a file to leave three men bloody and twitching on the soaking ground. ‘Leave them there!’ he shouted at two men who stooped to help the victims. ‘Leave them, I say, or I’ll have you flogged!’ At the rear of Taplow’s fusiliers a band played, their music made ragged by their stumbling progress over the tussocky soft ground. Drummer boys were ordered to attend to the three men, but two were already dead and the third had not long to live. The battalion surgeon finished the man with a quick knife cut, then, shrugging, wiped his bloody hands on his grey breeches.
The French artillery pumped smoke from the ridge crest. Sharpe, staring eastwards, could sometimes see the trace of a dark line in the sky and he knew he watched a cannonball at the top of its arcing flight, and he also knew that such a pencil line was only visible in the sky when the ball was coming straight at the observer. At those moments he felt a temptation to spur Sycorax onwards, feigning some urgent duty, but he restrained himself in case any man should think him cowardly. Instead he rode steadily, flinching inwardly, and hid his relief as the balls missed. One roundshot thumped into the mud just ahead of Sycorax, making the mare rear frantically. Somehow Sharpe kept his feet in the stirrups and his arse on the saddle as the gobbets of wet mud fountained about him. The mare was not properly trained to battle, but she was a good steady horse. She had been a gift from Jane, and that thought gave Sharpe a sentimental longing to see his wife. He wondered if her mail had become lost, because no letter had yet arrived, then a cannonball went just over his shako to decapitate a redcoat marching to Sharpe’s left and he forgot his wife in the sudden surge of fear.
‘Close up!’ a Sergeant shouted. ‘Close up!’ It was the litany of battle and the only obituary of the common soldier.
‘You’re used to this, I suppose?’ A Lieutenant, one of Nairn’s junior aides, spurred alongside Sharpe. Ahead of them a man’s entrails were being trodden into the mud, but either the Lieutenant did not notice or did not recognize what he saw.
‘I don’t think you ever get used to it,’ Sharpe said, though it was not true. One did get used to it, but that did not help the fear. The Lieutenant, who was new to the war, was clearly terrified, though he was trying hard not to show it. ‘It’s better,’ Sharpe said truthfully, ‘once you can fire back. It’s much less frightening then.’
‘Bless you, sir, I’m not frightened.’
‘I am.’ Sharpe grinned, then looked to his right and saw that Frederickson’s men were so far unscathed. Frederickson had taken his Riflemen closer to the enemy, which had been a shrewd move for the Greenjackets made a small and seemingly negligible target compared to the long and cumbersome column of redcoats. The French were firing over the Riflemen’s heads.
A cavalry officer galloped past Frederickson’s men towards the head of Beresford’s column. Sharpe recognized the man as one of Wellington’s aides, and assumed from his haste that he carried an urgent message. A clue to the message came when the ridge’s northern end suddenly exploded with cannon fire. Sharpe twisted in his saddle and saw that the French had unmasked a dozen batteries that were hammering their missiles down the hill at the attacking Spaniards.
The Lieutenant frowned. ‘I thought we were supposed to attack at the same time as the Dagoes, sir?’
‘We were.’
God only knew what had gone wrong, but gone wrong it had. The Spaniards, instead of waiting until Beresford’s diversionary attack was in position to the south, had precipitately charged up the ridge’s northern slopes. Their bright uniforms and gaudy colours made a brave show, but it was a gallant display being eviscerated by the concentrated fire of the deadly twelve-pounders.
‘Halt! Halt!’ Divisional officers were galloping back down Beresford’s column. ‘Face right! Face right!’
Battalion officers and sergeants took up the cry and the great column halted and clumsily turned to face the bleak, steep slope at the ridge’s centre.
Nairn, who had been riding at the head of his brigade, spurred back. ‘Column of half companies!’ he ordered. It seemed that Marshal Beresford must be contemplating an immediate assault on the ridge. Certainly, if Beresford was to divert attention from the Spanish attack then he could not wait till he reached the gentler slopes at the ridge’s southern end, but would be forced to launch his eleven thousand men on a desperate uphill scramble against the French entrenchments.
The French batteries, seeing the British and Portuguese battalions shake into their attack columns, kept firing. ‘Lie down!’ Nairn shouted. ‘Lie down!’
The battalions dropped, making themselves a smaller and lower target for the enemy gunners, but leaving the officers on horseback feeling horribly exposed. Sharpe stared at the ridge and feared its muscle-sapping steepness. The sun, just rising above the summit, was suddenly dazzling.
‘Wait here, Sharpe!’ Nairn was excited. ‘I’ll discover what’s happening. You wait here!’
Sharpe waited. After breakfast he had pushed some bread and beef into a saddle bag and now, suddenly hungry, he gnawed at a lump of the meat.
‘They’ve cocked it up!’ Colonel Taplow, his red face as bad-tempered as ever, rode to Sharpe’s side. ‘The Spanish have cocked it up, Sharpe!’
‘So it seems, sir.’ A cannonball thumped the earth to Sharpe’s left. Sycorax skittered sideways until Sharpe soothed her.
‘Seems?’ Taplow was incensed by the mild word. ‘They’ve cocked it up, that’s what they’ve done. Cocked it up!’ He gestured to the north where a new sound erupted as French musketry began flaying the Spaniards. The crackle of musketry was a thick, splintering sound that gave witness to just how many defenders had been waiting for the Spanish. ‘They went too early.’ Taplow seemed to revel in the Spanish mistake. ‘They couldn’t keep their breeches up, could they? Too much damned eagerness, Sharpe. No whippers-in, that’s their problem. No bottom. Not like the English. It’ll be up to us now, Sharpe, you mark my words. It’ll be up to us!’
‘Indeed it will, sir.’
The musketry was unending; a sustained terror of sound just like a million snapping rails of wood. And every snap meant another lead bullet flicking down the slope to strike home in the bunched Spanish ranks.
‘Ah ha! Told you so! No bottom!’ Taplow crowed triumphantly for the Spanish had begun to retreat. The movement was slow at first, merely a slight edging backwards, but it swiftly turned into a quick scramble to escape the flailing bullets. Sharpe was astonished that the Spaniards had climbed as far as they had, and he doubted whether any troops in the world could have gone further, but Colonel Taplow was not so generous. ‘All priming and no charge, that’s the Dago’s problem. No bottom, Sharpe, no bottom. Have a boiled egg.’
Sharpe accepted a hard-boiled egg which he ate as Beresford’s column patiently waited. The sun’s warmth was detectable now, and the small mist that had cloaked the western marshes was quite gone. A heron flapped clumsily into the air and flew southwards. A cannonball struck into Taplow’s bandsmen and Sharpe watched a blood-spattered trumpet fly into the air.
‘It’ll be up to us now!’ Taplow said with immense satisfaction. ‘It’s no good relying on foreigners, Sharpe, they only cock things up. Let me salute you.’
Sharpe suddenly realized that the irascible Taplow was offering a hand. He shook it.
‘Good man!’ Taplow said. ‘Proud to know you! Sorry you didn’t take communion, though. A fellow ought to square things with the Almighty before he kills the King’s enemies. Only decent thing to do. Had you realized that your servant forgot to shave you this morning? Flog the fellow. Let me wish you well of the day now!’ Taplow galloped southwards towards his men while Sharpe sighed. The egg had taken the edge from his hunger, so he pushed the lump of salt beef back into his pouch. Sycorax dropped her head to crop at the trampled grass.
New orders came. The southwards march was to resume, for there was clearly no advantage to be gained in assaulting the ridge’s centre now that the Spanish attack had been repulsed. Nairn said there was a hope that the Spanish would