Sharpe's Revenge (10 page)

Sharpe retrieved his horse. His task, once the advance began, would be to relay Nairn's orders. The junior aides would be doing the same thing, but Sharpe's rank and reputation would give him an authority that could be useful to Nairn. At times, Sharpe knew, he would have to use his own judgement, then claim that his decision was a verbal order from Nairn himself.

It was another hour before the order to advance was given. The French had spasmodically shelled the waiting men during the prolonged delay, but the very sparseness of the cannonade was evidence that the real artillery effort would wait until the British and Portuguese troops had marched closer to the guns. Some men grumbled at the wait, others averred that it was necessary so that the Spanish could regroup and attack again from the ridge's far end. Two chaplains led mules loaded with spare water canteens around the waiting troops. The Irishmen in the ranks crossed themselves. The loudest noise on the ridge, apart from the occasional bang of a French gun, were the pipes of the Highland Regiments.

‘It's going to be a bloody business, right enough. A bloody, bloody business,' Nairn said for the fourth or fifth time to Sharpe. The Scotsman was nervous. He knew this would be his one chance to fight his brigade in battle, and he feared he would be found wanting.

Yet the true responsibility did not lie with Nairn, nor even with Wellington who commanded the battle from its northern flank, but with the ordinary soldier. It was the redcoat and greenjacket who had to march forward in the certain knowledge that the best artillery in Europe waited to decimate his ranks. A shilling, a third of a pint of rum and two pounds of twice baked bread each day were the wages for this moment, and in return they must march into hell and come out victors.

‘It won't be long now,' Nairn said, as if to comfort the aides who bunched around him.

Divisional aides were galloping across the ridge's southern spur. Bands were forming into ranks and colours were being hoisted. The British gunners gave their cannon trails a last adjustment.

‘The General's compliments, sir,' a cavalry Captain reined in close to Nairn, ‘and if you are ready?'

‘My compliments to the General.' Nairn drew his sword.

No actual order to advance had been given, nor was it necessary, for as soon as the leading battalions saw the arrival of the Divisional aide, they were ordered to their feet. What waited for them on the ridge was a foretaste of hell, so it seemed best to get it done fast.

‘My compliments to Colonel Taplow,' Nairn said to Sharpe, ‘and tell him not to let his men fall off to the right.'

‘Indeed, sir.' Sharpe put his spurs to Sycorax's flanks. Nairn's concern about the right flank was justified for, as the attack met opposition, there would be a temptation for the right-hand men to seek safety down the ridge's western slope.

Taplow did not wait for Sharpe's arrival, but had already ordered his men forward. They advanced in two lines behind their chain of skirmishers. The front line was composed of five companies, and the rear of four. The battalion's bayonets were fixed, and their colours lofted between the two lines. Sharpe found Taplow on a grey horse just in front of the colour party. ‘The General's compliments, sir.'

‘He'll not find us wanting!' Taplow interrupted Sharpe. ‘I told you it would be up to us!' Taplow was in high spirits.

‘He's eager, sir, that your men don't deviate too far to the right.' Sharpe phrased Nairn's warning as tactfully as he could.

‘Damn your eyes! Does he think we're amateurs?' Taplow's rage was instant and overwhelming. ‘Tell him we shall march to the guns. Direct to the guns! We'll die like Englishmen, not like skulking Scotchmen. Damn your eyes, Major, and good day to you.'

The other English battalion of Nairn's brigade marched on Taplow's left, while behind came the Highlanders who advanced to the eerie skirl of their pipers. They were a secretive, proud battalion who followed their clan chief to war. Many spoke no English, just the Gaelic. In battle they could be terrifying, while off the battlefield they had a grave courtesy. To the left of Nairn's brigade, and straddling the spine of the ridge's summit, another brigade advanced.

Frederickson, with the skirmishers of the two English battalions, was far ahead of the leading battalions. The French gunners, waiting with smoking linstocks, ignored the skirmish line. They would wait till the plumper targets of the close-formed battalions were nearer.

The wait was not long. Sharpe, back at Nairn's side just a few paces ahead of the Highlanders, saw a French gunner give the elevating screw of his cannon one last turn, then jump clear as the linstock came down to hover near the portfire.

‘God help us,' said the agnostic Nairn, then, much louder, ‘steady, lads, steady!'

‘Tirez!'
shouted the battery's commander.

