Sharpe's Escape

CHAPTER 11

Vicente reached Sharpe and Harper first, outclimbing the two women, who were hampered by their ragged skirts and bare feet. Vicente glanced at the armed men watching them, then talked to the young man who sounded ever more reluctant to answer as Vicente's voice grew angrier. "They were told to look out for us," Vicente finally explained to Sharpe, "and kill us."

"Kill us? Why?"

"Because they say we're traitors," Vicente spat angrily. "Major Ferreira was here with his brother and three other men. They said we'd been talking with the French and were now trying to reach our army to spy on it." He turned back to the young man and said something in a furious tone, then looked back to Sharpe. "And they believed him! They're fools!"

"They don't know us," Sharpe said, nodding at the men down the hill, "and maybe they do know Ferreira?"

"They know him," Vicente confirmed. "He provided those weapons earlier in the year." He nodded towards the guns the men were holding, then turned back to the young man, asked a question, received a one-word answer and immediately started down the hill.

"Where are you going?" Sharpe called after him.

"To talk to them, of course. Their leader's a man called Soriano."

"They're partisans?"

"Every man in the hills is a partisan," Vicente said, then dropped the rifle from his shoulder, unbuckled his sword belt and, thus unarmed to show he meant no mischief, strode on down the hill.

Sarah and Joana arrived at the crest. Joana began questioning the young man, who seemed even more frightened of her than he had been of Vicente, who had now reached the group of six men and was talking with them. Sarah stood beside Sharpe and gently touched his arm as if reassuring herself. "They want to kill us?"

"They've probably got something else in mind for you and Joana," Sharpe said, "but they want to kill me, Pat and Jorge. Major Ferreira was here. He told them we were enemies."

Sarah asked the young man a question, then turned back to Sharpe. "Ferreira was here last night," she said.

"So the bastard's half a day ahead of us."

"Sir?" Harper was watching down the hill and Sharpe looked to see that the six men had taken Vicente hostage by pointing a musket at his head. The implication was obvious. If Sharpe killed the young man, they would kill Vicente.

"Shit," Sharpe said, not sure what he should do now. Joana made the decision. She ran down the hill, easily evading Harper's attempt to stop her, and she screamed at the men holding Vicente. She stood twenty yards from them and told them what had happened in Coimbra, how the French had raped and stolen and killed, and said how she had been dragged to a room by three Frenchmen and how the British soldiers had saved her. She unbuttoned the shirt to show them her torn dress, then she cursed the partisans because they had been fooled by their true enemies. "You trust Ferragus?" she asked them. "Has Ferragus ever shown you a kindness? And if these men are spies, why are they here? Why do they not travel with the French?" One man evidently tried to answer her, but she spat at him. "You are doing the enemy's work," she said scornfully. "You want your wife and daughters to be raped? Or are you not man enough to have a wife? You play with goats instead, do you?" She spat at him a second time, buttoned the shirt and turned back up the hill.

Four men followed her. They came cautiously, their muskets held towards Sharpe and Harper, and they stopped a safe distance away and asked a question. Joana answered them.

"She's saying," Sarah translated for Sharpe, "that you burned the food in the city that Ferragus would have sold to the French." Joana was evidently telling the four men more than that for she went on, spitting out words like bullets, her tone scornful, and Sarah smiled. "If she was my pupil," she said, "I'd wash her mouth out with soap."

"Good job I'm not your pupil," Sharpe said. The four men, evidently shamed by Joana's passion, glanced up at him and he saw the doubt on their faces and, on impulse, he pulled the young man to his feet. The four muskets immediately twitched upwards. "Go," Sharpe told the young man, releasing his hold on the frayed collar, "go and tell them we mean no harm."

Sarah translated and the young man, with a nod of gratitude, ran down the hill to his companions, the tallest of whom slung his musket and walked slowly up the hill. He still asked questions that Joana answered, but eventually he offered Sharpe a curt nod and invited the strangers to talk with him. "Does that mean they believe us?" Sharpe asked.

"They're not sure," Sarah answered.

It took the best part of an hour's talking to persuade the men that they had been deceived by Major Ferreira, and it was only when Vicente put his right hand on a crucifix and swore on his life, on his wife's soul and on the life of his baby child that the men accepted that Sharpe and his companions were not traitors, and then they took the fugitives to a small, high village that was little more than a sprawl of hovels where goatherds stayed in the summer. The place was now crammed with refugees who were waiting for the war to pass. The men were armed, mostly with British muskets that Ferreira had supplied, and that was why they had trusted the Major, though enough of the fugitives were familiar with the Major's brother and had been worried when Ferragus came to their settlement. Others knew of Vicente's family, and they were helpful in persuading Soriano that the Portuguese officer was telling the truth. "There were five of them," Soriano told Vicente, "and we gave them mules. The only mules we had."

"Did they say where they were going?"

"Eastwards, senhor."

"To Castelo Branco?"

"Then to the river," Soriano confirmed. He had been a miller, though his mill had been dismantled and its precious wooden mechanism burned and he did not know how he was to make a living now that he was behind the French lines.

"What you do," Vicente told him, "is take your men southwards and attack the French. You'll find foraging parties in the foothills. Kill them. Keep killing them. And in the meantime you give us shoes and clothes for the women, and guides to take us after Major Ferreira."

A woman in the settlement looked at the wound in Vicente's shoulder and said it was healing well, then rewrapped it in moss and a new bandage. Shoes and footcloths were found for Sarah and Joana, but the only dresses were heavy and black, not garments suitable for traveling miles across rough country, and Sarah persuaded the women to give up some boys' breeches, shirts and jackets instead. There was little food in the village, but some hard bread and goat's cheese were wrapped in cloth and given to them and then, near midday, they set off. They had, so far as Vicente could gauge, some sixty miles still to travel before they reached the River Tagus where, he hoped, they could find a boat that would carry them downstream towards Lisbon and the British and Portuguese armies.

"Three days' walking," Sharpe said, "maybe less."

"Twenty miles a day?" Sarah sounded dubious.

"We should do better than that," Sharpe insisted. The army reckoned to march fifteen miles a day, but the army was encumbered with guns, baggage and walking wounded. General Craufurd, vainly trying to reach Talavera in time for the battle, had marched the Light Brigade over forty miles in a day, but that had been on half-decent roads and Sharpe knew his route would be across country, up hill and down dale, following the paths where no French patrol would dare to ride. He would be lucky, he thought, if they reached the river in four days, and that meant he would fail because the Ferreira brothers had mules and would probably complete the journey in two.

He thought about that as they walked eastwards. It was high, bare country, barren and empty, though they could see settlements far below in the valleys. It would be a long unrewarding walk, he thought, because by the time they reached the river and found a boat the brothers would be a long way ahead, probably in Lisbon, and Sharpe knew the army would never give him permission to pursue the feud into the city. "Is Castelo Branco," he asked Vicente, "the only route to the river?"

Vicente shook his head. "It's the safe route," he said. "No French. And this road leads there."

"Call this a road?" It was a track, fit for men and mules, but hardly deserving the name of road. Sharpe turned and saw that the watchtower close to where they had encountered Soriano was still visible. "We'll never catch the bastards," he grumbled.

Vicente stopped and scratched a rough map in the earth with his foot. It showed the Tagus curling east out of Spain, then turning south towards the sea and so narrowing the peninsula on which Lisbon was built. "What they are doing," he said, "is going directly east, but if you want to take a risk we can go south across the Serra da Lousa. Those hills are not so high as these, but the French could be there."

Sharpe looked at the crude map. "But we'd reach the river farther south?"

"We'll reach the Zezere"-Vicente scratched another river, this one a tributary of the Tagus-"and if we follow the Zezere then it will come to the Tagus well south of where they're going."

"Save a day?"

"If there are no French." Vicente sounded dubious. "The farther south we go the more likely we are to meet them."

"But it will save a day?"

"Maybe more."

"Then let's do it."

So they turned south and saw no dragoons, no Frenchmen and few Portuguese. On the second day after their encounter with Soriano's men it began to rain: a gray, Atlantic drizzle that soaked them all to the bone and left them chilled and sore, but it was downhill now, going from the bare hilltops into pastureland and vineyards and small walled fields. The three escorts left them, not wanting to go into the Zezere valley where the French might be, but Sharpe, throwing caution to the wind, followed a road down to the river. It was dusk when they came to the fast-flowing Zezere which was dappled by rain, and they spent the night in a small shrine beneath the outstretched hand of a plaster saint whose shoulders were thick with bird dung. Next morning they crossed the river at a place where the water foamed white across gaunt and slippery boulders. Harper made a short rope by joining the rifle and musket slings, then they helped each other from stone to stone, wading where they had to, and it took much longer than Sharpe had hoped, but once on the far bank he felt more secure. The French army was on the road to Lisbon and that was now over twenty miles to the west, on the river's opposite bank, and he reckoned any French foraging parties would stay on that side of the Zezere and so he walked openly on the eastern bank. It was still hard going, for the river flowed fast through high hills, twisting between great rocky shoulders, but it became easier the farther south they went and by the afternoon they were following tracks which led from village to village. A few inhabitants were still in their cottages and they reported seeing no enemy. They were poor folk, but they offered the strangers cheese and bread and fish.

They reached the Tagus that evening. The weather was worse now. The rain was coming out of the west in great gray swathes that lashed the trees and turned small rivulets into streams. The Tagus was wide, a great flood of water being beaten by the seething rain, and Sharpe crouched at its edge and looked for any sign that there were boats and saw none. The Portuguese government had scoured the river, taking away any craft to prevent the French from using boats to circumvent the new defenses at Torres Vedras, but without a boat Sharpe was trapped, and by crossing the Zezere he had put that river between himself and Lisbon and to re-cross it, in order to follow the Tagus's right bank down towards the army, he would have to go back upstream to find a place where the smaller river could be forded. "There'll be a boat," he said. "There was at Oporto, remember?"

"We were lucky there," Vicente said.

"It isn't luck, Jorge," Sharpe said. At Oporto the British and Portuguese had destroyed the vessels on the Douro, yet Sharpe and Vicente had found some boats, enough indeed to let the army cross. "It isn't luck," Sharpe said again, "but peasants. They can't afford new boats, so they'll have given the government their old wrecked boats and hidden the good ones, so we just have to find one." Ferreira and his brother, Sharpe thought sourly, would find it easier to secure a boat. They carried money and he stared upriver, praying that he had got ahead of them.

They spent the night in a shed that leaked like a sieve and next morning, cold and damp and tired, they walked upstream, coming to a village where a group of men, all armed, some of them with ancient matchlocks, met them at the end of the street. Vicente talked with them, but it was plain the men were in no mood to be friendly. These river settlements had been harrowed by the Portuguese army to make certain no boats were left for the enemy, and Vicente was unable to persuade them to reveal any that might be hidden, and the men's guns, old as most of them were, convinced Sharpe that they were wasting their time. "They're telling us to go to Abrantes," Vicente said. "They say there will be boats hidden there."

"There are boats hidden here," Sharpe grumbled. "How far is Abrantes?"

"We could be there by midday?" Vicente sounded dubious. And the Ferreira brothers, Sharpe thought, would surely be on the river already and floating south. He was fairly confident that, by following the Zezere, he had managed to get ahead of them, but at any moment he half expected to see them float past and so escape him.

"I can talk to them." Vicente suggested, gesturing at the men. "If I promise to come back and pay for the boat, perhaps they'll sell us one."

"They won't believe a promise like that," Sharpe said. "No, we keep walking." They left the village, followed by seven men who were cheerful in their victory. Sharpe ignored them. He was going north now, the wrong direction entirely, but he said nothing until the villagers, sure they had seen the threat off, abandoned them with a shouted injunction to stay away. Sharpe waited till they were out of sight. "Time to get nasty," he said. "Those bastards have got a boat and I want it."

He led his companions off the road into the higher ground, then back towards the village, staying hidden in trees or behind the rows of vines that straggled on chestnut stakes. The rain kept coming down. His plan was simple enough: to find something that the villagers valued more than their boats and threaten that thing, but as they crept back towards the houses there was nothing obvious to take. There was no livestock, nothing except some chickens scratching in a fenced garden, but the men who had marched the strangers out of the village were celebrating in the tavern. Their boasting and laughter were loud and Sharpe felt his anger rise. "Fast in," he told Harper, "and scare the hell out of them."

Harper took the seven-barrel gun from his shoulder. "Ready when you are, sir."

"The two of us go in," Sharpe said to Vicente and the women, "and you three stand at the door. And look as if you're ready to use your guns."

He and Harper jumped a fence, ran across some rows of beans and threw open the tavern's back door. A dozen men were gathered in the room, clustered about a barrel of wine, and most still had guns on their shoulders, but Sharpe was across the floor before any could unsling a musket and Harper was bellowing at them from the empty hearth, his volley gun aimed at the group. Sharpe began by snatching muskets off shoulders and, when one man resisted, he slapped him around the face with his rifle's barrel, then he kicked the wine barrel off its small stand so that it crashed onto the stone floor with a noise like a cannon firing. Then, when the men were cowed by the noise, he backed to the front door and pointed the rifle at them. "I need a bloody boat," he snarled.

Vicente took over. He slung his rifle, walked slowly forward and spoke softly. He spoke of the war, of the horrors that had been visited on Coimbra, and he promised the men that the same would happen in their village if the French were not defeated. "Your wives will be violated," he said, "your houses burned, your children murdered. I have seen it. But the enemy can be beaten, will be beaten, and you can help. You must help." He was an advocate suddenly, the tavern his courtroom and the disarmed men his jury, and the speech he gave was impassioned. He had never spoken in a courtroom, his law had been practiced in an office where he enforced the regulations of the port trade, but he had dreamed of being an advocate, and now he spoke with eloquence and honesty. He appealed to the villagers' patriotism, but then, knowing what kind of men they were, he promised that the boat would be paid for. "In full," he said, "but not now. We have no money. But on my honor I shall return here and I shall pay you the price we agree. And when the French are gone," he ended, "you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you helped defeat them." He stopped, turned away and made the sign of the cross, and Sharpe saw that the men had been moved by Vicente's speech. It was still a near thing, for a promise of money in the future was the stuff of dreams, and patriotism struggled with cupidity, but finally a man agreed. He would trust the young officer and sell them his boat.

It was not much of a boat, merely an old skiff that had been used to ferry folk across the mouth of the Zezere. It was eighteen feet long, big-bellied, with two thwarts for oarsmen and four sets of tholes for oars. It had a high, curving prow and a wide flat stern. The ferryman had hidden the boat by sinking it in the Zezere, but the men of the village emptied it of stones, floated it, provided the oars and then demanded that Vicente repeat the promise to pay for the craft. Only then did they let Sharpe and his companions board the vessel. "How long to Lisbon?" Vicente asked them.

"It will drift there in a day and a night," the ferryman said, then watched as his boat was unhandily rowed out into the stream. Sharpe and Harper were at the oars and neither was used to such things and at first they were clumsy, but the current was doing the real work by swirling them downstream while they learned to control the long oars and at last they rowed steadily down the center of the Tagus. Vicente was in the bows, watching the river ahead, and Joana and Sarah were in the wide stern. If it had not been raining, if the brisk wind had not been kicking up the river to splash cold water into a boat that was perceptibly leaking, it might have been a jaunt, but instead they shivered beneath a dark sky as their small boat was swept southwards between the rain-darkened flanks of great hills. The river flowed fast, carrying its water from far across Spain to hurry them towards the sea.

And then the French saw them.

The fort was simply known as Work Number 119, and it was not much of a fort, merely a bastion built on the summit of a low hill, then given a stone-roofed magazine and six gun emplacements. The guns were twelve-pounders, taken from a flotilla of Russian warships that had taken shelter in Lisbon from an Atlantic storm and there been captured by the Royal Navy, while the gunners were a mix of Portuguese and British artillerymen who had ranged their unfamiliar weapons, determining that the shots would reach across the wide valley that was spread east and west beneath Work Number 119. To the east were ten more forts, reaching to the Tagus, while to the west, stretching more than twenty miles to the Atlantic, were over a hundred more forts and bastions that snaked in two lines across the hilltops. They were the Lines of Torres Vedras.

Three major roads pierced the lines. The principal road, halfway between the Tagus and the sea, was the main road to Lisbon, but there was another road, running beside the river and thus not far from Work Number 119, and that eastern road offered another route to the Portuguese capital. Massena, of course, did not have to use either route, nor the third road which pierced the lines at Torres Vedras and was protected by the River Sizandre. He might choose to outflank the three roads and attempt to march overland, attacking through the wilder and lonelier country that lay between the roads, but he would only find more forts and bastions.

He would find more than the newly constructed forts. The northward-facing slopes of the hills had been scarped by thousands of laborers who had hacked at the soil to steepen the slopes so that no infantry could possibly attack uphill, and where the slopes were made of rock the engineers had drilled and blasted the stone to create new cliff faces. If the infantry ignored the scarped slopes and endured the artillery bombardment from the crests, they could march into the valleys between the steepened hills, but there they would find huge barriers of thorn bushes filling the low ground like monstrous dams. The thorn bush barricades were strengthened by felled trees, protected where possible by dams that flooded the valleys, and were flanked by smaller bastions so that any attacking column would find itself funneled into a place of death and under the flail of cannon and musket fire.

Forty thousand troops, most of them Portuguese, manned the forts, while the rest of the two armies were deployed behind the lines, ready to march wherever an attack might threaten. Some British troops were stationed in the lines and the South Essex had been given a sector between Work Number 114 and Work Number 119 where Lieutenant Colonel Lawford had summoned his senior officers to show them the extent of their responsibilities. Captain Slingsby was the last to arrive and the other men watched as he negotiated the steep, muddy steps that climbed up to the masonry firestep.

"A guinea says he won't make it," Leroy muttered to Forrest.

"I can't conceive that he's drunk," Forrest said, though without much certainty.

Everyone else believed Slingsby was drunk. He was mounting the steps very slowly, taking exaggerated care to place his feet in the exact center of each tread. He did not look up until he reached the top when, with evident satisfaction, he announced to the assembled officers that there were forty-three steps.

This news took Colonel Lawford aback. He alone had not watched Slingsby's precarious ascent, but now turned with a look of polite surprise. "Forty-three?"

