'We're stuck. That's the problem. We're stuck.'

'Pardon, sir?' Sergeant Harper was waiting for Sharpe outside Cox's headquarters.

'Nothing.' Sharpe stood there, conscious of Patrick Harper's worried look. The Sergeant probably thought that his wound was going bad, poisoning the blood and sending insane vapours into his head. 'Are you alone?'

'No, sir. Private Roach, Daniel Hagman, and three Germans.'

Sharpe saw the others waiting in the shadows. The small, squat German Sergeant was there and Harper jerked a thumb at him.

'That's Helmet, sir.'

'You mean Helmut?'

'That's what I said, sir. He's a one-man army. Are you all right, sir?'

'Yes.'

Sharpe still stood on the steps, his escort waiting below, and fingered a piece of his sword's silver-wire hilt-wrapping that had worked itself loose. He made a mental note to have it soldered flat when they were back with the Battalion, and then marvelled that the mind could dwell on such a triviality at a moment like this.

Harper coughed. 'Are you ready, sir?'

'What? Yes.' He still did not move. He stared at the cathedral.

Patrick Harper tried again. 'Home, sir?'

'No. Over there.' He pointed at the cathedral.

'Yes, sir. Anything you say, sir.'

They walked across the Plaza, lit by the moon, and Sharpe pulled his thoughts back to the present.

'Is the girl all right?'

Harper nodded. 'Lovely, sir. She's fought all day.'

'Fought?'

The Irishman grinned. 'Helmet taught her how to use a sabre."

Sharpe laughed. It sounded like Teresa. He looked at the small German Sergeant and smiled at the man's curious walk: the legs bent apart like a lyre-frame, the stocky, immensely strong body scarcely moving as the legs pushed it forward.

Harper saw Sharpe's change of mood. 'We reckon you could just point Helmet at anything, sir, and he'd chew his way through. Houses, walls, regiments. They'd all have a wee hole, just his shape, straight through them.' Harper laughed. 'Bloody good with a sabre.'

Sharpe thought of the girl, knew that El Catolico had another score to settle, more personal than the gold, and was glad of his escort, of Harper with his seven-barrelled gun. 'What happened at the house today?'

Harper laughed. 'Not a lot, sir. They turned up for the gold, so they did, and first we couldn't speak the Portuguese and then Mr Lossow couldn't understand their English, and then Helmet growled a bit, chewed up some furniture, and the lads put on their spikes, and the Portuguese went home.'

'Where's the girl now?"

'Still there, sir.' Harper grinned at him, reassuringly. 'Down in the kitchen with the lads, having her weapons training. She'd make a good recruit."

'And Mr Knowles?'

'Enjoying himself, sir. All round defence, sir, and keep your eyes open, and Air Knowles doing the rounds every ten minutes. They won't get in. What's happening to us, sir?'

Sharpe shrugged, looked up at the dark windows of the houses. 'We're supposed to hand the gold over tomorrow. To El Catolico.'

'And are we, sir?'

'What do you think?'

Harper grinned, said nothing, and then one of the Germans crouched, sabre held up, and the group stopped. One of the few Portuguese civilians left in the town, hurrying from an alleyway, shrank into the wall and babbled incoherently at the odd group of soldiers who bristled with swords and guns and were looking at him as if sizing him for slaughter.

'All right,' Sharpe said. 'On we go.'

By the cathedral doors Sharpe could see the dark shapes of sentries guarding the ammunition. He crossed to them, his escort's heels echoing over the vast stone square, and the Portuguese guards snapped to attention, saluted, as Sharpe turned to the three Germans.

'Stay here.' Helmut nodded. 'Hagman, Roach. Stay with them. Come on, Sergeant.'

He stared over the Plaza before opening the small door that pierced the huge wooden gate into the cathedral. Was there a dark shape on the far side? Hovering by a corner of an alleyway? He suspected the Partisans were scouting the town, looking for him, but nothing would happen till they reached the dark warren of streets down the hill. He went inside.

