Sharpes Eagle   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

“Shoot them! Hurry!”

He could not stand the sight of the wounded animals. Men walked to them and pointed muskets at their heads, and Sharpe turned to count his Riflemen.

“They’re all safe, sir.” Harper had counted already.

“Thanks.” They had been in little danger as long as they stayed in ranks and kept the bayonets steady. He remembered thinking the same thing as the South Essex proudly marched up the field, banners waving, and now they were broken. He tried to estimate the butcher’s bill. There were no more than thirty or forty dead Frenchmen on the field, a high enough price from four hundred, but they had gained glory for their Regiment and had inflicted appalling losses on the British and Spanish. A hundred dead? He looked at the piles of dead, the broken trail of bodies leading to the bridge; it was impossible to guess the number. It would be high, and there would be far more wounded, men whose faces had been laid open by the horsemen, blinded men who would be led to Lisbon, shipped home, and abandoned to the cold charity of a society long inured to maimed beggars. He shivered.

But it was not just the dead and injured. In its first fight Simmerson’s Battalion had lost its pride as well. For sixteen years Sharpe had fought for the army, had defended colours in the melee of battle and thrust with a bayonet as he tried to reach the enemy’s standard; he had seen captured banners paraded through camp and felt the fierce elation of victory, but this was the first time he had seen a British flag taken on the field and he knew how his enemies would celebrate when the trophy reached Marshal Victor’s army. Soon Wellesley’s army would have to fight a battle, not a skirmish against four squadrons of Chasseurs, but a real battle in which the killing machines of the artillery made survival a game of chance, and their enemies would now go into that battle with their spirits raised because they had already humiliated the British. He felt the beginnings of an idea, an idea so outrageous that he smiled, and young Pendleton, waiting to return his rifle, grinned back at his officer.

“We did it, sir! We did it!”

“Did what?” Sharpe wanted to savour his idea but there was too much to do.

“Saved the flag, sir. Didn’t we?”

Sharpe looked at the teenager’s face. After a life of thieving in the streets of Bristol the boy had a pinched, hungry face, but his eyes were shining and there was a desperate plea for reassurance in his expression. Sharpe smiled. “We did it.