Battlesaurus (24 page)

Then come the horses, the British Heavy Cavalry, sunlight glinting off the steel of their blades, another ocean, this one a sparkling, glittering sea, as it cuts through the smoke and pours into the sides of the columns. It is wonderful to watch the way the horses swirl and pivot and the way the colors of the French fall, like flowers beneath the blade of the gardener.

The neat formations are broken, and still the cannon and the muskets sound, and now the flow is reversed, as the wave of color that has swept up the ridge now ebbs back out to sea, foaming and sputtering as it withdraws.

Still onward race the British horses, through the ranks of the French. Jack marvels at the speed and majesty of it all. Now the neat colors are well and truly scattered, a mosaic of individual dots as the cavalry races right up to and around the grand battery of French cannon.

Then the British tide turns as French horses race toward them: Napol
é
on's famous and dreaded lancers.

Jack thinks he will never again see such a spectacular, picturesque sight, as the two sides whirl and twirl in a wonderful, colorful waltz, and more and more of the beautiful flowers of this giant garden turn to scattered petals on the ground.

*   *   *

Jack looks around at the sound of a horse, galloping fast. It pulls to a halt behind the captain and the lieutenant.

The rider's face is as black as powder and his uniform also is covered in soot to the point where it is impossible to recognize who he is. The right sleeve of his jacket is torn open and the flap that hangs down is stained red with blood. If the rider even notices the wound, there is no sign of it.

“Left limber up, and as fast as you can!” he shouts. It is an officer of some rank, that is clear.

“Limber up.” Mercer repeats the order, and it is taken up by the lieutenants.

Jack races with the others to prepare the cannon for transport. The two Wood brothers grasp the handles on the trail of the gun carriage and hoist it as Bishop backs up the horses to attach the limber.

Jack has already mounted his horse and glances quickly behind, seeing the other gun crews forming up into the column.

“At a gallop, march!” Captain Mercer orders.

The ridgeline is not flat ground but rough countryside, and the carriage bounces and bucks along behind them. The smell of smoke fills the air and the sounds of battle get louder. They are the first crew in the column, but the others are close behind. The horses throw their heads back, enjoying the freedom of the gallop. They jostle against the wooden traces.

“Who is that officer?” Jack asks.

“That is Colonel Frazer himself,” Roberts answers. “Commander of the Royal Horse Artillery. That includes you, Private Sullivan.”

Captain Mercer and Colonel Frazer ride ahead of them, and their conversation flows back over the sound of the horses and the rumble of the carriage behind.

“It's going to be a big one,” Frazer says. “Right in the heart of our line. They are assembling a cavalry charge such as I have never seen. They've been bombarding us fiercely and it'll start any minute, I warrant.”

“My men will not falter, no matter what comes at them,” Captain Mercer says.

“That may be,” Frazer says. “But when the charge comes, the duke's orders are positive. That in the event of their persevering and charging home, you do not expose your men, but retire with them into the adjacent squares of infantry.”

The gallop up to that point has been downhill, but now they turn and race up the slope. Behind them stand the tall trees of the Sonian Forest. From the other side of the ridge come the sounds of battle. Constant musket- and cannonfire, but something else. A drumming. A vibration that seems to well up through the dirt of the ridge itself. Jack has never heard anything like it. It is loud enough to almost drown out the roar of the cannon.

The summit of the ridge approaches, and they pass through the infantry, frightened-looking men formed into squares, prickly with muskets like a hedgehog's spines. They are Brunswickers, German troops fighting in the British army.

As G troop comes up toward the top of the ridge Jack hears the sound of cannonballs, and up over the ridge comes the black blur of round shot. Most crash down into the ridge, or fly over their heads into the gully, but some smash into the packed squares of infantry, sending men and muskets flying. The Brunswick officers yell and push their men, closing up the gaps.

The artillery team has to slow as they come to a sharp dip down into a sunken road, and up the other side.

Still the thunder of the earth rises up around them, and only now, as they emerge up onto the front slope of the ridge, in between two other artillery troops, already unlimbered and firing, does Jack see the origin of such an earth-shattering racket.

