'Who did it?' 'A man called Morris, and a Sergeant. Hakeswill.' 'Why?' He shrugged. 'They lied.' 'You kill them?' 'Not yet.' She nodded slowly. 'You will?' 'I will.' It was not yet dawn, but the sky had the grey luminance that came before first light, and Sharpe wanted to be at the telegraph earl...
Bias Vivar said, “destroys discipline. You teach an army to march, to fight, to obey orders.” Each virtue was stressed by a downward slash of the razor which spattered soapy water onto the kitchen floor. “But,” he shrugged, “defeat brings ruin.” Sharpe knew that the Spania...
PART ONE "Welcome to San Miguel, Captain," Major Lucius Tubbs said to the officer beside him, "where God is in his heaven and all is well with the world." "Amen to that," said Sergeant Patrick Harper, standing behind the two officers who both ignored him. Major Tubbs, befitting his name, w...
Wellington, by now commander of both the Portuguese and the British armies, adopted a scorched earth policy that brought huge hardship to the Portuguese people. Attempts were made to deny the invaders every scrap of food, while the inhabitants of central Portugal were required to leave their home...
I gasped, staggered against the ship’s bows, and saw Finan moving to snatch at Eadith’s arm, but she had already pulled the sword back. Now she was staring at my wound with a look of horror. And as the blade left me so the stench came. A foul stench, and I felt liquid pouring from my rib. ‘It’s t...
It had stood through two millennia over the waters of the Tagus, and the old stonework yielded slowly to the modern explosives. The central pier gave a deep shudder that was felt as far away as Sharpe and his company; they wheeled round to see what had caused it, and dust flew from the crevices o...
Maybe not in the greater things of life, certainly not in the nature of his birth to a Cat Lane whore who had died without giving her only son a single caress, nor in the manner of his upbringing in a London orphanage that cared not a jot for the children within its grim walls, but in the smaller...