Free Sharpe's Gold by Bernard Cornwell Page B

it was possible that the French would decide not

    to exchange Kearsey for months; perhaps, Sharpe thought with a sinking feeling, till the

    British had been driven from Portugal.
    The depressing thought made him stare at the hermitage, half hidden by trees, the

    unlikely place where Wellington's hopes were pinned. Without Kearsey it was even more

    important that the Company should try to find the gold that night, but then those hopes,

    too, were dashed. Half the lancers rode with their prisoner to the village, but the other

    half, in a curving column, trotted towards the graveyard and its hermitage. Sharpe cursed

    beneath his breath. There was no hope now of finding the gold that night. The only chance

    left was to wait until the French had gone, till they had stopped using the village and the

    hermitage as their base for the campaign against the Partisans in the hills. And when the

    French did go, El Catolico would come, and Sharpe had no doubt that the tall, grey-cloaked

    Spaniard would use every effort to stop the British from taking the gold. Only one man

    stood a chance of persuading the Partisan leader, and that man was a prisoner, wounded,

    in the hands of the lancers. He slid back from the skyline, turned and stared at the

    Company. Harper slid down beside him. 'What do we do, sir?'
    'Do? We fight.' Sharpe gripped the hilt of the sword. 'We've been spectators long enough.

    We get the Major out, tonight.'
    Knowles heard him, turned an astonished face on them. 'Get him out, sir? There's two

    regiments there!'
    'So? That's only eight hundred men. There are fifty-three of us.'
    'And a dozen Irish.' Harper grinned at the Lieutenant.
    Knowles scrambled down the slope, looking at them with a disbelieving stare. 'With

    respect, sir. You're mad.' He began to laugh. 'Are you serious?'
    Sharpe nodded. There was no other choice. Fifty-three men must take on eight hundred, or

    else the war was lost. He grinned at Knowles. 'Stop worrying! It'll be simple!'
    And how the hell, he thought, do we do it?

CHAPTER 6
    Sharpe mocked himself. So simple. Just release the Major when two of the finest

    regiments in the French army were expecting a night attack. The wise course, he thought,

    was to go home. The French probably had the gold by now, the war was lost, and a sensible

    man would shoulder his rifle and think about making a living at home. Instead, like a

    gambler who had lost all but a handful of coins, he was staking everything on one last

    throw, a throw against odds of sixteen to one.
    Which was not, he told himself as the Company filed down a goat track in the darkness,

    quite true. He had lain on the gully's rim as the sun westered and watched the French

    preparations. They were thorough, but in their defence was their weakness, and Sharpe had

    felt the excitement well up inside, the incipient knowledge of success. The French

    expected an attack by Partisans, by small groups of silent men who would carry knives, or

    else who would fire muskets from the darkness, and they had prepared themselves for that

    ordeal. The village did not help them. The houses either side of the narrow street were

    jostled by low, ragged outbuildings; the whole making a maze of alleyways and dark

    corners where a silent assassin held the advantage. The French had no outlying

    sentries. To put a small group of men out in the fields was to write their death sentence,

    and the French, accustomed to this kind of fighting, had drawn themselves into makeshift

    fortresses. Most of the cavalry were in Cesar Moreno's house with its ample stabling and

    high, encircling wall. The other fortress, the only other building with a wall high and

    strong enough, was the hermitage with its cemetery. Both buildings would be crowded, but

    both safe from the silent knives, and to make them safer the French had embarked on a crusade

    of systematic destruction. The cottages nearest the Moreno house had been flattened,

    the ringing of the