Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe’s Tiger, Sharpe’s Triumph, Sharpe’s Fortress. Bernard Cornwell

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      ‘Sharpe! Sharpe!’ It was Colonel Gudin who, at nightfall, burst into the barracks room. ‘Come, quick! As you are, hurry!’

      ‘What about me, sir?’ Lawford asked. The Lieutenant had been idly reading his Bible as he lay on his cot.

      ‘Come on, Sharpe!’ Gudin did not wait to answer Lawford, but just ran across the barracks’ courtyard and out into the street which separated the European soldiers’ quarters from the Hindu temple. ‘Quick, Sharpe!’ the Frenchman called back as he hurried past a pile of mud bricks that were stacked at the street corner. Sharpe, dressed in tiger-striped tunic and boots, but with no hat, crossbelt, pouches or musket, ran after the Colonel. He leapt over a half-naked man who was sitting cross-legged beside the temple wall, shoved a cow out of his way, then turned the corner and hurried after Gudin towards the Mysore Gate. Lawford had paused to tug on his boots and by the time he reached the street beside the temple, Sharpe had already vanished.

      ‘Can you ride a horse?’ Gudin shouted at Sharpe when the two men reached the gate.

      ‘I did a couple of times,’ Sharpe said, not bothering to explain that the beasts had been unsaddled draught horses that had ambled docilely around the inn yard.

      ‘Get on that one!’ Gudin said, pointing to a small excited mare that was being held by an Indian infantryman along with Gudin’s own horse. ‘She belongs to Captain Romet, so for God’s sake take care,’ Gudin shouted as he swung himself up into the saddle. Captain Romet was one of Gudin’s two deputies, but as both the junior French officers spent most of their lives in the city’s most expensive brothel, Sharpe had yet to meet either of them. He climbed gingerly onto the mare’s back, then kicked back his heels and clung desperately to the horse’s mane as she followed Gudin’s gelding into the gateway. ‘The British are attacking a wood just north of Sultanpetah,’ the Colonel explained as he pushed his horse through the crowded archway.

      Sharpe could hear the distant fight. Muskets snapped and shells exploded dully to flicker red bursts of light far to the city’s west. It was very nearly night in the city. The first house lamps had long been lit and flaming torches smoked in the archway of the Mysore Gate through which a stream of men was hurrying. Some were infantry, others carried rockets. Gudin bellowed at them for passage, used his gelding to force the slower rocketmen aside, and then, once through the gate, he sawed on his reins to turn westwards.

      Sharpe followed, more intent on staying on the mare than watching the excitement that seethed around him. A narrow bridge led across the South Cauvery just outside the gate and Gudin shouted at its guards to clear the roadway. Rocketmen shrank back against the balustrades as Sharpe and Gudin hurried between the bridge’s small forts and then over the shallow, shrunken river. Once on the far bank they galloped hard across a stretch of muddy grass, then splashed through another small branch of the river. Sharpe clung to the mare’s neck as she lurched up out of the stream. Rockets were flaring in the sky ahead which still glowed from the last rays of the invisible sun.

      ‘Your old friends are trying to clear the tope,’ Gudin explained, pointing at the thick wood that showed black against the eastern skyline. He had slowed down, for now they were crossing more uneven ground and the Colonel did not want to break a horse’s leg by being too reckless. ‘I want you to confuse them.’

      ‘Me, sir?’ Sharpe slipped half out of the saddle, gripped the pommel desperately and somehow dragged himself upright. He could hear the snapping crack of muskets, and see the small muzzle flames flickering all across the land ahead. It seemed to him like a major attack, especially when a British field gun fired in the distance and its muzzle flame lit the twilight like sheet lightning.

      ‘Shout orders at them, Sharpe,’ Gudin said, when the report of the gun had rolled past them. ‘Confuse them!’

      ‘Lawford would have done better, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘He’s got a voice like an officer.’

      ‘Then you’ll have to sound like a sergeant,’ Gudin said, ‘and if you do it right, Sharpe, I’ll make you up to corporal.’

      ‘Thank you, sir.’

      Gudin had slowed his horse to a walk as they neared the wood. It was too dark to trot now and there was a danger they could lose their way. To Sharpe’s north, where the field gun had fired, the musketry was regular, suggesting that the British soldiers or sepoys were steadily taking their objectives, but in the wood in front, there seemed to be nothing but confusion. Muskets crackled irregularly, rockets СКАЧАТЬ