Harper laughed softly. A shell whimpered overhead to explode far in the rear. A roundshot followed to strike the ridge in front of Sharpe and spew up a shower of wet earth. Doggett’s horse jerked its face away from the spattering mud.

“He killed them,” Doggett said in pathetic explanation.

“He killed who?” Harper asked.

“The KGL. There were two battalions, all that was left of a brigade, and he put them in line and sent them to where the cavalry were waiting.”

“Again?” Sharpe sounded incredulous.

“They died, sir.” Doggett could not forget the sight of the swords and sabres rising and falling. He had watched one German running from the slaughter; the man had already lost his right arm to a sabre’s slice, yet it had seemed that the man would still escape, but a Cuirassier had spurred after him and chopped down with his heavy blade and Doggett could have sworn that the dying man threw one hateful look up the slope to where his real killer was. “I’m sorry, sir. There’s no point in telling you. I tried to stop him, but he told me to go away.”

Sharpe did not respond, except to unsling his rifle and probe a finger into its pan to discover whether the weapon was still primed.

Doggett wanted Sharpe to share his anger at the Prince’s callous behaviour. “Sir!” he pleaded. Then, when there was still no reply, he spoke more self-pityingly. “I’ve ruined my career, haven’t I?”

Sharpe looked up at the young man. “At least we can mend that, Doggett. Just wait here.”

Sharpe, without another word, began walking towards the centre of the British line while Harper took Doggett’s bridle and turned his horse away from the valley. “There are still a few skirmishers who wouldn’t mind making you into a notch on their muskets,” the Irishman explained to Doggett. “Did you really call the skinny bastard a silk stocking filled with shit?”

“Yes.” Doggett was watching Sharpe walk away.

“To his face?” Harper insisted.

“Indeed, yes.”

“You’re a grand man, Mr Doggett! I’m proud of you.” Harper released Doggett’s horse a few paces behind the colour party of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. “Now just wait here, sir. The Colonel and I won’t be long.”

“Where are you going?” Doggett shouted after the Irishman.

“Not far!” Harper called back, then he followed Sharpe into a drifting bank of powder smoke and disappeared.

Sharpe was half-way to the elm tree when Harper caught him. “What are you doing?” the Irishman asked.

“I’m sick of the royal bastard. How many more men will he kill?”

“So what are you doing?” Harper insisted.

“What someone should have done at his bloody birth. I’m going to strangle the bugger.”

Harper put a hand on Sharpe’s arm. “Listen — „

Sharpe threw the hand off and turned a furious face on his friend. “I’m going, Patrick. Don’t stop me!”

“I don’t give a bugger if you kill him.” Harper was just as angry. “But I’ll be damned if you hang for it.”

“Damn the bloody rope.” Sharpe walked on, carrying his rifle in his right hand.

The ridge’s centre was more thickly smothered with smoke than its flanks. The muzzle blast of the two cannon that the French had placed in La Haye Sainte’s kitchen garden carried almost to the ridge’s summit, and every shot pumped a filthy stinking fog to blanket the slope. The French were firing canister, punching a massive weight of musket-balls into the heart of the British defences. The British gunners, exposed on the skyline as they tried to return the fire, had been killed or wounded, allowing the enemy skirmishers to creep ever closer to the bullet-scarred elm tree from which every leaf and most of the bark had been blasted away.

Those staff officers who still lived, and they were not many, had sensibly retreated from the ravaged tree and now stood their horses well back from the ridge’s summit. Sharpe could not see the Duke, but he found the Prince in his fur-edged uniform. The Prince was two hundred paces off, close to the highway and surrounded by his Dutch staff. It was a long shot for a rifle loaded with common cartridge instead of the extra-fine powder, and it would be a tricky shot because of the men who crowded close to the Prince.

“Not here!” Harper insisted.

A shattered gun limber and two dead horses lay not far away and Sharpe crouched in the wreckage to see whether it gave him the cover he needed.

“You’ll never hit the bastard from this distance,” Harper said. “They don’t call him Slender Billy for nothing.”

“I will if God’s on my side.”

“I wouldn’t rely on God today.” The Irishman stared about the ridge top, seeking an idea, then saw a file of green-jacketed Riflemen running towards the valley. The Prince had spurred his horse to follow the Riflemen, thus taking himself closer to the embattled crest of the ridge.

“Where are those lads going?” Harper asked.

Sharpe saw the Greenjackets, and understood. The Duke must have gathered the remnants of his Riflemen and ordered them to stop the French guns firing from La Haye Sainte. It was a desperate throw, but Riflemen alone might succeed in silencing the murderous guns. Fifty Greenjackets were preparing to charge over the crest, and the Prince, who had never lacked bravery, could not resist going forward to watch their fight.

Sharpe suddenly upped and ran towards the Riflemen who had stopped just short of the crest and now crouched in a group as they fixed their long, brass-handled sword-bayonets onto their rifle muzzles. “You’re not coming,” he shouted at Harper who had begun to follow him.

“And how will you stop me?”

“You bloody deserve to die.” Sharpe dropped at the back of the squad of Riflemen, all of whose faces were blackened by the powder scraps exploded from their rifles’ pans. Their commanding officer was Major Warren Dunnett whose face showed understandable resentment when he recognized Sharpe. “Are you taking over?” he asked stiffly.

“It would be a great honour to serve under your command once again, Dunnett.” Sharpe could be very tactful when he wished.

Dunnett, pleased with the compliment, smiled grimly. “We make‘ this very quick!” he spoke to his fifty men. “Use the blades to clear the slope, then make your shots count! Once you’ve fired, tap reload and hold off the Voltigeurs. You understand?” The men nodded, and Dunnett waited. He waited so long that Sharpe wondered whether Dunnett had lost his nerve, but instead it seemed that there was another identical group of Riflemen who were attacking from the far side of the highway and Dunnett’s men merely waited for their signal so that the two groups crossed the ridge crest at the same moment.

Sharpe looked behind him. The Prince was fifty yards away, but staring over the Riflemens’ heads towards La Haye Sainte. Sharpe, to lessen his chances of being recognized, smeared mud on his scarred face and shoved his tricorne hat into his belt.

From somewhere beyond the high-road a bugle called the familiar running triplets of the order to open fire. “That’s the signal, my boys! Let’s go!” Dunnett had waited six years to avenge himself on the French and now, his sabre drawn, he led the Riflemen over the crest.

The appearance of the Rifles was so sudden that the closest French skirmishers were trapped. The sword-bayonets rammed down, were kicked free, then carried on. Dunnett shouted an incoherent challenge and slashed madly with his sabre, not striking anyone, but hissing the blade so fiercely through the smoky air that the French scrambled to escape such an apparent maniac. The fifty Riflemen on the far side of the road attacked with the same sudden and vicious desperation, driving the panicked Voltigeurs down the long slope. The mad charge stopped a hundred yards short of La Haye Sainte as the Riflemen abandoned the pursuit of the French to take up their firing positions. First, before aiming, they undipped their sword-bayonets so that the heavy blades would not unbalance their rifles.