Sharpe's Battle

"No one will get rich off me," Sharpe said grimly, then peered round the corner to see a barricade of dead grenadiers blocking the street with a mass of French infantry waiting behind them. "Who's loaded?" Sharpe asked the men crouching near him. "To the front," he ordered the half-dozen men who raised their hands. "Hurry now! We go round the corner," he told them, "you wait for my word, you kneel, you fire, then you charge like hell. Pat? You bring the rest five paces behind." Sharpe was leading a mongrel mix of riflemen, Co

He screamed the last word as he led his men around the corner. The French behind the barricade obliged Sharpe by firing straightaway, panicked by the awful screams of the attackers into firing too soon and firing too high. "Halt! Kneel!" Sharpe stood among the kneeling men. "Aim!" Harper was already leading the second charge out of the alley. "Fire!" Sharpe shouted and the volley whipped over the dead grenadiers as Sharpe's men charged out of the smoke and scrambled over the warm heap of bloody dead. The French ahead of Sharpe were desperately reloading, but their fixed bayonets impeded their ramrods and they were still trying to load their muskets when Sharpe's charge smashed home and the killing began again. Sharpe's sword arm was weary, his throat was hoarse from shouting and his eyes were stinging from powder smoke, sweat and blood, but there could be no rest. He rammed the sword home, twisted it, pulled it out, then rammed it forward again. A Frenchman aimed his musket at Sharpe, pulled the trigger and was rewarded with a hangfire as the powder in the pan caught fire, but did not set off the charge inside the barrel. The man screamed as the sword stabbed home. Sharpe was so weary from the killing that he was holding the big sword two-handed, his right hand on the hilt and his left gripping the lowest part of the blade so that he could shove it hard into the press of men. The crush of bodies was so great that there were times when he could hardly move and so he would claw at the faces nearest him, kick and bite and butt with his head until the damned French moved or fell or died and he could climb over another body and snarl forward with the bloody sword dripping.

Harper caught up with him. The spontoon's foot-long sharpened steel spearhead had a small cross-bar at its base to prevent the weapon being driven too deep into an enemy horse or man and Harper was repeatedly burying the blade clear to the cross-piece, then kicking and twisting to loosen the weapon before thrusting forward again. Once, when a French sergeant tried to rally a group of men, Harper lifted a dying man on the end of the truncated spear and used his thrashing body as a bleeding and screaming battering ram that he slammed into the enemy ranks. A pair of bloody-faced Co

A rush of Highlanders came out of a lane on Sharpe's right. He sensed that the battle was turning. They were attacking downhill now, not defending uphill, and the grey infantry of Loup's brigade was going back with the rest. He unclenched his left hand from the lower blade of the sword and saw he had cut his palm open. A musket flamed from a window to his left and a guardsman went spi

"Left!" Harper called and Sharpe turned to see a rush of grey-uniformed Frenchmen coming through an alley. The guardsmen no longer needed orders to counterattack, they just swarmed into the alley and screamed a wild, keening noise as they laid into the enemy. The Real Companпa Irlandesa had been caught up by the sublime joy of a victorious and killing fight. One man took a bullet in the chest and noticed nothing, but just went on stabbing and swinging his musket. Donaju had long ceased trying to exercise control. Instead he was fighting like his men, gri

"No."

"He'll live," Sharpe said. "He ain't the kind to die in battle."

"And we are?" Donaju asked.

"God knows." Sharpe was resting for a moment in an angle of wall. His breath came in great gasps. "Have you seen Loup?" he asked Harper.

"Not a sign of the bugger, sir," Harper answered. "But I'm saving this for him." He touched the clustered barrels of his volley gun that was slung on his back.

"Bastard's mine," Sharpe said.

A cheer a

A bellowing voice sounded to Sharpe's right and he saw it was Loup himself trying to rally the French. The Brigadier was standing on the remnants of the old stone clapper bridge where he swore at the ru

Some redcoats were pursuing the French over the stream as Sharpe ran towards the bridge. "Loup! You bastard! Loup!" he shouted. "Loup!"

The Brigadier turned and saw the blood-soaked rifleman ru