"Cornwell, Bernard - Sharpe 19 - Sharpe's Havoc" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cornwell Bernard)

Luis found his voice. ДYou are ... У he faltered.
ДI am an English officer, Luis, as you very well know, but the uniform is that of a French hussar. Ah! Chickpea soup, I do so like chickpea soup. Peasant food, but good.Ф He crossed to the table and, grimacing because his breeches were so tightly laced, lowered himself into the chair. ДWe shall be sitting a guest to dinner this afternoon.Ф
ДSo I was told,Ф Luis said coldly.
ДYou will serve, Luis, and you will not be deterred by the fact that my guest is a French officer.Ф
ДFrench?Ф Luis sounded disgusted.
ДFrench,Ф Christopher confirmed, Дand he will be coming here with an escort. Probably a large escort, and it would not do, would it, if that escort were to return to their army and say that their officer met with an Englishman? Which is why I wear this.Ф He gestured at the French uniform, then smiled at Luis. ДWar is like chess,Ф Christopher went on, Дthere are two sides and if the one wins then the other must lose.Ф
ДFrance must not win,Ф Luis said harshly.
ДThere are black and white pieces,Ф Christopher continued, ignoring his servantТs protest, Дand both obey rules. But who makes those rules, Luis? That is where the power lies. Not with the players, certainly not with the pieces, but with the man who makes the rules.Ф
ДFrance must not win,Ф Luis said again. ДI am a good Portuguese!Ф
Christopher sighed at his servantТs stupidity and decided to make things simpler for Luis to understand. ДYou want to rid Portugal of the French?Ф
ДYou know I do!Ф
ДThen serve dinner this afternoon. Be courteous, hide your thoughts and have faith in me.Ф
Because Christopher had seen the light and now he would rewrite the rules.
Sharpe stared ahead to where the dragoons had lifted four skiffs from the river and used them to make a barricade across the road. There was no way around the barricade which stretched between two houses, for beyond the right-hand house was the river and beyond the left was the steep hill where the French infantry approached, and there were more French infantry behind Sharpe, which meant the only way out of the trap was to go straight through the barricade.
ДWhat do we do, sir?Ф Harper asked.
Sharpe swore.
ДThat bad, eh?Ф Harper unslung his rifle. ДWe could pick some of those boys off the barricade there.Ф
ДWe could,Ф Sharpe agreed, but it would only annoy the French, not defeat them. He could defeat them, he was sure, because his riflemen were good and the enemyТs barricade was low, but Sharpe was also sure he would lose half his men in the fight and the other half would still have to escape the pursuit of vengeful horsemen. He could fight, he could win, but he could not survive the victory.
There really was only one thing to do, but Sharpe was reluctant to say it aloud. He had never surrendered. The very thought was horrid.
ДFix swords,Ф he shouted.
His men looked surprised, but they obeyed. They took the long sword bayonets from their scabbards and slotted them onto the rifle muzzles. Sharpe drew his own sword, a heavy cavalry blade that was a yard of slaughtering steel. ДAll right, lads. Four files!Ф
ДSir?Ф Harper was puzzled.
ДYou heard me, Sergeant! Four files! Smartly, now.Ф
Harper shouted the men into line. The French infantry who had come from the city were only a hundred paces behind now, too far for an accurate musket shot though one Frenchman did try and his ball cracked into the whitewashed wall of a cottage beside the road. The sound seemed to irritate Sharpe. ДOn the double now!Ф he snapped. ДAdvance!Ф
They trotted down the road toward the newly erected barricade which was two hundred paces ahead. The river slid gray and swirling to their right while on their left was a field dotted with the remnants of last yearТs haystacks which were small and pointed so that they looked like bedraggled witchesТ hats. A hobbled cow with a broken horn watched them pass. Some fugitives, despairing of passing the dragoonsТ roadblock, had settled in the field to await their fate.
ДSir?Ф Harper managed to catch up with Sharpe, who was a dozen paces ahead of his men.
ДSergeant?Ф
It was always ДSergeant,Ф Harper noted, when things were grim, never ДPatrickФ or ДPat.Ф ДWhat are we doing, sir?Ф
ДWeТre charging that barricade, Sergeant.Ф
ДTheyТll fillet our guts, if youТll pardon me saying so, sir. The buggers will turn us inside out.Ф
ДI know that,Ф Sharpe said, Дand you know that. But do they know that?Ф
Harper stared at the dragoons who were leveling their carbines across the keels of the upturned skiffs. The carbine, like a musket and unlike a rifle, was smoothbore and thus inaccurate, which meant the dragoons would wait until the last moment to unleash their volley, and that volley promised to be heavy for still more of the green-coated enemy were squeezing onto the road behind the barricade and aiming their weapons. ДI think they do know that, sir,Ф Harper observed.
Sharpe agreed, though he would not say so. He had ordered his men to fix swords because the sight of fixed bayonets was more frightening than the threat of rifles alone, but the dragoons did not seem to be worried by the menace of the steel blades. They were crowding together so that every carbine could join the opening volley and Sharpe knew he would have to surrender, but he was unwilling to do it without a single shot being fired. He quickened his pace, reckoning that one of the dragoons would fire at him too soon and that one shot would be SharpeТs signal to halt, throw down his sword and so save his menТs lives. The decision hurt, but it was the only option he had unless God sent a miracle.
