JК
Sharpes Gold :: Корнуэлл Бернард
Страница: 64 из 179The only way to win was to kill them all, every one, young and old, and even that, as the French werefinding, did not work. He thought of the bodies in the blood of the basement. It was not the war of Talavera.
They spent the night in the gully, cautious lest the French should still be watching, and some time in the small hours the bubbles stopped in Kelly's throat. Pru Kelly, though she did not know it, was a widow again, and Sharpe remembered the small Corporal's smile, his willingness. They buried him at dawn, in a grave scratched from the soil, and they heaped it with rocks that would be forced apart by a fox and perched on by the vultures who would tear his chest further apart.
Kearsey said the words, from memory, and the men stood round the heaped stones awkwardly. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and in a few weeks, Sharpe thought, Pru Kelly would marry again because that was the way with the women who marched with soldiers. The Polish Sergeant, tied up with musket slings, watched the burial and, for a few moments, stopped his struggles. The new day came, still hot, the rain still keeping away, and the Light Company marched into the empty valley to find their gold.
CHAPTER 9
It was a sweet smell, sticky-sweet, that left a foul deposit somewhere at the top of the nostrils, yet it was impossible to describe why it was so unpleasant. Sharpe had smelt it often enough, so had most of the Company, and they knew it fifty yards from the village. It was not so much a smell, Sharpe thought, as a state of the air, like an invisible mist. It seemed, like a mist, to thicken the air, make breathing difficult, yet all the time to have that sweet promise, as if the corpses the French had left behind were made of sugar and honey.
Not even the dogs had been left alive. A few cats, too difficult to catch, had survived the French, but the dogs, like their owners, had been killed, splayed open with desperate savagery, as if the French thought that death by itself was not enough and a body must be turned inside out if it was not to come magically alive to ambush them again. Only one man lived in the village, one of Sharpe's men left behind in the attack, and the French, true to the curious honour that prevailed between the armies, had left John Rorden propped on a mattress, with bread and water to hand and a bullet somewhere in his pelvis that would kill him before this new day was done.
Ramon, in slow English, told Sharpe that four dozen people had been left in the village, mostly the old or the very young, but they had all died. Sharpe stared at the wrecked houses, the blood splashed on low, white walls.
'Why were they caught?
Ramon shrugged, waved a bandaged hand.
They spent the night in the gully, cautious lest the French should still be watching, and some time in the small hours the bubbles stopped in Kelly's throat. Pru Kelly, though she did not know it, was a widow again, and Sharpe remembered the small Corporal's smile, his willingness. They buried him at dawn, in a grave scratched from the soil, and they heaped it with rocks that would be forced apart by a fox and perched on by the vultures who would tear his chest further apart.
Kearsey said the words, from memory, and the men stood round the heaped stones awkwardly. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, and in a few weeks, Sharpe thought, Pru Kelly would marry again because that was the way with the women who marched with soldiers. The Polish Sergeant, tied up with musket slings, watched the burial and, for a few moments, stopped his struggles. The new day came, still hot, the rain still keeping away, and the Light Company marched into the empty valley to find their gold.
CHAPTER 9
It was a sweet smell, sticky-sweet, that left a foul deposit somewhere at the top of the nostrils, yet it was impossible to describe why it was so unpleasant. Sharpe had smelt it often enough, so had most of the Company, and they knew it fifty yards from the village. It was not so much a smell, Sharpe thought, as a state of the air, like an invisible mist. It seemed, like a mist, to thicken the air, make breathing difficult, yet all the time to have that sweet promise, as if the corpses the French had left behind were made of sugar and honey.
Not even the dogs had been left alive. A few cats, too difficult to catch, had survived the French, but the dogs, like their owners, had been killed, splayed open with desperate savagery, as if the French thought that death by itself was not enough and a body must be turned inside out if it was not to come magically alive to ambush them again. Only one man lived in the village, one of Sharpe's men left behind in the attack, and the French, true to the curious honour that prevailed between the armies, had left John Rorden propped on a mattress, with bread and water to hand and a bullet somewhere in his pelvis that would kill him before this new day was done.
Ramon, in slow English, told Sharpe that four dozen people had been left in the village, mostly the old or the very young, but they had all died. Sharpe stared at the wrecked houses, the blood splashed on low, white walls.
'Why were they caught?
Ramon shrugged, waved a bandaged hand.