"Try Lord Kiely's cook, General. He was frying bacon not ten minutes ago and I don't suppose his Lordship's got much of an appetite. I just challenged the yellow bastard to a fight."

Runciman looked shocked. "You did what, Sharpe? A duel? Don't you know duelling is illegal in the army?"

"I never said anything about a duel, General. I just offered to beat the hell out of him right here and now, but he seemed to have other things on his mind."

Runciman shook his head. "Dear me, Sharpe, dear me. I can't think you'll come to a good end, but I shall be sad when it happens. What a scamp you are! Bacon? Lord Kiely's cook, you said?"

Runciman waddled away and Sharpe watched him go. "In ten years' time, Pat," Sharpe said, "he'll have turned last night's mess into a rare old story. How General Runciman saved the fort, armed to the jowls and fighting off the whole Loup Brigade."

"Runcibubble 's harmless," Harper said.

"He's harmless, Pat," Sharpe agreed, "so long as you keep the fool out of harm's way. And I almost failed to do that, didn't I?"

"You, sir? You didn't fail last night."

"Oh, but I did, Pat. I failed. I failed badly. I didn't see that Loup would out-clever me, and I didn't hammer the truth into Oliveira's skull, and I never saw how dangerously trapped we were in those barracks." He flinched, remembering the fetid, humid, dust-laden darkness of the night and the awful, scrabbling sound as the French tried to break through the thin masonry shell. "We survived because some poor fool set light to an ammunition wagon," Sharpe admitted, "not because we outfought Loup. We didn't. He won and we got beat."

"But we're alive, sir."

"So's Loup, Pat, so's Loup, God damn him."

But Tom Garrard was not alive. Tom Garrard had died, though at first Sharpe did not recognize his friend, for the body was so scorched and mutilated by fire. Garrard was lying face down in the very centre of the blackened spot where one of the ammunition wagons had stood and at first the only clue to his identity was the bent, blackened scrap of metal in an outstretched hand that had been fire-shrunken into a charred claw. Sharpe spotted the glint of metal and stepped through the still hot ashes to prise the box clear of the shrivelled grip. Two fingers snapped off the hand as Sharpe freed the tinder box. He brushed the black fingers aside, then levered open the lid to see that though all the linen kindling had long been consumed the picture of the redcoat was undamaged. Sharpe cleaned the engraving with a hand, then wiped a tear from his eye. "Tom Garrard saved our lives last night, Pat."

"He did?"

"He blew up the ammunition on purpose and killed himself doing it." The presence of the tinderbox could mean nothing else. Tom Garrard, in the wake of his battalion's defeat, had somehow managed to reach the ammunition wagons and light a fire he had known would blow his own soul clear into eternity. "Oh, dear God," Sharpe said, then fell silent as he remembered the years of friendship. "He was at Assaye with me," he went on after a while, "and at Gawilghur too. He was from Ripon, a farmer's boy, only his father was a tenant and the landlord threw him out when he was three days late with the rent after a bad harvest so Tom saved his folks the need to feed another mouth by joining the 33rd. He used to send money home, God knows how on a soldier's pay. In another two years, Pat, he'd have made colonel in the Portuguese, and then he planned to go home to Ripon and beat ten kinds of hell out of the landlord who drove him into the army in the first place. That's what he told me last night."

"Now you'll have to do it for him," Harper said.

"Aye. That bugger'll get a thumping he never dreamed of," Sharpe said. He tried to close the tinderbox, but the heat had distorted the metal. He took a last glance at the picture, then tossed the box back into the ashes. Then he and Harper climbed the ramparts where they had charged the small group of voltigeurs the night before and from where the full horror of the night could be seen. The San Isidro was a smoking, blackened wreck, littered with bodies and reeking of blood. Rifleman Thompson, the only greenjacket to die in the night, was being carried in a blanket towards a hastily dug grave beside the fort's ruined church.

"Poor Thompson," Harper said. "I gave him hell for waking me last night. Poor bugger was only going outside for a piss and tripped over me."

"Lucky he did," Sharpe said.

Harper walked to the tower door that still had the dents driven into it by the butt of his volley gun. The big Irishman fingered the marks ruefully. "Those bastards must have known we were trying to get refuge, sir," he said.

"At least one of those bastards wanted us dead, Pat. And if I ever find out who, then God help him," Sharpe said. He noticed that no one had thought to raise any flags on the battlements.

"Rifleman Cooper!" Sharpe called.

"Sir?"

"Flags!"

The first outsiders to arrive at San Isidro were a strong troop of King's German Legion cavalry who scouted the valley before climbing to the fort. Their captain reported a score of dead at the foot of the slope, then saw the far greater number of bodies lying in the fort's open area. "Mein Gott! What happened?"

"Ask Colonel the Lord Kiely," Sharpe said, and jerked a thumb at Kiely who was visible on the gatehouse turret. Other Real Companпa Irlandesa officers were supervising the squads collecting the Portuguese dead, while Father Sarsfield had taken charge of a dozen men and their wives who were caring for the Portuguese wounded, though without a surgeon there was little they could do except bandage, pray and fetch water. One by one the wounded died, some crying out in delirium, but most staying calm as the priest held their hands, asked their names and gave them the viaticum.

The next outsiders to arrive were a group of staff officers, mostly British, some Portuguese and one Spaniard, General Valverde. Hogan led the party, and for a solemn half-hour the Irish Major walked about the horror with an appalled expression, but when he left the other staff officers to join Sharpe he was grinning with an inappropriate cheerfulness. "A tragedy, Richard!" Hogan said happily.

Sharpe was offended by his friend's cheerfulness. "It was a bloody hard night, sir."

"I'm sure, I'm sure," Hogan said, trying and failing to sound sympathetic. The Major could not contain his happiness. "Though it's a pity about Oliveira's cacadores. He was a good man and it was a fine battalion."

"I warned him."

"I'm sure you did, Richard, I'm sure you did. But it's always the same in war, isn't it? The wrong people get the hind teat. If only the Real Companпa Irlandesa could have been decimated, Richard, that would have been a great convenience right now, a real convenience. Still and all, still and all, this will do. This will do very well."

"Do for what?" Sharpe asked fiercely. "Do you know what happened here last night, sir? We were betrayed. Some bastard opened the gates to Loup."

"Of course he did, Richard!" Hogan said soothingly. "Haven't I been saying all along that they couldn't be trusted? The Real Companпa Irlandesa aren't here to help us, Richard, but to help the French." He pointed to the dead. "You need further proof? But of course this is good news. Until this morning it was impossible to send the bastards packing because that would have offended London and the Spanish court. But now, don't you see, we can thank the Spanish King for the valued assistance of his personal guard, we can claim that the Real Companпa Irlandesa was instrumental in seeing off a strong French raid over the frontier, and then, honours even, we can send the treacherous buggers to Cadiz and let them rot." Hogan was positively exultant. "We are off the hook, Richard, the French malevolence is defeated, and all because of last night. The French made a mistake. They should have left you alone, but plainly Monsieur Loup couldn't resist the bait. It's all so clever, Richard, that I wish I'd thought of it myself, but I didn't. But no matter; this'll mean goodbye to our gallant allies and an end to all those rumours about Ireland."