Sharpe brought the volley gun forward. The seven half-inch balls had been rammed down on wadding and powder, but there was always a chance, a good chance, that some would roll out of the barrels the moment he pointed the gun downwards. There was no time to ram more wadding on top of the balls, so the trick of this was to shoot fast, very fast, and that meant he could not aim. He edged back, stood up, then froze as another voice spoke. "Captain Sharpe!" The speaker was not one of the men beneath Sharpe. His voice seemed to come from closer to the great doors. "Captain Sharpe. This is Major Ferreira."

So that bastard was here. Sharpe cradled the volley gun, ready to move forward and fire, but then Ferreira spoke again. "You have my word as an officer! No harm will come to you! My brother wants an apology, nothing more!" Ferreira paused, then spoke in Portuguese, presumably because he knew Jorge Vicente was with Sharpe, and Sharpe reckoned Vicente's neat, legal and trusting mind might just believe Ferreira and so he gave his own answer. In one fast movement he stepped to the edge, turned the gun's muzzles down into the alley and pulled the trigger.

Three of the balls were loose and had started to roll, and that reduced the gun's huge power, but the blast of the shots still echoed from the stone walls like thunder and the recoil of the bunched barrels almost threw the gun up and out of Sharpe's hands as the smoke billowed in the passage beneath him. There were screams in the passage too, and a hoarse shout of pain and the sound of feet scrambling as men ran from the sudden horror that had belched from above. A pistol fired, shattering a skylight, but Sharpe was already running towards the back of the warehouse. He jumped the next alley, landing on a pile of barrels that wobbled dangerously, but his momentum carried him on, scattering cats, then another jump and he was at the far end. "Found anything, Pat?"

"Bloody great trapdoor, nothing else."

"Catch!" Sharpe threw Harper the volley gun, then scrambled down, fumbling for footholds on the edges of boxes and jumping the last six feet. He looked left and right, but saw no sign of Ferragus or his men. "Where the hell are they?"

"You hit some of them?" Harper asked in a hopeful voice.

"Two, maybe. Where's the trapdoor?"

"Here."

"Jesus, it stinks!"

"Something nasty down there, sir. Lots of flies."

Sharpe crouched, thinking. To escape out the front of the warehouse meant going into the alleys between the piles of food, and Ferragus would have men covering all those passages. Sharpe could probably make it, but at what cost? At least one more wound. And he had a woman with him. He could not expose her to more fire. He lifted the trapdoor, letting out a gust of foul-smelling air. Something dead was down in the blackness. A rat? He peered down, saw steps going into darkness, but the shadows suggested there was a cellar down there, and once he was at the base of the steps he could fire up the stone stairway. Ferragus and his men would have to brave that fire to approach, and they would be reluctant to do that. And perhaps there was a way out of the cellar?

There were footsteps on the warehouse's far side, then more sounds from the top of the stacks. Ferragus had learned quickly and sent men to take the high ground and Sharpe knew he was trapped properly now and the cellar was the only option left. "Down," he ordered, "all of you. Down."

He went last, clumsily closing the trapdoor behind him, letting the heavy timber down slowly so that Ferragus might not realize his enemies had gone to earth. It was pitch black at the foot of the steps, and so foul-smelling that Sarah gagged. Flies buzzed in the dark. "Load the volley gun, Pat," Sharpe said, "and give me the rifles."

Sharpe crouched on the steps, one rifle in his hands, two beside him. Anyone opening the trapdoor now would be silhouetted against the warehouse's dim light and would fetch a bullet for their pains. "If I fire," he whispered to Harper, "you have to reload the rifle before the volley gun."

"Yes, sir." Harper could have reloaded a rifle blindfolded in Stygian darkness.

"Jorge?" Sharpe asked, and the answer was a hiss, betraying Vicente's pain. "Feel your way round the walls," Sharpe said, "see if there's a way out."

"Major Ferreira was up there," Vicente said, sounding reproachful.

"He's as bad as his brother," Sharpe said. "He was planning to sell the Frogs some bloody flour, Jorge, only I stopped it, so then he set me up for a beating at Bussaco." He had no proof of that, of course, but it seemed obvious. Ferreira had persuaded Hogan to invite Sharpe to supper at the monastery, and must have let his brother know that the rifleman would be alone on the dark path afterwards. "Just feel round the walls, Jorge. See if there's a door."

"There are rats," Vicente said.

Sharpe took his folding knife from his pocket, took out the blade, and whispered Sarah's name. "Take this," he said, and felt for her hand. He put the knife's handle into her fingers. "Be careful," he warned her, "it's a knife. I want you to cut a strip off the bottom of your dress and see if you can bandage Jorge's shoulder."

He thought she might protest at mangling her only dress, but she said nothing and a moment later Sharpe heard the ripping sound as she slashed and tore at the silk. Sharpe crept a small way up the stairs and listened. There was silence for a while, then the sudden bang of a pistol and another bang, virtually instantaneous, as the ball hammered into the trapdoor. The ball stuck there, not piercing the heavy timber. Ferragus was announcing that he had found Sharpe, but plainly the big man was unwilling to lift the hatch and rush the cellar, for there was another long I silence. "They want us to think they've gone," Sharpe said. "There's no way out," Vicente announced.

"There's always a way out," Sharpe said. "Rats get in, don't they?"

"But there are two dead men here," Vicente sounded disgusted. The smell was overpowering.

"They can't hurt us," Sharpe said in a whisper, "not if they're dead. Take your jacket and shirt off, Jorge, and let Miss Fry bandage you."

Sharpe waited. Waited. Vicente was hissing in pain and Sarah made soothing noises. Sharpe went closer to the hatch. Ferragus was not gone, he knew, and he wondered what the man would do next. Open the hatch and pour a pistol volley down? Take the casualties? Sharpe doubted it. Ferragus was hoping the fugitives would be deceived into thinking the warehouse was empty and would make their own way up the steps, but I Sharpe would not fall for that. He waited, listening to the scrape of Harper's ramrod shoving down the seven bullets.

"Loaded, sir," Harper said.

"Let's hope the bastards come, then," Sharpe said, and Sarah gave a sharp intake of breath that he ignored, then there was a sudden, weighty thump that sounded as loud as a cannon firing and Sharpe flinched back, expecting an explosion, but the thump was followed by silence. Something heavy had been placed on the hatch. Then there was another thump, and another, followed by a heavy scraping sound and then a whole succession of bangs and scrapes. "They're weighting down the hatch," Sharpe said.

"Why?" Sarah asked.

"They're trapping us here, miss, and they'll come back for us when they're good and ready." Ferragus, Sharpe reckoned, did not want to attract more attention to his warehouse by starting another firefight while there were still British and Portuguese troops in the city. He would wait till the army was gone and then, in the time before the French arrived, he would bring more men, more guns and unseal the cellar. "So we've got time," Sharpe said.

"Time to do what?" Vicente asked.

"Get out, of course. All of you, fingers in your ears." He waited a few seconds, then fired the rifle up the stairs. The bullet buried itself in the trapdoor. Sharpe's ears were ringing as he found a new cartridge, bit off the bullet, spat it out, and then primed the rifle. "Give me your hand, Pat," he said, then put the rest of the cartridge, just the paper and powder, into Harper's palm.