Wellington was not far away from Sharpe and Runciman. The General was sitting on his horse on the bloody dip of land where the road crossed the ridge between the church and the rocks, and behind him was nothing except the army's baggage and ammunition park. To the north and west his divisions guarded the plateau against the French threat, but here, in the centre, where the enemy had so nearly broken through, there was nothing left. There were no more reserves and he would not thin the ridge's other defenders and so open a back door to French victory. The battle would have to be won by his Highlanders and Irishmen, and so far they were rewarding his faith by retaking the village house by bloody house and cattle shed by burning cattle shed.

Then the grey infantry struck from the flank.

Sharpe saw the wolf-tail banner in the smoke. For a second he froze. He wanted to pretend he had not seen it. He wanted an excuse, any excuse, not to go down that awful slope to a village so reeking with death that the air alone was enough to make a man vomit. He had fought once already inside Fuentes de Onoro, and once was surely enough, but his hesitation was only for a heartbeat. He knew there was no excuse. His enemy had come to Fuentes de Onoro to claim victory and Sharpe must stop him. He turned. "Sergeant Harper! My compliments to Captain Donaju and ask him to form column. Go on! Hurry!" Sharpe looked at his men, his handful of good men from the bloody, fighting 95th. "Load up, lads. Time to go to work."

"What are you doing, Sharpe?" Runciman asked.

"You want to beat our court of inquiry, General?" Sharpe asked.

Runciman gaped at Sharpe, not understanding why the question had been asked. "Why, yes, of course," he managed to say.

"Then go over to Wellington, General," Sharpe said, "and ask his Lordship's permission to lead the Real Companпa Irlandesa into battle."

Runciman blanched. "You mean…?" he began, but could not articulate the horror. He glanced down at the village that had been turned into a slaughterhouse. "You mean…?" he began again and then his mouth fell slackly open at the very thought of going down into that smoking hell.

"I'll ask if you don't," Sharpe said. "For Christ's sake, sir! Gallantry forgives everything! Gallantry means you're a hero. Gallantry gets you a wife. Now for Christ's sake! Do it!" he shouted at Runciman as though the Colonel was a raw recruit.

Runciman looked startled. "You'll come with me, Sharpe?" He was as frightened of approaching Wellington as he was of going towards the enemy.

"Come on!" Sharpe snapped, and led a flustered Runciman towards the sombre knot of staff officers who surrounded Wellington. Hogan was there, watching anxiously as the tide of struggle in the village turned against the allies once again. The French were inching uphill, forcing the redcoats and the Portuguese and the German infantry back out of the village, only this time there were no ranks of muskets waiting at the crest of the ridge to blast the enemy as they climbed the road and overran the churned-up graveyard.

Runciman hung back as the two men reached the staff officers, but Sharpe pushed his way through the horses and dragged the reluctant Colonel with him. "Ask him," Sharpe said.

Wellington heard the words and frowned at the two men. Colonel Runciman hesitated, snatched off his hat, tried to speak and only managed an incoherent stutter.

"General Runciman wants permission, my Lord— Sharpe began coldly.

"— To take the Irish into battle." Runciman managed to complete the sentence in a barely coherent rush. "Please, my Lord!"

Some of the staff officers smiled at the thought of the Wagon Master General leading troops, but Wellington twisted in his saddle to see that the red-jacketed Real Companпa Irlandesa had formed column. It looked a pathetically small unit, but it was there, formed, armed and evidently eager. There was no one else. The General looked at Sharpe and raised an eyebrow. Sharpe nodded.

"Carry on, Runciman," Wellington said.

"Come on, sir." Sharpe plucked the fat man's sleeve to pull him away from the General.

"One moment!" The General's voice was frigid. "Captain Sharpe?"

Sharpe turned back. "My Lord?"

"The reason, Captain Sharpe, why we do not execute enemy prisoners, no matter how vile their behaviour, is that the enemy will reciprocate the favour on our men, no matter how small their provocation." The General looked at Sharpe with an eye as cold as a winter stream. "Do I make myself clear, Captain Sharpe."

"Yes, sir. My Lord."

Wellington gave a very small nod. "Go."

Sharpe dragged Runciman away. "Come on, sir!"

"What do I do, Sharpe?" Runciman asked. "For God's sake, what do I do? I'm not a fighter!"

"Stay at the back, sir," Sharpe said, "and leave everything else to me." Sharpe scraped his long sword free. "Captain Donaju!"

"Captain Sharpe?" Donaju was pale.

"General Wellington requests," Sharpe shouted loudly enough for every man in the Real Companпa Irlandesa to hear him, "that the King of Spain's bodyguard goes down to the village and kills every goddamn Frenchman it finds. And the Connaught Rangers are down there, Captain, and they need a morsel of Irish help. Are you ready?"

Donaju drew his own sword. "Perhaps you would do the honour of taking us down, Captain?"

Sharpe beckoned his riflemen into the ranks. There would be no skirmishers here, no delicate long-range killing, only a blood-soaked brawl in a godforsaken village on the edge of Spain where Sharpe's sworn enemy had come to turn defeat into victory. "Fix bayonets!" Sharpe called. For a second or two he was assailed with the strange thought that this was just how Lord Kiely had wanted his men to fight. His Lordship had simply wanted to throw his men into a suicidal battle, and this place was as good as any for that kind of gesture. No training could prepare a man for this battle. This was gutter fighting and it was either born into a man's bones or it was absent for ever. "And forward!" Sharpe shouted. "At the double!" And he led the small unit up the road to the ridge's crest where the soil was torn by enemy roundshot, then over the skyline and down. Down into the smoke, the blood and the slaughter.

CHAPTER XI

Bodies lay sprawled on the upper slope. Some were motionless, others still stirred slowly with the remnants of life. A Highlander vomited blood, then collapsed across a grave that had been so churned by shell and roundshot that the pelvic and wrist bones of a corpse lay among the soil. A French drummer boy sat beside the road with his hands clasped over his spilt guts. His drumsticks were still stuck in his crossbelt. He looked up mutely as Sharpe ran past, then began to cry. A greenjacket lay dead from one of the very first attacks. A bent French bayonet was stuck in his ribs just above a distended, blackened belly that was thick with flies. A shell cracked apart beside the body and scraps of its casing whistled past Sharpe's head. One of the guardsmen was hit and fell, tripping two men behind him. Harper shouted at them to leave the man alone. "Keep running!" he called harshly. "Keep running! Let the bugger look after himself! Come on!"

Halfway to the village the road curved sharply to the right. Sharpe left the road there, jumping down a small embankment into a patch of scrubland. He could see the Loup Brigade not far ahead. The grey infantry had plunged into the village from the north and were now threatening to cut the 88th into two parts. Loup's attack had first arrested the momentum of the British counterattack then reversed it, and to Sharpe's right he could see redcoats retreating out of the village to find shelter behind the remnants of the graveyard wall. A swarm of Frenchmen was pushing up from the village's lower houses, roused to one last brave effort by the example of Loup's brigade.