Riflemen retook the knoll of rocks as Portuguese soldiers hunted down and killed the voltigeurs inside the church. Irishmen and Scotsmen led the wild, screaming, bloody countercharge down through the graveyard and for a moment it seemed as though the ridge, the battle and the army were saved.

Then the French struck again.

Brigadier Loup understood that Massйna would not offer him a chance to make a name in the battle, but that did not mean he would accept the Marshal's animosity. Loup understood Massйna's distrust and did not particularly object, for he believed that a soldier made his own chances. The art of advancement was to wait patiently until an opportunity offered itself and then to move as fast as a striking snake, and now that his brigade had been ordered to its menial task of clearing the main road through and beyond the village of Fuentes de Onoro the Brigadier would watch for any opportunity that would allow him to release his superbly trained and hard-fighting men to a task more suited to their skills.

His journey across the plain was placid. The fighting boiled at the top of the pass above the village, but the British guns seemed not to notice the advance of a single small brigade. A couple of roundshot struck his infantrymen, and one case shot exploded wide of his grey dragoons, but otherwise the Loup Brigade's advance was untroubled by the enemy. The brigade's two infantry battalions marched in column either side of the road, the dragoons flanked them in two large squadrons while Loup himself, beneath his savage wolf-tailed banner, rode in the centre of the formation. Juanita de Elia rode with him. She had insisted on witnessing the battle's closing stages and Marshal Massйna's confident assurance that the battle was won had persuaded Loup it was safe enough for Juanita to ride at least as far as the Dos Casas's eastern bank. The paucity of British artillery fire seemed to vindicate Massйna's confidence.

Loup dismounted his dragoons outside the village gardens. The horses were picketed in a battered orchard where they would remain while the dragoons cleared the road east of the stream. There were not many obstructions here to slow the progress of the heavy baggage wagons carrying Almeida's relief supplies, merely one collapsed wall and a few blackening corpses left from the British gunfire, so once the dragoons had cleared the passage they were ordered to cross the ford and start on the larger job inside the village proper. Loup ordered Juanita to stay with the horses while he marched his two battalions of infantry around the village's northern flank so that they could begin clearing the main street from the top of the hill, working their way down to meet the dragoons coming up from the stream. "You don't have to be careful with the wounded," he told his men, "we're not a damned rescue mission. Our job is to clear the street, not nurse injured men, so just throw the casualties aside until the doctors arrive. Just clear the way, that's all, because the sooner the road's clear the sooner we can put some guns on the ridge to finish off the Goddams. To work!"

He led his men up around the village. A few scattered skirmishers' bullets came from the heights above to remind the grey-clad infantry that this was still not a battle won and Loup, striding eagerly ahead of his men, noted that the fighting was still very close to the plateau's lip, and then a great cheer from the ridge announced that the battle could yet be lost.

For the cheer marked the moment when a phalanx of red-coated infantry drove in the French attack and thrust it back across the crest. Now, beneath their bright flags, the British counterattack was storming down the slope towards the village. French voltigeurs were abandoning the high rocks and fleeing down the slope to find safety behind the village's stone walls. A sudden panic had gripped the leading French grenadiers who were giving ground to the vengeful redcoats, but Loup felt nothing but elation. God, it seemed, was working to a different plan than Marshal Andrй Massйna. The street clearance could wait, for suddenly Loup's opportunity had come.

Providence had placed his brigade on the left flank of the Irish counterattack. The redcoats were screaming down the hill, bayoneting and clubbing their enemies, oblivious of the two waiting battalions of fresh infantry. Behind the Irish came a disorganized mass of allied infantry, all sucked pell-mell into this new battle for mastery of Fuentes de Onoro's blood-glutted streets.

"Fix bayonets!" Loup called and drew his own straight-bladed dragoon sword. So Massйna had thought to keep his brigade from glory? Loup turned to see that his pagan banner of wolf tails hanging from an eagle's cross-bar was held high, and then, as the counterattacking British troops poured into the village streets, he ordered the advance.

Like a whirlpool that sucked every scrap of flotsam into its destructive vortex, the village had again become a place of close-quarter killing. "Vive l'Empereur!" Loup shouted, and plunged into the fight.

Sharpe eased the green jacket off the dead rifleman. The man had been one of the sharpshooters on the rocky knoll, but he had been shot by a voltigeur at the high point of the French attack and now Sharpe pulled the bloody jacket off the stiff, awkward arms. "Perkins! Here!" He threw the green jacket to the rifleman. "Get your girl to shorten the sleeves."

"Yes, sir."

"Or do it yourself, Perkins," Harper added.

"I'm no good with a needle, Sarge."

"That's what Miranda says too," Harper said, and the riflemen laughed.

Sharpe walked to the rocks above the village. He had brought his riflemen back unscathed from their errand to the Light Division, only to find that Major Tarrant had no new orders for him. The battle had become a vicious fight over mastery of the village, its graveyard and the church above, and men were not using ammunition so much as sword, bayonet and musket stock. Captain Donaju had wanted permission to join the men firing at the French from the crest's ridge, but Tarrant had been so worried by the proximity of the attackers that he had ordered the Real Companпa Irlandesa to stay close to the ammunition wagons that he was busily having harnessed to their horses or oxen. "If we must retreat," he had told Sharpe, "it'll be chaos! But a man must be ready." The Real Companпa Irlandesa made a thin line between the wagons and the fighting, but then the attack of the 74th Highlanders and the Connaught Rangers had eased Tarrant's urgency.

"Pon my soul, Sharpe, but it's hot work." Colonel Runciman had been hovering around the ammunition wagons, fidgeting and worrying, but now he came forward to catch a glimpse of the turmoil in the village beneath. He gave his horse's reins to one of the riflemen and peered nervously over the crest at the fighting beneath. It was hot work indeed. The village, left reeking and smoking from the earlier battles fought through its streets, was once again a maelstrom of musket smoke, screams and blood. The 74th and 88th had driven deep into the labyrinth of houses, but now their progress was slowing as the French defences thickened. The French howitzers on the other stream bank had begun lobbing shells into the graveyard and upper houses, adding to the smoke and noise. Runciman shuddered at the horrid sight, then stepped back two paces only to stumble on a dead voltigeur whose body marked the deepest point of penetration reached by the French. Runciman frowned at the body. "Why do they call them vaulters?" he asked.

"Vaulters?" Sharpe asked, not understanding the question.

"Voltigeur, Sharpe," Runciman explained. "French for vaulter."

Sharpe shook his head. "God knows, sir."

"Because they jump like fleas, sir, when you shoot at them," Harper offered. "But don't worry yourself about that one, sir." Harper had seen the look of worry on Runciman's face. "He's a good voltigeur, that one. He's dead."