“It’s all dangerous.”
“Aren’t we lucky, though?”
It will be entirely a matter of luck, Marc thought, but decided not to share this insight with his friend.
Three-pronged and carefully planned, the next assault began a few minutes later. Marc’s troop, along with the rest of Riddell’s fifty strong company, made directly for the copse. Firing volleys blindly in staggered sequence, they succeeded in stemming the enemy fire from that source while the other two companies closed in on the cowshed. Both groups took casualties. The rebels seemed able to fire from every side except the rear. Every overturned wagon or haystack harboured a sharpshooter. With Hilliard running ahead-sabre brandished, ululating-Marc’s squad roared into the little woods. It was empty. No rebel offered his belly to the bayonet.
“Keep going!” Marc called out.
They emerged on the far side, prepared to give chase. But thirty-five yards ahead stood a log rampart, hastily constructed of nearby corral railings with gun-slits arranged at intervals. A wave of shotgun explosions shattered the air above the din of the battle now going on around the cowshed on the right. Marc heard the spruce boughs on either side of him rattle, and felt a sharp blow, like a tack hammer’s sting, at his waist. He dropped to his knees. There was no pain. Around him came terrified screams and low moaning. They had been ambushed. He opened his mouth to sound the retreat, but no words came out. With eyes full of righteous anger and a single rivulet of blood on one cheek, Hilliard looked quizzically at his superior officer.
Marc swung his sabre frantically.
Hilliard nodded and yelled, “Back into the bush, lads! It’s a trap!”
Marc staggered into the trees. Three of his men lay writhing out in the open. He took a moment to examine his wound. There wasn’t one. The bird shot had barely penetrated his jacket, with its extra armour of mud.
“Are you hurt?” Hilliard asked, kneeling down.
“I’m all right. We need to get the wounded back in here.”
Sergeant Ogletree and three others managed to haul them into cover, protected by several volleys from the fellow troop next to them, which had also been strafed and had retreated to the safety of the evergreens. Captain Riddell’s voice could now be heard hollering orders, encouragement, or castigation above the crackling of the gunfire, the fast-falling snow, and the smothering spruce boughs. Heavy fighting seemed to be going on over by the cowshed on their right. The odour of cordite was thickening the air around them.
Marc’s squad was commanded to provide covering volleys for a full-company attack on the log-rampart. But the poor visibility-intermittent as a north wind gusted and died-made it difficult to see whether their volleys were having any effect, while the assault itself quickly bogged down before the rampart was reached. The ground was again littered with the wounded and those pinned there by the enemy, who seemed able to shoot from spots both hidden and implausible. Marc was surprised, and more than a little disappointed, that the lives of his men would be put at such risk in an assault carried out without the aid of maps, advance scouting, or any real knowledge of the rebels’ terrain, battle strength, or opportunities for defence.
When the snow let up briefly, it was evident that the frontal attack on the rampart had failed. Men were being dragged back to the copse by their comrades, one of them an ensign with his arm swinging loosely, like the empty sleeve of a jacket. Then, without warning, a dozen rebels rose up above the rampart and aimed their ragtag weapons at the retreating and wholly vulnerable redcoats. Marc screamed the order for a full volley, but the rebels had figured out the timing between volleys and knew they had twenty seconds to inflict severe damage on the exposed British.
Suddenly, before the rebels had time to begin firing, the pounding of hoofbeats shook the ground nearby, and a troop of Montreal cavalry burst around the northern end of the copse and made a thunderous charge at the rampart. Several of them were now firing their pistols, so that between the shock of seeing horses charging out of the snowy squalls like beasts from the Apocalypse and the deadly snap of pistol fire, the rebels balked momentarily, then dropped out of sight behind their barricade. Meanwhile, the wounded infantrymen and their rescuers made it back to the shelter of the trees.
Before the Montreal volunteers could reach the rampart and bring their swords into play, the rebels had regained their gun-slits and begun firing, desperately and blindly. But a horse is a large target, and here there was no respect for the martial animal, no code of conduct to be recognized and honoured. Half a dozen of the noble creatures collapsed in undignified heaps, tossing their riders awry and shrieking piteously. Dazed, with limbs bruised or broken, the Montrealers staggered away in several directions. Only a series of sharp volleys from the riflemen in the copse kept the enemy at bay long enough for those unhorsed volunteers to find their way back. Those who managed to remain mounted had to veer around their fallen comrades or their dying beasts. They broke apart and scattered. But foolishly brave though they might have been, they had saved perhaps a dozen lives by their impetuous gambit.
“Christ, Marc. I thought these Frenchies would be a bunch of yokels and misfits,” Hilliard said.
“They may well be,” Marc said, “but we’ve chosen to fight them on their home ground. They’ve got muskets, rifles, ammo. . and a cause.”
Sergeant Ogletree arrived to inform Marc that the captain had decided to try to clear the rebels from the rampart by attempting to encircle it from both sides. Marc’s troop was again to provide covering fire until the flanking movements were well under way, then they were to storm the barricade with bayonets at the ready while the enemy was distracted. But the company would wait ten minutes or so to begin the assault in the hope that the snow might start up again.
Marc was only half paying attention. His eye had caught sight of a horse in its death throes about twenty yards from the rampart. Its lips were foaming, and one huge eye was slowly rolling to a ghastly stop. And trapped underneath the animal’s hindquarters was its rider. He was on his stomach, so the only way he could attempt to raise the dying creature’s haunches off the lower part of his own body was by rising up onto his knees. But the dead weight was too much for him, and he was now clawing at the earth with both hands in a fruitless effort to pull himself free. Fortunately, he was facing the little woods, with the animal’s bulk shielding his presence, and plight, from the rebels behind the barricade. Any sounds he might have been making were drowned out by the continuing fire from skirmishes going on over by the outbuildings and the stone house.
“We can’t just leave him out there,” Hilliard said. And he took a step towards the open ground.
Marc put a hand on his shoulder. “I’ll go,” he said, and, without looking back, he rushed towards the stricken man in a low, trotting crouch, well within the range of any rifles poking out of the improvised loopholes in the enemy barricade. But it wasn’t until he had dropped down beside the surprised, and terrified, horseman that the first shots snapped at the breeze. One of them struck the upraised foreleg of the horse and shattered the bone.
“It’s all right, I’m British,” Marc said reassuringly. He realized that in his mud-caked clothes he could have been anyone: only his shako cap would be a certain sign of his allegiance.
“I can’t move my legs! I can’t feel my foot!” The “officer” turned out to be a corporal, a young man no more than twenty or so, beardless, handsome despite his pain-distorted features and glazed, goitered stare.
“I’ve got to lever the hindquarters of your horse so you can drag yourself free,” Marc said. “Then we’ll have to make a sprint for it. If we’re lucky, one of the troops in the woods will give us a volley to get us started.”
“Why doesn’t Prince move? I can’t get him to move!” The lad’s cry was anguished.