"Important thing to know, sir," Slingsby said. He meant that it was important in case the steps had to be climbed in darkness, but that explanation vanished from his head before he had time to say it. "Very important, sir," he added earnestly.

"I am sure we shall all remember it," Lawford said with a touch of asperity, then he gestured towards the rain-soaked northern landscape. "If the French do come, gentlemen," he said, "then this is where we stop them."

"Hear, hear," Slingsby said. Everyone ignored him.

"We let them come," Lawford went on, "and permit them to break themselves against our positions."

"Break themselves," Slingsby said, but quietly.

"And it is possible they will attempt a breakthrough here." Lawford hurried on in case his brother-in-law added more words. The Colonel pointed west to where a small valley twisted southwards past Work Number 119 and then curled around the back of the hill. "Major Forrest and I rode north yesterday," he said, "and looked at our position from the French point of view."

"Very wise," Slingsby said.

"And from those hills," Lawford continued, "that valley is a temptation. It seems to penetrate our lines."

"Penetrate," Slingsby repeated, nodding. Major Leroy half expected him to take out a notebook and pencil and write the word down.

"In truth," Lawford went on, "the valley is entirely blocked. It leads to nothing except a barricade of felled trees, thorn bushes and flooded land, but the French will not know that."

"Ridiculous," Slingsby muttered, though whether that was a judgment on Lawford or the French it was hard to tell.

"But we must nevertheless expect such an attack," Lawford continued, "and be prepared to deal with it."

"Unleash the cat," Slingsby said obscurely, though only Leroy heard him.

"If such an attack develops," Lawford said, his cloak billowing in a sudden gust of wet wind that blew around the hilltop, "the enemy will be under artillery fire from this work and from every other fort within range. If they survive it they will be penned in the valley and we would offer volley fire from the shoulder of this hill. They cannot climb the hill, which means they can only suffer and die in the valley."

Slingsby looked surprised at this, but managed to say nothing. "What we cannot do," Lawford went on, "is allow the French to establish batteries in the larger valley." He pointed to the low ground that lay ahead of Work Number 119. This was the wide valley which lay north of the lines and on the other side of which were the hills that would doubtless become the French positions. The stretch of lowland had once been rich and fertile, but the engineers had breached the embankment of the Tagus, letting the river flood much of the country beneath the fort. The floods came and went with the tide, which was high now, so that under Work Number 119 was a stretch of wind-rippled water that loosely followed the course of a stream that came from the west and meandered through the valley to its confluence with the Tagus.

The stream made a great double bend beneath the hill where Lawford spoke. It swerved from the northern side of the valley, almost reached the southern and then curved back to run into the Tagus. Inside the first bend, and on the British bank, was an ancient barn that was little more than a stone ruin in a grove of trees, while within the second curve, and thus on the French side of the stream, was what had once been a prosperous farm with a big house, some smaller cottages, a dairy and a pair of cattle sheds. All were abandoned now, people and livestock ordered south to escape the French, and the buildings looked forlorn in the inundated landscape. The farm itself was high and dry, perched on a small rise, so that it resembled an island in a wind-fretted lake, though as the tide ebbed the floods would slowly drain away, but the ground would still remain waterlogged and any French advance beside the Tagus would thus be forced to march westwards on the valley's far side until it reached the drier ground somewhere near the half-ruined barn. The enemy could cross the stream there and advance on the British works, a possibility that Lawford raised with his officers. "And if the devils manage to put some heavy guns in that barn," he went on, "or in those farm buildings," he pointed to the farm which lay a half mile east of the barn and was linked to the smaller building by an embanked track that was carried over the stream by a stone bridge, though the flooding meant that only the bridge's parapets were now visible, "then they can bombard these positions. That will not happen, gentlemen."

Major Leroy thought it a most unlikely proposition. To get to the dilapidated barn the French would have to cross the stream, while to reach the farm would mean negotiating a long stretch of waterlogged ground, and neither would make it easy to move guns and caissons. Leroy suspected Lawford knew that, but he also reckoned the Colonel did not want his men becoming complacent. "And to stop it from happening, gentlemen," Lawford said, "we're going to patrol. We're going to patrol vigorously. Company size patrols, down in the valley, so that any damned Frog who shows his nose will get it bloodied." Lawford turned and pointed at Captain Slingsby, "Your task, Cornelius…»

"Patrol," Slingsby said quickly, "vigorously."

"Is to establish a picquet in that barn," Lawford said, irritated at the interruption. "Day and night, Cornelius. The light company will live there, you understand?"

Slingsby stared down at the old barn beside the stream. The roof had partially fallen in and the place looked nothing like as comfortable as the billets that the light company had been given in the village behind Work Number 119, and for a moment Slingsby did not seem to entirely understand his orders. "We're taking up residence there, sir?" he asked plaintively.

"In the barn, Cornelius," Lawford replied patiently. "Fortify the place and stay there unless the whole damned French army attacks you, upon which eventuality you have my reluctant permission to withdraw." The other officers chuckled, recognizing a joke, but Slingsby nodded seriously.

"I want the light company in position by nightfall," Lawford went on, "and you'll be relieved on Sunday. In the meantime our patrols will keep you supplied with provisions." Lawford paused because a nearby telegraph station had begun to transmit a message and the officers had all turned to watch the inflated pigs' bladders being hoisted up the mast. "And now, gentlemen," Lawford retrieved their attention, "I want you to walk this section of the line," he gestured to the east, "familiarize yourselves with every fort, every path, every inch. We might be here a long time. Cornelius? A word."

The other officers walked away, going to explore the line between Work Number 119 and Work Number 114. Lawford, when he was alone with Slingsby, frowned at the smaller man. "It pains me to ask this," he said, "but are you drunk?"

Slingsby did not answer at once, instead he looked indignant and it seemed as though he would return a sharp answer, but then words failed him and he just turned away and gazed across the valley. The rain on his face made it appear as though he were crying. "Drank too much last night," he finally confessed in an abject voice, "and I apologize."

"We all do from time to time," Lawford said, "but not every night."

"Good for you," Slingsby said.

"Good for me?" Lawford was lost.

"Rum deters the fever," Slingsby said. "It's a known thing. It's a feb-" He paused, then tried again. "A febri-"

"A febrifuge," Lawford said for him.

"Exactly," Slingsby said vigorously. "Doctor Wetherspoon told me that. He was our fellow in the West Indies and a good man, a very good man. Rum, he said, it's the only feb-The only thing that works. Died in their hundreds, they did! But not me. Rum. It's medicine!"

Lawford sighed. "I have offered you an opportunity," he said quietly, "and it is an opportunity most men would seize gladly. You have command of a company, Cornelius, and it's a very fine one, and it seems ever more likely that it will need a new captain. Sharpe?" Lawford shrugged, wondering where on earth Sharpe was. "If Sharpe doesn't return," he continued, "then I shall have to appoint another man."

Slingsby just nodded.

"You are the obvious candidate," Lawford said, "but not if you are inebriated."

"You're right, sir," Slingsby said, "and I apologize. Fear of fever, sir, that's all it is."

"My fear," Lawford said, "is that the French will attack in the dawn. Half light, Cornelius, a touch of morning mist? We won't be able to see much from up here, but if you're in the barn then you'll see them quickly enough. That's why I'm putting you there, Cornelius. A picquet! I hear your muskets and rifles firing and I know the enemy is out and that you're retreating here. So keep a good watch and don't let me down!"

"I won't, sir. I won't." If Slingsby had been more than a little drunk when he arrived at the bastion he was now stone-cold sober. He had not meant to be drunk. He had woken feeling cold and damp and he had thought a little rum might revive him. He never meant to drink too much, but the rum gave him confidence and he needed it for he was finding the light company very hard to manage. They did not like him, he knew that, and the rum gave him the drive to cope with their obdurate behavior. "We won't let you down, sir," he said, meaning every word.

"That's good," Lawford said warmly, "very good." In truth he did not need the picquet in the old barn, but if he was to keep the promise he had given to his wife then he had to make a decent officer out of Slingsby, so now he would give him a simple job, one that would keep him alert instead of idling behind the lines. This was Slingsby's chance to show he could manage men, and Lawford was generous in giving it to him. "And I insist on one last thing," Lawford said.

"Anything, sir," Slingsby said eagerly.

"No rum, Cornelius. Don't take your medicine to the picquet, understand? And if you feel you're getting the fever, come back and we'll let the doctor have at you. Wear flannel, eh? That's supposed to ward it off."

"Flannel," Slingsby said, nodding.

"And what you do now," the Colonel went on patiently, "is take a dozen men and reconnoiter the farm. There's a path down the hill behind Work Number 118," he pointed, "and meanwhile the rest of your company can get ready. Clean muskets, sharp bayonets, fresh flints and full cartridge boxes. Tell Mister Knowles you're drawing rations for three days and be ready to deploy this afternoon,"

"Very good, sir," Slingsby said, "and thank you, sir." Lawford watched Slingsby go down the steps, then he sighed and took out his telescope which he mounted on a tripod already placed on the bastion. He stooped to the eyepiece and gazed at the northern landscape. The hills across the valley were crowned with three broken windmills, nothing left of them but their white stone stumps. Those, he supposed, would become French watchtowers. He swung the glass to the right, coming at last to a glimpse of the Tagus which swept wide towards the sea. A Royal Navy gunboat was anchored in the river, its ensign hanging limp in the rain. "If they come," a voice spoke behind Lawford, "then they can't use the road because it's flooded, so they'll be forced to make a detour and come straight up here."

Lawford straightened from the glass and saw it was Major Hogan who was swathed in an oilskin cape and had a black oilskin cover over his cocked hat. "You're well?" Lawford greeted the Irishman.

"I can feel a cold coming on," Hogan said, "a damned cold. First of the winter, eh?"

"Not winter yet, Hogan."

"Feels like it. May I?" Hogan gestured at the telescope. "Be my guest," Lawford said, and courteously wiped the rain from the outer lens. "How's the Peer?"

"His lordship thrives," Hogan said, stooping to the glass, "and sends his regards. He's angry, of course."

"Angry?"

"All those damned croakers, Lawford, who say the war's lost. Men who write home and get their block-headed opinions in the newspapers. He'd like to shoot the whole damned lot of them." Hogan was silent for a few seconds as he gazed at the British gunboat in the river, then he turned a mischievous look on Lawford. "You're not writing home with a bad opinion of his lordship's strategy, are you, Lawford?"

"Good Lord, no!" Lawford said, honestly.

Hogan bent to the glass again. "The flooding isn't all we hoped for," he said, "or what Colonel Fletcher hoped for. But it should suffice. They can't use the road, anyway, so what the bastards will do, Lawford, is march inland. Follow the base of those hills," Hogan was tracking the possible French route with the telescope, "and somewhere near that abandoned barn they'll cross over and come straight at you."

"Exactly what I'd surmised," Lawford said, "and then they'll advance into that valley." He nodded to the low ground that curled about the hill.

"Where they'll die," Hogan said with an indecent satisfaction. He stood up straight and winced at a twinge in his back. "In truth, Lawford, I don't expect them to try. But they might get desperate. Any news of Sharpe?"

Lawford hesitated, surprised by the question, then realized that it was probably the reason Hogan had sought him out. "None."

"Bloody lost, is he?"

"I fear it's time to write him out of the books," Lawford said, meaning that he could officially declare Sharpe missing and so create a vacant captainship.

"A bit premature, don't you think?" Hogan suggested vaguely. "Your affair, of course, Lawford, your affair entirely, and no damned business of mine whether you write him out or not." He stooped to the glass again and stared at one of the broken mills that crowned a hilltop across the wide valley. "What was he doing when he went missing?"

"Looking for turpentine, I think. That and escorting an English woman."

"Ah!" Hogan said, still vaguely, then straightened from the glass again. "A woman, eh? That sounds like Mister Sharpe, doesn't it? Good for him. That was in Coimbra, yes?"

"In Coimbra, yes," Lawford confirmed, then added indignantly, "He never turned up!"

"Another fellow disappeared there," Hogan said, standing at the bastion's edge and staring through the rain at the northern hills. "A major, quite important. He does for the Portuguese what I do for the Peer. Be a bad thing if he fell into French hands."

Lawford was no fool and knew that Hogan did not just make vague conversation. "You think they're connected?"

"I know they're connected," Hogan said. "Sharpe and this fellow had what you might call a disagreement."

"Sharpe never told me!" Lawford was piqued.

"Flour? On a hilltop?"

"Ah. He did tell me. No details, though."

"Richard never wastes details on senior officers," Hogan said, then paused to take a pinch of snuff. He sneezed. "He doesn't tell us," he went on, "in case we get confused. But he coped, in a way, and got himself thoroughly beaten up as a result."

"Beaten up?"

"The night before the battle."

"He said he'd tripped."

"Well, he would, wouldn't he?" Hogan was not surprised. "So, yes, the two were connected, but whether they still are is very dubious. Very dubious, but not impossible. I have great faith in Sharpe."

"As do I," Lawford said.

"Indeed you do," Hogan said, who knew more about the South Essex than Lawford would ever have guessed. "So if Sharpe does turn up, Lawford, send him on to the Peer's headquarters, would you? Tell him we need his information about Major Ferreira." Hogan very much doubted that Wellington would want to waste a second on Sharpe, but Hogan did, and it did no harm for Lawford to think that the General shared that wish.

"Of course I will," Lawford promised.

"We're at Pero Negro," Hogan said, "a couple of hours' ride westwards. And of course we'll send him back as soon as we can. I'm sure you're eager for Sharpe to resume his proper duties." There was a faint stress on the word «proper» that did not escape Lawford who sensed the mildest of reproofs, and the Colonel was wondering whether he should explain just what had happened between Sharpe and Slingsby when Hogan suddenly gave an exclamation and put his eye to the glass. "Our friends are here," he said.

For a moment Lawford thought Hogan meant that Sharpe had turned up, but then he saw horses on the far hill and he knew it was the French. The first patrols had come to the lines, and that meant Massena's army could not be far behind.

The Lines of Torres Vedras, built without the knowledge of the British government, had cost two hundred thousand pounds. They were the greatest, most expensive defensive works ever made in Europe.

And now they would be tested.

They were dragoons, the inevitable, green-coated dragoons who rode along the river beneath the looming hills of the Tagus's western bank. There were at least thirty of them and they had plainly been foraging for they had two small cows tied to one man's horse, but now, in the wet afternoon, they saw the small boat with its three men and two women, and the chance for sport was too good for the dragoons to pass up. They began by shouting that the boat was to be brought to their bank, but they had no expectation that their words would be understood, let alone obeyed, and a few seconds afterwards the first man fired.

The carbine shot splashed into the water five paces short of the boat. Sharpe and Harper began rowing harder, steering the boat obliquely away from the horsemen towards the eastern bank, and the dragoons spurred on ahead, a dozen or more of the horsemen dismounting where a wooded spur projected into the river. "They're getting ready to fire at us," Vicente warned.

The river made a bend around the wooded headland and on its eastern bank, a hundred paces from the dragoons, a vast tree had fallen into the water where it lay, half in and half out, its gaunt, sun-whitened branches jutting into the drizzle. Sharpe, twisting on the thwart, saw the tree and tugged hard on his left oar to steer for it. The other dragoons had dismounted now and hurried to the river's edge where they knelt, aimed and fired. The balls skipped across the river and one drove a splinter out of the small boat's gunwale. "You see the tree, Pat?" Sharpe asked, and Harper turned on the thwart and grunted confirmation and the two pulled at the heavy oars as another ragged volley crackled from the far bank, then the high, tarred prow of the boat smashed into the dead branches that tangled the backwater formed by the huge, pale trunk. A carbine bullet smacked into the dead wood and another whip-cracked overhead as Vicente pulled the boat farther into the sanctuary made by the fallen tree. Now, so long as they kept their heads down, the dragoons could not see them and could not hit them, but that did not deter the French, who kept up a desultory fire, evidently convinced that sooner or later the boat must reappear.

Vicente got tired of it first. He stood and edged his rifle over the tree. "I must find out if I can still fire a rifle," he said.

"Your left shoulder won't stop you," Sharpe said.

"Fire it accurately, I mean," Vicente said, and bent to the sights. The dragoons were using smoothbore carbines that were even less accurate than a musket, but at this range Vicente's rifle was deadly and he aimed at a mounted man he presumed was an officer. The dragoons had seen him, though whether they saw his gun was doubtful, and a flurry of shots banged from the far bank. None came close. Sharpe was peering over the trunk, curious as to how good a marksman Vicente was. He heard the bang of the rifle and saw the dragoon officer twitch hard back to leave a spray of blood. The man fell sideways.

"Good shooting," Sharpe said, impressed.

"I practiced all last winter," Vicente said. He could fire the rifle well enough, but reloading hurt his wounded shoulder. "If I am to be a leader of a tirador company then I must be a good marksman, yes?"

"Yes," Sharpe said, as a volley of French carbine fire rattled through the dead branches.

"And I won every competition," Vicente said as modestly as he could, "but it was only because of practice." He rammed a new bullet down and stood again. "This time I will kill the horse," he said.

He did, too, and Sharpe and Harper both added bullets into the group of dismounted dragoons. The carbines retaliated with a furious rattle of shots, but all were wasted. Some thumped into the tree, some threw splashes from the river, but most flew harmlessly overhead. Vicente flinched as he reloaded, then calmly shot a man standing up to his knees in the river in hope of closing the range, and the dragoons at last realized that they were making idiots of themselves by offering easy targets to men who were using rifles, and so they ran back to their horses, mounted, and disappeared into the trees.

Sharpe watched the horsemen riding south through the trees as he reloaded. "They'll be waiting for us downstream," he said.

"Unless they're going back to their army." Harper suggested.

Vicente stood and peered over the tree, but saw no enemy. "I think they'll be staying on the river," he said. "They won't have found much food between here and Coimbra, so they'll be wanting to make a bridge somewhere."

"A bridge?" Harper asked.

"To reach this bank," Vicente said. "There will be plenty of food on this bank. And if they do make a bridge it will be at Santarem."

"Where's that?"

"South," Vicente said, nodding downstream, "an old fortress above the river."

"Which we have to pass?" Sharpe asked.

