He lunged, piercing an enemy's throat, then stepped forward, downwards, knowing he was across the summit and oblivious of the muskets that flamed above him from the upper wall. The British gunners, their weapons re laid started to fire at the upper wall, driving the defenders away from the fire step The Scots rammed their bayonets forward, kicked the dead off the blades, stepped over the corpses and followed Kenny down to the space inside the walls.
'This way! ' Kenny shouted.
'This way! ' He led the rush of men to the left, to where the inner breach waited, its slope twitching as the round shot slammed home. Some Arabs, fleeing the Scotsmen's snarling rage, died as they tried to climb the inner breach and were struck by the cannonballs.
Blood spattered across the inner wall, smeared the ramp, then was whitened by the dust.
Kenny glanced behind to make sure that the column was close behind him.
'Keep them coming, ' he shouted to an aide who stood on the summit of the first breach.
'Keep them coming! ' Kenny spat a mouthful of dust, then shouted at the Scots to start the ascent of the second breach.
'Hurry! Hurry! ' Kenny's aides who were still outside the walls urged on the column. The rearmost ranks of the Colonel's assault party were stringing out, and the second storming group was not far behind.
'Close up! ' the aides urged the laggards.
'Close up!»
Morris reluctantly quickened. The sepoys carrying the ladders were running down the slight slope which led to the narrow space beside the tank where the enemy's guns were aimed. All along Gawilghur's walls the smoke jetted, the flames spat and the rockets blasted out in gouts of smoke and streams of sparks. Even arrows were being fired. One clattered on a rock near Sharpe, then spun into the grass.
The Scots were climbing the inner breach now, and a stream of men was vanishing over the rocky summit of the outer breach. No mines had awaited the attackers, and no cannon had been placed athwart the breach to blast them as they flooded through the wall. Sepoys scrambled up the stones.
«Hurry!» the aides shouted.
'Hurry!»
Sharpe ran down the slope towards the tank. His canteen and haversack thumped on his waist, and sweat poured down his face.
'Slow down!»
Morris shouted at him, but Sharpe ignored the call. The company was breaking apart as the more eager of the men hurried to catch up with Sharpe and the others dallied with Morris.
'Slow down, damn you!»
Morris called to Sharpe again.
'Keep going! ' Kenny's aides shouted. Two of them had been posted beside the tank and they gestured the men on. The round shot of the breaching batteries hammered above their heads making a noise like great barrels rolling across floorboards, then cracked into the smoke rimmed upper wall. A green and red flag waved there. Sharpe saw an Arab aim a musket, then smoke obscured the sight. A small cannonball struck a sepoy, throwing him back and smearing the stony road with blood and guts. Sharpe leaped the sprawling body and saw he had reached the reservoir. The water was low and scummed green. Two Scots and a sepoy lay on the sun-baked mud, their blood seeping into the cracks that crazed the bank. A musket ball hammered into the mud, then a small round shot lashed into the rear of Morris's company and bowled over two men.
'Leave them! ' an aide shouted.
'Just leave them! ' A rocket smashed close by Sharpe's head, enveloping him in smoke and sparks. A wounded man crawled back beside the road, trailing a shattered leg.
Another, blood oozing from his belly, collapsed on the mud and lapped at the filthy water.
Sharpe half choked on the thick smoke as he stumbled up the rising ground. Big black round shot lay here, left from the cannonade that had made the first breach. Two redcoat bodies had been heaved aside, three others twitched and called for help, but Kenny had posted another aide here to keep the troops moving. Dust spurted where musket balls lashed into the ground, then Sharpe was on the breach itself, half lost his balance as he climbed the ramp, and then was pushed from behind. Men jostled up the stones, clambered up, hauled themselves up with one hand while the other gripped their musket. Sharpe put his hand on a smear of blood. The dusty rubble was almost too hot to touch, and the ramp was much longer than Sharpe had anticipated. Men shouted hoarsely as they climbed, and still the bullets thudded down. An arrow struck and quivered in a musket stock. A rocket crashed into the flood of men, parting it momentarily as the carcass flamed madly where it had lodged between a boulder and a cannonball. Someone unceremoniously dumped a dead Scotsman on top of the hissing rocket and the press of men clambered on up over the corpse.
Once at the summit the attackers turned to their left and ran down the inside of the breach to the dry grass that separated the two walls. A fight was going on in the left-hand breach, and men were bunching behind it, but Sharpe could see the Scots were gradually inching up the slope. By God, he thought, but they were almost in! The British guns had ceased firing for fear of hitting their own men.
Sharpe turned right, going to the second inner breach that Morris's company was supposed to seal off. High above him, from the fire step of the inner wall, defenders leaned over to fire down into the space between the ramparts. Sharpe seemed to be running through a hail of bullets that magically did not touch him. Smoke wreathed about him, then he saw the broken stones of the breach in front and he leaped onto them and clambered upwards.
'I'm with you, Dick! ' Tom Garrard shouted just behind, then a man appeared in the smoke above Sharpe and heaved down a baulk of wood.
The timber struck Sharpe on the chest, throwing him back onto Garrard who clutched at him as the two men fell on the stones. Sharpe swore as a fusillade of musket fire came down from the breach summit. A handful of men was with him, maybe six or seven, but none seemed to be hit. They crouched behind him, waiting for orders.
'No farther!»
Morris shouted.
'No farther!»
'Bugger him, ' Sharpe said, and he picked up his musket. Just then the British guns, seeing that the right- hand breach was still occupied by the Mahrattas, opened fire again and the balls hammered into the stones just a few feet over Sharpe's head. One defender was caught smack in the belly by an eighteen-pounder shot and it seemed to Sharpe that the man simply disintegrated in a red shower. Sharpe ducked as the blood poured down the stones, trickling past him and Garrard in small torrents.
«Jesus,» Sharpe said. Another round shot slammed into the breach, the sound of the ball's strike as loud as thunder. Shards of stone whipped past Sharpe, and he seemed to be breathing nothing but hot dust.
'No farther! ' Morris said.
'Here! To me! Rally! Rally! ' He was crouched under the inner wall, safe from the defenders on the breach, though high above him, on the undamaged fire step Arab soldiers still leaned out to fire straight down.
'Sharpe! Come here! ' Morris ordered.
'Come on! ' Sharpe shouted. Bugger Morris, and bugger all the other officers who said you could put a racing saddle on a cart horse but the beast would not go quick.
'Come on! ' he shouted again as he clambered up the stones, and suddenly there were more men to his right, but they were Scots, and he saw that the leading men of the second assault group had reached the fortress. A red-haired lieutenant led them, a claymore in his hand.
The Lieutenant was climbing the centre of the breach, while Sharpe was trying to clamber up the steeper flank. The Highlanders went past
Sharpe, screaming at the enemy, and the sight of their red coats made the British gunners cease fire, and immediately the breach summit filled with robed men who carried curved swords with blades as thick as cleavers. Swords clashed, muskets crashed, and the red-haired Lieutenant shook like a gaffed eel as a scimitar sliced into his belly. He turned and fell towards Sharpe, dropping his claymore. A line of defenders was now firing down the breach, while a huge Arab, who looked seven feet tall to Sharpe, stood in the centre with a reddened scimitar and dared any man to challenge him. Two did, and both he threw back in a shower of blood.
