Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Company

'This way! This way!" They were going right, away from the San Pedro bastion, clawing a path on the hill's steep side until they had turned a corner and would receive some shelter from the grapeshot. The first attack had been horribly repulsed, but the Third Division would try again. They could hear the fury at the main breach, far away, and see on the sheeted floodwaters the dim reflections of the fires that were consuming the Light and Fourth Divisions. Knowles could feel a madness in the air, beating its dark wings against a city, bringing a night of insane death and crazy effort. 'Light Company! Light Company!

'Here, sir. An old Sergeant, steadying his Captain with a hand, and then a Lieutenant leading a dozen men. My God, Knowles thought, is this all that is left? But then he saw more men, tugging the cumbersome ladder. Another Sergeant grinned at him. 'Do we go again, sir?

'Wait for the bugle. He knew there was no point in making a scattered attack that could be picked off piecemeal by the defenders. The whole Division must go together.

Knowles suddenly felt good. There was an impression in his head, one that had been nagging him, and now he pinned it down. The musket fire had been light from the parapet. The grapeshot had confused him, but now, thinking back to the chaos of the first attack, the shattering ladder, he remembered how few had been the musket flashes from the walls. The French must have left a skeleton garrison in the castle, and a confidence surged through him! They would do it. He grinned at his men, slapped their backs, and they were glad that he was confident. He was trying to think how Sharpe would do this. The danger was not the muskets, the danger was from the defenders toppling the long, rickety ladders. He oordered off a dozen men, under the Lieutenant, and told hem they were not to try and climb the ladder. Instead they were to fire at the ladder's head, scour the parapet of its defenders, and only when the parapet was clear and he had led the men over the battlements were they to follow. 'Understand?

They grinned and nodded, and he grinned back and drew the curved sabre from its scabbard.

The Sergeant laughed. 'I thought you were going to forget it again, sir. The men laughed at him and he was glad of the darkness to cover his blush, but they were good men, his men, and he suddenly understood, as never before, the sense of loss that Sharpe had suffered. Knowles wondered how he was to climb the ladder and hold the sword, and knew he would. have to put the blade between his teeth. He would drop it! He was nervous, but then, instead of bugles, there were shouts and the trampling of feet and the moment had come.

The survivors of the Third Division erupted from the darkness. The carcasses flowed down, and the cannon in the small casde bastion shredded the attack, but they were screaming defiance and the ladders swayed in the ungainly curves until they slammed against the castle wall.

'Up! He jammed the blade between his teeth and gripped the rungs. Musket balls came down and then he heard his own guns firing, the Lieutenant calling the orders, and he was climbing. The great, irregular granite blocks were going past his face, and he scrambled up, the fear a living thing beside him, and he concentrated on keeping the sabre between his teeth. His jaw ached. It was such a stupid tiling to worry about because he was nearing the top and he wanted to laugh and he was afraid, so afraid, because the enemy would be waiting, and he felt his knuckles graze against the granite as the slope of the ladder took him close to the wall. He took the sabre from his mouth.

'Stop firing! The Lieutenant stared up and held his breath.

Knowles had to use his fist, wrapped round the sabre handle, as a prop to help him up the last rungs. It was easier than climbing with the blade in his teeth. He suddenly felt foolish, as if someone might have laughed at him for climbingg a ladder with a sabre in his mouth, and he wondered why the mind chose such irrelevant and stupid thoughts at such: moment. He could hear the guns, the screams, the crash of another ladder, and the man behind pushed at him, and the top was there! This was the moment of death and his fearharrowed him, but he pushed over the top and saw the bayonet come sawing towards him. He leaned to one side, tottering on the ladder, and swung his right arm for balance and, to his surprise, saw the sabre at the end of the arm cleave down into the enemy's head. A hand pushed him from behind, his feet were still pedaling at the rungs, but he had run out of ladder! He was falling forward on to the body of the dead man, and another enemy was coming, so he rolled and twisted and knew he was there. He was on the ramparts! There was a keening in his throat, that he did not hear, a sound of insensate fear, and he thrust up with the sabre, into the man's groin, and the scream winged into the night and the blood pulsed on to Knowles's wrist, and the second man was with him.

They had done it! They had done it! The men were coming up the ladder, and he was filled with a joy that he did not know existed. He was on his feet, his blade bloodied to the hilt, and the enemy were running towards them, muskets outstretched, but the fear was conquered. There was something odd about the Frenchmen's uniforms. They were not blue and white. Knowles had a glimpse of red turnbacks and yellow facings, but then he was jumping forward, remembering that Sharpe always attacked, and the sabre twisted a bayonet aside, flicked up, and he had the man in the throat. 'Light Company! To me! Light Company!

A musket volley shattered along the parapet, but he was still alive and more of his men were joining him. He heard the enemy shouting orders. German! These were Germans! If they were half as good as the more numerous Germans who fought for Wellington, but he would not feel fear, only victory. He led his men down the wall, bayonets out. The enemy were few and outnumbered, and every yard of wall that Knowles's men cleared was another yard where ladders could safely be climbed and the casde parapet filled with the red uniforms.

The Germans died hard. They defended each casement, each stairway, but they stood no chance. The castle had been denuded of troops, only a thin battalion left, but that battalion fought grimly. Each minute that they saved on the battlements was another minute for the central reserves to reach the casde, so they fought on, despising the odds, and screamed as they fell from the parapets, chopped down by the redcoats, and fought till the wall was lost.

Knowles felt the joy of it. They had won the unbelievable victory. They had climbed a rock hill and a casde and they had won! He pounded his men on their backs, hugged them, laughed with them, forgave them all their crimes, because they had done it. It did not matter that the vast casde buildings would still have to be cleared, the dark, treacherous courtyards, because no one now could take this battlement from them. The British had won the city's highest point and from here they could fight downhill, into the streets, down to the main breach, and Knowles knew he would reach Teresa first and he would see, some time in the night, the gratitude on Sharpe's face. He had done it. They had done it. And for the first time that night, it was British cheers dial startled the air in Badajoz.

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!