The ridge erupted with gunfire. Flames lanced from barrels to pump smoke thick as fog over the hilltop. The roundshot slashed through the advancing battalions. Sharpe saw one ball carve a bloody hole in Taplow's first line, kill another man in his second, then graze the turf and, on its upward rebound, strike down a file of Highlanders. The one ball had turned four men to meat and blood and splintered bone. The screams of the wounded began to rival the music of the bands and the crashing of the enemy guns. It was not just the closest battery that fired, but the gunners in the central redoubt, and other gunners too, further and higher up the ridge, who could launch their missiles over the heads of their own infantry to plunge and bounce and tear among the British troops.

‘Those poor lads.' Nairn watched Taplow's battalion that was dropping dead and wounded behind its ranks.

‘Close up! Close up!' the Sergeants shouted. An Ensign, fifteen years old, and proud to be in his first battle, was disembowelled. A Sergeant, marching behind and to the dead boy's flank, filched six guineas from the corpse's tail pocket without even breaking step. ‘Close up, you bastards! Close up!'

A howitzer shell landed just in front of Taplow's rear line and, because its fuse still smoked, the closest men scattered. The shell exploded harmlessly as Taplow berated the men for cowards.

Frederickson's Riflemen had advanced far forward and were now trying to pick off the enemy gunners, but the cannon smoke made a perfect screen to hide the enemy. The smoke also served to obscure the aim of the French gunners, but so long as they fired level and ahead, they could scarcely miss. French skirmishers, armed with muskets, were threatening Frederickson's men, though even the bravest enemy was loath to come too close to the deadly rifles. Harper was calling targets to his men. ‘See that officer, Marcos? Kill the bugger.'

‘Tell Taplow to double forward at the battery!' Nairn shouted to Sharpe over the noise of the enemy guns. ‘I'll put the Highlanders in behind him!'

Sharpe spurred Sycorax forward again. The mare was nervous of the horrid noises. The guns made a deep percussive, car-thumping bang, while the passage of the roundshot overhead sounded just like heavy barrels being rolled across a wooden floor. A cannonball that came too close sounded like the tearing of cloth, but much more sudden and overwhelming, making a man flinch in the wake of its air-splitting astonishment. Behind all the noises was the sound of the bands and the gut-wrenching music of the pipes. Men screamed, Sergeants shouted, then a new ingredient joined the cacophony: the crackling thunder of an infantry volley. It was a French volley. The enemy battalion was hidden by the cannon smoke, but Sharpe, as he rode towards Taplow, saw the smoke twitch as the bullets flicked through from the ridge's centre.

‘Steady now! Steady!' Taplow was riding immediately behind his front line. His horse sheered away from a wounded man who vomited blood, and Taplow slashed his crop down on to the animal's rump to keep it steady and obedient. Behind him the battalion's colours twitched from the strike of musket bullets.

‘Major-General Nairn's compliments, sir...' Sharpe began.

‘Damn Nairn!'

‘If you'd double, sir, towards the battery...'

‘In my own time, sir, in my own time. Damn you.' Taplow twisted his horse away from Sharpe. ‘Well done!' he exhorted his men. ‘Close up, my lads! Be steady now! Our turn will come! We'll kill the bastards in a minute! Close up! Steady now, steady!'

When the attacking line was a hundred paces from the French guns, the enemy changed from roundshot to canister. The tin encased canisters split apart in the muzzle-flames to scatter a charge of lead-balls like bird-shot. Now, instead of the surgical strike of a roundshot, each discharge tore a ragged and gaping red hole in the advancing ranks. Taplow's line was shrinking fast and littering its wide path with a scatter of dead and injured. The carnage and the noise at last made the advancing battalion check, and that evidence of his men's fear spurred Taplow to ram his horse through the ranks. ‘Charge, you buggers! Charge for England!'

Released, the battalion charged. They screamed in fear, but they ran forward, and the smoke of the guns served to hide them from their enemies. A small dip in the ground helped to save them from the worst of the canister as they scrambled towards the smoke and the enemy's gun line.

‘Come on, you bastards! Kill the buggers!' Taplow was ahead of his men, charging like a cavalryman with his sword aloft, when two canisters exploded full in his face so that man and horse were turned instantly into scraps of bloody flesh that ribboned back in the guns' gale to spatter the ranks behind.

‘Charge!' It was a Colour Sergeant who took up the cry.

