away to infinity, but here the combat was held tight within the cockpit of the small valley above which the smoke made an unnatural early dusk. Beyond the battle’s margin, out where the crops stood unharmed and no blood trickled in the plough furrows, the sunlight shone through ragged clouds on peaceful fields, but the valley itself was a piece of hell on earth, flickering with flame and belching smoke.
Neither Sharpe nor Harper spoke much. No one was speaking much in the British line any more. Sometimes a sergeant ordered the files to close, but the orders were unnecessary now. Each man was simply enduring as- best he could.
The French skirmishers were falling back as their ammunition became exhausted. That, at least, gave some relief, and let the British battalions lie down on the crushed mud and straw. The Voltigeurs did not retire all the way to their own ridge, but waited on the valley floor for a fresh supply of cartridges to be brought forward. Only in the British centre; in front of the newly captured
La Haye Sainte, were newly committed skirmishers advancing up the slope beneath the raking canister fire of the two eight-pounder guns that the French had placed in the farm’s kitchen garden.
Peter d’Alembord, insisting that he was well, had returned to Colonel Ford’s side. He still rode Sharpe’s horse that he now stood beneath the battalion’s colours, which had been torn to yellow shreds by the skirmishers’ bullets. Colonel Ford’s ears were so dulled by the incessant percussion of the guns that he could hardly hear the small remarks d’Alembord made. Not that Ford cared. He was clutching his horse’s reins as though they were his last hold on sanity.
A single horsemen rode slowly in the emptiness behind the British battalions. His horse picked a slow path through the broken gun carriages and past the rows of red-coated dead. Shell fragments smoked on the scorched and trampled crops. The horseman was Simon Doggett who now sought his own battalion of Guardsmen, but as he rode westwards he saw the two Riflemen crouching close to the ridge’s crest. Doggett turned his horse towards the Greenjackets and reined in close behind them.
“He did it again, sir. He damn well did it again,“ Doggett’s outraged indignation made him sound very young, ”so I told him he was a silk stocking full of shit.“
Sharpe turned. For a second he blinked in surprise as though he did not recognize Doggett, then he seemed to snap out of the trance induced by the numbing gun-fire. “You did what?”
Doggett was embarrassed. “I told him he was a silk stocking full of shit.”
Harper laughed softly. A shell whimpered overhead to explode far in the rear. A roundshot followed to strike the ridge in front of Sharpe and spew up a shower of wet earth. Doggett’s horse jerked its face away from the spattering mud.
“He killed them,” Doggett said in pathetic explanation.
“He killed who?” Harper asked.
“The KGL. There were two battalions, all that was left of a brigade, and he put them in line and sent them to where the cavalry were waiting.”
“Again?” Sharpe sounded incredulous.
“They died, sir.” Doggett could not forget the sight of the swords and sabres rising and falling. He had watched one German running from the slaughter; the man had already lost his right arm to a sabre’s slice, yet it had seemed that the man would still escape, but a Cuirassier had spurred after him and chopped down with his heavy blade and Doggett could have sworn that the dying man threw one hateful look up the slope to where his real killer was. “I’m sorry, sir. There’s no point in telling you. I tried to stop him, but he told me to go away.”
Sharpe did not respond, except to unsling his rifle and probe a finger into its pan to discover whether the weapon was still primed.
Doggett wanted Sharpe to share his anger at the Prince’s callous behaviour. “Sir!” he pleaded. Then, when there was still no reply, he spoke more self-pityingly. “I’ve ruined my career, haven’t I?”
Sharpe looked up at the young man. “At least we can mend that, Doggett. Just wait here.”
Sharpe, without another word, began walking towards the centre of the British line while Harper took Doggett’s bridle and turned his horse away from the valley. “There are still a few skirmishers who wouldn’t mind making you into a notch on their muskets,” the Irishman explained to Doggett. “Did you really call the skinny bastard a silk stocking filled with shit?”
“Yes.” Doggett was watching Sharpe walk away.
“To his face?” Harper insisted.
“Indeed, yes.”
“You’re a grand man, Mr Doggett! I’m proud of you.” Harper released Doggett’s horse a few paces behind the colour party of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. “Now just wait here, sir. The Colonel and I won’t be long.”
“Where are you going?” Doggett shouted after the Irishman.
“Not far!” Harper called back, then he followed Sharpe into a drifting bank of powder smoke and disappeared.
Sharpe was half-way to the elm tree when Harper caught him. “What are you doing?” the Irishman asked.
“I’m sick of the royal bastard. How many more men will he kill?”
“So what are you doing?” Harper insisted.
“What someone should have done at his bloody birth. I’m going to strangle the bugger.”
Harper put a hand on Sharpe’s arm. “Listen — „
Sharpe threw the hand off and turned a furious face on his friend. “I’m going, Patrick. Don’t stop me!”
“I don’t give a bugger if you kill him.” Harper was just as angry. “But I’ll be damned if you hang for it.”
“Damn the bloody rope.” Sharpe walked on, carrying his rifle in his right hand.
The ridge’s centre was more thickly smothered with smoke than its flanks. The
Those staff officers who still lived, and they were not many, had sensibly retreated from the ravaged tree and now stood their horses well back from the ridge’s summit. Sharpe could not see the Duke, but he found the Prince in his fur-edged uniform. The Prince was two hundred paces off, close to the highway and surrounded by his Dutch staff. It was a long shot for a rifle loaded with common cartridge instead of the extra-fine powder, and it would be a tricky shot because of the men who crowded close to the Prince.
“Not here!” Harper insisted.
A shattered gun limber and two dead horses lay not far away and Sharpe crouched in the wreckage to see whether it gave him the cover he needed.
“You’ll never hit the bastard from this distance,” Harper said. “They don’t call him Slender Billy for nothing.”
“I will if God’s on my side.”
“I wouldn’t rely on God today.” The Irishman stared about the ridge top, seeking an idea, then saw a file of green-jacketed Riflemen running towards the valley. The Prince had spurred his horse to follow the Riflemen, thus taking himself closer to the embattled crest of the ridge.
“Where are those lads going?” Harper asked.
Sharpe saw the Greenjackets, and understood. The Duke must have gathered the remnants of his Riflemen and ordered them to stop the French guns firing from La Haye Sainte. It was a desperate throw, but Riflemen alone might succeed in silencing the murderous guns. Fifty Greenjackets were preparing to charge over the crest, and the Prince, who had never lacked bravery, could not resist going forward to watch their fight.
Sharpe suddenly upped and ran towards the Riflemen who had stopped just short of the crest and now crouched in a group as they fixed their long, brass-handled sword-bayonets onto their rifle muzzles. “You’re not coming,” he shouted at Harper who had begun to follow him.
“And how will you stop me?”
“You bloody deserve to die.” Sharpe dropped at the back of the squad of Riflemen, all of whose faces were
