"I did," Lawford said, "but they're busy at headquarters, Sharpe, damned busy, and I doubt they'll worry too much about a few pounds of flour. Still, you did the right thing."

"I wasn't thinking of the flour, sir," Sharpe said, "but about Major Ferreira."

"I'm sure there's an innocent explanation," Lawford said airily, then rode ahead, leaving Sharpe scowling. He liked Lawford, whom he had known years before in India and who was a clever, genial man whose only fault, perhaps, was a tendency to avoid trouble. Not fighting trouble: Lawford had never shirked a fight with the French, but he hated confrontations within his own ranks. By nature he was a diplomat, always trying to smooth the corners and find areas of agreement, and Sharpe was hardly surprised that the Colonel had shied away from accusing Major Ferreira of dishonesty. In Lawford's world it was always best to believe that yapping dogs were really sleeping.

So Sharpe put the confrontation of the previous day out of his mind and trudged on, half his thoughts conscious of what every man in the company was doing and the other half thinking of Teresa and Josefina, and he was still thinking of them when a horseman rode past him in the opposite direction, wheeled around in a flurry of dust and called to him. "In trouble again, Richard?"

Sharpe, startled out of his daydream, looked up to see Major Hogan looking indecently cheerful. "I'm in trouble, sir?"

"You do sound grim," Hogan said. "Get out of bed the wrong side, did you?"

"I was promised a month's leave, sir. A bloody month! And I got a week."

"I'm sure you didn't waste it," Hogan said. He was an Irishman, a Royal Engineer whose shrewdness had taken him away from engineering duties to serve Wellington as the man who collected every scrap of information about the enemy. Hogan had to sift rumors brought by peddlers, traders and deserters, he had to appraise every message sent by the partisans who harried the French on both sides of the frontier between Spain and Portugal, and he had to decipher the dispatches, captured by the partisans from French messengers, some of them still stained with blood. He was also an old friend of Sharpe, and one who now frowned at the rifleman. "A gentleman came to headquarters last night," he said, "to lodge an official complaint about you. He wanted to see the Peer, but Wellington's much too busy fighting the war, so the man was fobbed off on me. Luckily for you."

"A gentleman?"

"I stretch the word to its uttermost limits," Hogan said. "Ferragus."

"That bastard."

"Illegitimacy is probably the one thing he cannot be accused of," Hogan said.

"So what did he say?"

"That you hit him," Hogan said.

"He can tell the truth, then," Sharpe admitted.

"Good God, Richard!" Hogan examined Sharpe. "You don't seem hurt. You really hit him?"

"Flattened the bastard," Sharpe said. "Did he tell you why?"

"Not precisely, but I can guess. Was he planning to sell food to the enemy?"

"Close on two tons of flour," Sharpe said, "and he had a bloody Portuguese officer with him."

"His brother," Hogan said, "Major Ferreira."

"His brother!"

"Not much alike, are they? But yes, they're brothers. Pedro Ferreira stayed home, went to school, joined the army, married decently, lives respectably, and his brother ran away in search of sinks of iniquity. Ferragus is a nickname, taken from some legendary Portuguese giant who was reputed to have skin that couldn't be pierced by a sword. Useful, that. But his brother is more useful. Major Ferreira does for the Portuguese what I do for the Peer, though I fancy he isn't quite as efficient as I am. But he has friends in the French headquarters."

"Friends?" Sharpe sounded skeptical.

"More than a few Portuguese joined the French," Hogan said. "They're mostly idealists who think they're fighting for liberty, justice, brotherhood and all that airy nonsense. Major Ferreira somehow stays in touch with them, which is damned useful. But as for Ferragus!" Hogan paused, staring uphill to where a hawk hovered above the pale grass. "Our giant is a bad lot, Richard, about as bad as they come. You know where he learned English?"

"How would I?"

"He joined a ship as a seaman when he ran away from home," Hogan said, ignoring Sharpe's surly response, "and then had the misfortune to be pressed into the Royal Navy. He learned lower-deck English, made a reputation as the fiercest bare-knuckle fighter in the Atlantic fleet, then deserted in the West Indies. He apparently joined a slave ship and rose up through the ranks. Now he calls himself a merchant, but I doubt he trades in anything legal."

"Slaves?"

"Not any longer," Hogan said, "but that's how he made his money. Shipping the poor devils from the Guinea coast to Brazil. Now he lives in Coimbra where he's rich and makes his money in mysterious ways. He's quite an impressive man, don't you think, and not without his advantages?"

"Advantages?"

"Major Ferreira claims his brother has contacts throughout Portugal and western Spain, which sounds very likely."

"So you let him get away with treason?"

"Something like that," Hogan agreed equably. "Two tons of flour isn't much, not in the greater scheme of things, and Major Ferreira persuades me his brother is on our side. Whatever, I apologized to our giant, said you were a crude man of no refinement, assured him that you would be severely reprimanded, which you may now consider done, and promised that he would never see you again." Hogan beamed at Sharpe. "So the matter is closed."

"So I do my duty," Sharpe said, "and land in the shit."

"You have at last seized the essence of soldiering," Hogan said happily, "and Marshal Massena is landing in the same place."

"He is?" Sharpe asked. "I thought we were retreating and he was advancing?"

Hogan laughed. "There are three roads he could have chosen, Richard, two very good ones and one quite rotten one, and in his wisdom he chose this one, the bad one." It was indeed a bad road, merely two rutted wheel tracks either side of a strip of grass and weeds, and littered with rocks large enough to break a wagon or gun wheel. "And this bad road," Hogan went on, "leads straight to a place called Bussaco."

"Am I supposed to have heard of it?"

"A very bad place," Hogan went on, "for anyone attacking it. And the Peer is gathering troops there in hope of giving Monsieur Massena a bloody nose. Something to look forward to, Richard, something to anticipate." He raised a hand, kicked back his heels and rode ahead, nodding to Major Forrest who came the other way.

"Two ovens in the next village, Sharpe," Forrest said, "and the Colonel would like your lads to deal with them."

The ovens were great brick caves in which the villagers had baked their bread. The light company used pickaxes to reduce them to rubble so the French could not use them. They left the precious ovens destroyed and then marched on.

To a place called Bussaco.