‘KKkkkKearsey’ Sharpe yelled, forgetting niceties of rank. For God's sake, where was the bastard? 'Kearsey!'

'Sharpe?' The Major was standing in a doorway, buckling his trousers. 'Sharpe?'

'Get out of here, Major!'

'My parole!'

'You're rescued!' Damn his parole.

A door opened at the end of the passage, a rifle fired, the door shut. Kearsey suddenly seemed to wake up. 'That way!' He pointed at closed doors across the passage. 'You drop outside the house.'

Sharpe nodded. The landing seemed safe. An officer had opened a door at the end of the passage, but a rifle bullet had dissuaded him from further risk. The Green Jackets were reloading, waiting for orders, and Sharpe went to the stairhead. Downstairs was chaos. The room was filled with musket smoke that was lanced, second by second, with flames as the Redcoats fired at windows, doors and passageways. Knowles had long stopped controlling the volleys. Now each man fired as fast as he could and the burning paper wads, spat after the musket balls, were setting fire to rush mats and hanging curtains. Sharpe cupped his hands. 'Lieutenant! Up here!'

Knowles nodded and turned back to his men. Sharpe found Kearsey at his side, hopping on one leg as he pulled on a boot. 'The rifles will cover them, Major! Take over!'

Kearsey nodded, showed no surprise at Sharpe's peremptory commands, and the tall Rifleman turned to the closed doors. The first was not locked. The room was empty, the window invitingly open, and Harper went through to knock out the remaining glass and frame. Sharpe tried the other door, it resisted, and he hit it with his shoulder, the wood round the lock splintering easily, and he stopped.

On the bed, hands and feet tied to the four stubby posts, was a girl. Dark hair on a pillow, a white dress, a reminder of Josefina, and eyes that glared at him over a gag. She was jerking and writhing, struggling to free herself, and Sharpe was struck by the sudden beauty, the fierceness of the face. The shots still sounded downstairs, a sudden cry, the smell of flames catching wood, and he stepped to the bed and cut at the ropes with the unwieldy sword. She jerked her head sideways, towards the room's shadowed corner, and Sharpe saw the movement, flung himself down, heard the explosion and felt the wind of the pistol ball as a man reared up from beside the bed. A Colonel, no less, in Hussar uniform, whose pleasure had been interrupted before it could begin. There was fear on the man's face. Sharpe smiled, climbed on to the bed, watched as the Colonel tried to wriggle from the corner, and then, with cold determination, pinned him prisoner against the wall.

'Sergeant!'

Harper came in, seven-barrelled gun in hand, and saw the girl. 'God save Ireland.'

'Cut her free!'

Sharpe heard Kearsey's voice on the landing. 'Steady now!' He could hear Knowles downstairs, counting off the men, sending the wounded up first. The French Colonel was babbling at Sharpe, pointing at the girl, but the sword held him and Sharpe wished he had killed the man straightaway. This was no place to take prisoners and he was trapped, not knowing what was happening outside. The girl was free, rubbing her wrists, and Sharpe dropped the sword. 'Watch him, Sergeant!'

He ran to the window, smashed panes with the sword, and saw the empty darkness outside. They could make it! The first Redcoats were at the head of the stairs, and then the French Colonel screamed, a terrible agony, and Sharpe whipped round to see that the slim, dark-haired girl had taken the Frenchman's own sabre and plunged it, point first, into his groin. She was smiling, and she was beautiful enough to catch the breath.

Harper was staring aghast. Sharpe ignored the Frenchman. 'Patrick!'

'Sir?'

'Get the men in here. Through the window! And next door!'

The girl spat at the Colonel, who had collapsed in his own blood, swore at him, and then looked at Sharpe with a glance that seemed to convey pure disdain because he had not killed the Frenchman himself. Sharpe was reeling from her, thrown off balance by her hawk-like beauty, hardly hearing the commands from the landing, the banging muskets. He snapped his attention back, despising himself, but the girl was faster. She had the Colonel's sabre, her freedom, and she ran out the door, ignoring the fight, and turned right. Sharpe followed, caution gone, just the instinct left that some things, just one thing perhaps, could turn a man's life inside out.

CHAPTER 7

Knowles had done well. The hall was on fire but empty of the enemy, and the Redcoats backed up the stairs, still loading and firing their muskets, ignoring the fresh blood that made the steps slippery, and then the Riflemen took over, the Bakers spitting into the hallway below, and Major Kearsey, sabre in hand, was pushing the men into a bedroom, towards a window, and shouting, 'Jump!'

'Aim low! Aim low!' Harper's voice bellowed at the Riflemen. Hussars were coming into the hall, choking on the smoke. Redcoats were pouring from the first-floor windows, forming up in the field beneath, and only Sharpe was absent.

Knowles looked round. 'Captain!'

'He's missing!' Major Kearsey grabbed Knowles. 'Get outside! There may be cavalry!'

The girl had run through a door and Sharpe followed, noticing, irrelevantly, a small statue of the Virgin Mary with a host of candles flickering at its base. He remembered the Catholics in the Company deciding that today – no, yesterday – was the fifteenth of August, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and he was grateful because the stairs beyond the door were pitch dark and he grabbed a candle and followed the fading footsteps. He hurried, heels sliding over steps, banging down the stairs. He cursed himself. His place was with his men, not chasing some girl because she had Josefina's long black hair, a slim body, and a beauty that had overcome him. But this was not a night for sensible action; it was a mad darkness, a gambler's last throw, and he reasoned that she had been kept a prisoner and that made her important to the enemy, and so important to him.

The rationalization lasted to the bottom of the stairs. The stairway was four-sided and he knew it had plunged below ground, into the cellars, and he was still hurtling down, almost out of control, with the candle flame blown out, when a white arm shot out and her voice hushed him. They were by a door, light leaking through its gaping planks, but there was no point in pretending that anyone on the far side had not heard their feet on the stairway, Sharpe pushed it open, ignoring her caution, and in the cellar a lantern hung from a hook, and beneath it, fear across his face, was a lancer holding a musket and bayonet. He lunged at Sharpe, thinking perhaps that he could kill with a blade point more easily than by pulling a trigger, but Sharpe had cut his teeth on just such fighting. He let the bayonet come, stepped aside, and used his enemy's own motion to run the sword blade into his stomach. Then Sharpe nearly gagged.

The cellar was spattered with blood, with bodies that showed death in a dozen horrid ways. Wine-racks stood by the walls, looted empty, but the floor was black with Spanish blood, strewn with mutilations obscene as nightmare. Young, old, men and women, all killed horribly. It struck Sharpe that these people must have died the day before, as he watched from the hilltop, killed as the French pretended the village was empty. He had lain in the gully, the sun warm on his back, and in the cellar the Spanish had died, slowly and with exquisite pain. The bodies lay in the crumpled way of the dead, their number impossible to count, or to tell the ways in which they had died. Some were too young even to have known what had happened, killed no doubt before their mothers' eyes, and Sharpe felt an impotent rage as the girl stepped past him, searching the shambles, and from far away, as if across a whole town, Sharpe heard a volley of shots. They must get out! He grabbed the girl's arm.