Sharpe told his Light Company that the dead men with their fringed epaulettes were the famous French Voltigeurs, the skirmishers, the men with whom the Light Company would fight their own private battle between the lines before the big Battalions clashed. The men of the South Essex, who had not seen enemy infantry before, stared curiously at the blue-jacketed bodies that had been thrown down beside a church wall. Dark stains marked the uniforms, their heads were bent back in the strange attitude of the dead, one man had a finger missing where Sharpe supposed it had been hacked off to get at a valuable ring. Ensign Denny stared at them with fascination: these were the famous French infantry that had marched the length and breadth of Europe; he looked at the moustached faces and wondered how he would feel when he saw similar faces, but animated, staring at him over the browned barrel of the French musket.

The French made no resistance to the west of Talavera or in the town itself. The armies marched through or past the town and on a mile until they stopped at dusk on the banks of a small river that flowed into the Tagus. The Battalion marched to the north of the town, and Sharpe wondered how Josefina would find a room there. Hogan had promised to look after her, and Sharpe stared at the crowds pressing into the narrow streets as though he might catch a glimpse of her. The men grumbled. They were tired and hungry and they resented being denied the pleasures of the town. They could see officers on horseback riding towards the old walls, their wives and children walked there, but the troops went on to the Alberche and camped in the cork groves that sloped down to the shallow river. Tomorrow they must fight. If they survived tomorrow then would come the time to buy drink in Talavera, but first they must cross the River Alberche and defeat the army of Marshal Victor. Fires were lit throughout the trees, the Battalions swiftly settling in for the night, glancing apprehensively at the far river-bank where hundreds of smoke plumes mingled and shivered over the French camp. The armies had finally been brought together, British, Spanish and French, and tomorrow they must fight, and Sharpe’s company squatted by their fires and wondered about the men just across the river who sat by similar fires and made the same jokes in a different language.

Sharpe and Harper strolled to the river’s edge where the Battalion’s leading picquets were settling for a night’s guard duty. Two men of the Light Company, dressed in greatcoats, nodded at Sharpe and jerked their thumbs across the river. A French picquet stood watching them, three men smoking pipes, while another Frenchman filled his canteen at the water’s edge. The man looked up, saw the Riflemen, and raised a hand. He shouted something but they did not understand him. Sharpe shivered slightly. The sun had lost its heat, was reddening in the west, and the chill of the night was already making itself felt. He waved back at the Frenchman and turned back towards the cork grove.

Now was the time for the rituals before battle. Sharpe walked through the trees and chatted with men who prepared themselves with the obsessions for detail that all men thought might protect them in the chaos of the fight. The Riflemen had stripped their locks, pinned the massive rifle main springs with nails, and brushed every scrap of dirt from the machinery. Men put new flints in their muskets or rifles, unscrewed them and put them in again, looking for the perfect fit that would never come loose, turn sideways, or shatter in the pan. Pots of boiling water were carried carefully from the fires and poured into the barrels of the guns to flush out every last powder deposit, because tomorrow a man’s life might depend on how fast he could reload his musket. Joining the noise of the insects were the sounds of hundreds of stones rubbing endlessly on bayonets, the countrymen sharpening the blades as they used to sharpen reaping hooks or wide-bladed scythes. Men repaired uniforms, sewed on buttons, made new laces, as though to be comfortable was to be safer. Sharpe had been through the ritual a hundred times; he would go through it again tonight the way that a knight in times far past must have strapped every piece of armour, tightened each piece, delayed the next until the first was secure. Some Riflemen emptied all the fine powder from their horns and spread the black grains on clean white cloth to ensure there were no damp lumps that could clog the measuring spout in battle. There were the same jokes: „Don’t wear your hat tomorrow, Sarge, the French might see your face and die laughing.“ That one always worked as long as the Sergeant did not see which man had shouted from the shadows; other men were asked to go and sleep with the French so their snoring would keep the enemy awake; the stale jokes were as much a part of the battle as the bullets which would begin to fly at first light.

Sharpe walked past the fires, swapping jokes, accepting tots of hoarded spirits, feeling the edges of bayonets, telling the men that the next day would not be bad. Nor should it be. The combined British and Spanish far outnumbered the French; the allies had the initiative, the battle should be short, swift, and victory almost a certainty. He listened to men boasting of the deeds they would perform next day and knew that the words covered their fear; it was right that they should. Other men, more quietly, asked him what it would be like. He smiled and told them they would see in the morning, but it would not be as bad as they feared, and shrugged away his knowledge of the chaos they would all have to surmount when the attacking infantry walked into the storm of canister and musket shot. He left the fires behind, skirted the bigger blaze where the officers’ servants prepared the thin stew of salt beef that was the last of the hoarded supplies, and out of the trees altogether. In the last light of dusk he could see a farmhouse five hundred yards away where earlier he had seen the sixteenth Light Dragoons go with their horses. He crossed the fields and went into the yard. A line of troopers in blue and scarlet uniforms waited by the armourer. Sharpe waited for them to finish and then unsheathed the huge sword and carried it to the wheel. This was part of his ritual, to have the sword sharpened by a cavalry armourer because they made a finer edge, and the armourer looked at his Rifleman’s uniform and grinned. He was an old soldier, too old to ride into battle, but he had seen it all, done it all himself. He took the blade from Sharpe, tested it with a broad thumb, and then pressed it onto the pedalled stone. The sparks flowed off the wheel, the blade sang; the man swept it lovingly up and down the edge and then sharpened the top six inches of the back blade. He wiped the sword with an oily piece of leather.

“Get yourself a German one, Captain.” It was an old argument, whether the Kligenthal blades were better than the British. Sharpe shook his head. “I’ve eaten German swords with this one.”

The armourer cackled a toothless laugh and peered down the edge. “There you are, Captain. Take care of it.”

Sharpe put some coins on the wheel frame and held the sword up to the last light of the western sky. There was a new sheen on the edge, he felt it with his thumb and smiled at the armourer. “You’ll never get a Kligenthal as sharp as that.”

The armourer said nothing but from behind him he took out a sabre and handed it to Sharpe. Sharpe sheathed his sword and took the curved blade. It felt as if it had been made for him; its balance was a miracle, as if the steel were not there even though it flashed in the red light. He touched the blade. It would have sliced through silk as cleanly as it must cut through the breastplate of the French cavalry. “German?” Sharpe asked.

“Yes, Captain. Belongs to our Colonel.” The armourer took the blade back. “And I haven’t begun to sharpen it yet!”