The candles had come into their own, throwing small, wavering pools of yellow light on patches of the great stone vault. The tiny red glow of the eternal presence flickered at the far end, and Sharpe waited while Harper dipped a casual finger and crossed himself.

The Irishman stepped alongside Sharpe. 'What are we doing, sir?'

'I don't know.' Sharpe chewed his bottom lip, stared at the small lights, then walked towards the cluster of lanterns that marked the steps to the vault. More sentries stiffened as they approached and Sharpe waved them down. 'Slippers, Sergeant.'

There was a small pile of ammunition by the head of the steps, put there for the soldiers who came to fetch it for the ramparts to save them the bother of pulling on the felt slippers. Sharpe guessed that about twenty men would work the magazine, bringing up the barrels, living their days in the damp, cold air of the cathedral's underworld. Harper saw Sharpe staring at an opened bale of cartridges.

'There's more by that door, sir.'

'More?'

Harper nodded, pointed at a door that flanked the great processional gates. 'There, sir. Bloody great pile of cartridges. Did you want some?'

Sharpe shook his head, peered into the gloom, and saw that against the door there were a dozen bales of the paper cartridges. He guessed they were placed so that infantry battalions could replenish swiftly without getting in the way of the men who brought up the huge powder kegs. He turned back to the crypt. Planks had been laid down the stairs, two feet apart, so that the barrels could be rolled up easily.

'Come on.'

They went down the stairs, into the intermittent light of the horn lanterns, and Sharpe saw that the rest of the garrison's supply of small arms ammunition was now stacked either side of the vault, forming a corridor to the leather-curtained steps of the deep crypt. He padded down the corridor and knelt by the curtain. Two thicknesses of stiff leather, weighted at the bottom, a precaution in case there was a small explosion in the first vault. The stiff leather could soak up a minor blast, protect the massive dump of gunpowder beneath, and Harper watched, astonished, as Sharpe drew his sword and cut off the weights, clenching his teeth as he sawed through the leather.

'What the hell, sir?'

Sharpe looked up at him. 'Don't ask. Where are the sentries?'

'Upstairs.' The Sergeant knelt beside him. 'Sir?'

Sharpe stopped the desperate cutting, looked at the broad, friendly face. 'Don't you trust me?'

Harper was offended, even hurt, and he bent past Sharpe, took hold of the torn part of the curtain in one hand, the upper leather in the other, and pulled. As a demonstration of strength it was remarkable, the veins standing out in his neck, his whole body rigid with effort as the double-thick leather peeled apart, silently and slowly, and Sharpe helped it with the sword blade until, after thirty seconds, Harper leaned back with a grunt and in his hand was the separated bottom two inches of the curtain with its heavy lead weights sewn into the hem.

'Of course I bloody trust you. Just tell me.' The Irishman's anger was real.

Sharpe shook his head. 'I will. Later. Come on.'

Upstairs, taking off the slippers, Sharpe nodded at the candles.

'Funny keeping them alight.'

Harper shook his head. 'They're a hell of a way from the vault, sir.' His voice showed that he was slightly mollified, still insulted, but ready to be friendly. 'Anyway. It's what they call insurance, isn't it?'

'Insurance?'

'Sure.' The huge head nodded. 'A few prayers never did any army any harm.' He stood up. 'Where now, sir?'

To a bakery. The soldiers, British and German, were mystified as Sharpe traced a gutter away from the cathedral to a building not far from the north gate. He tried the door, but it was well locked, and Harper gestured him to one side.

'Helmet? Door.'

The German Sergeant nodded, moved ponderously at the barrier, grunted as he hit it, and then turned with what passed as a smile as the wood splintered away in front of him.

'Told you, sir,' Harper said. 'Any provosts about?'

'If there are any, kill them,' Sharpe said.

'Sir! You hear that, Helmet? Kill the provosts!'

It was pitch black inside but Sharpe felt his way over the floor, past a table that must once have been the counter for the shop, and found huge brick ovens, cold now, hunched at the back of the bakery. He went back to the street, empty of Portuguese provosts or patrols.