"I suggest we do it tonight," Vicente said. "We should rest here for a while, wait for dark, then float downstream."

Sharpe wondered if that was what the Ferreira brothers would be doing. He constantly stared northwards, half expecting to see them, and worried that he did not. Perhaps they had changed their minds? Maybe they had gone to the northern mountains, or else had crossed the Tagus much higher up and used their money to buy horses to carry them down the eastern bank. He told himself it did not really matter, that the only important thing was to get back to the army, but he wanted to find the brothers. Ferreira, at least, should pay for his treachery and Sharpe had a score to settle with Ferragus.

They lingered till dusk, making a fire ashore and brewing a can of strong, gunpowder-flavored tea with the last leaves from Sharpe and Harper's haversacks. Any dragoons would long have ridden back to their base for fear of the partisans who were at their most dangerous in the darkness, and as the light faded Sharpe and Harper pushed the boat out of their refuge and let it drift downstream again. The rain persisted: a soft drizzle that soaked and chilled them as the last light went. Now they were at the mercy of the stream, unable to see or steer, and they let the boat go where it wanted. Sometimes, far off, there was the misted gleam of a fire high in the western hills, and once there was a bigger fire, much closer, but who had lit it was a mystery. Once or twice they bumped into solid pieces of driftwood, and then they brushed past a fallen tree, and an hour or so later, after it seemed to Sharpe that they had drifted for hours, they saw a cluster of rain-hazed lights high up on the western bank. "Santarem," Vicente said softly.

There were sentries on the high wall, lit up there by fires behind the parapet, and Sharpe assumed they were French. He could hear men singing in the town and he imagined the soldiers in the taverns and wondered if the rape and horror that had raged through Coimbra was being visited on Santarem's townsfolk. He crouched low in the boat, even though he knew that any sentry on that high wall could see nothing against the river's inky blackness. It seemed to take forever to pass beneath the ancient ramparts, but at last the lights faded and there was only the wet darkness. Sharpe fell asleep. Sarah bailed the boat with a tin cup. Harper snored while, beside him, Joana shivered. The river was wider now, wider and faster, and Sharpe woke in the wolf light before dawn to see misted trees on the western bank and fog everywhere else. The rain had stopped. He unshipped his oars and gave a few tugs, to warm himself more than anything else. Sarah smiled at him from the stern. "I've been dreaming," she said, "of a cup of tea."

"None left," Sharpe said.

"That's why I was dreaming of it," she said.

Harper had woken and started rowing now, but it seemed to Sharpe they were making no progress at all. The fog had thickened and the boat seemed suspended in a pearly whiteness into which the water faded. He tugged harder at the oars and finally saw the vague shape of a twisted tree on the eastern bank and he kept his eyes on the tree, kept rowing as strongly as he could, and slowly became convinced that the tree was staying in the same place however hard he pulled.

"Tide," Vicente said.

"Tide?"

"It comes up the river," Vicente said, "and it's carrying us backwards. Or trying to. But it will turn."

Sharpe thought about going to the eastern bank and mooring the boat, but then decided that the Ferreira brothers, who could not be so very far behind, might slip past in the fog, so he and Harper pulled at the oars until their hands were blistered with the effort of fighting the flooding tide. The fog grew brighter, the tide at last slackened and a gull flew overhead. They were still miles from the sea, but there was a smell of salt and the water was brackish. The day was growing warmer, and that seemed to thicken the fog which drifted in patches like gun smoke above the swirling gray water. They had to go nearer the western bank to avoid the bedraggled remains of a fish trap made of nets, withies and poles that jutted far out from the eastern shore. There was no movement on the western bank so that they seemed to be alone on a pale river beneath a pearly sky, but then, from ahead, came the unmistakable bang of a cannon. Birds shot up from the trees on the bank and flew in circles as the sound echoed from some unseen hills, rumbled up the river's valley and faded.

"I can't see anything," Vicente reported from the bow.

Sharpe and Harper had rested on their oars and both twisted to see ahead, but there was only the fog over the river. Another cannon sounded and Sharpe thought he saw a patch of the mist thicken, then he rowed two more strokes and there, appearing like a ghost ship in the vapor, was a gunboat firing at the western shore. There were dragoons there, half seen in the mist, scattering from the gunfire. Another cannon blasted from the boat that was anchored in midstream, and a barrel-load of grapeshot threw down two horses and Sharpe saw a sudden spray of blood, almost instantly gone, discolor the fog, and then the gunboat's forward cannon fired and a round shot skipped across the water a score of yards ahead of the skiff. It had been a warning shot, and a man was standing in the gunboat's forepeak, shouting at them to come alongside.

"They're English," Vicente said. He stood in the skiff's bow and waved both arms while Sharpe and Harper pulled towards the gunboat that had one high mast, a low waist, and six gunports visible on its port side which faced upstream. A white ensign hung at the stern while a union flag drooped at the topmast.

"Here!" the man shouted. "Bring that bloody boat here!"

The two aft cannon fired at the retreating dragoons who were now galloping into the fog, leaving dead horses behind. Three seamen with muskets were waiting for the skiff, pointing their guns down into the boat.

"Any of you speak English?" another man called.

"My name's Captain Sharpe!"

"Who?"

"Captain Sharpe, South Essex regiment. And point those bloody muskets somewhere else!"

"You're English?" The astonishment might have come from Sharpe's appearance for he was not wearing his jacket and his beard had grown to a thick stubble.

"No, I'm bloody Chinese," Sharpe snapped. The skiff bumped against the tarred side of the gunboat and Sharpe looked up at a very young naval lieutenant. "Who are you?"

"Lieutenant Davies, commanding here."

"I'm Captain Sharpe, that's Captain Vicente of the Portuguese army, and the big fellow is Sergeant Harper and I'll introduce the ladies later. What we need, Lieutenant, if you'd be so kind, is some proper tea."

They scrambled aboard by using the chain plates which secured the ratlines for the big mast and Sharpe saluted Davies who, though he only looked about nineteen years old and was a lieutenant, nevertheless outranked Sharpe because, as an officer commanding one of His Majesty's vessels, he had the equivalent rank of major in the army. The seamen gave a small cheer as Joana and Sarah climbed over the side in their rain-shrunken breeches. "Quiet on deck!" Davies snarled and the seamen went instantly silent. "Secure the guns," Davies ordered. "Make fast that boat! Lively, lively!" He gestured that Sharpe and his companions should go to the boat's stern. "Welcome to the Squirrel," he said, "and I think we can supply tea. Might I ask why you're here?"

"We've come from Coimbra," Sharpe said, "and you, Lieutenant?"

"We're here to amuse the Frogs," Davies said. He was a very tall, very thin young man in a shabby uniform. "We come upstream on the tide, kill any Frogs foolish enough to appear on shore, and drift back down again."

"Where are we?" Sharpe asked.

"Three miles north of Alhandra. That's where your lines reach the river." He paused by a companionway. "There's a cabin below," he said, "and the ladies are welcome to it, but I must say it's damned poky. Damp as well."

Sharpe introduced Sarah and Joana who both elected to stay on the stern deck, which was cumbered by a vast tiller. The Squirrel had no wheel, and its quarterdeck was merely the after part of the maindeck which was crowded with seamen. Davies explained that his vessel was a twelve-gun cutter and that, though it could easily be managed by six or seven men, it needed a crew of forty to man its guns, "and even then we're short-handed," he complained, "and can only fire one side of guns. Still, one side is usually enough. Tea, yes?"

"And the loan of a razor?" Sharpe asked.

"And something to eat," Harper said under his breath, staring innocently up at the huge mainsail that was brailed onto a massive boom which jutted out over the diminutive white ensign.

"Tea, shave, breakfast," Davies said. "Stop gawking, Mister Braithwaite!" This was to a midshipman who was staring at Joana and Sarah and evidently trying to decide whether he preferred his women dark- or fair-haired. "Stop gawking and tell Powell we need breakfast for five guests."

"Five guests, sir, aye aye, sir."

"And might I beg you to keep an eye out for another boat?" Sharpe asked Davies. "I have a suspicion that five fellows are following us, and I want them stopped."

"That's my job," Davies said. "Stop anything that tries to float down river. Miss Fry? Might I bring you a chair? You and your companion?"

A breakfast was served on deck. There were thick white china plates heaped with bacon, bread and greasy eggs, and afterwards Sharpe blunted Davies's razor by scraping at the stubble on his chin. Davies's servant had brushed his green jacket, cleaned and polished his boots, and burnished his sword's metal scabbard. He leaned on the gunwale, feeling a sudden relief that the journey was over. In a matter of hours, he thought, he could be back with the battalion, and that spoiled his good mood, for he supposed he would be doomed to Lawford's continuing displeasure. The fog had thinned into a mist, and the tide was dropping, swirling past the Squirrel, which was anchored at bow and stern so that her small broadside pointed up river. Sharpe could see a chain of islands off the western bank, low-lying streaks of grassy sand that sheltered a smaller inshore channel, while down river, beyond a wide bend and just visible above the skeins of mist, Sharpe could see the masts of other ships. It was a whole squadron of gunboats, Davies said, posted to guard the flank of the defensive lines. Somewhere in the distance a cannon fired, its sound flat in the warming air.

"It's going to be a nice day for a change," Davies leaned on the gunwale beside Sharpe, "if this damn mist clears."

"I'm glad to be rid of the rain," Sharpe said.

"Rather rain than fog," Davies said. "Can't fire guns if you can't see the bloody target." He glanced up at the dim glow of the sun through the mist, judging the time. "We'll stay here for another hour," he said, "then drop down to Alhandra. We'll put you ashore there." He looked up at the union flag that stirred listlessly at the masthead. "Bloody south wind," he said, meaning that he could not sail down river, but would have to let the current take him.

"Sir!" There was a man at the crosstrees where the topmast met the mainmast. "Boat, sir!"

"Where away?"

The man pointed and Sharpe took out his glass and searched westwards and then, through a shimmer of mist, saw a small boat running down the inshore channel. He could only see the heads of the men in the boat. Davies was running down the deck. "Let go the after spring," he shouted, "man numbers one and two!"

The Squirrel swung on its bow anchor, the current hurrying her round until the guns bore and then the tension was taken up on the stern anchor line to steady the ship at a new angle. "Fire a warning shot when you can!" Davies ordered.

There was a pause as the Squirrel steadied, then the gun captain, who had been squinting down the barrel, leaped back and jerked his lanyard. The small cannon recoiled onto its breeching ropes and thick smoke clouded the gunwales. The second gun fired almost immediately, its round shot hissing above the low island to splash into the channel ahead of the fleeing boat.

"They ain't stopping, sir!" the man at the crosstrees called.

"Fire at them, Mister Combes! Directly at them!"

"Aye aye, sir!"

The next shot struck the island and bounced high over the fleeing boat which was traveling fast on the river's current and was helped by the ebbing tide. Sharpe doubted the gunfire would stop the boat. He scrambled a few rungs up the ratlines and used his telescope, but he could see little of the occupants who were obscured by the mist. Yet it had to be the Ferreira brothers. Who else could it be? And he thought, but could not be sure, that one of the men in the boat was unnaturally large. Ferragus, he thought.

"Lieutenant!" he called.

"Mister Sharpe?"

"There are two men in that boat who need to be captured. That's my duty." That was not really true. Sharpe's duty was to return to duty, not to prolong a feud, but Davies did not know that. "Can we borrow one of your boats to pursue them?"

Davies hesitated, wondering if granting such a request would contravene his standing orders. "The gunboats downstream will apprehend them," he pointed out.

"And they won't know they're wanted men," Sharpe said, then paused as the Squirrel's forward guns fired and missed again. "Besides, they're likely to slip ashore before they reach your squadron. And if that happens we need to be put ashore to follow them."

Davies thought for another second, saw that the fugitive boat had almost vanished in the mist, then turned on Midshipman Braithwaite. "The jolly boat, Mister Braithwaite. Look quick now!" He turned back to Sharpe who had regained the deck. "The ladies will stay here." It was not a question.

"We will not," Sarah answered firmly, and hefted her French musket. "We've come this far together and we'll finish it together."

For a second Davies looked as though he would argue, then decided life would be simpler if all his unbidden guests were off the Squirrel. The forward cannon fired a last time and smoke wreathed the deck. "I wish you joy," Davies said.

And they were over the side and in pursuit.

CHAPTER 12

Marshal Andre Massena was feeling numb. He was saying nothing, just staring. It was shortly after dawn, the day after his first patrols had reached the new British and Portuguese works, and now he crouched behind a low stone wall on which his telescope rested and he slowly panned the glass along the hilltops to the south and everywhere he saw bastions, guns, walls, barricades, more guns, men, telegraph stations, flagpoles. Everywhere.

He had been planning the victory celebrations to be held in Lisbon. There was a fine large square beside the Tagus where half the army could be paraded, and the greatest problem he had anticipated was what to do with the thousands of British and Portuguese prisoners he expected to capture, but instead he was looking at an apparently endless barrier. He saw how the lower slopes of the opposite hills had been steepened, he saw how the enemy guns were protected by stone, he saw flooded approach routes, he saw failure.

He drew in a deep breath and still had nothing to say. He leaned back from the wall and took his one eye from the telescope. He had thought to maneuver here, to show part of his army on the road to draw in the enemy forces who would think an attack imminent, and then launch the greater part of l'Armee de Portugal round to the west in a slashing hook that would cut off Wellington's men. He would have pinned the British and Portuguese against the Tagus and then graciously accepted their surrender, but instead there was nowhere for his army to go except up against those walls and guns and steepened slopes.

"The works extend to the Atlantic," a staff officer reported dryly.

Massena said nothing and one of his aides, knowing what was in his master's mind, asked the question instead. "Not the whole way, surely?"

"Every last kilometer," the staff officer said flatly. He had ridden the width of the peninsula, protected by dragoons and watched all the way by an enemy ensconced in batteries, forts and watchtowers. "And for much of its length," he continued remorselessly, "the works are covered by the River Sizandre, and there is a second line behind."

Massena found his voice and turned furiously on the staff officer. "A second line? How can you tell?"

"Because it's visible, sir. Two lines."

Massena stared again through the glass. Was there something strange about the guns in the bastion immediately opposite? He remembered how, when he had been besieged by the Austrians in Genoa, he had put false guns in his defenses. They had been painted tree trunks jutting from emplacements and, from anything more than two hundred paces, they had more or less looked like cannon barrels, and the Austrians had dutifully avoided the fake batteries. "How far to the sea?" he asked.

"Nearly fifty kilometers, sir." The aide made a wild guess.

Massena did the arithmetic. There were at least two bastions every kilometer, and the bastions he could see all had four cannon, some more, so by a cautious estimate there were eight guns to the kilometer, which meant Wellington must have assembled four hundred cannon for just the first line, and that was a ridiculous assumption. There were not that many guns in Portugal, and that encouraged the Marshal to believe that some of the guns were false. Then he thought of Britain's navy and wondered if they had brought ships' guns ashore. Dear God, he thought, but how had they done this? "Why didn't we know?" he demanded. There was silence in which Massena turned and stared at Colonel Barreto. "Why didn't we know?" he demanded again. "You told me they were building a pair of forts to protect the road! Does that look like a pair of lousy forts!"

"We weren't told," Barreto said bitterly.

Massena stooped to the glass. He was angry, but he curbed his feelings, trying to find a weakness in his enemy's careful defenses. Opposite him, beside the bastion which had the strangely dark guns, there was a valley that curled behind the hill. He could see no defenses there, but that meant little for all of the low ground was obscured by mist. The hilltops, with their forts and windmills, were in the bright sun, but the valleys were shrouded, yet he fancied that small valley, which twisted behind the nearest hill, was bereft of defenses. Any attack up the valley would be harassed by the high guns, of course, if they were real guns, but once through the gap and behind the hill, what was to stop the Eagles? Perhaps Wellington was deceiving him? Perhaps these defenses were more show than real? Perhaps the stone bastions were not properly mortared, the guns fake and the whole elaborate defense a charade to dissuade any attack? Yet Massena knew he must attack. In front of him was Lisbon and its supplies, behind him was a wasteland, and if his army were not to starve then he must go forward. The anger bloomed in him again, but he thrust it away. Anger was a luxury. For the moment he knew he must show sublime confidence or else the very existence of these defenses would grind the heart from his army. "C'est une coquille d'oeuf," he said.

"A what?" An aide thought he had misheard.

"Une coquille d'oeuf," Massena repeated, still gazing through the glass. He meant it was an eggshell. "One tap," he went on, "and it will crack."

There was silence except for the intermittent sound of cannon fire from a British gunboat on the River Tagus that lay a mile or so to the east. The aides and Generals, staring over Massena's head, thought the defensive line a most impressive eggshell.

"They've fortified the hilltops," Massena explained, "but forgotten the valleys between and that, gentlemen, means we shall prise them open. Prise them open like a virgin." He preferred that simile to the eggshell, for he repeated it. "Like a virgin," he said enthusiastically, then collapsed the glass and stood. "General Reynier?"

"Sir?"

"You see that valley?" Massena pointed across the misted low ground to where the small valley twisted behind one of the fortified hills. "Send your light troops into it. Go fast, go before the mist vanishes. See what's there." He would lose some men, but it would be worth it to discover that the valleys were the weak point in Wellington's defense, and then Massena could pick his valley and time and break this virgin wide open. Massena chuckled at the thought, his spirits restored, and he held his telescope out to an aide and just then one of the dark guns on the opposite hill fired and the ball seared across the valley, struck the slope twenty paces below the wall and bounced up over Massena's head. The British had been watching him, and must have decided that he had spent too long in one place. Massena took off his cocked hat, bowed to the enemy in acknowledgment of their message, and walked back to where the horses waited.

He would attack.

Major Ferreira had not foreseen this. He had thought the boat, which they had bought for too much money south of Castelo Branco, would take them all the way to the wharves of Lisbon, but now he saw that the British navy was blockading the river. It was the last of many difficulties he had faced on the journey. One of the mules had gone lame and that had slowed them, it had taken time to discover a man willing to sell a hidden boat, and then, once on the river, they had become entangled with a fish trap that had held them up for over an hour and next morning some French foragers had used them for target practice, forcing them to row into a tributary of the Tagus and hide there until the French got bored and rode away. Now, with the journey's end not so far away, there was the gunboat.

