Sharpes Battle   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

They marched after dark. Donaju insisted on coming, and fifty of his men came too. More would have marched, but Sharpe wanted most of the Real Companпa Irlandesa to stay behind and guard the families and baggage. Everyone and everything left in the San Isidro Fort had been moved into the gatehouse just in case Loup did come back to finish off his previous night's work. "Which would just be my bloody luck," Sharpe said. "Me marching to shoot him and him marching to geld me." He had his riflemen ranging ahead as scouts just in case the French were returning to the San Isidro.

"What do we do if we meet them?" Donaju asked.

"Hide," Sharpe said. "Seventy of us can't beat a thousand of them, not in the open." An ambush might work this night, but not a firefight on open, level moonlit ground against an overwhelming enemy. "And I hate night fighting," Sharpe went on. "I was captured in a bloody night fight in India. We were blundering around in the sodding dark with no one knowing what they were doing or why except for the Indians, and they knew well enough. They were firing rockets at us. The things were no bloody use as weapons, but at night their fire blinded us and the next thing I knew there were twenty big buggers with fixed bayonets all around me."

"Where was that?" Donaju asked.

"Seringapatam."

"What business did you have in India?" Donaju asked in evident disapproval.

"Same business I've got here," Sharpe said curtly. "Killing the King's enemies."

El Castrador wanted to know what they were talking about, so Donaju translated. The partisan was suffering because Sharpe had refused to let anyone ride a horse so El Castrador's horse, like the horses of the Spanish-Irish officers, was being led at the column's rear. Sharpe had insisted on the precaution because men on horses were liable to ride away from the line of march and the sight of a mounted man on a crest could easily serve to alert a French patrol. Sharpe had similarly insisted that no man carry a loaded musket in case a stumble snapped a lock and fired a shot that would carry far in the still, almost windless night.

The march was not hard. The first hour was the worst, for they had to climb the steep hill opposite the San Isidro, but once over the crest the road kept to fairly level ground. It was a drover's road, grassy, wide and easy marching in the cool night air. The route wound lazily between rocky outcrops where enemy picquets could have been hidden. Normally Sharpe would have reconnoitred such dangerous places, but this night he pushed his scouts urgently ahead.