MARSHAL ANDRÉ MASSÉNA was feeling numb. He was saying nothing, just staring. It was shortly after dawn, the day after his first patrols had reached the new British and Portuguese works, and now he crouched behind a low stone wall on which his telescope rested and he slowly panned the glass along the hilltops to the south and everywhere he saw bastions, guns, walls, barricades, more guns, men, telegraph stations, flagpoles. Everywhere.

He had been planning the victory celebrations to be held in Lisbon. There was a fine large square beside the Tagus where half the army could be paraded, and the greatest problem he had anticipated was what to do with the thousands of British and Portuguese prisoners he expected to capture, but instead he was looking at an apparently endless barrier. He saw how the lower slopes of the opposite hills had been steepened, he saw how the enemy guns were protected by stone, he saw flooded approach routes, he saw failure.

He drew in a deep breath and still had nothing to say. He leaned back from the wall and took his one eye from the telescope. He had thought to maneuver here, to show part of his army on the road to draw in the enemy forces who would think an attack imminent, and then launch the greater part of l'Armée de Portugal round to the west in a slashing hook that would cut off Wellington's men. He would have pinned the British and Portuguese against the Tagus and then graciously accepted their surrender, but instead there was nowhere for his army to go except up against those walls and guns and steepened slopes.

"The works extend to the Atlantic," a staff officer reported dryly.

Masséna said nothing and one of his aides, knowing what was in his master's mind, asked the question instead. "Not the whole way, surely?"

"Every last kilometer," the staff officer said flatly. He had ridden the width of the peninsula, protected by dragoons and watched all the way by an enemy ensconced in batteries, forts and watchtowers. "And for much of its length," he continued remorselessly, "the works are covered by the River Sizandre, and there is a second line behind."

Masséna found his voice and turned furiously on the staff officer. "A second line? How can you tell?"

"Because it's visible, sir. Two lines."

Masséna stared again through the glass. Was there something strange about the guns in the bastion immediately opposite? He remembered how, when he had been besieged by the Austrians in Genoa, he had put false guns in his defenses. They had been painted tree trunks jutting from emplacements and, from anything more than two hundred paces, they had more or less looked like cannon barrels, and the Austrians had dutifully avoided the fake batteries. "How far to the sea?" he asked.

"Nearly fifty kilometers, sir." The aide made a wild guess.

Masséna did the arithmetic. There were at least two bastions every kilometer, and the bastions he could see all had four cannon, some more, so by a cautious estimate there were eight guns to the kilometer, which meant Wellington must have assembled four hundred cannon for just the first line, and that was a ridiculous assumption. There were not that many guns in Portugal, and that encouraged the Marshal to believe that some of the guns were false. Then he thought of Britain's navy and wondered if they had brought ships' guns ashore. Dear God, he thought, but how had they done this? "Why didn't we know?" he demanded. There was silence in which Masséna turned and stared at Colonel Barreto. "Why didn't we know?" he demanded again. "You told me they were building a pair of forts to protect the road! Does that look like a pair of lousy forts!"

"We weren't told," Barreto said bitterly.

Masséna stooped to the glass. He was angry, but he curbed his feelings, trying to find a weakness in his enemy's careful defenses. Opposite him, beside the bastion which had the strangely dark guns, there was a valley that curled behind the hill. He could see no defenses there, but that meant little for all of the low ground was obscured by mist. The hilltops, with their forts and windmills, were in the bright sun, but the valleys were shrouded, yet he fancied that small valley, which twisted behind the nearest hill, was bereft of defenses. Any attack up the valley would be harassed by the high guns, of course, if they were real guns, but once through the gap and behind the hill, what was to stop the Eagles? Perhaps Wellington was deceiving him? Perhaps these defenses were more show than real? Perhaps the stone bastions were not properly mortared, the guns fake and the whole elaborate defense a charade to dissuade any attack? Yet Masséna knew he must attack. In front of him was Lisbon and its supplies, behind him was a wasteland, and if his army were not to starve then he must go forward. The anger bloomed in him again, but he thrust it away. Anger was a luxury. For the moment he knew he must show sublime confidence or else the very existence of these defenses would grind the heart from his army. "C'est une coquille d'oeuf," he said.

