Sharpe and Harper had found a park of four-wheeled ammunition wagons at the edge of the forest, all under the guard of a plump officer of the quartermaster’s staff who refused to release any of the wagons without proper authority.
“What is proper authority?” Sharpe asked.
“A warrant signed by a competent officer, naturally. If you will now excuse me? I’m not exactly underemployed today.” The Captain offered Sharpe a simpering smile and turned away.
Sharpe drew his pistol and put a bullet into the ground between the Captain’s heels.
The Captain turned, white-faced and shaking.
“I need one wagon of musket cartridge,” Sharpe said in his most patient voice.
“I need authorization, I’m accountable to — „
Sharpe pushed the pistol into his belt. “Patrick, just shoot the fat bugger.”
Harper unslung his seven-barrelled volley gun, cocked and aimed it, but the Captain was already running away. Sharpe spurred after him, caught the man’s collar, and dragged his face up to the saddle. “I’m a competent officer, and if I don’t get the ammunition I want in the next five seconds I shall competently ram a nine-pounder up your back passage and spread you clear across Brussels. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So which wagon do we take?”
“Any one you wish, sir, please.”
“Order a driver to follow us. We want musket ammunition, not rifle ammunition. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.” Sharpe dropped the man. “You’re very kind.”
The French skirmishers were still sniping at the chateau’s walls, and more enemy infantry were massing in the woods for another assault on Hougoumont as the wagon thundered down the rough track and past the haystack at the gate. The French had turned a battery of howitzers on the farm, and some of their shells had set fire to the farmhouse roof, but Colonel MacDonnell was remarkably sanguine. “They can’t burn stone walls, can they?” A shell crashed onto the stable roof, bounced in a shower of broken slates and landed on the yard’s cobbles. Its fuse hissed smoke for a second, then the shell exploded harmlessly, but the sight of the bursting powder acted as a spur to the Guardsmen who were unloading the cartridge boxes from the newly arrived wagon. MacDonnell, turning to go back into the farmhouse, stopped and cocked his head. “Unless I miss my guess, which I rather doubt, our cavalry are earning their pay for a change?”
Sharpe listened. Through the crack of musketry and the boom of heavy guns, the ten trumpet notes of a cavalry charge sounded thin and clear. “I think you’re right.”
“Let’s hope they know which side they’re fighting for,” MacDonnell said drily then, with a wave of thanks, he went back to the house.
Sharpe and Harper followed the empty wagon back to the ridge where they turned eastwards towards the line’s centre. They passed what was left of Captain Witherspoon who had been killed when a common shell had skimmed the ridge and exploded in his belly. His watch, miraculously unbroken, had fallen into a nettle patch where, unseen and hidden, it ticked on. The hands of the watch now showed twenty-seven minutes past two on the afternoon in which the Prussians were supposed to arrive, and had not come.
Lord John galloped clear of the broken French infantry. Ahead and around him were knots of other horsemen; all galloping across the valley to assault the main French battle line on the southern ridge.
The British charge had been scattered by the fighting among the infantry, so now the horsemen galloped in small groups like a field split apart by a long run after a fox. The troopers were still crazed by victory, confident that nothing could stand against their long and bloody swords.
A hedge of holly, broken and trampled by the advance of the French columns, barred Lord John’s path. His horse soared over it, stumbled on the plough ridges beyond, then caught its footing and galloped on. Three men of the Inniskillings charged to his left and Lord John veered towards them, seeking company. An explosion of smoke and earth gouted to his right, then was snatched behind as he galloped on. A ragged line of Scots Greys were just ahead, their horses’ flanks sheeted with blood and sweat. Lord
John looked for Christopher Manvell, or any other of his friends, but saw none. Not that it mattered, for today he felt that every trooper was his friend.
All across the western half of the valley the cavalry charged. Their big horses were blowing hard, and the ground was soaked and heavy, but the horses were strong and willing. The men had stopped screaming with blood-lust, so the sound of the charge had now become the thrash of the hooves, the creak of saddles, and the rasp of breath.
The French gunners on the southern ridge loaded their twelve-pounders with canister. They spiked the charge bags and pushed the quills into the vents.
The horses thundered across the valley floor. They were closing on each other now, drawn together by the need for companionship and the realization of danger.
The French gunners gave their gun-trails a last adjustment. The gunners crouched with the next round ready in their arms. The officers judged the distance, then shouted the order: „Tirez!“
A blast of canister scoured down the forward slope. Two of the Scots Greys ahead of Lord John tumbled in blood and muddy confusion. He galloped between the two men, watching the smoke of the guns roll towards him. A riderless horse with flapping stirrups raced up on his right side. One of the Irish riders on Lord John’s left had been hit by canister in his right arm. He put the reins between his teeth and took his sword into his left hand.
The guns fired again; another thunder of smoke in which the sudden flames stabbed, and out of which another blast of canister tore huge gaps in the charging line, but still hundreds of men stayed in their saddles. A Life Guard’s dying horse crashed into a Scots Grey arid both men and their horses ploughed screaming into the field. An officer behind jumped the dying mess and shouted the mad challenge that had begun the insane charge: ‘To Paris!“
The voice seemed to release a thousand others. The screams began again, the screams of men too frightened to recognize their fear, too exhilarated to believe in death, and too close to the guns to turn back.
The leading horses cleared the gun smoke to see the French artillerymen running desperately for the safety of the infantry behind. The swords began their work again. A gunner swung his heavy rammer at a Life Guard, missed, and died with a sword blade rammed down his open mouth.
The infantry, two hundred yards behind the guns, and protected by a thick hedge, had formed square. The horsemen, on tired horses that wanted to draw breath, swerved away from the threat of the close-packed muskets. They sought other targets, galloping in a useless melee between the abandoned guns and the infantry’s invulnerable squares. Some of the horses slowed to a walk. No one had thought to bring the hammers and soft copper nails that were needed to spike the captured guns, so the worst they could do was slash their swords at the Emperor’s wreathed initial that was embossed on each gun barrel. Some of the French gunners had been too slow to escape and had taken refuge under their weapons, or between the wheels of the limbers, and those men at least could be hunted down. Horsemen leaned clumsily from their saddles to lunge at men who crouched and dodged under the gun axles.
More British horsemen arrived, thudding up through the cannon smoke to find the guns captured, the gunners dead or dying, and a mass of cavalry wheeling impotent among the limbers. They had charged to glory, and reached nowhere. The French infantry barred the promised road to Paris, and now that infantry began firing volleys that, even at two hundred yards, found targets.
“Time to go home, I think.” A Scots Grey captain, his sword bloody to the hilt, walked his horse past Lord John whose tired horse cropped at a patch of grass behind a gun. Lord John was staring at the nearest infantry and wondering when the charge would resume.