There was nothing left of Taplow, except blood, bones and gobbets of flesh spread across the ridge. His men charged over the ragged ruin of their Colonel and his horse then plunged into the smoke. A shell, fired from further up the ridge, exploded ten yards behind Sycorax and the mare, terrified, bolted forward into the thick fog of gunsmoke.

The smoke was acrid. Shar
^p
e wanted to draw his sword, but he needed both hands to curb Sycorax's panic. She burst through the smoke and Sharpe saw a mass of snarling redcoats hacking and thrusting at the French gunners. This was revenge, and none of the Fusiliers would take an enemy's surrender. The gunners would pay for the damage they had done, and so the bayonets ripped and thrust.

Sycorax stopped, quivering, because a French trench blocked her path. The trench was shallow, as if it had only been half finished. A redcoat and two Frenchmen lay dead inside. Sharpe scraped his sword free and tried to make sense of the chaos beyond the trench. Taplow's men were brawling, stabbing and clawing their way through the battery while, just seventy paces to their left, a fresh enemy battalion was marching through the gunsmoke. The only man to have seen that threat was Frederickson, who had spread his skirmishers in a tenuous line to block the enemy's approach, but a handful of Riflemen could not hope to stop a determined charge by a whole battalion. Taplow's men were in utter disorder, seeking only vengeance, yet at any moment the enemy's counter-attack would come on them like thunder.

‘Form companies!' Sharpe shouted at the fusiliers. He spurred Sycorax over the shallow trench, then used the flat of his sword on men hunting down the last gunners who were trying to find refuge beneath the hot barrels of their guns. ‘Form companies!' He found a Major. ‘Are-you in command now?'

‘Command?' The man was dazed.

‘Taplow's dead.'

‘Good God!' The Major gaped at Sharpe.

‘For Christ's sake, form your men! You're about to be attacked.'

‘We are?'

Sharpe twisted to his left and saw that the French battalion had checked their advance while they fixed bayonets yet, despite the small delay, there could not be more than half a minute before the French advanced into the captured battery where they would make mincemeat of the redcoats. Sharpe shouted for the men to form, and a few Sergeants saw the danger and took up the cry, but Sharpe knew it was hopeless. Taplow's men were oblivious of everything but the captured battery and its small plunder. In less than a minute they would be overwhelmed. He swore under his breath. No one had even thought to spike the enemy guns, and Sharpe wished he had remembered to put a hammer and a few nails in his saddlebag.

Then, blessedly, he heard a crashing volley and he saw the Highlanders coming out of the smoke bank. Nairn had brought them in to the left of Taplow's charge, and now the Scots fell on the flank of the advancing French battalion. It took just two Scottish volleys before the French gave up the counter-attack.

Sharpe found Taplow's senior Major. ‘Form your battalion!'

‘I can't ...'

‘Do it. Now! Or else I'll have you arrested! Move!'

A French gunner, wounded from a dozen blades, collapsed beside Sharpe's horse. Redcoats were drinking the powder-stained water from the gun-buckets in which the cannon swabs were soaked between shots. The English wounded were propped against the wicker baskets filled with earth that made the cannon embrasures. One such basket seemed to explode into dirty shreds under the impact of a roundshot and Sharpe realized that French guns, further up the ridge, had begun to fire into the captured battery.

‘You're the reserve now!' Sharpe shouted at the Major. ‘Form your men and fall in behind the Highlanders!'

He did not wait to see if he was obeyed, but spurred after the Scots who were marching onwards. To their left, beyond Nairn's second battalion, another brigade was going forward. The attack seemed to have broken the outer French crust, but as the British advanced so they would squeeze the French into an ever thicker and more impenetrable defence.

Sharpe rode past a dead Rifleman and was relieved to see it was not Harper. Nairn's attack, spirited and bloody, was going well. The Highlanders' Grenadier Company was in an enemy trench, led by a group of officers and sergeants who used their massive claymore swords to scour the French out. Frederickson's sharpshooters picked off the fleeing enemy. Two pipers, apparently oblivious of the horror, calmly played their instruments. There was something about that music, Sharpe thought, that suited a battlefield. The noise was like that which a man might make if he was being skinned alive, but it seemed to fill the enemy with fear just as it inspired the Scots to savagery. A riderless horse, its neck sheeted with blood, galloped in panic towards the enemy lines.