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“So would any man. Now shut up. You’re supposed to be dying.”
Patrick Harper said nothing more as the cart slewed round a corner, over a muddy rut, and up on to the harder track that led straight to the bridge over the fort’s inner ditch. The wind gusted, bringing the stench of powder smoke in its cold touch. No sound came from the south and Sharpe knew the Marines were still far from Arcachon. If the Scylla was to be saved from further punishment, then the Rifles would have to do the job.
They were already within cannon-range of the fort, but no gunners stared from the deep embrasures. “Run,” Sharpe said. “Run as if he’s dying.”
“He is,” Harper groaned.
Sharpe had to push hard to keep up with Frederickson’s pace and he saw a head appear on the fortress wall, he saw the tricolour lift to the smoke-fouled wind, then Sweet William, beside him, was shouting in breathless French and Sharpe knew that it was madness for three men to take on one of the coastal forts of mainland France, but he was committed now, inside musket range, and all they could do was push on, pray, then fight like the soldiers that they were; the best.
CHAPTER 7
They stopped ignominiously on the sand-gritted planks of the drawbridge.
The gates did not open, they could go no further, and Sharpe and Frederickson, chests heaving and breath misting into great plumes from the effort of pushing the obstinate cart with Harper’s weight, could only stare up at a puzzled face which appeared on the ramparts.
Frederickson shouted to the sentry in French, an answer was made, and Harper, fearing a sudden musket blast from above, groaned horribly on the cart. The blood on his huge chest was drying to a cracked crust.
“He wants to know,” Frederickson spoke to Sharpe with astonishment in his voice, “whether we’re the Americans.”
“Yes!” Sharpe shouted. “Yes, yes!”
„Attendee!“ The guard’s head disappeared.
Sharpe turned to look through the notch made where the approach road cut through the glacis. He stared at the place where the villagers stood by the trees and where he had dimly discerned the shape of a gun’s limber among the pines. “The Americans are manning those guns?” He too sounded astonished.
Frederickson shrugged. “Must be.”
Sharpe turned back, his boots making a hollow sound on the thick planks of the drawbridge. To right and left the flooded inner ditch stretched.
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