And now he was dead. His body, unrecognizable, was in the ashes of the church where other bodies, shrunken by heat, lay among the charred and fallen rafters. A dead dog was in the street, a trickle of dried blood extending from its mouth and a cloud of flies buzzing above the wound in its flank. More flies sounded inside the biggest of the two taverns and Sharpe pushed open the door with the butt of his rifle and gave an involuntary shudder. Maria, the girl Harper had liked, was spread naked on the only table left unbroken in the taproom. She had been pinned to the table by knives thrust through her hands and now the flies crawled across her bloody belly and breasts. Every wine barrel had been splintered, every pot smashed and every piece of furniture other than the single table torn apart. Sharpe slung his rifle and tugged the knives from Maria’s palms so that her white arms flapped as the blades came free. Perkins stared aghast from the door. „Don’t just stand there,” Sharpe snapped, „find a blanket, anything, and cover her.”

„Yes, sir.”

Sharpe went back to the street. Vicente had tears in his eyes. There were bodies in half a dozen houses, blood in every house, but no living folk. Any survivors of Vila Real de Zedes had fled the village, chased out by the casual brutality of their conquerors. „We should have stayed here,” Vicente said angrily.

„And died with them?” Sharpe asked.

„They had no one to fight for them!” Vicente said.

„They had Lopes,” Sharpe said, „and he didn’t know how to fight, and if he had then he wouldn’t have stayed. And if we’d fought for them we’d be dead now and these folk would be just as dead.”

„We should have stayed,” Vicente insisted.

Sharpe ignored him. „Cooper? Sims?” The two men cocked their rifles. Cooper shot first, Sharpe counted to ten and then Sims pulled his trigger, Sharpe counted to ten again and then he fired into the air. It was a signal that Harper could lead the others down from the hilltop. „Look for spades,” Sharpe said to Vicente.

„Spades?”

„We’re going to bury them.”

The graveyard was a walled enclosure just north of the village and there was a small hut with sextons’ shovels that Sharpe gave to his men. „Deep enough so the animals don’t scratch them up,” he ordered, „but not too deep.”

„Why not too deep?” Vicente bridled, thinking that a shallow grave was a callous insult to the dead.

„Because when the villagers come back,” Sharpe said, „they’ll dig them up to find their relatives.” He found a large piece of sacking in the shed and he used it to collect the charred bodies from the church, dragging them one by one to the graveyard. The left arm came off Father Josefa’s body when Sharpe tried to pull the priest free of the charred cross, but Sims saw what was happening and came to help roll the shrunken, blackened corpse onto the sacking.

„I’ll take it, sir,” Sims said, seizing hold of the sacking.

„You don’t have to.”

Sims looked embarrassed. „We’re not going to run, sir,” he blurted out, then looked fearful as if he expected to get the rough edge of Sharpe’s tongue.

Sharpe looked at him and saw another thief, another drunk, another failure, another rifleman. Then Sharpe smiled. „Thank you, Sims. Tell Pat Harper to give you some of his holy water.”

„Holy water?” Sims asked.

„The brandy he keeps in his second canteen. The one he thinks I don’t know about.”

Afterward, when the men who had come down from the hilltop were helping to bury the dead, Sharpe went back to the church where Harper found him. „Picquets are set, sir.”

„Good.”

„And Sims says I was to give him some brandy.”

„I hope you did.”

„I did, sir, I did. And Mister Vicente, sir, he’s wanting to say a prayer or two.”

„I hope God’s listening.”

„You want to be there?”

„No, Pat.”

„Didn’t think you would.” The big Irishman picked his way through the ashes. Some of the wreckage still smoked where the altar had stood, but he pushed a hand into the blackened tangle and pulled out a twisted, black crucifix. It was only four inches high and he laid it on his left palm and made the sign of the cross. „Mister Vicente’s not happy, sir.”

„I know.”

„He thinks we should have defended the village, but I told him, sir, I told him you don’t catch the rabbit by killing the dog.”

Sharpe stared into the smoke. „Maybe we should have stayed here.”

„Now you’re talking like an Irishman, sir,” Harper said, „because there’s nothing we don’t know about lost causes. Sure and we’d all have died. And if you see that the trigger guard on Gataker’s rifle is hanging loose then don’t give him hell about it. The screws are worn to buggery.”

Sharpe smiled at Harper’s effort to divert him. „I know we did the right thing, Pat. I just wish Lieutenant Vicente could see it.”

„He’s a lawyer, sir, can’t see a bloody thing straight. And he’s young. He’d sell his cow for a drink of milk.”

„We did the right thing,” Sharpe insisted, „but what do we do now?”

Harper tried to straighten the crucifix. „When I was a wee child,” he said, „I got lost. I was no more then seven, eight maybe. No bigger then Perkins, anyway. There were soldiers near the village, your lot in red, and to this day I don’t know what the bastards were doing there, but I ran away from them. They didn’t chase me, but I ran all the same because that’s what you did when the red bastards showed themselves. I ran and I ran, I did, and I ran until I didn’t know where the hell I was.”

„So what did you do?”

„I followed a stream,” Harper said, „and came to these two wee houses and my aunty lived in one and she took me home.”

Sharpe started to laugh and, though it was not really funny, could not stop.

„Maire,” Harper said, „Aunty Maire, rest her soul.” He put the crucifix into a pocket.

„I wish your Aunty Maire was here, Pat. But we’re not lost.”

„No?”

„We go south. Find a boat. Cross the river. Keep going south.”

„And if the army’s gone from Lisbon?”

„Walk to Gibraltar,” Sharpe said, knowing it would never come to that. If there was peace then he would be found by someone in authority and sent to the nearest port, and if there was war then he would find someone to fight. Simple, really, he thought. „But we march at night, Pat.”

„So we’re still at war, you think?”

„Oh, we’re at war, Pat,” Sharpe said, looking at the wreckage and thinking of Christopher, „we’re bloody well at war.”

Vicente was staring at the new graves. He nodded when Sharpe said he proposed marching south during the night, but he did not speak until they were outside the cemetery gates. „I am going to Porto,” he said.

„You believe there’s been a peace treaty?”

„No,” Vicente said, then shrugged. „Maybe? I don’t know. But I do know Colonel Christopher and Brigadier Vuillard are probably there. I didn’t fight them here, so I must pursue them there.”

„So you’ll go to Oporto,” Sharpe said, „and die?”

„Maybe,” Vicente said grandly, „but a man cannot hide from evil.”

„No,” Sharpe said, „but if you fight it, fight it clever.”

„I’m learning how to fight,“ Vicente said, „but I already know how to kill.”

That was a recipe for suicide, Sharpe thought, but he did not argue. „What I’m planning,” he said instead, „is to go back the way we came. I can find the way easy enough. And once I’m at Barca d’Avintas I’ll look for a boat. There has to be something that will float.”

„I’m sure there is.”

„So come with me that far,” Sharpe suggested, „because it’s close to Oporto.”

Vicente agreed and his men fell in behind Sharpe’s when they left the village, and Sharpe was glad of it for the night was pitch black again and despite his confidence that he could find the way he would have become hopelessly lost if Vicente had not been there. As it was they made painfully slow progress and eventually rested in the darkest heart of the night and made better time when the wolf light edged the eastern horizon.