They climbed the shallow ramp to the first wall and stopped by the battlements. Sentries lined the rampart, bunched near the gleaming batteries that had been dug into the wall's heart and, in front of them, crouched like grey fingers, were the outer defences, gently sloping, deceptive, filled with Portuguese troops whose fires cast strange glows on the deep ditches that were unseen by the enemy. Further out, beyond the dark strip of earth that was cleared of cover so that the defenders could tear the heart out of an assault, Sharpe could see French fires, some half hidden, and from the far darkness came the occasional ring of a pickaxe, the thump of earth being pried loose.

He jumped, startled by a sudden report, and realized that the Portuguese were sending the occasional missile in the hope of disturbing the French engineers. Night was when the batteries were dug, trenches extended, but the time was not yet right for the Portuguese troops to sally out of the defences and raid the French works in the night-time assault of bayonets in enemy trenches. The French were not close enough yet. A siege worked to a timetable, understood by both sides, and this was just the beginning when the besiegers' ring was not yet complete and the fortress town was at the height of its strength and pride.

He led the way on the rampart's top to the north gate, and Harper watched his Captain stare moodily down at the sentries, the vast gate, the companies of infantry who lived between the granite traps to guard the entrance of the town.

Harper guessed what was in Sharpe's mind. 'No way out, sir.'

'No.' The last small chance gone. 'No. Back to the house.'

They went down steps and found a street that went towards the lower town and Sharpe stayed away from the dark houses with their blind windows and shut-up doors. Their boots rang cold on the cobbles, as they peered into alleyways, up the cross streets, and once or twice Harper thought he saw a shadow that was too irregular to be part of a building, but he could not be sure. Almeida was quiet, eerie. Sharpe drew his sword.

'Sir?' Harper's voice was worried. 'You wouldn't be planning, would you, to…'

They had forgotten the rooftops, but Helmut, alerted by a sound, had turned, looked up, and the man who dropped on him screamed terribly as the sabre pierced him. Sharpe went right, Harper left, and the street was suddenly full of men with swords, dark clothes, and the dying man's pathetic whimpers. Hagman was using his bayonet, backed against a wall and letting El Catolico's men come to him, and Sharpe, by the same wall, twisted desperately to one side as a rapier blade came at him and missed his waist by inches. He parried a second man with the sword, remembered El Catolico calling it a butcher's weapon, and, forsaking technique for anger he hacked with it once and felt the edge hit something, bite, and slide free. He turned back to the first attacker, but Roach was there, massive and ponderous, pounding the life from the man with his rifle-butt, and Sharpe twisted back, flickered his sword out in a blind lunge and felt it parried, pushed aside, and he leaped back, knowing the attack was coming, tripped on the dead man and fell backwards.

The fall saved his life. The seven-barrelled gun, held against the far wall, fizzed as the spark lit the pan and then blasted a channel clear across the street. The sound, magnified by the close walls, rang in Sharpe's head, but he saw three men staggering, one down, and Roach pulled him to his feet and he went forward, into the confusion of the blast, and chopped down on one man, kicked a second, and suddenly the four British were together, across the street, and the Spanish were caught between them and the three men of the King's German Legion.

The Germans had done well. The sabre was their weapon and they fought the swordsmen with their own skills. Sharpe knew he had to learn the art of the sword but this was no time to try. He hacked forward, his left arm hurting but the right chopping diagonally down, left and right, pushing opponents to either side, where Roach and Hagman bayoneted them, and the Partisans, their surprise gone, began to run, to slip past the Germans and escape into the night.

Helmut growled. With these odds there was no point in trying to kill, and he had small chance of beating the long rapiers with their delicate finesse. He used his curved sabre in short, economic strokes, going for the eyes, always the eyes, because a man will run before he loses his sight, and Helmut sent his attackers reeling, one after the other, hands clasped to their faces and blood showing between the fingers. The Spanish had had enough; they ran, but the short Sergeant dropped his sabre, grabbed one by the arm, hugged him like a bear, and then, quickly releasing him, swung him against a wall with all his force. It sounded like a sack of turnips falling from the top of a barn on to a stone floor.

