'You're sweating, man, ' Morris complained.
'Why don't you find yourself some shade? There's nothing we can do until the gunners knock that bloody gatehouse flat.'
'There is, ' Sharpe said.
Morris cocked a sceptical eye up at Sharpe.
'I've had no orders, Ensign, ' he said.
'I want you and the Light Company, sir, ' Sharpe said respectfully.
'There's a way up the side of the ravine, sir, and if we can get a ladder to the top then we can cross the wall and go at the bastards from the back.'
Morris tipped the canteen to his mouth, drank, then wiped his lips.
'If you, twenty like you and the Archangel Gabriel and all the bloody saints asked me to climb the ravine, Sharpe, I would still say no. Now for Christ's sake, man, stop trying to be a bloody hero. Leave it to the poor bastards who are under orders, and go away.' He waved a hand.
«Sir,» Sharpe pleaded, 'we can do it! I've sent for a ladder.'
«No!» Morris interrupted loudly, attracting the attention of the rest of the company.
'I am not giving you my company, Sharpe. For God's sake, you're not even a proper officer! You're just a bumped-up sergeant! A bloody ensign too big for your boots and, allow me to remind you, Mister Sharpe, forbidden by army regulations to serve in this regiment. Now go away and leave me in peace.'
'I thought you'd say that, Charles, ' Sharpe said ruefully.
'And stop calling me Charles! ' Morris exploded.
'We are not friends, you and I. And kindly obey my order to leave me in peace, or had you not noticed that I outrank you?'
'I had noticed. Sorry, sir, ' Sharpe said humbly and he started to turn away, but suddenly whipped back and seized Morris's coat. He dragged the Captain back into the rocks, going so fast that Morris was momentarily incapable of resistance. Once among the rocks, Sharpe let go of the patched coat and thumped Morris in the belly.
'That's for the flogging you gave me, you bastard, ' he said.
'What the hell do you think you're doing, Sharpe?' Morris asked, scrambling away on his bottom.
Sharpe kicked him in the chest, leaned down, hauled him up and thumped him on the jaw. Morris squealed with pain, then gasped as Sharpe backhanded him across the cheek, then struck him again. A group of men had followed and were watching wide-eyed. Morris turned to appeal to them, but Sharpe hit him yet again and the Cap-268
tain's eyes turned glassy as he swayed and collapsed. Sharpe bent over him.
'You might outrank me, ' he said, 'but you're a piece of shit, Charlie, and you always were. Now can I take the company?'
«No,» Morris said through the blood on his lips.
'Thank you, sir, ' Sharpe said, and stamped his boot hard down on Morris's head, driving it onto a rock. Morris gasped, choked, then lay immobile as the breath scraped in his throat.
Sharpe kicked Morris's head again, just for the hell of it, then turned, smiling.
'Where's Sergeant Green?'
'Here, sir.' Green, looking anxious, pushed through the watching men.
'I'm here, sir, ' he said, staring with astonishment at the immobile Morris.
'Captain Morris has eaten something that disagreed with him, ' Sharpe said, 'but before he was taken ill he expressed the wish that I should temporarily take command of the company.'
Sergeant Green looked at the battered, bleeding Captain, then back to Sharpe.
'Something he ate, sir?'
'Are you a doctor, Sergeant? Wear a black plume on your hat, do you?'
'No, sir.'
'Then stop questioning my statements. Have the company paraded, muskets loaded, no bayonets fixed.' Green hesitated.
'Do it, Sergeant!»
Sharpe roared, startling the watching men.
'Yes, sir! ' Green said hurriedly, backing away.
Sharpe waited until the company was in its four ranks. Many of them looked at him suspiciously, but they were powerless to challenge his authority, not while Sergeant Green had accepted it.
'You're a light company, ' Sharpe said, 'and that means you can go where other soldiers can't. It makes you an elite. You know what that means? It means you're the best in the bloody army, and right now the army needs its best men.
It needs you. So in a minute we'll be climbing up there' he pointed to the ravine 'crossing the wall and carrying the fight to the enemy. It'll be hard work for a bit, but not beyond a decent light company.' He looked to his left and saw Eli Lockhart leading his men down the side of the ravine with one of the discarded bamboo ladders.
'I'll go first, ' he told the company, 'and Sergeant Green will go last. If any man refuses to climb, Sergeant, you're to shoot the bugger.'
'I am, sir?' Green asked nervously.
'In the head, ' Sharpe said.
Major Stokes had followed Lockhart and now came up to Sharpe.
'I'll arrange for some covering fire, Sharpe, ' he said.
'That'll be a help, sir. Not that these men need much help. They're the 33rd's Light Company. Best in the army.'
'I'm sure they are, ' Stokes said, smiling at the seventy men who, seeing a major with Sharpe, supposed that the Ensign really did have the authority to do what he was proposing.
Lockhart, in his blue and yellow coat, waited with the ladder.
'Where do you want it, Mister Sharpe?'
'Over here, ' Sharpe said.
'Just pass it up when we've reached the top.
Sergeant Green! Send the men in ranks! Front rank first! ' He walked to the side of the ravine and stared up his chosen route. It looked steeper from here, and much higher than it had seemed when he was staring through the telescope, but he still reckoned it was climbable. He could not see the Inner Fort's wall, but that was good, for neither could the defenders see him. All the same, it was bloody steep. Steep enough to give a mountain goat pause, yet if he failed now then he would be on a charge for striking a superior officer, so he really had no choice but to play the hero.
So he spat on his bruised hands, looked up one last time, then started to climb.
The second assault on the Inner Fort's gatehouse fared no better than the first. A howling mass of men charged through the wreckage of the shattered gate, stumbled on the dead and dying as they turned up the passage, but then the killing began again as a shower of missiles, rockets and musket fire turned the narrow, steep passage into a charnel house. An axe man succeeded in reaching the second gate and he stood above Colonel Kenny's scorched body to sink his blade deep into the timber, but he was immediately struck by three musket balls and dropped back, leaving the axe embedded in the dark, iron-studded wood. No one else went close to the gate, and a major, appalled at the slaughter, called the men back.
'Next time, ' he shouted at them, 'we designate firing parties to give cover. Sergeant! I want two dozen men.'
'We need a cannon, sir, ' the Sergeant answered with brutal honesty.
'They say one's coming.' The aide whom Kenny had sent to fetch a cannon had returned to the assault party.
'They say it'll take time, though, ' he added, without explaining that the gunner officer had declared it would take at least two hours to manhandle a gun and ammunition across the ravine.
The Major shook his head.
'We'll try without the gun, ' he said.
