He stared into the far distance where a frost still lay in those folds of the hills which the sun had not yet touched. A wind fretted at the high tower and thick bulwarks of the fort behind him. The wind felt immeasurably clean and cold, like a dose of commonsense after the wit-fuddling darkness and candle-stench of the night before. It was madness, God-damned madness! Sharpe had let himself be talked into it, and he knew he had also been influenced by Louisa’s enthusiasm for the whole idiotic business. He threw a whole handful of the pebbles which, like canister splitting apart from a cannon’s muzzle, spattered about the white boulder.

Footsteps sounded behind Sharpe, stopping a few paces away. There was a pause, then a surly voice. “You wanted me, sir?”

Sharpe stood. He pulled his sword straight, then turned to stare into Harper’s resentful eyes.

Harper hesitated, then took off his hat in the formal salute. “Sir.”

“Harper.”

Another pause. Harper glanced away from the officer, then looked back. “It isn’t fair, sir. Not at all, sir.”

“Don’t be so bloody pathetic. Who ever expected fairness in a soldier’s life?”

Harper stiffened at Sharpe’s tone, but would not flinch from it. “Sergeant Williams was a fair man. So was Captain Murray.”

“And they’re dead men. We don’t stay alive by being agreeable, Harper. We stay alive by being quicker and nastier than the enemy. You’ve got the stripes?”

Harper hesitated again, then nodded reluctantly. He fished in his ammunition pouch and brought out a set of Sergeant’s chevrons that had been newly stitched in white silk. He showed them to Sharpe, then shook his head. “I still say it ain’t fair, sir.” This had been Sharpe’s price: that Vivar would persuade the Irishman of his duty. If Harper would accept a Sergeantcy, then Sharpe would march on Santiago de Compostela. The Major had been amused by the price, but had agreed to exact it.

“I’m not accepting the stripes to please you, sir.” Harper was deliberately provocative, as though he hoped to change Sharpe’s mind by a display of insolence. “I’m just doing it for the Major. He told me about his flag, sir, and I’ll take it into the cathedral for him, then throw these stripes back at you.”

“You’re a Sergeant at my pleasure, Harper. For as long as I need you and want you. That’s my price, and that’s what you accept.”

There was silence. The wind fretted at the hill’s crest and fluttered the silk stripes in Harper’s hand. Sharpe wondered where such a rich and lustrous material had been found in this remote fortress, then forgot the speculation as he realized that once again he had taken the wrong course. He had let his hostility show when instead he should have demonstrated his need of this big man’s co-operation. Just as Bias Vivar had humbled himself to ask for Sharpe’s help, so Sharpe now had to show some humility to bring this man to his side.

“I didn’t want the stripes when I was first offered them,” Sharpe said awkwardly.

Harper shrugged as if to show that Sharpe’s odd admission was of no interest to him.

“I didn’t want to become an officer’s guard dog,” Sharpe went on. “My friends were in the ranks, my enemies were Sergeants and officers.”

That must have touched a sympathetic chord for the

Irishman gave a half-grudging and half-amused grimace.

Sharpe stooped and picked up some pebbles. He flicked one at the white rock and watched it ricochet down the hill. “When we rejoin Battalion they’ll probably put me back in the stores and you can go back to the ranks.” Sharpe said it as a sop to the Irishman’s pride, as a half-promise that Harper would not be forced to keep the white stripes, but he could not keep the resentment from his voice. “Does that satisfy you?”

“Yes, sir.” Harper’s agreement sounded neither heartfelt nor bitter, merely the acknowledgement of a wary truce.

“You don’t have to like me,” Sharpe said, “but just remember I was fighting battles when this Battalion was still being formed. When you were growing up, I was carrying a musket. And I’m still alive. And I haven’t stayed alive by being fair, but by being good. And if we’re going to survive this shambles, Harper, we’ve all got to be good.”

“We are good. Major Vivar said so.” Harper spoke defensively.

“We’re half-good,” Sharpe spoke with a sudden intensity, “but we’re going to be the bloody best. We’re going to be the cocks of the dirtiest dunghill in Europe. We’re going to make the French shiver to think of us. We’re going to be good!”

Harper’s eyes were unreadable; as cold and hard as the stones of the hillside, but there was a stirring of interest in his voice now. “And you need me to do it?”

“Yes, I do. Not to be a bloody lapdog. Your job is to fight for the men. Not like Williams, who wanted you all to like him, but by making them good. That way we all stand a chance of going home when this war’s over. You want to see Ireland again, don’t you?”

“Aye, I do.”

“Well, you won’t see it again if you fight against your own side as well as the bloody French.”

Harper blew out a great breath, almost in exasperation. It was plain he had accepted the stripes, however reluctantly, because Vivar had pressed them on him. Now, with equal reluctance, he was being half-persuaded by Sharpe. “A good few of us will never see home,” he said guardedly, “not if we go to this cathedral for the Major.”

“You think we shouldn’t go?” Sharpe asked with genuine curiosity.

Harper considered. He was not weighing what answer he should give, for his mind was already made up, but rather what tone he should use. He could be surly, thus ensuring that Sharpe knew of his continuing hostility, or he could match Sharpe’s conciliatory manner. He chose neither, but rather spoke in a flat and dutiful voice. “I think we should go, sir.”

“To see a saint on a white horse?”

Again the Irishman teetered between his choices. He stared at the stark horizon, then shrugged as he chose his new course. “It never does to question a miracle, sir. You just take the guts and belly out of it and you’re left with nothing at all.”

Sharpe heard the acquiescence, and knew his price was being paid. Harper would co-operate, but Sharpe wanted that co-operation to be willing. He wanted their fragile truce to become more than an agreement of convenience. “You’re a good Catholic?” he asked, wondering just what sort of a man his new Sergeant was.

“I’m not so devout as the Major, sir. Not many are, are they?” Harper paused. He was making his peace with Sharpe, but there would be no formal declaration of hostility’s end, nor any regrets about the past, but rather a new beginning that must find its halting start on this cold hillside. Both men were too proud for apology, so apologies must be forgotten. “Religion’s for the women, so it is,” Harper went on, “but I make my nod to the Church when I must, and I hope God’s not looking when I don’t want Him to see what I’m doing. But I believe, aye.”

“And you think there’s some usefulness in taking an old flag to a cathedral?”

“Aye, I do,” Harper said flatly, then frowned as he tried to think of an explanation for his bald faith. “Did you see that wee church in Salamanca where the Virgin’s statue had eyes that moved? Your priest there said it was a miracle, but you could see the string the fellow jerked to make the wooden eyeballs twitch!” More relaxed now, he laughed at the memory. “But why go to the trouble of having a string? I asked myself. Because the people want a miracle, that’s why. And just because some people invent a miracle doesn’t mean there aren’t real ones, does it now? It means the opposite, so it does, for why would you imitate something that doesn’t exist? Perhaps it is the real banner. Perhaps we will see St James himself, in all his glory, riding in the sky.” Harper frowned for a second. “But we’ll never know if we don’t try, will we?”