The rubble of the eastern wall beckoned the two columns forward. It could be easily climbed, its breast-high stones were fallen into a gentle ramp on which Sharpe could see his mens' rifle bullets kicking up spurts of whitish dust. He imagined the two columns of the Fusiliers flowing over the wall into the courtyard, their anger fired by Kinney's death, so why, why in God's name, had Pot-au-Feu invited this attack?
The rifles were drowned by a double explosion from the watchtower hill and Sharpe turned to see the jets of burgeoning smoke mark the position of the two guns in the earthworks beneath the tower. The roundshot rumbled, struck the ground short of the columns and bounced over their heads. The Fusiliers jeered and their officers shouted for silence. Bayonets were bright in the ranks.
Sergeants shouted dressing at the men, ordered their marching, and some of the red jackets with white facings were clean and bright, showing that new recruits were fighting on this Christmas morning. The guns fired again.
The barrels were hotter, or else the elevating screws had been touched a fraction, and this time the first bounce of the balls was in the nearer column and Sharpe saw the files wiped sideways, blood splashing behind, and one man pitched forward, musket dropping, and then crawled from the column and collapsed.
'Close up! Close up!'
'Faster!' Farthingdale waved the hat.
Perhaps he was still right, Sharpe thought. The guns could do little damage in the time it would take for the columns to reach the Castle. They might kill a dozen men, wound as many again, but that would not stop the attack. He looked at the Castle. Musket smoke spouted from almost every embrasure, his Riflemen had targets now, and no bullets struck the slope of the broken wall. He ordered the skirmish line another ten paces forward.
No bullets striking the rubble. He looked again. Nor was there musket smoke above the wall. His men had switched their fire to the men who fired at the attack, and no men fired from the wall which meant it was undefended. Undefended! No men were there, and then Sharpe cursed and began a stumbling run over the uneven ground towards the columns that were close to his skirmish line.
A cannon fired from the watchtower, high this time, so the ball struck between the columns and bounced up and over. The Sergeants called the marching time, their mouths huge, and the officers rode or walked beside their companies with swords drawn. The second gun fired, smashing the nearer column again, plucking men out of the ranks so that the men behind stepped over the carnage and closed files, and still the columns came on. The gun echo died in the valley. The Rifles cracked ahead, muskets spattered from the ramparts, and the leading men of the columns were in the lingering smoke of the skirmish lines first position.
Sharpe pushed unceremoniously through the ranks of the nearer column. He waved at Sir Augustus, proud on his nervous horse. 'Sir! Sir!'
Farthingdale's sabre was drawn. His cloak was peeled back to show the red, black and gold of his uniform. He had purchased his way to a Colonelcy, never having fought, always being the political soldier in the palaces and parliaments of power. 'Sir!'
'Major Sharpe!' He sounded cheerful. He was leading an attack before the eyes of his lover. 'The wall's mined, sir!'
The peevishness was back in his face. He looked at Sharpe in annoyance, thinking, reining in his restless horse. 'How do you know?'
'No one's defending it, sir.’
’They're deserters, Sharpe, not a damned army!' Sharpe was walking alongside the prancing horse. 'For God's sake, sir! It's mined!'
'God damn you, Sharpe! Out of my way!' Farthingdale let his horse have its head and it leaped ahead, and Sharpe stood there, impotent, while the two columns marched stolidly past. Two hundred and seventy men in each column, bayonets glittering by their faces, marching for the easy-looking wall that Sharpe knew had been left as a temptation for just such an attack as this. God damn it! He looked behind him. The grass had been trampled flat and pale by the two columns, littered by the small knots of bleeding and dead men where the cannon fire had struck. The guns fired again and Sharpe pushed through the column and headed back for his men. Pray God he was wrong.
Cross had pulled his Company aside to let the columns through and Sharpe could see the Colours held high and he knew that the Ensigns, not yet out of boyhood, would be proud of this moment. Kinney had not brought the band's instruments with him, or else the musicians would be playing the attack forward until the fighting made them take up their secondary job, that of caring for the wounded. Farthingdale waved them on, cheered them on, and at last the Fusiliers were allowed to cheer themselves as they broke into a run for the last few yards. The cannon on the eastern wall was unmasked, fired, and the head of the further column was torn ragged by the flailing canister. One man crawled on the grass, his white trousers soaking red, his head shaking because he did not know what had happened.