ДSir?Ф Harper struggled to keep up with Sharpe. ДTheyТll kill you!Ф
ДGet back, Sergeant,Ф Sharpe said, ДthatТs an order.Ф He wanted the dragoons to fire at him, not at his men.
ДTheyТll bloody kill you!Ф Harper said.
ДMaybe theyТll turn and run,Ф Sharpe called back.
ДGod save Ireland,Ф Harper said, Дand why would they do that?Ф
ДBecause God wears a green jacket,Ф Sharpe snarled, Дof course.Ф
And just then the French turned and ran.


CHAPTER 2
Sharpe had always been lucky. Maybe not in the greater things of life, certainly not in the nature of his birth to a Cat Lane whore who had died without giving her only son a single caress, nor in the manner of his upbringing in a London orphanage that cared not a jot for the children within its grim walls, but in the smaller things, in those moments when success and failure had been a bulletТs width apart, he had been lucky. It had been good fortune that took him to the tunnel where the Tippoo Sultan was trapped, and even better fortune that had decapitated an orderly at Assaye so that Richard Sharpe was riding behind Sir Arthur Wellesley when that GeneralТs horse was killed by a pike thrust and Sir Arthur was thrown down among the enemy. All luck, outrageous luck sometimes, but even Sharpe doubted his good fortune when he saw the dragoons twisting away from the barricade. Was he dead? Dreaming? Concussed and imagining things? But then he heard the roar of triumph from his men and he knew he was not dreaming. The enemy really had turned away and Sharpe was going to live and his men would not have to march as prisoners to France.
He heard the firing then, the stuttering chatter of muskets and realized that the dragoons had been attacked from their rear. There was powder smoke hanging thick between the houses that edged the road, and more coming from an orchard halfway up the hill on which the great white flat-topped block of a building stood, and then Sharpe was at the barricade and he leaped up onto the first skiff, his foot half sticking in some new tar that had been smeared on its lower hull. The dragoons were facing away from him, shooting up at the windows, but then a green-coated man turned and saw Sharpe and shouted a warning. An officer came from the door of the house beside the river and Sharpe, jumping down from the boat, skewered the manТs shoulder with his big sword, then shoved him hard against the limewashed wall as the dragoon who had shouted the warning fired at him. The ball plucked at SharpeТs heavy pack, then Sharpe kneed the officer in the groin and turned on the man who had fired at him. That man was going backward mouthing Дnon, non,Ф and Sharpe slammed the sword against his head, drawing blood but doing more damage with the bladeТs sheer weight so that the dazed dragoon fell and was trampled by riflemen swarming over the low barricade. They were screaming slaughter, deaf to HarperТs shout to give the dragoons a volley.
Maybe three rifles fired, but the rest of the men kept charging to take their sword bayonets to an enemy that could not stand against an attack from front and back. The dragoons had been ambushed by troops coming from a building some fifty yards down the road, troops who had been hidden in the building and in the garden behind, and the French were now being attacked from both sides. The small space between the houses was veiled in powder smoke, loud with screams and the echo of shots, stinking of blood, and SharpeТs men were fighting with a ferocity that both astonished and appalled the French. They were dragoons, schooled to fight with big swords from horseback, and they were not ready for this bloody brawl on foot with riflemen hardened by years of tavern fights and barrack-room conflicts. The men in rifle-green jackets were murderous in close combat and the surviving dragoons fled back to a grassy space on the river bank where their horses were picketed and Sharpe roared at his men to keep going eastward. ДLet them go!Ф he shouted. ДDrop Сem! Drop Сem!Ф The last four words were those used in the rat pit, the instruction shouted to a terrier trying to kill a rat that was already dead. ДDrop Сem! Keep going!Ф There was French infantry close behind, there were more cavalrymen in Oporto and SharpeТs priority now was to get as far away from the city as he possibly could. ДSergeant!Ф
ДI hear you, sir!Ф Harper shouted and he waded down the alley and hauled Rifleman Tongue away from a Frenchman. ДCome on, Isaiah! Move your bloody bones!Ф
ДIТm killing the bastard, Sergeant, IТm killing the bastard!Ф
ДThe bastardТs already dead! Now move!Ф A brace of carbine bullets rattled in the alleyway. A woman screamed incessantly in one of the nearby houses. A fleeing dragoon stumbled over a pile of woven wicker fish traps and sprawled in the houseТs backyard where another Frenchman was lying among a pile of drying washing that he had pulled from a line as he died. The white sheets were red with his blood. Gataker aimed at a dragoon officer who had managed to mount his horse, but Harper pulled him away. ДKeep running! Keep running!Ф
Then there was a swarm of blue uniforms to SharpeТs left and he turned, sword raised, and saw they were Portuguese. ДFriends!Ф he shouted for the benefit of his riflemen. ДWatch out for the Portuguese!Ф The Portuguese soldiers were the ones who had saved him from an ignominious surrender, and now, having ambushed the French from behind, they joined SharpeТs men in their headlong flight to the east.