"A what?" An aide thought he had misheard.

"Une coquille d'oeuf," Masséna repeated, still gazing through the glass. He meant it was an eggshell. "One tap," he went on, "and it will crack."

There was silence except for the intermittent sound of cannon fire from a British gunboat on the River Tagus that lay a mile or so to the east. The aides and Generals, staring over Masséna's head, thought the defensive line a most impressive eggshell.

"They've fortified the hilltops," Masséna explained, "but forgotten the valleys between and that, gentlemen, means we shall prise them open. Prise them open like a virgin." He preferred that simile to the eggshell, for he repeated it. "Like a virgin," he said enthusiastically, then collapsed the glass and stood. "General Reynier?"

"Sir?"

"You see that valley?" Masséna pointed across the misted low ground to where the small valley twisted behind one of the fortified hills. "Send your light troops into it. Go fast, go before the mist vanishes. See what's there." He would lose some men, but it would be worth it to discover that the valleys were the weak point in Wellington's defense, and then Masséna could pick his valley and time and break this virgin wide open. Masséna chuckled at the thought, his spirits restored, and he held his telescope out to an aide and just then one of the dark guns on the opposite hill fired and the ball seared across the valley, struck the slope twenty paces below the wall and bounced up over Masséna's head. The British had been watching him, and must have decided that he had spent too long in one place. Masséna took off his cocked hat, bowed to the enemy in acknowledgment of their message, and walked back to where the horses waited.

He would attack.

MAJOR FERREIRA HAD NOT FORESEEN THIS. He had thought the boat, which they had bought for too much money south of Castelo Branco, would take them all the way to the wharves of Lisbon, but now he saw that the British navy was blockading the river. It was the last of many difficulties he had faced on the journey. One of the mules had gone lame and that had slowed them, it had taken time to discover a man willing to sell a hidden boat, and then, once on the river, they had become entangled with a fish trap that had held them up for over an hour and next morning some French foragers had used them for target practice, forcing them to row into a tributary of the Tagus and hide there until the French got bored and rode away. Now, with the journey's end not so far away, there was the gunboat.

At first, seeing the boat in midstream, Ferreira had not been alarmed. He had the seniority and uniform to argue his way past any allied officer, but then, unexpectedly, the boat had opened fire. He had not known the Squirrel was warning him, ordering him either to heave to or else ground his boat on the island that edged the smaller channel; instead he believed he was under fire and so he snapped at his brother and his three men to row harder. In truth he panicked. He had been worrying about his reception in Lisbon ever since the army had retreated from Coimbra. Had anyone got wind of the food in the warehouse? He had a guilty conscience and that conscience made him try to outrun the gunfire, and he believed he had done it until he saw, dim through the mist layer that hung above the swathe of land encircled by the river's bend, the thicket of masts denoting a whole squadron of gunboats barring the river. He was standing in the sternsheets now, staring about him, and he saw, with a great pang of relief, the forts that guarded the main road north from Lisbon. A swirl of parting mist showed the forts on the hills and Ferreira saw the Portuguese flag flying above the nearest and so he impulsively pulled on the tiller ropes to carry the boat to shore. Better to deal with Portuguese soldiers, he thought, than British sailors.

"We're being followed," his brother warned him.

Ferreira turned and saw the jolly boat racing down the river's center. "We're going ashore," he said, "they won't follow us there."

"They won't?"

"They're sailors. Hate being on dry land." Ferreira smiled. "We'll go to the fort," he said, jerking his chin towards the new bastions dominating the road, "we'll get horses and we'll be in Lisbon by this afternoon."

