Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe’s Tiger, Sharpe’s Triumph, Sharpe’s Fortress. Bernard Cornwell
Читать онлайн книгу.
standing just beyond the picketed horses. Ensign Hicks was with him.
Hakeswill had sunk onto the ground, but now hauled himself upright on the staff of his halberd. ‘Assaulted me, sir, he did!’ The Sergeant could scarcely speak for the pain in his belly. ‘He went mad, sir! Just mad, sir!’
‘Don’t worry, Sergeant, Hicks and I both saw it,’ Morris said. ‘Came to check on the horses, ain’t that right, Hicks?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Hicks said. He was a small young man, very officious, who would never contradict a superior. If Morris claimed the clouds were made of cheese Hicks would just stand to attention, twitch his nose, and swear blind he could smell Cheddar. ‘Plain case of assault, sir,’ the Ensign said. ‘Unprovoked assault.’
‘Guard!’ Morris shouted. ‘Here! Now!’
Blood was pouring down Hakeswill’s face, but the Sergeant managed a grin. ‘Got you, Sharpie,’ he said softly, ‘got you. Flogging offence, that.’
‘You bastard,’ Sharpe said softly, and wondered if he should run. He wondered if he would stand any chance of making it safely away if he just sprinted into the dark, but Ensign Hicks had drawn his pistol and the sound of the hammer being cocked stilled Sharpe’s tiny impulse to flee.
A panting Sergeant Green arrived with four men of the guard and Morris pushed the horses aside to let them through. ‘Arrest Private Sharpe, Sergeant,’ he told Green. ‘Close arrest. He struck Sergeant Hakeswill, and Hicks and I witnessed the assault. Ensign Hicks will do the paperwork.’
‘Gladly, sir,’ Hicks agreed. The Ensign was slurring his words, betraying that he had been drinking.
Morris looked at Sharpe. ‘It’s a court martial offence, Sharpe,’ the Captain said, then he turned back to Green who had not moved to obey his orders. ‘Do it!’
‘Sir!’ Green said, stepping forward. ‘Come on, Sharpie.’
‘I didn’t do nothing, Sergeant,’ Sharpe protested.
‘Come on, lad. It’ll sort itself out,’ Green said quietly, then he took Sharpe’s elbow and led him away. Hicks went with them, happy to please Morris by writing up the charge.
Morris waited until the prisoner and his escort had gone, then grinned at Hakeswill. ‘The boy was faster than you thought, Sergeant.’
‘He’s a devil, that one, sir, a devil. Broke my nose, he did.’ Hakeswill gingerly tried to straighten the cartilage and the bleeding nose made a horrible crunching noise. ‘But his woman’s ours.’
‘Tonight?’ Morris could not keep the eagerness from his voice.
‘Not tonight, sir,’ Hakeswill said in a tone that suggested the Captain had made a foolish suggestion. ‘There’ll be enough trouble in the company with Sharpe arrested, sir, and if we go after his bibbi tonight there’ll be a rare brawl. Half the bastards are full of arrack. No, sir. Wait till the bastard’s flogged to death. Wait for that, sir, and then they’ll all be meek as lambs. Meek as lambs. Flogging does that to men. Quietens them down something proper, a good whipping does. All be done in a couple of days, sir.’
Morris flinched as Hakeswill tried to straighten his nose again. ‘You’d better see Mister Micklewhite, Hakeswill.’
‘No, sir. Don’t believe in doctors, sir, except for the pox. I’ll strap it up, sir, and soon be right as rain. Besides, watching Sharpie flogged will be treatment enough. I reckon we done him, sir. You won’t have long to wait, sir, not long at all.’
Morris found Hakeswill’s intimate tone unseemly, and stepped stiffly back. ‘Then I’ll wish you a good night, Sergeant.’
‘Thank you kindly, sir, and the same to you, sir. And sweet dreams too, sir.’ Hakeswill laughed. ‘Just as sweet as sweet can ever be, sir.’
