Sharpes Siege   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

The sergeant, hiding beneath the ramparts at the southeastern corner of the fort, had a wooden baker’s peel which he dug into a barrel of lime. He scooped shovel-load after shovel-load of the white powder over the edge.

“Fire!” Frederickson shouted.

Lieutenant Fytch, aiming his pistol, was shot in the chest and thumped back, astonishment on his face and blood on his crossbelt. “I’m…” He could not say what he wanted to say, instead he began to gasp for breath; each exhalation a terrible, pitiful moan.

“Leave him!” Sharpe bellowed at a Marine. This was no time to rescue wounded men. This was a time to fight, or else they would all be wounded. “The whole barrel, sergeant!”

Rossner stooped, lifted the barrel, and tipped it over the rampart. Two bullets struck it, but the powder spumed and fell, was caught by the wind, and Sharpe saw it, like musket smoke, drifting on to the assault troops.

Some of whom, safely over the moat, were dragging with their hands at the branches in the archway.

“Fire!” Harper bellowed the order to his squad and pulled the trigger of his seven-barrelled gun.

Bullets tore through pine and threw men backwards.

“Spike the bastards!” Harper dropped the gun and unslung his rifle. He rammed its bayonet forward, between two branches, and twisted the blade in a Frenchman’s arm.

Attackers were coughing, screaming, and clutching at their eyes as the lime drifted among the Grenadiers.

“Fire!” Sharpe yelled and a score of muskets hammered down into the crowd below.

The conscripts on the counterguard fired at the fort, but most fired high. Some balls struck. A Marine corporal, hit in the shoulder, went on loading his musket despite the pain.

“You’ve got them beat!” Frederickson hurled a third shell that exploded among half-blinded men. “Now kill the bastards, kill them!” Men loaded as fast as cut, grazed hands would work. Bullet after bullet spat down into the French mass that was still pushed forward by the rear ranks.

Sharpe fired his own rifle down into the chaos. “Cheer, you buggers! Let them know they’ve lost! Cheer!”

Lieutenant Fytch, blood filling his mouth, tried to cheer and died instead.

“Fire!” Frederickson shouted over the cheer.

The area about the gate was flames and smoke and bullets heavy with death. Men screaming, men blinded, men bleeding, men crawling.

“Fire!”

Men stumbled, the pain in their eyes like fire, to fall from the makeshift causeway on to the spikes. Blood drifted on the muddy waters.