where the musket balls juddered the air and the smoke rolled thick from the battery of guns. So thick, Sharpe suddenly noticed, that the enemy would be looking into a fog of their own making. 'Come on! Let them hear you! Let them hear you! Let them hear you! He was shouting it as a war cry as he scrambled up the trench's side.
He thought he was alone for a few seconds. He feared to stand up on the trench's parapet, fearing to lose the happiness that he had found, but he made himself do it, and he ran forward, shouting, hearing his voice alone in the din of guns, and then he heard the cheers behind him and saw, to his left, more men rising from the shelter of walls and trenches and heard their wild cheers.
Patrick Harper, in the centre of the line, saw Sharpe taking the right column forward and he screamed his own group at the wall. There was a boulder outside the enemy line, its flanks chipped white where bullets had struck it, and he ran for it, unslinging the vicious seven-barrelled gun as he drove himself forward, his voice keening in a strange, curdling chant of his own devising as he jumped, steadied himself on the boulder's summit, a huge target for every French musket in their rock citadel, and fired.
The seven bullets smashed outwards, clearing a stretch of the wall by flinging three enemy backwards and Harper jumped, gun flailing like a club, and his men were beside him, screaming like banshees from hell, their blades ripping and gouging and the wall was taken. Sharpe was across it to the right and the trench was outflanked: he shouted the Companies forward to the next wall that was shrouded in the fog of the battery. 'Come on! Come on! Come on! Speed was all. There was no time to form line, or dress ranks, only time to carry the bloodstained bayonets up to the next defence and kill again. A British corporal, his jaw blown away by a mountain gun, wept into his bloodsoaked hands. A dog, shot in the rump, yelped helplessly for its dead master.
Charlie Weller, in his first fight, listened to the screams and the noise and he thought that he would never be able to go forward. He did, somehow. It helped to be at the back of the Company, following the man in front, not certain what terrible things caused the screams that came from the leading ranks. Once, through a shifting curtain of smoke, he saw a French flag flying on the pinnacle, and somehow this battle did not seem anything like he had imagined. He could hear the enemy's shouts, louder than he had ever thought they would be, and he had already seen what they had done to men bigger than he, yet he went forward, listening to the sergeants but not truly hearing them. Boney, whimpering because of the noise, stayed loyally close. A musket ball struck Weller's shako, knocking it over his left eye, and he nervously straightened it. He crouched when his squad stopped, stared at his unbloodied bayonet inches before his eyes and thought that he would never make a soldier.
'Mr Price! A voice shouted from the front of the column. 'Take your squad right!
'That's us, Charlie. Private Clayton, a fly rogue whose wife was the envy of the rest of the Battalion, grinned at Weller. 'Say your prayers and don't piss yourself. Ready?
A crash of musketry sounded at the column's front, then Lieutenant Price, his sword clumsy in his hand, was shrieking at his men to follow him. 'Come on, lads! This is what they pay us for! Weller, thinking that he would be dead within seconds, and thinking of his mother who had told him he would come to a miserable end if he went for a soldier, found his legs moving in obedience to the officer's shout. He held the musket ahead of him, copying the other men, and then he heard them shout, tried to shout himself, though it came out more like a child's whimper of terror, and suddenly, in a trench behind a low parapet of piled rocks, he saw moustached men who aimed their huge muskets right at him.
The muskets fired. He screamed in sheer terror, and somehow the scream turned into anger, and he saw Clayton jumping into the trench, bayonet searing down on one of the enemy. They seemed huge to Charlie, who suddenly felt very young, and then he was at the trench's edge himself and a Frenchman, a great brute of a man who reminded Charlie of the blacksmith at home, lunged up with his bayonet.
Desperately, as though it was a pitchfork, Weller parried the blow. The crack of the two muskets meeting was satisfyingly loud and, even more satisfying, Weller's farm bred strength drove the enemy's weapon to one side and he suddenly heard Clayton shrieking at him. 'Kill the bugger, Charlie! Kill him!
He drove the bayonet down, screaming in fear as much as anger, and the blade went into the enemy's neck. The man turned, wrenching Weller off balance, and he fell onto the wounded man. The Frenchman hit him, and Weller pounded his fist into the moustached face, and then a blade came over his shoulder and into the Frenchman's chest. The man heaved once beneath Weller, choked, and was suddenly still. 'Not bad, Charlie, but hang onto your gun. Clayton pulled him up. 'Get the bugger's pack. Quick!
'His pack? Charlie had entirely forgotten Harper's advice.
'That's what you killed him for, isn't it?
Weller unstrapped the pack, lugged it off the corpse's back, and did not mind that it was slick with blood. He shook the contents out, abandoning the spare clothes, but splitting a length of sausage with Boney, then he buckled his trophy to his belt. When this was over he would transfer his own belongings to his new pack. He looked at it proudly.
'On! On! On! Captain d'Alembord was shouting at them. 'Move! Angel, screaming with rage, was trying to count the Frenchmen he had killed while he killed yet more. Beside him, silent as ever, Daniel Hagman, his wounded shoulder healed, fired his rifle with murderous precision.
'Come on, Charlie. Clayton pushed him on. The Light Company was coming to the pinnacle's defences and Weller, with his bayonet blooded, and his hands sticky with enemy blood, was beginning to think that he might yet make a soldier.
Lieutenant Colonel Bartholomew Girdwood was singing. He was sitting in an abandoned trench, the dead lying like broken things about him, and he sang.
He sang it again. The tears running down his face gathered at the corners of his untarred moustache. He heard one of the mountain guns fire, and he shuddered. The shudder drew new tears. He looked at one of the dead man, a Welsh corporal who lay with a bullet hole in his throat, and Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood explained to the man that, in truth, this was not a battle. Not a battle at all. Battles, he said, were fought on plains. Always on plains. Not on hills. The corporal did not reply and Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood screamed at the man that he would be on a charge if he did not respond. 'Speak, you bastard! Speak! Another gun made him whimper. He looked up at the sky. 'Twenty-four inches is the proper interval between men for attack. Form up. He laughed. He thought he might get out of the trench and bring some order to this place. He looked at the corporal. 'Her skin is white, you know. Did you know that? He cut it with the cane. White, white. He looked at his feet. 'Two feet. He sang his verse of poetry again.
Then, from around the corner of the trench, one of the many dogs that plagued his Battalion trotted towards the Lieutenant Colonel. It looked at Girdwood, smelled the blood of the dead men, then began worrying at the throat of the Welsh corporal.
'No! No! Girdwood screamed at the dog. He pulled out his pistol, aimed it, but the flint fell on an empty pan. His hands were shaking too much for him to reload the gun. The dog looked at him, its jowls redly wet, wagged its tail, and Lieutenant Colonel Girdwood, who had wanted nothing more than to fight in a real battle, screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed.
'Christ! d'Alembord, who thought it a miracle that he still lived, flinched from a ricochet that slapped the rock next to him. He heard the shouts from the right, knew that the Grenadier Company must be attacking the wall, and though part of him felt an unworthy temptation to let them finish this job, he knew, too, that he could not live with himself if he did. 'Are you loaded?'
'Yes, sir! the voices chorused at him.
'One more time, lads! Once more unto the breach and we must be bloody mad. Go!
He was laughing in hysteria as he led them. He saw the French stand behind the wall, he screamed the order to fire, and his own men's volley hammered past his ears as he jumped to the wall's top, swung his sword
