Sharpe's Eagle (14 page)

"Listen. "

The time for regrets would come later, the time to be saddened by the carnage, to reflect on
being alive and unwounded, most of all to regret that he could not have spent more time with the
dying Lennox. Sharpe drew the great sword, hefted his rifle in his left hand, turned to the one
hundred and seventy men who paraded in three ranks across the road.

"Forward!"

As they marched Sharpe let his thoughts dwell briefly on the conversation with Lennox. Had he
convinced the dying man? He thought so. Lennox was a soldier, he understood that Sharpe had so
little time, and the Rifleman was convinced he had seen relief in the Scotsman's face. Keeping
the promise was another matter: first there was this day's business to complete. Forrest marched
beside him, the two of them a few paces in front of the solitary colour that once again waved
over the small formation; the Major was distinctly nervous.

"Will it work, Sharpe?"

The tall Rifleman grinned. "So far it has, Major. They think we're mad."

Forrest had insisted on coming along rather than stay with the wounded by the bridge. He was
still a little dazed, shaken by the blow on his head, and he had refused Sharpe's offer to
command the survivors in the face of the new French onslaught. "I've never been in battle before
today, Sharpe," Forrest had said. "Except that I once suppressed a food riot in Chelmsford, and I
don't think that counts."

Sharpe could understand the Major's nervousness, was grateful that Forrest had given his
blessing to what seemed to be an act of utter folly, yet Sharpe's instincts told him the plan
would work. To the watching and waiting Chasseurs it looked as if the small British force was
intent on committing suicide by a death-or-glory charge that stood no hope of success but would
at least save them from the attrition of dying piecemeal from the blows of the French gunners.
Forrest had asked, almost plaintively, why the enemy were continuing the fight, had they not
already won a big enough victory? Sharpe was now offering them the chance to capture a second
British colour that could be paraded in the French camp to persuade the soldiers of the fragility
of the new enemy.

"Is it time, Sharpe?" Forrest was anxious.

"No, sir, no. A minute yet."

They marched straight up the track towards the gun three hundred yards away. Sharpe's plan had
depended on two things, and the enemy had obliged by doing both. First they had brought the small
four-pounder as close to the British as safety allowed. They would not want to use solid round
shot against the infantry; instead Sharpe knew they would load the gun with canister, the deadly
metal container of musket balls and scrap iron that shattered as soon as it left the barrel and
sprayed its lethal mixture like bent nails fired from a coachman's blunderbuss. No doubt the
French expected the British to lie down in the broken ground by the waterside, sheltered by the
falling river-bank, but the canisters would have sought them out even there and killed them two
by two, three by three. Instead the British were marching straight for the gun, like sheep
walking into a slaughterhouse, and the French gunners would probably need no more than three
rounds to tear them apart and let the cavalry finish the dazed survivors off. Sharpe's second
guess was about the cavalry. He had felt an enormous relief when they paraded to the British
right. He had expected that, but if they had gone to the left the plan could never have been
started, and they would have had no option but to die by the bridge. The ground to the right was
thinly strewn with bodies, unlike the left which was an obstacle course of dead men and horses,
and Sharpe had guessed that the French Colonel, charging obliquely to the fire of his cannon,
would want an unobstructed path for the horsemen who now waited for the gun to open
fire.

He watched the French gunners. They were unhur-ried, there was no need for haste, and they
glanced constantly at the British force, which marched convenient-ly towards their gun. It was
pointing directly at Sharpe. He could see the dirty green-painted carriage, the dulled brass
barrel, and the blackened muzzle. He had watched the efficient gun crew lever the three-quarters
of a ton until the four and a half feet of barrel pointed straight down the road. Now a
blue-coated gunner was putting the serge bag with its one and a half pounds of black powder in
the cannon. A second man rammed it down, and Sharpe saw a third man lean over the touch-hole and
thrust down with a spike so that the serge bag was pierced and the powder could be set off by the
fuse. Another gunner was walking forward with the metal canister. It was only seconds now before
the gun would be ready to fire. He lifted his rifle into the air and pulled the
trigger.

"Now!"