At first, seeing the boat in midstream, Ferreira had not been alarmed. He had the seniority and uniform to argue his way past any allied officer, but then, unexpectedly, the boat had opened fire. He had not known the Squirrel was warning him, ordering him either to heave to or else ground his boat on the island that edged the smaller channel; instead he believed he was under fire and so he snapped at his brother and his three men to row harder. In truth he panicked. He had been worrying about his reception in Lisbon ever since the army had retreated from Coimbra. Had anyone got wind of the food in the warehouse? He had a guilty conscience and that conscience made him try to outrun the gunfire, and he believed he had done it until he saw, dim through the mist layer that hung above the swathe of land encircled by the river's bend, the thicket of masts denoting a whole squadron of gunboats barring the river. He was standing in the sternsheets now, staring about him, and he saw, with a great pang of relief, the forts that guarded the main road north from Lisbon. A swirl of parting mist showed the forts on the hills and Ferreira saw the Portuguese flag flying above the nearest and so he impulsively pulled on the tiller ropes to carry the boat to shore. Better to deal with Portuguese soldiers, he thought, than British sailors.

"We're being followed," his brother warned him.

Ferreira turned and saw the jolly boat racing down the river's center. "We're going ashore," he said, "they won't follow us there."

"They won't?"

"They're sailors. Hate being on dry land." Ferreira smiled. "We'll go to the fort," he said, jerking his chin towards the new bastions dominating the road, "we'll get horses and we'll be in Lisbon by this afternoon." The boat ran ashore and the five men carried their weapons and French coin up the bank. Ferreira glanced once at the jolly boat and saw it had turned and was making heavy going as it tried to cross the current. He assumed the sailors wanted to take his boat, and they were welcome to it for now he was safe, but when the five men broke through the bushes at the top of the bank they came across a further difficulty. The river was embanked here, but farther south the big earth wall must have been breached to let the water flood the road and Ferreira saw there would be no easy walk to the closest fort because the land was inundated and that meant they would have to go inland to skirt the floods. That was no great matter, but then he felt alarm because, somewhere in the mist ahead of him, a gun sounded. The echo rolled between the hills, but no shot came anywhere near them, and no second shot sounded, which suggested that there was no need to worry. Probably a gunner ranging his piece or testing a rebored touchhole. They walked westwards, following the line of the swamp-edged flood, and after a while, vague in the mist, Ferreira saw a farm standing on higher ground. There was a wide stretch of boggy land between them and the farm, but he reckoned if he could just reach those buildings then he would not be too far from the forts on the southern heights. That thought gave Ferreira a conviction that all would be well, that the tribulations of the last days would be crowned with unmerited but welcome success. He began to laugh.

"What is it?" his brother asked.

"God is good to us, Luis, God is good."

"He is?"

"We sold that food to the French, took their money and the food was destroyed! I shall say we tricked the French and that means we shall be heroes."

Ferragus smiled and patted the leather satchel hanging from his shoulder. "We're rich heroes."

"I'll probably be made Lieutenant Colonel for this," Ferreira said. He would explain that he had heard of the hoarded food and stayed behind to ensure its destruction, and such a feat would surely merit a promotion. "They were a bad few days," he admitted to his brother, "but we made it through. Good God!"

"What?"

"The forts," Ferreira said in astonishment. "Look at all those bastions!" The mist obscured the valley, but it was a low mist and as they breasted a gentle rise Ferreira could see the hilltops and he could see that every height had its small fort and, for the first time, he realized the extent of the new works. He had thought that only the roads were being guarded, but it was plain that the line stretched far inland. Could it cross the peninsula? Go all the way to the sea? And if it did then surely the French would never reach Lisbon. He felt a sudden surge of relief that he had been forced out of Coimbra for if he had stayed, if the warehouse had not been burned, then he would inevitably have found himself recruited by Colonel Barreto. "That damned fire did us a favor," he told his brother, "because we're going to win. Portugal will survive." All he had to do was reach a fort flying the Portuguese flag and it would all be over; the uncertainty, the danger, the fear. It was over and he had won. He turned, looking for the Portuguese flag he had seen flying above the mist, and when he turned he saw the pursuers coming from the river. He saw the

green jackets.

So it was not over, not quite. And clumsily, weighed down by their money, the five men began to run.

General Sarrut assembled four battalions of light infantry. Some were chasseurs and some voltigeurs, but whether they were called hunters or vaulters they were all skirmishers and there was no real distinction between them except that the chasseurs had red epaulettes on their blue coats and the voltigeurs had either green or red. Both considered themselves elite troops, trained to fight against enemy skirmishers in the space between the battle lines.

The four battalions were all from the 2nd regiment that had left France with eighty-nine officers and two thousand six hundred men, but now the four battalions were down to seventy-one officers and just over two thousand men. They did not carry the regiment's Eagle for they were not going to battle. They were carrying out a reconnaissance and General Sarrut's orders were clear. The skirmishers were to advance in loose order across the low land in front of the enemy forts and the fourth battalion, on the left of the line, was to probe the small valley and, if they met no resistance, the third would follow. They would advance only far enough to determine whether the valley was blockaded or otherwise defended and, when that was established, the battalions were to withdraw back to the French-held hills. The mist was both a curse and a blessing. A blessing because it meant the four battalions could advance without being seen from the enemy forts, and a curse because it would obscure the view up the smaller valley, but by the time his first men reached that valley Sarrut expected the mist would be mostly burned away. Then, of course, he could expect some furious artillery fire from the enemy forts, but as his men would be in skirmish order it would be a most unlucky shot that did any damage.

General Sarrut had been far more worried by the prospect of enemy cavalry, but Reynier had dismissed the concern. "They won't have horsemen saddled and ready," he had claimed, "and it'll take them half a day to get them up. If they bother to fight you in the valley it'll be infantry, so I'll have Soult's brigade ready to deal with the bastards." Soult's brigade was a mix of cavalry: chasseurs, hussars and dragoons, a thousand horsemen who only had six hundred and fifty-three horses between them, but that should be enough to deal with any British or Portuguese skirmishers who tried to stop Sarrut's reconnaissance.

It was mid-morning by the time Sarrut's men were ready to advance and the General was about to order the first battalion out into the mist-shrouded valley when one of General Reynier's aides came galloping down the hill. Sarrut watched the officer negotiate the slope. "It'll be a change of orders," he predicted sourly to one of his own aides. "Now they'll want us to attack Lisbon."

Reynier's aide curbed his horse in a flurry of earth, then leaned forward to pat the beast's neck. "There's a British picquet, sir," he said. "We've just seen it from the hilltop. They're in a ruined barn by the stream."

"No matter," Sarrut said. No mere picquet could stop four battalions of prime light infantry.

"General Reynier suggests we might capture them, sir," the aide said respectfully.

Sarrut laughed. "One sight of us, Captain, and they'll be running like hares!"

"The mist, General," the aide said respectfully. "It's patchy, very patchy, and General Reynier suggests if you head westwards you may slip around them. He feels their officer might have some information about the defenses."

Sarrut grunted. A suggestion from Reynier was tantamount to an order, but it seemed a pointless order. Doubtless the picquet did have an officer, though it seemed extremely unlikely that such a man would have any useful knowledge, yet Reynier had to be indulged. "Tell him we'll do it," he said, and sent one of his own aides to the front of the column and ordered half a battalion to curl around to the west. That would take them through the mist, probably out of sight of the barn, and they could head back to cut the picquet off. "Tell Colonel Feret to advance now," he told the aide, "and you go with him. Make sure they don't advance too far. The rest of the troops will march ten minutes after he leaves. And tell him to be quick!"

He stressed those last few words. The point of the exercise was merely to discover what lay behind the enemy hill, not to win a victory that would have the Parisian mob cheering. There was no victory to be won here, merely information to gather, and the longer his troops stayed in the low ground the longer they would be exposed to cannon fire. It was a job, Sarrut thought, that would have been done far more efficiently by a squadron of cavalry who could gallop across the valley in a matter of moments, but the cavalry was in poor shape. Their horses were worn out and hungry, and that thought reminded Sarrut that the British picquet in the old barn must have rations. That cheered him up. He should have thought to tell his aide to keep some back if any were found, but the aide was a smart young fellow and would doubtless do it anyway. Fresh eggs, perhaps? Or bacon? Newly baked bread, butter, milk yellow and warm from the cow? Sarrut dreamed of these things as the chasseurs and voltigeurs tramped past him. They had marched hard and long in these last few days and they must have been hungry, but they seemed cheerful enough as they went by the General's horse. Some had boot soles missing, or else had soles tied to the uppers with string, and their uniforms were faded, ragged and threadbare, but he noted that their muskets were clean and he did not doubt that they would fight well if, indeed, they were called on to fight at all. For most of them, he suspected, the morning would be a tiring tramp through sodden fields enlivened by random British artillery fire. The last company marched past and Sarrut spurred his horse to follow.

Ahead of him was a brigade of skirmishers, a misted valley, an unsuspecting enemy and, for the moment, silence.

Lieutenant Jack Bullen was a decent young man who came from a decent family. His father was a judge and both his elder brothers were barristers, but young Jack had never shone at school and though his schoolmasters had tried to whip Latin and Greek into his skull, his skull had won the battle and stayed innocent of any foreign tongue. Bullen had never minded the beatings. He had been a tough, cheerful youngster, the sort who collected birds' eggs, scrapped with other boys and climbed the church tower for a dare, and now he was a tough, cheerful young man who thought that being an officer in Lawford's regiment was just about the finest thing life could afford. He liked soldiering and he liked soldiers. Some officers feared the men more than they feared the enemy, but young Jack Bullen, nineteen years old, enjoyed the rank and file's company. He relished their poor jokes, enthusiastically drank their sour-tasting tea and considered them all, even those whom his father might have condemned to death, transportation or hard labor, as capital fellows, though he would have much preferred to be with the capital fellows of his old company. He liked number nine company, and while Jack Bullen did not actively dislike the light company, he found it difficult. Not the men, Bullen had a natural talent for getting along with men, but he did find the light company's commanding officer a trial. It took a lot to suppress young Jack Bullen's spirits, but somehow Captain Slingsby had managed it.

"He's queer, sir," Sergeant Read said respectfully.

"He's queer," Bullen repeated tonelessly.

"Queer, sir," Read confirmed. To be queer was to be ill, but Read really meant that Captain Slingsby was drunk, but as a sergeant he could not say as much.

"How queer?" Bullen asked. He could have walked the twenty paces to discover for himself, but he was in charge of the sentries who lined the stream just outside the crumbling barn, and he did not really want to face Slingsby.

"Very queer, sir," Read said gravely. "He's talking about his wife, sir. He's saying bad things about her."

Bullen wanted to know what things were being said, but he knew the Methodist Sergeant would never tell him, so he just grunted in acknowledgment.

"It's upsetting the men, sir," Read said. "Such things shouldn't be said about women. Not about wives."

Bullen suspected Slingsby's outburst was amusing the men rather than upsetting them, and that was bad. An officer, however friendly, had to keep a certain dignity. "Can he walk?"

"Barely, sir," Read said, then amended the answer. "No, sir."

"Oh, dear God," Bullen said and saw Read flinch at the mild blasphemy. "Where did he get the liquor?"

Read sniffed. "His servant, sir. Got a pack filled with canteens and the Captain's been drinking all night, sir."

Bullen wondered what he should do. He could hardly send Slingsby back to battalion, for Bullen did not see it as his job to destroy his commanding officer's reputation. That would be a disloyal act. "Keep an eye on him, Sergeant," Bullen said helplessly. "Maybe he'll recover."

"But I can't take his orders, sir, not in the state he's in."

"Is he giving you orders?"

"He told me to put Slattery under arrest, sir."

"The charge?"

"Looking funny at him, sir."

"Oh dear. Ignore his orders, Sergeant, and that's an order. Tell him I said so."

Read nodded. "You're taking over, sir?"

Bullen hesitated, knowing the question was important. If he said yes then he was formally acknowledging that Slingsby was not fit to command, and that would inevitably result in an enquiry. "I'm taking over until the Captain has recovered," he said, which seemed a decent compromise.

"Very good, sir." Read saluted and turned away.

"And Sergeant?" Bullen waited till Read turned back. "Don't look funny at him."

"No, sir," Read said solemnly, "of course not, sir. I wouldn't do such a thing, sir."

Bullen sipped his mug of tea and found it had gone cold. He put it down on a stone and walked to the stream. The mist had thickened slightly, he thought, so that he could only see some sixty or seventy yards, though, perversely, the hilltops a quarter-mile away were clear enough, which proved that the mist was merely a low-lying layer blanketing the damp earth. It would clear. He remembered marvelous winter mornings in Essex when the mist would drift away to show the hunting field spread out in glorious pursuit. He liked hunting. He smiled to himself, remembering his father's great black gelding, a tremendous hunter, that always screwed left when it landed on the far side of a hedge and every time his father would shout, "Order in court! Order in court!" It was a family joke, one of the many that made the Bullen house a happy one.

"Mister Bullen, sir?" It was Daniel Hagman, the oldest man in the company, who called from a dozen paces upstream.

Bullen, who had been thinking how they would be readying the horses for the cubbing season at home, walked to the rifleman. "Hagman?

"Thought I saw something, sir." Hagman pointed through the mist. "Nothing there now."

Bullen peered and saw nothing. "This mist will burn off soon enough."

"Be clear as a bell in an hour, sir. It'll be nice to have some sunshine."

"Won't it just?"

Then the shooting started.

Sharpe had feared that the Ferreira brothers would set up an ambush in the bushes at the top of the river bank and so he had asked Braithwaite to take the jolly boat downstream of the brothers' abandoned boat to a place where the river's edge was bare of trees. He had told Sarah and Joana to stay in the boat, but they had ignored him, scrambling ashore behind the three men. Vicente was worried by their presence. "They shouldn't be here."

"We shouldn't be here, Jorge," Sharpe said. He was gazing across the marshland, then saw the Ferreira brothers and their three companions in the mist. The five men were walking inland, looking as though they did not have a care in the world. "We shouldn't be here," Sharpe went on, "but we are, and so are they. So let's finish this." He unslung the rifle and made sure the priming was still in the pan. "Should have fired and reloaded on board the Squirrel," he told Harper.

"You think the powder's damp?"

"Could be." He feared the mist might have moistened the charge, but there was nothing he could do about it now. They began walking, but, by landing farther south Sharpe had unwittingly put them deeper in the marshes and the going was hard. The ground, at best, was squelchy, at worst it was a glutinous mess and, because the tide was ebbing, the land was newly waterlogged. Sharpe cut north, reckoning that the land there was firmer, but the five fugitives were increasing their lead with every step. "Take your boots off," Harper recommended. "I grew up in Donegal," he went on, "and there's nothing we don't know about bog-land."

Sharpe kept his boots on. His came up to his knees and were not such an impediment, but the others pulled off their shoes and they made faster progress. "All we need to do," Sharpe said, "is get close enough to shoot the bastards."

"Why don't they look around?" Sarah wondered.

"Because they're dozy," Sharpe said, "because they reckon they're safe." They had reached the firmer ground, a very slight rise between the marsh and the northern hills, and they hurried now, closing the gap on the five men who still looked as carefree as if they were out for a day's rough shooting. They were strolling, guns slung, chatting. Ferragus towered over his companions and Sharpe had an urge to kneel, aim and shoot the bastard in the back, but he did not trust the rifle's charge and so he kept going. Way off to his left he could see some buildings in the mist: a couple of cottages, a barn, some sheds and a larger house and he supposed it had been a prosperous farmstead before the engineers flooded the valley. He suspected the marshy ground extended almost to those half-seen buildings, which seemed to be on higher land, and he reckoned Ferreira would try to reach the farm and then head south. Or else, if the brothers realized they were being followed, they would hole up in the buildings and it would be hell to get them out and Sharpe began to hurry, but just then one of the men turned and stared straight at him. "Bugger," Sharpe said, and dropped to his knee.

The five men began running, a clumsy run because they were carrying guns and coins. Sharpe lined the sights, pulled the cock all the way back and squeezed the trigger. He knew instantly he had missed because the rifle hesitated, then gave a wheezing cough instead of a bang, which meant that the mist-dampened charge had fired, but weakly, and the bullet would have dropped short. He began reloading as Harper and Vicente fired and one of their bullets must have struck a man in the leg because he fell. Sharpe was ramming a new charge down. There was no time to wrap the bullet in leather. He wondered why the hell the army did not issue ready-wrapped bullets, then he pushed the ramrod down onto the ball, primed, knelt and fired again. Joana and Sarah, even though their muskets were futile at this range, both fired. The man who had fallen was on his feet again, showing no sign of being wounded because he was running hard to catch up with his companions. Harper fired and one of the men swerved violently as if the ball had gone frighteningly close to him, and then all five were on the higher ground and running for the buildings. Vicente fired his second shot just as the men vanished among the stone walls.

"Damn," Sharpe said, ramming a new bullet down.

"They won't stay there," Vicente said quietly. "They'll run south."

"We'll go through the marsh, then," Sharpe said, and he set off, splashing into mud and waterlogged grass. He was aiming to get south of the farmstead and so cut off the fugitives, but almost at once he realized the attempt was probably futile. The ground was a morass, there were floods ahead, and when he was up to his knees in water he stopped. He swore because he could see the five men leaving the farm and heading south, but they were also balked by floodwater and turned west again. Sharpe put the rifle to his shoulder, led Ferragus with the sights and pulled the trigger. Harper and Vicente also fired, but they were shooting at moving targets and all three bullets missed, then the five men were gone in the persistent mist. Sharpe fished out a new cartridge. "We tried," he said to Vicente.

"They'll be in Lisbon by this evening," Vicente said. He helped Sharpe struggle free of a patch of mud. "I will report Major Ferreira, of course."

"He'll be long gone, Jorge. Either that or it'll be his word against yours and he's a major and you're a captain, so you know what that means." He stared into the western mist. "It's a pity," he said. "I owed that big bastard a beating."

"Is that why you followed him?" Sarah asked.

"As much as anything else." He rammed a new bullet down the rifle, primed the lock, closed the frizzen and slung the rifle. "Let's find dry land," he said, "and go home."