Cavalry. A blue mass of them. As far as the eye can see in every direction, a horse-and-human tidal wave. With it comes the smoke and the dust kicked up by the shoes of thousands of horses, so that the front lines are completely obscured.

“Unlimber your guns. Form the line!” Captain Mercer shouts.

“Form the line! Form the line!” The call is echoed by the lieutenants.

“Do not wait for my command. Fire as soon as your gun is sighted,” the captain calls. “Double load.”

From behind him Jack hears the call from the Brunswick officers: “Prepare to receive cavalry!”

The infantry tighten their squares, the front rows on their knees, the stocks of their muskets braced on the ground in front of them. The rear row stands tall, their muskets held at the ready. The bayonets gleam sharp and deadly.

The horse team wheels around to bring the gun to bear. Wacker and Roberts are already off their horses, pulling the key and lifting the lunette off the pintle hook.

The Wood brothers are right behind them, grabbing the wheels and helping haul the carriage into position.

Jack slides out of his saddle and grabs his swab and ramrod from the back of the caisson. There is no time to set the elevation, or properly aim the gun. But nor is there any need. The briskly trotting horses of the French cuirassiers are less than a hundred yards away, rising up over the crest of the ridge.

Townshend runs to the closest crew and uses their linstock to light his own. Jack twists the tampion out of the muzzle. Wacker appears with a case shot and drops it into the barrel, whipping his hands out of the way as Jack rams it home. There is a metallic clunk as it hits the cannonball that is already loaded in the barrel.

The double loading, ball and grape, will shorten the range considerably, but range is not the problem. The front row of the cavalry is barely seventy yards away.

“Ready!” Jack shouts, hauling his ramrod out of the barrel.

“Fire!” Roberts yells, and Townshend touches the portfire to the firing tube that is already in the fuse hole.

Jack has barely time to spin away from the muzzle when he is enveloped in smoke and noise, with no time to cover his ears. A sheet of flame bellows out of the mouth of the cannon.

He can see nothing. He can hear nothing apart from a ringing in his ears. Then the other cannon speak too, with flames and smoke of their own, and the French cavalry disappears behind a solid wall of smoke.

Jack reverses the ramrod without even thinking about what he is doing, coughing and spluttering through the foul, sulfurous stench of burnt gunpowder. Aren't they supposed to be running for the safety of the infantry squares? But there has been no such order. Or has there been and has he missed it in the roaring of the cannon and the ringing in his ears? Have the other members of his crew run to safety and he is still here, by himself?

He dunks the sponge end of the ramrod into the water bucket and shoves it into the muzzle. No time even to worm the barrel.

The younger Wood has a charge ready and Townshend and Richardson are there with another round shot and another canister of grape.

Jack rams it home, expecting at any moment to feel a cavalry saber slide between his shoulder blades.

He hauls out the ramrod and only then turns to see the damage the first round has caused.

It is chaos. The ground in front of them is littered with the dead and dying, both horses and men. The scattered shot from the canister has torn into the wall of cavalry, cutting them down like the scythe of a mower. The solid cannonball that followed has plowed through the ranks behind.

Horses have fallen. Men have died. Some riders, now horseless, have dropped their armor and run. Some horses, now riderless, have panicked and turned into the paths of those behind.

Jack glances around. Nobody has run to the infantry squares. The men of G troop still man their guns, right along the line.

The next row of cuirassiers are fighting their way over the ones in front and just as they succeed in doing so, the cannon roar again. There is a metallic punching sound audible as the roar of the cannon dies, and Jack realizes it is the sound of steel balls perforating the armor of the cuirassiers.

“Stay at your posts.” Now Jack hears the order. “Do not retreat into the squares!” That is followed by, “Hold. Hold.”

This time they hold their fire until the order is given. The cuirassiers are allowed to wend their way past the killing ground before the cannon retort. Those not felled by the grapeshot and round shot are struck down by musketballs from the Brunswick squares to either side of them.

