Sprinting over the pasture, her skirt held up in her right hand and her bonnet grasped in her left, came Louisa Parker. A bellow of rage sounded from the farm, evidently her aunt’s despairing protest, but the girl ignored it. She skirted a fallen, bleeding horse. A Frenchman began running in pursuit, but Hagman dropped the man with a single shot.

“Lieutenant! Lieutenant!” Louisa shouted.

“God Almighty!” Harper laughed as the girl, gasping for breath and eyes wide with the excitement of the moment, crashed into the gully and threw herself at Sharpe as though he could protect her against all the world.

Sharpe, exhilarated by her arrival, opened his arms to check her headlong flight. For a second she clung to him, laughing and breathless, then she drew away. Sharpe’s men cheered the girl’s defiance.

“Lieutenant!” Vivar had spurred back to hasten the Riflemen’s retreat, and now stared with amazement at the girl at Sharpe’s side. “Lieutenant?”

But there was no time for explanations, no time for anything but the panicked flight eastwards, away from the sea’s safety, and back to the mysteries enshrined in Bias Vivar’s strongbox. The wild goose was safe.

CHAPTER 10

They journeyed throughout that night, climbing ever higher and always into the teeth of a wind that brought the chill from the snow which lay in the gullies of the upper slopes. Past midnight, from a wooded spur, Sharpe saw the far off gleam of the western sea. Much closer, and beneath him in the dark tangle of the lowlands, a smear of camp fires betrayed where men bivouacked. “The French,” Vivar said softly.

“Who believed I was escorting you southwards,” Sharpe said accusingly.

“Later! Later!” Vivar responded, just as he had to every other attempt Sharpe had made to invite an explanation for the Spaniard’s behaviour. Beyond Vivar the Riflemen, bowed under their heavy packs, trudged up the hill path. The Cazadores led their horses to conserve the strength of the animals for the long journey which lay ahead. Only the wounded were allowed to ride. Even Louisa Parker had been told she must walk. Vivar, seeing the girl go past, scowled at Sharpe. “I leave you alone for two days and you find an English girl?”

Sharpe heard the hostility in the Spaniard’s voice and chose to answer it mildly. “She ran away from her aunt and uncle.”

Vivar spat towards the distant lights. “I heard all about them! The Parkers, yes? They call themselves missionaries, but I think they are English busybodies. I was told that the Bishop was going to eject them from Santiago de Compostela, but I see the French have done that favour for us. Why did she run away?”

“I think she craves excitement.”

“We can provide that,” Vivar said sourly, “but I have never considered soldiers to be fit company for a girl; even a Protestant girl.”

“You want me to shoot her?” Sharpe suggested acidly.

Vivar turned back towards the path. Til shoot her myself, Lieutenant, if she makes any difficulties. We have our own mission, and that must not be put at risk.“

“What mission?”

“Later! Later!”

They climbed higher, leaving the shelter of the trees to emerge onto a wind-scoured slope of thin grass and treacherous rocks. The night was dark, but the cavalrymen knew their path. They crossed a high valley, splashing through a stream, then climbed again. “I’m going,” Vivar said, “to a remote place. Somewhere the French won’t disturb us.” He walked in silence for a few paces. “So you met Tomas?”

Sharpe sensed that it was a great effort for Vivar to make the question sound casual. He tried to respond in the same careless manner. “That’s your brother’s name?”

Tf he is my brother. I can count no traitor as a brother.“ Vivar’s shame and bitterness was now undisguised. He had been unwilling to discuss the Count of Mouromorto earlier, yet the subject was unavoidable. Sharpe had met the Count, and explanations must be offered. Vivar had obviously decided that now, in the clean cold darkness, was the right time. ”How did he seem to you?“

“Angry,” Sharpe said inadequately.

“Angry? He should be filled with shame. He thinks Spain’s only hope is to ally itself with France.” They were walking along a high ridge and Vivar had to shout above the wind’s noise. “We call such men anfrancesados. They believe in French ideas, but in truth they are Godless traitors. Tomas was ever seduced by northern notions, but such things bring no happiness, Lieutenant, only a great discontent. He would cut out Spain’s heart and put a French encyclopaedia in its place. He would forget God, and enthrone reason, virtue, equality, liberty, and all the other nonsenses which make men forget that bread has doubled in price and only tears are more plentiful.”

“You don’t believe in reason?” Sharpe let the conversation veer away from the painful subject of the Count of Mouro-morto’s loyalty.

“Reason is the mathematics of thinking, nothing more. You don’t live your life by such dry disciplines. Mathematics cannot explain God, no more can reason, and I believe in God! Without Him we are no more than corruption. But I forget. You are not a believer.”

“No,” Sharpe said lamely.

“But that disbelief is better than Tomas’s pride. He thinks he is greater than God, but before this year is out, Lieutenant, I will deliver him to the justice of God.”

“The French may think otherwise?”

“I do not give a damn what the French think. I only care about victory. That is why I rescued you. That is why, this night, we travel in the dark.” Vivar would explain no more, for all his energies were needed to cajole the flagging men further and higher. Louisa Parker, exhausted beyond speech, was lifted onto a horse. Still the path climbed.

At dawn, beneath a sky scoured clean of cloud in which the morning star was a fading speck above the frosted land, Sharpe saw that they travelled towards a fortress built on a mountaintop.

It was not a modern fort, built low behind sloping earthen walls that would bounce the cannon shot high over ditches and ravelins, but a high fortress of ancient and sullen menace. Nor was it a gracious place. This was not the home of some flamboyant lord, but a stronghold built to defend a land till time itself was finished.

The fort had lain empty for a hundred years. It was too distant and too high to be easily supplied, and Spain had not needed such places. But now, in a cold dawn, Bias Vivar led his tired Cazadores under the old, moss-thick arch and into a cobbled courtyard that was rank with weed and grass. Some of his men, commanded by a Sergeant, had garrisoned the old fortress while the Major was gone, and the smell of their cooking fires was welcome after the chill of the night. Not much else was welcoming; the ramparts were overgrown, the keep was a home for ravens and bats, and the cellar was flooded, but Vivar’s delight, as he led Sharpe about the walls, was infectious.

“The first of the Vivars built this place almost a thousand years ago! It was our home, Lieutenant. Our flag flew from that tower and the Moors never took it.”

He led Sharpe to the northern bastion which, like the eyrie of some massive bird of prey, jutted above immeasurable space. The valley far below was a blur of streams and frosted tracks. From here, for centuries, steel-helmed men had watched for the glint of reflected sunlight from far-off heathen shields. Vivar pointed to a deep shadowed cleft in the northern mountains where the frost lay like snow. “You see that pass? A Count of Mouromorto once held that road for three days against a Muslim horde. He filled hell with their miserable souls, Lieutenant. They say you can still find rusted arrowheads and scraps of their chain mail in the crevices of that place.”

Sharpe turned to look at the high tower. “The castle now belongs to your brother?”