Authors: Bernard Cornwell
“It's nothing, boys, nothing,” Fitzgerald called. A scrap of the rocket's cylinder had torn open his left arm, and there was a gash on the back of his head that was dripping blood from the ends of his hair, but he shook off any help. “Takes more than a black man's rocket to knock down an Irishman,” he said happily, “Ain't that right, O'Reilly?”
“It is, sir,” the Irish Private answered.
“Got skulls like bloody buckets, we have,” Fitzgerald said,
and crammed his tattered shako back on his head. His left arm was numb, and blood had soaked his sleeve to the wrist, but he was determined to keep going. He had taken worse injuries on the hunting field and still been in his saddle at the death of the fox.
Hakeswill's resentment of Fitzgerald seethed. How dare a mere lieutenant overrule him? A bloody child! Not nineteen years old yet, and still with the bog water wet behind his ears. Hakeswill slashed at a cactus with his halberd, and the savagery of the gesture dislodged the musket that was slung on his left shoulder. The Sergeant never usually carried a musket, but tonight he was armed with the halberd, the musket, a bayonet, and a brace of pistols. Except for the brief fight at Malavelly it had been years since Hakeswill had been in a battle and he was not sure he wanted to fight another this night, but if he did then he would make damned sure that he carried more weapons than any heathen enemy he might meet.
The sun had long gone by the time Wellesley halted the three battalions, though a lambent light still suffused the western sky and, under its pale glow, the 33rd formed line. The two sepoy battalions waited a quarter of a mile behind the 33rd. The rocket trails seemed brighter now as they climbed into a cloudless twilight sky where the first few stars pricked the dark. The missiles hissed as they streaked overhead, their smoke trails made lurid by the spitting flames. Spent rockets lay on the ground with small pale flames flickering feebly from their exhausts. The weapons were spectacular, but so inaccurate that even the inexperienced 33rd no longer feared them, but their relief was tempered by a sudden display of bright sparks at the lip of the aqueduct's embankment. The sparks were instantly extinguished by a cloud of powder smoke, and the sound of musketry followed
a few seconds later, but the range was too great and the balls spent themselves harmlessly.
Wellesley galloped his horse to Major Shee's side, spoke briefly, then spurred on. “Flank companies!” the Colonel shouted. “Advance in line!”
“That's us, boys,” Fitzgerald said and drew his sabre. His left arm was throbbing now, but he did not need it to fight with a blade. He would keep going.
The Grenadier and Light companies advanced from the two flanks of the battalion. Wellesley halted them, formed them into a line of two ranks, and ordered them to load their muskets. Ramrods rattled into barrels. “Fix bayonets!” the Colonel called and the men drew out their seventeen-inch blades and slotted them onto the musket muzzles. It was full night now, but the heat was still like a wet blanket. The sound of slaps echoed through the ranks as men swatted at mosquitoes. The Colonel curbed his white horse at the front of the two ranks. “We're going to chase the enemy off the embankment,” he said in his cold, precise voice, “and once we've cleared them away Major Shee will bring on the rest of the battalion to drive the enemy out of the trees altogether. Captain West?”
“Sir!” Francis West, the commander of the Grenadier Company, was senior to Morris and so was in charge of the two companies.
“You may advance.”
“At once, sir,” West said. “Detachment! Forward!”
“I'm in your hands, Mother,” Hakeswill said under his breath as the two companies began their advance. “Look after me now! Oh God in his heaven, but the black bastards are firing at us. Mother! It's your Obadiah here, Mother!”
“Steady in the line!” Sergeant Green's voice called. “Don't hurry! Keep your ranks!”
Morris had discarded his horse and drawn his sabre. He
felt distinctly unwell. “Give them steel when we get there,” he called to his company.
“We should give the buggers some bleeding artillery,” someone muttered.
“Who said that?” Hakeswill shouted. “Keep your bleeding tongues still!”
The first balls were whistling past their ears now and the crackle of the enemy's musketry filled the night. The Tippoo's men were firing from the aqueduct's embankment and the flames of their fusillade sparked bright against the dark background of the
tope
. The two companies instinctively spread out as they advanced and the corporals, charged to be file-closers, bawled at them to close up. The ground was night dark, but the skyline above the trees still showed clearly enough. Lieutenant Fitzgerald glanced behind once and was appalled to see that the western sky was still touched by a blazing streak and he knew that crimson glow would silhouette the company once it climbed the embankment, but there was no going back now. He stretched his long legs, eager to be first into the enemy lines. Wellesley was advancing behind the companies and Fitzgerald wanted to impress the Colonel.
