„Fuse went out,” Sharpe said, „just went out.”
He went down to the northernmost redoubts and stared at the gun. How much bloody ammunition did the bastards have? The rate of fire had slowed a little, but that seemed more to do with the gunners’ weariness than a shortage of shells. He watched them load another round, did not bother to take cover and the shell exploded up behind the watch-tower. The howitzer had recoiled eight or nine feet, much less than a field gun, and he watched as the gunners put their shoulders to the wheel and shoved it back into place. The air between Sharpe and the gun wavered because of the day’s heat, which was made more intense by a small grass fire ignited by the cannon’s blast. That had been happening all day and the howitzer’s muzzle flame had left a fan-shaped patch of scorched grass and ferns in front of the barrel. And then Sharpe saw something else, something that puzzled him, and he opened Christopher’s small telescope, cursing the loss of his own, and he steadied the barrel on a rock and stared intently and saw that an officer was crouching beside the gun wheel with an upraised hand. That odd pose had been what puzzled him. Why would a man crouch by the front of a gun’s wheels? And Sharpe could just see something else. Shadows. The ground there had been cleared, but the sun was now low in the sky and it was throwing long shadows and Sharpe could see that the cleared ground had been marked with two half-buried stones, each maybe the size of a twelve-pounder’s round shot, and that the officer was bringing the wheels right up to the two stones. When the wheels touched the stones he dropped his hand and the men went about the business of reloading.
Sharpe frowned, thinking. Now why, on a fine sunny day, would the French artillery officer need to mark a place for his gun’s wheels? The wheels themselves, iron-rimmed, would leave gouges in the soil that would serve as markers for when the gun was repositioned after each shot, yet they had taken the trouble to put the stones there as well. He ducked down behind the wall as another blossom of smoke heralded a shell. This one fell fractionally short and the jagged-edged iron scraps rattled against the low stone walls that Sharpe’s men had built. Pendleton poked his head above the redoubt. „Why don’t they use round shot, sir?” he asked.
„Howitzers don’t have round shot,” Sharpe said, „and it’s hard to fire a proper gun uphill.” He was brusque for he was wondering about those stones. Why put them there? Had he imagined them? But when he looked through the glass he could still see them.
Then he saw the gunners walk away from the howitzer. A score of infantrymen had appeared, but they were merely a guard for the gun which was otherwise abandoned. „They’re having their supper,” Harper suggested. He had brought water for the men in the forward positions and now sat beside Sharpe. For a moment he looked embarrassed, then grinned. „That was a brave thing you did, sir.”
„You’d have done the bloody same.”
„I bloody wouldn’t,” Harper said vehemently. „I’d have been out of that bloody door like a scalded cat if my legs had bloody worked.” He saw the deserted gun. „So it’s over for the day?” he asked.
„No,” Sharpe said, because he suddenly understood why the stones were there.
And knew what he could do about it.
Brigadier Vuillard, ensconced in the Quinta, poured himself a glass of Savages’ finest white port. His blue uniform jacket was unhooked and he had eased a button of his breeches to make space for the fine shoulder of mutton that he had shared with Christopher, a dozen officers and three women. The women were French, though certainly not wives, and one of them, whose golden hair glinted in the candlelight, had been seated next to Lieutenant Pelletieu who seemed unable to take his bespectacled eyes from a cleavage that was deep, soft, shadowed and streaked where sweat had made rivulets through the white powder on her skin. Her very presence had struck Pelletieu almost dumb, so that all the confidence he had shown on first meeting Vuillard had fled.