'On! On! On!' Sir Augustus Farthingdale had stopped his horse, let the Colours go past him, and now he urged the columns onto the eastern wall. Smoke from the cannon drifted over the rubble.
Let me be wrong, Sharpe prayed. Let me be wrong.
The first men onto the rubble broke ranks. They spread out as each chose a path on the uneven stones. Their muskets were held ready for the killing thrust of the bayonet.
'On! On!' Farthingdale was up in his stirrups, sabre flailing the air, and Sharpe cursed the man for he knew that this display had been put on for Josefina. Musket bullets struck in the columns, making a flurry like a stone dropped into a water-current, the men reclosing about the disturbed patch. 'On! On!'
They ran at the rubble, packing it, spreading up it, cheering as they breasted it and saw the courtyard in front of them, and again Sharpe prayed he was wrong, and then he saw that the first men were over the stones and he felt a flood of relief because they would not die in the flaming horror of an exploding mine on Christmas Day in the morning.
The jet of smoke seemed to leap from the base of the stones towards Farthingdale and his horse, leaping like a striking snake, and the horse reared, throwing Farthingdale backwards, and then the smoke was coming from every crevice of the stones and Sharpe shouted in helpless warning.
The broken wall heaved upwards, turned into flame and boiling dark smoke so that it was like premature night where the Fusiliers were hurled up and back by the packed powder beneath the stones. The explosion rumbled, then cracked into defiant thunder that rolled between the thorn-clad hills, and the wall heaved up, out, and the men who had not reached the broken barrier stopped in fear.
The gun on the wall fired again and then there was cheering from the Castle, from the hill by the watchtower, and Pot-au-Feu unleashed every musket onto the motionless columns. Flames licked among the smashed barrier beneath the smoke. Musket flashes showed where the enemy was hunting the survivors who had been first into the courtyard.
'Back! Back!' Someone shouted it, all accepted it, and the two columns went back from the smoke, the musket noise, and then Price screamed at Sharpe. 'Sir!'
Men were filing down between the thorn bushes to attack the stricken Battalion on its flank.
'Form on the column!' Sharpe bellowed. Cross's bugler blew the three notes that meant 'form' and Sharpe pushed men towards the red-coated ranks.
A Fusilier Captain, wild-eyed and confused, was shouting at his men to go back. Sharpe yelled at him to stand fast. Six companies at least were unaffected by the mine, and there was still a chance of hurling them into the courtyard, but the Fusiliers obeyed the voices of their own officers. 'Back!'
The men from the thorn, bushes were making a rough skirmish line to attack the retreating Battalion and there was some satisfaction, not much, in seeing the Riflemen hurl them back with well-aimed shots, and then Sharpe heard the clash of steel from beyond the smoke, the sound of more shots, and he knew that there were Fusiliers trapped in the courtyard of the Castle. Those men must not die, or worse, become new hostages to Hakeswill's cruel vices. Sharpe threw his unfired Rifle at Hagman, drew his sword, and turned to where the d
ark smoke still clung to the blood-streaked stones. He would get those men out, and then they would take this Castle in the proper way, the professional way, and he turned as he heard footsteps beside him on the grass. 'What are you doing?'
'Coming with you.' Harper's voice brooked no argument. It was Christmas Day, and they were going to war.
Chapter 12
Going through the acrid curtain of smoke, between the licking flames that consumed the scraps of powder barrel, was like passing into a different world. Gone was the clean air and cold grass of the valley, instead it was a world of broken stone, slick with blood, littered by scraps of unrecognizable burned flesh; a courtyard where the survivors of the mine were being hunted across a cobbled yard.
Sharpe saw Harper go down and he checked in fear for the Sergeant, then saw the huge Irishman tugging the shaft of a halberd clear from a body. The blade swung up into the smoke, a great axe of silver light, and Harper screamed his war shout in his native Gaelic. Sharpe had seen this moment before, the instant when the normally placid Sergeant seethed with the anger of Irish heroes, careless of his safety, caring only to fight in a manner that might be enshrined in the plaintive Irish songs that kept alive the heroism of a nation.
