Seven Stones to Stand or Fall (Outlander)(25)
Another volley, close enough this time that several British soldiers in the front lines fell, knocked down by musket fire.
“Hold, hold!” The order rattled down the lines like gunfire. The brimstone smell of slow match was thick, pungent above the scent of powder smoke; the artillerymen held their fire, as well.
French cannon fired, and balls bounced murderously across the field, but they seemed puny, ineffectual, despite the damage they did. How many French? he wondered. Perhaps twice as many, but it didn’t matter. It wouldn’t matter.
Sweat ran down his face, and he rubbed a sleeve across to clear his eyes.
“Hold!”
Closer, closer. Many of the Indians were on horseback; he could see them in a knot on the left, milling. Those would bear watching….
“Hold!”
Wolfe’s arm rose slowly, sword in hand, and the army breathed deep. His beloved grenadiers were next to him, solid in their companies, wrapped in sulfurous smoke from the match tubes at their belts.
“Come on, you buggers,” the man next to Grey was muttering. “Come on, come on!”
Smoke was drifting over the field, low white clouds. Forty paces. Effective range.
“Don’t fire, don’t fire, don’t fire…” someone was chanting to himself, struggling against panic.
Through the British lines, sun glinted on the rising swords, the officers echoing Wolfe’s order.
“Hold…hold…”
The swords fell as one.
“FIRE!” and the ground shook.
A shout rose in Grey’s throat, part of the roar of the army, and he was charging with the men near him, swinging his saber with all his might, finding flesh.
The volley had been devastating; bodies littered the ground. He leapt over a fallen Frenchman, brought his saber down upon another, caught halfway in the act of loading, took him in the cleft between neck and shoulder, yanked his saber free of the falling man, and went on.
The British artillery was firing as fast as the guns could be served. Each boom shook his flesh. He gritted his teeth, squirmed aside from the point of a half-seen bayonet, and found himself panting, eyes watering from the smoke, standing alone.
Chest heaving, he turned round in a circle, disoriented. There was so much smoke around him that he could not for a moment tell where he was. It didn’t matter.
An enormous blur of something passed him, shrieking, and he dodged by instinct and fell to the ground as the horse’s feet churned by. Grey heard as an echo the Indian’s grunt, the rush of the tomahawk blow that had missed his head.
“Shit,” he muttered, and scrambled to his feet.
The grenadiers were hard at work nearby; he heard their officers’ shouts, the bang and pop of their explosions as they worked their way stolidly through the French like the small mobile batteries they were.
A grenade struck the ground a few feet away, and he felt a sharp pain in his thigh; a metal fragment had sliced through his breeches, drawing blood.
“Christ,” he said, belatedly aware that being in the vicinity of a company of grenadiers was not a good idea. He shook his head to clear it and made his way away from them.
He heard a familiar sound that made him recoil for an instant from the force of memory—wild Highland screams, filled with rage and berserk glee. The Highlanders were hard at work with their broadswords—he saw two of them appear from the smoke, bare legs churning beneath their kilts, pursuing a pack of fleeing Frenchman, and felt laughter bubble up through his heaving chest.
He didn’t see the man in the smoke. His foot struck something heavy and he fell, sprawling across the body. The man screamed, and Grey scrambled hastily off him.
“Sorry. Are you—Christ, Malcolm!”
He was on his knees, bending low to avoid the smoke. Stubbs was gasping, grasping desperately at Grey’s coat.
“Jesus.” Malcolm’s right leg was gone below the knee, flesh shredded and the white bone splintered, butcher-stained with spurting blood. Or…no. It wasn’t gone. It—the foot, at least—was lying a little way beyond, still clad in shoe and tattered stocking.
Grey turned his head and threw up.
Bile stinging the back of his nose, he choked and spat, turned back, and grappled with his belt, wrenching it free.
“Don’t—” Stubbs gasped, putting out a hand as Grey began wrapping the belt round his thigh. His face was whiter than the bone of his leg. “Don’t. Better—better if I die.”
“The devil you will,” Grey replied briefly.
His hands were shaking, slippery with blood. It took three tries to get the end of the belt through the buckle, but it went at last, and he jerked it tight, eliciting a yell from Stubbs.
“Here,” said an unfamiliar voice by his ear. “Let’s get him off. I’ll—shit!” He looked up, startled, to see a tall British officer lunge upward, blocking the musket butt that would have brained Grey. Without thinking, he drew his dagger and stabbed the Frenchman in the leg. The man screamed, his leg buckling, and the strange officer pushed him over, kicked him in the face, and stamped on his throat, crushing it.
“I’ll help,” the man said calmly, bending to take hold of Malcolm’s arm, pulling him up. “Take the other side; we’ll get him to the back.” They got Malcolm up, his arms round their shoulders, and dragged him, paying no heed to the Frenchman thrashing and gurgling on the ground behind them.