The crowd, swollen by people from the city, shouted an abrupt, brief shout in appreciation of the Slaughterman’s skill. El Matanfe acknowledged the cheer with a wave of his knife and then hooked his left hand over the chain. He stepped back, tightening it.

The power came. It pulled Sharpe forward. He could not resist it and he saw the Slaughterman smile with the ease of the task. Sharpe braced his feet, but his boots slid in the mire and he was being dragged towards his opponent. Then the jerking began, the vicious, hard jerks that pulled him off balance and he tripped, fell, and the chain was pulling his arm from his socket and when the pressure stopped he rolled to one side, knowing the knife was slicing down, only to hear the Slaughterman laughing.

‘The Englishman is frightened!’

Sharpe stood up. His jacket and overalls were smeared with mud. The crowd was catcalling, jeering him. The Slaughterman had simply made a fool of him to demonstrate his strength. El Matarife was smiling now; smiling with relief and triumph. He had made this kind of fighting his speciality, and he would play with Sharpe as Sharpe had watched him play with the French prisoner.

El Matarife beckoned Sharpe forward. ‘Come, Englishman, come! Come on! Come to your death.’

Sharpe dropped his left arm and flexed it.

He went forward.

El Matarife waited. He was crouching, the knife low. He began to shake the chain, trying to loop it about Sharpe’s blade, but Sharpe simply held his left arm out and the chain went away from him.

‘Come, Englishman.’

They were close now, four feet from each other, both men staring into the other’s eyes, both knives held low. Neither moved. The crowd was silent.

When El Matarife moved it was as fast as a scorpion’s strike, but Sharpe had fought all his life and his own speed matched that of the Spaniard. Sharpe stepped back and the blade hissed past his face. Sharpe smiled.

El Matarife bellowed at him, trying to frighten him, and then looped the chain high so it would fall over Sharpe’s head. Sharpe caught the loop as it came, jerked on it, and sliced up with his knife as the Spaniard’s guard was lifted, and Sharpe saw the sudden fear on the beast’s face as El Matarife realised Sharpe’s speed and as the Rifleman’s knife whipped upwards.

‘Uno,’ El Matarife’s right forearm was bleeding.

The crowd was silent.

Sharpe had gone back as fast as he had moved forward. The Spaniard growled. He had underestimated the Englishman, even let him live as a boast to the crowd, but now El Matarife planned Sharpe’s death. He stepped back, tightening the chain, and began again to try and tug Sharpe off balance, jerking the silver chain with massive strength, but this time Sharpe stepped into the pull, letting himself be dragged forward, and the Slaughterman had to step back and keep stepping back until he was at the edge of the fighting space with nowhere to go and Sharpe laughed at him. ‘You are a traitor, Spaniard, and your mother whored with swine.’

El Matarife roared and leaped forward. The knife seared high, coming at Sharpe’s eyes, dropped, and slashed upwards.

‘Uno!’ El Matarife was shouting it in triumph and the crowd shouted with him.

Sharpe would have waking nightmares about that moment for ever. The knife was within a half inch of slicing his belly open, slicing from his groin to his ribs and spilling his guts onto the silvered mud, and he would never know how his body moved so fast or how his right hand, seeing the opening, slashed in to chop at the Spaniard’s passing arm. He shouted as he jumped back.

‘Dos!’

La Marquesa had cried out and hidden her eyes with her hands.

The crowd breathed out a great sigh. The Englishman was not touched. El Matarife was panting, his great chest heaving beneath his black leather coat. Both his forearms were cut.

Harper breathed a huge sigh of relief. ‘God save Ireland.’

‘Will he win?’ Angel asked.

’I don’t know, lad. I tell you one thing.’

‘What?’

‘I’ll shoot that fat bastard through the gut before he kills Mr Sharpe.’

Angel hefted his rifle. ‘I kill him. I’m Spanish.’

The chain tightened as Sharpe stepped back. In his left hand he held the loose end of the chain. He watched El Matarife’s eyes, saw the moment when the Partisan would challenge the pressure of the chain, and Sharpe went suddenly forward. He lunged with the knife, going low, still watching the eyes between their mats of hair, and as the Slaughterman brought up his knife arm to spear the point into Sharpe’s face, the Rifleman whiplashed the silver chain.

The end struck the bestial face, slashing across his eyes to sting and momentarily blind him. and Sharpe turned, kicked, and his right boot-heel was going where he had wanted it to go, thumping into El Matarife’s left knee with sickening force, tearing down and away, grinding kneecap and flesh, and the Slaughterman’s eyes widened in pain as his knife came desperately down in defence.

Sharpe was falling. He saw the blade come, felt it razor into his skin, slicing through his leather boot as if it was cotton, and then he was scrambling away from the huge man and the roar of the crowd was like thunder among the wagons.

‘Una! Una! Una!’

El Matanfe jumped forward and Sharpe heard the cry of pain as his weight went onto the wounded knee. The pain gave Sharpe time to roll to his feet and the crowd, that had been noisy with anticipation, fell into uneasy silence.

Harper, who had seen the boot-heel slam into the knee, smiled to himself.

El Matanfe had not shouted the number with the crowd. His knee was on fire, the pains shooting up to his groin and down to his ankle. He had never faced a man this fast.

Sharpe laughed. ‘You’re slow, Matanfe.’

‘God damn you, Englishman.’ El Matanfe leapt at Sharpe, knife going to the Englishman’s groin, but his knee crumpled an him, he stumbled forward, and Sharpe stepped back.

Patrick Harper laughed.

El Matanfe tried to stand. Sharpe jerked back, pulling him forward. The Spaniard tried again, and again the chain jangled as Sharpe tugged it, and again the Slaughterman was pulled forward into the mud and coins.

El Matanfe tried again, and again the Rifleman wrenched him down, and this time Sharpe jumped forward and his foot was on the Slaughterman’s right wrist, pinning the knife into the mud. The Slaughterman looked up at his enemy, seeing death.

Sharpe stared at the man. ‘You let me live a moment ago, Matanfe. I return you the favour.’

He stepped away. He let the Spaniard stand, then pulled again, pulling all the huge man’s weight onto the knee so that the bestial face screwed in pain and the great, leather-clad body fell once more to the mud. The crowd was silent. The Slaughterman was on his hands and knees, staring up at Sharpe, and, as the Rifleman came close, the Partisan lunged again with his knife at Sharpe’s groin, but Sharpe had moved faster.

The loose end of the chain whipped and curled about the Slaughterman’s hand, was jerked back, and El Matanfe cried out as the chain crushed his fingers and snatched the knife from his grip. Sharpe kicked it under the half-plundered wagon.

The Rifleman went behind his enemy. He gripped the Slaughterman’s hair and jerked his head up.

The crowd watched in silence. Sharpe raised his voice. ‘You hear me, Matanfe?

‘I hear you.’

Sharpe spoke even louder. ‘You and your brother work for the French!’

‘No!’

But the blade was at the side of El Matarife’s neck. ‘You work for the French, Slaughterman. You whore for the French.’

‘No!’ And the big, bearded man tried to seize Sharpe’s wrist, but the blade moved away and Sharpe’s hand jerked back on the thick, greasy hair and his knee ground into the Slaughterman’s spine so that the huge beard jutted out above his throat.