The cheers could not be heard at the breaches. The casde was a long journey away, at least a mile's ride by the time a horseman had circled the floodwaters, and it would be minutes yet before the messenger would be dispatched. Picton waited. He had heard the bell strike eleven as he saw his first, magnificent men cross the parapet, and he waited, listening to the sounds of battle, to know if they had won or were being chopped to pieces in the castle yards. He heard the cheers, stood up in his stirrups and roared his own, then turned to an aide-de-camp. 'Ride, man, ride! He turned to another staff officer and clapped the man mightily on the back. 'We've proved him wrong! Damn his eyes! We did it!
He chuckled, anticipating Wellington's reaction whenthe news arrived at midnight.
Anger would take a man through a breach, sheer passion, but a small idea helped. It was not much of an idea, hopeless even, deserving the name Forlorn, but it was all Sharpe had, and so he stared at the ravelin that stretched so invitingly towards the third, unsullied breach. There was no point in trying to outrace the grapeshot across its flat, diamond surface. Any man who tried was flicked hopelessly away, contemptuous meat to the gunners' fire. Yet the third breach was the newest, and the French had been given small time to entrap it, and Sharpe could see, through the sifting smoke, that the Chevaux de Prise on the new breach's summit was too short. There was a gap at the right hand side, a gap three men could pass abreast, and the only problem was reaching the gap. There was no approach in the ditch. The fires still seethed, white hot and violent, and the only path was across the ravelin. They must climb the ravelin, brave the top, and jump into the ditch, and it must be done at the ravelin's edge, close to the flames, where the diamond shape narrowed and the fatal journey was short.
He had no right to take the Company on the journey. This was a Forlorn Hope, born of despair and nurtured by pride, and it belonged to the volunteer, to the foolish. He knew he did not have to go himself, but he wanted no dead man's shoes. He had waited, letting the violence of the last attack spend itself in the ditch, and there was now a kind of truce before the breaches. As long as the British stayed quiet, harmless behind the ravelin, the gunners let them be. Only when men came into the firelight, towards the breaches, did the muzzles spout flame and the grapeshot crease the ditch floor. Back in the darkness, down the glacis, Sharpe could hear orders being called. Another attack was coming, the last reserves of the Division being fed into the ditch, and that was the moment, the hopeless moment, when the feeble idea, based only on the narrowing width of the ravelin, must be tried. He turned to his men and drew the sword, the blade a great streak in the night, and the steel hissed as he swung it to the point at the firelight.
'I'm going there. There is one more attack, just one, and then it's all over. No one's touched that central breach, and that's where I'm going. Over the ravelin, down into the ditch, and I'll probably break my bloody legs because there are no ladders or hay-bags, but that's where I'm going. The faces were pale, staring at him as they squatted on the slope. 'I'm going because the French are laughing at us, because they think they've beaten us, and I'm going to hammer those bastards into pulp for thinking that. He had not known how much anger there was inside him. He was not a speechmaker, never had been, but the anger gave him words. 'I'm going to make those bastards wish they had never been born. They are going to die, and I can't ask you to come with me, because you don't have to come, but I'm going, and you can stay here and I won't blame you. He stopped, out of words, unsure even of what he had said. The fires crackled behind him.
Patrick Harper stood up, stretched his huge arms and in one of them, catching the fires of death, was a vast axe, one of the many that had been issued to cut at the obstacles in the ditch. He stepped forward, over the dead, and turned to look at the Company. In the flame light, hard by the terrible ditch, Patrick Harper was like a warrior sprung from a forgotten age. He grinned at the Company. 'Are you coming?
There was nothing to make them go. Too often Sharpe had asked the impossible of them, and they had always given, but never in this horror, never like this, but they stood up, the pimps and the thieves, murderers and drunks, and they grinned at Sharpe and looked to their weapons. Harper looked down on his Captain. 'It was a fine speech, sir, but mine was better. Would you be giving me that? He pointed to the seven-barreled gun.
Sharpe nodded, handed it over. 'It's loaded.
Daniel Hagman, the poacher, took Sharpe's rifle. No man was a better shot.
Lieutenant Price, nervously flexing his sabre, grinned at Sharpe. 'I think I'm mad, sir.
'You can stay.
'And let you get to the women first? I'll come.
Roach and Peters, Jenkins and Clayton, Cresacre the wife-beater, all were there, and all felt the nervous exhilaration. This was a place fit to go mad in. Sharpe looked at them, counted them, loved them. 'Where's Hakeswill?
'Buggered off, sir. Haven't seen him. Peters, a huge man, spat on the glacis.
Below them the last battalion was climbing the slope, almost within the firelight, and Sharpe knew that the Company must attack at the same time. 'Ready? 'Sir.
A mile's ride away, unknown to the rest of the army, the Third Division was clearing the last of the castle yards. It had taken nearly an hour's hard fighting against the Germans and against the French who had pounded up from the central reserve in the Cathedral square. A mile in the other direction, equally unknown, Leith's Fifth Division had stormed the San Vincente. The ladders had split apart, the wood green, and the men had fallen into a spiked ditch, but other ladders were brought up, the muskets smashed at the battlements, and they had won a second impossible victory. Badajoz had fallen. The Fifth Division were in the city's streets, the Third possessed the castle, but the men in the ditch and on the dark glacis had no way of knowing. The news traveled faster inside the city. Rumors of defeat raced like a plague through the narrow streets, up on to the Santa Maria and Trinidad bastions and the defenders looked fearfully behind them. The city was dark, the castle silhouette unchanged, and they shrugged and told each other it could not be true. But what if it was? Fear batted at them with grim wings.
'Make ready!
By God! Another attack. The defenders turned from the city and looked over the walls. There, from the darkness, from the corpse-littered slope, another attack surged towards the ditch. More meat for the guns, and the fire flashed down the priming tubes, the smoke crashed out, and the mincer turned on.
Sharpe waited for the first gun, heard it, and started running. To Badajoz.
CHAPTER 27
The heights of the wall disappeared in smoke, the flames lancing through, and he jumped, the sword high, and the men in the ditch screamed at them. 'Down! Down!
He had not counted on this. The ditch was crammed with the living, the dying, and the dead, and the living clawed at him. 'Get down! They'll kill us.
He had sprawled down on bodies, but he scrambled up and heard his men thumping around him. There were small fortresses in the ditch, piled corpses, that soaked the grapeshot and sheltered men who themselves crouched on other corpses.