Within the courtyard was a new, low wall, easily jumped, that was Pot-au-Feu's defence line inside the Castle. Men were running to the wall, laughter on their faces, muskets ready to fire at the Fusiliers who were dazed in the smoke. Some of Pot-au-Feu's men had leaped the wall and hunted survivors with bayonets. A few of the Fusiliers had bunched together, a Sergeant commanding them, and they held their bayonets out and died as the musket balls flamed across the puny wall.
Then Harper came out of the smoke.
To the defenders in the courtyard it must have seemed as if a creature from myth had come out of the explosion's darkness, a huge man, drunk with battle, an axe head swinging from his hands, and he ran at the wall, jumped, and the steel blade clove the smoke and bit wet into the defenders.
'Fusiliers! Fusiliers!' Sharpe shouted. He slipped, his right heel greased by a smear of blood, and the fall saved him from a Frenchman's bayonet that came from his left. Sharpe rolled on the ground, swung the huge sword and saw a sliver of wood slice from the musket above him. He lashed out with his left foot, caught the man on his kneecap, and then the man was staggering and Sharpe was on his feet, and the sword finished the Frenchman off. 'Fusiliers! To me!'
He tugged at the sword blade, kicked the body, and the weapon came reluctantly free. 'Fusiliers!'
God, this was a bad place! It was only the presence of some of the enemy around the survivors that stopped Pot-au-Feu's muskets sweeping the courtyard clean. Four men lay at Harper's feet, others had gone back from the fury in the huge man, from the great blade that swung from his powerful arms, and Sharpe saw a man take careful aim with his musket. 'Patrick!'
The halberd was thrown, the fluke of its axe head burying itself in the man's forehead, and Harper came back over the wall unslinging his seven-barrelled gun.
'Save it, Patrick! To me! To me!'
The Sergeant was hustling his men towards Sharpe. Three wounded were being helped, another man had both Colours of the Fusiliers bundled carelessly under his arm. The shafts were broken and splintered.
'This way!' Sharpe turned and kept the movement going in a backswing of his sword that drove back a man in Portuguese uniform who was charging from the rubble. The man seemed crazed, mad with fighting, and Sharpe saw other figures on the broken wall where the smoke clung and was thick with the smell of roasted flesh. Sharpe concentrated on the one man, letting all his anger flow into the lunge of the twisting sword, and he saw the brown uniform fold over the great blade and he was twisting it free even as he knew that they were surrounded.
A musket ball slammed into the stones by his left foot, another plucked at the tail of his jacket, and a third spun a Fusilier clear round, dying before he hit the ground, and Sharpe could see men thick on the stones, scrambling towards them, and he knew that he could never get the wounded across the barrier. He twisted round again. He would not die here! Not at the hands of these scum on this day!
They expected him to stand and fight or else to run over the stones, so he must do something else, and he must decide in an instant or else they would all be dead or worse. Pot-au-Feu did believe he could win! He was proving it to his men, and they were rewarding him by fighting with a fanaticism that was partly born of the knowledge that they were doomed if defeated.
To his right was the gate-tower, huge and massively turreted. There had to be a doorway into it and Sharpe was moving, yelling, and the Fusiliers changed direction and Sharpe led them with his sword and the deserters backed off because they had not expected this and the sword swept at them. He stepped over a red-jacketed body, its mouth open and red, and then the sword took a man in the back and Harper seized the fallen musket, squeezed the trigger, and Sharpe was on the low wall, across it, yelling as if the fiend was inside him, beginning to enjoy this crazy charge into the heart of the enemy's defence, and there was the doorway, small and black, off to his right. 'There! Go! Go! Go!'
The Sergeant led them, dragging a wounded man despite his screams of pain, and Sharpe seized Harper's elbow, turned him, so the two of them would be the rearguard as the Fusiliers scrambled into the desperately small doorway. A backswing to knock a musket and bayonet into the air, withdraw, lunge, and shout in triumph because another bastard was down, and then the shout across the courtyard.
'Get them!'
Hakeswill’s voice. The musket balls flattened on the gate-tower, pecked at the cobbles, and Sharpe went backwards. 'Get inside!' Thank God for the smoke in the courtyard, the hiding smoke, but then there was a crude line visible that came towards them, mouths open, bayonets ahead of them and Harper went onto one knee and the great gun was in his shoulder. 'Get back, sir!'
