Sharpes Gold   ::   Корнуэлл Бернард

The march in the darkness seemed to take forever, but Sharpe dared not hurry the men, for fear of getting lost. They slipped and cursed on the stones; their musket stocks banged hollowly on rock; they squinted in the tiny light that came from the sickle moon hazed by the northern clouds. To the east the stars pricked at the outline of the hills, and as they neared the valley floor and midnight approached, the French lit fires that beckoned the Company like a beacon in the dark night.

Harper was beside Sharpe. 'They'll blind themselves, sir.

The French, in the security of their firelight, would see nothing beyond a musket shot from their walls. The circling night would be a place of fantasy and strange shapes. Even for Sharpe the landmarks, that had seemed so clear by day, now took on monstrous shapes, even disappeared, and he stopped often, crouched, and tried to filter the real from the imaginary. The men's guns were loaded, but not cocked, their white belts hidden beneath greatcoats; their breathing loud in the darkness. They neared the village, angling north away from the house, going past the heavy barley and feeling naked and obvious in the wide valley. Sharpe strained his senses for a telltale sign that a sentry, high on Moreno's house, had been alerted: the click of a carbine-lock, the scrape of an officer's sword, or worst of all the sudden stab of flame as a picquet saw the dark shapes in the field. The crunching of the dry soil beneath his feet seemed to be magnified into a terrible loudness, but he knew it was the same for the enemy guards. This was the worst time of night, when fears took over, and the Hussars and lancers inside their walls would hear the wolves in the hills, the nightjars, and each sound would be a knelling for their death until the senses were blunted, distrusted, and the night merely became a horror to survive.

A flash of light. 'Down! Sharpe hissed. Christ! Flames whipped crazily into the night, spewed sparks that spiralled away in the breeze, and then he realized that the cavalrymen had lit another fire, one of the timber piles out in the cleared space, and Sharpe stayed on the ground, listening to the pounding of his heart, and searched the dark shapes of the deserted cottages to his front. Or were they deserted? Had the French been clever and let any watcher in the hills think that they were all inside the protective, well-lit walls? Had the small cottages, the dark alleyways, been salted with men, waiting with sabres? He took a breath. 'Sergeant?

'Sir?

'You and me. Lieutenant?

'Sir?

'Wait here.