"They're not gone!" Harper said suddenly, and Sharpe turned to see, miraculously, that the five men were coming back to the farm. They were hurrying, looking into the mist behind them and Sharpe, unslinging the rifle, wondered what in hell was happening.

Then he saw the skirmish line. For a moment he was sure it had to be a British or a Portuguese company, but then he saw the blue coats and white crossbelts, saw the epaulettes, and saw that some of the men wore short sabers and he knew they were the French. And there was more than one company, for out of the mist a whole horde of skirmishers was appearing.

Then, from the west, came a splintering crackle of muskets. The skirmishers turned towards the sound, paused. The Ferreiras were in the farm buildings now. Harper cocked his rifle. "What in God's name is happening?"

"It's called a battle, Pat."

"God save Ireland."

"He can start by saving us," Sharpe said. For it seemed that, though his enemies were trapped, the French had trapped him.

A vagary of the mist saved Bullen. He was alert, all his men were alert, for shots had sounded to the east, somewhere out in the inundated land towards the river and Bullen had been about to order Sergeant Huckfield to take a dozen men to investigate the sounds when a swirl of wind, driven down from the southern heights, shifted a patch of whiteness on the western side of the ruined barn and Bullen saw men running. Blue-coated men, carrying muskets, and for a second or two he was so astonished that he did nothing. The French, he could hardly believe they were French, were already south of him, evidently running to get between the barn and the forts, and he understood instantly that he could not extricate the men back to the hills. "Sir!" one of the riflemen called, and the word jarred Bullen out of his shock.

"Sergeant Read!" Bullen was trying to think of everything as he spoke. "Redcoats to the farm. The place we went last night. Take your packs!" Bullen had led a patrol to the big farmstead in the dusk. He had followed the raised track at low tide, crossed the stream on the small stone bridge, poked around the deserted buildings, then explored a little way towards the Tagus until he was stopped by marshland. The farm was his best refuge now, a place with stone walls, marsh all around it, and only one approach: the track from the bridge. So long as he could reach that rough road before the French. "Riflemen!" he ordered. "Here! Sergeant McGovern! Pick two men and get Captain Slingsby out of here. Rifles? You're the rearguard! Let's go!"

Bullen went last, walking backwards among the riflemen. The mist had closed again and the enemy was hidden, but when Bullen was only thirty paces from the barn the French appeared there, charging into the ruins, and one of them saw the greenjackets off to the east and shouted a warning. Voltigeurs turned and fired, but their volley was a ragged effort because they were in skirmish order, although enough of the balls went dangerously close to Bullen and he backed away faster. He could see a half-dozen of the Frenchmen running towards him and he was about to turn and flee when some rifles snapped and two of the Frenchmen went down. Blood was bright on grubby white breeches. He turned and saw that the greenjackets were in skirmish order. They were doing what they were trained to do, and now some of them fired again and another Frenchman jerked backwards.

"We can manage them, sir," Hagman said. "Probably just a patrol. Harris! Watch left! You hurry on, sir." He spoke to Bullen again. "We know what we're doing and that pistol ain't much use." Bullen had been unaware of even drawing the pistol that had been a gift from his father. He fired it anyway and fancied that the small bullet struck a Frenchman, though it was far more likely the man had been thrown backwards by a shot from one of the riflemen. Another rifle fired. The greenjackets were going backwards, one man retreating while his partner kept watch. The French were firing back, but at too long a range. Their musket smoke made thicker patches of mist. By a miracle the voltigeurs were not following hard on Bullen's footsteps. They had expected to trap the picquet in the ruined barn and no one had given them orders to divert the attack eastwards, and that delay gave Bullen precious minutes. He realized that Hagman was right and that the riflemen did not need his orders so he ran past them to the bridge where Sergeant Read was waiting with the redcoats. Captain Slingsby was drinking from a canteen, but at least he was causing no trouble. The rifles fired from the mist and Bullen wondered if he should strike directly south, following the marshes by the stream, then he saw there were Frenchmen out in that open space and he ordered the redcoats across the bridge and back to the farm. The riflemen were hurrying back now, threatened by a new skirmish chain of voltigeurs who had come from the mist. Dear God, Bullen thought, but the Crapauds were everywhere!

"Into the farm!" he shouted at the redcoats. The farmhouse was a sturdy building that had been built on the western face of a small rise so that its front door was approached by stone steps and its windows were eight feet above the ground. A perfect refuge, Bullen thought, so long as the French did not bring artillery. Two redcoats hauled Captain Slingsby up the steps and Bullen followed into a long room, parlor and kitchen united in one, with the door and the two high windows facing down the track leading to the bridge. Bullen could not see the bridge in the mist, but he could see the riflemen retreating fast down the track and he knew the French could not be far behind. "In here!" he shouted at the green-jackets, then explored the rest of his makeshift fort. A second door and a single window faced the back where a yard was edged with other low-tiled buildings, while, at one end of the room, a ladder led to an attic where there were three bedrooms. Bullen split the men into six squads, one for each window facing the track, one for the door, and one each for the small rooms upstairs. He posted a single sentry at the back door, hoping the French would not reach the yard. "Break through the roof," he told the men he posted upstairs. The first voltigeurs were on the track now and their musket balls rattled on the farm's stone walls.

"There are men in the yard, sir," the sentry at the back door said.

Bullen thought he meant Frenchmen and snatched open the back door, but saw that one of the strangers was in the uniform of a Portuguese major and the others were all civilians, one of whom was the biggest man Bullen had ever seen. The Portuguese Major stared wide-eyed at Bullen, apparently as astonished to see Bullen as Bullen was to see him, then the Major recovered. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Lieutenant Bullen, sir."

"There are enemy over there," the Major said, pointing east, and Bullen cursed, for he had been thinking that perhaps his men could wade towards the river and so put themselves under the protection of the British gunboat that he had heard firing in the dawn. Now, it seemed, he was surrounded, so he had no choice but to make the best defense he could. "We will join you," the Major announced, and the five men came into the farmhouse where Bullen, on the Major's advice, put a handful of men in the eastern window to keep a look out for the enemy the Major had seen in the direction of the river. There was a clatter as shattered tiles cascaded from the roof where men broke through from the attic, then a bellow of gunfire as the Portuguese civilians fired at men coming from the east. Bullen turned to see what they were shooting at, and just then a volley crackled from the west and glass shattered in the windows and a redcoat spun back, a bullet in his lung. He began coughing up frothy blood. "Fire!" Bullen shouted.

Another man was hit, this time in the farm's doorway. Bullen went to a window, peered over the shoulder of a redcoat and saw Frenchmen running to the left, more going right and still more coming up the track. Muskets and rifles fired from the roof, but he did not see a single Frenchman fall. The long, low room echoed with the bangs of the guns, filled with smoke, and then the British and Portuguese cannon on the ridge added their own noise. The men in the back windows were firing as hard as the men in the front.

"They're working their way around the sides, sir," Read said, meaning that the French were going to the flanks of the farmhouse where no windows pointed.

"Kill them, boys!" Slingsby suddenly shouted. "And God save King George."

"Bugger King George," a redcoat muttered, then cursed because he had been struck by a splinter of wood driven from the window frame by a musket ball. "'Ware left, 'ware left!" a man shouted and three muskets banged together. Bullen dashed to the back door, peered through and saw powder smoke at the far end of the farmyard where cottages and cattle sheds huddled together. What the hell was happening? He had somehow hoped the French would stay on the track, attacking only from the west, but he realized now that had been a stupid hope. The voltigeurs were surrounding the farm and hammering it with musket fire. Bullen could sense panic in himself. He was twenty years old and over fifty men were looking to him for leadership, and so far he had given it, but he was being assailed by the sound of enemy musketry, the unending rattle of balls against the stone walls and by Captain Slingsby who was now on his feet and shouting at the men to look for the whites of the enemies' eyes.

Then the Portuguese Major solved some of his problems. "I'll look after this side," he told Bullen, pointing east. Bullen suspected there were fewer enemy out there, but he was grateful that he could forget them now. He looked back to the west which was taking the brunt of the fire, though most of it was being wasted on the stone walls. The problem, Bullen saw, lay north and south, for once the French realized that he had no guns covering the flanks of the building, they were bound to concentrate there.

"Loopholes in the gable ends, sir," Hagman suggested, intuitively understanding Bullen's problem, and he did not wait for the Lieutenant's answer, but went up the ladder to try and prise out the masonry at the gable ends of the roof. Bullen could hear the French shouting to each other now and, for want of anything better to do, fired his pistol through the open door, and then another gust of wind swirled more mist away and he saw, to his astonishment, that the whole valley beyond the bridge was filled with Frenchmen. Most were going away from him, advancing in a huge skirmish line towards the forts, and the gunners were firing at them from the hilltops and their shells exploded above the grassland, thickening the mist with their smoke and adding to the noise.

A redcoat fell back from a window, his skull spurting blood. Another was hit in the arm and dropped his musket which fired and the bullet hit a rifleman in the ankle. The noise outside was unceasing, the sound of the balls hitting the stone walls a devil's drumbeat, and Bullen could see the fear on the men's faces, and it was not helped by the fact that Slingsby had now drawn his sword and was shouting at the men to fire faster. The front of Slingsby's red coat was spattered with dribble and he was staggering slightly. "Fire!" he bellowed. "Fire! Give them hell!" He had an open canteen in his left hand and Bullen, suddenly angry, pushed the Captain aside so that Slingsby staggered and sat down. Another man was hit in the doorway, this one wounded in the arm by a splinter from a musket stock that had been struck by a bullet. Some men were refusing to go to the door now, and there was more than just fear on their faces, there was sheer terror. The sound of the guns was magnified by the room, the French shouts seemed horribly close, there were the incessant, deeper bangs of the big guns on the ridge, while in the farmhouse there was smoke and fresh blood and the beginnings of panic.

Then the bugle sounded. It was a strange call, one that Bullen had never heard, and slowly the musket fire died away as the bugle called again, and one of the redcoats guarding a west-facing window called that a Frenchman was waving a white rag on the end of a sword. "Hold your fire!" Bullen shouted. "Hold your fire!" He stepped cautiously to the doorway and saw a tall man in a French coat, white breeches and riding boots approaching up the track. Bullen decided he did not want the men to hear the parley and so he stepped outside, taking off his hat. He was not quite sure why he did that, but he had no white cloth and taking off his shako seemed the next best thing.

The two men met twenty paces from the farm. The Frenchman bowed, swept off his cocked hat, put it back on, then took the handkerchief from the tip of his sword. "I am Captain Jules Derain," he announced in impeccable English, "and I have the honor to be an aide to General Sarrut." He put the handkerchief in his breast pocket, then sheathed the sword so hard that the hilt clashed against the scabbard throat. It was an ominous noise.

"Lieutenant Jack Bullen," Bullen said.

Derain waited. "You have a regiment, Lieutenant?" he asked after the pause.

"The South Essex," Bullen said.

"Ah," Derain said, a response that delicately implied he had never heard of the unit. "My General," he went on, "salutes your bravery, Lieutenant, but wishes you to understand that any farther defense is tantamount to suicide. You might like to avail yourself of this opportunity to surrender?"

"No, sir," Bullen said instinctively. He had not been brought up to give in so easily.

"I congratulate you on a fine sentiment, Lieutenant," Derain said, then drew a watch from his pocket. He clicked open the watch's lid. "In five minutes, Lieutenant, we shall have a cannon by the bridge." He gestured down the track that was misted and so crowded with voltigeurs that Bullen had no chance to see if Derain told the truth. "Three or four shots should persuade you," Derain went on, "but if you yield first then you shall of course live. If you force me to use the cannon then I shall not offer you another chance to surrender, nor will I be responsible for my men's behavior."

"In my army," Bullen said, "officers are held responsible."

"I daily thank my God that I am not in your army," Derain said smoothly, then took off his hat and bowed again. "Five minutes, Lieutenant. I wish you good day." He turned and walked away. A mass of voltigeurs and chasseurs were on the track, but, worse, Bullen could see more on either side of the farmhouse. If the farm was a virtual island in the marshes then it already belonged more to the French than to him. He pulled on his shako and walked back to the farmhouse, watched by the French soldiers.

"What did they want, Lieutenant?" It was the Portuguese officer who asked the question.

"Our surrender, sir."

"And your reply?"

"No," Bullen said, and heard the men murmuring, though whether they agreed with him or were grieved by his decision, he could not tell.

"My name is Major Ferreira," Ferreira said, drawing Bullen towards the hearth where they were assured of a little privacy, "and I am on the Portuguese staff. It is important, Lieutenant, that I reach our lines. What I wish you to do, and I know it will be hard for you, is to bargain with the French. Tell them you will surrender," he held up his hand to still Bullen's protest, "but tell them, too, that you have five civilians here and your condition for surrender is that the civilians go free."

"Five civilians?" Bullen managed to interrupt with the question.

"I shall pretend to be one," Ferreira said airily, "and once we have passed the French lines you will then yield, and I assure you that Lord Wellington will be told of your sacrifice. I also have no doubt you will be exchanged very soon."

"My men won't be," Bullen said belligerently.

Ferreira smiled. "I am giving you an order, Lieutenant." He paused to take off his uniform coat, evidently deciding the lack of it would disguise his military status. The big civilian with the frightening face came to stand beside him, using his bulk as an added persuasion, and the other civilians stood close behind, carrying their guns and their heavy bags.

"I recognize you!" Slingsby said suddenly from the hearth. He blinked at Ferragus. "Sharpe hit you."

"Who are you?" Ferreira demanded coldly.

"I command here," Slingsby said, and tried to salute with his sword, but only succeeded in striking the heavy wooden mantel. "Captain Slingsby," he said.

"Until Captain Slingsby recovers," Bullen said, ashamed to be admitting to a foreigner that his commanding officer was drunk, "I command."

"Then go, Lieutenant." Ferreira pointed to the door.

"Do as he says," Slingsby said, though in truth he had not understood the conversation.

"Best to do what he says, sir," Sergeant Read muttered. The Sergeant was no coward, but he reckoned staying where they were was to invite death. "Frogs will look after us."

"You can't give me orders," Bullen challenged Ferreira.

The Major restrained the big man, who had growled and started forward. "That is true," Ferreira said to Bullen, "but if you do not surrender, Lieutenant, and we are captured then eventually we shall be exchanged and I shall have things to tell Lord Wellington. Things, Lieutenant, that will not improve your chances of advancement." He paused, then lowered his voice. "This is important, Lieutenant."

"Important!" Slingsby echoed.

"On my honor," Ferreira said solemnly, "I have to reach Lord Wellington. It is a sacrifice I ask of you, Lieutenant, indeed I beg it of you, but by making it you will serve your country well."

"God save the gracious King," Slingsby said.

"On your honor?" Bullen asked Ferreira.

"Upon my most sacred honor," the Major replied.

So Bullen turned to the door. The light company would surrender.

Colonel Lawford stared into the valley. The mist was fast disappearing now, showing the whole area covered in French skirmishers. Hundreds of skirmishers! They were spread out so that the British and Portuguese guns were having little or no effect. The shells exploded, shrapnel burst in the air with black puffs of smoke, but Lawford could see no French casualties.

Nor could he see his light company. "Damn," he said quietly, then stooped to the telescope on its tripod and stared at the ruined barn that was half shrouded in the remaining mist, and though he could see men moving close to the broken walls he was fairly sure they wore neither green nor red coats. "Damn," he said again.

"What the devil are the benighted buggers doing? Morning, Lawford. What the devil do the bloody bastards think they're doing?" It was General Picton, dressed in a shabby black coat, who bounded up the steps and scowled down at the enemy. He was wearing the same tasseled nightcap he had worn during the battle on Bussaco's ridge. "Bloody silly maneuver," he said, "whatever it is." His aides, out of breath, followed him onto the bastion where a twelve-pounder fired, deafening everyone and shrouding the air with smoke. "Stop your damned firing!" Picton bellowed. "So, Lawford, what the devil are they doing?"

"They've sent out a brigade of skirmishers, sir," Lawford said, which was not a particularly helpful answer, but all he could think of saying.

"They've sent out skirmishers?" Picton asked. "But nothing heavy? Just out for a bloody stroll, are they?"

Musket fire crackled in the valley. It seemed to come from the big abandoned farm that was hidden by the mist, which lay thicker above the swampy ground, yet it was plain something was happening there, for three or four hundred of the French skirmishers, instead of advancing across the valley, were crossing the bridge and moving towards the farm. The floods were receding with the ebbing tide, showing the big curve of the stream that cradled the farm.

"They're there," Major Leroy announced. He had his own telescope propped on the parapet and was staring into the shredding mist. He could only see the farm's rooftops and there was no sign of the missing light company, but Leroy could see dozens of voltigeurs firing at the buildings. He pointed down into the valley. "They must be at the farm, sir."

"Who's at the farm?" Picton demanded. "What farm? Who the devil are you talking about?"

That was the question Lawford had dreaded, but he had no choice but to confess what he had done. "I put our light company out as a picquet, sir," he said.

"You did what?" Picton asked, his tone dangerous.

"They were in the barn," Lawford said, pointing at the ruined building. He could hardly explain that he had put them there as an opportunity for his brother-in-law to get a grip on the light company, and that he had supposed that even Slingsby would have the wit to retreat the moment he was faced with overwhelming force.

"Just the barn?" Picton asked.

"They were ordered to patrol," Lawford replied.

"God damn it, man," Picton exploded. "God damn it! One picquet's about as much use as a tit on a broomstick! Chain of picquets, man, chain of picquets! One bloody picquet? The bloody French quick-stepped round them, didn't they? You might as well have ordered the poor devils to line up and shoot themselves in the head. It would have been a quicker end. So where the hell are they now?"

"There's a farm," Leroy said, pointing, and just then the mist cleared enough to show the western face of the farm from which musket smoke spurted.

"Sweet Jesus bloody Christ," Picton grumbled. "You don't want to lose them, do you, Lawford? Looks bad in His Majesty's bloody army when you lose a whole light company. It reeks of carelessness. I suppose we'd best rescue them." The last words, spoken in an exaggerated Welsh accent, were scornful.

