She nodded, then there was a sudden braying of a trumpet, a whoop like that of a huntsman, and he pulled away from her. 'I'll come back! The first carbine shots cracked down the creekbed.
The militia was like a second British army, but a privileged one. A man who joined the militia could never be asked to serve abroad and his wife, unlike the wife of a regular soldier, received an allowance while he was away from home. It was a pampered, soft, well-trained, and useless army. It had been raised to resist an invasion that had never come, while now, nine years later, it starved the regular army of good men. Some militia men transferred to the regulars, attracted by the bounty and wanting, after their training, to do some real fighting, but most preferred to avoid the dangers of real soldiering.
The militia cavalry of South Essex, whose honorary Colonel was Sir Henry Simmerson, kept a troop quartered close to Foulness. Their task was to patrol the creeks against smuggling, guard the Foulness Camp, and protect Sir Henry's big brick house. When a man ran from Foulness, the militia cavalry went eagerly into a practised routine, because they had been offered a bounty should they ever succeed in stopping a deserter. Now, like a gift from heaven, the troops saw the big man who hauled the punt north towards the Crouch. Their first bullets drove him into the cover of the reeds.
Sharpe ran from the boathouse, gun, ammunition and bundle all held in his arms, and his shoes slipped in the treacherous mud as he turned towards Harper. A man shouted behind, a bullet cracked and whined off the brickwork to Sharpe's left while another drove a fountain of bright water up to his right. He heard the militia officer order his men forward. Some had dismounted to come down into the creek bed, others spurred their horses to its far bank.
She was to marry Girdwood? She was to be put with that tar-faced fool? A bullet crackled in the reeds to Sharpe's right, he slipped again as yet another shot thumped wetly into a rill of mud by his feet, then he was by the punt. 'Here! He threw the carbine to Harper, then the ammunition pouch, and tossed Jane's bundle into the punt. ‘Ill drag it! You hold the bastards off! And Patrick!
'Sir? Harper was finding cover as Sharpe hauled the punt on towards the river.
'Don't kill any of them. They're on our side, remember?"
'I don't think they know that, sir. Harper grinned. If anything he was fractionally faster than Sharpe with a gun. British infantry could fire four shots a minute, while the best of the French could only manage three, yet Sharpe and Harper could both fire five shots in a minute from a clean musket on a dry day. Harper grinned and buckled on the belt with its ammunition pouch. The militia were about to discover what it was to fight against the best.
Sharpe dragged the heavy punt, struggling and cursing, forcing his tired legs to push through the mud, water and clinging roots. A bullet clattered through the reeds beside him, another struck the punt with a thump that ran up Sharpe's arm, then, mercifully, the creek turned, hiding him from his pursuers, and there was enough water in the half cleared bed to ease the punt's progress. Sharpe wondered, with a sudden, terrible fear, whether a stray bullet might have ricocheted into the boathouse. Marry Girdwood? By God he would break that vicious fool!
Patrick Harper knelt at the bend in the creek. He thumbed the cock of Captain Finch's carbine back, saw that the dismounted cavalrymen were closer than their mounted comrades, and fired.
He rolled to one side, clearing his own smoke, and took a cartridge from the captured pouch. He was doing his job now, albeit with a short carbine instead of a rifle, and his second shot hammered down the creek bed within twelve seconds of his first and he saw the cavalrymen, who had never faced an enemy who fired real bullets, dive into cover.
He reloaded again. He saw a mass of men dark in the reeds to the left of the creek and he put a bullet into the ground ahead of them, and then a horseman on the bank was bellowing orders for the dismounted cavalry to spread out, to fire back, and Harper lay down as the volley cut into the reeds about him. 'Forward! The cavalry officer shouted. 'Forward! And there was something in that arrogant voice that touched a nerve in Harper. He knelt up, his face grim, and he put a bullet into the man who led the rush up the creek's wet bed. 'That's from Ireland. He said it under his breath, and already the next cartridge was in his hand, the bullet in his mouth, and the wounded cavalryman was screaming and thrashing and his comrades were stunned because real blood had come into this night, their blood, and Harper was already moving right to snap off his next shot.
He was enjoying himself. It was only an officer like Sharpe, he decided, who would give an Irishman a chance like this, and though his first shots had been aimed only to warn and to wound, and though Sharpe had told him not to kill, the militia officer's voice, and the proximity of the last volley, had got his Irish blood roused. He was talking to himself, muttering in Gaelic, watching for the officer who had stayed safely on the bank and shouted at his men to hurry into danger. 'Forward! the man shouted. 'Spread left! Hurry now!
Harper had the gun at his shoulder. He saw the officer waving his sword, urging his muddy troops on, but not dirtying himself with the pursuit, and Harper knew where the bullet would go. He knew precisely where it would go. He smiled, tightened his finger, fired, and saw the officer fall back with the bullet exactly where Harper had aimed it. One dead, one wounded, and he was reloading again, and the militia, who had never seen how Wellington's men fought, were getting a taste of it in this Essex marsh.
'Patrick!
Grinning, letting them off his hook, Harper slid backwards to the shallow water, turned, and with the carbine and ramrod held in separate hands, ran towards Sharpe. The punt was afloat in a pool among the reeds, and Sharpe gestured at him to get in.
The Irishman's weight momentarily grounded the punt, but Sharpe heaved with a paddle in the mud, and they headed towards the open river that flowed past the marker pole. A bullet snickered through the rushes to their right, another splashed overhead, and Sharpe grabbed a handful of the tough plants at the channel's edge and dragged the punt forward until the bow was suddenly snatched eastwards by the violent current, he gave the boat one last heave with the paddle, and they were out in the wide River Crouch and being swept towards the sea that must be, Sharpe knew, some two miles eastwards.
'Paddle! Both men, kneeling in the flat craft, dug their blades into the water and drove the punt towards the northern bank.
There was a shout behind them, a yell of anger, and Harper muttered the prayer that all sailors and soldiers said before the enemy fired. 'For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly grateful.
The volley made the water dance about them, small spouts of white that rose and fell, and the two men pumped their arms and drove the punt through the ripples of the gunshots, out into midstream, and Sharpe heard the rattle of ramrods behind him.
'They're slow, Harper said scornfully. 'We'd have had two shots off by now.
‘They can still kill us. Paddle!
Harper paddled, his strength driving his side of the punt faster than Sharpe's. Water splashed cold on them from their clumsy strokes. 'I'm afraid I killed one of the buggers, sir!
'You what?
'I killed one, sir! It was an accident, of course. Didn't mean to.
Sharpe did not seem to care. 'Bugger them. They shouldn't try and kill us. He said it angrily and dug his paddle in the water just as the second volley came from the southern bank.
The second volley was more ragged, the splashes wider spaced because the punt was now more than a hundred paces away from the shore, but one bullet struck a thwart, drove splinters up, then whined into the darkness. Harper laughed. 'Lucky bloody shot.