Sharpe turned and nodded at Teresa and Ramon. 'Do they know anything about the gold? About Captain Hardy?'

'They say not.' Kearsey shrugged. 'Perhaps El Catolico moved the gold and Hardy went with it. I ordered him to stay with it.'

'Then surely the girl would know?'

Kearsey turned and spoke in staccato Spanish to her. Sharpe listened to the reply; her voice was deep and husky, and even if he could not understand the language he was glad to look at her. She had long, dark hair, as black as Josefina's, but there the resemblance ended. The Portuguese girl had been a lover of comfort, of wine drunk by candlelight, of soft sheets, while this girl reminded Sharpe of a wild beast with eyes that were deep, wary, and set either side of a hawk-like nose. She was young. Kearsey had told him twenty-three, but at either side of her mouth were curved lines. Sharpe remembered that her mother had died at the hands of the French, God knows what she herself had suffered, and he remembered the smile after she had skewered the Colonel with his own sabre. She had aimed low, he recalled, and he laughed at the remembrance. She looked at Sharpe as if she would have liked to claw out his eyes with her long fingers.

'What's funny?'

'Nothing. You speak English?'

She shrugged and Kearsey looked at Sharpe. 'Her father's fluent; that's what makes him so useful to us. They've picked up a bit, from him, from me. Good family, Sharpe.'

'But do they know anything about Hardy? The gold?'

'She doesn't know a thing, Sharpe. She thinks the gold must still be in the hermitage, and she hasn't seen Hardy.' Kearsey was happy with the answer, confident that no Spaniard would lie to him.

'So the next thing we must do, sir, is search the hermitage.'

Kearsey sighed. 'If you insist, Sharpe. If you insist.' He winced again and slid down from the edge of the gully. 'But for now, Sharpe, watch for that patrol. It won't be long.'

The Major was right, at least, about that. Three hundred lancers rode from the village, trotting their horses along a track that paralleled the broken stalks of barley, and Sharpe watched them come. They carried carbines instead of lances and he knew they intended to search the hillsides on foot. He turned to the gully and ordered silence, explained that a patrol was coming, and then turned back to see the Poles dismounting at the foot of the rock-strewn slope.

A fly landed on his cheek. He wanted to crush it but dared not, as the lancers had started their climb up the steep slope, their horses left with picquets below. They were stringing into a line, a crude skirmish order, and he could hear the distant voices grumbling at the heat and the exertion. There was a chance that they would miss the gully, that by climbing obliquely up the slope they would emerge on the crest near the pile of rocks and never suspect that a whole Company was in dead ground behind them. He breathed slowly, willed them to stay low on the slope, and watched the officers trying to force the line higher with the flat side of their drawn sabres.

He could hear Kelly's breathing, someone else clearing his throat, and he flapped with his free hand for silence. A tall lancer, suntanned and with a black moustache, was climbing higher than the others. As he clawed his way up, carbine slung, Sharpe saw a tarnished gold band on the man's sleeve. A Sergeant. He was a big man, almost as big as Harper, and his face was scarred from battlefields on the other side of Europe. Go down, Sharpe urged silently, go down, but the man kept coming on his lone, perverse climb. Sharpe moved his head slowly, saw the faces staring at him, and found Harper. He beckoned slowly, put a finger to his lips, pointed at the foot of the inner slope of the gully.

The Polish Sergeant stopped, looked up, wiped his face, and turned to look at his comrades. An officer shouted at him, waved his sabre to make the Sergeant join the line, which had gone ahead, but the Sergeant shook his head, shouted back, and gestured at the skyline, which was just a few, steep feet away. Sharpe cursed him, knew that if the Light Company were discovered they would be harried eastwards, away from the gold, from victory, and this one veteran was putting it all at risk. He was climbing just below Sharpe, who craned forward as far as he dared to see the yellow, square top of the headgear come closer and closer. He could hear the man grunting, the sound of his fingernails scraping on rock, the scrabble of his boots searching for a foothold, and then, as if in a nightmare, a large brown hand with bitten nails appeared right by Sharpe's face and he summoned all his strength for a desperate act. He waited – it could only have been for a half-second, but it seemed forever – until the man's face appeared. The eyes widened in surprise and Sharpe put out his right hand and gripped the Sergeant by the windpipe, his fingers closing like a man-trap on the throat. He thrust his left hand forward, found the belt, and, half turning on to his back, he pulled the lancer up and over the rim, holding the huge man in the air with a strength he hardly knew he possessed, and he threw him, arms and carbine flailing, to the tender mercy of Sergeant Harper. The Irishman kicked the lancer as he landed, had his seven-barrelled gun reversed and brought it down, sickeningly, on the man's head. Sharpe whirled back to face the slope. The line was still advancing! No one had seen, no one had noticed, but it was still not over. The lancer was tough, and Harper's blows, that would have killed a fair-sized bullock, seemed to have done nothing more than knock off the yellow and blue hat.

The enemy Sergeant had Harper round the waist, was squeezing, and the Irishman was trying to twist the other man's head clean off his shoulders. The Pole's teeth were gritted; he should have shouted, but he must have been dazed, and all he could think of was trying to stand up, to face his opponent, and use his own massive fists to beat at Harper. The men in the gully were frozen, appalled by the enemy who had suddenly landed in their midst, and it was Teresa who reacted. She picked up a musket, turned it, took four steps and swung its brass-tipped butt into the man's forehead. He slumped, tried to rise, but she swung again and Sharpe saw the fierce joy on her face as the weapon felled the Sergeant, his face bloodied, and suddenly it was quiet again in the gully.

Harper shook his head. 'God save Ireland.'

The girl gave Harper the kind of pitying look that Sharpe thought she had reserved only for him, and then, without so much as a glance at Sharpe, she scrambled up the slope to lie beside him and peer at the enemy. They had at last missed the Sergeant. Men from the top of the line stopped and bunched uncertainly, called down to their officer, waiting as he cupped his hands and shouted up the slope. The voice echoed and faded. He called again, stopped the rest of the line, and Sharpe knew that in a few moments they would be discovered. Damn the Sergeant! He looked round, wondering if there were cover to be had on the far slope beyond the gully, knowing it was hopeless, and then he saw the girl was moving, crossing the gully and climbing out the far side. His face must have betrayed his alarm, for Kearsey, sitting by Ramon, shook his head. 'She'll manage.' The whisper just reached Sharpe.

The search-line had sat down, glad of the rest, but the officer still called to the missing Sergeant. He was climbing the hill in short, erratic bursts, uncertain what to do and annoyed by those of his men who shouted with him. He had no choice, though; he would have to come and look for his Sergeant, and Sharpe, the sweat pouring off his face, could not imagine what one girl could do that would deflect the lancers from the search.

A scream startled him, piercing, and was cut off and repeated. He slid down the rocks a few inches and turned his face up the ridge where the sound had come from. Harper looked at him, puzzled. It had to be the girl. Sharpe peered over the edge again and saw the lancers pointing up the slope. Teresa screamed again, a terrifying sound, and Sharpe's men looked at each other, then up at Sharpe, as if to ask him what they could do to rescue her. Sharpe watched the lancers, saw their uncertainty, and then he heard them shout and point up the slope. He looked to see what had excited them, and his men, watching him, were reassured by a smile that seemed to Harper to be the biggest he had ever seen on Sharpe's face. None of them down in the gully could see what was happening, but Sharpe, up on the rim, picked up the telescope and gave up caring if anyone saw the flash of light or not.