"My battalion's standing to," Lawford said with as much dignity as he could muster.

"What's left of it," Picton said. "And we have the Portuguese, don't we?" He turned to an aide.

"Both battalions are ready, sir," the aide said.

"Then bloody go," Picton ordered. "Draw them off, Lawford." Lawford and the other South Essex officers ran down the steps. Picton shook his head. "It's too late, of course," he said to an aide, "much too late." He watched the powder smoke thicken the lingering mist around the distant farmstead. "Poor buggers will be in the net long before Lawford has a chance, but we can't do nothing, can we? We can't just do nothing." He turned furiously on the gunners. "Why are you standing around like barrack-gate whores? Put some fire on those bastards." He pointed to the skirmishers threatening the farm. "Kill the vermin."

The guns were realigned, then bucked back and their smoke vented out into the valley as the shells screamed away, leaving their traces of fuse smoke behind. Picton scowled. "Bloody picquet in a barn," he said to no one in particular. "No Welsh regiment would have been so cretinous! That's what we need. More Welsh regiments. I could clear bloody Europe if I had enough Welsh regiments, instead of which I have to rescue the bloody English. God only knows why the Almighty made bloody foreigners."

"Tea, sir," an aide said, bringing the General a generous tin mug and that, at least, silenced him for the moment. The guns fired on.

Sharpe struggled through the marsh to the edge of the higher ground where the farm stood. He expected to be shot at, but it seemed the Ferreira brothers and their three companions were not waiting for him at the eastern edge of the farmyard and, as he reached a corner of a cattle byre, he saw why. French voltigeurs, a swarm of them, were on the other side of the farmhouse which was evidently under siege. Frenchmen were coming towards him, though for the moment they seemed not to have noticed Sharpe and were plainly intent on infiltrating the buildings to surround the beleaguered farmhouse.

"Who's fighting who?" Harper asked as he joined Sharpe.

"God knows." Sharpe listened and thought he detected the crisper sound of rifles from the farmhouse. "Are those rifles, Pat?"

"They are, sir."

"Then those have to be our fellows in there," he said, and he slipped around the end of the byre and immediately muskets blasted from the farmhouse and the balls struck the byre's stone walls and thumped into the timber partitions that divided the row of open cattle stalls. He crouched behind the nearest timber wall that was about four feet high. The byre was open on the side facing the yard and the muskets kept firing from the house to snap over his head or crack into the stonework. "Maybe it's the Portuguese," he shouted back to Harper. If Ferreira had discovered a Portuguese picquet in the farmhouse then doubtless he could persuade them to fire at Sharpe.

"Stay where you are, Pat!"

"Can't, sir. Bloody Crapauds are getting too close."

"Wait," Sharpe said, and he stood up behind the partition and aimed the rifle at the house and immediately the windows facing him vanished in smoke as muskets fired. "Now!" Sharpe called, and Harper, Vicente, Sarah and Joana came around the corner and joined him in the stall, which was crusted with ancient cattle dung. "Who are you?" Sharpe bellowed at the farmhouse, but his voice was lost in the din of constant musketry that echoed around the yard as the balls thumped home, and if there was any reply from the house he did not hear it. Instead two Frenchmen appeared between the cottages on the far side of the yard and Harper shot one and the other ducked away fast just before Vicente's bullet clipped a scrap of stone from the wall. The man Harper had shot crawled away and Sharpe aimed his rifle at the gap between the buildings, expecting another voltigeur to appear at any moment. "I'm going to have to reach the house," Sharpe said, and he peered over the partition again and saw what he thought was a red coat in the farmhouse window. There were no more voltigeurs on the far side of the yard and he thought briefly about staying where he was and hoping the French did not discover them, but inevitably they would find them in the end. "Watch for any bloody Frogs," he said to Harper, indicating across the yard, "and I'm going to run like hell. I think there are redcoats in there, so I just need to reach the buggers." He tensed, nerving himself to cross the bullet-stitched farmyard, and just then he heard a bugle blowing. It blew a second and a third time, and voices shouted in French, some of them horribly close, and the firing slowly died away until there was silence except for the boom of the artillery on the heights and the crack of exploding shells in the valley beyond the farm.

Sharpe waited. Nothing moved, no musket fired. He dodged around the partition into the next stall and no one fired at him. He could see no one. He stood up gingerly and gazed at the farmhouse, but whoever had been at the windows was now inside the house and he could see nothing. The others followed him into the new compartment, then they leapfrogged up the spaces where cattle had been kept and still no one shot. "Sir!" Harper said warningly, and Sharpe turned to see a Frenchman watching them from beside a shed across the yard. The man was not aiming his musket, instead he waved at them and Sharpe realized the bugle call must have presaged a truce. An officer appeared beside the French soldier and he gestured that Sharpe and his companions should go back into the byre. Sharpe gave him two fingers, then ran for the next building which proved to be a dairy. He banged open the door and saw two French soldiers inside, who turned, half raising their muskets, then saw the rifle aimed at them.

"Don't even bloody think about it," Sharpe said. He crossed the flagged floor and opened the end door nearest the house. Vicente, Harper and the two women followed him into the dairy, and Sarah talked with the two Frenchmen, who were now thoroughly terrified.

"They've been told not to fire until the bugle sounds again," she told Sharpe.

"Tell them they'd bloody well better not fire, then," Sharpe said. He peered through the door to see how many voltigeurs were between the dairy and the house and saw none, but when he looked around the corner there were a score of them, just yards away. They were crouching well off to the side, then one turned and saw Sharpe's face at the dairy door and must have assumed he was French for he simply yawned. The voltigeurs were just waiting. A couple of the men were even lying down and one had his shako over his eyes as if he was trying to catch a moment's sleep. Sharpe could not see an officer, though he was sure one must be close.

Sharpe moved back out of the Frenchmen's sight and he wondered who the hell was in the farmhouse. If they were British then he was safe, but if they were Portuguese then Ferreira would have him killed. If he stayed where he was he would either be killed or captured by the French when the truce ended. "We're going to the house," he told his companions, "and there are a bunch of Frogs around the corner. Just ignore them. Hold your weapons low, don't look at them and walk as though you own the bloody place." He took a last look, saw no one in the farm window, saw the voltigeurs chatting or resting, and decided to risk it. Just cross the yard. It was only a dozen paces. "Let's do it," he said.

Sharpe, afterwards, reckoned the French simply did not know what to do. The senior officers, those who might have made an instant decision what to do about enemy soldiers patently breaking a truce, were at the front of the farm, and those who saw the three men and two women emerge from the dairy and cross the angle of the yard to the back door of the house were too surprised to react at once, and by the time any Frenchman had made up his mind, Sharpe was already at the farmhouse. One man did open his mouth to protest, but Sharpe smiled at him. "Nice day, eh?" he said. "Should dry out our wet clothes." Sharpe ushered the others through the door and then, going in last, he saw the redcoats. "Who the hell's been trying to kill us?" he demanded loudly and, for answer, an astonished Rifleman Perkins pointed wordlessly at Major Ferreira, and Sharpe, without breaking stride, crossed the room and smacked Ferreira across the side of the head with his rifle butt. The Major dropped like a poleaxed ox. Ferragus started forward, but Harper put his rifle muzzle to the big man's head. "Do it," the Irishman said softly, "please."

Redcoats and greenjackets were staring at Sharpe. Lieutenant Bullen, in the front doorway, had stopped and turned, and now gazed at Sharpe as if he saw a ghost. "You bloody lot!" Sharpe said. "Of all people, you bloody lot. You were trying to kill me out there! Lousy bloody shots, all of you! Not one bullet came near me! Mister Bullen, isn't it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where are you going, Mister Bullen?" Sharpe did not wait for an answer, but turned away. "Sergeant Huckfield! You'll disarm those civilians. And if that big bastard gives you any trouble, shoot him."

"Shoot him, sir?" Huckfield asked, astonished. "Are you bloody deaf? Shoot him! If he so much as bloody twitches, shoot him." Sharpe turned back to Bullen. "Well, Lieutenant?"

Bullen looked embarrassed. "We were going to surrender, sir. Major Ferreira said we should." He gestured at Ferreira who lay motionless. "I know he isn't in charge here, sir, but that's what he said and… " His voice trailed away. He had been about to add that Slingsby had recommended surrender, but that would have been a disavowal of responsibility and so dishonorable. "I'm sorry, sir," he said miserably. "It was my decision. The Frenchman said they're fetching a cannon."

"The miserable bastard lied to you," Sharpe said. "They haven't got cannon. On ground as wet as this? It would take twenty horses to get a cannon over here. No, he just wanted to scare you, because he knows as well as anyone that we could all die of old age in here. Harvey, Kirby, Batten, Peters. Shut this door," he pointed to the front door, "and pile all the packs behind it. Block it up!"

"Back doorway too, sir?" Rifleman Slattery asked.

"No, Slats, leave it open, we're going to need it." Sharpe took a quick glance through one of the front windows and saw that it was so high from the ground that no Frenchman could hope to escalade the sill. "Mister Bullen? You'll command this side," he meant the two windows and the door at the front of the house, "but you only need four men. They can't get through those windows. Are there any redcoats upstairs?"

"Yes, sir."

"Get 'em down here. Rifles only up there. Carter, Pendleton, Slattery, Sims. Get up that ladder and try to look as if you're enjoying yourselves. Mister Vicente? Can you climb upstairs with your shoulder?"

"I can," Vicente said.

"Take your rifle up, look after the boys up there." Sharpe turned back to Bullen. "Keep your four men firing at the bastards. Don't aim, just fire. I want every other redcoat on this side of the room. Miss Fry?"

"Mister Sharpe?"

"Is that musket loaded? Good. Point it at Ferragus. If he moves, shoot him. If he breathes, shoot him. Perkins, stay with the ladies. Those men are prisoners, and you treat them as such. Sarah? Tell them to sit down and put their hands on their heads and if any one of them moves his hands, kill him." Sharpe crossed to the four men and kicked their bags to the side of the room and heard the chink of coins. "Sounds like your dowry, Miss Fry."

"The five minutes are up, sir," Bullen reported, "at least I think so." He had no watch and could only guess.

"Is that what they gave you? So watch the front, Mister Bullen, watch the front. That side of the house is your responsibility."

"I will command there." Slingsby, who had watched Sharpe in silence, suddenly pushed himself away from the hearth. "I am in command here," he amended his statement.

"Do you have a pistol?" Sharpe demanded of Slingsby, who looked surprised at the question, but then nodded. "Give it here," Sharpe said. He took the pistol, lifted the frizzen and blew out the priming powder so the weapon would not fire. The last thing he needed was a drunk with a loaded weapon. He put the gun back into Slingsby's hand, then sat him back down in the hearth. "What you're going to do, Mister Slingsby," he said, "is watch up the chimney. Make sure the French don't climb down."

"Yes, sir," Slingsby said.

Sharpe went to the back window. It was not large, but it would not be difficult for a man to climb through and so he put five men to guard it. "You shoot any bugger trying to get through, and use your bayonets if you run out of bullets." The French, he knew, would have used the last few minutes to reorganize, but he was certain they had no artillery so in the end they could only rush the house and he reckoned now that the main attack would come from the rear and would converge on the window and on the door he had deliberately left open. He had eighteen men facing that door in three ranks, the front rank kneeling, the others standing. The only last worry was Ferragus and his companions and Sharpe pointed his rifle at the big man. "You cause me trouble and I'll give you to my men for bayonet practice. Just sit there." He went to the ladder. "Mister Vicente? Your men can fire whenever you've got targets! Wake the bastards up. You men down here," he turned back to the large room, "wait."

Ferreira stirred and pushed up to all fours and Sharpe hit him with the rifle butt again, then Harris called from upstairs that the French were moving, the rifles cracked in the roof space and there was a cheer outside and a huge French volley that hammered against the outside wall and came through the open windows to thump into the ceiling beams. The cheer had come from the back of the house and Sharpe, standing beside the one window facing east, saw men come running from behind the byres on the one side and the cottages on the other. "Wait!" he called. "Wait!" The French still cheered, encouraged perhaps by the lack of fire, and then the charge came up the steps to the open back door and Sharpe shouted at the kneeling men. "Front rank! Fire!" The noise was deafening inside the room and the six bullets, aimed at three paces, could not miss. The front rank men scuttled aside to load their muskets and the second rank, who had been standing, knelt down. "Second rank, fire!" Another six bullets. "Third rank, fire!" Harper stepped forward with the volley gun, but Sharpe gestured him back. "Save it, Pat," he said, and he stepped to the door and saw that the French had blocked the steps with dead and dying men, but one brave officer was trying to lead men up between the bodies and Sharpe raised the rifle, shot the man in the head and stepped back before a ragged volley whipped up through the empty doorway.

That doorway was now blocked by corpses, one of whom was lying almost full length inside the house. Sharpe pushed the body out and closed the door, which immediately began to shake as musket balls struck the heavy wood, then he drew his sword and went to the window where three Frenchmen were clawing at the redcoats' bayonets, trying to drag the muskets clean out of their enemies' hands. Sharpe hacked down with the sword, half severed a hand, and the French backed off, then a new rush of men came to the window, but Harper met them with the volley gun and, as so often when the huge gun fired, the sheer noise of it seemed to astonish the enemy for the window was suddenly free of attackers and Sharpe ordered the five men to fire obliquely through the opening at the voltigeurs trying to clear a passage to the door.

A blast of musketry announced a second attack at the other side of the house. Voltigeurs were hammering on the front door, shaking the pile of packs behind it, but Sharpe used the men who had fired the lethal volleys at the back door to reinforce the musketry at the front of the house, each man firing fast through a window and then ducking out of sight, and the French suddenly realized the strength of the farmhouse and their attack ended abruptly as they pulled back around the sides of the house. That left the front empty of enemy, but the back of the house faced the farmyard with its buildings that offered cover and the fire there was unending. Sharpe reloaded the rifle, knelt by the back window and saw a voltigeur at the yard's end twitch back as he was struck by a bullet fired from the attic. Sharpe fired at another man, and the voltigeurs scuttled into cover rather than face more rifle fire. "Cease fire!" Sharpe shouted. "And well done. Saw the buggers off! Reload. Check flints."

There was a moment's comparative silence, though the cannon from the heights were loud and Sharpe realized that the artillery in the forts was shooting at the men attacking the farm because he could hear the shrapnel rattling on the roof. The riflemen in the attic were still firing. Their rate was slow, and that was good, signifying that Vicente was making sure they aimed true before pulling the triggers. He looked across at the prisoners, reckoning he could use Perkins's rifle and the muskets that Joana and Sarah carried. "Sergeant Harper?"

"Sir!"

"Tie those bastards up. Hands and feet. Use musket slings." A half-dozen men helped Harper. As Ferragus was trussed he stared up at Sharpe, but he made no resistance. Sharpe tied the Major's hands as well. Slingsby was on his hands and knees, rooting at the packs piled behind the front door, and when he had found his bag with its supply of rum he went back to the hearth and uncorked the canteen. "Poor bloody bastard," Sharpe said, amazed that he could feel any pity for Slingsby. "How long has he been lushed?"

"Since Coimbra," Bullen said, "more or less continuously."

"I only saw him drunk once," Sharpe said.

"He was probably scared of you, sir," Bullen said.

"Of me?" Sharpe sounded surprised. He crossed to the hearth and went on one knee and looked into Slingsby's face. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant," he said, "for being rude to you."

Slingsby blinked at Sharpe, confusion and then surprise on his face.

"You hear me?" Sharpe asked.

"Decent of you, Sharpe," Slingsby said, then drank some more.

"There, Mister Bullen, you heard me. One apology."

Bullen grinned, was about to speak, but just then the rifles in the roof sounded and Sharpe turned to the windows. "Be ready!"

The French came at the back again, but this time they had assembled a large force of voltigeurs with orders to pour fire through the one window while a dozen men cleared the steps of bodies to make way for an assault party, who made the mistake of giving a huge cheer as they charged. Sharpe whipped open the door and Harper ordered the front rank to fire, then the second, then the third, and the bodies piled again at the foot of the steps, but the French kept coming, scrambling over the bodies, and a musket cracked just beside Sharpe's ear and he saw it was Sarah, firing into the persistent attack. And still more Frenchmen came up the steps and Harper had the reloaded first rank fire, but a blue-coated man survived the fusillade and burst through the door where Sharpe met him with the point of the sword. "Second rank," Harper shouted, "fire!" and Sharpe twisted the blade out of the dying man's belly, pulled him into the house and slammed the door shut again. Sarah was watching the men reload and copying them. The door was shaking, dust flying from its bracing timbers with every bullet strike, but no one was trying to open it now, and the French musketry that had kept Sharpe's men away from the windows died down as the frustrated French retreated to the flanks of the house where they were safe from the fire. "We're winning," Sharpe said, and men grinned through the powder stains on their faces. And it was almost true.

Two of General Sarrut's aides completed the reconnaissance and, if sense had prevailed, their bravery would have finished the morning's excitement. The two men, both mounted on fit horses, had risked the cannon fire to gallop into the mouth of the valley that twisted behind the bastion the British called Work Number 119. Shells, rifle fire and even a few musket balls struck all around the two horses as they raced into the shadow of the eastern hill, then both riders slewed their beasts around in a flurry of turf and spurred back the way they had come. A shell banged close behind, spurting blood from the haunch of one horse, but the two exhilarated officers made their escape safely, galloped through the foremost skirmishers, jumped the small stream and reined in beside the General. "The valley's blocked, sir," one of them reported. "There are trees, bushes and palisades blocking the valley. No way through."

"And there's a bastion with cannon above the blockage," the second aide reported, "just waiting for an attempt on the valley."

Sarrut swore. His job was done now. He could report to General Reynier, who in turn would report to Marshal Massena, that none of the guns was a fake and that the small valley, far from offering a passage through the enemy's line, was an integral part of the defenses. All he needed to do now was sound the recall and the skirmishers would retreat, the gun smoke dissipate and the morning would revert to silence, but as the two horsemen had returned from their excursion, Sarrut had seen brown-uniformed Portuguese cazadores coming from the blocked valley. The enemy, it seemed, wanted a fight, and no French general became a marshal by refusing such an invitation. "How do they get out of their lines?" he wanted to know, pointing at the Portuguese skirmishers.