The boat ran ashore and the five men carried their weapons and French coin up the bank. Ferreira glanced once at the jolly boat and saw it had turned and was making heavy going as it tried to cross the current. He assumed the sailors wanted to take his boat, and they were welcome to it for now he was safe, but when the five men broke through the bushes at the top of the bank they came across a further difficulty. The river was embanked here, but farther south the big earth wall must have been breached to let the water flood the road and Ferreira saw there would be no easy walk to the closest fort because the land was inundated and that meant they would have to go inland to skirt the floods. That was no great matter, but then he felt alarm because, somewhere in the mist ahead of him, a gun sounded. The echo rolled between the hills, but no shot came anywhere near them, and no second shot sounded, which suggested that there was no need to worry. Probably a gunner ranging his piece or testing a rebored touchhole. They walked westwards, following the line of the swamp-edged flood, and after a while, vague in the mist, Ferreira saw a farm standing on higher ground. There was a wide stretch of boggy land between them and the farm, but he reckoned if he could just reach those buildings then he would not be too far from the forts on the southern heights. That thought gave Ferreira a conviction that all would be well, that the tribulations of the last days would be crowned with unmerited but welcome success. He began to laugh.

"What is it?" his brother asked.

"God is good to us, Luis, God is good."

"He is?"

"We sold that food to the French, took their money and the food was destroyed! I shall say we tricked the French and that means we shall be heroes."

Ferragus smiled and patted the leather satchel hanging from his shoulder. "We're rich heroes."

"I'll probably be made Lieutenant Colonel for this," Ferreira said. He would explain that he had heard of the hoarded food and stayed behind to ensure its destruction, and such a feat would surely merit a promotion. "They were a bad few days," he admitted to his brother, "but we made it through. Good God!"

"What?"

"The forts," Ferreira said in astonishment. "Look at all those bastions!" The mist obscured the valley, but it was a low mist and as they breasted a gentle rise Ferreira could see the hilltops and he could see that every height had its small fort and, for the first time, he realized the extent of the new works. He had thought that only the roads were being guarded, but it was plain that the line stretched far inland. Could it cross the peninsula? Go all the way to the sea? And if it did then surely the French would never reach Lisbon. He felt a sudden surge of relief that he had been forced out of Coimbra for if he had stayed, if the warehouse had not been burned, then he would inevitably have found himself recruited by Colonel Barreto. "That damned fire did us a favor," he told his brother, "because we're going to win. Portugal will survive." All he had to do was reach a fort flying the Portuguese flag and it would all be over; the uncertainty, the danger, the fear. It was over and he had won. He turned, looking for the Portuguese flag he had seen flying above the mist, and when he turned he saw the pursuers coming from the river. He saw the green jackets.

So it was not over, not quite. And clumsily, weighed down by their money, the five men began to run.

GENERAL SARRUT ASSEMBLED four battalions of light infantry. Some were chasseurs and some voltigeurs, but whether they were called hunters or vaulters they were all skirmishers and there was no real distinction between them except that the chasseurs had red epaulettes on their blue coats and the voltigeurs had either green or red. Both considered themselves elite troops, trained to fight against enemy skirmishers in the space between the battle lines.

The four battalions were all from the 2nd regiment that had left France with eighty-nine officers and two thousand six hundred men, but now the four battalions were down to seventy-one officers and just over two thousand men. They did not carry the regiment's Eagle for they were not going to battle. They were carrying out a reconnaissance and General Sarrut's orders were clear. The skirmishers were to advance in loose order across the low land in front of the enemy forts and the fourth battalion, on the left of the line, was to probe the small valley and, if they met no resistance, the third would follow. They would advance only far enough to determine whether the valley was blockaded or otherwise defended and, when that was established, the battalions were to withdraw back to the French-held hills. The mist was both a curse and a blessing. A blessing because it meant the four battalions could advance without being seen from the enemy forts, and a curse because it would obscure the view up the smaller valley, but by the time his first men reached that valley Sarrut expected the mist would be mostly burned away. Then, of course, he could expect some furious artillery fire from the enemy forts, but as his men would be in skirmish order it would be a most unlucky shot that did any damage.

