“God save Ireland.” Harper reined in at Quatre Bras. In front of him, and smeared across the southern sky, was the smoke of thousands of camp-fires. The smoke betrayed an army encamped. The French troops were hidden by the folds of ground and by the woods and high crops, but the smoke was evidence enough that thousands of men had closed on Frasnes in the night to support the battalion of French skirmishers who had been baulked the previous evening.

Closer to Sharpe and Harper, around the crossroads of Quatre Bras, more men had gathered; all of them Dutch-Belgians of the Prince of Orange’s Corps. There was a smattering of musket-fire from far beyond the stream, evidence that the rival picquet lines of skirmishers were bidding each other a lethal good morning. The Baron Rebecque, waiting with a group of the Prince’s aides at the crossroads, seemed relieved to see Sharpe. “We’re concentrating the corps here, instead of at Nivelles.”

“Quite right, too!” Sharpe said fervently.

Rebecque unfolded a sketch map he had made. “The French are in Frasnes, and we’re holding all the farms beyond the stream. Except this one by the ford. We’ll only garrison that if we’re forced back to it.”

“I’d garrison it now,” Sharpe recommended,

“Not enough men.” Rebecque folded his map. “So far only eight thousand infantry have arrived, with sixteen guns and no cavalry.”

Sharpe cast a professional eye at the smoke of the French cooking fires. “They’ve got twenty thousand, Rebecque.”

“I was hoping you wouldn’t tell me that.” Rebecque, accepting Sharpe’s experienced estimate without question, smiled grimly.

“So if I can make a suggestion?”

My dear Sharpe, anything.“

“Tell our skirmishers to hold their fire. We don’t want to provoke the Crapauds into nastiness, do we?” There was no sense in inviting battle from a much stronger enemy; it was better to delay any fighting in the hope of more allied troops arriving to even the numbers who faced each other south of Frasnes.

The sky above Quatre Bras was dirtied by the camp-fires, but to the east the rising sun betrayed a much vaster quantity of rising woodsmoke. That larger smear in the sky showed where the Prussian army faced the main force of the French and where the day’s real battle would be fought. The French would be trying to defeat the Prussians before the British and Dutch could come to their aid, while the Prussians, to be certain of victory, needed Wellington’s troops to march from Quatre Bras and assault the Emperor’s left flank. But that rescue mission had been stopped dead by the presence of the twenty thousand Frenchmen encamped in Frasnes who had been sent by the Emperor to make sure that the allied armies did not combine. All that the French needed to do was take the crossroads at Quatre Bras. Sharpe reckoned it could not take the enemy longer than an hour to overrun the fragile line of Dutch-Belgian troops, and in one further hour they could have fortified the crossroads to make them impassable to the British.

The French were thus one hour from victory; just one hour from separating the allied armies, yet as the sun climbed higher and as the smoke of the dying fires thinned, the French made no move to advance on the crossroads. They did not even follow the retreating Dutch skirmishers, but seemed content to let the morning’s skirmish die to nothing. Sharpe looked to the north and west, searching for the tell-tale drifts of dust that would speak of reinforcements hurrying towards the threatened crossroads. No dust showed above the roads yet, evidence that the French had plenty of time to make their attack.

The Prince of Orange arrived three hours after dawn, excited at the prospect of action. “Morning, Sharpe! A bright one, isn’t it! Rebecque, all well?”

Rebecque attempted to tell the Prince how his troops were deployed, but the Prince was too restless merely to listen. “Show me, Rebecque, show me! Let’s go for a gallop. All of us!” He gestured to his whole staff who dutifully fell in behind Rebecque and the Prince as they spurred away from the crossroads,towards the south. The Prince waved happily at a party of soldiers who drew water from the stream, then twisted in his saddle to shout at Sharpe. “I expected to see you at the ball last night, Sharpe!”

“I arrived very late, sir.”

“Did you dance?”

“Regrettably not, sir.”

“Nor me. Duty called.” The Prince galloped past the deserted Gemioncourt farm, through a bivouacked Dutch brigade, and did not rein in till he had passed the forward Dutch picquets and could see clear down the paved highway into the village of Frasnes. There had to be some enemy skirmishers close by, yet the Prince blithely ignored their threat. His staffofficers waited a few yards to the rear as the young man stared towards the enemy encampment. “Sharpe?”

Sharpe walked his horse forward. “Sir?”

“How many of the devils are facing us, would you say?”

Very few enemy troops were actually in sight. A battery of guns stood at the edge of the village, some cavalry horses stood unsaddled in the street beyond, and a battalion of infantry was bivouacked in a field to the right of the guns, but otherwise the enemy was hidden, and so Sharpe stuck with his earlier estimate. “Twenty thousand, sir.”

The Prince nodded. “Just what I’d say. Splendid.” He smiled genially at Sharpe. “And just when are you going to appear in a Dutch uniform?”

Sharpe was taken aback. “Soon, sir.”

“Soon? I’ve been requesting that small courtesy for weeks! I want to see you in proper uniform today, Sharpe, today!“ The Prince shook an admonishing finger at the Rifleman then took out his telescope to stare at the battery of French guns. It was hard to see what calibre the cannon were for the air was already hot enough to shimmer and blur the details df the far guns. ”It’s going to be a hot day,“ the Prince complained. His yellowish skin glistened with sweat. He was in a blue uniform coat that was thickly encrusted with gold loops and edged with black astrakhan fur. At his hip hung a massively heavy sabre with an ivory hilt. The Prince’s vanity had made him dress for a winter’s campaign on what threatened to be the summer’s hottest day yet.

The sultry air pressed heavily on the men who guarded the farms that marked the perimeter of the Dutch position. If that perimeter was broken, there was still the Gemioncourt farm by the ford which could be an anchor to a defensive line, but once Gemioncourt was captured there was nothing between the French and the crossroads. Sharpe prayed that the French would go on waiting, and that the British troops who were marching desperately to reinforce the outnumbered defenders at Quatre Bras reached the crossroads in time.

By eight o’clock the French had still not attacked. At nine o’clock the Dutch troops still waited. Atten the Duke of Wellington reached the crossroads and, content that nothing yet threatened the Dutch troops, galloped eastwards to find the Prussians.

The morning inched onwards. It seemed impossible that the French still hesitated. At intervals an enemy horseman might appear at the edge of the village to gaze through a spyglass at the Dutch positions, but no attacks followed such reconnaissances, no skirmishers wormed their way through the fields, and no cannon crashed shell or roundshot at the fragile Dutch lines.

At midday the French still waited. The heat was now oppressive. The western clouds had thickened and the old wounds in Sharpe’s leg and shoulder began to ache; a sure prophecy of rain. He lunched with the Prince of Orange’s staff in the remains of an orchard behind the farm at the crossroads. Harper, of whose status none of the Dutch was quite certain, shared the princely cold chicken, hard-boiled eggs and red wine. The Prince, momentarily forgetting his orders for Sharpe to change into Dutch uniform, dominated the luncheon conversation as he eagerly expressed his wish that the French would attack before the Duke returned from his meeting with the Prussians, for then the Prince could defeat the enemy with only the help of his faithful Dutch troops. The Prince dreamed of a great Netherlands victory, with himself as its hero. He saw pliant girls offering him the laurels of victory before they fainted before his conquering feet. He could not wait to begin such a triumph, and prayed that the French would offer him the chance of glory before the arrival of any British reinforcements.