Бернард Корнуэлл - Sharpe's Siege

“Follow the web-foots on the beach?”

“Christ, no.” Sharpe did not care if he never saw Bampfylde again. “We’ll take the inland road.” He turned. The Comte de Maquerre was standing disconsolate by the tideline watching as his two horses, each given a long lead rope, were unceremoniously dumped overboard. The horses would have to swim now, tethered to the Amelie’s boat, and the Count feared for their loss.

Frederickson still stared at the map. “How are you going to stop Bampfylde invading France?”

“By refusing to believe that prinked-up bastard.” Sharpe nodded towards the Frenchman. “I should have heaved him overboard last night.”

“I could have an accident with a rifle?” Frederickson offered helpfully.

It was a cheerful thought for a cold morning, but Sharpe shook his head before turning to watch a working party of Riflemen wrestling supplies through the surf. “We can jettison the bloody ladders,” Sharpe said sourly. He wondered how Bampfylde proposed crossing the ditches and walls of the Teste de Buch without scaling-ladders, then dismissed the problem as irrelevant now. Sharpe’s job now was to go inland, ambush a military convoy on the great road that led southwards, and try to discover the mood of Bordeaux from the captives he would take. “We’ll split the supplies between the men. What we can’t carry, we leave.”

“Yes, sir.” Frederickson folded the map and pushed it into his pouch. “You’ll leave the order of march to me?”

But Sharpe did not reply. He was staring at a group of seated Riflemen who sheltered from the icy wind in a fold of the sand-dunes. “You!” he bellowed, “come here!”

The Riflemen’s faces, bland with the innocence that always greeted an officer’s anger, turned to stare at Sharpe, but one man stood, shook sand from his green jacket, and started towards the two officers. “Did you know?” Sharpe turned furiously on Frederickson.

“No,” Frederickson lied.

Sharpe looked towards the man he had summoned. “You stupid bloody fool!”

“Sir.”

“Jesus Christ! I make you a bloody RSM and what do you do? You throw it away!”

Patrick Harper’s cheek was even more swollen from the toothache and, as though it explained all, he touched the swelling. “It was this, sir.”

The reply took the wind from Sharpe’s anger. He stared at the huge Irishman who gave him a lopsided grin in return. “Your tooth?” Sharpe asked menacingly.

“I went to the surgeon to have the tooth pulled, so I did, sir, and he gives me some rum against the pain, so he does, sir, and I think I must have taken a drop too much, sir, and the next thing I know is I’m on a ship, sir, and the bastard still hasn’t touched the tooth, nor has he, sir, and the only explanation I can possibly think of, sir, is that in my legally inebriated condition some kind soul presumed I was one of Captain Frederickson’s men and put me on to the Amelie.” Harper paused in his fluent, practised lie. “It was the very last thing I wanted, sir. Honest!”

“You lying bastard,” Sharpe said.

“Maybe, sir, but it’s the truth so help me God.” Patrick Harper, delighted with both his exploit and explanation, grinned at his officer. The grin spoke the real truth; that the two of them always fought together and Harper was determined that it should stay that way. The grin also implied that Major Richard Sharpe would somehow avert the righteous wrath of the Army from Harper’s innocent head.

“So your tooth still isn’t pulled?” Sharpe asked.

“That’s right, sir.”

“Then I’ll damn well pull it now,” Sharpe said.

Harper took a step backwards. He was four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, with muscles to match his size, while on his shoulders were slung a rifle and his fearful seven-barrelled gun, but over his broad, swollen face there suddenly appeared a look of sheer terror. “You’ll not pull the tooth, sir.”

“I damn well will.” Sharpe turned to Frederickson. “Find me some pincers, Captain.”

Frederickson’s hand instinctively went to the pouch at his belt, then checked. “I’ll ask the men, sir.”

Harper blanched. “Mr Sharpe! Sir! Please!”

“Quiet!” Sharpe stared at the huge Ulsterman. In truth he was relieved that Harper was here, but the Army was the Army and the relief could not be betrayed. “You’re a damned fool, RSM. What about your son?”

“He’s a bit too young to fight yet, sir.” Harper grinned, and Sharpe had to look away so that he did not return the grin.

“No pincers, sir!” Frederickson sounded disappointed, though Sharpe suspected Sweet William had made no kind of real search for the implement. “You’ll want us under way, sir?”

“Inland. Sergeant Harper!”

“Sir?”

“Attach yourself to Captain Frederickson’s Company and assume whatever rank he sees fit to give you.”

“Sir!”

Like beasts of burden the Riflemen shouldered packs, canteens, weapons, greatcoats and supplies. They went eastwards into the trees, then northwards on the country road that straggled between the few marsh hamlets of this barren coast.

It was not much of a road, merely a rutted cart track that wound between brush and pine and edged past great swamps where long-legged wading birds flapped slowly into the winter air as the Riflemen passed. The Green Jackets marched fast, as they were trained to march, and always, a quarter mile ahead, the picquets signalled back towards Sharpe that the road was clear.

It seemed strange to be this deep in France. This was the land of Bonaparte, the enemy land, and between Sharpe and Bordeaux, indeed between Sharpe and Paris, there were no friendly troops. A single squadron of enemy cavalry could cut this march into butcher’s offal, yet the Green Jackets marched undisturbed and unseen.

“If we go at this pace,” Frederickson said, “we’ll overtake the Marines.”

“It had occurred to me,” Sharpe said mildly.

The eye-patched man stared at Sharpe. “You’re not thinking of taking the…”

“No,” Sharpe interrupted. “If Bampfylde wants to take the fort, he can. But if the map’s right we have to go close to Arcachon, so we might take a look at the fort before we turn eastwards.”

Patrick Harper carried the picquets’ packs and coats as punishment, but the extra weight made no difference to his marching pace. His tooth bothered him; the pain of that was foul and throbbing, but he had no other cares in the world. He had followed Sharpe because it was unthinkable to stay behind when Sharpe went off on his own. Harper had seen that happen before and the Major had nearly killed himself in Burgos Castle as a result. Besides, Jane Sharpe, giving him the oil of cloves, had suggested he stowed away, Isabella had insisted he stay with the Major, and Captain Frederickson had turned his blind eye to Harper’s presence. Harper felt he was in his proper place; with Sharpe and with a column of Riflemen marching to battle.

Their green jackets and dark trousers melded with the cloud-darkened pines. The 60th had been raised for just such terrain, the American wilderness, and Sharpe, turning sometimes to watch the men, could see how well chosen the uniform was. At a hundred paces an unmoving man could be invisible. For a moment Sharpe felt the sudden pride of a Rifleman. The Rifles, he believed as an article of his soldier’s faith, were simply, indisputably, the finest troops in all the world.

They fought like demons and were made more deadly because they were trained, unlike other infantry, to fight independently. These men, in danger, would not look to an officer or sergeant for instruction, but would know, thanks to their training, just what to do. They were mostly squat and ugly men, toothless and pinched-faced, villainous and foul-mouthed, but on a battlefield they were kings, and victory was their common coin.