THE TWO riflemen crouched at the edge of the field. One, a dark-haired man with a scarred face and hard eyes, eased back the cock of his rifle, aimed, but then, after a few seconds, lowered it. "Too far away, " he whispered.

The second was taller than the first and, like his companion, wore the faded green jacket of the 95th Rifles, but instead of a Baker rifle, he carried a curious volley gun of seven barrels. "No good trying with this, " he whispered, hefting the huge gun, "only works at close range."

"If we get too close they'll run, " the first man said.

"Where can they run to? It's a field, for God's sake."

"So we just walk up and shoot him?"

"Unless you want to strangle the sod."

Major Richard Sharpe lowered his rifle's flint. "Come on, then, " he said, and the two men stood and walked gingerly towards the three bullocks. "You think they'll charge us, Pat?" Sharpe asked.

"They're gelded, sir! " Sergeant Major Patrick Harper offered. "Got about as much spark as three blind mice."

"They look dangerous to me, " Sharpe said. "They've got horns."

"But they're missing their other equipment, sir. They can't sing the low notes, if you follow me, " Harper said, then pointed to one of the bullocks.

"He's got some fat on him, sir. He'll roast just fine." The chosen bullock, unaware of its fate, watched the two men.

"I can't just shoot it! " Sharpe protested.

"It's Christmas dinner, sir, " Harper encouraged his commanding officer.

"Proper roast beef, plum pudding and wine. We've got the plums and we've got the wine, sir, so all we need is the beef and the suet."

"Where do you get suet?"

"Off the bullock, of course. It's sort of stacked around the kidneys, so it is, but you'd best shoot the poor beast first. It's kinder."

Sharpe walked closer to the animal. It had large, brown, sad eyes. "I can't do it, Pat."

"One shot, sir. Imagine it's a Frenchman."

Sharpe lifted the rifle, cocked it and aimed straight between the bullock's eyes. The animal gazed at him ruefully. "You do it, " Sharpe said to Harper, lowering the gun.

"With this?" Harper held up the volley gun. "I'll blow its head off!»

"We don't want its head, do we?" Sharpe said. "Just its rumps and suet. Go on, do it."

"Not very accurate, sir, not a volley gun. Good for killing Frogs, it is. But not for slaughtering cattle."

"So have the rifle, " Sharpe said, offering the weapon.

Harper gazed at the rifle for a second, but did not take it. "The thing is, sir, " the huge Irishman said, "that I drank a drop too much last night. My hands are shaky, see? Best that you do it, sir."

Sharpe hesitated. The Light Company had set their hearts on a proper Christmas dinner: bloody roast beef, gravy thick enough to choke a rat and a brandy-soaked pudding clogged with plums and suet. "It's daft, isn't it?" he said. "I wouldn't think twice if it was a Frog. It's only a cow."

"Bullock, sir."

"What's the difference?"

"You can't milk this one, sir."

«Right,» Sharpe said, and aimed the rifle again. "Just hold still, " he ordered the bullock, then crept a half-pace closer so that the gun's blackened muzzle was only a few inches from the coarse black hair. "I shot a tiger once, " he said.

"Go on, sir, kill it."

Sharpe gazed into the beast's eyes. He had put wounded horses out of their misery and shot enough rabbits in his time, but somehow he could not squeeze the trigger. And then he was saved from having to shoot at all because a small, high eager voice hailed him from the field's far side.

"Mr. Sharpe, sir! Mr. Sharpe!»

Sharpe lowered the rifle's cock, then turned to see Ensign Charles Nicholls rustling over the grass.

Nicholls had only just arrived in Spain and went everywhere at a tumultuous pace, as if he feared the war might get away from him.

"Slow down, Mr. Nicholls, " Sharpe said.

"It's Colonel Hogan, sir, " Ensign Nicholls panted, "he wants you, sir. He says it's the Frogs, sir. He says we've got to stop some Frogs, sir, and it's urgent."

Sharpe slung the rifle on his shoulder. "We'll do this later, sergeant major, " he said.

"Yes, sir, of course we shall."

The bullock watched the men go, then lowered its head to the grass. "Were you going to shoot it, sir?" Nicholls asked excitedly.

"What do you think I was going to do?" Sharpe asked the boy. "Strangle it?"

"I couldn't shoot one, " Nicholls admitted. "I'd feel too sorry for it." He gazed at Sharpe and Harper in admiration, and no wonder, for there were no two men in Wellington's army who were more admired or feared. It was Sharpe and Harper who had taken the French Eagle at Talavera, who had stormed through the breach of blood at Badajoz and cut the great road at the rout of Vitoria.

Nicholls hardly dared believe he was in their battalion. "You think we're going to fight, sir?" he asked eagerly.

"I hope not, " Sharpe said.

"No, sir?" Nicholls sounded disappointed.

"It's Christmas in three days, " Sharpe said. "Would you want to die at Christmas?"

"I don't suppose I would, sir, " Nicholls admitted.

The ensign was seventeen, but looked fourteen. He wore a second-hand uniform coat on which his mother had sewn loops of tarnished gold lace, then turned up the yellow-tipped sleeves so they did not fall down over his hands.

"I was worried, " Nicholls had explained to Sharpe when he arrived at the battalion just a week before, "that I would miss the war. Awful bad luck to miss a war."

"Sounds like good luck to me."

"No, sir! A fellow must do his duty, " Nicholls had said earnestly; and the ensign did try very hard to do his duty and was never discouraged when veterans of the regiment laughed at his eagerness.

He was, Sharpe thought, like a puppy. Wet nose, tail up and raring to bare his milk teeth at the enemy.

But not at Christmas, Sharpe thought, not at Christmas. He hoped Hogan was wrong and that the Frogs were not moving, for Christmas was no time to be killing.

"You probably won't have to fight, " Colonel Hogan said, then sneezed violently. He pummeled his nose with a giant red handkerchief, then blew scraps of snuff from the map. "It could be a rumour, Richard, nothing but rumour. Did you shoot your bullock?"

"Never got round to it, sir. And how did you know we were going to shoot one, anyway?"

"It am the peer's chief of intelligence, " Hogan said grandly, "and I know everything, or almost everything. What I don't know, Richard, is whether these Frogs are going to use the east road or the west, so I have to cover both, or rather the Spaniards will block the east road and you and your merry men will guard the west. Here."

He stabbed a finger down and Sharpe peered at the map to see a tiny mark close to the French frontier, and next to it, in Hogan's extravagant handwriting, the name Irati. "You'll like Irati, " Colonel Hogan said. "It's a nothing place, Richard. Hovels and misery, that's all it is and all it'll ever be, but that's where you're going." Because maybe the French were going there. Wellington's victory at Vitoria had thrown Napoleon's armies out of Spain, but a handful of French forts still remained south of the frontier and Hogan's spies had learned one of those garrisons was about to attempt an escape into France. The garrison planned to march at Christmas, in the hope that their enemies would be too bloated with beef and wine to fight, but Hogan had got wind of their plans and was setting his snares on the only two routes that the escaping garrison could use.

One, the eastern road, was by far the easier, for it entered France through a low pass, and Hogan guessed it was that route the French would choose. But there was a second, a tight, hard, steep road, and that had to be blocked as well, so the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers, Sharpe's regiment, would climb into the hills and spend their Christmas at a place of hovels and misery called Irati.