Sharpe 3-Book Collection 7: Sharpe's Revenge, Sharpe's Waterloo, Sharpe's Devil Read Free Page B

pointing straight between Sharpe’s eyes.
    He watched the black hole and suddenly felt the warm calm of battle. The reassurance was so unexpected, yet so familiar, that he smiled.
    And Bampfylde fired.
    Flame pierced at Sharpe through the billowing smoke, but he had already heard the ball go past his head with a crack like a leather whip snapped hard. The bullet could not have been more than six inches from his left ear, and Sharpe wondered if both pistols pulled to the right. He waited, wanting the smoke of Bampfylde’s pistol to dissipate in the wind. He was still smiling, though he did not know it. Bampfylde, doubtless from nerves, had fired too quickly and thus had wasted his shot. Sharpe now had all the time he needed to take revenge for the men who had died in the fortress of Teste de Buch.
    The wind shredded the smoke, revealing a Bampfylde who stood in profile to Sharpe. The Naval Captain was sucking in his belly to make his body into a smaller target. Sharpe had the blade of the pistol’s foresight outlined against the white silk shirt, and now he lined the back notch with the blade foresight, then he edged the pistol a fraction to the left just in case the weapon did pull to the right. He would aim low, for most guns fired high. If this one did not fire high then he would give Bampfylde a belly wound. That would kill, but slowly; as slowly as some of Sharpe’s men had died after Bampfylde had abandoned them behind the enemy’s lines.
    His finger curled round the trigger. The smoke was entirely gone from Bampfylde now and was nothing more than a tenuous scrap of distant mist that was being whirled high off the bluffs edge to sail inland.
    ‘Fire, damn you!’ Bampfylde blurted the words aloud, and Sharpe, who had been about to fire, saw that the Naval Captain was visibly shaking.
    ‘Fire, God damn you!’ Bampfylde called again, and Sharpe knew he had won utterly, for he had reduced this proud man to a quivering coward. Sharpe had accused Bampfylde of cowardice, and now he was proving the allegation.
    ‘Fire!’ Bampfylde called the word in despair.
    Sharpe lowered the pistol’s muzzle to compensate for the upward pull, then fired.
    Sharpe’s pistol did not pull up at all, but had a slight tendency to fire leftwards, rather than right, and the result, instead of a belly shot, was to sear the ball through both cheeks of Bampfylde’s bottom. It ripped his white naval breeches open, then scored bloody gouges in his flesh. Bampfylde squealed like a stuck pig and lurched forward. He dropped his pistol, fell to his knees and Sharpe felt the exultation of a job well done. He could see blood bright on the white breeches. The doctor was running clumsily with his black bag, but Ford was already kneeling beside the wounded Bampfylde. ‘It’s only a flesh wound, sir.’
    ‘He’s broken my back!’ Bampfylde hissed the words as evidence of his pain.
    ‘He’s creased your arse.’ Frederickson was grinning.
    Ford looked up at Frederickson. ‘You agree honour is served, sir?’
    Frederickson was finding it hard not to laugh. ‘Eminently served, Lieutenant. I bid you good day.’
    The doctor knelt beside the Naval Captain. ‘A flesh wound, nothing more. It will only need a bandage. There’ll be some bruising and soreness. You’re a lucky man.’
    Ford translated for the distraught Bampfylde, but the Naval Captain was not listening. Instead he was staring through angry and shameful tears at the black-haired Rifleman who had come to stand over him. Sharpe said nothing, but just tossed down the smoking pistol and walked away. He had failed to kill the man, which angered him, but honour had been served on the dead of the Teste dc Buch. He had eaten his grass before breakfast, and now Sharpe must cement his fragile peace with Jane, send her away with his love, then go back to the place he knew the best and feared the most: the battlefield.

    Bordeaux still belonged to the Emperor, though for how long no one could