Sharpe’s Battle: The Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro, May 1811. Bernard Cornwell
Читать онлайн.| Название | Sharpe’s Battle: The Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro, May 1811 |
|---|---|
| Автор произведения | Bernard Cornwell |
| Жанр | Приключения: прочее |
| Серия | |
| Издательство | Приключения: прочее |
| Год выпуска | 0 |
| isbn | 9780007339525 |
SHARPE’S
BATTLE
Richard Sharpe and the Battle
of Fuentes de Oñoro, May 1811
BERNARD CORNWELL
Copyright
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1995
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 1995
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is a work of fiction.
The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
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Source ISBN: 9780006473244
Ebook Edition © March 2012 ISBN: 9780007339525
Version: 2017-05-08
Sharpe’s Battle is for Sean Bean
‘As always the action’s the thing – and once Sharpe is surrounded by enemies, both on his own side and the opposition, events move at their usual satisfyingly breathless pace’
Independent on Sunday
Contents
The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)
The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)
CHAPTER ONE
Sharpe swore. Then, in desperation, he turned the map upside down. ‘Might as well not have a bloody map,’ he said, ‘for all the bloody use it is.’
‘We could light a fire with it,’ Sergeant Harper suggested. ‘Good kindling’s hard to come by in these hills.’
‘It’s no bloody use for anything else,’ Sharpe said. The hand-drawn map showed a scatter of villages, a few spidery lines for roads, streams or rivers, and some vague hatchings denoting hills, whereas all Sharpe could see was mountains. No roads or villages, just grey, bleak, rock-littered mountains with peaks shrouded by mists, and valleys cut by streams turned white and full by the spring rains. Sharpe had led his company into the high ground on the border between Spain and Portugal and there become lost. His company, forty soldiers carrying packs, haversacks, cartridge cases and weapons, seemed not to care. They were just grateful for the rest and so sat or lay beside the grassy track. Some lit pipes, others slept, while Captain Richard Sharpe turned the map right side up and then, in anger, crumpled it into a ball. ‘We’re bloody lost,’ he said and then, in fairness, corrected himself. ‘I’m bloody lost.’
‘My grand-da got lost once,’ Harper said helpfully. ‘He’d bought a bullock from a fellow in Cloghanelly Parish and decided to take a short cut home across the Derryveagh Mountains. Then the fog rolled in and grand-da couldn’t tell his left from his right. Lost like a wee lamb he was, and then the bullock deserted the ranks and bolted into the fog and jumped clear over a cliff into the Barra Valley. Grand-da said you could hear the poor wee beast bellowing all the way down, then there was a thump just like you’d dropped a bagpipe off