For Sharpie was done.
CHAPTER THREE
Colonel McCandless woke as the dawn touched the world’s rim with a streak of fire. The crimson light glowed bright on the lower edge of a long cloud that lay on the eastern horizon like the smoke rill left by a musket volley. It was the only cloud in the sky. He rolled his plaid and tied it onto his saddle’s cantle, then rinsed his mouth with water. His horse, picketed close by, had been saddled all night in case some enemy discovered McCandless and his escort. That escort, six picked men of the 4th Native Cavalry, had needed no orders to be about the day. They grinned a greeting at McCandless, stowed their meagre bedding, then made a breakfast out of warm canteen water and a dry cake of ground lentils and rice. McCandless shared the cavalrymen’s meal. He liked a cup of tea in the mornings, but he dared not light a fire for the smoke might attract the pestilential patrols of the Tippoo’s Light Cavalry. ‘It will be a hot day, sahib,’ the Havildar remarked to McCandless.
‘They’re all hot,’ McCandless answered. ‘Haven’t had a cold day since I came here.’ He thought for a second, then worked out that it must be Thursday the twenty-eighth of March. It would be cold in Scotland today and, for an indulgent moment, he thought of Lochaber and imagined the snow lying deep in Glen Scaddle and the ice edging the loch’s foreshore, and though he could see the image clearly enough, he could not really imagine what the cold would feel like. He had been away from home too long and now he wondered if he could ever live in Scotland again. He certainly would not live in England, not in Hampshire where his sister lived with her petulant English husband. Harriet kept pressing him to retire to Hampshire, saying that they had no relatives left in Scotland and that her husband had a wee cottage that would suit McCandless’s declining years to perfection, but the Colonel had no taste for a soft, plump, English landscape, nor, indeed, for his soft plump sister’s company. Harriet’s son, McCandless’s nephew William Lawford, was a decent enough young fellow even if he had forgotten his Scottish ancestry, but young William was now in the army, here in Mysore indeed, which meant that the only relative McCandless liked was close at hand and that circumstance merely strengthened McCandless’s distaste for retiring to Hampshire. But to Scotland? He often dreamed of going back, though whenever the opportunity arose for him to take the Company’s pension and sail to his native land, he always found some unfinished business that kept him in India. Next year, he promised himself, the year of our Lord 1800, would be a good year to go home, though in truth he had promised himself the same thing every year for the last decade.
The seven men unpicketed the horses and hauled themselves into their worn saddles. The Indian escort was armed with lances, sabres and pistols, while McCandless carried a claymore, a horse pistol and a carbine that was holstered on his saddle. He glanced once towards the rising sun to check his direction, then led his men northwards. He said nothing, but he needed to give these men no orders. They knew well enough to keep a keen lookout in this dangerous land.
For this was the kingdom of Mysore, high on the southern Indian plateau, and as far as the horsemen could see the land was under the rule of the Tippoo Sultan. Indeed this was the Tippoo’s heartland, a fertile plain rich with villages, fields and water cisterns; only now, as the British army advanced and the Tippoo’s retreated, the country was being blighted. McCandless could see six pillars of smoke showing where the Tippoo’s cavalry had burned granaries to make sure that the hated British could not find food. The cisterns would all have been poisoned, the livestock driven westwards and every storehouse emptied, thus forcing the armies of Britain and Hyderabad to carry all their own supplies on the cumbersome bullock carts. McCandless guessed that yesterday’s brief and unequal battle had been an attempt by the Tippoo to draw the escorting troops away from the precious baggage onto his infantry, after which he would have released his fearsome horsemen onto the wagons of grain and rice and salt, but the British had not taken the bait which meant that General Harris’s ponderous advance would continue. Say another week until they arrived at Seringapatam? Then they would face two months of short rations and searing weather before the monsoon broke, but McCandless reckoned