“I gave my word.” Frederickson stood his ground stubbornly.

“Then I, as your superior, have rescinded it.” Bampfylde’s voice was suddenly infused with anger at this soldier’s impertinence. “They are pirates and in the morning they will hang from a gallows. That is my decision, Captain Frederickson, mine, and if you say one more word on it, just one, then by God I will have you put under arrest like them! Now get out!”

Frederickson stared at Bampfylde. For a second he was tempted to dare Bampfylde to make good his threat, then, without a word, he turned and stalked from the room.

Bampfylde smiled. “Shut the door, Bo’sun. Now, where were we, gentlemen?”

In the fort’s yard, carpenters from the Scylla hammered six inch nails into beams that, when all the work was done, would be raised to make a gallows for the morning where Cornelius Killick, instead of dancing scorn about the Navy, would dance attendance on a rope.

Thomas Taylor, the Rifleman from Tennessee who had so far done his duty without murmur or protest, stopped Captain Frederickson close to the busy hammers. “Sir?”

“It’ll stop, Taylor, I promise you.”

Taylor, satisfied because of the fury on his captain’s face, stepped back. The air about the fort was ghostly with a mist that blurred the stars and touched frigid on Frederickson’s scarred skin. He saw his own anger mirrored in Taylor’s eyes and knew that loyalties were being stretched in this cold night. “It will stop,” he promised again, then went to wake Sharpe.

Sharpe struggled out of a dream in which he saw his wife as a flesh-rotted skeleton presiding at a tea-party. He groped for his sword, flinched from a stab of pain that seared in his bandaged head, then recognized the eye-patched face in the light of the horn-lantern that Frederickson carried. “Dawn already?” Sharpe asked.

“No, sir. But they’re beating the hell out of them, sir.” Sharpe sat up. It was piercingly cold in the room. “They’re doing what?”

“The Americans.” Frederickson told how the seamen were being dragged before Ford, while the officers were being entertained by Captain Bampfylde. Rifleman Taylor had woken Frederickson with the news, now Frederickson woke Sharpe. “They’ve found two deserters already.”

Sharpe groaned as his head split with pain. “The deserters will have to hang.” His tone conveyed that such men deserved nothing else.

Frederickson nodded agreement. “But I gave my word to Killick that he would be treated like a gentleman. They’re half killing the poor bastard. And they’re all to hang, Bampfylde says, deserters or no.”

“Oh, Christ.” Sharpe pulled his boots on, not bothering to tuck his overall trousers into the leather. He put his arms into his jacket, then stood. “Bugger Bampfylde.”

“Page nine, paragraph one of the King’s Regulations might be more appropriate, sir.”

Sharpe frowned. “What?”

“”Post Captains,“‘ Frederickson quoted, ”’commanding Ships or Vessels that do not give Post, rank only as Majors during their commanding such Vessels.“”

Sharpe buttoned his jacket then buckled the snake hasp of his sword belt. “How the hell do you know that?”

“I took care to look up the respective pages before we left, sir.”

“Jesus. I should have done that!” Sharpe snatched up his shako and led the way downstairs. “But he’s commanding the Vengeance. That gives Post and makes him a full Colonel!”

“He’s not on board,” Frederickson said persuasively, “and the Vengeance is a half mile offshore. If he commands anything, it’s the Scylla, and frigates aren’t Post.”

Sharpe shrugged. The quibble seemed dubious grounds for taking command from Bampfylde.

Frederickson clattered down the stairs behind Sharpe. “And may I remind you of the next paragraph?”

“You’re going to anyway.” Sharpe pushed open a door and went into the pitiless cold of the courtyard. The air stung his cheeks and brought tears to his eyes.

“”Nothing in these regulations is to authorize any Land Officer to command any of His Majesty’s Squadrons or Ships, nor any Sea Officer to command on Land.“‘ Frederickson paused, raised his heel, and slammed it down on the iced cobbles. ”Land, sir.“

Sharpe stared at Frederickson. The carpenter’s mauls sounded like small cannons thumping to increase the throbbing agony of his skull. “I don’t give a damn, William, if they hang Killick. The bloody Americans shouldn’t be butting into this bloody war anyway, and I don’t give a tuppenny damn if we hang every mother’s son of them. But you gave your word?”

“I did, sir.”

“So I give a damn that your word’s kept.”

Sharpe did not bother to knock on Bampfylde’s door, instead he kicked it in and the crack of the swinging wood slamming against the wall made Captain Bampfylde jump in alarm.

This time there were two Rifle officers, both scarred, both with faces harder than rifle butts, and both displaying an anger that was chilling in the fire-heated room.

Sharpe ignored Bampfylde. He crossed the room and stooped to the fallen men who had been further punched and kicked since Frederickson had left. Sharpe straightened and looked at the bo’sun. “Untie them.”

“Major Sharpe…” Bampfylde began, but Sharpe turned on him.

“You will oblige me, Captain Bampfylde, by not interfering with my exercise of command on land.”

Bampfylde understood instantly. He knew a quotation from the Regulations and he knew a lost battle. But a battle was not a campaign. “These men are the Navy’s prisoners.”

“These men were captured by the Army, on land, where they were fighting as auxiliaries to the Imperial French Army.” Sharpe was making it up as he went along. “They are my prisoners, my responsibility, and I order them un-tied!” This last was to the captain’s barge crew who, startled by the sudden shout, stooped to the bound men.

Captain Bampfylde wanted these Americans, but he wanted to preserve his dignity more. He knew that in a struggle over precedence, a struggle fuelled by legalistic interpretations of the Regulations, he would barely survive. He also felt the disarming touch of fear in the presence of these men. Bampfylde well knew what reputations came with Sharpe and Frederickson, and their ruffianly looks and scarred faces suggested that this was a battle Bampfylde could not win by force. Instead he would have to use subtlety, and in that knowledge he smiled. “We shall discuss their fate in the morning, Major.”

“Indeed we will.” Sharpe, somewhat surprised by the ease of his victory, turned to Frederickson. “Order the other Americans into proper confinement, Mr Frederickson. Use our men as guards. Then clear the kitchen and ask Sergeant Harper to join me there. Bring them.” He nodded at the American officers.

In the kitchens, Sharpe offered an awkward apology.

Cornelius Killick, who was tearing a loaf of bread apart, cocked a bloodied eyebrow. “Apologize?”

“You were given an officer’s word, and it was broken. I apologize.”

Patrick Harper pushed open the kitchen door. “Captain Frederickson said you wanted me, sir?”

“To be a cook, Sergeant. There’s some Frog soup on the stove.”

“Pleasure, sir.” Harper, whose face was almost back to its normal size and who seemed remarkably well recovered from his self-inflicted surgery, opened the stove’s fire-box and threw in driftwood. The kitchens were blessedly warm.

“You’re Irish?” Lieutenant Docherty suddenly asked Harper.

“Thai I am. From Tangaveane in Donegal and a finer piece of God’s country doesn’t exist. It’s fish soup, sir,” Harper said to Sharpe.

“Tangaveane?” The thin-faced lieutenant stared at Harper. “Then you’d be knowing Cashelnavean?”

“On the road to Ballybofey? Where the old fort would be?” Harper’s face suddenly took on a look of magical happiness. “I’ve walked that road more times than I remember, so I have.”

“We farmed on the slopes there. Before the English took the land.” Docherty gave Sharpe a sour, challenging look, but the English officer was leaning against the wall, apparently oblivious. “Docherty,” Docherty said to Harper.