Sharpe’s Company. Bernard Cornwell

as it cleaved a skull. He screamed at them, scaring them, slipped on new blood, tugged the blade free and swung again. The French went back. They outnumbered him six to one, but they were gunners more used to killing at a distance than seeing the face of their enemy wild over a naked sword. They cowered back and Sharpe turned, back to the casement’s edge, and found an arm clinging desperately to the stonework. He grabbed the wrist and heaved a Connaught Ranger into the sunken gun-pit. The man’s eyes were bright with excitement. Sharpe yelled at him. ‘Help the others up! Use your sling!’

      A musket ball went past his head, clanging off the barrel of the gun, and Sharpe whirled to see the familiar uniforms of French infantry running down the stone stairs to rescue the gun. He went for them, wild with the madness of battle, and the crazy thought whirled in his head that he wished the mean-faced bastard clerk in Whitehall could see him now. Perhaps then Whitehall would know what its soldiers did, but there was no time for the thought because the infantry were coming down the narrow space beside the barrel. He leaped at them, shouting and lunging with the point to drive them back and he knew he was outnumbered.

      They checked, let him come, and then countered with their long bayonets. The sword was not long enough! He swung at them, smashing bayonets to the side, but another came past his swing and he felt the blade catch in his greatcoat. He seized the barrel with his left hand, pulled the man off balance and brought the great brass hilt of the sword down on his head. He was forced back. Another bayonet flickered at him, making him dodge wildly so that he slipped against the siege gun, his sword was whirling uselessly, flailing for balance, and he saw the bayonets above him. His anger was useless because he could not parry.

      The shout was in a language he did not speak, but the voice was Harper’s and the massive Irishman was crunching the enemy with the seven-barrelled gun held like a club. He ignored Sharpe, stepped over him, laughed at the French, swung at them and went forward as his ancestors had gone into fine, dawn-misted battles. He chanted the same words that his ancestors had, and the Connaught men were beside him and no troops in the world could have stood against their anger and their attack. Sharpe ducked under the barrel and there were more enemy, fearful now, and he hacked up with the blade, drove them back, stabbed with it, screaming the challenge. The French scrambled for the stone stairs in their rear, and the crazed men in red and green coats came on, stepping over the bodies, hacking and clawing at them. Sharpe felt the blade grate on a rib and he swung it clear, and suddenly the only enemy were the survivors who cowered at the foot of the stairs, shouting their surrender. They had no hope. The men of Connaught had lost friends on the breach, old friends, and the blades were used in short, efficient strokes. The bayonets ignored the French cries, worked swiftly, and the casement was thick with the smell of fresh blood.

      ‘Up!’ There were still enemies on the wall, enemies that could fire down into the gun-pit, and Sharpe climbed the stairs, the sword a streak of reflected firelight ahead of him, and suddenly the night air was cool and clear and he was on the wall. The infantry had fallen back down the ramparts, fearful of the carnage round the gun, and Sharpe stood at the stair’s head and watched them. Harper joined him, with a group of red-jacketed 88th, and they panted so that their breath fogged.

      Harper laughed. ‘They’ve had enough!’

      It was true. The French were pulling back, abandoning the breach, and only one man, an officer, tried to force them back. He shouted at them, beat at them with his sword, and then, seeing that they would not attack, came on himself. He was a slim man with a thin, fair moustache beneath a straight, hooked nose. Sharpe could see the man’s fear. The Frenchman did not want to make a solo attack, but he had his pride, and he hoped his men would follow. They did not. Instead they called to him, told him not to be a fool, but he walked on, looking at Sharpe, and his sword was ridiculously slim as he lowered it to the guard. He said something to Sharpe, who shook his head, but the Frenchman insisted and lunged at Sharpe, who was forced to leap back and bring up the huge sword in a clumsy parry. Sharpe’s anger had gone in the cool air, the fight was over, and he was irritated by the Frenchman’s insistence. ‘Go away! Vamos!’ He tried to remember the words in French, but he could not.

