Sharpes Havoc   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

„Sergeant?”

It was always „Sergeant,” Harper noted, when things were grim, never „Patrick” or „Pat.” „What are we doing, sir?”

„We’re charging that barricade, Sergeant.”

„They’ll fillet our guts, if you’ll pardon me saying so, sir. The buggers will turn us inside out.”

„I know that,” Sharpe said, „and you know that. But do they know that?”

Harper stared at the dragoons who were leveling their carbines across the keels of the upturned skiffs. The carbine, like a musket and unlike a rifle, was smoothbore and thus inaccurate, which meant the dragoons would wait until the last moment to unleash their volley, and that volley promised to be heavy for still more of the green-coated enemy were squeezing onto the road behind the barricade and aiming their weapons. „I think they do know that, sir,” Harper observed.

Sharpe agreed, though he would not say so. He had ordered his men to fix swords because the sight of fixed bayonets was more frightening than the threat of rifles alone, but the dragoons did not seem to be worried by the menace of the steel blades. They were crowding together so that every carbine could join the opening volley and Sharpe knew he would have to surrender, but he was unwilling to do it without a single shot being fired. He quickened his pace, reckoning that one of the dragoons would fire at him too soon and that one shot would be Sharpe’s signal to halt, throw down his sword and so save his men’s lives. The decision hurt, but it was the only option he had unless God sent a miracle.

„Sir?” Harper struggled to keep up with Sharpe. „They’ll kill you!”

„Get back, Sergeant,” Sharpe said, „that’s an order.” He wanted the dragoons to fire at him, not at his men.

„They’ll bloody kill you!” Harper said.

„Maybe they’ll turn and run,” Sharpe called back.

„God save Ireland,” Harper said, „and why would they do that?”

„Because God wears a green jacket,” Sharpe snarled, „of course.”

And just then the French turned and ran.



CHAPTER 2

Sharpe had always been lucky. Maybe not in the greater things of life, certainly not in the nature of his birth to a Cat Lane whore who had died without giving her only son a single caress, nor in the manner of his upbringing in a London orphanage that cared not a jot for the children within its grim walls, but in the smaller things, in those moments when success and failure had been a bullet’s width apart, he had been lucky.