"They were good days, Tom," Sharpe said.

"Only because they're a long way back. Nothing like distant memory for putting green leaves on a bare life, Dick."

Sharpe held the smoke in his mouth, then breathed out. "Let's hope it's a long life, Tom. Let's hope Loup isn't halfway here already. It would be a damned pity for you all to come up here for an exercise only to be slaughtered by Loup's brigade."

"We're not really here for an exercise," Garrard said. There was a long awkward silence. "Can you keep a secret?" Garrard asked eventually. The two men had reached a dark open space, out of earshot of any of the bivouacked caзadores. "We didn't come here by accident, Richard," Garrard admitted. "We were sent."

Sharpe heard footfalls on the nearest rampart where a Portuguese officer made his rounds. A challenge rang out and was answered. It was comforting to hear such military efficiency. "By Wellington?" Sharpe asked.

Garrard shrugged. "I suppose so. His Lordship doesn't talk to me, but not much happens in this army without Nosey's say-so."

"So why did he send you?"

"Because he doesn't trust your Spanish Irishmen, that's why. There have been some odd stories going round the army these last few days. Stories of English troops burning Irish priests and raping Irish women, and—"

"I've heard the tales," Sharpe interrupted, "and they're not true. Hell, I even sent a captain down to the camps today and he found out for himself." Captain Donaju, returning from the army's cantonments with Father Sarsfield, had possessed enough grace to apologize to Sharpe. Wherever Donaju and Sarsfield had visited and whoever they had asked, even men fresh out of Ireland, they could find no confirmation of the stories printed in the American newspaper. "No one can believe the stories!" Sharpe now protested to Garrard.

"But true or not," Garrard said, "the stories worry someone high up, and they think the stories are coming from your men. So we've been sent to keep an eye on you."

"Guard us, you mean?" Sharpe asked bitterly.

"Keep an eye on you," Garrard said again. "No one's really sure what we're supposed to do except stay here until their Lordships make up their mind what to do. Oliveira thinks your lads will probably be sent to Cadiz. Not you, Dick," Garrard hastened to add reassuringly, "you're not one of the Irish, are you? We'll just make sure these Irish lads can't make mischief and then your lads can go back to some proper soldiering."

"I like these Irish lads," Sharpe said flatly, "and they're not making mischief. I can warrant that."

"I'm not the one you have to convince, Dick."

It was Hogan or Wellington, Sharpe supposed. And how clever of Hogan or Wellington to send a Portuguese battalion to do the dirty work so that General Valverde could not say that a British regiment had persecuted the Royal Irish Company of the King of Spain's household guard. Sharpe blew out cigar smoke. "So those sentries on the wall, Tom," he said, "they're not looking outwards for Loup, are they, but looking in at us?"

"They're looking both ways, Dick."

"Well, make sure they're looking outwards. Because if Loup comes, Tom, there'll be hell to pay."

"They'll do their duty," Garrard said doggedly.

And they did. The diligent Portuguese picquets watched from the walls as the night chill spread down into the eastern valley where a ghostly mist worked its way upstream. They watched the long slopes, always alert to the smallest motion in the vaporous dark while in the fort some children of the Real Companпa Irlandesa cried in their sleep, a horse whinnied and a dog barked briefly. Two hours after midnight the sentries changed and the new men settled into their posts and gazed down the hillsides.

At three in the morning the owl flew back to its roost in the ruined chapel, its great white wings beating above the smouldering remnants of the Portuguese fires. Sharpe had been walking the sentries' beat and staring into the long shadowed night for the first sign of danger. Kiely and his whore were in bed, as was Runciman, but Sharpe stayed awake. He had taken what precautions he could, moving vast quantities of the Real Companпa Irlandesa's spare ammunition into Colonel Runciman's day parlour and issuing the rest to the men. He had talked a long while with Donaju, rehearsing what they should do if an attack did come and then, when he believed he had done all he could, he had walked with Tom Garrard. Now, following the owl, Sharpe went to his bed. It was less than three hours till dawn and Loup, he decided, would not come now. He lay down and fell fast asleep.

And ten minutes later woke to gunfire.

As the wolf, at last, attacked.

The first Sharpe knew of the attack was when Miranda, the girl rescued from the high border settlement, screamed like a banshee and for a second Sharpe thought he was dreaming, then he became aware of the gunshot that had preceded the scream by a split second and he opened his eyes to see that Rifleman Thompson was dying, shot in the head and bleeding like a stuck pig. Thompson had been hurled clear down the flight of ten steps that led from the magazine's crooked entrance and now lay twitching as a flood of gore spurted from his matted hair. He had been carrying his rifle when he was shot and now the weapon skidded over the floor to stop beside Sharpe.

Shadows loomed at the stairhead. The magazine's main entrance led into a short tunnel which would have been equipped with two doors when the fort had been properly garrisoned and its magazine filled with shot and powder. Where the second door should have hung the tunnel turned in an abrupt right angle, then reversed back to the stairhead. The pair of turns had been designed to baffle any enemy shell that might have breached the magazine's entrance and in the bleak darkness the double angle had succeeded in slowing down Thompson's killers who now erupted into the tiny rushlight that burned in the great underground chamber.

Grey uniforms. This was not a dream, but a nightmare for the grey killers had come.

Sharpe seized Thompson's rifle, pointed the muzzle and pulled the trigger.

An explosion crashed through the cellar as a cluster of flames speared through a smoke cloud towards the French at the top of the stair. Patrick Harper had fired his seven-barrelled gun and the volley of pistol balls slammed into the attackers to throw them back into the angle of the corridor's last turn where they went down in a welter of blood and pain. Two more riflemen fired. The magazine echoed with the shots and the air was stinking and thick with the choking smoke. A man was screaming, so was a girl. "Back way! Back way!" Sharpe shouted. "Shut that bloody girl up, Perkins!" He seized his own rifle and fired it up the stairs. He could see nothing now except for the small shining spots where the tiny rushlights glimmered in the smoke. The French seemed to have vanished, though in truth they were merely trying to negotiate the barricade of screaming, bleeding, twitching men who had been hurled back by Harper's volley and the fusillade of rifle bullets.

There was a second stair at the magazine's end, a stair that twisted up to the ramparts and was designed to let ammunition be delivered direct to the firestep rather than be carried through the fort's courtyard. "Sergeant Latimer!" Sharpe shouted. "Count them up! Thompson's out of it. Go, go!" If the French already held the ramparts, Sharpe reflected, then he and his riflemen were already trapped and doomed to die like rats in a hole, but he dared not abandon hope. "Go!" he shouted at his men. "Out! Out!" He had been sleeping with his boots on, so all he needed to do was snatch up his belt, pouches and sword. He slung the belt over his shoulder and began reloading the rifle. His eyes were smarting from the smoke. A French musket coughed more smoke at the top of the stairs and the bullet ricocheted harmlessly off the back wall.