General Sarrut had been far more worried by the prospect of enemy cavalry, but Reynier had dismissed the concern. "They won't have horsemen saddled and ready," he had claimed, "and it'll take them half a day to get them up. If they bother to fight you in the valley it'll be infantry, so I'll have Soult's brigade ready to deal with the bastards." Soult's brigade was a mix of cavalry: chasseurs, hussars and dragoons, a thousand horsemen who only had six hundred and fifty-three horses between them, but that should be enough to deal with any British or Portuguese skirmishers who tried to stop Sarrut's reconnaissance.

It was mid-morning by the time Sarrut's men were ready to advance and the General was about to order the first battalion out into the mist-shrouded valley when one of General Reynier's aides came galloping down the hill. Sarrut watched the officer negotiate the slope. "It'll be a change of orders," he predicted sourly to one of his own aides. "Now they'll want us to attack Lisbon."

Reynier's aide curbed his horse in a flurry of earth, then leaned forward to pat the beast's neck. "There's a British picquet, sir," he said. "We've just seen it from the hilltop. They're in a ruined barn by the stream."

"No matter," Sarrut said. No mere picquet could stop four battalions of prime light infantry.

"General Reynier suggests we might capture them, sir," the aide said respectfully.

Sarrut laughed. "One sight of us, Captain, and they'll be running like hares!"

"The mist, General," the aide said respectfully. "It's patchy, very patchy, and General Reynier suggests if you head westwards you may slip around them. He feels their officer might have some information about the defenses."

Sarrut grunted. A suggestion from Reynier was tantamount to an order, but it seemed a pointless order. Doubtless the picquet did have an officer, though it seemed extremely unlikely that such a man would have any useful knowledge, yet Reynier had to be indulged. "Tell him we'll do it," he said, and sent one of his own aides to the front of the column and ordered half a battalion to curl around to the west. That would take them through the mist, probably out of sight of the barn, and they could head back to cut the picquet off. "Tell Colonel Feret to advance now," he told the aide, "and you go with him. Make sure they don't advance too far. The rest of the troops will march ten minutes after he leaves. And tell him to be quick!"

He stressed those last few words. The point of the exercise was merely to discover what lay behind the enemy hill, not to win a victory that would have the Parisian mob cheering. There was no victory to be won here, merely information to gather, and the longer his troops stayed in the low ground the longer they would be exposed to cannon fire. It was a job, Sarrut thought, that would have been done far more efficiently by a squadron of cavalry who could gallop across the valley in a matter of moments, but the cavalry was in poor shape. Their horses were worn out and hungry, and that thought reminded Sarrut that the British picquet in the old barn must have rations. That cheered him up. He should have thought to tell his aide to keep some back if any were found, but the aide was a smart young fellow and would doubtless do it anyway. Fresh eggs, perhaps? Or bacon? Newly baked bread, butter, milk yellow and warm from the cow? Sarrut dreamed of these things as the chasseurs and voltigeurs tramped past him. They had marched hard and long in these last few days and they must have been hungry, but they seemed cheerful enough as they went by the General's horse. Some had boot soles missing, or else had soles tied to the uppers with string, and their uniforms were faded, ragged and threadbare, but he noted that their muskets were clean and he did not doubt that they would fight well if, indeed, they were called on to fight at all. For most of them, he suspected, the morning would be a tiring tramp through sodden fields enlivened by random British artillery fire. The last company marched past and Sarrut spurred his horse to follow.

Ahead of him was a brigade of skirmishers, a misted valley, an unsuspecting enemy and, for the moment, silence.

