Sharpe's Fury - 11 Read Free Page B

tensioned between the neighboring barges across which the heavy baulks ran to support the chesses, the planks that made the roadway. It probably weighed over a hundred tons, Sharpe reckoned, and this job would not be over until that long bridge was destroyed.
    “They’re dozy bastards,” Harper said in wonderment, presumably speaking of Fort Joseph’s defenders, but still Sharpe would not look. He was staring at Fort Josephine across the river where he could see men clustered about a cannon. They stepped away and the gun fired, belching a dirty smoke above the river’s thinning mist. It had fired a round of canister. The tin can, crammed with bullets, tore itself apart as it left the cannon’s muzzle and the half-inch balls whipped the air about Sharpe’s hilltop. The boom of the cannon rolled and echoed up the river valley. “Anyone hit?” Sharpe called. No one answered.
    The cannon’s fire only made the defenders of the nearer fort stare at the hill more intently. They were aiming one of their own cannon now, trying to elevate it so that the canister would scrape the skyline. “Keep your heads down,” Sharpe said. Then there was a dull rattle of musketry and he dared to look back at the attack.
    It was almost over. There were redcoats in the ditch, more on ladders, and even as Sharpe watched he saw the redcoats surge over the parapet and carry bayonets at the blue-uniformed Frenchmen. There was no need of his rifles. “Get out of sight of that damned gun,” he shouted, and his men hurried off the crest. A second cannon fired from the fort across the river. A musket ball plucked at the hem of Sharpe’s greatcoat and another drove up a flurry of dew from the grass by his side, but then he was off the hilltop and hidden from the distant gunners.
    No gun fired from Fort Joseph. The garrison had been taken utterly by surprise and there were redcoats in the center of the fort now. A panicked stream of Frenchmen was running from the eastern gate to cross the bridge to the safety of Fort Josephine on the river’s Spanish bank. The musket fire was slowing. Maybe a dozen Frenchmen had been captured, the rest were fleeing, and there seemed to be scores of them running toward the bridge. The redcoats, screaming their war cries in the dawn, carried bayonets that encouraged the panicked flight. The French tricolor was hauled down before the last of the attacking troops had even crossed the ditch and wall. It had all been that quick.
    “Our job’s done,” Sharpe said. “Down to the fort.”
    “That was easy,” Bullen said happily.
    “Not over yet, Jack.”
    “The bridge, you mean?”
    “Got to be destroyed.”
    “The hard bit’s done, anyway.”
    “That’s true,” Sharpe said. He liked young Jack Bullen, a bluff Essex boy who was uncomplaining and hardworking. The men liked Bullen too. He treated them fairly, with the confidence that came from privilege, but it was a privilege that was always tempered by cheerfulness. A good officer, Sharpe reckoned.
    They filed down the hill, across the rocky valley, over a small stream that fell cold from the hills and so up the next hill to the fort where the ladders were still propped against the parapet. Every now and then a petulant gun fired from Fort Josephine, but the balls were wasted against the earth-filled wicker baskets that topped the parapet. “Ah, you’re here, Sharpe.” Brigadier Moon greeted him. He was suddenly affable, his dislike of Sharpe washed away by the elation of victory.
    “Congratulations, sir.”
    “What? Oh, thank you. That’s generous of you.” Moon did seem touched by Sharpe’s praise. “It went better than I dared hope. There’s tea on the boil over there. Let your lads have some.”
    The French prisoners were sitting in the fort’s center. A dozen horses had been found in the stables and they were now being saddled, presumably because Moon, who had marched from the Tagus, reckoned he had earned the privilege of riding back. A