"Narrow path down the backside of the hill, sir," the more observant of the aides answered, "protected by gates and the forts."

Sarrut grunted. That answer suggested he could not hope to assail the forts by the path used by the Portuguese, but he would be damned before he just retreated when the enemy was offering a fight. The least he could do was bloody their noses. "Push hard into them," he ordered. "And what the devil happened to that picquet?"

"Gone to ground," another aide answered.

"Where?"

The aide pointed to the farm that was ringed with smoke. The mist had just about gone, but there was so much smoke around the farm it looked like fog.

"Then dig them out!" Sarrut ordered. He had originally scoffed at the idea of capturing a mere picquet, but frustration had changed his mind. He had brought four prime battalions into the valley and he could not just march them back with nothing to show for it. Even a handful of prisoners would be some sort of victory. "Was there any damn food in that barn?" he asked.

An aide held out a lump of British army biscuit, twice baked, as hard as a round shot and about as palatable. Sarrut scorned it, then kicked his horse through the stream, past the barn and out into the pastureland where there was more bad news. The Portuguese, far from being hit hard, were driving his chasseurs and voltigeurs back. Two battalions against four and the two were winning, and Sarrut heard the distinctive crack of rifles and knew those weapons were swinging the confrontation in the Portuguese favor. Why the hell did the Emperor insist that rifles were useless? What was useless, Sarrut thought, was pitting muskets against skirmishers. Muskets were for use against enemy formations, not against individuals, but a rifle could pick the flea off a whore's back at a hundred paces. "Ask General Reynier to loose the cavalry," he said to an aide. "That'll sweep those bastards away."

It had started as a reconnaissance and was turning into a battle.

The South Essex came from the eastern side of the hill on which Work Number 119 stood, while the Portuguese had come from its western side and those two battalions now blocked the entrance to the small valley. The South Essex was thus on the Portuguese right, a half-mile away, and in front of them was a stretch of pastureland edged by the flooded stream and the swamps which ringed the beleaguered farmstead. To Lawford's left was the shoulder of the hill, the flank of the Portuguese and, out in the valley in front of him, the swarm of voltigeurs and chasseurs whose scattered formations were punctuated by the exploding bursts of smoke from the British and Portuguese cannon. "It's a bloody mess!" Lawford protested. Most of the South Essex's officers had not had time to fetch their horses, but Lawford was up on Lightning and from the saddle's height he could see the track that crossed the bridge and led to the farmstead. That, he decided, was where he would go. "Double column of companies," he ordered, "quarter distance," and he glanced across at the farmhouse and realized, from the volume of fire and the thickness of the smoke, that the light company was putting up a stout resistance. "Well done, Cornelius," he said aloud. It might have been imprudent for Slingsby to have retreated to the farmhouse rather than to the hills, but at least he was fighting hard. "Advance, Major!" he told Forrest. Each company of the South Essex was now in four ranks. Two companies were abreast, so that the battalion was arranged in two companies wide and four deep, with number nine company on its own at the rear. To General Picton, watching from the heights, it looked more like a French column than a British unit, but it allowed the battalion to keep itself in good close order as it advanced obliquely, the marshland to its right and the open land and the hills to its left. "We'll deploy into line as necessary," Lawford explained to Forrest, "sweep those men away from the farm track, capture the bridge, then send three companies up to the buildings. You can take them. Brush those damned Frogs away, bring Cornelius's fellows out, rejoin, and we'll go back for dinner. I thought we might finish that peppered ham. It's rather good, isn't it? "

"Very good."

"And some boiled eggs," Lawford said.

"Don't you find they make you costive?" Forrest asked.

"Eggs? Make you costive? Never! I try to eat them every day and my father always swore by boiled eggs. He reckoned they keep you regular. Ah, I see the wretches have noticed us." Lawford spurred Lightning up the narrow space between the companies. The wretches he had seen were chasseurs and voltigeurs who were gathering ahead of his battalion. The French had been attacking the right flank of the Portuguese, but now saw the redcoats approaching and turned to face the new threat. There were not enough of them to stem the battalion's advance, but Lawford still wished he had his light company to go out ahead and drive the skirmishers back. He knew he would have to take some casualties before he was in range to offer a volley that would finish the French nonsense and so he rode to the front so that the men saw him share their danger. He glanced over at the farm and saw the fighting was still fierce there. A shell cracked into flame and smoke a hundred yards ahead. A musket ball, fired at far too long a range, fluttered close above Lawford's head to strike the yellow regimental color, and then he heard the bugles and he stood in the stirrups and saw, way across the far side of the valley, columns of horsemen cascading out of the hills. He noted them, but did nothing yet, for they were too far away to pose any danger. "Go right!" Lawford shouted at Forrest who was by the grenadier company that was on the right flank at the front. "Head up! Head up!" He pointed, meaning that the battalion should march for the bridge. A man stumbled in the front rank, then stayed on the ground, holding his thigh. The files behind opened to march past him, then closed again. "Two men to help him, Mister Collins," Lawford called to the nearest Captain. He dared not leave an injured man behind, not with cavalry loose in the valley. Thank God, he thought, that there was no French artillery.

The horsemen had crossed the stream now and Lawford could see the bright glitter of their drawn sabers and swords. A mix of horsemen, he noted: green-coated dragoons with their long straight swords, sky-blue hussars and lighter green chasseurs with sabers. They were a good mile away, evidently intent on taking the Portuguese on their far flank, but a glance back showed that the cazadores were alive to the danger and were forming two squares. The horsemen saw it too and swerved eastwards, the soft turf flying up behind their horses' hooves. Now they were coming at the South Essex, but they were still far off and Lawford kept marching as voltigeurs scattered from the horsemen's path. Shells exploded among the cavalry and they instinctively spread out and Lawford had a mischievous impulse. "Half distance!" he shouted. "Half distance!"

The companies now increased the intervals between each other. Like the cavalry they were spreading out, no longer resembling a close column, but showing stretches of daylight between each unit and so inviting the cavalry to penetrate those gaps and rip the battalion apart from the inside. "Keep marching!" Lawford called to the nearest company which was looking nervously towards the cavalry. "Ignore them!" Less than half a mile now. The cavalry had spread into a line that thundered across the valley and the South Essex were marching across their front, the left flank of each rank exposed to the horsemen. Now it was all down to timing, Lawford thought, pure timing, for he did not want to form square too soon and so persuade the horsemen to sheer off. How many were there? Three hundred? More, he reckoned, and he could hear their hooves on the soft turf, see their pennants, and he saw the line go into the gallop and he reckoned they had committed themselves too soon because the ground was soft and their horses would be blown by the time they reached his battalion. A shell burst among the leading horsemen and a dragoon went down in a flurry of hooves, bridle, blood and sword. The second line of cavalry swerved around the thrashing horse and Lawford reckoned it was time. "Form square!"

There was something beautiful in good drill, Lawford thought. To watch the rearmost companies halt and march backwards, see the center companies swing out, the forward companies mark time, and all the separate parts come seamlessly together to make a misshapen oblong. Three companies formed the long sides, two were at the northern edge and a single company made the southern face, but what mattered was that the square was made and was impenetrable. The outside rank went onto one knee. "Fix bayonets!"

Most of the horsemen pulled away, but at least a hundred stayed straight and so rode directly into Lawford's volley. The western face of the square vanished in smoke, there were the screams of horses and as the smoke cleared Lawford could see men and beasts galloping away to leave a dozen bodies on the ground. Voltigeurs were firing at the square now, grateful to have such a huge target, and the casualties were being lifted into the square's center. The only answer to the skirmishers was half-company volley fire, and that worked, each blast driving a group of Frenchmen back and sometimes leaving one writhing on the ground, but, like wolves around a flock, they pressed back and the horsemen circled behind them, waiting for the redcoat battalion to open its ranks and give them a chance to attack. Lawford was not going to give it to them. His battalion would stay closed up, but that gave the skirmishers their target and he realized, slowly, that he had marched into a perilous dilemma. The best way of ridding himself of the voltigeurs was to open ranks and advance, but that would invite the cavalry to charge, and the cavalry was the greater danger so he had to stay closed up, yet that gave the French muskets a tempting target, and the voltigeurs were gnawing him to death one injury or death at a time. The artillery was helping Lawford. The shells were exploding steadily, but the ground was soft and the guns were firing from the heights so that many of the shells buried themselves before they exploded and their force was thus cushioned by the ground or wasted upwards. The shrapnel was deadlier, but at least one of the gunners was cutting the fuses too long. Lawford edged the battalion northwards. Moving in square was hard, it had to be done slowly, and the wounded men in the square's center had to be carried with the formation, and the battalion was forced to pause every few seconds so that another volley could blast out at the skirmishers. In truth, Lawford realized, he had been snared by the voltigeurs and what had seemed an easy task was suddenly bloody.

"I wish we had our rifles," Forrest muttered.

Lawford was irritated by the wish, but he also shared it. It was his fault, he knew, for sending the light company out as a picquet and trusting that they would not get into trouble, and now his own battalion was in trouble. It had begun so well: the march in close order, the beautiful drill-book example of forming square, and the easy defeat of the cavalry charge, but now the South Essex was near the center of the valley and had no support except for the distant guns, while more and more voltigeurs, smelling blood, were closing on the battalion. So far he had not suffered many casualties, only five men dead and a score wounded, but that was because the French skirmishers were keeping their distance, wary of his volleys, yet every minute brought another musket strike and the closer he went to the farm track, the more isolated he became. And Picton was watching, Lawford knew, which meant his battalion was on display.

And it was stuck.

Vicente came down the ladder to report that a redcoat battalion was marching to their rescue, but that it was threatened by cavalry and so had formed square a half-mile away. Sharpe looked through the window and saw from the regimental color that it was the South Essex, but the battalion might as well have been a hundred miles away for all the help they could offer him.

The French, after the repulse of their last attack, had concealed themselves behind the farm buildings, well out of sight of the rifles firing from the farmhouse roof. The track to the farm, which had been thick with voltigeurs, was empty now. Sharpe had brought two riflemen downstairs, placed them with himself and Perkins at the front windows and they had used the voltigeurs for target practice until the French, outranged and in the open, had either run into cover at the sides of the house or else gone back to the dryer part of the valley to help the attack on the beleaguered square. "So what do we do now, Mister Bullen?" Sharpe asked.

"Do, sir?" Bullen was surprised to be asked.

Sharpe grinned. "You did well to get the men here, very well. I thought maybe you had another good idea about how to get them out."

"Go on fighting, sir?"

"That's usually the best thing to do," Sharpe said, then peered quickly out of the window and drew no musket fire. "The Frogs won't last long," he said. That seemed an optimistic forecast to Bullen because, as far as he could see, the valley was full of Frenchmen, both infantry and cavalry, and the redcoat square was plainly balked. Sharpe had reached the same conclusion. "Time to earn all that money the King pays you, Mister Bullen."

"What money, sir?"

"What money? You're an officer and a gentleman, Mister Bullen. You've got to be rich." Some of the men laughed. Slingsby, sitting in the hearth with the canteen on his lap, was asleep, his head back against the masonry and his mouth open. Sharpe turned and looked through the window again. "They're in trouble," he said, nodding at the battalion. "They need our help. They need rifles, which means we've got to rescue them." He frowned at the prisoners, an idea half forming. "So Major Ferreira told you to surrender?" he asked Bullen.

"He did, sir. I know it wasn't his place to give orders, but… "

"It wasn't his place," Sharpe interrupted, more interested in why Ferreira would have been so willing to fall into French hands. "Did he say why you were to surrender?"

"I was to make a bargain with the French, sir. If they let the civilians go then we'd give up."

"Sneaky bastard," Sharpe said. Ferreira, utterly cowed and with a huge bruise on his temple, stared up at Sharpe. "So you want to get to the lines before us?" Sharpe asked him. Ferreira said nothing. "Not you, Major," Sharpe said, "you're a military man and you're under arrest. But your brother now? And his men? We can let them go. Miss Fry? Tell them to stand up."

The four men stood awkwardly. Sharpe had Perkins and a pair of redcoats point guns at them as Harper untied their feet, then their hands. "What you're going to do," he told them, letting Sarah translate, "is get out of here. There are no Frenchmen out front. Sergeant Read? Unblock the front door." Sharpe looked back at Ferragus and his three companions. "So you can go as soon as the door's open. Run like hell, cut across the marsh and you should make it to those redcoats."

"The French will shoot them if you make them go," Vicente protested, still a lawyer at heart.

"I'll bloody shoot them if they don't go," Sharpe said, then turned as there was a flurry of fire from the yard at the back of the house. The remaining riflemen in the roof answered it and Sharpe listened, judging from the noise whether another attack was coming, but it seemed to him the French were merely firing at random. The volleys of the South Essex came dull across the tongue of wetland while, farther away, the sound of the Portuguese rifles was crisper.

Major Ferreira, at the far end of the room, spoke in Portuguese to his brother. "He said," Sarah translated for Sharpe, "that you will shoot them in the back if they go."

"Tell them I won't. And tell them that if they go fast they'll live."

"The door's unblocked, sir," Read said.

Sharpe looked at Vicente. "Get all the riflemen out of the attic." He would miss their fire and he could only hope that the absence of powder smoke from the battered roof did not encourage the French, but he had an idea, one that could just do some real damage to the enemy. "Sergeant Harper!"

"Sir?"

"You're going to line up six riflemen and six redcoats, match them for size and make them change jackets."

"Change jackets, sir?"

"You heard me! Get on with it. And when the first six are done, do another six. I want every rifleman in a red coat. And once they're dressed they can put their packs on." Sharpe turned to look at the wounded men who were in the room's center. "We're going out," he told them, "and you're staying here." He saw the alarm on their faces. "The French won't hurt you," he reassured them. The British looked after French wounded and the French did the same. "But they won't take you with them either, so when this mess is over we'll come back for you. But the Frogs will steal anything valuable, so if you've got something that's precious give it to a friend to keep for you."

"What are you doing, sir?" one of the wounded men asked.

"Going to help the battalion," Sharpe said, "and I'll be back for you, that's a promise." He looked at the first riflemen reluctantly pulling on the yellow-faced red coats. "Get on with it!" he snapped, and just then Perkins, who had been helping to guard the civilian prisoners, gave a grunt of pain and surprise. Sharpe half turned, thinking an errant bullet must have come through the window, and he saw that Ferragus, released from his bonds, had hit Perkins, and that the redcoats dared not fire at the brute for fear of hitting the wrong man in the crowded room, and Ferragus, free, vengeful and dangerous, was now coming for Sharpe.

Colonel Lawford watched the voltigeurs thicken to the west and north. There were only a few to the south, and none to the east where the ground was flooded or waterlogged. The cavalry waited behind the voltigeurs, ready for the moment when the musket fire so weakened the South Essex's square that another charge would be possible. For now the French musketry was still at too long a range, but it was hurting and the center of the square was slowly filling with wounded men. The gunners on the hilltop were helping a little, for as the voltigeurs concentrated on the square they made a more inviting target for the shells and shrapnel, but the French skirmishers to the north, who were facing one of the square's narrower sides, were receiving less shell fire because the gunners feared striking the South Essex, and so those skirmishers pressed ever closer and inflicted increasing damage. More voltigeurs ran to that side, understanding that they would receive less volley fire there than from the longer side of the square that faced west.

"I'm not sure," Major Forrest came across to Lawford, "that we can reach the farm now, sir."

Lawford did not answer. The implication of Forrest's remark was that the attempt to rescue the light company should be abandoned. The way south, back to the fort on the hill, was clear enough and, if the South Essex moved back towards the heights, they would survive. The French would see it as a victory, but at least the battalion would live. The light company would be lost, and that was a pity, but better to lose one company than all ten.

"The fire is definitely slacking," Forrest said, and he was not talking of the incessant musketry of the voltigeurs, but of the action at the farm.

Lawford twisted in the saddle and saw that the farmhouse was virtually free of powder smoke. He could see a group of Frenchmen crouched behind a shed or barn, which told him the farmhouse itself had not fallen, but Forrest was right. There was less firing there and that suggested the light company's resistance was being abraded. "Poor fellows," Lawford said. He thought for a second of trying to reach the farm by cutting across the floods and the marshland, but a riderless horse, one of those whose saddles had been emptied by the South Essex square, was floundering in the swamp and, from its struggles, it was plain that any attempt to cross the waterlogged ground would be inviting trouble. The horse heaved itself onto a firmer patch and stood there, shivering and frightened. Lawford felt a flicker of fear himself and knew he must make a decision. "The wounded will have to be carried," he said to Forrest. "Detail men from the rear rank."

"We're going back?" Forrest asked.

"I fear so, Joseph. I fear so," Lawford said, and just then a voltigeurs bullet struck Lightning in the right eye and the horse reared, screaming, and Lawford kicked his boots from the saddle and threw himself to the left as Lightning twisted in the sky, hooves flailing. Lawford fell heavily, but managed to scramble clear as the big horse collapsed. Lightning tried to get up again, but only succeeded in kicking the ground and Lawford's servant ran to the beast with the Colonel's big horse pistol. Then he hesitated, for Lightning was thrashing. "Do it, man!" the Colonel called. "Do it!" The horse's eyes were white, its bloodied head was beating against the ground and the servant could not aim the pistol, but Major Leroy snatched the gun, rammed his boot onto the horse's head and then fired into Lightning's forehead. The horse gave a last great spasm, then was still. Lawford swore. Leroy threw the pistol back to the servant and, his boots glistening with the horse's blood, went back to the western face of the square.

"Give the orders, Major," Lawford said to Forrest. He felt close to tears. The horse had been magnificent. He ordered his servant to unbuckle the girth and remove the saddle, and he watched as those wounded who could not crawl or limp were lifted from the ground and then the South Essex began to retreat. It would be a painfully slow withdrawal. The square had to stay together if the horsemen were not to charge, and it could only edge its way cautiously, shuffling rather than marching. The French, seeing it move south, gave an ironic cheer, and pressed closer. They wanted to finish the redcoats and go back to their side of the valley with a fine haul of prisoners, captured weapons and, best of all, the two precious colors. Lawford looked up at the two flags, both now punctured with bullet strikes, and he wondered if he should strip them from the poles and burn the heavy silk, then dismissed that thought as panic. He would get back to the hills and Picton would be angry, and doubtless there would be mockery from other battalions, but the South Essex would survive. That was what mattered.

