JК
Sharpes Battle :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 125 из 244He was in a dangerous and fatalistic mood. Maybe, he thought, this reckless march was the aftermath of defeat, a kind of shocked reaction in which a man lashed out blindly, and this daft expedition under the half-moon was undoubtedly blind, for Sharpe knew in his inmost soul that the unfinished business between himself and Brigadier Loup would almost certainly stay unfinished. No man could expect to march by night towards a fortified village that he had not reconnoitred and then spring an ambush. The odds were that the small expedition would watch the village from afar, Sharpe would conclude that nothing could be achieved against its walls or in the nearby defile, and in the dawn the guards and riflemen would march back to San Isidro with nothing but sore feet and a wasted night.
It was just after midnight when the column reached the low ridge that overlooked the valley of San Cristobal. Sharpe rested the men behind the crest while he climbed to the top with El Castrador, Donaju and Harper. The four men lay in the rocks and watched.
The grey stone of the village was blanched near white by the moonlight which cast stark shadows from the intricate web of stone walls that marked the fields around the small settlement. The lime-washed bell tower of the church seemed to glow, so clear was the night and so bright the half-moon that hung above the glimmering hills. Sharpe trained his telescope on the tower and, though he could plainly see the untidy stork's nest on top and the sheen of the moon glancing from a bell suspended in the tower's arched opening, he could see no sentries there. But nor would he necessarily expect to see a picquet, for any man keeping watch through a cold long night in a high vulnerable place would be likely to huddle for shelter in a corner of the tower.
San Cristobal looked as though it had been a pleasant village before Loup's brigade came to evict the inhabitants and destroy their livelihood. The sturdy field walls had been built to keep fighting bulls safely penned, and those bulls had paid for the church and houses that all showed a touch of affluence in the lens of Sharpe's telescope. At Fuentes de Onoro, the tiny village where he had first met El Castrador, the cottages had been mostly low and virtually windowless, but some of San Cristobal's houses had two storeys and nearly all the outward-facing walls possessed windows and even, in one case, a small balcony. Sharpe assumed there would be picquets in half those windows.
He traced the line of the drover's road with his telescope to see that where a track left the road to become the village's main street a stone wall had been built between two houses.
It was just after midnight when the column reached the low ridge that overlooked the valley of San Cristobal. Sharpe rested the men behind the crest while he climbed to the top with El Castrador, Donaju and Harper. The four men lay in the rocks and watched.
The grey stone of the village was blanched near white by the moonlight which cast stark shadows from the intricate web of stone walls that marked the fields around the small settlement. The lime-washed bell tower of the church seemed to glow, so clear was the night and so bright the half-moon that hung above the glimmering hills. Sharpe trained his telescope on the tower and, though he could plainly see the untidy stork's nest on top and the sheen of the moon glancing from a bell suspended in the tower's arched opening, he could see no sentries there. But nor would he necessarily expect to see a picquet, for any man keeping watch through a cold long night in a high vulnerable place would be likely to huddle for shelter in a corner of the tower.
San Cristobal looked as though it had been a pleasant village before Loup's brigade came to evict the inhabitants and destroy their livelihood. The sturdy field walls had been built to keep fighting bulls safely penned, and those bulls had paid for the church and houses that all showed a touch of affluence in the lens of Sharpe's telescope. At Fuentes de Onoro, the tiny village where he had first met El Castrador, the cottages had been mostly low and virtually windowless, but some of San Cristobal's houses had two storeys and nearly all the outward-facing walls possessed windows and even, in one case, a small balcony. Sharpe assumed there would be picquets in half those windows.
He traced the line of the drover's road with his telescope to see that where a track left the road to become the village's main street a stone wall had been built between two houses.