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Sharpes Battle :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 7 из 244"They're foraging," Sharpe said, "using the water trick."
"Hungry bastards," Harper said.
The French had been driven from Portugal more by hunger than by force of arms. When Wellington had retreated to Torres Vedras he left behind him a devastated countryside with empty barns, poisoned wells and echoing granaries. The French had endured five months of famine partly by ransacking every deserted hamlet and abandoned village for hidden food, and one way to find buried jars of grain was to pour water on the ground, for where the soil had been dug and refilled the water would always drain away more quickly and so betray where the grain jars were hidden.
"No one would be hiding food in these hills," Harper said scornfully. "Who do they think would carry it all the way up here?"
Then a woman screamed.
For a few seconds both Sharpe and Harper assumed the sound came from an animal. The scream had been muffled and distorted by distance and there was no sign of any civilians in the tiny settlement, but as the terrible noise echoed back from the far hillside so the full horror of the sound registered on both men. "Bastards," Harper said softly.
Sharpe slid the telescope shut. "She's in one of the houses," he said. "Two men with her? Maybe three? Which means there can't be more than thirty of the bastards down there."
"Forty of us," Harper said dubiously. It was not that he was frightened by the odds, but the advantage was not so overwhelming as to guarantee a bloodless victory.
The woman screamed again.
"Fetch Lieutenant Price," Sharpe ordered Harper. "Tell everyone to be loaded and they're to stay just back from the crest." He turned round. "Dan! Thompson! Cooper! Harris! Up here." The four were his best marksmen. "Keep your heads down!" he warned the four men, then waited till they reached the crest. "In a minute I'm taking the rest of the rifles down there. I want you four to stay here and pick off any bastard who looks troublesome."
"Bastards are going already," Daniel Hagman said. Hagman was the oldest man in the company and the finest marksman. He was a Cheshire poacher who had been offered a chance to enlist in the army rather than face transportation for stealing a brace of pheasants from an absentee landlord.
Sharpe turned back. The French were leaving, or rather most of them were, for, judging from the way that the men at the rear of the infantry column kept turning and shouting towards the houses, they had left some of their comrades inside the cottage where the woman had screamed.
"Hungry bastards," Harper said.
The French had been driven from Portugal more by hunger than by force of arms. When Wellington had retreated to Torres Vedras he left behind him a devastated countryside with empty barns, poisoned wells and echoing granaries. The French had endured five months of famine partly by ransacking every deserted hamlet and abandoned village for hidden food, and one way to find buried jars of grain was to pour water on the ground, for where the soil had been dug and refilled the water would always drain away more quickly and so betray where the grain jars were hidden.
"No one would be hiding food in these hills," Harper said scornfully. "Who do they think would carry it all the way up here?"
Then a woman screamed.
For a few seconds both Sharpe and Harper assumed the sound came from an animal. The scream had been muffled and distorted by distance and there was no sign of any civilians in the tiny settlement, but as the terrible noise echoed back from the far hillside so the full horror of the sound registered on both men. "Bastards," Harper said softly.
Sharpe slid the telescope shut. "She's in one of the houses," he said. "Two men with her? Maybe three? Which means there can't be more than thirty of the bastards down there."
"Forty of us," Harper said dubiously. It was not that he was frightened by the odds, but the advantage was not so overwhelming as to guarantee a bloodless victory.
The woman screamed again.
"Fetch Lieutenant Price," Sharpe ordered Harper. "Tell everyone to be loaded and they're to stay just back from the crest." He turned round. "Dan! Thompson! Cooper! Harris! Up here." The four were his best marksmen. "Keep your heads down!" he warned the four men, then waited till they reached the crest. "In a minute I'm taking the rest of the rifles down there. I want you four to stay here and pick off any bastard who looks troublesome."
"Bastards are going already," Daniel Hagman said. Hagman was the oldest man in the company and the finest marksman. He was a Cheshire poacher who had been offered a chance to enlist in the army rather than face transportation for stealing a brace of pheasants from an absentee landlord.
Sharpe turned back. The French were leaving, or rather most of them were, for, judging from the way that the men at the rear of the infantry column kept turning and shouting towards the houses, they had left some of their comrades inside the cottage where the woman had screamed.