Honour and the Sword Read Online Free PDF Page B

right then, I was busy checking my musket action and getting the damn thing loaded. I’d only just got it comfortably on the rest when there was movement in the dark and the sound of pounding hooves, and there they were, cuirassiers charging us down the Ancre Road.
    The press of men behind me slackened a little, and I had a nasty suspicion some of our civilians were trying to back away. Our sergeant kept his head. He watched the bastards thundering closer, he knew as well as I did those breastplates can resist a ball at anything other than close range, and only when they were nearly on top of us did he give the order to fire. It was a good, tight volley, a great crash of sound, and through the smoke we heard the screaming of horses, the shouting of men, and the thud of bodies hitting the ground.
    It was over a year since I’d stood in the line, but the drill comes back pretty quickly in that situation, and I was legging it to the back before the echo even died. I’d forgotten the rest of it, though, the bitter smell of smoke, the roar in your ears, the instinct that reaches for your powder the second your hand’s off the trigger, I was only just in with the ramrod when the second rank fired. There was still a third, but the sergeant called them to hold, he knew once they discharged we were stuffed, we weren’t up with the reload. The cavalry saw us waiting, thought better of it, and backed off to regroup. Some of the civilians cheered, but not me, Abbé, I’d seen it all before. I knew what they’d do next.
    And they did. They’d mustered more men for their next assault, so they halted just out of range, then sent up the first group with levelled pistols. It was only the bloody caracole , and us a sitting target with three thin ranks to beat it. On they came, blasted their pistols at us and skipped back out of range while the next lot took their place.
    The sergeant divided our ranks into two, so we could raise six rounds to cover the reload, but it couldn’t last, men were dropping all round. Next time I reached the front there was only Marcel and one other man beside me, a hard-faced bugger in a fancy coat who was Steward of Ancre itself. He wasn’t even that for much longer, the bastards fired the same time we did, and blew a hole in his chest I could have stuck two fists in. I was over his body and off for the back, Marcel limping beside me. His hand was clutching his thigh, while between his fingers pumped out thick, red blood.
    I grabbed Giles Leroux from the second rank to take his place and yelled at Marcel to leave the line, but he only grinned and shook his head. Smoke-blackened face, wide smile and eyes as bright as hope, poor lad, just burning to be a hero. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They’ll give up soon.’
    Did they buggery. A murmur ran along the ranks in front of us and I saw something nastily familiar rumbling down the Ancre Road towards us. Field guns, Abbé. Artillery. We were fucked.
    Père Gérard Benoît
    Our sergeant saw that all was lost, and ordered the civilians to flee while he took upon himself the business of military surrender. I was rejoiced to see the young Marcel Dubois escaping into the woods with a companion, for his gallantry deserved a better reward than to be made prisoner of the enemy.
    Many of our folk had already quit the village with such goods as they could carry, but others had nothing in their lives but the homes and businesses they were now required to leave. Some ran for Verdâme, in the hope the assault might have spent itself there; some concealed themselves in the Dax-Verdâme woods which divide our two villages; others barricaded themselves in the illusory safety of their homes. Many sought sanctuary in our own church of St Sebastian, crowding the building to the extent I found it hard to re-enter, the more as some had brought their livestock, and the aisles were filled with pigs and chickens. I nevertheless sought to comfort the people with the saying of