The musketry fire blazed along the embankment's lip, each shot a spark of brightness that glowed briefly in the dark smoke, but the fire was wildly inaccurate for the attackers were still in the night-shadowed low ground and concealed by the defenders' own powder smoke. Far off to their left other battalions were assaulting the northern stretch of the embankment and Fitzgerald heard a cheer as those men charged home, then Captain West gave the order to charge and the men of the 33rd's two flank companies let loose their own cheer as they were released from the leash.
They ran hard toward the embankment. Musket balls whipped overhead. All the redcoats wanted now was to get
this attack over and done. Kill a few bastards, loot a few bodies, then get the hell hack to the camp. They cheered as they reached the embankment and clambered up its short steep slope. “Kill them, boys!” Fitzgerald shouted as he reached the crest, but there was suddenly no enemy there, only a still stretch of dark gleaming water and, as the attackers joined him, they all checked rather than plunge into the aqueduct.
A blast of musketry erupted from the farther bank. The Light Company, poised on the lip of the western bank, was silhouetted against the remnants of the daylight while the Tippoo's men were shrouded by the
tope's
night-dark trees.
Redcoats fell as the bullets thumped home. The aqueduct was only about ten paces wide and, at that range, the Mysorean infantry could not miss. One man was lifted right off his feet and thrown back onto the ground behind the embankment. Rockets slashed across the dark water, their fiery trails slicing just inches above the twin embankments. For a few seconds no one knew what to do. A man gasped as a rocket snatched off his foot, then he slid down into the weed-thick water where his blood swirled dark. Some redcoats fired back at the trees, but they fired blind and their bullets hit nothing. The wounded stumbled back down the embankment, the dead twitched as they were struck by bullets, while the living were dazed by the noise and dazzled by the rockets' dreadful red tails. Captain Morris stared in confusion. He had somehow not expected to cross the aqueduct. He had thought the trees were on this side of the water and he did not know what to do, but then Lieutenant Fitzgerald gave a shout of defiance and jumped down into the waterway. The black water came up to his waist. “Come on, boys! Come on! There's not so many of the bastards!” He waded forward, his naked sabre bright in the starlight. “Let's flush them out! Come on, Havercakes!”
“Follow him, lads!” Sergeant Green shouted and about
half the Light Company jumped into the green-scummed water. The others crouched, waiting for Morris's orders, but Morris was still confused and Sergeant Hakeswill was crouching at the foot of the embankment out of the enemy's sight.
“Go on!” Wellesley shouted, angered at their hesitation. “Go on! Don't let them stand there! Captain West! On! On! Captain Morris, move!”
“Oh Jesus, Mother!” Hakeswill called as he scrambled up the embankment. “Mother, Mother!” he shouted as he dropped into the warm water. Fitzgerald and the first half of the company was already across the farther embankment and inside the
tope
now and Hakeswill could hear shouts and shots and a chilling clash as steel scraped on steel.
Wellesley saw his two flank companies at last advance across the aqueduct and he sent an aide back to summon Major Shee and the rest of the battalion. The musket fire in the
tope
was dense, an unending crackle of shots, each flash momentarily illuminating the fog of powder smoke that spread between the leaves. It looked like something from hell: flash after flash of fire blooming in the dark, rocket trails blazing among the trees, and always the moans of dying men and shrieks of pain. A sergeant yelled at his men to close up, another man shouted desperately, wanting to know where his comrades were. Fitzgerald was cheering his men forward, but too many of the redcoats were being penned back against the embankment where they were in danger of being overwhelmed. Wellesley sensed he had done this all wrong. He should have used the whole battalion instead of just the two flank companies, and the realization of his mistake annoyed him. He took pride in his profession, but if a professional soldier could not hurl a few enemy infantry and rocketmen out of a small wood, then what good was he? He thought about spurring Diomed, his horse, across the aqueduct and
into the flaring smoke patches among the
tape
, but he resisted the impulse for then he would be among the trees and out of touch with the rest of the 33rd and he knew he needed Shee's remaining eight companies to reinforce the attackers. If necessary he could summon the two sepoy battalions as reinforcements, but he was sure the remainder of the 33rd would be sufficient to retrieve victory from confusion and so he turned and galloped back to hurry the battalion forward.
