„Shall we go there?” Vicente prompted Sharpe.

„Maybe,” Sharpe responded cautiously. He was tempted because the building would offer a marvelous view of the city, but he still could not believe the French would leave the seminary empty. „We’ll go further along the bank first, though.”

He led with his riflemen. Their green jackets blended better with the leaves, offering them a small advantage if there was a French picquet ahead, but they saw no one. Nor did Sharpe see any activity on the southern bank, yet the guns were still firing and now, over the loom of the seminary hill, he could see a dirty white cloud of gun smoke being pumped into the river valley.

There were more buildings now, many of them small houses built close to the river, and their gardens were a maze offences, vines and olive trees that hid Sharpe’s men as they went on westward. Above Sharpe, to his right, the seminary was a great threat in the sky, its serried windows blank and black, and Sharpe could not rid himself of the fear that a horde of French soldiers were hidden behind that sun-glossed cliff of stone and glass, yet every time he looked he saw no movement.

Then, suddenly, there was a single French soldier just ahead. Sharpe had turned a corner and there the man was. He was in the middle of a cobbled slipway that led from a boat builder’s shed to the river, and he was crouching to play with a puppy. Sharpe desperately beckoned for his men to stop. The enemy was an infantryman, and he was only seven or eight paces away, utterly oblivious, his back to Sharpe and his shako and musket on the cobblestones, letting the puppy playfully nip his right hand. And if there was one French soldier there had to be more. Had to be! Sharpe stared past the man to where a stand of poplars and thick bushes edged the slipway’s far side. Was there a patrol there? He could see no sign of one, nor any activity among the boatyard’s tumbledown sheds.

Then the Frenchman either heard the scuff of a boot or else sensed he was being watched for he stood and turned, then realized his musket was still on the ground and he stooped for it, then froze when Sharpe’s rifle pointed at his face. Sharpe shook his head, then jerked the rifle to indicate that the Frenchman should stand up straight. The man obeyed. He was a youngster, scarce older than Pendleton or Perkins, with a round, guileless face. He looked scared and took an involuntary step back as Sharpe came fast toward him, then he whimpered as Sharpe tugged him by the jacket back around the corner. Sharpe pushed him to the ground, took his bayonet from its scabbard and threw it into the river. „Tie him up,” he ordered Tongue.

„Slit his throat,” Tongue suggested, „it’s easier.”

„Tie him up,” Sharpe insisted, „gag him, and make a good job of it.” He beckoned Vicente forward. „He’s the only one I’ve seen.”

„There must be more,” Vicente declared.

„God knows where they are.”

Sharpe went back to the corner, peered around and saw nothing except the puppy which was now trying to drag the Frenchman’s musket across the cobbles by its sling. He gestured for Harper to join him. „I can’t see anyone,” Sharpe whispered.

„He can’t have been alone,” Harper said.

Yet still no one moved. „I want to get into those trees, Pat,” Sharpe hissed, nodding across the slipway.

„Run like shit, sir,” Harper said, and the two of them sprinted across the open space and threw themselves into the trees. No musket flared, no one shouted, but the puppy, thinking it was a game, followed them. „Go back to your mother!” Harper hissed at the dog which just barked at him.

„Jesus!” Sharpe said, not because of the noise the dog was making, but because he could see boats. The French were supposed to have destroyed or taken every vessel along the Douro, but in front of him, stranded by the falling tide on the muddy outer bank of a great bend in the river, were three huge wine barges. Three! He wondered if they had been holed and, while Harper kept the puppy quiet, he waded through the sticky mud and hauled himself aboard the nearest barge. He was hidden from anyone on the north bank by thick trees, which was perhaps why the French had somehow missed the three vessels and, better still, the barge Sharpe had boarded seemed quite undamaged. There was a good deal of water in its bilge, but when Sharpe tasted it he found it was fresh, so it was rainwater, not the salty tidewater that swept twice daily up the Douro. Sharpe splashed through the flooded bilge and found no gaping rents torn by axes, then he heaved himself up onto a side deck where six great sweeps were lashed together with fraying lengths of rope. There was even a small skiff stored upside down at the stern with a pair of ancient oars, cracked and bleached, lodged halfway beneath its hull.

„Sir!” Harper hissed from the bank. „Sir!” He was pointing across the river and Sharpe looked over the water and saw a red coat. A single horseman, evidently British, stared back at him. The man had a cocked hat so was an officer, but when Sharpe waved he did not return the gesture. Sharpe guessed the man was confused by his green coat.

„Get everyone here, now,” Sharpe ordered Harper, then looked back to the horseman. For a second or two he wondered if it was Colonel Christopher, but this man was heavier and his horse, like most British horses, had a docked tail while Christopher, aping the French, had left his horse’s tail uncut. The man, who was sitting his horse beneath a tree, turned and looked as if he was speaking to someone, though Sharpe could see no one else on the opposite bank, then the man looked back to Sharpe and gestured vigorously toward the three boats.

Sharpe hesitated. It was a safe bet that the man was senior to him and if he crossed the river he would find himself back in the iron discipline of the army and no longer free to act as he wished. If he sent any of his men it would be the same, but then he thought of Luis and he summoned the barber, helping him up over the barge’s heavy gunwale. „Can you manage a small boat?” he asked.

Luis looked momentarily alarmed, then nodded firmly. „I can, yes.”

„Then go over the river and find out what that British officer wants. Tell him I’m reconnoitering the seminary. And tell him there’s another boat at Barca d’Avintas.” Sharpe was making a swift guess that the British had advanced north and had been stopped by the Douro. He assumed the cannonade was from the guns firing at each other across the river, but without boats the British would be helpless. Where the hell was the bloody navy?

Harper, Macedo and Luis manhandled the skiff over the gunwale and down the glutinous mud into the river. The tide was rising, but it still had some way to go before it reached the barges. Luis took the oars, settled himself on the thwart and, with admirable skill, pulled away from the bank. He looked over his shoulder to judge his direction, then sculled vigorously. Sharpe saw another horseman appear behind the first, the second man also in red coat and black cocked hat, and he felt the bindings of the army reaching out to snare him so he jumped off the barge and waded through the mud to the bank. „You stay here,” he ordered Vicente, „I’ll look up the hill.”

For a moment Vicente seemed ready to argue, then he accepted the arrangement and Sharpe beckoned his riflemen to follow him. As they disappeared into the trees Sharpe looked back to see Luis was almost at the other bank, then Sharpe pushed through a stand of laurel and saw the road in front of him. This was the road by which he had escaped from Oporto and, to his left, he could see the houses where Vicente had saved his bacon. He could see no French. He stared again at the seminary, but nothing moved there. To hell with it, he thought, just go.

He led his men in skirmish order up the hill, which offered little cover. A few straggly trees broke the pasture and a dilapidated shed stood halfway up, but otherwise it was a deathtrap if there were any Frenchmen in the big building. Sharpe knew he should have exercised more caution, but no one fired from the windows, no one challenged him, and he quickened his pace so that he felt the pain in his leg muscles because the slope was so steep.