Free Sharpe 18 - Sharpe's Siege by Bernard Cornwell Page A

them!” He watched the men gingerly descend the tumble-home to step into the rocking boats. The sea, miraculously, was gentle this morning, heaving with the long swells of the ocean, but not broken into whitecaps. Sharpe raised the glass, cursing because the small movements of the Amelie made training the telescope difficult, and he saw yet more red-coated Marines waiting on the Vengeance's maindeck. “That bastard didn't need us at all!”
    “Not to take the fort, perhaps,” Sweet William lit a cheroot, “but a force of trained Riflemen will be damned useful for the march on Bordeaux.”
    “Damn his bloody soul!” Sharpe understood now. Wigram had sent de Maquerre to force a decision, and Bampfylde had secreted the Marines to implement the decision. Come hell or high water Wigram and Bampfylde wanted to take Bordeaux, and Sharpe was caught in the middle. He watched the packed longboats pull towards the breaking surf and he felt a bitter anger at Bampfylde who had lied about a malady so that he could have trained skirmishers for his madcap scheme. Even the sun, showing through the clouds for the first time in weeks, could not alleviate Sharpe's anger.
    “It's my belief,” Frederickson said, “that he wanted you personally.”
    “Me?”
    “He probably has an exalted view of your ability,” Frederickson said drily. “If the celebrated Major Sharpe fails, then no reasonable man could expect Captain Bampfylde to succeed. On the other hand, of course, who better than yourself to guarantee success?”
    “Bugger Bampfylde,” Sharpe said.
    The longboats landed their red-coated troops, then were launched back through the surf. The oarsmen, tugging against wind and tide, jerked like small marionettes to pull the heavy boats free of the shore's suction. They did not come to the Amelie; instead they went to the Vengeance where still more Marines waited for disembarkation.
    The morning ticked on. A breakfast of gravy-dipped bread was passed around the Riflemen who waited on the Amelie's deck. Those Marines already ashore formed up in ranks and, to Sharpe's astonishment, a half Company was marched off the beach towards the shelter of the dark pines. Sharpe himself was supposed to command the land operations, yet he was being utterly ignored. “Captain Tremgar!”
    “Sir?”
    “Your boat can put me ashore?”
    Tremgar, a middle-aged man wrapped in a filthy tarpaulin jacket, knocked the dottle from his pipe on the brass binnacle cover that was covered with tiny dents from just such treatment. “Ain't got orders to do it, Major.”
    “I'm giving you orders!”
    Tremgar turned. One of the longboats was pulling away from the Vengeance and carrying, instead of Marines, a group of blue-cloaked naval officers. Tremgar shrugged. “Don't see why not, Major.”
    It took twenty minutes to lower the Amelie`s small tender into the water, and another five before Sharpe was sitting uncomfortably on the stern thwart. The Comte de Maquerre, seeing a chance to escape from the stinking collier, had insisted on sharing the boat. He had exchanged his British uniform for a suit of brown cloth.
    From the Amelie's deck the sea had appeared benign, but here, in the tiny boat, it swelled and threatened and ran cold darts of fear up Sharpe's back. The oars spattered him with water, the waves heaved towards the gunwales, and at any moment Sharpe expected the small rowboat to turn turtle. The Comte, wrapped in his cloak, looked seasick.
    Sharpe twisted. The Amelies tar- and salt-stained hull reared above him. A cook jettisoned a bucket of slops over the side and gulls, screaming like banshees, swooped from the air between the yards to fight over the scraps.
    The Comte, offended by Sharpe's cavalier treatment in the small hours, said not a word. Slowly, oar-tug by oar-tug, the four boatmen dragged the small craft away from the Amelie and the grumble of the surf, like the roar of a far-off, relentless battle, grew louder.
    Sharpe instinctively