Sharpe's Fortress by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page A

them a flogging, you dogs! Give them a flogging.”
    The two battalions fired in half companies now, each half company firing two or three

    seconds after the neighbouring platoon so that the volleys rolled in from the outer

    wings of each battalion, met in the centre and then started again at the flanks. Clockwork

    fire, Sharpe called it, and it was the result of hours of tedious practice. Beyond the

    battalions' flanks the six-pounders bucked back with each shot, their wheels jarring up

    from the turf as the canisters ripped apart at the muzzles. Wide swathes of burning grass

    lay under the cannon smoke. The gunners were working in shirtsleeves, swabbing, ramming,

    then ducking aside as the guns pitched back again Only the gun commanders most of them

    sergeants, seemed to look at the enemy, and then only when they were checking the alignment

    of the cannon. The other gunners fetched shot and powder, sometimes heaved on a handspike

    or pushed on the wheels as the gun was re laid then swabbed and loaded again.
    “Water!” a corporal shouted, holding up a bucket to show that the swabbing water was

    gone.
    “Fire low! Don't waste your powder!” Major Swinton called as he pushed his horse into

    the gap between the centre companies. He peered at the enemy through the smoke. Behind

    him, next to the 74th's twin flags, General Wellesley and his aides also stared at the

    Arabs beyond the smoke clouds. Colonel Wallace, the brigade commander, trotted his horse

    to the battalion's flank. He called something to Sharpe as he went by, but his words were

    lost in the welter of gunfire, then his horse half spun as a bullet struck its haunch.

    Wallace steadied the beast, looked back at the wound, but the horse did not seem badly hurt.

    Colonel Harness was thrashing one of the native palanquin bearers who had been trying to

    push the Colonel back into the curtained vehicle. One of Wellesley's aides rode back to

    quieten the Colonel and to persuade him to go southwards.
    “Steady now!” Sergeant Colquhoun shouted.
    “Aim low!”
    The Arab charge had been checked, but not defeated. The first volley must have hit the

    attackers cruelly hard for Sharpe could see a line of bodies lying on the turf. The

    bodies looked red and white, blood against robes, but behind that twitching heap the Arabs

    were firing back to make their own ragged cloud of musket smoke. They fired haphazardly,

    untrained in platoon volleys, but they reloaded swiftly and their bullets were striking

    home. Sharpe heard the butcher's sound of metal hitting meat, saw men hurled backwards, saw

    some fall. The file-closers hauled the dead out of the line and tugged the living closer

    together.
    "Close up!
    Close up!" The pipes played on, adding their defiant music to the noise of the guns.

    Private Hollister was hit in the head and Sharpe saw a cloud of white flour drift away from

    the man's powdered hair as his hat fell off.
    Then blood soaked the whitened hair and Hollister fell back with glassy eyes.
    “One platoon, fire!” Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He was so shortsighted that he could

    barely see the enemy, but it hardly mattered.
    No one could see much in the smoke, and all that was needed was a steady nerve and

    Colquhoun was not a man to panic.
    “Two platoon, fire!” Urquhart shouted.
    “Christ Jesus!” a man called close to Sharpe. He reeled backwards, his musket falling,

    then he twisted and dropped to his knees.
    “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” he moaned, clutching at his throat. Sharpe could see no wound

    there, but then he saw blood seeping down the man's grey trousers. The dying man looked up at

    Sharpe, tears showed at his eyes, then he pitched forward.
    Sharpe picked up the fallen musket, then turned the man over to unstrap the cartridge

    box. The man was dead, or so near as to make no difference.
    “Flint,” a front rank man called.
    “I need a flint!”
    Sergeant Colquhoun elbowed through the ranks, holding out a