Sharpe's Havoc by Bernard Cornwell Read Free Book Online Page A

Sharpe’s left and he turned, sword raised, and saw

they were Portuguese. “Friends!” he shouted for the benefit of his riflemen. “Watch out for

the Portuguese!” The Portuguese soldiers were the ones who had saved him from an

ignominious surrender, and now, having ambushed the French from behind, they joined

Sharpe’s men in their headlong flight to the east.
    “Keep going!” Harper bawled. Some of the riflemen were panting and they slowed to a walk

until a flurry of carbine shots from the surviving dragoons made them hurry again. Most of

the shots went high, one banged into the road beside Sharpe and ricocheted up into a poplar,

and another struck Tarrant in the hip. The rifleman went down, screaming, and Sharpe

grabbed his collar and kept running, dragging Tarrant with him. The road and river curved

leftwards and there were trees and bushes on its bank. That woodland was not far away, too

close to the city for comfort, but it would provide cover while Sharpe reorganized his

men.
    “Get to the trees!” Sharpe yelled. “Get to the trees!”
    Tarrant was in pain, shouting protests and leaving a trail of blood on the road. Sharpe

pulled him into the trees and let him drop, then stood beside the road and shouted at his men

to form a line at the wood’s edge. “Count them, Sergeant,” he called to Harper, “count them!”

The Portuguese infantry mingled with the riflemen and began reloading their muskets.

Sharpe unslung his rifle and fired at a cavalryman who was wheeling his horse on the river

bank, ready to pursue. The horse reared, throwing its rider. Other dragoons had drawn their

long straight swords, evidently intent on a vengeful pursuit, but then a French officer

shouted at the cavalrymen to stay where they were. He at least understood that a charge

into thick trees where infantry was loaded and ready was tantamount to suicide. He would

wait for his own infantry to catch up.
    Daniel Hagman took out the scissors that had cut Sharpe’s hair and sliced Tarrant’s

breeches away from the wounded hip. Blood spilled down as Hagman cut, then the old man

grimaced. “Reckon he’s lost the joint, sir.”
    “He can’t walk?”
    “He won’t walk never again,” Hagman said. Tarrant swore viciously. He was one of Sharpe’s

troublemakers, a sullen man from Hertfordshire who never lost a chance to become drunk and

vicious, but when he was sober he was a good marksman who did not lose his head in battle.

“You’ll be all right, Ned,” Hagman told him, “you’ll live.”
    “Carry me,” Tarrant appealed to his friend, Williamson.
    “Leave him!” Sharpe snapped. “Take his rifle, ammunition and sword.”
    “You can’t just leave him here,” Williamson said, and obstructed Hagman so that he could

not unbuckle his friend’s cartridge box.
    Sharpe seized Williamson by the shoulder and hauled him away. “I said leave him!” He did not

like it, but he could not be slowed down by the weight of a wounded man, and the French would

tend for Tarrant better than any of Sharpe’s men could. The rifleman would go to a French

army hospital, be treated by French doctors and, if he did not die from gangrene, would

probably be exchanged for a wounded French prisoner. Tarrant would go home, a cripple, and

most likely end in the parish workhouse. Sharpe pushed through the trees to find Harper.

Carbine bullets pattered through the branches, leaving shreds of leaf sifting down the

shafts of sunlight behind them. “Anyone missing?” Sharpe asked Harper.
    “No, sir. What happened to Tarrant?”
    “Bullet in the hip,” Sharpe said, “he’ll have to stay here.”
    “Won’t miss him,” Harper said, though before Sharpe had made the Irishman into a sergeant,

Harper had been a crony of the troublemakers among whom Tarrant had been a ringleader. Now

Harper was the troublemaker’s scourge. It was strange, Sharpe reflected, what three stripes

could