"Is it a hill-top village?" Sharpe asked.

El Castrador shook his head. "It sits in a valley like that one" — he waved at the eastern valley—"but not so deep. No trees grow there, seсor, and a man cannot get close to San Cristobal without being seen. And El Lobo has built walls across all the gaps between the houses and he keeps watchmen in the church's bell tower. You cannot get close." El Castrador issued the warning in a worried voice. "You are thinking of going there?"

Sharpe did not answer for a long time. Of course he was thinking of going there, but to what purpose? Loup had a brigade of men while Sharpe had half a company. "How close can I get without being seen?" he asked.

El Castrador shrugged. "A half-mile? But there is also a defile there, a valley where the road runs. I've often thought we could trap Loup there. He used to scout the valley before he rode through it, but not now. Now he is too confident."

So go to the defile, Sharpe thought, and watch. Just watch. Nothing else. No attack, no ambush, no disobedience, no heroics, just a reconnaissance. And after all, he told himself, Wellington's order to take the Real Companпa Irlandesa to the army headquarters at Vilar Formoso did not detail the route he must take. Nothing specifically forbade Sharpe taking a long, circuitous journey via San Cristobal, but he knew, even as he thought of that evasion, that it was specious. The sensible thing was to forget Loup, but it cut against all his instincts to be beaten and just lie down and accept the beating. "Does Loup have artillery at San Cristobal?" he asked the partisan.

"No, seсor."

Sharpe wondered if Loup had arranged for this intelligence to reach him. Was Loup enticing Sharpe into a trap? "Would you come with us, seсor?" he asked El Castrador, suspecting that the partisan would never come if Loup was the inspiration behind this news of the brigade's whereabouts.

"To watch Loup," the Spaniard asked guardedly, "or to fight him?"

"To watch him," Sharpe said, knowing it was not the honest answer.

The Spaniard nodded. "You haven't enough men to fight him," he added to explain his cautious question.

Privately Sharpe agreed. He did not have enough men, not unless he could surprise Loup or maybe ambush him in the defile. One rifle bullet, well aimed, would kill a man as surely as a full battalion attack, and when Sharpe thought of Oliveira's mangled and tortured body he reckoned that Loup deserved that bullet. So maybe tonight, Sharpe thought, he could take his riflemen to San Cristobal and pray for a private revenge in the defile at dawn. "I would welcome your help," Sharpe told El Castrador, flattering the man.

"In a week's time, seсor," El Castrador said, "I can assemble a respectable troop."

"We go tonight," Sharpe said.

"Tonight?" The Spaniard was appalled.

"I saw a bullfight once," Sharpe said, "and the matador gave the bull the killing stroke, the one over the neck and down through the shoulders, and the bull staggered, then sank to its knees. The man pulled the sword out and turned away with his arms raised in triumph. You can guess what happened."

El Castrador nodded. "The bull rose?"

"A horn in the small of the man's back," Sharpe confirmed. "Well, I am the bull, seсor, and I confess to being wounded, but Loup's back is turned. So tonight, when he thinks we're too weak to move, we march."

"But only to watch him," the partisan said cautiously. He had been scorched by Loup too often to risk a fight.

"To watch," Sharpe lied, "just to watch."

He was truthful with Harper. He took his friend to the top of the gatehouse tower from where the two riflemen stared across the eastern valley towards the hazed country where the village of San Cristobal was hidden. "I don't honestly know why I'm going," Sharpe confessed, "and we've got no orders to go and I'm not even sure we can do a damned thing when we get there. But there's a reason for going." He paused, suddenly feeling awkward. Sharpe found it hard to articulate his more private thoughts, perhaps because to do so exposed a vulnerability and few soldiers were good at doing that, and what he wanted to say was that a soldier was only as good as his last battle and Sharpe's last battle had been this disaster that had left San Isidro smoking and bloody. And there were plenty of carping fools in the army who would be glad that the upstart from the ranks had at last got his comeuppance, all of which meant that Sharpe must strike back at Loup or else lose his reputation as a lucky and victorious soldier.

"You have to beat the blood out of Loup?" Harper broke the silence with his suggestion.

"I don't have enough men to do that," Sharpe said. "The riflemen will come with me, but I can't order Donaju's men to San Cristobal. The whole idea's probably a waste of time, Pat, but there's a chance, a half-chance, that I can get that one-eyed bastard in my rifle sight."

"You'd be surprised," Harper said. "There's more than a few of the Real Companпa Irlandesa who'd love to come with us. I don't know about the officers, but Sergeant Major Noonan will come, and that fellow Rourke, and there's a wild bugger called Leon O'Reilly who wants nothing more than to kill Crapauds and there's plenty more like him. They've got something to prove, you see. That they're not all as yellow as Kiely."

Sharpe smiled, then shrugged. "It probably is all a waste of time, Pat," he repeated.

"So what else were you planning on doing tonight?"

"Nothing," Sharpe said, "nothing at all." Yet he knew that if he marched to another defeat he would risk everything he had ever earned, but he also knew that not to go, however hopeless the prospect of revenge, was to accept the beating Loup had administered and Sharpe was too proud to accept that licking. He would most likely achieve nothing by marching to San Cristobal, yet march he must.

They marched after dark. Donaju insisted on coming, and fifty of his men came too. More would have marched, but Sharpe wanted most of the Real Companпa Irlandesa to stay behind and guard the families and baggage. Everyone and everything left in the San Isidro Fort had been moved into the gatehouse just in case Loup did come back to finish off his previous night's work. "Which would just be my bloody luck," Sharpe said. "Me marching to shoot him and him marching to geld me." He had his riflemen ranging ahead as scouts just in case the French were returning to the San Isidro.

"What do we do if we meet them?" Donaju asked.

"Hide," Sharpe said. "Seventy of us can't beat a thousand of them, not in the open." An ambush might work this night, but not a firefight on open, level moonlit ground against an overwhelming enemy. "And I hate night fighting," Sharpe went on. "I was captured in a bloody night fight in India. We were blundering around in the sodding dark with no one knowing what they were doing or why except for the Indians, and they knew well enough. They were firing rockets at us. The things were no bloody use as weapons, but at night their fire blinded us and the next thing I knew there were twenty big buggers with fixed bayonets all around me."

"Where was that?" Donaju asked.

"Seringapatam."

"What business did you have in India?" Donaju asked in evident disapproval.

"Same business I've got here," Sharpe said curtly. "Killing the King's enemies."

El Castrador wanted to know what they were talking about, so Donaju translated. The partisan was suffering because Sharpe had refused to let anyone ride a horse so El Castrador's horse, like the horses of the Spanish-Irish officers, was being led at the column's rear. Sharpe had insisted on the precaution because men on horses were liable to ride away from the line of march and the sight of a mounted man on a crest could easily serve to alert a French patrol. Sharpe had similarly insisted that no man carry a loaded musket in case a stumble snapped a lock and fired a shot that would carry far in the still, almost windless night.