The cavalry turns and tries to retreat, but those coming along behind are forcing the front rows forward. Again and again the cannon fire their lethal double dose, tearing great holes in the ranks, trapped between the barricades of bodies and the relentless swell behind.

Finally the French horsemen begin to retreat, those at the rear wheeling around to create a gap through which the front rows can gallop.

There are cheers and shouts from the gun crews along the line and Jack feels himself filled with a wild exhilaration, partly at sending the seemingly unstoppable French cavalry back in its tracks, and partly at still being alive and uninjured.

And then the screaming starts.

 

ATTACK

All is wild confusion. All is terror.

Men run past the gun, toward the sweeping blades of the cavalry. The sound of sabers meeting flesh and bone melds into the screams as the unarmed soldiers run to their deaths. Running from … what?

“Turn the gun.” It is Frost's soft, high voice. He is yelling, but even that sounds impossibly calm amid the chaos and the unearthly screaming. “Turn the gun.”

Jack does not understand what is going on, and so does nothing except stay at his position by the muzzle of the cannon, first dipping his sponge in the bucket of water. The cannon swings around to face the rear and he moves with it. It makes no sense at all, and yet that is where the screaming is coming from. He swabs out the barrel as it turns to the north and west.

He can barely see anything. The sun is low on the horizon, burning through a low slot in the clouds, which are blood-red to match the field below. The swirling smoke, white, lit red by the sun, comes and goes in eddies. It is like staring into a fog bank.

“Round shot.” Frost's voice again, a single sane thing in an insane maelstrom.

Someone's hands put a charge in the barrel, and Jack rams it home in the smoke and the fury, then waits for the cannonball.

“Round shot, please.” Still the lieutenant's voice. What can he see that Jack cannot? Still men are streaming past him, many have thrown down their muskets and run in a blind panic.

A pair of hands appears out of the smoke, carrying a cannonball; then Jack sees Wacker's face. Where are the others? Why is the loader bringing the shot? It makes no sense.

Jack looks up at a blur of movement overhead. It is a soldier, in Brunswick colors, arms flailing as he flies through the air.

Jack rams the rod down on top of the cannonball and has just withdrawn it when the impossible happens. Something from a fantasy. A nightmare. Jack wonders if he has died, and does not know it, for surely this is hell.

A vast shadow darkens the red smoke and through it comes a mouth such as Jack could not have imagined. A jaw the size of a gun carriage. Teeth as long as bayonets. Behind it are eyes—black, evil eyes.

The mouth closes on Wacker, who has just turned and so has seen his fate, yet does not scream or cry out. His head, arms, and upper torso disappear into the maw.

The mouth—that abominable mouth—flicks to one side and pieces of Wacker,
pieces
, fly off into the red smoke.

Now the eyes see Jack and the mouth swings toward him. It opens and in some kind of instinctive reaction Jack shoves the ramrod as high and as hard as he can up into the gaping throat. The mouth recoils for a moment, then it lunges forward again.

There is a roar like thunder and new smoke billows. The teeth, just a yard from Jack's face, jerk upward, then backward into smoke, disappearing from sight.

“Sullivan! Sullivan!” It is the lieutenant, and only then does Jack realize that the cannon has fired.

It will be the cannon's last shot.

He instinctively goes through the motions of swabbing out the cannon. But now there are French soldiers sifting through the smoke, with muskets and swords.

One of them sees him and aims, but there is a gleam of silver and the soldier drops, clutching at his throat. Lieutenant Frost emerges from behind him, now in battle with two French grenadiers, both with bayonets fixed to their muskets. The lieutenant is a swordsman of no mean skill and the flash and clang of steel is constant as he darts and whirls, keeping both of the men at bay, but unable to get close enough to either to inflict any damage.

A musket fires close by, creating a distraction. One of the grenadiers glances away and Frost slips inside his blade and sinks his own sword home. But the other Frenchman is behind him now, leaning in for the kill. Frost is off-balance, his sword in the wrong position, trying to turn with too little time. The Frenchman strikes but just as he does so the solid wooden end of the ramrod smashes down on the top of his head. He staggers, the musket drops from his hands, and he falls to Frost's sword.