‘What are you doing?’ Consuela, the maid, stood in the doorway.

‘I’m going.’

‘You can’t! You’re weak as a kitten! Go on! To bed.’

He shook his head stubbornly. ‘I’m going.’

They tried to stop him, a gaggle of women at the foot of the stairs shouting at him and fluttering like the nuns in the convent. He thanked them, pushed gently past them, and went into the yard of the house. The yard was filled with wood shavings. The rain was cold on his face.

‘You mustn’t go!’

‘I have to go.’

He had no horse so he would walk. It was hard at first, his bruised muscles refusing to make the stride easy. He crossed the great plaza, still smeared with the marks of the exploding French shells, past the cathedral that had been saved from the flames, and the townspeople watched him silently. He looked an odd figure, a soldier with a slashed head, black eyes, walking stiffly like a man going to his death. He had not been shaved this day and he thought for a moment of stopping at one of the barbers who waited for trade by their chairs in the street, then remembered he had no money.

He crossed the Arlanzon, seeing the water pitted by the rain, and already the water was cold where it had soaked through his uniform.

‘Senor! Sehor!’

He turned. Consuela, the half-blind maid, was running after him. He stopped.

She pushed a package wrapped in oil-paper into his hands. ‘If you must go, Major, take this.’

‘What is it?’

‘Cold chicken. Cheese.’ She smiled. ‘Go with God.’

He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Consuela.’ He walked eastwards on the Great Road, following the French army that had long gone, walking to a war.

He stopped that afternoon in an orchard. He ate half of the chicken, and wrapped the rest of the food in the paper. Then, every muscle aching, he went to the stream that ran through the thick orchard grass. He knelt at its edge.

He used the fingers of his left hand to undo the bandage on his right. It came stickily away, the last tug hurting like fire and ripping the crust from the wound. He hissed with the sudden pain and thrust his hand into the water.

He flexed his fingers. He watched the blood dilute and go, wispy red, downstream. He spread his fingers wide, let the water flow into the cut, then took off the bandage that covered the wound made by the knife. The cut was on the ball of his left hand. It too bled into the water. He left his hands in the stream till they were numb.

He unwrapped the bandage from his head and dipped his skull into the water, holding his breath to let the stream flow about his hair. He drank. He took his head out, flicked the wet hair back with a jerk, and saw the horsemen.

He stayed still. He was on all fours. The horsemen were on the Great Road, hunched beneath their cloaks against the rain. They were Partisans and they rode to battle. Sharpe could see corks stuck in their musket muzzles, see the rags wrapped about the locks, see the sabres protruding from the wet cloaks.

He could have called out, he could have shouted for help and asked for a horse, but he did not. The men were fifty yards away, visible through the twisting trunks of the stunted apple trees, and Sharpe had seen their leader. He had seen the black beard that grew up to the high cheekbones, the small eyes, the broad blade of the poleaxe on the man’s shoulder. It was El Matarife. Sharpe stayed rock still as they passed, then settled back on his haunches.

El Matarife was following the French, hoping to be present when the armies met, and El Matarife was now between Sharpe and his goal.

He stayed by the stream and the rain fell on him as he thought what to do. He could only press on, he decided, and when he had waited long enough for the Partisans to be well out of sight, he stood, groaned with pain, and went back to the muddy road.

He walked. He seemed alone on the road. The fields either side still showed the damage caused by the trampling French army. Sharpe walked on the crushed crops because they gave firmer footing than the slick, muddy road.

He went through small villages, always checking first that no horsemen lingered at a wine house. By dusk he was in a wide land, no houses or horsemen in sight, with the road stretching damp before him towards the darkening east. The rain blocked his view of the hills that he knew should be on the horizon.

He was looking for shelter, hoping for a farm or at the least, a bush to keep the worst of the rain from him. There was nothing. He walked on, trying to force his pace to the fast Rifleman’s march, persuading himself that by ignoring the pain it would go away. His feet squelched in his boots and rain trickled into his eyes.

He heard a horse and turned to see a single horseman a hundred yards behind him. He cursed himself for not looking before, though there would have been nowhere to hide in this bare land even with ten minutes more warning. It was possible, he knew, that the man was simply a farmer on his way home, but the horse was bigger and stronger than a farmer’s mount. Sharpe suspected it was one of El Matarife’s men, left behind for some reason on the road.

Sharpe gripped his sword-handle. His right hand was still stiff because of the gouging of the brass telescope tube. He saw the horseman spur into a trot, then the man waved, and suddenly Sharpe was laughing and stumbling back down the road. ‘Angel! Angel!’

The boy was laughing. He jumped from Carbine’s back and put his arms round Sharpe. ‘Major!’ He was slapping Sharpe’s back. ‘You’re here!’

‘Where did you come from?’

‘Your face!’ Angel took off his cloak and insisted on putting it round Sharpe’s shoulders.

‘How the hell did you find me?’ Sharpe took the proffered flask of wine and tipped it to his lips. It felt good.

Angel had done no more than follow orders. Major Hogan had told him not to leave Sharpe and so, when the lancers took Sharpe south, Angel had followed. He had hidden himself outside Burgos, watching the Great Road to see if Sharpe was taken eastwards.

The boy had seen the explosion. Afterwards, when the last of the French had left the city and he had seen no prisoners with them, he had tried to get news of Sharpe. ‘They said you were dead.’

‘Who did?’

‘The people who worked for the French. There was one English prisoner in the castle, but the building he was in collapsed.’

Sharpe grinned. ‘I got out first.’

‘So I looked in the ruins.’ Angel shrugged. ‘Nothing. Then El Matarife came so I hid again.’

‘What did he want?’

‘There was a rumour that the French left their wounded in a hospital. It wasn’t true.’ Angel nodded up the road. ‘He went on.’

‘I saw him.’

The boy grinned. ‘So now what?’

‘We find Wellington.’ Sharpe looked at Carbine and suddenly knew that everything would be all right. He laughed aloud, his tiredness forgotten. ‘We’re going to win the bloody war, Angel. You and I, just you and I!’ He patted the patient, strong horse. Carbine would take him to Wellington, he would vindicate himself and, he laughed at the thought, do everything that Helene wanted him to do, but with his honour intact. ‘We’re going to win the goddamned war!’

The army tried to sleep. Some men succeeded, others listened to the rain on canvas, to the owls calling in the valleys and, from the hills, the howling of wolves that made the horses nervous. Children cried and were soothed by their mothers.

An hour after midnight the rain stopped and, slow and ragged, the sky cleared. Stars showed for the first time in weeks. The wind was still cold, shivering the picquets who stared into the shadows and thought of the morning.

The bugles called the army awake when the stars were still bright. The breakfast was cold. The tents were collapsed and folded. Men muttered and shivered and thanked God it was not raining. Sufficient unto this day was the evil that awaited them.