His one hundred and seventy men began to run, a shambling lung-bursting run in their broken
shoes. Each soldier carried three loaded muskets, two slung on their shoulders, one carried in
their hands. They kept roughly aligned; if the cavalry moved they could close ranks in seconds,
form the impenetrable wall of bayonets. The French gunners heard the rifle shot, paused to watch
their enemy break into their cumbrous run, and grinned at the futility of the men who thought
they could charge a field gun. Then everything changed.

In the twenty minutes after the visit of the Chasseur Captain the British had continued to
collect their wound-ed. Sharpe was certain the French had noticed nothing odd about the stream of
men who went to and from the bodies that lay thickly around the spot where he and Harper had
saved the Regimental Colour. In those twenty minutes Sharpe had hidden thirty men among the dead,
ten Riflemen who lay crumpled in borrowed red jackets, and twenty men of the South Essex. Each
Rifleman carried two rifles, one borrowed from a comrade, and every redcoat lay with three loaded
muskets. The French had ignored them. They unlimbered the gun and lined it on target and had
taken no notice of the scattered bodies that lay thickly just a hundred paces to their right. The
time for looting would be later; first the gunners would destroy the presumptuous English who
were half running, half walk-ing, towards them.

Harper sweated in his borrowed jacket. It was much too small for him and he had ripped the
seams in both armpits, but even so he could feel the sweat trickling down to the small of his
back. The red jackets were essential. The French had become accustomed to the sight of the dead
men and would have been certain to notice if suddenly ten bodies in green uniforms had appeared
among the corpses. Harper's biggest fear had been that the French might wander over to loot the
bodies, but they had been ignored. He watched Sharpe march towards them, still two hundred and
fifty yards away, and heard Lieutenant Knowles sigh with relief as Sharpe lifted his rifle in the
air. Knowles was nominally in charge of the thirty men but Harper was satisfied the inexperienced
Lieutenant would do nothing without first talking to him, and he suspected Sharpe had told
Knowles, in no uncertain way, to leave the decisions to Harper.

The sound of the shot came flatly up the field. With relief Harper stretched his muscles and
knelt upwards. "Take your time, lads, make the shots tell."

To hurry would destroy their purpose. The Riflemen aimed deliberately, let the cramp ease in
their arms; the first shots would be the most important. Hagman was first, Harper had expected
that, and he watched approvingly as the Cheshire poacher grunted over his back sight and pulled
the trigger. The gunner who was on the point of inserting the fuse spun away from the barrel and
fell. In the next two seconds another eight bullets slaughtered three more of the French gun
crew; the four survivors scrambled desperately for the scanty cover provided by the trail and the
spokes of the gun's wheels. The gun could not be fired now. The canister was still not loaded,
Harper could see it lying beside a dead gunner who had fallen by the brass muzzle, and any man
who dared to try to thrust the projectile into the barrel would be sure to be cut down by the
deadly rifles. The French had stopped using rifles on the battlefield; they had abandoned them
because they were too slow to load, but these gunners were learning that even the slow rifle had
its advantages over the speedy musket, which could never hope to be accurate at a hundred
paces.

"Cease firing!" The Riflemen looked at Harper. "Hagman!"

"Sarge?"

"Keep them busy. Gataker, Sims, Harvey!" The three looked at him expectantly. "You load for
Hagman. You others, aim for the cavalry officers."

Lieutenant Knowles ran and crouched beside the Sergeant. "Is there anything we can
do?"

"Not yet, sir. We'll move in a minute."

Knowles and the twenty men with muskets were there to protect the Riflemen if the French
cavalry charged them, as surely they must. Harper stared at the horsemen. They seemed as
surprised as the gunners and sat on their horses staring at the slaughtered artillerymen as if
not believing their eyes. They had expected the gun to blow the British infantry into ragged
ruin, and now it dawned on them that there was no gun, no easy victory. Harper raised his first
rifle, snapped the backsight into the upright position, and guessed the horsemen were three
hundred yards away. It was a long shot for a rifle, but not impossible, and the French had
conveniently bunched their senior officers in a small group forward of their first line. As he
pulled the trigger he heard other rifles fire; he saw the group pull apart, a horse went down,
two officers fell dead or wounded. The French were temporarily leaderless. The initiative, as
Sharpe had planned, had gone totally to the British. Harper stood up.

