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"Hurry!»
Sharpe ran down the slope towards the tank. His canteen and haversack thumped on his waist, and sweat poured down his face.
"Slow down!»
Morris shouted at him, but Sharpe ignored the call. The company was breaking apart as the more eager of the men hurried to catch up with Sharpe and the others dallied with Morris.
"Slow down, damn you!»
Morris called to Sharpe again.
"Keep going! " Ke
"Leave them! " an aide shouted.
"Just leave them! " A rocket smashed close by Sharpe's head, enveloping him in smoke and sparks. A wounded man crawled back beside the road, trailing a shattered leg.
Another, blood oozing from his belly, collapsed on the mud and lapped at the filthy water.
Sharpe half choked on the thick smoke as he stumbled up the rising ground. Big black round shot lay here, left from the ca
Once at the summit the attackers turned to their left and ran down the inside of the breach to the dry grass that separated the two walls. A fight was going on in the left-hand breach, and men were bunching behind it, but Sharpe could see the Scots were gradually inching up the slope. By God, he thought, but they were almost in! The British guns had ceased firing for fear of hitting their own men.
Sharpe turned right, going to the second i
"I'm with you, Dick! " Tom Garrard shouted just behind, then a man appeared in the smoke above Sharpe and heaved down a baulk of wood.
The timber struck Sharpe on the chest, throwing him back onto Garrard who clutched at him as the two men fell on the stones. Sharpe swore as a fusillade of musket fire came down from the breach summit. A handful of men was with him, maybe six or seven, but none seemed to be hit. They crouched behind him, waiting for orders.
"No farther!»
Morris shouted.
"No farther!»
"Bugger him, " Sharpe said, and he picked up his musket. Just then the British guns, seeing that the right-hand breach was still occupied by the Mahrattas, opened fire again and the balls hammered into the stones just a few feet over Sharpe's head. One defender was caught smack in the belly by an eighteen-pounder shot and it seemed to Sharpe that the man simply disintegrated in a red shower. Sharpe ducked as the blood poured down the stones, trickling past him and Garrard in small torrents.
«Jesus,» Sharpe said. Another round shot slammed into the breach, the sound of the ball's strike as loud as thunder. Shards of stone whipped past Sharpe, and he seemed to be breathing nothing but hot dust.
"No farther! " Morris said.
"Here! To me! Rally! Rally! " He was crouched under the i
"Sharpe! Come here! " Morris ordered.
"Come on! " Sharpe shouted. Bugger Morris, and bugger all the other officers who said you could put a racing saddle on a cart horse but the beast would not go quick.
"Come on! " he shouted again as he clambered up the stones, and suddenly there were more men to his right, but they were Scots, and he saw that the leading men of the second assault group had reached the fortress. A red-haired lieutenant led them, a claymore in his hand.
The Lieutenant was climbing the centre of the breach, while Sharpe was trying to clamber up the steeper flank. The Highlanders went past
Sharpe, screaming at the enemy, and the sight of their red coats made the British gu
"Light Company! " Sharpe shouted.
"Give those bastards fire! Fire!»
Some muskets banged behind him and the row of defenders seemed to stagger back, but they closed up again, rallied by the huge man with the bloodstained scimitar. Sharpe had his left hand on the broken shoulder of the wall and he used it to haul himself up, then twisted aside as the closest Arabs turned and fired at him. The balls whiplashed past as a naming lump of wadding struck Sharpe on the cheek. He let go of the wall and fell backwards as a gri
«Bastards,» he swore, then saw the dead Scottish Lieutenant's claymore lying on the stones. He picked it up and swept it at the ankles of the Arabs above him, and the blade bit home and threw one man down, and the Scots were charging up the breach again, climbing over their own dead and screaming a raw shout of hate that was matched by the Arabs' cries of victory.