Sharpe's Skirmish Read Online Free PDF Page B

barricade. Sharpe had been tempted to add to the barricade by taking carts and furniture from the villagers, but he had resisted the temptation. The villagers had suffered enough from the war, and they had been welcoming to his men by shyly bringing gifts of olives, eggs and freshly caught fish. The single cart would have to suffice.
    "Why would the French come here?" Teresa asked. They were standing on the fort's parapet.
    "If they can retake Salamanca," Sharpe said, "they cut Wellington off from his supplies. They don't even need to take the city to do that! Just sit on the road to Ciudad Rodrigo. In a couple of days the supplies will dry up, and Nosey will have to turn round and come back to deal with the buggers. He won't be best pleased."
    "So we must stop them?"
    Sharpe nodded.
    "So why don't you send for reinforcements?"
    Sharpe shrugged.
    "Because you're not sure they're coming?" Teresa asked.
    "I can't be sure," he said.
    "And you're frightened of looking like a fool?"
    "If I raise an alarm," Sharpe said, "and no crapauds come, they'll string my guts out and hang their washing on them. I'll be a quartermaster for the rest of my days! They'll never trust me again."
    Teresa shook her head. "Richard, you took a French eagle! You crossed the breach at Badajoz! You have pride to spare! So write a request now," she said.
    "You don't understand," he said stubbornly. "I could snatch a thousand French eagles and I'm still the bugger who came up from the ranks. I'm still an upstart. They can smell me a hundred yards off, and they're just waiting, Teresa, just waiting for me to make a mistake. One mistake!
    That's all it takes."
    "Write a request now," she said patiently, "and as soon as the first Frenchman shows, I will ride to Salamanca. As soon as we hear the first gunshot in the hills, I will ride. So then you will not have to hold for long, Richard."
    He thought about it, and knew she was right, and so he went down to the mess and lit a candle and then woke Ensign Hickey because the Ensign had gone to a proper school and would know what words to use, and then Sharpe penned the words in his clumsy handwriting. 'I have reason to believe,' he wrote, 'that a French column is approaching this fort which I have the honour to command. My command being perilously small in numbers, I request reinforcements as quickly as may be possible. Richard Sharpe, Capt'.
    "Shouldn't I date it?" he asked, "put a time on it?"
    "I will convince them you were in a hurry," Teresa said.
    Hickey, shy to be seen in front of Teresa in his undershirt, pulled a blanket over his bare legs. "Are the French really coming, sir?" He asked Sharpe.
    "I reckon so. Why? Does that worry you?"
    Hickey thought about it for a heartbeat, then nodded. "Yes, sir, it does,"
    "It's why you joined the army, isn't it?"
    "I joined the army, sir, because my father wanted me to."
    "He wanted you dead?"
    "I pray not, sir."
    "I was an Ensign once, Hickey," Sharpe said, "and I learned one lesson about being an Ensign."
    "And what lesson was that, sir?"
    "That ensigns are expendable, Hickey, expendable. Now go to sleep."
    Sharpe and Teresa climbed back to the parapet. "You were cruel, Richard,"
    she said.
    "I was honest."
    "And were you expendable? As an ensign?"
    "I climbed a cliff, love. I climbed a cliff. And they reckoned I would die, and none, I reckon, would have cared much if I had."
    And who would be climbing the cliff in the morning, he wondered, who? And where? And how? And what had he forgotten? And would the bastards come?
    And could he stop them? And Jesus, he was nervous. He had listened to his instinct, and he was ready for the French, but it still felt all wrong. It felt like defeat, and it had not even started yet.
    Teresa's men, three miles south of San Miguel in the foothills of the Sierra de Gredos, roasted a hare over an open fire. They lit the fire in a grove of trees, deep in a rocky cleft, and were sure that its light could not be seen on the road which lay