Sharpe 16 - Sharpe's Honour Read Online Free PDF Page A

South Essex's musket ammunition had gone down into the stream.
    When the French approached the bridge only Sharpe's Riflemen had ammunition. The French could have taken the bridge with one volley of musketry because Sharpe had nothing with which to oppose them.
    `Never, Mr Collip, ever, separate a man from his weapons and ammunition. Do you promise me that?'
    Collip nodded eagerly. `Yes, sir.'
    `I think you owe me a bottle of something, Mr Collip.'
    `Yes, sir. Of course, sir.'
    `Good day, Mr Collip.'
    Sharpe walked away. He smiled suddenly, perhaps because the clouds in the west had parted and there was a sudden shaft of red sunlight that glanced down to the scene of his victory. He looked for Patrick Harper, stood with his old Riflemen, and drank tea with them. `A good day's work, lads.'
    Harper laughed. `Did you tell the bastards we didn't have any ammunition?'
    `Always leave a man his pride, Patrick.' Sharpe laughed. He had not laughed often since Christmas.
    But now, with this first fight of the new campaign, he had survived the winter, had made his first victory of the spring, and he looked forward at last to a summer untrammelled by the griefs and tangles of the past. He was a soldier, he was marching to war, and the future looked bright.

CHAPTER 2
    On a day of sunshine, when the martins were busy making their nests in the old masonry of Burgos Castle, Major Pierre Ducos stared down from the ramparts.
    He was hatless. The small west wind lifted his black hair as he stared into the castle's courtyard. He fidgeted with the earpieces of his spectacles, wincing as the curved wire chafed his sore skin.
    Six wagons were being dragged over the cobbles. The wagons were huge, lumbering fourgons, each pulled by eight oxen. Tarpaulins covered their loads, tarpaulins roped down and bulging with cargo. The tired oxen were prodded to the far end of the courtyard where the wagons, with much shouting and effort, were parked against the keep's wall.
    The wagons had an escort of cavalrymen who carried bright-bladed lances from which hung red and white pennants.
    The garrison of the castle watched the wagons arrive. Above their heads, at the top of the keep, the tricolour of France flapped sullenly in the wind. The sentries stared out across the wide countryside, wondering whether the war would once again lap against this old Spanish fortress that guarded the Great Road from Paris to Madrid.
    There was a rattle of hooves in the gateway and Pierre Ducos saw a bright, gleaming carriage come bursting into the courtyard. It was drawn by four white horses that were harnessed to the splinter-bar with silver trace chains. The carriage was driven too fast, but that, Ducos decided, was typical of the carriage's owner.
    She was known in Spain as La Puta Dorada, `the Golden Whore'.
    Beside the carriage, where it stopped beneath Ducos' gaze, was a General of cavalry. He was a youngish man, the very image of a French hero, whose gaudy uniform was stiffened to carry the weight of his medals. He leaped from his horse, waved the coachmen aside, and opened the carriage door and let down the steps with a flourish. He bowed.
    Ducos, like a predator watching its victim, stared at the woman.
    She was beautiful, this Golden Whore. Men who saw her for the first time hardly dared believe that any woman was so beautiful. Her skin was as white and clear as the white pearl shells of the Biscay beaches. Her hair was golden. An accident of lip and bone, of eye and skin had given her a look of innocence that made men wish to protect her. Pierre Ducos could think of few women so little in need of protection.
    She was French. She was born Helene Leroux and she had served France since her sixteenth year. She had slept in the beds of the powerful and brought from their pillows the secrets of their nations, and when the Emperor had taken the decision to annex Spain to his Empire, he had sent Helene as his weapon.
    She had pretended to be the daughter of victims of the