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“You shouldn’t go,” Frederickson said to Sharpe, meaning that it was foolish for the two senior officers to risk themselves at the same time.
Sharpe ignored the well-meant advice. “Lieutenant Minver. As soon as we have the gate open, you charge! Swords fitted!”
“Sir.” The lieutenant, a thin dark man, smiled nervously. Harper lay on the cart, shivering.
“Take your men to the edge of the sand,” Sharpe said as he took off his pack, his officer’s sash, snake-buckled belt, his Rifleman’s jacket, and his shako. Frederickson was doing the same. “Sergeant Rossner? You bring this equipment.”
“Sir!”
Harper’s seven-barrelled gun, loaded and primed, was put beside the Irishman’s bloodstained right hand. His rifle was on the left side of the cart where Sharpe’s sword, drawn from the scabbard, lay easily to hand. Sharpe wanted to give the impression of three men bringing the victim of an accident from the ambush party. Yet success depended on the French guards seeing only the dreadful blood on Patrick Harper.
Harper, lying belly up on the cart, was in danger of choking on his own blood. He spat a thick gob, turned his head, and spat again. “Spit onto your chest! Don’t waste it!” Sharpe said. Harper growled in mutiny, then spat a satisfying lump of blood down to his navel. Sharpe took one handle of the cart, Frederickson the other, and Sharpe- nodded. “Move.”
The firing from the fort had stopped which meant, Sharpe knew, that either the frigate was out of range or else was sinking. There was no sound from the ambush site.
The cart screeched foully on the rough track that led past scrawny alders towards the Teste de Buch. Far away, over the houses and beyond the dunes, Sharpe saw a shiver of white which he knew must be the frigate’s topsails, then heard a bellow of thunder and saw a blossom of smoke which told him Grant had opened fire again. Captain Grant, at least, was doing his duty. Even at the cost of his ship and men he was drawing the fort’s fire, and his success was measured by the sudden clap of thunder as the huge fortress guns opened their own fire again.
The cart axle screeched fit to wake the dead, bounced on the uneven road, and Harper groaned. His right hand, streaked with bloody rivulets, groped for his seven-barrelled gun and Sharpe, seeing the movement, knew the huge Irishman was recovering. “Well done, Sergeant.”
“Didn’t mean to be rude to you, sir.” Harper choked on blood as he said the words.
“Yes, you did,” Frederickson cheerfully answered for Sharpe.
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