“God knows.” Sharpe slung the seven-barreled gun on his shoulder and went to the windows. They were barred to stop boys from being daredevils and he shook the bars, hoping that they could be loosened and that he and Clouter could drop down into the orphanage garden and make their way unseen to the cemetery, but the iron bars felt frustratingly solid. He swore and tugged again. Clouter saw what he was doing and came to help and the big man gave a grunt as he heaved on an iron rod. It came away in his hand, splintering the wooden sill.

Then Lavisser called from the courtyard. “Sharpe! Sharpe!”

Sharpe turned and went back to the landing. He went cautiously, half expecting a volley, but instead saw that a half-dozen of the soldiers were on the ground, bloodied, twitching and scorched. A bomb had exploded in the group beside the bolted door. But then Sharpe saw that Lavisser was not alone. Astrid was beside him and she was in the grip of a tall, pale-faced man. It was Aksel Bang. God damn it, Sharpe thought, but he had bloody forgotten Bang! “Sharpe?” Lavisser called again.

“What do you want?”

“Just come down, Sharpe, and that’s an end to it.” The city was shuddering, flaming, incandescent. Above the burning chapel Sharpe had an impression of scores of falling bombs and a sky laced with fiery rocket trails. The smoke boiled. He stepped back into the shadow and took the rifle from his shoulder. He could see Lavisser, but not Barker. Was Barker inside? Stalking him?

“End of what?” he called to Lavisser.

“I’m told Miss Skovgaard knows the names I want.”

“Let her go.”

Lavisser smiled. Another bomb crashed into the orphanage and the blast of its smoke and flame whipped the skirts of Lavisser’s coat, but he showed no fear. He just smiled. “I can’t let her go, Richard, you know that. I want the names.”

“I’ve got the names. I’ve got your list.”

“Then bring it down, Richard, and I’ll let Miss Skovgaard go.”

Sharpe knelt and thumbed back the rifle’s cock. Jesus wept, he thought, but this gun had better be accurate. Aksel Bang was no more than twenty paces away, but he was standing behind Astrid with his right arm about her waist. Sharpe could only see Bang’s lugubrious face, the rest of him was hidden by Astrid, but on the range at Shorncliffe Sharpe had been able to put ten bullets out of ten through a target the size of a man’s face at sixty yards.

“What are you waiting for, Richard?” Lavisser called.

“I’m thinking.”

Clouter crouched beside Sharpe. “There’s a big fellow prowling,” Sharpe told him. “Watch out for him.”

Clouter nodded. Sharpe aimed through the bars of the balcony’s balustrade, lining the notch in the rifle’s backsight and the leaf of the foresight on Aksel Bang’s face. Then Sharpe suddenly worried about whether he had wrapped the ball in its scrap of greased leather when he had reloaded the gun. He remembered firing the rifle in the Bredgade house, but when had he reloaded it? He thought when he had arrived at the orphanage last night, but he had given it no thought. Why should he? Loading a gun was like breathing, not something a man thought about. But if he had not used the leather patch then the bullet would not be gripped by the seven spiraling grooves and lands that gave it spin and so made it accurate. And if the ball was unwrapped then it would be fractionally smaller than the barrel’s width and when he fired it would fly out at a slight angle. Very slight, but enough to make it go wide and perhaps strike Astrid.

“Sharpe! I’m waiting!” Lavisser peered up at the dark doorway. “Bring me the list!”

“Let her go!” Sharpe shouted.

“Please don’t be tedious, Richard. Just come down. Or do you want me to describe what I plan to do to the lovely Astrid if you don’t come down?”

Sharpe fired. He could not see where the bullet went, for the doorway was immediately filled with a fog of powder smoke, but he heard Astrid scream and Sharpe immediately knew he had made a mistake. He should have fired at Lavisser, not Bang. Bang did not have the guts to do anything on his own initiative, but Sharpe had picked him because he was holding Astrid and now Sharpe dashed through the smoke to lean on the balustrade and he saw that Bang was on his back, spreadeagled, and where his face had been there was only a great patch of broken bone, cartilage and bloody flesh. Astrid had vanished. Lavisser was staring at Bang in disbelief, then Sharpe saw the movement to his right and he dropped to one knee as Barker fired the musket. The ball plucked at Sharpe’s hair and scored a slash across the side of his skull and he was dazed, but not disabled, and he was screaming a war shout as he charged down the balcony and rammed the muzzle of the unloaded rifle into Barker’s groin. Another musket flashed and Sharpe felt the wind of the ball passing and he saw there was a second man behind Barker, but Clouter shouted at Sharpe to drop, and he did, and the volley gun flamed and roared as loud as an exploding bomb. The second man was snatched backward as two shells cracked through the rafters of the dormitory where Sharpe and Clouter had sheltered.

Barker was writhing on the balcony. “No!” he shouted at Sharpe who had drawn one of his pistols.

“Yes,” Sharpe said.

“I let you live!” Barker shouted.

“More bloody fool you,” Sharpe said and aimed the pistol. He fired and the ball took Barker under the chin, and then a musket banged from the courtyard and tore a splinter from the balustrade beside Sharpe. Clouter fired back with both his pistols, then crouched to reload the volley gun. Sharpe slid his last pistol along the balcony to the black man. “Wait there,” he told him.

“Where are you going?” Clouter asked.

“To find the bastard,” Sharpe said. Lavisser had vanished, so Sharpe took the volley gun from his shoulder, stepped over Barker’s corpse, and stalked along the landing. Flames were terrible to his right, threatening to roast him, but he ran past them into cooler air and came to the door leading to the inside stairs and saw Lavisser there, on the half landing, and Sharpe brought the volley gun to his shoulder, but Lavisser was quicker to raise his pistol and Sharpe ducked back. “I’m not going to shoot, Richard!” Lavisser called. “I just want to talk!”

Sharpe waited. His head was ringing and blood was dripping from his ear. A bomb exploded in the courtyard, twitching the bloodied bodies of the dead infantrymen. A carcass was burning there and its flames set fire to a soldier’s ammunition pouch which crackled angrily. “I’m not going to shoot,” Lavisser said again, closer now. “Talk to me. Are you there?”

“I’m here,” Sharpe said.

Lavisser, the pistol held away from his body to show he meant no harm, stepped cautiously onto the balcony. “See?” He gestured with the pistol. “No more shooting, Richard.”

Sharpe had the volley gun at his waist and it’s seven barrels were pointing at Lavisser. He kept it there.

Lavisser glanced at the gun, then smiled. “Your woman’s safe. She ran out through the arch.”

“My woman?”

“Mister Bang seemed to think she was sweet on you.”

“Bang was an idiot.”

“My dear Richard, they’re all idiots. This is Denmark! Dull, insufferably dull. It threatens to be the most respectable country on God’s earth.” He flinched as a bomb fell into the storeroom over the archway, but he did not take his eyes from Sharpe. “Our gunners are showing rare form tonight. Mister Bang says you’re going to stay here.”

“So?”

“So am I, Richard, and I could do with a friend who isn’t insufferably respectable.”

Sharpe took a step forward for the heat behind him was growing intolerable. Lavisser stepped back. He still held the pistol out to one side. Clouter was walking down the far side of the balcony now, then he nimbly leaped off the balustrade onto the mast-rigged flagpole. The tarred ratlines were burning, but he scrambled down with such practiced speed that he came to no harm.