The British line at last advanced. From east to west it stretched for three miles, snaking in and out of millet fields, through pastureland and across the wide, dry riverbed. The centre of the line was an array of thirteen red-coated infantry battalions, three of them Scottish and the rest sepoys, while two regiments of cavalry advanced on the left flank and four on the right. Beyond the regular cavalry were two ma.s.ses of mercenary hors.e.m.e.n who had allied themselves to the British in hope of loot. Drums beat and pipes played. The colours hung above the shakos. A great swathe of crops was trodden flat as the c.u.mbersome line marched north.

The British guns opened fire, their small six-pound missiles aimed at the Mahratta guns.

Those Mahratta guns fired constantly. Sharpe, walking behind the left flank of number six company, watched one particular gun which stood just beside a bright clump of flags on the enemy-held skyline. He slowly counted to sixty in his head, then counted it again, and worked out that the gun had managed five shots in two minutes. He could not be certain just how many guns were on the horizon, for the great cloud of powder smoke hid them, but he tried to count the muzzle flashes that appeared as momentary bright flames amidst the grey-white vapour and, as best he could guess, he reckoned there were nearly forty cannon there. Forty times five was what? Two hundred. So a hundred shots a minute were being fired, and each shot, if properly aimed, might kill two men, one in the front rank and one behind. Once the attack was close, of course, the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds would switch to canister and then every shot could pluck a dozen men out of the line, but for now, as the redcoats silently trudged forward, the enemy was sending round shot down the gentle slope. A good many of these missed. Some screamed overhead and a few bounced over the line, but the enemy gunners were good, and they were lowering their cannon barrels so that the round shot struck the ground well ahead of the redcoat line and, by the time the missile reached the target, it had bounced a dozen times and so struck at waist height or below. Grazing, the gunners called it, and it took skill. If the first graze was too close to the gun then the ball would lose its momentum and do nothing but raise jeers from the redcoats as it rolled to a harmless stop, while if the first graze was too close to the attacking line then the ball would bounce clean over the redcoats. The skill was to skim the ball low enough to be certain of a hit, and all along the line the round shots were taking their toll. Men were plucked back with shattered hips and legs. Sharpe pa.s.sed one spent cannonball that was sticky with blood and thick with flies, lying twenty paces from the man it had eviscerated.

"Close up!" the sergeants shouted, and the file-closers tugged men to fill the gaps. The British guns were firing into the enemy smoke cloud, but their shots seemed to have no effect, and so the guns were ordered farther forward. The ox teams were brought up, the guns were attached to the limbers, and the six-pounders trundled on up the slope.

"Like ninepins." Ensign Venables had appeared at Sharpe's side.

Roderick Venables was sixteen years old and attached to number seven company. He had been the battalion's most junior officer till Sharpe joined, and Venables had taken it on himself to be a tutor to Sharpe in how officers should behave.

"They're bowling us over like ninepins, eh, Richard?"

Before Sharpe could reply a half-dozen men of number six company threw themselves aside as a cannonball bounced hard and low towards them. It whipped harmlessly through the gap they had made. The men laughed at having evaded it, then Sergeant Colquhoun ordered them back into their two ranks.

"Aren't you supposed to be on the left of your company?" Sharpe asked Venables.

"You're still thinking like a sergeant, Richard," Venables said.

"Pigears doesn't mind where I am." Pig-ears was Captain Lomax, who had earned his nickname not because of any peculiarity about his ears, but because he had a pa.s.sion for crisply fried pig-ears. Lomax was easygoing, unlike Urquhart who liked everything done strictly according to regulations.

"Besides," Venables went on, 'there's d.a.m.n all to do. The lads know their business."

"Waste of time being an ensign," Sharpe said.

"Nonsense! An ensign is merely a colonel in the making," Venables said.

"Our duty, Richard, is to be decorative and stay alive long enough to be promoted. But no one expects us to be useful! Good G.o.d! A junior officer being useful? That'll be the day." Venables gave a hoot of laughter. He was a b.u.mptious, vain youth, but one of the few officers in the 74th who offered Sharpe companionship.

"Did you hear a new draft has come to Madras?" he asked.

"Urquhart told me."

"Fresh men. New officers. You won't be junior any more."

Sharpe shook his head.

"Depends on the date the new men were commissioned, doesn't it?"

"Suppose it does. Quite right. And they must have sailed from Britain long before you got the jump up, eh? So you'll still be the mess baby.

Bad luck, old fellow."

Old fellow? Quite right, Sharpe thought. He was old. Probably ten years older than Venables, though Sharpe was not exactly sure for no one had ever bothered to note down his birth date. Ensigns were youths and Sharpe was a man.

"Whoah!" Venables shouted in delight and Sharpe looked up to see that a round shot had struck the edge of an irrigation ca.n.a.l and bounced vertically upwards in a shower of soil. Tig-ears says he once saw two cannonb.a.l.l.s collide in mid-air," Venables said.

"Well, he didn't actually see it, of course, but he heard it. He says they suddenly appeared in the sky. Bang! Then flopped down."

"They'd have shattered and broken up," Sharpe said.

"Not according to Pig-ears," Venables insisted.

"He says they flattened each other." A sh.e.l.l exploded ahead of the company, whistling sc.r.a.ps of iron casing overhead. No one was hurt and the files stepped round the smoking fragments. Venables stooped and plucked up a sc.r.a.p, juggling it because of the heat.

"Like to have keepsakes," he explained, slipping the piece of iron into a pouch.

"I'll send it home for my sisters. Why don't our guns stop and fire?"

"Still too far away," Sharpe said. The advancing line still had half a mile to go and, while the six-pounders could fire at that distance, the gunners must have decided to get really close so that their shots could not miss. Get close, that was what Colonel McCandless had always told Sharpe. It was the secret of battle. Get close before you start slaughtering.

A round shot struck a file in seven company. It was on its first graze, still travelling at blistering speed, and the two men of the file were whipped backwards in a spray of mingling blood.

"Jesus," Venables said in awe.

"Jesus!" The corpses were mixed together, a jumble of splintered bones, tangled entrails and broken weapons. A corporal, one of the file closers stooped to extricate the men's pouches and haversacks from the scattered offal.

"Two more names in the church porch," Venables remarked.

"Who were they, Corporal?"

"The McFadden brothers, sir." The Corporal had to shout to be heard over the roar of the Mahratta guns.

"Poor b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," Venables said.

"Still, there are six more. A fecund lady, Rosie McFadden."

Sharpe wondered what fecund meant, then decided he could guess.

Venables, for all his air of carelessness, was looking slightly pale as though the sight of the churned corpses had sickened him. This was his first battle, for he had been sick with the Malabar Itch during a.s.saye, but the Ensign was forever explaining that he could not be upset by the sight of blood because, from his earliest days, he had a.s.sisted his father who was an Edinburgh surgeon, but now he suddenly turned aside, bent over and vomited. Sharpe kept stolidly walking.

Some of the men turned at the sound of Venables's retching.

"Eyes front!" Sharpe snarled.

Sergeant Colquhoun gave Sharpe a resentful look. The Sergeant believed that any order that did not come from himself or from Captain Urquhart was an unnecessary order.

Venables caught up with Sharpe.

"Something I ate."

"India does that," Sharpe said sympathetically.

"Not to you."

"Not yet," Sharpe said and wished he was carrying a musket so he could touch the wooden stock for luck.

Captain Urquhart sheered his horse left wards