[ he hadn't quite been talking about the battle wounds, but he lacks the language -- or perhaps the inclination -- to explain instead the horrors of being alive in the wake of a breached siege. the bluish guts strung about the rocks. hundreds of corpses in ditches. and some men cowering under little fortresses of bodies, praying the defender's guns wouldn't find them.
and then there was the hell unleashed on the city itself once the attackers broke in, keen to slake their fury and exact revenge upon a force that had cut down so many of their brothers in arms. and once that hell reached beyond the soldiers and touched the civilians...
sharpe had seen things in badajoz that he could not put to words. babies slaughtered before their mothers' eyes; naked women kept captive in pew-rows in a grand cathedral; stumbling, swearing, drunken men who were off to commit crimes they should be hanged for. he does not doubt that, and he would have hanged them himself in badajoz had he not been busy finding teresa. ]
After you -- [ he signals that she should enter the apartment building before him. ]
no subject
[ he hadn't quite been talking about the battle wounds, but he lacks the language -- or perhaps the inclination -- to explain instead the horrors of being alive in the wake of a breached siege. the bluish guts strung about the rocks. hundreds of corpses in ditches. and some men cowering under little fortresses of bodies, praying the defender's guns wouldn't find them.
and then there was the hell unleashed on the city itself once the attackers broke in, keen to slake their fury and exact revenge upon a force that had cut down so many of their brothers in arms. and once that hell reached beyond the soldiers and touched the civilians...
sharpe had seen things in badajoz that he could not put to words. babies slaughtered before their mothers' eyes; naked women kept captive in pew-rows in a grand cathedral; stumbling, swearing, drunken men who were off to commit crimes they should be hanged for. he does not doubt that, and he would have hanged them himself in badajoz had he not been busy finding teresa. ]
After you -- [ he signals that she should enter the apartment building before him. ]