„If they can’t cross at Amarante,” Wellesley demanded that evening, „then where will they go?” The question was asked in the blue reception room of the Palacio das Carrancas where Wellesley and his staff had eaten a meal that had evidently been cooked for Marshal Soult and which had been found still hot in the palace’s ovens. The meal had been lamb, which Sir Arthur liked, but so tricked out with onions, scraps of ham and mushrooms that its taste had been quite spoiled for him. „I thought the French appreciated cooking,” he had grumbled, then demanded that an orderly bring him a bottle of vinegar from the kitchens. He had doused the lamb, scraped away the offending mushrooms and onions, and decided the meal was much improved.

Now, with the remnants of the meal cleared away, the officers crowded about a hand-drawn map that Captain Hogan had spread on the table. Sir Arthur traced a finger across the map. „They’ll want to get back to Spain, of course,” he said, „but how?”

He had expected Colonel Waters, the most senior of the exploring officers, to answer the question, but Waters had not ridden the north country and so the Colonel nodded to Captain Hogan, the most junior officer in the room. Hogan had spent the weeks before Soult’s invasion mapping the Tras os Montes, the wild northern mountains where the roads twisted and the rivers ran fast and the bridges were few and narrow. Portuguese troops were even now marching to cut off those bridges and so deny the French the roads which would lead them back to their fortresses in Spain, and Hogan now tapped the vacant space on the map north of the road from Oporto to Amarante. „If Amarante’s taken, sir, and our fellows capture Braga tomorrow,” Hogan paused and glanced at Sir Arthur who gave an irritable nod, „then Soult is in a pickle, a real pickle. He’ll have to cross the Serra de Santa Catalina and there are no carriage roads in those hills.”

„What is there?” Wellesley asked, staring at the forbidding vacancy of the map.

„Goat tracks,” Hogan said, „wolves, footpaths, ravines and very angry peasants. Once he gets to here, sir”-he tapped the map to the north of the Serra de Santa Catalina-”he’s got a passable road that will take him home, but to reach that road he’ll have to abandon his wagons, his guns, his carriages, in fact everything that can’t be carried on a man or a mule’s back.”

Thunder growled above the city. The sound of rain began, then grew heavier, pelting down onto the terrace and rattling on the tall uncurtained windows. „Damn bloody weather,” Wellesley growled, knowing it would slow down his pursuit of the beaten French.

„It rains on the ungodly too, sir,” Hogan observed.

„Damn them as well.” Wellesley bridled. He was not sure how much he liked Hogan, whom he had inherited from Cradock. The damn man was Irish for a start which reminded Wellesley that he himself had been born in Ireland, a fact of which he was not particularly proud, and the man was plainly not high born and Sir Arthur liked his aides to come from good families, yet he recognized that prejudice as quite unreasonable and he was beginning to suspect that the quiet-spoken Hogan had a good deal of competence, while Colonel Waters, of whom Wellesley did approve, spoke very warmly of the Irishman.

„So,” Wellesley summed up the situation, „they’re on the road between here and Amarante, and they can’t come back without fighting us and they can’t go forward without meeting Beresford, so they must go north into the hills. And where do they go after that?”

„To this road here, sir,” Hogan answered, pointing a pencil at the map. „It goes from Braga to Chaves, sir, and if he manages to get past the Ponte Nova and reach Ruivaens, which is a village here”-he paused to make a pencil mark on the map-”then there’s a track that will take him north across the hills to Montalegre and that’s just a stone’s throw from the frontier.” Sir Arthur’s aides were huddled about the dining table, looking down at the candlelit map, though one man, a slight and pale figure dressed in elegant civilian clothes, did not bother to take any interest, but just stretched languidly in an armchair where he managed to convey the insulting impression that he was bored by this talk of maps, roads, hills and bridges.

„And this road, sir,” Hogan went on, tracing his pencil from the Ponte Nova to Montalegre, „is a real devil. It’s a twister, sir. You have to walk five miles to go a half-mile forward. And better still, sir, it crosses a couple of rivers, small ones, but in deep gorges with quick water, and that means high bridges, sir, and if the Portuguese can cut one of those bridges then Monsieur Soult is lost, sir. He’s trapped. He can only lead his men across the mountains and they’ll have the devil on their heels all the way.”

„God speed the Portuguese,” Wellesley grunted, grimacing at the sound of the rain which he kriew would slow his allies who were advancing inland in an attempt to sever the roads by which the French could reach Spain. They had already cut them off at Amarante, but now they would need to march further north while Wellesley’s army, fresh from its triumph at Oporto, would have to chase the French. The British were the beaters driving their game toward the Portuguese guns. Wellesley stared at the map. „You drew this, Hogan?”

„I did, sir.”

„And it’s reliable?”

„It is, sir.“

Sir Arthur grunted. If it were not for the weather, he thought, he would bag Soult and all his men, but the rain would make it a damned difficult pursuit. Which meant the sooner it began the better and so aides were sent with orders that would start the British army on its march at dawn. Then, the orders given, Sir Arthur yawned. He badly needed some sleep before the morning and he was about to turn in when the big doors were thrown open and a very wet, very ragged and very unshaven rifleman entered. He saw General Wellesley, looked surprised and instinctively came to attention.

„Good God,” Wellesley said sourly.

„I think you know Lieutenant… „Hogan began.

„Of course I know Lieutenant Sharpe,” Wellesley snapped, „but what I want to know is what the devil is he doing here? The 95th aren’t with us.”

Hogan removed the candlesticks from the corners of the map and let it roll up. „That’s my doing, Sir Arthur,” he said calmly. „I found Lieutenant Sharpe and his men wandering like lost sheep and took them into my care, and ever since he’s been escorting me on my journeys to the frontier. I couldn’t have coped with the French patrols on my own, Sir Arthur, and Mister Sharpe was a great comfort.”

Wellesley, while Hogan offered the explanation, just stared at Sharpe. „You were lost?” he demanded coldly.

„Cut off, sir,” Sharpe said.

„During the retreat to Corunna?”

„Yes, sir,” Sharpe said. In fact his unit had been retreating toward Vigo, but the distinction was not important and Sharpe had long learned to keep replies to senior officers as brief as possible.

„So where the devil have you been these last few weeks?” Wellesley asked tartly. „Skulking?”

„Yes, sir,” Sharpe said, and the staff officers stiffened at the whiff of insolence that drifted through the room.

„I ordered the Lieutenant to find a young Englishwoman who was lost, sir,” Hogan hurried to explain. „In fact I ordered him to accompany Colonel Christopher.”

The mention of that name was like a whip crack. No one spoke though the young civilian who had been pretending to sleep in the armchair and who had opened his eyes wide with surprise when Sharpe’s name was first mentioned now paid very close attention. He was a painfully thin young man and pallid, as though he feared the sun, and there was something feline, almost feminine, in his delicate appearance. His clothes, so very elegant, would have been well suited to a London drawing room or a Paris salon, but here, amidst the unwashed uniforms and suntanned officers of Wellesley’s staff, he looked like a pampered lapdog among hounds. He was sitting up straight now and staring intently at Sharpe.