Sharpe 3-Book Collection 2. Bernard Cornwell
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a crash or thump as the shell struck, the ragged explosion of the powder charge and the shriek of its fragmented casing. One shell failed to explode and they all waited breathless as the seconds passed and then realized that its fuse must have been faulty.
‘How many bloody shells do they have?’ Harper asked after a quarter-hour.
No one could answer. Sharpe had a vague recollection that a British six-pounder carried more than a hundred rounds of ammunition in its limber, caisson and axle boxes, but he was not sure of that and French practice was probably different, so he said nothing. Instead he prowled round the hilltop, going from the tower to the men in the redoubts and then watching anxiously down the other flanks of the hill, and still there was no sign that the French contemplated an assault.
He went back to the tower. Hagman had produced a small wooden flute, something he had whittled himself during his convalescence, and now he played trills and snatches of old familiar melodies. The scraps of music sounded like birdsong, then the hilltop would reverberate to the next explosion, the shell fragments would batter against the tower and as the brutal sound faded so the flute’s breathy sound would re-emerge. ‘I always wanted to play the flute,’ Sharpe said to no one in particular.
‘The fiddle,’ Harris said, ‘I’ve always wanted to play the fiddle.’
‘Hard that,’ Harper said, ‘because it’s fiddly.’
They groaned and Harper grinned proudly. Sharpe was mentally counting the seconds, imagining the gun being pushed back into place and then being sponged out, the gunner’s thumb over the touchhole to stop the rush of air forced by the incoming sponge from setting fire to any unexploded powder in the breech. When every lingering scrap of fire had been extinguished inside the barrel they would thrust home the powder bags, then the six-inch shell with its carefully cut fuse protruding from the wooden bung, and the gunner would ram a spike down the touchhole to pierce a canvas powder bag and afterwards push a reed filled with more powder down into the punctured bag. They would stand back, cover their ears and the gunner would touch the linstock to the reed and just then Sharpe heard the boom and almost instantly there was an almighty crash inside the tower itself and he realized the shell had come right through the hole at the top of the truncated staircase and now it fell down, fuse smoking in a wild spiral, to lodge between two of the packs that held their food and Sharpe stared at it, saw the wisp of smoke shivering upwards, knew they must all die or be terribly maimed when it exploded and he did not think, just dived. He scrabbled at the fuse, knew he was too late to extract it and so he dropped onto the shell, his belly smothering it, and his mind was screaming because he did not want to die. It will be quick, he thought, it will be quick, and at least he would not have to take decisions any more and no one else would be hurt and he cursed the shell because it was taking so long to explode and he was staring at Daniel Hagman who was staring back at him, eyes wide and the forgotten flute held just an inch from his mouth.
‘Stay there much longer,’ Harper said in a voice that could not quite hide the strain he was feeling, ‘and you’ll hatch the bloody thing.’
Hagman started to laugh, then Harris and Cooper and Harper joined in, and Sharpe climbed off the shell and saw that the wooden plug that held the fuse was blackened by fire, but somehow the fuse had gone out and he picked up the damned missile and hurled it out of the hole and listened to it clatter down the hill.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ Sharpe said. He was sweating, shaking. He collapsed back against the wall and looked at his men who were weak with laughter. ‘Oh, God,’ he said.
‘You’d have had a bellyache if that had popped, sir,’ Hagman said and that started them all laughing again.
Sharpe felt drained. ‘If you bastards have nothing better to do,’ he said, ‘then take out the canteens. Give everyone a drink.’ He was rationing the water like the food, but the day was hot and he knew everyone would be dry. He followed the riflemen outside. Vicente, who had no idea what had just happened, but only knew that a second shell had failed to explode, looked anxious. ‘What happened?’
‘Fuse went out,’ Sharpe said, ‘just went out.’
He went down to the northernmost redoubts and stared at the gun. How much bloody ammunition did the bastards have? The rate of fire had slowed a little, but that seemed more to do with the gunners’ weariness than a shortage of shells. He watched them load another round, did not bother to take cover and the shell exploded up behind the watchtower. The howitzer had recoiled eight or nine feet, much less than a field gun, and he watched as the gunners put their shoulders to the wheel and shoved it back into place. The air between Sharpe and the gun wavered because of the day’s heat, which was made more intense by a small grass fire ignited by the cannon’s blast. That had been happening all day and the howitzer’s muzzle flame had left a fan-shaped patch of scorched grass and ferns in front of the barrel. And then Sharpe saw something else, something that puzzled him, and he opened Christopher’s small telescope, cursing the loss of his own, and he steadied the barrel on a rock and stared intently and saw that an officer was crouching beside the gun wheel with an upraised hand. That odd pose had been what puzzled him. Why would a man crouch by the front of a gun’s wheels? And Sharpe could just see something else. Shadows. The ground there had been cleared, but the sun was now low in the sky and it was throwing long shadows and Sharpe could see that the cleared ground had been marked with two half-buried stones, each maybe the size of a twelve-pounder’s round shot, and that the officer was bringing the wheels right up to the two stones. When the wheels touched the stones he dropped his hand and the men went about the business of reloading.
Sharpe frowned, thinking. Now why, on a fine sunny day, would the French artillery officer need to mark a place for his gun’s wheels? The wheels themselves, iron-rimmed, would leave gouges in the soil that would serve as markers for when the gun was repositioned after each shot, yet they had taken the trouble to put the stones there as well. He ducked down behind the wall as another blossom of smoke heralded a shell. This one fell fractionally short and the jagged-edged iron scraps rattled against the low stone walls that Sharpe’s men had built. Pendleton poked his head above the redoubt. ‘Why don’t they use round shot, sir?’ he asked.
‘Howitzers don’t have round shot,’ Sharpe said, ‘and it’s hard to fire a proper gun uphill.’ He was brusque for he was wondering about those stones. Why put them there? Had he imagined them? But when he looked through the glass he could still see them.
Then he saw the gunners walk away from the howitzer. A score of infantrymen had appeared, but they were merely a guard for the gun which was otherwise abandoned. ‘They’re having their supper,’ Harper suggested. He had brought water for the men in the forward positions and now sat beside Sharpe. For a moment he looked embarrassed, then grinned. ‘That was a brave thing you did, sir.’
‘You’d have done the bloody same.’
‘I bloody wouldn’t,’ Harper said vehemently. ‘I’d have been out of that bloody door like a scalded cat if my legs had bloody worked.’ He saw the deserted gun. ‘So it’s over for the day?’ he asked.
‘No,’ Sharpe said, because he suddenly understood why the stones were there.
And knew what he could do about it.
Brigadier Vuillard, ensconced in the Quinta, poured himself a glass of Savages’ finest white port. His blue uniform jacket was unhooked and he had eased a button of his breeches to make space for the fine shoulder of mutton that he had shared with Christopher, a dozen officers and three women. The women were French, though certainly not wives, and one of them, whose golden hair glinted in the candlelight, had been seated next to Lieutenant Pelletieu who seemed unable to take his bespectacled eyes from a cleavage that was deep, soft, shadowed and streaked where sweat had made rivulets through the white powder on her skin. Her very presence had struck Pelletieu almost dumb, so that all the confidence he had shown on first meeting Vuillard had fled.
The Brigadier, amused by the woman’s effect on the artillery officer, leaned forward to accept a candle from Major Dulong that he used to light a cigar. It was a warm night, the windows were open and a big pale moth fluttered about the candelabra at the table’s centre.