The route back to the hills was clear of all enemy now because the right-hand battalion of cazadores had moved closer to the South Essex. The French had been repulsed by the Portuguese, defeated by their rifles, and instead had concentrated on the vulnerable redcoats, and now the Portuguese battalion moved to its right and its rifles were working on the men assailing Lawford, and that cleared the way south, but the cavalry drifted that way and the Portuguese formed square again. The cavalry, harassed by the endless shells, moved back towards the center of the valley, but the Portuguese rifles still kept the way home clear for the South Essex. In another two or three hundred yards, Lawford thought, he would be close to the hill and the French would give up and retreat, except that they would console themselves by capturing the farm. Lawford glanced at the buildings, saw no smoke coming from the roof or windows and reckoned it was all too late. "We tried," he said to Forrest, "at least we tried."

And failed, Forrest thought, but said nothing. The northern-most files of the square divided to edge about Lightning's corpse, then closed up again. The voltigeurs, wary of the Portuguese rifles, were concentrating on that northern flank again and the half-company volleys were constant as the redcoats tried to drive the pestilential skirmishers away. The muskets flamed and the smoke thickened and the square shuffled south. And the light company was alone.

Sharpe ducked, just evading a blow of Ferragus's right fist, and instead caught a left on his shoulder, which was like being hit by a musket ball. It almost knocked him over, and the following punch from Ferragus's right hand, which was supposed to half crush Sharpe's skull, only succeeded in glancing off the top of his head and knocking off his shako, but it still rocked Sharpe who instinctively rammed the butt of his rifle towards Ferragus and caught the big man on his left knee. The pain of that blow stopped Ferragus, and the second blow of the rifle caught him on his right fist which was still injured from the stone blow Sharpe had given him at the monastery. Ferragus flinched from the pain and two redcoats tried to haul him down but he shook them off like a bear shrugging off dogs, although they had slowed him for a second, giving Sharpe a chance to stand. He tossed the rifle to Harper. "Let him be," Sharpe said to the redcoats, "let him be." He unbuckled his sword belt and threw the weapon to Bullen. "Keep a watch out of the windows, Mister Bullen!"

"Yes, sir."

"A good watch! Make sure the men are looking out there, not in here."

"Let me murder him, sir," Harper suggested.

"Let's not be unfair to Mister Ferreira, Pat," Sharpe said. "He couldn't cope with you. And the last time he tried to deal with me he had to have help. Just you and me, eh?" Sharpe smiled at Ferragus who was flexing his right hand. Sarah was behind the big man and she cocked the musket, grimacing with the force needed to drag back the doghead. The sound of the ratchet made Ferragus glance behind and Sharpe stepped forward and drove his right knuckles into Ferragus's left eye. He felt something give there, the big head jerked back and Sharpe was out of range by the time he had recovered. "I know you'd like to kill him," Sharpe said to Sarah, "but it's not very ladylike. Leave him to me." He went forward again, aimed a blow at Ferragus's closing left eye and stepped back before he delivered it, moving to his left, making sure Ferragus followed him, and pausing just a heartbeat too long because Ferragus, faster than Sharpe expected, delivered a straight left. It did not travel far, it did not even look particularly powerful, but it struck Sharpe in his bandaged ribs and was like a cannonball's strike, and if he had not already decided to step back he would have been floored by the blow, but his legs were already moving as the pain seared up his ribs. He flicked out his own left hand, aiming again at the swollen eye, but Ferragus swatted it aside, released his left hand again, but Sharpe was safely back now.

Ferragus could see nothing from his left eye, and the pain of it was a flaring red agony in his skull, but he knew he had hurt Sharpe and knew if he could get close he could do more than just hurt the rifleman, who was now stepping back between the wounded redcoats and the big hearth. Ferragus hurried, reckoning to take Sharpe's best blows and then get close enough to murder the English bastard, but Slingsby, drunk as a judge and sitting in the hearth, stuck out his right leg and Ferragus tripped on it and Sharpe was back in his face, the left fist again pulping Ferragus's damaged eye and ramming the heel of his right hand into Ferragus's nose. Something broke there and Ferragus, swatting at Slingsby with his left hand, threw out his right to stop Sharpe, but Sharpe had stepped back again. "Let him be, Mister Slingsby," Sharpe said. "Are your men watching out the windows, Mister Bullen?"

"They are, sir."

"Make damn sure they are."

Sharpe was past the wounded men now, in the open space between the front and back windows where no one dared stand for fear of the French bullets, and he backed towards the window facing the yard, heard a bullet whack into the window frame, stabbed a quick left at Ferragus who swayed to let it pass and rushed at Sharpe. Sharpe stepped back, going to Ferragus's left because that was his blind side, and Ferragus turned to face Sharpe who knew he had to take the punishment now and he stepped into the big man's range and drove his fists one after the other into his enemy's belly and it was like punching an oak board. Sharpe knew those blows would not hurt and he did not care because all he wanted to do was drive Ferragus backwards. He rammed his head forward, banging his forehead into the bloody mess of Ferragus's face, and he heaved forward and his head rang as a blow struck him on the side of the skull. His vision went red and black. He pushed again and Ferragus's left hand hit him on the other side of the head and Sharpe knew he could not take more than one other such blow, and he was not even sure he would survive that for his senses were reeling and he gave a last heave, and felt Ferragus jar up against the window sill. Sharpe ducked then, trying to avoid the next blow, which glanced off the top of his head, but even that glancing blow was enough to send a stab of pain down through his skull, but then he felt Ferragus quiver. And quiver again, and now Sharpe staggered back and saw that Ferragus's remaining eye was dull. The big man was looking astonished and Sharpe, through his half daze, slashed out his left hand to hit Ferragus in the throat. Ferragus tried to respond, tried to plant two hammer-like blows into Sharpe's vulnerable ribs, but his broad back was filling the window and it was the first easy target the French had been given since the siege of the farm had begun, and two musket balls struck him and he shook again, then opened his mouth and the blood spilled out. "Your men aren't watching outside, Mister Bullen!" Sharpe said. A last bullet hit Ferragus, this one at the nape of his neck and he pitched forward like a felled tree.

Sharpe bent to recover his shako, took a deep breath and felt the pain in his ribs. "You want some advice, Mister Bullen?" Sharpe said.

"Of course, sir."

"Never fight fair." He took his sword back. "Detail two men to escort Major Ferreira and another two to help Lieutenant Slingsby. And those four men carry those bags." He pointed to the bags that had belonged to Ferragus and his men. "And what's inside, Mister Bullen, belongs to Miss Fry, so make sure the thieving bastards keep the bags buckled."

"I will, sir."

"And maybe," Sharpe said to Sarah, "you'll be kind enough to give Jorge some coins? He has to pay for that boat."

"Of course I will."

"Good!" Sharpe said, then turned to Harper. "Is everyone changed?"

"Almost, sir."

"Get on with it!" It took another moment, but finally every rifleman, even Harper, was in a red jacket, though the largest red coat looked ludicrously small on the Irishman. Sharpe changed coats with Lieutenant Bullen and hoped the French would really mistake the riflemen for men with muskets. He had not made the men change their breeches because he reckoned that would take too much time, and a sharp-eyed voltigeur might wonder why the redcoats had dark-green trousers, but he would risk that. "What we're going to do," he told the company, "is rescue a battalion."

"We're going out?" Bullen sounded alarmed.

"No, they are." Sharpe pointed to the three Portuguese civilians. He took his rifle from Harper and cocked it. "Out!"

The three men hesitated, but they had seen what the rifleman had done to their master and they were terrified of him. "Tell them to run to the square," Sharpe said to Vicente. "Tell them they'll be safe there." Vicente looked dubious, suspecting that what Sharpe was doing was against the rules of war, but then he looked into Sharpe's face and decided not to argue. Nor did the three men. They were taken to the front door and, when they hesitated, Sharpe leveled his rifle.

They ran.

Sharpe had not lied to them. They were fairly safe and the farther they went from the farmhouse, the safer they became. None of the French reacted at first, for the last thing they had expected was for anyone to break from the house, and it was a full four or five seconds before the first musket fired, but the voltigeurs were shooting at running men, men going away up the farm track, and the bullets went wild. After fifty yards the three men cut across the marshland, and the going was much harder for them, but they were also farther away from the French who, frustrated by their escape, tried to close the distance. They moved out from behind the farm buildings, going to the edge of the marsh, aiming their muskets at the three men who were trying to pick a path through the morass. "Rifles," Sharpe said, "start killing those bastards."

The French, by running from cover, had made themselves easy targets for rifles shooting from the farm windows. There were a few seconds of panic among the voltigeurs, then they ran back to the sides of the farm. Sharpe waited as the riflemen reloaded. "They won't do that again," he said, then told them what he planned.

The red-jacketed riflemen were to leave the farm first and, like the three Portuguese, were to run as fast as they could up the track and then angle across the swamp towards the flooded stream. "Except we're going to stop by the dungheap out front," Sharpe told them, "and give the others some covering fire." Major Ferreira, his escorts, Slingsby, Sarah and Joana would go next, shepherded by Vicente, and finally Lieutenant Bullen would bring the rest of the company out. "You're our rearguard," Sharpe told Bullen. "You hold off the voltigeurs. Proper skirmish work, Lieutenant. Fight in pairs, nice and calm. The enemy will see green jackets so they won't be eager to close, so you should be fine. Just retreat after us, get into the marsh, and go for the battalion. We'll all have to wade the stream and we'll drown if it's too bloody deep, but if those three make it then we know it's safe. That's what they're doing, showing us the way."

The three Portuguese were halfway across the boggy ground now, splashing into the receding floodwaters, and their flight had proved that once they were away from the farmhouse they were in no real danger from the voltigeurs. Sharpe reckoned he would be unlucky to lose two men in this foray. The French had been shocked by the volume of fire from the farm, and they were sheltering now, most of them just wanting to get back to their encampments. So give them what they wanted. "Rifles, are you all ready?"

He crowded them by the front door, told them they must get out of the farm fast, warned them to be ready to stop by the dunghill, turn there, and fight off any threat from the voltigeurs. "Enjoy yourselves, lads," Sharpe said. "And go!"

He went first, jumping down the steps, sprinting towards the track, stopping at the dunghill, turning and dropping to one knee, and the red-jacketed riflemen were spreading in the skirmish line either side of him as he aimed the rifle at the side of the house, looking for an officer, seeing none, but there was a voltigeur taking aim with his musket. Sharpe fired. "Jorge!" he bellowed. "Now!"

Rifles fired. The French were huddled on either side of the building, reckoning they were safe because none of the farm's garrison had succeeded in making a loophole in the gable ends, but they made easy targets now and the bullets tore into them as Vicente's group ran past Sharpe. "Keep going!" Sharpe called to Vicente, then looked back to the farm as a musket ball whipcracked past his head. "Mister Bullen! Now!"

Bullen's group, the largest, came out last and Sharpe bellowed at them to form the skirmish chain and start fighting. "Rifles, back! Back!" They were all there, eighteen men in red coats, running back up the track and then following Vicente as he angled into the wetland, behind the three Portuguese who were wading the stream close to the square now. So the stream could be crossed. The square had been retreating, edging away, but Sharpe saw it had stopped now, presumably because they had seen the light company break from the farm. The battalion's red files were edged with smoke that drifted past the two flags. Sharpe looked back, amazed again because time seemed to be slowing and everything was taking on a marvelous clarity. Bullen's men were too slow in making their skirmish chain and one man was down, struck in the knee, squealing with pain. "Leave him!" Sharpe shouted. He had stopped to reload his rifle. "Fight the bastards, Mister Bullen! Drive them in!" The French were starting to move from the shelter of the farmhouse and the muskets had to stop that, had to drive them back. Sharpe saw an officer shouting, gesturing with a sword, evidently encouraging men to come out of the farm buildings and charge down the track and Sharpe aimed, fired and lost the man in his rifle smoke. A ball struck the ground beside him, ricocheted upwards; another hissed past his head. Bullen had his men in hand now, had steadied them, they were fighting properly, retreating slowly, and Sharpe turned and ran after his disguised riflemen. They were in the marsh, waiting for him. "That way!" he shouted, pointing them towards the voltigeurs fighting the north face of the square. Vicente was close to the South Essex now, plunging into the flooded stream.

Sharpe angled into the march to join his riflemen. The going was easy enough at first for he could jump from tussock to tussock, but then his boots began to stick in the glutinous mud. A musket ball splashed near him and he saw, from the spray, that it had been fired from the west, from the voltigeurs harassing the square.

Those were the men Sharpe was heading for. He would let Bullen, Vicente and the rest of the company go towards the square, but he would take his red-jacketed riflemen up onto the flank of the voltigeurs who had been doing so much damage to the battalion. Only a few of those voltigeurs were worrying about him, and they were simply shooting wildly across the stream, firing at too long a range, and Sharpe knew they were seeing redcoats, not riflemen. They reckoned eighteen redcoats could do them no damage, and Sharpe wanted them to think that, and he led his men to the edge of the flooded ground where the range to the voltigeurs was under a hundred paces. "Officers," he told the riflemen, "sergeants. Look for them. Kill them."

This was why God had made rifles. Muskets could fight each other at a hundred paces and it was a miracle if an aimed shot hit, but the rifles were killers at that range, and the voltigeurs, who had thought themselves faced only with muskets, were ambushed. In the first few seconds Sharpe's riflemen had killed three Frenchmen and wounded another seven, then they reloaded and Sharpe edged them to the left, a few paces nearer the square, and they fired again and the voltigeurs, confused because they only saw red coats, fired back. Sharpe knelt, watched an officer running with a hand holding up his saber, waited for the man to stop and point out a target, and pulled the trigger. When the smoke cleared the officer was gone. "Slow and steady!" Sharpe called. "Make the bullets count!" He turned and saw that Bullen was safe in the marshland now, the voltigeurs had followed him up the track, but none was willing to splash into the morass.

He looked back west, loaded the rifle with its stock half submerged in water, saw a man taking aim with his musket and fired at him. The voltigeurs were at last realizing that they were fighting a cruelly unequal battle and they were running back out of the rifles' range, but the cavalry, farther away, saw only a scatter of red coats and a group of the horsemen turned, drove back their spurs, and burst past the retreating voltigeurs. "Back," Sharpe called, "gently back. And edge left!" He was taking his men closer to the square now, wading through water a foot deep. He still had to cross the stream, but so did the cavalry, and those Frenchmen seemed oblivious of the flooded obstacle. Perhaps they thought the sheet of water was all one depth, just a foot or so deep, and so they lowered their sabers, spurred their horses into a canter and rode for the kill. "Wait till they're floundering," Sharpe said, "then kill them."

The front rank splashed into the flooded land on the opposite bank, then one horse went down into the stream, pitching its rider over its head. The other horses slowed, struggling now to find their footing, and

Sharpe shouted at his men to open fire. A hussar, his pigtails hanging either side of his sunburned face, snarled as he wrenched at his reins and tried to force his horse on through the stream and Sharpe put a bullet straight through the sky-blue jacket. A shell exploded in the second rank of horsemen who had pulled up when they saw the first check. Sharpe reloaded, glanced around to make sure none of the voltigeurs from the farm were coming through the swampy ground, then shot a dragoon. This was easy killing and the horsemen understood it and turned their horses and raked back their spurs so that they struggled back to the firmer ground, still pursued by rifle fire.

And there was more rifle fire now, a storm of it from the far side of the South Essex where the cazadores had come to the redcoats' aid and were driving the voltigeurs back, then the north side of the square exploded into smoke as two companies fired a volley into the flank of the horsemen who were spurring away to safety. Sharpe slung his rifle on his shoulder. "Not a bad day's work, Pat," he said, then nodded at the lone cavalry horse that had crossed the stream and marooned itself in the marsh. "They still pay a reward for enemy horses, don't they? He's all yours, Sergeant."

The cavalry were no longer threatening and so the South Essex deployed into a four-rank line, twice as thick as they would use on a normal battlefield, but safer in case any of the hussars or dragoons decided to try one last attack. That was unlikely for there were Portuguese cazadores on the battalion's left flank now, and empty marshland on their right, while the French, harassed by the cannon fire, were retreating across the valley. Best of all the light company was back.

"It went well," Lawford said. He had mounted the horse Harper had brought to the battalion. "Very well."

"A nervous moment or two," Major Forrest said.

"Nervous?" Lawford said in a surprised tone. "Of course not! Everything went exactly as I thought. Quite exactly as I thought. Pity about Lightning, though." He looked with disgust at his brother-in-law who, plainly drunk, was sitting behind the color party, then he took off his hat as Sharpe walked down the line. "Mister Sharpe! That was very pretty what you did to those voltigeurs, very pretty. Thank you, my dear fellow."

Sharpe changed jackets with Bullen, then looked up at Lawford who was beaming with happiness. "Permission to rescue our wounded from the farm, sir," Sharpe said, "before I return to duty."

Lawford looked puzzled. "Rescuing the wounded is part of your duty, isn't it?"

"I mean being quartermaster, sir."

Lawford leaned from his captured saddle. "Mister Sharpe," he said softly.

"Sir?"

"Stop being bloody tedious."

"Yes, sir."

"And I'm supposed to send you to Pero Negro after this," the Colonel went on and, seeing Sharpe did not understand, added, "to headquarters. It seems the General wants a word with you."

"Send Mister Vicente, sir," Sharpe said, "and the prisoner. Between them they can tell the General everything he needs to know."

"And you can tell me," Lawford said, watching the French go back into the far hills.

"Nothing to tell, sir," Sharpe said.

"Nothing to tell! Good God, you've been absent for two weeks and you've nothing to tell?"

"Just got lost, sir, looking for the turpentine. Very sorry, sir."

"You just got lost," Lawford said flatly, then he looked at Sarah and Joana who were in muddy breeches and had muskets. Lawford looked as if he was about to say something about the women, then shook his head and turned back to Sharpe. "Nothing to tell, eh?"

"We got away, sir," Sharpe said, "that's all that matters. We got away." And they had. It had been Sharpe's escape.