Sharpe's Rifles Read Free Page A

mildness.
    “He’s a jumped-up bloody nothing.”
    Murray smiled. “He’s a damned efficient Quartermaster, Warren. When did your men last have so

much ammunition?”
    “His job is to arrange my bed for tonight, not loiter here in the hope of proving how well he

can fight. Look at him!” Dunnett, like a man with an itching sore that he could not stop

scratching, stared at the Quartermaster. “He thinks he’s still in the ranks, doesn’t he? Once a

peasant, always one, that’s what I say. Why’s he carrying a rifle?”
    “I really couldn’t say.”
    The rifle was the Quartermaster’s eccentricity, and an unfitting one, for a Quartermaster

needed lists and ink and quills and tally-sticks, not a weapon. He needed to be able to forage

for food or ferret out shelters in apparently overcrowded billets. He needed a nose to smell out

rotten beef, scales to weigh ration flour, and stubbornness to resist the depredations of other

Quartermasters. He did not need weapons, yet the new Lieutenant always carried a rifle as well as

his regulation sabre. The two weapons seemed to be a statement of intent; that he wanted to fight

rather than be a Quartermaster, yet to most of the greenjackets the weapons were a rather

pathetic pretension carried by a man who, whatever his past, was now nothing more than an ageing

Lieutenant.
    Dunnett stamped his cold feet on the road. “I’ll send the flank companies back first, Johnny.

You can cover.”
    “Yes, sir. Do we wait for our horse?”
    “Bugger the cavalry.” Dunnett offered the infantryman’s automatic scorn of the mounted arm.

“I’m waiting five more minutes. It can’t take this long to clear some bloody guns off the road.

Do you see anything, Quartermaster?” The question was asked mockingly.
    “No, sir.” The Lieutenant took off his shako and pushed a hand through hair that was long,

black, and made greasy by days of campaigning. His greatcoat hung open and he wore neither scarf

nor gloves. Either he could not afford them, or else he was boasting that he was too tough to

need such comforts. That arrogance made Dunnett wish that the new Lieutenant, so eager for a

fight, would be cut down by the enemy horsemen.
    Except there were no enemy horsemen in sight. Perhaps the rain and the wind and the God-damned

bloody cold had driven the French to shelter in the last village. Or perhaps the drunken women

had proved too irresistible a lure. Whichever it was, there were no Frenchmen in sight, just

sleet and low clouds driven to turmoil by a freshening wind.
    Maj’r Dunnett swore nervously. The four companies seemed alone in a wilderness of rain and

frost, four companies of forgotten soldiers in a lost war, and Dunnett made up his mind that he

could wait no longer. “We’re going.”
    Whistles blew. The two flank companies turned and, like the walking dead, shambled up the

road. The two centre companies stayed at the bridge under Captain Murray’s. command. In five

minutes or so, when the flank companies had stopped to provide cover, it would be Murray’s turn

to withdraw.
    The Riflemen liked Captain John Murray. He was a proper gentleman, they said, and it was a fly

bastard who could fool him; but if you were straight with him, then the Captain would treat you

fair. Murray had a thin and humorous face, quick to smile and swift with a jest. It was because

of officers like him that these Riflemen could still shoulder arms and march with an echo of the

elan they had learned on the parade ground at Shorncliffe.
    “Sir!” It was the Quartermaster who still stood on the bridge and drew Murray’s attention to

the east where a figure moved in the sleet. “One of ours,” he called after a moment.
    The single figure, staggering and weaving, was a redcoat. He had no musket, no shako, nor

boots. His naked feet left bloodstains on the road’s flint bed.
    “That’ll learn him,” Captain Murray said. “You see,