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

center of the greasy cloth, he found three silver and a dozen small copper coins. “Knew you’d have something,” he told the dead man, then pushed the coins into his own pouch.
    The cavalry was finishing off the remnants of the Tippoo’s infantry. The Tippoo himself, with his entourage and standard-bearers, had gone from the top of the ridge, and there were no cannon firing there either. The enemy had slipped away, abandoning their trapped infantry to the sabres andlances of the British and Indian cavalry. The Indian cavalry had been recruited from the city of Madras and the East Coast states which had all suffered from the Tippoo’s raids and now they took a bloody revenge, whooping and laughing as their blades cut down the terrified fugitives. Some cavalrymen, running out of targets, were already dismounted and searching the dead for plunder. The sepoy infantry, too late to join the killing, arrived to join the plunder.
    Sharpe twisted the bayonet off his musket, wiped it clean on the dead man’s sash, scooped up the sabre and pistol, then went to find more loot. He was grinning, and thinking that there was nothing to this fighting business, nothing at all, A few shots in Flanders, one volley here; and neither fight was worthy of the name battle. Flanders had been a muddle and this fight had been as easy as slaughtering sheep. No wonder Sergeant Hakeswill would live for ever. And so would he, Sharpe reckoned, because there was nothing to this business. Just a couple of bangs and it was all over. He laughed, slid the bayonet into its sheath, and knelt beside another dead man. There was work to do and a future to finance.
    If only he could decide where it would be safe to run.

CHAPTER 2
    S ergeant Obadiah Hakeswill glanced about to see what his men were doing. Just about all of them were plundering, and quite right too. That was a soldier’s privilege. Fight the battle then strip the enemy of anything worth a penny. The officers were not looting, but officers never did, at least not so that anyone noticed them, but Hakeswill did see that Ensign Fitzgerald had somehow managed to get himself a jeweled sabre that he was now flashing around like a shilling whore given a guinea fan. Mister bloody Ensign Fitzgerald was getting above himself in Sergeant Hakeswill’s considered opinion. Ensigns were the lowest of the low, apprentice officers, lads in silver lace, and Mister bloody-Fitzgerald had no business countermanding Hakeswill’s orders so Mister bloody Fitzgerald must be taught his place, but the trouble was that Mister Fitzgerald was Irish and Hakeswill was of the opinion that the Irish were only half civilized and never did understand their place. Most of them, anyway. Major Shee was Irish, and he was civilized, at least when he was sober, and Colonel Wellesley, who was from Dublin, was wholly civilized, but the Colonel had possessed the sense to make himself more English than the English, while Mister bloody Fitzgerald made no pretence about his birth.
    â€œSee this, Hakeswill?” Fitzgerald, sublimely unaware ofHakeswill’s glowering thoughts, stepped across a body to show off his new sabre. “See what, sir?”
    â€œDamned blade is made in Birmingham! Will you credit that? Birmingham! Says so on the blade, see? ‘Made in Birmingham.’”
    Hakeswill dutifully examined the legend on the blade, then fingered the sabre’s pommel which was elegantly set with a ring of seven small rubies. “Looks like glass to me, sir,” he said dismissively, hoping he could somehow persuade Fitzgerald to relinquish the blade.
    â€œNonsense!” Fitzgerald said cheerfully. “Best rubies! Bit small, maybe, but I doubt the ladies will mind that, Seven pieces of glitter? That adds up to a week of sin, Sergeant. It was worth killing the rascal for that.”
    If you did kill him, Hakeswill thought sourly as he stumped away from the exuberant Ensign. More likely