“But…“ Again Parker was silenced by a carbine bullet. This one clanged against a saucepan that hung from a beam. The bullet punched a hole in the metal, hit the next beam, and dropped at Sharpe’s feet. He picked it up, juggling it because of its heat, then smelt it. Parker frowned in perplexity.

“There’s a rumour that the Frogs poison their bullets, sir.” Sharpe said it loud enough so that his men, some of whom half-believed the story, could hear. “It ain’t true.”

“It isn’t?”

“No, sir.” Sharpe put the bullet into his mouth, grinned, then swallowed it. His men laughed at the expression on George Parker’s face. Sharpe turned to see how the farmer was progressing with the loophole. The walls of the farm were hugely thick and, though the man’s pick had pierced a foot into the centre rubble, he still had not reached day-‘ight.

A volley of carbine shots crashed through the rear window.

The Riflemen, unharmed, jeered their defiance, but it was a defiance that the grey-haired Parker could not share. “You’re doomed, Lieutenant!”

“Sir, if you’ve nothing better…“

“Lieutenant! We are civilians! I see no reason why we should stay here and share your death!” George Parker had found courage under fire; the courage to assert his timorous soul and demand surrender.

Sharpe primed his rifle. “You want to walk out there, sir?”

“A flag of truce, man!” Parker flinched as another carbine bullet ricocheted over his head.

“If that’s what you want, sir…“ But before Sharpe could finish his sentence, there was a panicked shout from Sergeant Williams upstairs, then a rattling crash as a massive enemy volley flogged the front of the house. A Rifleman was jerked back from the window with blood spurting from his head. Two rifles fired, more shot from upstairs, then the northern window was darkened as French Dragoons, who had charged about the blind western angle of the house, filled the frame. Sharpe and several other men fired; but the Dragoons were dragging at the chairs which blocked the window. They were repulsed only when the farmer’s wife, screaming with despair and using a strength that seemed remarkable in so scrawny a woman, snatched the cauldron from the pothook and threw it at the enemy. The scalding lye snatched the French back as though a cannon had fired at them.

“Sir!” Harper was by the kitchen door. A crash sounded in the passage as the French broke down the southern door which the Irishman had not blocked as securely as the northern. A group of Dragoons had taken advantage of the larger attack to make a charge at the other side of the house and were now within the central passage. Harper fired his rifle through the kitchen door, which instantly splintered in two places as the French replied. Both bullets struck the table.

The kitchen filled with powder smoke. Men were taking turns to fire through the windows, then reloading with frantic haste. The coachman emptied his huge pistol through the door and was rewarded with a shout of pain.

“Open it!” Sharpe said.

Harper obeyed. An astonished Frenchman, levelling his carbine, found himself facing Sharpe’s sword which skewered forward so savagely that the blade’s tip jarred against the far wall of the passage after it had gone clean through the Dragoon’s body. Harper, screaming his weird battle-shouts, followed Sharpe with an axe he had plucked from the kitchen wall. He hacked down at another man, making the passage slithery with blood.

Sharpe gouged and twisted his sword free. A Frenchman’s blade scraped up his forearm, springing warm blood, and he threw himself onto the man, forcing him against the passage wall and hammering the sword hilt at his face. A rifle exploded beside his head to throw another Dragoon back from the door. The pigs squealed in terror, while Sharpe tripped over a crawling Frenchman who was bleeding from the belly. Another rifle hammered in the passage, then Harper shouted that the enemy was gone.

A carbine bullet slammed into the passage, ricocheted from the walls, and buried itself in the far door. Sharpe pushed into the room where the animals were kept and saw a wooden trough that would serve as some kind of barricade in the passage. He dragged it out, and the pigs took the opportunity to escape before he could slam the damaged outer door closed and ram the trough under its cross-members. “Lucky bloody French,” Harper said. “Pork for supper.”

The action lulled again. Dreadful squeals announced the death of the pigs; squeals which momentarily stilled.the fusillade of carbine shots which raked the farmhouse. No more Frenchmen appeared as targets. One Rifleman was dead in the kitchen, another wounded. Sharpe went to the ladder. “Sergeant Williams?”

There was no answer.

“Sergeant Williams! How are those loopholes?”

It was Dodd who answered. “He’s dead, sir. Got one in the eye, sir.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“He was looking out the roof, sir.”

“Make sure someone keeps looking out!”

Williams was dead. Sharpe sat at the foot of the ladder and stared at Patrick Harper. He was the obvious replacement, the only choice, but Sharpe suspected the big Irishman would scathingly reject the offer. So, he thought, the rank should not be offered but simply imposed. “Harper?”

“Sir?”

“You’re a Sergeant.”

“I’m bloody not.”

“You’re a Sergeant!”

“No, sir! Not in this damned army. No.”

“Jesus Christ!” Sharpe spat the blasphemy at the huge man, but Harper merely turned to stare out of the window to where puffs of smoke betrayed the position of some Dragoons in a ditch.

“Mister Sharpe?” A tentative hand touched Sharpe’s wounded arm. It was George Parker again. “My dear wife and I have discussed it, Lieutenant, and we would appreciate it if you would communicate with the French commander.” Parker suddenly saw Sharpe’s blood on his own fingers. He blanched and stuttered on: ‘Please don’t think we wish to desert you at this time, but…“

“I know,” Sharpe cut him short, “you think we’re doomed.” He spoke savagely, not because he disapproved of Parker’s wish to be safe, but because, if the Parkers went, he would lose Louisa. He could have left the Parkers on the road, safe in their carriage, but he had panicked them into flight because he did not want to lose the girl’s company. Yet now Sharpe knew he had no choice, for the two women could not be expected to endure the French assault, nor the danger of a ricocheting bullet. Louisa must go.

On the table, where the dead Rifleman lay among shattered crockery with the blood still dripping from his sopping hair, there was a piece of cheesecloth which, though grey and dirty, might pass for a flag of truce. Sharpe speared the flimsy material onto the tip of his sword, then shuffled over to the window. The Riflemen made way for him.

He reached up and pushed the sword clear of the window frame. He waved it left and right, and was rewarded with a shout from outside. There was a pause in which, tentatively, Sharpe stood upright.

“What do you want, Englishman?” a voice shouted.

“To talk.”

“Come out then. Just one of you!”

Sharpe plucked the cheesecloth from his sword, sheathed the blade, and went into the passage. He stepped over a dead Dragoon, pulled the chest clear of the northern door, then, feeling oddly naked and exposed, walked into the rain.

To talk to the man in the red pelisse.