Sharpes Siege   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

At the foot of the stone ramp, facing the collapsed gateway, was the single cannon. Its capsquare was broken, but the barrel was charged with the last of the garrison’s dry powder and rammed with metal scraps, stone fragments, and rusty nails. A trail of powder had been trickled into its vent, then covered with a patch of oilcloth.

Harper stood by the cannon. Beside it, sheltered in a hole beneath the stone ramp, was a torch made of twisted straw, rags and pitch. He plucked it out and whirled it through the air so that the flames were fanned into a sudden, rain-sizzling blaze.

“Now!” Frederickson, halfway up the ramp with his men, shouted the order.

Harper plucked the oilcloth free and jammed the burning concoction of dripping pitch and straw on to the venthole. He saw the powder spark and threw himself sideways.

The cannon fired.

It recoiled viciously and the barrel, ramming with all the force of the dirty powder inside it, tore itself off the carriage, but not before the charge, spreading like duckshot, emptied itself into the courtyard.

The stones and metal scraps flayed into the French. A shower of blood momentarily rivalled the rain, then the barrel clanged down on to the carriage’s right wheel, snapping spokes as if they were matchwood, and Harper was scrambling up the ramp and shouting for his axe.

Men screamed in the yard. Men had been blinded, eviscerated, torn ragged. Calvet had instinctively thrown himself flat and now listened to the horror about him. “Charge!” He scrambled up. “Charge!”

He could see how few defenders were left to face him, but at least they were. Riflemen, the British elite, and he would capture these last few as a token of his victory. “Charge!”

Men, made courageous by the paucity of the defenders and roused to gallantry by the general’s voice, obeyed. From among the wounded and the dead, from the clinging smoke of the cannon, a pelting, yelling mass of men emerged. Calvet led them.

“Now!” Frederickson had the last seven lime-barrels at the head of the ramp. Sergeant Rossner threw one, it bounced, split open, then, spewing powder that was turned to instant whitewash by the rain, slammed into the first rank of Frenchmen. A man screamed as the barrel pinned him against the broken gun-carriage and as limewash flayed at his eyes.

Frederickson looked behind him. Sharpe’s men, using the dry cover of the citadel where captured French ammunition had been stored, were holding the southern wall. Minver’s men, with agonizing slowness, were being rowed towards the Thuella.