The kick of the seven-barrelled gun almost threw Harper into the doorway. The centre of the attacking line was snatched away, the shot echoed huge in the Castle, and Sharpe grabbed Harper's collar and hauled him backwards. The Sergeant rolled clear inside the doorway and shook his head. 'God save Ireland.'
'Stairs, sir!' The Fusilier Sergeant pointed at a winding stairway.
'Door!'
Harper slammed it. It looked rotten and frail, nail heads half falling from the once stout planks. There was a bar for it and Sharpe dropped it into place as a musket ball splintered a hole by his right wrist.
The Fusilier Sergeant was hesitating at the bottom of the curving stairs. 'Buggers are up there, sir.'
Sharpe told him what he thought of the defenders upstairs, then led the way with his sword outstretched. Going up the tight, spiral staircase Sharpe understood the cleverness of the old Castle builders for the steps, in this direction, turned in a clockwise direction. Sharpe's sword arm, like most mens', was his right arm, and it was blocked and hampered by the central stone shaft that supported the inner side of each step. A defender, going backwards up the stairs, would have far more freedom for his right arm. So far no one challenged his ascent.
He was going slowly, carefully, scared of each step. Below him he could hear the thumping as musket butts hammered at the door. It could not hold. Then one of his wounded screamed horribly and Sharpe remembered a glimpse of a shattered thigh-bone sticking clean from the torn flesh and he knew the man was being dragged up the steps. Poor bastard, Christmas Day 1812, and the thought gave him such anger that he abandoned his caution and ran up the steps, shouting, and he burst into a spacious room where men, far more frightened than he, waited to see what came out of the doorway. They did not know if it would be friend or foe and they hesitated long enough for the sword to take one and the other two ran back to an open door that looked onto the northern ramparts. Sharpe slammed the door shut, barred it, then turned to look at their refuge.
It was a large, rectangular chamber lit by two arrow slits that looked out at the valley. Two huge and broken windlasses were in the room, long dec
ayed, and a rusted pulley on the ceiling showed where once a portcullis had been raised and lowered by guards in this room. Another circular staircase led upwards from a doorway and Sharpe knew it must lead to the turret's top from which Pot-au-Feu's men had fired on the attack.
Harper was loading his seven-barrelled gun, a long process, while the Fusiliers dragged the wounded into the chamber. Sharpe grabbed the Sergeant's tunic. 'Two men for each doorway, muskets loaded.' He looked at the windlasses. The great drums were still there, the wood rotten and dusty. 'Try and block the stairway with one of them.'
A shot echoed up the stairway, then another, then a splintering crash as the door was pounded down. Sharpe grinned at the Sergeant. 'Don't worry. They'll be cautious coming up here.'
Two Fusiliers tugged at the nearest windlass, snapping bits of wood from its decrepit frame, but achieving nothing. Harper gave one his seven-barrelled gun and a handful of the pistol cartridges he fed it with. 'Load that, son. Just like a bloody musket. Now stand back.’
He wrapped the huge arms about the vast wooden drum, tested his strength tentatively against the force of the anchors that held the axle to the huge beam beneath, and then the arms tightened, the legs pushed, his face was distorted with the effort, and still the drum would not move. One of the men guarding the staircase primed his musket, hastily levelled it, and fired down into the winding stair. A shout from below. That would slow them.
Harper tugged at the drum, swore at it, jerked it rhythmically so that his muscles tore at the ancient brackets. He pulled again, sinews like the ropes that had once raised the portcullis through the slit in the floor, and Sharpe saw a rusted angle-iron snap, heard the splintering of dry wood, and Harper's legs straightened as the drum rose ponderously clear, shedding old dust, and the Irishman carried it, gait as clumsy as a dancing bear, the burden looking like a hogshead of beer in his grasp and he grunted at the two guards to stand aside. He let it go into the stairway, it fell, crashing and bouncing, and then jammed itself into the bend. He wiped his hands and grinned. 'A present from the Irish. They'll have to burn the bastard out of there.' He went back to his seven-barrelled gun, finished the loading, and grinned at Sharpe. 'Next floor, sir?'