![]() He went through the kitchen and out to the car. The image was hauntingly familiar, but it wouldn't come. He went up the stairs, but paused once more to look back. In fact, Kaa had known the youth was approaching for some time, but he did not want to discourage Zhaki from practicing the arts of stealth. A thicker knot of clouds loomed like an upraised fist on the distant northern horizon, angry purple and black. The sky was filled with swirling streamers of gray. The fabric crumbled instantly in the hot dry air, leaving only a dangling mesh where some threads had been plaited with fine gold wire. They mainly showed dragons - dragons by the hundreds in flight or hanging from their perch rings, dragons with men on their backs hunting down deer and, sometimes other men. There were statues in niches set in the walls, and here and there faded but interesting tapestries had been hung. What was odd, thought Twoflower as he strolled down a wide flight of stairs and kicked up billowing clouds of silver dust motes, was that the tunnels here were much wider. Lemuel told us to expect trouble, he said in a curiously melodic voice.We came dressed for the occasion. After the sinking, I arranged to have her flown off the Chalmette to the laboratory. 'I'm sorry.And then this man, this fake Anubis, went before the highborn virtuous woman and told her in the plainest terms that he had had her! She went screaming to her husband. A priest, lost in the depths of the choir, mumbled beyond the window light, and Sharpe saw Harper cross himself. Light, like carved silver, slashed the cathedral's gloom, slanted across the crouching grey pillars, splintered o(T brass and paint, drowned the votive candles that burned before the statues, inched its way over the broad, worn flagstones as the sun moved higher, and Sharpe waited. Footsteps sounded in the doorway and he swivelled anxiously, but it was only a squad of bare-headed Portuguese soldiers, muskets slung, who dipped their fingers in the holy water and clattered up the aisle to the priest and his service. Damn the bloody French, damn the bloody gunner, and he might as well have stayed in the warm bed with his arms round the girl. 'Are you - hurt?'Ĭhrist, thought Sharpe, Christ and a thousand deaths. Lossow swore in German, stood up, flinched as he put his weight on his left leg. 'Yes.' Sharpe's shoulder hurt like the devil. Sharpe slammed his scabbard on the floor, hurting his shoulder, so he cursed again. Now he was said to be visiting the magazine, so they waited, and the light shaped the dust into silver bars and the muffled responses got lost somewhere in the high stone ceiling, and still Cox had not arrived. So the three had hurried there and Cox had gone. 'Dead, poor fellow.'Ĭox had not been at his headquarters he was on the ramparts, they were told. 'Good God.' He knelt by Charles, felt for a pulse, and opened one of the Captain's eyelids. 'Just a bruise.' Lossow saw the midshipman's head. Sharpe turned round, blood flecking his uniform, and his face grim. That's good shooting.' There was a reluctant respect in his voice. Harper looked over the ramparts, at the drifting smoke. He doubted if the gun would fire again, not today the iron barrels had a limited life and the gun had achieved its purpose. 'And who works it? Maybe, I don't know.' He glanced at the battery, its embrasure plugged, and he knew that the French gunners would be celebrating. 'Amen to that, sir.' Harper had infinitely more patience. Lossow's heels clicked in the side aisle he came from behind a pillar, blinked in the sunlight. ![]()
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