, and as the smoke went Sharpe saw the fruits of his work. The scorch marks that fanned out from the shallow earthwork, and then the blood. It hardly looked like bodies after battle, it looked as if a giant hand had squeezed the enemy to death, had scattered fragments of flesh and blood on the winter grass beneath the lowering clouds, and then he saw distinct bodies, broken and burned, and the wounded stirred in the carnage like creatures heaving up from a pall of blood.
The Rocket Troop had burned hands and faces, scorched marks on their uniforms, but they grinned as they stood up in their trench, grinned because they had lived, and they beat soil from their greatcoats and trousers and then turned to look at their enemy.
Sharpe looked too, looked where the rockets had pierced and twisted through the ranks. Flames showed where the sticks burned, one giving fire to a wounded Frenchman's uniform and the man could not struggle free and his ammunition pouch exploded, gouting more smoke on the grass, and the dead seemed to stretch halfway back to the village, and Sharpe had not seen a field after battle like it. It sounded like a field after battle, the noise, the small noise usually, of men who are dying.
'Captain Gilliland?
'Sir?
'I thank you for your efforts. Tell your men so.
'Yes, sir. Gilliland's voice was subdued, like Sharpe's. The Rifle officer still stared at the field. He could see two horsemen halfway to the village, horsemen who stared as he stared, while beyond them the French infantry was slowly ordered into ranks before the village. Sharpe shook his head. Fifteen cannons firing canister would have caused more destruction, but there was something about the scorch marks, the burned dead, the spread of the wounded and corpses that was unlike anything he had seen. 'I suppose one day all battlefields will look like this.
'Sir?
‘Nothing, Captain Gilliland. Nothing. He shook the mood off him, turned, and saw the Bugler still had his rifle on one skinny shoulder. Sharpe took the rifle from him, dragging the sling free of the left arm, tears stinging his eyes because the boy had a musket ball buried in his brain. It would have been quick, but the boy would never be a Rifleman.
The first flake of snow fell as Sharpe walked away. It fell soft as love, seemed to hesitate, then settled on the bugler's forehead. It melted, turning red, and disappeared.
CHAPTER 24
The second truce in a day, a truce that would last till four o'clock. This time the General had ridden forward with Dubreton so he could see this Sharpe for himself, and he had agreed to the four hour truce because he knew there would be no passage of the pass this day. He needed time to draw up new orders to get round the delay imposed on him by the tall, scarred, grim looking Rifleman. He needed time to collect the wounded from in front of the Castle, to take them from that place of roasted flesh and scorched grass.
So many wounded, so many dead. Sharpe had tried to count from the gatehouse turret, but the bodies were too dense on the valley floor, and he wrote on a piece of paper merely that they had destroyed more than a Battalion of the enemy. Most were wounded, overcrowding the French surgeons' rooms, carried back by the light ambulances or on slow stretchers through the falling snow.
North-east of the village, caught in a tangle of thorns, some Lancers found a rocket that had exhausted itself and which had not exploded. They took it back to Adrados, but not before one of them saw riders on the hillcrests, saw a stab of musket flame, and when they handed over the weapon to Major Ducos they gave him news of a fresh enemy in the hills. Partisans.
Ducos bent low over the rocket in the inn, peering at its construction, prising the metal tube away from the head so he could see where the fuse had somehow worked itself free. He straightened up, his eyes losing their focus, and wondered how much of the stick had been burned away. It should be possible, he thought, to cram more powder into the cylinder, put a new stick onto it, and test fire the weapon. He began taking measurements of the rocket head, jotting the figures on paper in his cramped handwriting, while above him the wounded screamed as doctors peeled charred cloth from burned skin.
In the Castle courtyard the Fusiliers boiled water, then poured the water into their musket barrels to clear the fouled deposits of powder. They filled their ammunition pouches, watched the snow settle, and hoped the French had had enough.
In the Castle dungeons Obadiah Hakeswill rubbed his wrists where the ropes had been, grinned at the other prisoners, and promised them escape. In the dim light, far from the straw torches that lit the steps where the guards were, he pulled himself along the back wall, through the ordure and the cold puddles, till he was in the darkest corner. There he stood up, his nakedness pale against the dark stones, and his head twitched as he pulled at a stone high on the wall. He moved slowly, quietly, not wanting to attract attention. He had remembered the one thing that everyone else seemed to have forgotten.
