Sharpe 3-Book Collection 6: Sharpe’s Honour, Sharpe’s Regiment, Sharpe’s Siege. Bernard Cornwell

and the constriction of river and highland would force the British to a frontal attack in the valley that would bring them into the face of the great guns that, in this morning of drifting mist, looked like fearsome monsters in wait for their victims.

      The guns that gave the French such confidence were placed on a low north–south ridge called the Arinez Hill. The French high command, knowing that soldiers, above all humankind, are superstitious, had spread the story of the Arinez Hill, and the story, on this dawn of waiting, added to the French confidence. The hill was a place of ill-luck for the English.

      Centuries before this dawn, on a day of searing heat, three hundred English knights, marauding for plunder, had been surrounded by a Spanish army on the Arinez Hill. The English had dared not take off their armour, for then they would have been meat for the Spanish crossbows, and so they fought, the day long, roasting like pigs, their tongues swelling with thirst, their eyes blinded with sweat, and time after time the Spanish came up the hill to be thrust down with the long, heavy swords or beaten back with the maces and clubs. The stolid clay of the hill was slick with blood and loud with the screams of horses and men.