Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2: Sharpe’s Havoc, Sharpe’s Eagle, Sharpe’s Gold. Bernard Cornwell

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СКАЧАТЬ of voices and reckoned the French were discussing what to do next. The answer came soon enough when he heard the trampling of feet and he deduced that the infantry had been sent to scour the nearer hillside, but in the dark they merely blundered through the ferns and cursed whenever they tripped on rocks or became entangled by gorse. Officers and sergeants snarled and snapped at the men who were too sensible to spread out and get lost or maybe ambushed in the darkness. After a while they trailed back to the trees and there was another long wait, though Sharpe could hear the clatter of the howitzer’s rammer as it shoved and scraped the next shell home.

      The French probably thought their attackers were gone, he decided. No shots had come for a long time and their own infantry had made a perfunctory search, and the French were probably feeling safer, for the gunner foolishly tried to revive the portfire by whipping it back and forth a couple of times until its tip glowed a brighter red. He did not need the extra heat to light the reed in the touchhole, but rather to see the touchhole, and it was his death sentence for he then blew on the tip of the slow match held in the portfire’s jaws, and either Harris or Tongue shot him, and even Sharpe jumped with surprise when the rifle shot blistered the night and he had a glimpse of flame far off to his right, and then the French infantry were forming ranks, the fallen portfire was snatched up and, just as the howitzer fired, so the muskets hammered a crude volley in the direction of Tongue and Harris.

      And the grass fires started again. One sprang up just in front of the howitzer and two smaller fires were ignited by the wadding of the French muskets. Sharpe, his eyes still dazzled by the gun’s big flame, nevertheless could see the crew heaving at the wheels and he slid the rifle forward. He fired, changed weapons and fired again, aiming at the dark knot of men straining at the nearest gun wheel. He saw one fall away. Pendleton fired. Two more shots came from the right and the grass fires were spreading and then the infantry realized that the flames were illuminating the gunners, making them targets, and they frantically stamped out the small fires, but not before Pendleton had fired his second rifle and Sharpe saw another gunner spin away from the howitzer, then a last shot came from Tongue or Harris before the flames were at last extinguished.

      Sharpe and Pendleton went back fifty paces before reloading. ‘We hurt them that time,’ Sharpe said. Small groups of Frenchmen, emboldening themselves with loud shouts, darted forward to search the slope again, but again found nothing.

      He stayed another half-hour, fired four more times and then went back to the hilltop, a journey which, in the dark, took almost two hours, though it was easier than going down for there was just enough light in the sky to show the outline of the hill and the broken stub of the watchtower. Tongue and Harris followed an hour later, hissing the password up at the sentry before coming excitedly into the fort where they told the tale of their exploit.

      The howitzer fired twice more during the night. The first shot rattled the lower slope with canister and the second, a shell, cracked the night with flame and smoke just to the east of the watchtower. No one got much sleep, but Sharpe would have been surprised if anyone had slept well after the day’s ordeal. And just before dawn, when the eastern edge of the world was a grey glow, he went round to make sure everyone was awake. Harper was laying a fire beside the watchtower wall. Sharpe had forbidden any fires during the night, for the flames would have given the French gunners an excellent aiming mark, but now that the daylight was coming it would be safe to brew up some tea. ‘We can stay here for ever,’ Harper had said, ‘so long as we can stew some tea, sir. But run out of tea and we’ll have to surrender.’

      The grey streak in the east spread, lightening at its base. Vicente shivered beside Sharpe for the night had turned surprisingly cold. ‘You think they’re coming?’ Vicente asked.

      ‘They’re coming,’ Sharpe said. He knew that the howitzer’s ammunition supply was not endless, and there could only have been one reason to keep the gun working through the night and that was to fray his men’s nerves so that they would be easy meat for a morning attack.

      And that meant the French would come at dawn.

      And the light grew, wan and grey and pale as death, and the tops of the highest clouds were already golden red as the light changed from grey to white and white to gold and gold to red.

      And then the killing began.

      ‘Sir! Mister Sharpe!’

      ‘I see them!’ Dark shapes melding into the dark shadows of the northern slope. It was French infantry or, perhaps, dismounted dragoons, coming to attack. ‘Rifles! Make ready!’ There were clicks as Baker rifles were cocked. ‘Your men don’t fire, understand?’ Sharpe said to Vicente.

      ‘Of course,’ Vicente said. The muskets would be hopelessly inaccurate at anything more than sixty paces so Sharpe would keep the Portuguese volley as a final defence and let his riflemen teach the French the advantages of the seven lands and seven grooves twisting the quarter turn in the rifle barrels. Vicente was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet, betraying the nervousness he felt. He fingered one end of his small moustache and licked his lips. ‘We wait till they reach that white rock, yes?’

      ‘Yes,’ Sharpe said, ‘and why don’t you shave that moustache off?’

      Vicente stared at him. ‘Why don’t I shave my moustache?’ He could scarcely believe his ears.

      ‘Shave it off,’ Sharpe said. ‘You’d look older. Less like a lawyer. Luis would do it for you.’ He had successfully taken Vicente’s mind off his worries, and now he looked east where a mist hung over the low ground. No threat from there, he reckoned, and he had four of his riflemen watching the southern path, but only four because he was fairly certain that the French would concentrate their troops on one side of the hill and, once he was absolutely certain of that, he would bring those four back across to the northern side and let a couple of Vicente’s men guard the southern path. ‘When you’re ready, lads!’ Sharpe called. ‘But don’t fire high!’

      Sharpe did not know it, but the French were late. Dulong had wanted his men closed up on the summit approach before the horizon turned grey, but it had taken longer than he anticipated to climb the dark slope and, besides, his men were befuddled and tired after a night of chasing phantoms. Except the phantoms were real and had killed one gunner, wounded three more and put the fear of God into the rest of the artillery crew. Dulong, ordered to take no prisoners, felt some respect for the men he faced.

      And then the massacre began.

      It was a massacre. The French had muskets, the British had rifles, and the French had to converge on the narrow ridge that climbed to the small summit plateau and once on the ridge they were easy meat for the rifles. Six men went down in the first few seconds and Dulong’s response was to lead the others on, to overwhelm the fort with manpower, but more rifles cracked, more smoke drifted from the hilltop, more bullets thumped home and Dulong understood what he had only appreciated before through lectures: the menace of a rifled barrel. At a range where a full battalion musket volley was unlikely to kill a single man, the British rifles were deadly. The bullets, he noticed, made a different sound. There was a barely detectable shriek in their whiplike menace. The guns themselves did not cough like a musket, but had a snap to their report, and a man struck by a rifle bullet was thrown back further than he would have been by a musket ball. Dulong could see the riflemen now, for they stood up in their rock pits to reload their damned guns, ignoring the threat of the howitzer’s shells that sporadically arced over the French infantry’s heads to explode on the crest. Dulong shouted at his men to fire at the green-jacketed enemy, but the musket shots sounded feeble and the balls went wide and still the rifle shots slashed home and his men were reluctant to climb onto the narrow part of the ridge so Dulong, knowing that example was all, and reckoning that a lucky man might possibly survive the rifle fire and reach the redoubts, decided to set an example. He shouted at his men to follow, drew his sabre and СКАЧАТЬ