The Scarlet Thief by Paul Fraser Collard Page B

men. The two-man deep formation was perfectly suited to blasting volleys of musketry at opposing infantry but against a cavalry charge it would be torn apart in a brief frenzy of bloody hacking.
    ‘Sir!’ Digby-Brown arrived breathless at Jack’s side, the young officer’s face devoid of all colour. ‘Sir, we must retire. Sir!’
    Jack ignored him, his concentration focused on the Cossacks.
    ‘Sir! I must insist that we retire!’ Digby-Brown was speaking in an icy whisper lest the nearest men hear his desperate plea. The need to maintain a facade of proper behaviour was deeply ingrained, despite the threat of fifty charging Russian Cossacks.
    ‘There’s no time.’ Jack felt himself come to life. ‘We’ll form square.’
    ‘Sir?’
    ‘A square, damn you!’ Jack was desperately trying to remember all the conversations he had overheard in the officers’ mess, discussions on tactics that kept the battalion officers entertained for hours on end. He knew the evolutions of the drill itself inside out, the manoeuvres needed to move the company from one formation to another. But that was as a redcoat, a single cog in the complex machinery that was a British army battalion. It was not as an officer. No one told the men why they changed formation or why the drill had to be learnt so perfectly. The redcoats were only so many cattle blindly obedient to the commands they were given. Commands Jack would now have to give.
    ‘Sir, I disagree. We must retire!’ Digby-Brown argued, his face ashen.
    ‘No. There’s no time,’ Jack snapped. ‘We’ll form square and if they are foolish enough to attack then we’ll fight the bastards off.’
    The oath had come to Jack’s mouth unbidden, the stress of the moment revealing the cracks in the veneer of his imposture. An imposture that would end in the destruction of the company if the fusiliers did not form the protective square in very short order.
    The Cossack force split in two, each wing banking away from the Light Company with the grace of swallows turning on the breeze. Jack twisted his head from side to side, desperately trying to watch the movements of both groups of Cossacks at the same time. The Russian riders were curving back towards the fusiliers’ thin red line. Deftly and without audible words of command they had changed the direction of their attack and were now closing in fast against the Light Company’s exposed flanks.
    ‘Form the rallying square!’ Jack bellowed at his men. The fusiliers looked at each other in silent terror but countless hours of incessant training had buried their instincts deep and, despite their panic, the men reacted to the command.
    The square was the only defence that could provide protection against the charging cavalry. The fusiliers needed to form a wall of bayonets round the company and force the Russian horses to veer away.
    The three sergeants screamed themselves hoarse, pulling the ranks together. The square started to emerge.
    The Cossacks were horribly close.
    ‘Prepare to resist cavalry!’ Jack yelled, readying the men to fire even as they still jostled with each other to form the walls. The soldiers on the outermost wall of the square squatted on the ground, the butts of their rifles jammed into the soil. Their position was the most terrifying, forced to sit and wait for the enemy to close, without being able to fire back. Yet their bayonets were what would hold the enemy at bay, for no horse would be willing to charge the ring of steel no matter how hard their riders urged them on.
    Those men still standing raised their rifles. The formation was ragged but it would have to suffice.
    The Cossacks thundered towards the huddle of redcoats. To Jack they resembled a locomotive moving at full speed, the noise and the power of the charge seemingly irresistible. Yet his men stood their ground, defiant in the face of their terror, standing firm when lesser men would have run screaming for their lives.
    ‘Independent firing, at