Free Sharpe's Fortress by Bernard Cornwell Page A

Damned odd, I thought.

    I was arse over elbow for months, I can tell you.” The Colonel's voice tailed away.
    “Damned hot,” he said after a while.
    “Damned hot. Ever heard of the 95th, Sharpe?”
    '95th, sir? Another Scottish regiment?"
    “Lord, no. The 95th Rifles. They're a new regiment. Couple of years old. Used to be

    called the Experimental Corps of Riflemen!” Wallace hooted with laughter at the clumsy

    name.
    “But a friend of mine is busy with the rascals. Willie Stewart, he's called. The

    Honourable William Stewart. Capital fellow! But Willie's got some damned odd ideas. His

    fellows wear green coats. Green! And he tells me his riflemen ain't as rigid as he seems to

    think we are.” Wallace smiled to show he had made some kind of joke.
    “Thing is, Sharpe, I wondered if you wouldn't be better suited to Stewart's outfit? His

    idea, you should understand. He wrote wondering if I had any bright young officers who

    could carry some experience of India to Shorncliffe. I was going to write back and say

    we do precious little skirmishing here, and it's skirmishing that Willie's rogues are

    being trained to do, but then I thought of you, Sharpe.”
    Sharpe said nothing. Whichever way you wrapped it up, he was being dismissed from the

    74th, though he supposed it was kind of Wallace to make the 95th sound like an interesting

    sort of regiment.
    Sharpe guessed they were the usual shambles of a hastily raised wartime battalion,

    staffed by the leavings of other regiments and composed of gutter rogues discarded by

    every other recruiting sergeant. The very fact they wore green coats sounded bad, as

    though the army could not be bothered to waste good red cloth on them. They would probably

    dissolve in panicked chaos in their first battle.
    “I've written to Willie about you,” Wallace went on, 'and I know he'll have a place for

    you." Meaning, Sharpe thought, that the Honourable William Stewart owed Wallace a

    favour.
    “And our problem, frankly,” Wallace continued, 'is that a new draft has reached Madras.

    Weren't expecting it till spring, but they're here now, so we'll be back to strength in a

    month or so." Wallace paused, evidently wondering if he had softened the blow

    sufficiently.
    “And the fact is, Sharpe,” he resumed after a while, 'that Scottish regiments are more

    like, well, families!
    Families, that's it, just it. My mother always said so, and she was a pretty shrewd

    judge of these things. Like families! More so, I think, than English regiments, don't you

    think?"
    “Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, trying to hide his misery.
    “But I can't let you go while there's a war on,” Wallace continued heartily. The Colonel

    had turned to watch the cannon again. The engineer had finished unwinding his fuse and

    the gunners now shouted at everyone within earshot to stand away.
    “I do enjoy this,” the Colonel said warmly.
    “Nothing like a bit of gratuitous destruction to set the juices flowing, eh?”
    The engineer stooped to the fuse with his tinderbox. Sharpe saw him strike the flint

    then blow the charred linen into flame. There was a pause, then he put the fuse end into the

    small fire and the smoke fizzed up.
    The fuse burned fast, the smoke and sparks snaking through the dry grass and starting small

    fires, then the red hot trail streaked up the back of the gun and down into the

    touch-hole.
    For a heartbeat nothing happened, then the whole gun just seemed to disintegrate. The

    charge had tried to propel the double shot up the wedged barrel, but the resistance was

    just big enough to restrict the explosion. The touch-hole shot out first, the shaped piece

    of metal tearing out a chunk of the upper breach, then the whole rear of the painted

    barrel split apart in smoke, flame and whistling lumps of jagged metal. The forward part of

    the barrel, jaggedly torn off, dropped to the grass as the gun's wheels were splayed out. The

    gunners cheered.
    “One less Mahratta