      The Irish laughed. ‘Put him over your knee, Captain!’ The Frenchman was little more than a boy, ridiculously young, but brave. He came forward again, the sword level, and this time Sharpe jumped towards him, growled, and the Frenchman rocked back.

      Sharpe dropped his own blade. ‘Give up!’

      The answer was another lunge that came close to Sharpe’s chest. He leaned back and beat the sword aside. He could feel his anger returning. He swore at the man, jerked his head down the ramparts, but still the fool came forward, incensed by the Irish laughter, and again Sharpe had to parry and force him back.

      Harper finished the farce. He had worked his way behind the officer and, as the Frenchman looked at Sharpe for another attack, the Sergeant coughed. ‘Sir? Monsewer?’ The officer looked round. The giant Irishman smiled at him, came forward unarmed and very slowly. ‘Monsewer?’

      The officer nodded to Harper, frowned, and said something in French. The huge Sergeant nodded seriously. ‘Quite right, sir, quite right.’ Then a giant fist travelled from some place low down, up, and straight on to the Frenchman’s chin. He crumpled, the Connaught men gave an ironic cheer, and Harper laid the senseless body beside the rampart. ‘Poor wee fool.’ He grinned at Sharpe, immensely pleased with himself, and looked over towards the breach. The fight still went on, but Harper knew his part in the assault was done, and well done, and that nothing could touch him this night. He jerked his thumb at the Connaught Rangers and looked at Sharpe. ‘Connaught lads, sir. Good fighters.’

      ‘They are.’ Sharpe grinned. ‘Where’s Connaught? Wales?’

      Harper made a joke at Sharpe’s expense, but in Gaelic, so that he was forced to listen to the Rangers’ good-humoured laughter. They were in good spirits, happy, like the Sergeant from Donegal, that they had played a good part in this night’s fight, a part that would make a fine story to weave through the long winter nights in some unimaginable future. Harper knelt to go through the unconscious Frenchman’s pockets and Sharpe turned to look at the breach.

      The 45th, on the far side, were dealing with the second gun. They had found planks, abandoned in the trench, and thrown them over to the casement lip and Sharpe watched, admiringly, as the Nottinghamshire men charged across the perilous path and took their long bayonets to the gun crew. The growl had become a whoop of victory and the dark beast in the ditch uncoiled across the undefended breach and swarmed past the two silent guns towards the streets of the town. A few shots came from doors and windows, but only a few, and the British horde flooded down the rubble to where the breach had smothered the old mediaeval wall. It was over.

      Or nearly. A second mine had been put in the ruins of the old wall. Black powder had been crammed into an old postern and now the French lit the fuse and ran back into the streets. The mine exploded. Flame streaked up from the darkness, old stones shattered outwards, boiling smoke and dust, and with it came the stench of roasted flesh and the head of the victorious column was uselessly decimated. For a second there was a stunned silence, time just to draw breath, and then the shout was not for victory, but for revenge, and the troops took their anger into the defenceless streets.

      Harper watched the howling mob flow into the city. ‘You think we’re invited?’

      ‘Why not?’

      The Sergeant grinned. ‘God knows, we’ve deserved it.’ He was dangling a gold watch and chain and he started forward towards the ramp that led down towards the houses. Sharpe followed and suddenly stopped. He froze.

      Down where the second mine had exploded, lit by a flickering length of old timber, was a mangled body. One side seemed sleek with new blood, a sleekness speckled with the ivory of bone, but the other side was gorgeous in yellow facings and gold lace. A fur-trimmed cavalry cloak covered the legs. ‘Oh God!’

      Harper heard him and saw where he was looking. Then both men were racing down the ramp, slipping on ice and slushy snow, and running towards Lawford’s body.

      Ciudad Rodrigo was won; but not at this price, Sharpe thought, dear God, not at this price.