Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe’s Revenge, Sharpe’s Waterloo, Sharpe’s Devil. Bernard Cornwell

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      It had been easy enough to escape the prefecture by causing some small chaos, but leaving the city itself would be a harder task. Every exit was guarded by a picquet of redcoats. The soldiers were not there to guard Bordeaux against the marauding bands of the countryside, but rather to apprehend any deserter who might have evaded the provosts at the quays and be trying to take his woman back to Spain and Portugal.

      Sharpe had used the stars to find a westward road through the city, but now, so close to the open country, he had been forced to stop. He was staring at a picquet of a dozen soldiers who were silhouetted about a brazier. Sharpe was too far away to distinguish their faces or see what regiment they might be from. He silently cursed the lost telescope.

      ‘If we wait much longer,’ Frederickson warned, ‘they’ll have men after us.’

      ‘Surely they won’t stop officers walking past?’ Harper offered.

      ‘Let’s hope not.’ Sharpe decided Harper was right, and that rank alone should suffice to see them past the bored guards. He nevertheless wondered just what he should do if the picquet proved obdurate. It was one thing to strip drunken provosts naked, but quite another to use force against a squad of redcoats. ‘Cock your rifles,’ Sharpe said as they walked forward.

      ‘Are you going to shoot them?’ Frederickson sounded incredulous.

      ‘Threaten them, anyway.’

      ‘I won’t shoot anyone.’ Frederickson left his rifle slung on his shoulder. Harper had fewer scruples and dragged back the cock of his seven barrelled gun. The monstrous click of the heavy lock made the officer commanding the picquet turn towards the approaching Riflemen.

      Sharpe was close enough now to see that the picquet’s officer was a tall and dandified man who, like many infantry officers who aspired to high fashion, wore a cavalryman’s fur-edged pelisse over one shoulder. The officer strolled towards the three Riflemen with a languid, almost supercilious, air. The three must have looked strange for, in an army that had swiftly accustomed itself to peace, they were accoutred for war. They had heavy packs, crammed pouches, and were festooned with weapons. The sight of those weapons made the picquet’s sergeant snap an order to his men who unslung their muskets and shuffled into a crude line across the road. The officer calmly waved his hand as if to suggest that the sergeant need not feel any alarm. The officer had now walked thirty yards away from the brazier. He stopped there, folded his arms, and waited for the Riflemen to reach him. ‘If you haven’t got passes,’ he said in a most superior and disdainful voice, ‘then I’ll have no choice but to arrest you.’

      ‘Shoot the bugger,’ Sharpe said gleefully to Harper.

      But Harper was grinning, the officer was laughing, and Fortune, the soldier’s fickle goddess, was smiling on Sharpe. The tall and disdainful officer was Captain Peter d’Alembord of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers. He was an old friend who had once served under Sharpe and who now commanded Sharpe’s old light company. D’Alembord also knew Frederickson and Harper well, and was delighted to see both men.

      ‘How are you, Regimental Sergeant Major?’ he asked Harper.

      ‘I’m just a Rifleman again now, sir.’

      ‘Quite right, too. You were far too insubordinate to be promoted.’ D’Alembord looked back to Sharpe. ‘Purely out of interest, sir, but do you have a pass?’

      ‘Of course I don’t have a bloody pass, Dally. The bastards want to arrest us.’

      It had been pure good luck that had brought Sharpe to this picquet that was manned by his old battalion. He was close enough now to recognize some of the men about the brazier. He saw Privates Weller and Clayton, both good men, but this was no time to greet old comrades, nor to implicate them in this night’s escapade. ‘Just get us quietly out of the city, Dally, and forget you ever saw us.’

      D’Alembord turned to his picquet. ‘Sergeant! I’ll be back in an hour or so.’

      The Sergeant was curious. The picquet duty had been boring, and now some small excitement broke the tedium, but he was too far from the three Riflemen to recognize them. He took a few steps forward. ‘Can I say where you’ll be, sir? If I’m asked.’

      ‘In a whorehouse, of course.’ D’Alembord sighed. ‘The trouble with Sergeant Huckfield,’ he said to Sharpe, ‘is that he’s so damned moral. A good soldier, but horribly tedious. We’ll go this way.’ He led the three Riflemen into a foetid black alley that reeked with an overwhelming stench of blood. ‘They put me next to a slaughterhouse,’ d’Alembord explained.

      ‘Is there a safe way out of the city?’ Sharpe asked.

      ‘There are dozens,’ d’Alembord said. ‘We’re supposed to patrol these alleys, but most of the lads don’t take kindly to arresting СКАЧАТЬ