Some of Oliveira's left-hand companies reached the ramparts safely. Loup saw the dark uniforms streaming up an ammunition ramp and was content to let them go. If they crossed the wall and fled out into the valleys then the remainder of his dragoons would hunt them down like vermin, while if they stayed on the ramparts his men inside the San Isidro Fort would do the same. Loup's immediate concern was the men who were trying to surrender. Dozens of Portuguese soldiers, their rifles unloaded, stood with hands raised. Loup rode at one such man, smiled, then cut down with a backswing that half severed the man's head. "No prisoners!" Loup called to his men. "No prisoners!" His withdrawal from the fort could not be slowed by prisoners and, besides, the slaughter of a whole battalion would serve to warn Wellington's army that in reaching the Spanish frontier they had encountered a new and harder enemy than the troops they had chased away from Lisbon. "Kill them all!" Loup shouted. A caзador aimed at Loup, fired, and the bullet slapped inches past the Brigadier's short grey beard. Loup laughed, spurred his grey horse and threaded his way through the panicking infantry to hunt down the wretch who had dared try to kill him. The man ran desperately, but Loup cantered up behind and slashed his sword in an underhand swing that laid the man's spine open to the night. The man fell, writhing and screaming. "Leave him!" Loup called to a French infantryman tempted to give the wretch his coup de grвce. "Let him die hard," Loup said. "He deserves it."

Some of the survivors of Oliveira's battalion opened a galling rifle fire from the walls and Loup wheeled away from it. "Dragoons! Dismount!" He would let his dismounted cavalry hunt down the defiant survivors while his infantry dealt with the Real Companпa Irlandesa and the riflemen who seemed to have taken refuge in the barracks buildings. That was a pity. Loup had hoped that his advance guard would have trapped Sharpe and his damned greenjackets in the magazine, and that by now Loup would have had the pleasure of meting out an exquisitely painful revenge for the two men Sharpe had killed, but instead the rifleman had temporarily escaped and would need to be dug out of the barracks like a fox being unearthed at the end of a day's good run. Loup tilted his watch's face to the moon as he tried to work out just how much time he had left to break the barracks apart.

"Monsieur!" a voice shouted as the Brigadier closed his watch and slid out of his saddle. "Monsieur!"

Loup turned to see a thin-faced and angry Portuguese officer in the firm grip of a tall French corporal. "Monsieur?" Loup responded politely.

"My name is Colonel Oliveira, and I must protest, monsieur.My men are surrendering and your men are killing still! We are your prisoners!"

Loup fished a cigar from his sabretache and stooped to a dying fire to find an ember that would serve to light the tobacco. "Good soldiers don't surrender," he said to Oliveira, "they just die."

"But we are surrendering," Oliveira insisted bitterly. "Take my sword."

Loup straightened, sucked on the cigar and nodded to the Corporal. "Let him go, Jean."

Oliveira shook himself free of the Corporal's grip. "I must protest, monsieur," he said angrily. "Your soldiers are killing men who have their hands raised."

Loup shrugged. "Terrible things happen in war, Colonel. Now give me your sword."

Oliveira drew his sabre, reversed the blade and held the hilt towards the hard-faced dragoon. "I am your prisoner, monsieur," he said in a voice thickened by shame and anger.

"You hear that!" Loup shouted so that all his men could hear. "They have surrendered! They are our prisoners! See? I have their Colonel's sabre!" He took the sabre from Oliveira and flourished it in the smoky air. Gallantry insisted he should now give the weapon back to his defeated enemy on a promise of parole, but instead Loup hefted the blade as though judging its effectiveness. "A passable weapon," he said grudgingly, then looked into Oliveira's eyes. "Where are your colours, Colonel?"

"We destroyed them," Oliveira said defiantly. "We burned them."

The sabre slashed silver in the moonlight and blood seeped black from the slash on Oliveira's face where the steel had sliced across his left eye and his nose. "I don't believe you," Loup said, then waited until the shocked and bleeding Colonel had recovered his wits. "Where are your colours, Colonel?" Loup asked again.

"Go to hell," Oliveira said. "You and your filthy country." He had one hand pressed over his wounded eye.

Loup tossed the sabre to the Corporal. "Find out where the colours are, Jean, then kill the fool. Cut him if he won't tell you. A man usually loosens his tongue to keep his balls screwed on tight. And the rest of you," he shouted at his men who had paused to watch the confrontation between the two commanding officers, "this isn't a damned harvest festival, it's a battle. So start doing your job! Kill the bastards!"

The screams began again. Loup drew on his cigar, brushed his hands and walked towards the barracks.

The Dona Juanita's hounds began to howl. The sound set more children crying, but one glance from Sharpe was enough to make the mothers quell their infants' misery. A horse whinnied. Through one of the loopholes Sharpe could see that the French were leading away the horses captured from the Portuguese officers. He assumed the Irish company's horses had already been taken away. It had gone quiet in the barracks. Most of the French attackers had pursued the Portuguese, leaving just enough infantrymen behind to keep the trapped men blocked inside the barracks. Every few seconds a musket ball cracked against the stone, a reminder to Sharpe and his men that the French were still watching every blocked-up door and window.

"Bastards will have captured poor old Runcibubble," Hagman said. "I can't see the General living on prisoners' rations."

"Runciman's an officer, Dan," Cooper said. Cooper was aiming his rifle through one of the loopholes, stalking a target. "He won't live on rations. He'll give his parole and be feeding on proper Frog victuals. He'll get even fatter. Got you, you bastard." He pulled his trigger, then slid the rifle inside to let another man take his place. Sharpe suspected that the erstwhile Wagon Master General would be lucky to be a prisoner because if Loup was fighting true to his reputation then it was more likely that Runciman was lying slaughtered in his bed with his flannel nightdress and tasselled woollen cap soaked in blood.

"Captain Sharpe, sir!" Harper called from the far end of the block. "Here, sir!"

Sharpe worked his way between the straw mattresses that lay on the beaten earth floor. The air inside the blocked-up barracks was fetid and the few wicks still alight were guttering. A woman spat as Sharpe went by and Sharpe turned on her. "You'd rather be out there being raped, you stupid bitch? I'll bloody well throw you out, if that's what you want."

"No, seсor," she shrank away from his anger.

The woman's husband, crouching at a loophole, tried to apologize for his wife. "It's just that the women are frightened, sir."

"So are we. Anyone but a fool would be frightened, but that doesn't mean you lose your manners." Sharpe hurried on to where Harper was kneeling beside the pile of straw-filled sacks that had served as mattresses and which now blocked the door.

"There's a man calling you, sir," Harper said. "I think it's Captain Donaju."

Sharpe crouched near the loophole next to the barricaded door. "Donaju! Is that you?"

"I'm in the men's barracks, Sharpe. Just to let you know that we're all well."

"How did you escape the gatehouse?"

"Through the door to the ramparts. There's half a dozen officers here."