Sharpe's Havoc by Bernard Cornwell

could stand fifty yards from a musket and stand a good

chance of living, but standing a hundred paces in front of a Baker in the hands of a good man

was a death warrant, and so the dragoons had pulled back into the trees.
    There was infantry in the wood as well, but what were the bastards doing? Sharpe propped

his loaded rifle against the wall and took out his telescope, the fine instrument made by

Matthew Berge of London which had been a gift from Sir Arthur Wellesely after Sharpe had

saved the General’s life at Assaye. He rested the telescope on the wall’s mossy coping and

stared at the leading company of French infantry which was well back in the trees, but Sharpe

could see they were formed in three ranks. He was looking for some sign that they were ready to

advance, but the men were slouching, musket butts grounded, without even fixed bayonets. He

whipped the glass right, suddenly fearing that perhaps the French would try to cut off his

retreat by infiltrating the vineyard, but he saw nothing to worry him. He looked back at

the trees and saw a flash of light, a distinct white circle, and realized there was an

officer kneeling in the leafy shadows staring at the village through a telescope. The man

was undoubtedly trying to work out how many enemy were in Barca d’Avintas and how to

attack them. Sharpe put his own telescope away, picked up the rifle and leveled it on the

wall. Careful now, he thought, careful. Kill that one officer and any French attack is

slowed, because that officer is the man who makes the decisions, and Sharpe pulled back the

flint, lowered his head so that his right eye was gazing down the sights, found the patch of

dark shadow that was the Frenchman’s blue coat and then raised the rifle’s foresight, a blade

of metal, so that the barrel hid the target and so allowed the bullet to drop. There was

little wind, not enough to drift the bullet left or right. A splintering of noise sounded

from the other rifles and a drop of sweat trickled past Sharpe’s left eye as he pulled the

trigger and the rifle hammered back into his shoulder and the puff of bitter smoke from the

pan made his right eye smart and the specks of burning powder stung his cheek as the cloud of

barrel smoke billowed in front of the wall to hide the target. Sharpe twisted to see

Lieutenant Vicente’s troops streaming into the vineyard accompanied by thirty or forty

civilians. Harper was coming back across the paddock. The odd clicking noise was louder

suddenly and Sharpe registered that it was the sound of French carbine bullets striking

the other side of the stone wall. “We’re all clear of the village, sir,” Harper said.
    “We can go,” Sharpe said, and he marveled that the enemy had been so slow, thus giving him

time to extricate his force. He sent Harper with most of the greenjackets to join Vicente

and they took a dozen French horses with them, each horse worth a small fortune in prize money

if they could ever rejoin the army. Sharpe kept Hagman and six other men and they spread

along the wall and fired as fast as their rifles would load, which meant they did not wrap the

bullets in leather patches which gripped the rifling, but just tapped the balls down the

barrels because Sharpe did not care about accuracy, he just wanted the French to see a

thick rill of smoke and hear the shots and thus not know that their enemy was withdrawing.
    He pulled the trigger and the flint broke into useless scraps so he slung the rifle and

backed out of the smoke to see that Vicente and Harper were both well into the vineyard and

so he shouted at his remaining men to hurry back across the paddock. Hagman paused to fire

a last bullet, then he ran and Sharpe went with him, the last man to leave, and he could not

believe it had been that easy to disengage, that the French had been so supine, and just then

Hagman went down.
    At first Sharpe thought Hagman had