‘No, Mr Sharpe.’ Ducos was behind the table, sitting again. ‘When they ask me how you died, I shall say that I offered you parole, you accepted, and that you then attacked me with the sword I had politely returned to you. My life will be saved by Sergeant Lavin.’ The Frenchman smiled. ‘But I truly hate violence, Mr Sharpe. Would you believe me if I said I do not wish you dead?’

‘No.’

Ducos shrugged. ‘It’s true. You can live. You can walk out of here with your sword. We won’t exchange you, of course, you’ll spend the rest of the war in France. We might even civilise you.’ Ducos smiled at his joke and looked down at the papers. ‘So tell me, Mr Sharpe, or even Major Sharpe if it makes you feel better, did Helene seek British help?’

Sharpe swore at him.

Ducos sighed and nodded. Lavin turned, stolid and unstoppable, and this time he punched Sharpe’s face, cutting his lips open and slashing a bloody line over his forehead with a ring.he wore. Sharpe fell again, deliberately, and this time boots slammed into his back. He cried out, also deliberately, scrabbled with his hands, and suddenly knew hope.

A twisted, bent tube of brass from his telescope was by the wall. He shouted again as a boot landed, grabbed the tube, and concealed it in his fist. A hand grasped his collar, hauled him up, turned him, and pushed him back to the wall.

It was the smallest tube in his hand. He could feel the torn, knurled rim that had held the small lens of the eyepiece. The tube was six inches in length and one end was split and jagged where Ducos had stamped on it.

Ducos waited for Sharpe’s breathing to slow, for the battered, bleeding face to face him again. ‘It may help you to know, Major, that I will ask you a number of questions to which I already have the answers. You will, therefore, suffer pain unnecessarily. Eventually you will understand the futility of that course. You were accused of murdering Helene’s husband, true?’

‘You know I was.’

Ducos smiled. ‘I arranged it, Mr Sharpe. Did you know that?’ Ducos was pleased by the jerk of Sharpe’s head, the sudden surprise in the bruised eyes. Ducos liked his victims to know who was responsible for their misfortune. ‘Why did Wellington fake your death?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sharpe’s lips were swelling. He was swallowing blood. He made his breathing ragged. He was judging distances, planning not the first death, but the second.

Ducos was enjoying the spectacle of his enemy trampled and broken. It was not the physical beating that gave Ducos pleasure, but Sharpe’s realisation that he had been outmanoeuvred. ‘You were sent to rescue Helene?’

Sharpe’s voice came Out thickened and slurred by his bleeding lips. ‘I wanted to know why she lied in her letter.’

The answer checked Ducos, who frowned. ‘The rescue was your own idea?’

‘My idea.’ Sharpe spat a gob of blood onto the floor.

‘How did you know where she was?’

‘Everyone knew. Half of bloody Spain knew.’

Ducos accepted that truth. Her fate was supposed to have been a secret, but nothing was secret that happened in Spain. Even Verigny, a gaudy fool, had eventually discovered where his lover was held. None of that worried Ducos. All that worried Ducos was the security of the treaty. ‘So you rescued her five days ago?’

‘Something like that.’

‘And General Verigny discovered you the next day?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did you sleep with her, Mr Sharpe?’

‘No.’

‘But you said that’s why you wanted to rescue her.’

‘She wouldn’t have me.’ Sharpe shut his eyes and leaned his head on the wall. The last two times he had been attacked the armed soldiers had not bothered to use their bayonets to stop him retaliating. They could see he was beaten and defenceless. They were wrong, but he must wait for his moment and he was planning it carefully. He had fallen to his right the last time and the man there had stepped back and away to give Lavin room. He must be made to do it again.

‘Did you sleep with her?’

‘No.’

‘Did she tell you why she was in the convent?’

‘She wanted a rest.’

Ducos shook his head. ‘You are a stubborn fool, Mr Sharpe.’

‘And you’re a filthy little bastard.’

‘Mr Sharpe,’ Ducos leaned back in his chair, ‘tell me what explanation she offered to you. She must have offered you some reason for her arrest?’

Sharpe shook his head as though he was having difficulty with his senses. ‘She said she had a dream about you. She was ordered to marry you by the Emperor and she saw you naked and it was the most horrid thing she’d ever…’

‘Sergeant!’

The first blow landed on Sharpe’s skull, a glancing blow, but then there was a pile-driving thump in his belly and the air rushed out of him. He forced himself to the right, was helped by a blow to his head, and then he was on the ground. ‘Stop!’

A boot thudded at his kidneys. He pulled the brass tube out of his sleeve, turned it, and gripped it with his right hand. He would have one chance only, just one.

‘No!’ He shouted it desperately, as if he was a child begging to be spared a beating, and then yelped as a boot hammered on his thigh. Ducos spoke a word in French.

The blows stopped. The Sergeant leaned down to haul Sharpe up by his collar. The other three men were standing back, weapons lowered, grins on their faces.

Lavin pulled Sharpe up and never saw the hand that struck up with the jagged brass tube.

Sharpe bellowed in anger, the war shout. They thought him weak and beaten, but he had one fight in him and they would learn what a Rifleman was in a fight.

The tube, jagged brass edges splayed at its end, struck Lavin’s groin and Sharpe twisted it, pushed and gouged as the Sergeant let go of him and screamed a horrid, high scream and dropped his hands to the blood and pain, but already Sharpe had let the tube go, was rising to the Sergeant’s right, was moving with all his speed and filling the room with his battle-shout.

The Sergeant’s body blocked two men. The third raised his musket, but the muzzle was seized, pulled, and the heel of Sharpe’s right hand struck the man’s moustache, breaking bone, snapping the head back, then Sharpe dropped his bleeding hand to the musket’s lock, turned the gun, and pulled the trigger.

The two remaining men had dared not fire for fear of their own comrades. Seconds only had passed since the Sergeant had stooped to pick up the broken English officer. Now a musket belched smoke and noise.

One man fell, the musket ball in his lungs, and Sharpe hammered back with the brass butt at the man whose musket he had taken and who still grappled with him. The butt hit the man’s head, but he dragged Sharpe down, close to the bleeding, sobbing Sergeant, and the room echoed to a second musket shot, hammering louder than thunder in the room, drowning even the agony of Sergeant Lavin.

Sharpe twisted, heaved, flailed with the musket at the man who had fired as he fell. He still shouted, knowing that men are frightened by noise, by savagery, and he wrenched his right foot free from the man who held it, rose snarling from the bloody floor and lunged with his captured bayonet in short, professional strokes at the last of his enemies still standing. Ducos, his mouth open, was standing terrified at the door. He had no weapon.

The bayonets clashed, Sharpe pushed his opponent’s aside, lunged again, then broke to his right, to the table, seized the sword and his voice was triumphant as he swung it, the scabbard scraping free and flying across the room, and he sliced down with the blade, shouting in savage victory, and cut into the last man’s neck, dragging the blade back against bone and blood. He saw the man begin to fall, then finished him off with a lunge that was dragged downwards by the dying man. In seconds, just seconds, he had killed two men and wounded two others.

He twisted and jerked the sword free, then turned to the door. ‘Ducos!’