LIEUTENANT JACK BULLEN was a decent young man who came from a decent family. His father was a judge and both his elder brothers were barristers, but young Jack Bullen had never shone at school and though his schoolmasters had tried to whip Latin and Greek into his skull, his skull had won the battle and stayed innocent of any foreign tongue. Bullen had never minded the beatings. He had been a tough, cheerful youngster, the sort who collected birds' eggs, scrapped with other boys and climbed the church tower for a dare, and now he was a tough, cheerful young man who thought that being an officer in Lawford's regiment was just about the finest thing life could afford. He liked soldiering and he liked soldiers. Some officers feared the men more than they feared the enemy, but young Jack Bullen, nineteen years old, enjoyed the rank and file's company. He relished their poor jokes, enthusiastically drank their sour-tasting tea and considered them all, even those whom his father might have condemned to death, transportation or hard labor, as capital fellows, though he would have much preferred to be with the capital fellows of his old company. He liked number nine company, and while Jack Bullen did not actively dislike the light company, he found it difficult. Not the men, Bullen had a natural talent for getting along with men, but he did find the light company's commanding officer a trial. It took a lot to suppress young Jack Bullen's spirits, but somehow Captain Slingsby had managed it.

"He's queer, sir," Sergeant Read said respectfully.

"He's queer," Bullen repeated tonelessly.

"Queer, sir," Read confirmed. To be queer was to be ill, but Read really meant that Captain Slingsby was drunk, but as a sergeant he could not say as much.

"How queer?" Bullen asked. He could have walked the twenty paces to discover for himself, but he was in charge of the sentries who lined the stream just outside the crumbling barn, and he did not really want to face Slingsby.

"Very queer, sir," Read said gravely. "He's talking about his wife, sir. He's saying bad things about her."

Bullen wanted to know what things were being said, but he knew the Methodist Sergeant would never tell him, so he just grunted in acknowledgment.

"It's upsetting the men, sir," Read said. "Such things shouldn't be said about women. Not about wives."

Bullen suspected Slingsby's outburst was amusing the men rather than upsetting them, and that was bad. An officer, however friendly, had to keep a certain dignity. "Can he walk?"

"Barely, sir," Read said, then amended the answer. "No, sir."

"Oh, dear God," Bullen said and saw Read flinch at the mild blasphemy. "Where did he get the liquor?"

Read sniffed. "His servant, sir. Got a pack filled with canteens and the Captain's been drinking all night, sir."

Bullen wondered what he should do. He could hardly send Slingsby back to battalion, for Bullen did not see it as his job to destroy his commanding officer's reputation. That would be a disloyal act. "Keep an eye on him, Sergeant," Bullen said helplessly. "Maybe he'll recover."

"But I can't take his orders, sir, not in the state he's in."

"Is he giving you orders?"

"He told me to put Slattery under arrest, sir."

"The charge?"

"Looking funny at him, sir."

"Oh dear. Ignore his orders, Sergeant, and that's an order. Tell him I said so."

Read nodded. "You're taking over, sir?"

Bullen hesitated, knowing the question was important. If he said yes then he was formally acknowledging that Slingsby was not fit to command, and that would inevitably result in an enquiry. "I'm taking over until the Captain has recovered," he said, which seemed a decent compromise.

"Very good, sir." Read saluted and turned away.

"And Sergeant?" Bullen waited till Read turned back. "Don't look funny at him."

"No, sir," Read said solemnly, "of course not, sir. I wouldn't do such a thing, sir."

Bullen sipped his mug of tea and found it had gone cold. He put it down on a stone and walked to the stream. The mist had thickened slightly, he thought, so that he could only see some sixty or seventy yards, though, perversely, the hilltops a quarter-mile away were clear enough, which proved that the mist was merely a low-lying layer blanketing the damp earth. It would clear. He remembered marvelous winter mornings in Essex when the mist would drift away to show the hunting field spread out in glorious pursuit. He liked hunting. He smiled to himself, remembering his father's great black gelding, a tremendous hunter, that always screwed left when it landed on the far side of a hedge and every time his father would shout, "Order in court! Order in court!" It was a family joke, one of the many that made the Bullen house a happy one.

