Countless ships were entering the channel. They looked ghostly in the night for their white sails were touched by the wan moonlight. They seemed motionless, for there was small wind this night. The General stared. There were hundreds of ships out there, far too many for his handful of guns, and those spectral vessels were bringing guns, horses and men to Denmark. Beyond the fleet, on the Swedish shore, a scatter of glimmering lights showed in the town of Helsingborg. “Have they fired on us?” he asked the Captain.

“No, sir,” the Captain said. The redness was fading on the waiting shot. “Not yet, sir.”

But just then a dull boom sounded from the distant fleet and the General saw a flash of red illumine one of the black-and-yellow hulls.

“Sir!” The Captain was impatient. He wanted his guns to pour their red heat into the dark bellies of the British fleet. He imagined that fleet burning, saw its sails writhing with flame and the sea shivering with fire.

“Wait,” the general said, “wait.”

Another gun fired at sea, but there was no trundling sound of round shot in the air and no splash of a falling shot. There was just the cannon’s dull boom fading in the night, then renewing itself as a third gun fired. “They’re making a salute,” the General said. “Return it. No shot.”

“We salute them?” The Captain sounded incredulous.

The General wrapped his nightgown tighter against the night’s chill, then stepped down from the embrasure. “We are not yet at war, Captain,” he said reproachfully, “and they are offering us a salute, so we shall return the compliment. Fifteen guns, if you please.”

The red-hot round shot cooled.

The ships ghosted southward. They carried an army that had come to crush Denmark.

And Denmark saluted it.

Sharpe could hear voices coming from the parlor across the hall, but the conversation was in Danish so he learned nothing, though he presumed Skovgaard was telling his daughter of Britain’s perfidy. A clock in the house struck ten and was followed by the cacophony of the city’s bells.

Light flared briefly under the small dining room’s door as Skovgaard or his daughter carried candles upstairs, then Sharpe heard the house shutters being closed and their bolts slammed home. Someone tested the door of the room in which he was imprisoned and, satisfied that it was securely locked, pulled the key from the door and walked away.

Sharpe had not been idle. He had explored the room to discover a bureau with drawers, but they held nothing useful, merely linens. He had groped for firedogs in the hearth, thinking he might use them to break down the door, but the fireplace was empty. He had tried the door, but it was solid, locked and immovable.

So now he waited.

Lavisser would kill him. Skovgaard might think the renegade guardsman was a hero, but Sharpe knew better. The Honorable John Lavisser was a thief and a killer. He was escaping from debt in England and it was no longer any wonder that the first man appointed to accompany Lavisser had died, because Lavisser had doubtless wanted a clean start in his new country. Sharpe was nothing but dirt to be swept out of his way.

And Skovgaard was no help. The Dane was dazzled by Lavisser’s patriotic gesture and absurdly impressed that Lavisser was a gentleman with royal connections. So get out of here, Sharpe thought. Get out before Lavisser brought Barker to do his dirty work.

But the dining room’s door was locked and its walls were solidly paneled. Sharpe had tried to lift the floorboards, but they were firmly nailed and he could get no purchase. Yet there was a way out.

He did not want to try. But escape was there, and he had no choice. Or a bad choice. He could wait till morning and then be handed over to Lavisser’s mercies. Or he could do what he feared to do.

Jem Hocking had once tried to sell the young Richard Sharpe to a chimney sweep, only Sharpe had run away. Sweeping was a death sentence. Some boys got trapped in chimneys and suffocated, while the rest were coughing up bloody scraps of their lungs long before they were full grown. So Sharpe had run away and he had never stopped running since, but now he must try and climb like a sweep. Be sure your sin will find you out. He thought of that text as he stooped into the wide hearth. It was clean, but he could smell the rank soot in the shaft above him. He pushed his hands up to find a brick ledge a couple of feet above the hearth’s throat. He did not want to do this. He was frightened of becoming trapped in the narrow black passage, but it was the only way out. Or rather he hoped it was a way out, but he could not be sure. It was possible that the chimney served only the one hearth, in which case it would become ever narrower and he would be blocked, but it was far more likely that this flue would join another. Go up this shaft, he told himself, then drop down the other. It will be easy, he tried to reassure himself, a ten-year-old could do it.

