09 Sharpe's Gold by Bernard Cornwell

Author:Bernard Cornwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
ISBN: 9780006173144
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1986-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Sharpe point­ed at a stunt­ed olive tree, ap­par­ent­ly a mark­er be­tween two fields, and shout­ed up at Hag­man. 'See the tree, Daniel?'

The voice came down from the bell-​tow­er. 'Sir?'

'Olive tree! Four hun­dred yards away. Be­yond the big house!'

'Got it, sir.'

'Shoot that hang­ing branch off!'

Hag­man mut­tered some­thing about bloody mir­acles, El Catoli­co sneered at the im­pos­si­bil­ity of the marks­man­ship, and Sharpe smiled at him.

'If any of your men try to leave the vil­lage, they get shot. Un­der­stand?'

The Spaniard did not re­ply. Sharpe had put four Ri­fle­men in the bell-​tow­er with or­ders to shoot any horse­men spurring away from Casate­ja­da. For the mo­ment he need­ed all the time he could gain be­fore El Catoli­co's whole band of hard­ened Par­ti­sans be­gan the pur­suit of the Light Com­pa­ny through the hills. The Bak­er ri­fle banged, the hang­ing branch leaped in­to the air, hinged on a strip of bark, and then fell back. Hag­man had not ful­ly sev­ered the pale bark, but the demon­stra­tion was more than enough, and El Catoli­co watched the ragged branch sway­ing like a pen­du­lum. He said noth­ing. His men, dis­armed and per­plexed, sat by the ceme­tery wall and watched five oth­er Ri­fle­men, led by Harp­er, rak­ing at the huge pile of ma­nure with their bay­onets. They were pulling out leather bags, filled with coins, and dump­ing them at Sharpe's feet; bag af­ter bag, thick with gold, more mon­ey than Sharpe had ev­er seen in one place, a for­tune be­yond his imag­in­ings.

The Ri­fle­men were awed by the gold, elat­ed at its dis­cov­ery, and dis­be­liev­ing in their ex­cite­ment as the warm, reek­ing bags thumped down at Sharpe's feet. El Catoli­co's face was as rigid as a child's mask sold at a coun­try fair­ground, but Sharpe knew the con­trolled mus­cles hid a rag­ing anger. The Spaniard crossed to Sharpe, ges­tured at the bags.

'Our gold, Sharpe.'

'Ours?'

'Span­ish.' The dark eyes searched the Ri­fle­man's face.

'So we take it to Cadiz for you. Do you want to come?'

'Cadiz!' For a mo­ment the mask slipped and the voice was a snarl of anger. 'You won't take it to Cadiz! It will go back to Eng­land with your army, to buy com­forts for your Gen­er­als.'

Sharpe hoped his own face mir­rored the scorn on El Catoli­co's. 'And what were you go­ing to do with it?'

The Spaniard shrugged. 'Take it to Cadiz. By land.'

Sharpe did not be­lieve him; ev­ery in­stinct told him that El Catoli­co had planned to steal the gold, keep it, but he had no proof ex­cept that the gold had been hid­den. He shrugged back at the guer­ril­la lead­er. 'Then we'll save you a jour­ney. It will be our plea­sure.'

He smiled at El Catoli­co, who turned away and spoke rapid­ly to his men, ges­tur­ing at Sharpe, and the seat­ed fight­ers by the wall mut­tered an­gri­ly so that Sharpe's men had to heft their ri­fles and step one pace for­ward.

Patrick Harp­er stopped be­side Sharpe and stretched his back mus­cles. 'They're not hap­py, sir.'

Sharpe grinned. 'They think we're steal­ing their gold. I don't think they want to help us take it to Cadiz.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.