"Hagman's group! Keep firing. You others! Follow me!"

He ran towards the gun, curving wide so that Hagman had an uninterrupted field of fire, and
the men followed him. The plan had been for the Riflemen to destroy the gunners and let Sharpe's
company capture the gun, but Harper could see his Lieutenant still had a long way to go and
neither he nor Sharpe had expected the gun to be placed so conveniently close to the ambush
party. Knowles felt astonished at the rush for the gun, but the huge Irishman was so infectious
that he found himself urging the redcoats on as they dodged the bodies and ran for the gun that
loomed larger and larger. The surviving artillery-men took one look at the seeming dead who had
come to life, and fled. As Harper sprinted the final few yards he was aware of Hagman's spaced
shots ceasing and then he was there, his hands actually on the brass muzzle, the men surrounding
him.

"Sir?"

"Sergeant?" Knowles was panting.

"Two ranks between the gun and the cavalry?" Harper made it sound like a request, but Knowles
nodded as if it had been an order. The young Lieutenant was frantically nervous. He had seen his
new Battalion destroyed by cavalry, watched the King's Colour dragged from the field, and fought
off the sabres with the sword his father had bought him for fifteen guineas at Kerrigan's in
Birming-ham. He had watched Sharpe and Sergeant Harper recover the Regimental Colour and had been
astonished by their action. Now he wanted to prove to the Riflemen that his men could fight just
as effectively, and he lined up his small force and stared at the cavalry, which was at last
moving. It seemed as if a hundred horsemen were advancing towards the gun; the rest were slanting
off towards Sharpe, and Knowles remembered the sabres, the smell of fear, and gripped his sword
tightly. He was determined not to let Sharpe down. He thought of Sharpe's last words to him, the
hands that gripped his shoulders and eyes that bored into him. "Wait!" Sharpe had said. "Wait
until they're forty paces away, then fire the volley. Wait, wait, wait!" Knowles found it
incredible that he was the same rank as Sharpe; he felt sure he would never have the easy manner
of command that seemed so natural to the tall Rifleman. Knowles was awed by the French, they were
the conquerors of Europe, yet Sharpe saw them as men to be outwitted and outfought, and Knowles
desperately wanted the same confidence. Instead he felt nervous. He wanted to fire his first
volley now, to stop the French horses while they were a hundred paces away, but he controlled the
fear and watched the horse-men walk forward, watched as a hundred sabres rasped from their
scabbards and caught the afternoon sun in ranks of curved light. Harper came and stood beside
him.

"We've got a treat for the bastards, sir."

He sounded so cheerful! Knowles swallowed, kept his sword low. Wait, he told himself, and was
surprised to hear that he had spoken out loud and that his voice had sounded calm. He looked at
his men. They were trusting him!

"Well done, sir. May I?" Harper had spoken softly. Knowles nodded, not sure what was
happening.

"Platoon!" Harper was in front of the tiny line of men. He pointed to the ten men on the
right. "Sideways, four paces. March!" Then on the left the same order.

"Platoon! Backwards. March!"

Knowles stepped back with them, watching as the French eased their horses into a trot, and
then under-stood. While he had been standing watching the French, the Riflemen had moved the gun!
Instead of pointing down the track it was now aimed at the French cavalry; somehow they had
loaded it, and the canister which should have swept the British off the road like a housewife
scattering roaches with a broom was now threatening the cavalry instead. Harper stood at the back
of the gun, well clear of the wheel. The gunners had done most of the loading, the Riflemen had
thrust the canister into the barrel and found the slow match that burned red at the end of the
pole. The fuse was in the touch-hole. It was a reed filled with fine powder, and when Harper
touched it the fire would flash down the tube and ignite the powder charge in its serge
bag.

"Hold your fire!" Harper shouted clearly; he did not want the inexperienced men of the South
Essex to fire when the gun went off. "Hold your fire!"