He hauled on the ledge with his hands and scrabbled with his boots to find some purchase on the tiled hearth. He slipped a couple of times, then managed to push and pull his way up through the chimney’s throat. The air stank, but this first bit was easy enough and he clambered onto the ledge and knelt there while he groped up again and felt the flue becoming narrower. The house was only a couple of years old but that had been long enough to leave a thick deposit of soot that crumbled under his fingers and fell into his hair and eyes. His mouth was full of it. He tried to spit, but half choked instead. He could hear the flakes of soot and clinker rattling down into the hearth. Suppose Skovgaard was still downstairs? Suppose someone lit a fire? Common sense told him that was unlikely, but the fear would not go away.

He tried to stand, but the chimney bellied in at the sides and at first he could not squeeze past the bulging bricks so he twisted sideways and tried again. He managed to force his way up into the black hole, but the masonry inside the chimney was crudely pointed and his clothes kept snagging on mortar. He heaved the first two times it happened and heard his coat rip, but then the fabric was caught again and he knew the shaft could only get narrower and so he dropped back to his knees, twisted around and fell back into the fireplace. He crawled into the room where he gasped for breath and pawed soot from his eyes.

If it were to be done, he thought, then it would have to be done naked. He stripped, then nerved himself and went back into the hearth. He climbed onto the ledge, twisted sideways and stood up. It was easier now, though the rough brickwork gouged and scraped his skin. The flue was so narrow that the masonry scraped against his shoulder blades and chest. It was like being buried alive, he thought. Every time he breathed he could feel the eddy of air on the bricks in front of his eyes and smell the rank fumes of old soot. He could see nothing, but the constriction of the chimney pressed black and filthy like the cold walls of a tomb. He shivered. The flue was barely wide enough from front to back, but it was a few inches wider than his shoulders and he used that space to push himself up. He could scarcely bend his legs. Each time he wanted to move he had to lift a foot a few inches to find a rough ledge in the chimney’s pointing, then shove himself up. He hooked his fingers into the small spaces between the brick courses, scrabbling through the thick deposit of soot that cascaded thick onto his face. He tried to breathe through his nose, but soot clogged it and he was forced to half choke through his dry mouth. He could not look up because the chimney was too narrow for him to tilt his head back and so he reached up, desperate to find the place where another flue joined this shaft.

Inch by inch he climbed. He slipped once and only stopped himself sliding back to the ledge by ramming his shoulder into the wall. He scraped his foot down the flue, seeking any purchase, and found a space where the pointing had come out of the brickwork. He shoved himself another inch, then another, but the chimney’s sides were narrowing. He had his arms above his head, but the sides of the shaft were touching his shoulders now and he had to fight for every inch. His eyes stung even though he kept them closed. His throat was dry, the soot was sour in his gullet and the stench made him want to retch. He lifted his left foot two inches, all he could manage, and found a rough piece of masonry. He put his weight on it and the mortar broke away, clattering down to the hearth below. He held on with his hands, found another tiny ledge and shoved himself up. The hair on the back of his head brushed against bricks and he sensed the shaft was narrowing even more and he felt a terrible despair because he would be blocked, maybe even stuck, but then, quite suddenly, his right hand groped in nothingness. He flailed for a heartbeat, then discovered that the bricks above him sloped steeply away and he knew he had come to the place where two flues joined. All he had to do now was wriggle up, then drop down into the second flue and pray it was as wide as the first. He found a foothold, then pushed and slid and wriggled until there was just empty black space in front of his face. He paused, stretching out his hand to explore the mound of bricks where the flues joined and felt a fierce elation. He would damn well do it! He hooked his hands over the breastwork, hauled himself up, twisted so his belly would slide over the mound and then rammed his head painfully against bricks.