He took a deep breath. The last time he had been as drunk as this was in Burgos Castle, the night before the explosion, and the war in Spain suddenly seemed a long, long way off, as though it belonged to another man's life. He walked on, crossing one of the open ditches that ran with sludge thick as blood in the darkness.

He heard feet running behind him and he turned, always knowing to face a strange sound, and he saw a girl come from under the archway, stop, turn, and then walk awkwardly towards him. She had a scarf wrapped about a thin face that was bright-eyed with consumption. It, was odd, he thought, how the dying consumptives went through a period of lucent beauty before their lungs coughed up the bloody lumps and they died in racking agony.

She crossed the ditch, raising her skirts, then clumsily swayed her hips as she came close to him. The smile she gave him was nervous. 'Lonely?

'No. He smiled back. He assumed she had seen him pass and had been sent to take some coins from the rich-looking officer to make up her night's earnings.

To his surprise she put her thin arms up to his neck, her cheek on his cheek, and pressed her body against his. 'Maggie sent me. Two men followed you and they're behind you. She said it in a garbled rush.

He held her. To his right there was a gateway. He remembered it opened into an entranceway that ran between two houses. At its far end was a stairway that climbed to an old garret. A Jew had lived there, it was odd how the memories came back, a Jew who had worn his hair in long ringlets and had walked about with his nose deep into books. The rookery had left the old man alone, knowing him to be harmless, but after his death it was rumoured that a thousand gold guineas had been found in his room. The rookery was always full of such rumours. 'Come with me.

He took her hand. He laughed aloud as if he was carelessly drunk, but the girl's message had sobered him as fast as a French twelve pounder shot smashing the air close to him. He took her through the gate, into the alley, and into the deep shadows by the wooden stairway.

'Here. The girl was hoisting her skirts.

'I don't need that, love. He grinned.

'You want this. At her waist was a belt and, hanging from the leather, a hook. It was an old device for hiding stolen goods, but now the girl had the huge horse pistol hooked by its trigger guard. It was a fearful weapon with a splayed brass muzzle that, like a blunderbuss, would spray its charge of metal fragments in a widening fan. An ideal weapon, Sharpe supposed, with which the guard cowed Maggie Joyce's gin rooms. The barrel, Sharpe saw, was stuffed with rags to keep the missiles in place, and he pulled them out, then tapped the butt on the ground to tamp the stones and nails back onto the charge. He thumbed the heavy cock back. It was stiff, but clicked into place.

'Who are they?

'One's called Jem Lippett, she doesn't know the other. Jemmy's a topper. She gave the news that one of the men was a professional killer without any tone of alarm. This was a rookery.

Sharpe drew his long battle-sword. 'Get behind me.

She crouched low. Sharpe guessed she was fifteen, perhaps fourteen, and he supposed she whored for her living. Few girls escaped the rookery, unless they were startlingly beautiful, and then their men would hawk them further west where the prices were higher. 'How do you know Maggie? He spoke softly, not worrying about silence, because the men, if they were following him, would expect to hear voices from the entranceway.

'I work for her.

'She was beautiful once.

'Yes? The girl sounded disinterested. 'She says you grew up here.

'Yes.

'Born here?

'No. He was watching the dark shape of the gate. His sword was beside him on the ground. 'Born in Cat Lane. I came here from a foundling home.

'Maggie said you killed a man?

'Yes. He turned to look at her thin face. 'What's your name?

'Belle.

He was silent. He had killed a man who was beating the living daylights out of Maggie. Sharpe had cut the man's throat, and the blood had soaked into Maggie's hair and she had laughed and cuffed Sharpe round the head for messing her up. She had sent Sharpe out of the rookery, knowing that the murdered man's friends would look for revenge, for Sharpe had killed one of the kings of St Giles, one of the leaders of the criminals who lived in such safe squalor in the dark maze. Maggie had saved Sharpe's life then, and she was doing it again now, even though she could have left him unwarned, hoped for his death, and kept the jewels of Vitoria for herself.

Or perhaps she was not saving his life, for he could neither see nor hear anything untoward. Somewhere a dog barked, fierce and urgent, and then there was a yelp as it was silenced with a blow. A voice sang in an alleyway, there was laughter from a gin shop, and always the cries of babies and the shouts of anger and the screaming of men and women who lived and fought together in the tight filth of the small rooms where two families could share one room with a third in the hallway outside.

The girl coughed, a racking, hollow, dreadful sawing that would kill her before two winters had passed, and Sharpe knew the sound would bring the men into the alley if, indeed, they looked for him.

A bottle broke nearby. The gate of the entranceway creaked open an inch, stopped, and creaked again.

The girl's hands were on his back as if his nearness gave her comfort. He held the gun with both hands, its butt on the ground, its muzzle facing upwards so that the loose charge of killing fragments would not trickle down the barrel. He waited. The gate had opened only a few inches.

The gate was the only entrance into this place. It did not move again. Sharpe wondered if the two men waited for him to come out, preferring to ambush him as he came through the gateway rather than come themselves into the dark cul-de-sac where he might be waiting. He knew he must tempt them inside, make them think he was defenceless here, and he felt the crawling excitement that he had thought he would only get on a battlefield where he faced the French. At this moment, just as he did on a battlefield, he must dictate the enemy's move for them. He smiled. The two men who pursued him, if indeed they came to kill him, had found themselves an enemy. 'Belle? He spoke in a whisper.

'What?

'Make a noise!

She knew what he meant. She began to moan, to give small gasps, and her hands rubbed up and down his back as the noises grew louder. 'Come on, she said. 'Come on, my love, come on! The two men obeyed her.

Two men, and moving so swiftly and silently that at first Sharpe was hardly aware that they had slunk past the door, then he saw the gleam of a knife and he pressed back with his spine to keep Belle moaning and the noise drew the two men towards the dark space beside the stairs.

Sharpe pulled the trigger. He half expected the old gun not to work, but the priming flashed; he had already closed one eye to keep his night vision; and the huge pistol bucked in his hands as the charge exploded and the barrel tried to leap upwards.

It was a nasty weapon. Its effect, in the tight entranceway, was as if a canister had been fired from a field gun. The scraps of stone and metal sprayed out from the stubby, splayed barrel and ricocheted from the walls to throw the two men backwards in blood and smoke and, even as they fell, Sharpe was moving. He dropped the empty gun, picked up the long, heavy, killing sword, and shouted the war-shout that put fear into his enemies.

One of the men, the one dressed in the greatcoat and in whose hand was a pistol, was dead. Half his head was missing, smeared in blood that fanned up the alley's wall, but the second man, cursing and sobbing, was trying to stand and in his right hand was a long knife.