Harper grinned at him, wiped blood from his sword-bayonet. 'Very nice, Helmet.'

There was a shout from down the street, the flare of torches, and the six men whirled round, weapons raised, but Sharpe ordered them to wait. A Portuguese patrol, muskets ready, pounded towards them, and Sharpe saw the officer leading with a drawn sword. The officer stopped, suspicion on his face, and then grinned, spread his arms, and laughed.

'Richard Sharpe! Of all the devils! What are you doing?'

Sharpe laughed, wiped the blood off his blade, and pushed it into the scabbard. He turned to Harper. 'Sergeant, meet Tom Garrard. Once a Sergeant in the Thirty-third, now a Lieutenant in the Portuguese army.' He took Garrard's hand, shook it. 'You bastard. How are you?'

Garrard beamed at him, turned to Harper. 'We were Sergeants together. Christ, Dick, it must be bloody years. I remember you blowing the face off that bloody little heathen! It's good to see you. A bloody Captain! What's the world coming to?' He gave Sharpe a salute and laughed.

'It's years since anyone called me Dick. You well?'

'Chipper. Couldn't be better.' He jerked a thumb at his men. 'Good lads, these. Fight like us. Well, well, well. You remember that girl in Sering? Nancy?'

Sharpe's men looked at Garrard curiously. It was a year since the Portuguese government had asked the British to reorganize their army and one of the changes, started by the Englishman, Marshal Beresford, who now commanded the Portuguese troops, was to offer commissions to experienced British Sergeants so that the raw, untrained Portuguese troops were given officers who knew how to fight. It was good, Garrard said, and working well, and he looked at Harper.

'You should join up, Sergeant.'

Harper grinned, shook his head. 'I'll stay with him.'

'You could do worse.' Garrard looked at Sharpe. Trouble?'

'It's over.'

Garrard sheathed his sword. 'Anything I can do?'

'Open a gate for us. Tonight.'

Garrard looked at him shrewdly. 'How many of you?'

'Two hundred and fifty. Cavalry and us.'

'Christ, mate. That's impossible. I thought you meant just you seven only.' He stopped, grinned. 'You with this gold?'

'That's us. You know about it?'

'God Almighty! Bloody orders from everyone to stop the gold leaving. We didn't even know there was any gold here.' He shook his head. 'I'm sorry, Dick. Can't help.'

Sharpe grinned. 'Doesn't matter. We'll manage.'

'You will.' He grinned again. 'I heard about Talavera. That was bloody well done. It really was.'

Sharpe pointed at Harper. 'He was with me.'

Garrard nodded to the Irishman. 'Proud of you.' He looked at his men. 'We'll do it next time, won't we, lads?' The Portuguese smiled back, nodded shyly to Sharpe.

'We must go, Tom. Work to do.' The farewells were said, promises to look each other up, that might or might not ever be kept, and Sharpe accepted Garrard's offer for the Portuguese soldiers to clear the bodies off the street.

'Go easy, Dick!'

'And you.' Sharpe looked at Harper. 'Did you see El Catolico?'

The Sergeant shook his head. 'There were enough of them, sir. But not him. Perhaps he doesn't do his own dirty work?'

Then where? Sharpe looked up at the roofs. The rooftops. He turned to the Sergeant.

'Do we have sentries on the roof?'

'The roof?' Alarm showed on the big face. 'Sweet Jesus!'

'Come on!' They began running. Not again, thought Sharpe. Please, God, not again. He remembered Josefina lying in the blood-stained sheets; he ran faster, the sword in his hand. 'Open up!'

The sentries turned, startled, and pushed open the courtyard gate. There was the smell of horses, torchlight, and he leapt up the steps, banged open the kitchen door, and there was the Company, eating, the firelight, candles, and Teresa, unharmed, at the end of the table. He breathed a sigh of relief, shook his head, and Lossow came over the floor.

'Welcome back! What is it?'

Sharpe pointed to the ceiling. 'Upstairs!' He was trying to catch his breath. 'Upstairs. The bastard's waiting upstairs.'