SHARPE’S REGIMENT
PENGUIN BOOKS
SHARPE’S REGIMENT
Bernard Cornwell’s most recent novels are Copperhead and Rebel, historical novels set during the American Civil War, and The Winter King. Sharpe’s Regiment is the eighth volume in Bernard Cornwell’s acclaimed Richard Sharpe series, which takes the hero to the famous battle of Waterloo—and beyond. Several novels in the series have been made into a television mini-series. Bernard Cornwell was born in London and lives in Chatham, Massachusetts.
THE COMPLETE SHARPE SERIES
1. SHARPE’S RIFLES
2. SHARPE’S EAGLE
3. SHARPE’S GOLD
4. SHARPE’S COMPANY
5. SHARPE’S SWORD
6. SHARPE’S ENEMY
7 SHARPE’S HONOR
8. SHARPE’S REGIMENT
9. SHARPE’S SIEGE
10. SHARPE’S REVENGE
11. WATERLOO
RICHARD SHARPE AND THE
INVASION OF FRANCE,
JUNE TO NOVEMBER
1813
Bernard Cornwell
PROLOGUE SPAIN, June 1813
PROLOGUE
Regimental Sergeant Major MacLaird was a powerful man and the pressure of his fingers, where they gripped Major Richard Sharpe’s left hand, was painful. The RSM’s eyes opened slowly. ‘I’ll not cry, sir.’
‘No.’
‘They’ll not say they saw me cry, sir.’
‘No.’
A tear rolled down the side of the RSM’s face. His shako had fallen. It lay a foot from his head.
Sharpe, leaving his left hand in the Sergeant Major’s grip, gently pulled back the red jacket.
‘Our Father, which art in heaven.’ MacLaird’s voice choked suddenly. He lay on the hard flints of the roadway. Some of the dark flints were flecked with his blood. ‘Oh, Christ!’
Sharpe was staring into the ruin of the Sergeant Major’s belly. MacLaird’s filthy shirt had been driven into the wound that welled with gleaming, bright blood. Sharpe let the jacket fall gently onto the horror. There was nothing to be done.
‘Sir,’ the RSM’s voice was weak, ‘please, sir?’ Sharpe was embarrassed. He knew what this hard man, who had bullied and whored and done his duty, wanted. Sharpe saw the struggle on the strong man’s face not to show weakness in death and he gripped MacLaird’s hand as if he could help this last moment of a soldier’s pride. MacLaird stared at the officer. ‘Sir?’
‘Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,’ the words came uncertainly to Sharpe’s lips. He did not know if he could remember the whole prayer. ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ Sharpe had no belief, but perhaps when he died then he too would want the comfort of old phrases. ‘Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ One pound of twice-baked bread a day and it had been the bastard French who had trespassed. What were the next words? The flints dug into his knee where he knelt. ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, Amen.’ He thought he had remembered it all, but it did not matter now. MacLaird was dead, killed by a piece of stone the size of a bayonet that had been driven from a rock by the strike of a French cannon ball. The blood had stopped flowing and there was no pulse in his neck.
Slowly Sharpe uncurled the fingers. He lay the hand on the breast, wiped the tears from the face, then stood. ‘Captain Thomas?’
‘Sir?’
‘RSM’s dead. Take him for burial. Captain d’Alembord!’
‘Sir?’
‘Push those picquets fifty yards further up the hill, this isn’t a god-damn field-training day! Move!’ The picquets were perfectly positioned, and everyone knew it, but Sharpe was venting an anger where he could.
The ground was wet, soaked by overnight rain. There were puddles on the track, some discoloured with blood. To Sharpe’s left, where the hillside fell away, a party of men hacked at the thin soil to make graves. Ten bodies, stripped of their jackets and boots that were too valuable to be buried, waited beside the shallow trench. ‘Lieutenant Andrews!’
‘Sir?’
‘Two Sergeants! Twenty men! Collect rocks!’
‘Rocks, sir?’
‘Do it!’ Sharpe turned and bellowed the order. In this mood men were foolish who crossed the tall, dark-haired officer who had risen from the ranks. His face, always savage, was tight with anger.