Hakeswill slithered down the farther embankment into the black shadows among the trees. He held the musket in his left hand and the halberd in his right. He crouched beside a tree trunk and tried to make sense of the chaos around him. He could see muskets flashing, their garish flames momentarily suffusing the smoke with light and glinting off the leaves, he could hear a man crying and he could hear shouts, but he had no idea what was happening. A handful of his men had stayed close to him, but Hakeswill did not know what to tell them; then a terrible war cry sounded close to his left and he whirled round to see a group of tiger-striped infantry charging toward him. He screamed in pure panic, fired the musket one-handed, and dropped the weapon immediately as he fled into the trees to avoid the assault. Some of the redcoats scattered blindly, but others were too slow and were overrun by the Indians. Their shouts were cut short as bayonets did their work, and Hakeswill, knowing that the Tippoo's men were slaughtering the small group of redcoats, blundered desperately through the tangling trees to get clear. Captain Morris was calling Hakeswill's name, a note of panic in his voice. “I'm here, sir!” Hakeswill called back. “I'm here, sir!”
“Where?”
“Here, sir!” A volley of musketry crashed in the trees and the balls slashed through leaves and thumped into trunks.
Rockets screamed up to clatter among the high branches. Their fiery exhausts blinded the men and the explosions of their powder-filled cones rained down shards of hot metal and fluttering scraps of leaves. “Mother!” Hakeswill shouted and shrank down beside a tree.
“Form line!” Morris shouted. “Form line!” He had a dozen men with him and they formed a nervous line and crouched among the trees. The reflected flames of the burning rockets flickered red on their bayonets. Somewhere nearby a man panted as he died, the blood bubbling in his gullet at the end of every labored breath. A volley crackled and splintered a few yards away, but it was fired away from Morris who nevertheless ducked. Then, for a few blessed seconds, the confusing noise of battle diminished and in the comparative silence Morris looked around to try and find some bearings. “Lieutenant Fitzgerald!” he shouted.
“I'm here, sir!” Fitzgerald called confidently from the darkness ahead. “Up afront of you. Cleared the buggers out of here, sir, but some of the rascals are working about your flank. Watch the left, sir.” The Irishman sounded indecently cheerful.
“Ensign Hicks!” Morris called.
“I'm here, sir, right beside you, sir,” a small voice said from almost beneath Morris.
“Jesus Christ!” Morris swore. He had been hoping that Hicks could have brought reinforcements, but it seemed that no one except Fitzgerald had any control in the chaos. “Fitzgerald!” Morris shouted.
“Still here, sir! Got the buggers worried, we have.”
“I want you here, Lieutenant!” Morris insisted. “Hakeswill! Where are you?”
“Here, sir,” Hakeswill said, but not moving from his hiding place among the bushes. He guessed he was a few paces north of Morris, but Hakeswill did not want to risk being
ambushed by a tiger-striped soldier as he blundered about in search of his Captain and so he stayed put. “Coming to join you, sir,” he called, then crouched even lower among the shrouding leaves.
“Fitzgerald!” Morris shouted irritably. “Come here!”
“The bloody man.” Fitzgerald said under his breath. His left arm was useless now, and he sensed it had been injured more badly than he had supposed. He had ordered a man to tie a handkerchief around the wound and hoped the pressure would staunch the blood. The thought of gangrene was nagging at him, but he pushed that worry away to concentrate on keeping his men alive. “Sergeant Green?”
“Sir?” Green responded stoically.
“Stay with the men here. Sergeant,” Fitzgerald ordered. The Irishman had led a score of the Light Company deep into the
tope
and he saw no point in surrendering the ground just because Morris was nervous. Besides. Fitzgerald was fairly sure that the Tippoo's troops were just as confused as the British and if Green staved steady and used volley fire he should be safe enough. “I'll bring the rest of the company back here,” Fitzgerald promised Sergeant Green, then the Lieutenant turned and called back through the trees. “Where are you, sir?”