Sharpes Sword   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

He rode past a dead horse, its rider crouching for safety behind the corpse, and Sharpe had never done this. He had never ridden with the cavalry in a charge and there was a splendour to it that he could not have dreamt. This was the moment when a man became a god, when the air was noise, when speed lent its strength to the sword, a glorious feeling in those minutes before a bullet turned the god into dead meat.

A cavalryman, wounded, was being dragged by his stirrup. He screamed.

At fifty yards another rank of the square brought up their muskets, looked into the storm of anger, and fired. A horse and rider tumbled, hooves high in the sunlight, falling, and the blood streaked impossibly far on the grass, then the next rank was past, manes flying, and still the French had one more loaded rank.

The square blossomed smoke. A bullet hammered past Sharpe, but he did not hear it. He could only hear the hooves. An officer ahead of Sharpe was hit. He saw the man shaking with the pain, imagined the scream that he could not hear in this valley of noise, and saw the long sword dangle useless by its wrist strap. The man’s horse was hit too, jerking its head in sudden pain, yet it charged on. A dying man on a dying horse leading the charge.

The trumpet hurled them at the enemy. One trumpeter was down, his legs broken, yet he played on, played the charge again and again, the notes that could drive a man into wild glory. These screams in the valley, horses and men, screams of pain drowned by the trumpets. The guidons were lowered like lances, it was the final moment, and crossfire took them from another square and one guidon went down, point first into the earth and the man who had held it seemed to fall so slowly, then suddenly he was rolling and screaming, streaking the grass with his blood, and still the charge was led by a dying man on a dying horse. The man died first. He fell forward onto the neck of his horse, yet the horse still obeyed its last command. It charged. It used up its blood, its great heart pumping to the dying limbs, and the horse fell to its knees. Still it tried to charge as it slid on the grass, slick with blood that pumped from its chest, and it slid with its dead burden and died itself. And as it died, and could not turn, it slid like a great missile of dead meat into the front face of the square. Man and horse, in death, smashing the ranks back, opening the gap, and the next rank of Germans saw it.

They saw daylight. They twitched the reins, they screamed, and the French tried desperately to remake the line. Too late.