They climbed. "How are your feet?" Harper asked.

"Cut to bloody pieces," Sharpe said.

"I was thinking I should give my boots to Joana."

"She'd probably think she was wearing a boat on each foot," Sharpe said.

"She's managing, though. A tough one, that."

"Needs to be if she's going to endure you, Pat."

"Soft as lights with women, I am."

They climbed straight up through the tangling heather, the slope every bit as steep as the one the French had assailed at Bussaco, and both stopped talking long before they reached the summit. They were saving their breath. Sweat was pouring down Sharpe's face as he neared the peak which was crowned with a scatter of rocks and he kept looking up, willing the rocks to get closer, and it was on his fourth or fifth glance that he saw the small movement, saw the foreshortened barrel moving and he threw himself sideways. "Down, Pat!"

Sharpe was pushing the rifle forward when the musket fired. The puff of smoke blossomed among the rocks and the bullet ripped through the heather between him and Harper, and Sharpe immediately stood and, his tiredness forgotten, ran diagonally up the hill, daring anyone else on the summit to take a shot at him, but no shot sounded. Instead he could hear the clatter of a ramrod on a barrel and he knew whoever had fired was reloading and he swerved uphill, always watching the rocks for the sight of another barrel, and then he saw the man, a young man, just rising from behind a boulder, and Sharpe stopped and brought the rifle up. The young man saw him then, saw the soldier fifty paces from where he had expected him to be, and he began to move the musket and then understood that one more inch of movement would mean that the green-jacketed soldier would pull the trigger and he went very still. "Put the gun down," Sharpe said.

The young man did not understand him. He looked from Sharpe to Harper, who was now climbing towards his other side. "Put the bloody gun down!" Sharpe snarled and walked forward, keeping the rifle at his shoulder. "Down!"

"Arma!" Harper called. "Por terra!"

The young man looked as if he would twist and run away. "Go on, son," Sharpe said, "give me an excuse." And then the boy put the musket down and looked terrified as the two green men came up either side of him. He dropped behind a boulder, cowering there, expecting to be shot.

"Jesus," Sharpe said, for now he was on the hilltop and he could see that the young man had been a lookout, and that on the long downwards sweep of the far slope there were a score of other men, some of them bunched where the path that Sharpe and his companions had been using crossed the hill's shoulder. A half-dozen others, evidently alerted by the young man, were climbing towards the hilltop, but they stopped abruptly when they saw Sharpe and Harper appear on the summit.

"You were sleeping, son, weren't you?" Sharpe said. "Didn't see us till it was too late."

The young man did not understand and just looked helplessly from Sharpe to Harper.

"That was good, Pat," Sharpe said, picking up the young man's musket and tossing it to one side. "You learned Portuguese quickly."

"Picked up a word or two, sir."

Sharpe laughed. "So what do these buggers want, eh?" He turned and gazed at the six closest men who were staring up the long slope.

They were all civilians, refugees or possibly partisans. They were two hundred paces away and one had a dog, almost a wolf, on a rope leash. The dog was barking and trying to get away from his master to attack up the hill. All the men had muskets. Sharpe turned away and looked down to where Vicente was gazing up the slope, and Sharpe beckoned him. He waited, then saw Vicente and the two women begin to climb. "Best if we're all in the same place," he explained to Harper, then turned back because one of the six men had fired his musket. The men down the hill could not see their companion, who was hidden by the boulder, and perhaps they assumed he had escaped and so one of them opened fire. The ball went wild. Sharpe did not even hear it pass, but then a second man fired. The dog, excited by the sound of gunfire, was howling now, howling and leaping. A third man fired and this time the ball snapped past Sharpe's head.

"They need a bloody lesson," Sharpe said. He strode to the young man, pulled him to his feet and put the rifle to his head. The muskets stopped firing.

"We could shoot the bloody dog." Harper suggested.

"You can be sure to kill it at two hundred paces?" Sharpe asked. "And not just wound it? Because if you just wing it, Pat, that dog will want a mouthful of Irish meat as revenge."

"Better to shoot this bastard, sir, you're right," Harper said, standing on the other side of their terrified prisoner. The six men were now arguing amongst each other, while the rest, those who looked as if they had been waiting in ambush where the path crossed the lower crest, began to climb to the summit.

"There's almost thirty of them," Harper said. "We'll be hard put to deal with thirty."

"Fifteen each?" Sharpe suggested flippantly, then shook his head. "It won't come to that." He hoped it would not, but first he needed Vicente on the hilltop so that he could talk with the men.

Who began to spread out so that Sharpe could not get past them.

They had been waiting for him and he had come to them. And they had orders to kill.

Part Three

THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS

CHAPTER 11

Vicente reached Sharpe and Harper first, outclimbing the two women, who were hampered by their ragged skirts and bare feet. Vicente glanced at the armed men watching them, then talked to the young man who sounded ever more reluctant to answer as Vicente's voice grew angrier. "They were told to look out for us," Vicente finally explained to Sharpe, "and kill us."

"Kill us? Why?"

"Because they say we're traitors," Vicente spat angrily. "Major Ferreira was here with his brother and three other men. They said we'd been talking with the French and were now trying to reach our army to spy on it." He turned back to the young man and said something in a furious tone, then looked back to Sharpe. "And they believed him! They're fools!"

"They don't know us," Sharpe said, nodding at the men down the hill, "and maybe they do know Ferreira?"

"They know him," Vicente confirmed. "He provided those weapons earlier in the year." He nodded towards the guns the men were holding, then turned back to the young man, asked a question, received a one-word answer and immediately started down the hill.

"Where are you going?" Sharpe called after him.

"To talk to them, of course. Their leader's a man called Soriano."

"They're partisans?"

"Every man in the hills is a partisan," Vicente said, then dropped the rifle from his shoulder, unbuckled his sword belt and, thus unarmed to show he meant no mischief, strode on down the hill.

Sarah and Joana arrived at the crest. Joana began questioning the young man, who seemed even more frightened of her than he had been of Vicente, who had now reached the group of six men and was talking with them. Sarah stood beside Sharpe and gently touched his arm as if reassuring herself. "They want to kill us?"

"They've probably got something else in mind for you and Joana," Sharpe said, "but they want to kill me, Pat and Jorge. Major Ferreira was here. He told them we were enemies."

Sarah asked the young man a question, then turned back to Sharpe. "Ferreira was here last night," she said.

"So the bastard's half a day ahead of us."

"Sir?" Harper was watching down the hill and Sharpe looked to see that the six men had taken Vicente hostage by pointing a musket at his head. The implication was obvious. If Sharpe killed the young man, they would kill Vicente.