He turned away from the house, to his Company, and he knew that he had become obsessed with this woman. It seemed to him to be ridiculous, to be an ambition of impossible proportions, but now he was snagged on it. His job was to kill Leroux, to protect the unknown figure of El Mirador, yet his mind stayed with La Marquesa.

“Sir?” Harper came to formal attention. “Company ready for inspection, sir!”

“Lieutenant Price!”

“Sir?”

“Weapons, please.” Sharpe trusted his men. None would go into battle with unserviceable weapons. Price could look at them, tug at screwed flints, feel bayonet edges, but he would find nothing. Sharpe could hear the assault troops being paraded. They were all Light troops, the best of their Battalions, and they were assembling way back from the wasteland, hoping that the sudden eruption of the attack would take the French by surprise. The siege guns still fired. Four eighteen pounders had been dragged across the fords and brought to the city and the huge, iron guns hammered at the forts.

“Listen to me.” He spoke quietly. “We’re not here for heroics. It’s not our job to capture the forts, understand?” They nodded. Some grinned. “The other Light companies do that. Our job is to find one man, the man we captured. So we stay behind the attack. If we can we move to one side, out of the firing line. I don’t want casualties. Keep your heads down. It’s skirmish order all the way. If we capture the forts, then our job is to search the prisoners. Normal squads. I don’t want anyone going off on their own. There’s no bloody reward so don’t go in for heroics. And remember. This bastard killed young McDonald and he killed Colonel Windham. He’s dangerous. If you find him, or if you think you’ve found him, tie the sod up. And I’m paying ten guineas for his sword.”

“What if it’s worth more, sir?” It was Batten’s voice; the whining, grumbling, never satisfied Batten. Harper started towards him, but Sharpe held up a hand.

“It is worth more, Batten, probably twenty times more, but if you sell it to anyone else but me I’ll have you digging latrines for the rest of the bloody war. Clear?”

The others grinned. A private soldier could hardly expect to sell a valuable sword on the open market. He would be accused of stealing it, and the penalty for theft could be hanging. Some Sergeants would pay more, but not much more, and make their profit in Lisbon. Ten guineas was a big sum, more than a year’s wages after deductions and the Company knew it was a fair offer. Sharpe raised his voice again. “No bayonets. Load, but flints down. We don’t want them knowing we’re coming. One musket banging off and they’ll be giving us canister for supper.” He nodded at Harper. “Right turn, you know where we’re going.”

Harper kept his voice low. “Right turn!”

“Captain Sharpe!” It was Major Hogan, hurrying towards the main battery where the eighteen pounders sounded.

“Sir!” Sharpe snapped to attention, saluted. In front of the Company they were formal, correct.

“Good luck!” Hogan grinned at the men. They knew him well, the Riflemen had spent weeks with him before they were forcibly joined to the South Essex, the redcoats remembered him from Badajoz or nights when he had come to seek Sharpe’s companionship. The Irish Major looked at Sharpe, turned his back to the men, and made a resigned gesture. “Good luck to you.”

“Not good?”

“No.” Hogan sniffed. “Some idiot messed up the ammunition supply. We’ve got about fifteen rounds for each gun! What the hell use is that?”

Sharpe knew he meant the big eighteen pounders. “What about the howitzers?”

Hogan had taken out his snuff box and Sharpe waited while the Major inhaled his usual huge pinch. He sneezed. “God and his Angels!” He sneezed again. “Bloody howitzers! They’re not denting the bloody place! A hundred and sixty rounds for six guns. It’s no way to run a war!”

“You’re not hopeful.”

“Hopeful?” Hogan waited as an eighteen pounder fired one of its precious, dwindling ammunition stock. “No. But we’ve persuaded the Peer to attack just the centre fort. We’re firing at that.”

“The San Cayetano?”

Hogan nodded. “If we can grab that, then we can build our own batteries there and hammer the others.” He shrugged. “Surprise is everything, Richard. If they don’t expect us…‘ He shrugged again.

“Leroux may not be in the San Cayetano.”

“He probably isn’t. He’s probably in the big one. But you never know. They may all surrender if the middle one falls.”

Sharpe reflected that it could be a long night. If the other forts did decide that resistance was futile then the surrender negotiations could take hours. There were, he guessed, a thousand men in the three garrisons and they would be difficult to search in the darkness. He glanced ruefully at the Palacio Casares behind him. There was a chance, a good chance, that he would never manage to arrive on time. Hogan caught the glance. “You invited?”

“To the celebration? Yes.”

“So’s the whole damned town. I just hope there’s something to celebrate.”

Sharpe grinned. “We’ll surprise them.” He looked round to see his Company being marched into an alleyway and he gestured at their backs. “I must go.”

Three hundred and fifty men, the Light Companies of two brigades of the Sixth Division, were crammed into a street that ran behind the houses facing the wasteland. It was the closest cover to the centre fort, the San Cayetano, but no one, apart from a handful of officers, was allowed to look at the ground they had to cover. Surprise was everything. There were twenty ladders, each surrounded by its carrying party, and they would be the first to rush the two hundred yards towards the fort’s ditch. They would jump into the excavation and then put the ladders against the palisade.

Sharpe could hear the crack of rifles, startling the swallows who flew in the dusk. Riflemen had surrounded the forts for the six days since the army had entered Salamanca, living uncomfortably in shallow pits of the waste ground, sniping at the French embrasures. The evening sounded normal. The French could not have detected anything unusual in the rhythm of the siege. The big guns fired intermittently, the rifles cracked, and as the light faded so did the sound of the firing. It would seem, Sharpe hoped, a peaceful night in the three forts built on the hill above the slow-sliding river Tormes.

A big Sergeant with a scarred face tugged at a rung of one of the ladders. It bent, fractured, and the Sergeant spat moodily against a wall. “Bloody green wood!”

Harper was loading his seven-barrelled gun, carefully measuring powder from his Rifleman’s horn. He grinned up at Sharpe. “Met that Irish priest while you were chatting with the Major, sir. Wished us luck.”

“Curtis? How the hell does he know? I thought this was secret.”

Harper shrugged, then tapped the butt of the huge gun on the ground. “Probably saw this lot march in, sir.” He jerked his head at the Light Companies. “Don’t exactly look as if they’ve come for a Regimental dance.”

Sharpe sat and waited, head back against the wall, the loaded rifle between his knees. It seemed strange, on this perfect summer’s evening, the light fading into translucent grey, to think of the vast, secret war that shadowed the war of guns and swords. How had the priest known this attack was to take place tonight? Were there French spies in Salamanca who also knew? Who might have already warned the fortresses? Sharpe supposed there might be. It was possible that the French were ready, eagerly awaiting the first attack that they would shred with canister.

Sharpe had only seen one French spy. He had been a small Spaniard, jolly and generous, who had purported to be a lemonade seller outside Fuentes d’Onoro. He proved to be a Corporal in one of the Spanish Regiments that fought for the French and Sharpe had watched the man hung. He had died with dignity, a smile on his lips, and Sharpe wondered what bravery it took to be such a man. El Mirador, Sharpe supposed, had that bravery. He had lived in Salamanca, under French occupation, and still he had sent his stream of intelligence towards the British forces in Portugal. Tonight Sharpe was fighting for that brave man, for El Mirador, and he looked up at the fading light and knew that the attack must come soon.