Forrest frowned at the sight. "Why don't they surrender?"

"Would you, sir?"

Forrest was offended. "Of course not, Sharpe, I'm English!"

"They're French, sir. They don't like surrendering either."

***

"Yes, Sharpe. Why do you fight? Are you against republicanism?"

"Me, sir? I couldn't even spell it.' He grinned at Forrest, saw that the Major was serious. 'Good Lord, sir. We always fight the French. Every twenty years or so. If we didn't they'd invade us. Then we'd all be forced to eat snails and speak French." He laughed at Forrest. "I don't know, sir. We fight them because they're meddlesome bastards and someone has to stamp all over them."

Forrest sighed. He was saved truing to explain the political forces of the world to Sharpe because Colonel Windham and a group of the Battalion's officers spotted them and joined them at the parapet.

***

Hogan had once mentioned to Sharpe that nothing cheered up a British officer as much as a dead fox.

***

"Here it is! We've had poacher trouble, Forrest, damned bad trouble. Some rascal's been among the pheasants. My good lady caught him!"

"Splendid, sir." Forrest tried to sound enthusiastic.

"More than caught him! She bought a new kind of mantrap. Damned thing did so much damage that he died of the gangrene. Here we are. Mrs. Windham writes: It so inspired the Rector that he incorporated Same into last Sunday's sermon to the undoubted Edification of those in the Parish Unmindful of their Station!"

Windham beamed at the assembled officers. Sharpe doubted if anyone in the Colonel's parish was unmindful of their station while Mrs. Windham was so mindful of her own, but he judged it not the right time to say so. Windham looked again at the letter. 'Splendid man, our Rector. Rides like a trooper. Know what his text was?'

Sharpe waited for a gun to fire. "Numbers. Chapter thirty-two, verse twenty-three, sir?" He spoke mildly.

The Colonel looked at him. "How the devil did you know?" He seemed to suspect that the Rifleman might have reading his post. Leroy was grinning.
Sharpe decided not to say that he had slept in a dormitory in a foundling home that had the text painted in letters three feet high down the wall.

"It seemed appropriate, sir."

"Quite right, Sharpe, damned appropriate. "Be sure your sin will find you out." It found him out, eh? Died of the gangrene!."

***

"Bomb them."

"Ah! Colonel Fletcher is with us." Wellington turned to him.

Fletcher smiled. "I say bomb them, my Lord. Smoke them out! They'll give up."

"And how long, pray, before they give up?"

Fletcher shrugged. He knew it could take weeks for the squat howitzers to reduce enough of Badajoz to smoking rubble, to burn the food supplies and thus force a surrender. "A month, my Lord?"

"Two, more like, perhaps three. And let me advert you, Colonel, to the notion, imperfectly understood though it may be within the walls, that the Spanish are our allies. If we indiscriminately bomb them with shells it is possible, you will grant me, that our allies will be displeased."

Fletcher nodded. "They'll not be too happy, my Lord, if your men rape everything that moves and steal everything that doesn't."

"We will trust to our soldiers' good sense."

***

"Sharpe! Sharpe! Sharpe!" They chanted it senselessly, a war cry, and men who did not know what it meant picked up the sound, and the ditch stirred, and the shout bellied into the night. "Sharpe! Sharpe! Sharpe!"

"What are they saying, March?"

"It sounds like sharp , my Lord."

The General laughed because moments before he had wished for one thousand Sharpes, and now, perhaps, that rogue was giving him the city. His aides-de-camp, hearing the grim tone of the laughter, did not understand and did not like to ask.

***

The cathedral had been a refuge, a sanctuary, but no longer. Troops had invaded it, had chased the women, caught them, and now, under the myriad votive candles, the women were being raped. A nun, her habit ripped apart, was spread-eagled on the high altar while an Irishman of the 88th, down from the casde assault, tried vainly to climb up to her. He was too drunk.

Долго читал, почти два месяца, прерывался, наверное, раз шесть.

Началось все плохо. Корнуэлл уже проделывал такое с Шарпом после индийской арки. Его понизили, потому что в Лондоне отклонили его повышение, выданное Уэлингтоном, стрелкам в сержанты вытащили Обадайю Хейксвилла, который последний раз должен был сгинуть еще в Гавилгуре в яме со змеями, высекли и понизили в рядовые Харпера. Ко всему прочему у него появилась постоянная женщина, Тереза, та самая партизанка из Золота Шарпа, которая родила ему дочь, и обе они в полной французов крепости, осаждаемой англичанами. Ня.

Учитывая то, что впереди еще одиннадцать книг, я думал, что Терезу и дочь он потеряет. Но нет, обе выжили, несмотря на то, что Обадайа все таки добрался до них, по пути убив Капитана Ноулса, который раньше был лейтенантом у Шарпа. Печаль, славный малый был. Шарп женился на Терезе и получил назад свое капитанство, Харпер — свое звание сержанта, стрелки — свои винтовки и зеленые мундиры. ИЧСХ, Обадайя, блджад, выжил!