"Mister Bullen, sir?" It was Daniel Hagman, the oldest man in the company, who called from a dozen paces upstream.

Bullen, who had been thinking how they would be readying the horses for the cubbing season at home, walked to the rifleman. "Hagman?"

"Thought I saw something, sir." Hagman pointed through the mist. "Nothing there now."

Bullen peered and saw nothing. "This mist will burn off soon enough."

"Be clear as a bell in an hour, sir. It'll be nice to have some sunshine."

"Won't it just?"

Then the shooting started.

SHARPE HAD FEARED that the Ferreira brothers would set up an ambush in the bushes at the top of the river bank and so he had asked Braithwaite to take the jolly boat downstream of the brothers' abandoned boat to a place where the river's edge was bare of trees. He had told Sarah and Joana to stay in the boat, but they had ignored him, scrambling ashore behind the three men. Vicente was worried by their presence. "They shouldn't be here."

"We shouldn't be here, Jorge," Sharpe said. He was gazing across the marshland, then saw the Ferreira brothers and their three companions in the mist. The five men were walking inland, looking as though they did not have a care in the world. "We shouldn't be here," Sharpe went on, "but we are, and so are they. So let's finish this." He unslung the rifle and made sure the priming was still in the pan. "Should have fired and reloaded on board the Squirrel," he told Harper.

"You think the powder's damp?"

"Could be." He feared the mist might have moistened the charge, but there was nothing he could do about it now. They began walking, but, by landing farther south Sharpe had unwittingly put them deeper in the marshes and the going was hard. The ground, at best, was squelchy, at worst it was a glutinous mess and, because the tide was ebbing, the land was newly waterlogged. Sharpe cut north, reckoning that the land there was firmer, but the five fugitives were increasing their lead with every step. "Take your boots off," Harper recommended. "I grew up in Donegal," he went on, "and there's nothing we don't know about bogland."

Sharpe kept his boots on. His came up to his knees and were not such an impediment, but the others pulled off their shoes and they made faster progress. "All we need to do," Sharpe said, "is get close enough to shoot the bastards."

"Why don't they look around?" Sarah wondered.

"Because they're dozy," Sharpe said, "because they reckon they're safe." They had reached the firmer ground, a very slight rise between the marsh and the northern hills, and they hurried now, closing the gap on the five men who still looked as carefree as if they were out for a day's rough shooting. They were strolling, guns slung, chatting. Ferragus towered over his companions and Sharpe had an urge to kneel, aim and shoot the bastard in the back, but he did not trust the rifle's charge and so he kept going. Way off to his left he could see some buildings in the mist: a couple of cottages, a barn, some sheds and a larger house and he supposed it had been a prosperous farmstead before the engineers flooded the valley. He suspected the marshy ground extended almost to those half-seen buildings, which seemed to be on higher land, and he reckoned Ferreira would try to reach the farm and then head south. Or else, if the brothers realized they were being followed, they would hole up in the buildings and it would be hell to get them out and Sharpe began to hurry, but just then one of the men turned and stared straight at him. "Bugger," Sharpe said, and dropped to his knee.

The five men began running, a clumsy run because they were carrying guns and coins. Sharpe lined the sights, pulled the cock all the way back and squeezed the trigger. He knew instantly he had missed because the rifle hesitated, then gave a wheezing cough instead of a bang, which meant that the mist-dampened charge had fired, but weakly, and the bullet would have dropped short. He began reloading as Harper and Vicente fired and one of their bullets must have struck a man in the leg because he fell. Sharpe was ramming a new charge down. There was no time to wrap the bullet in leather. He wondered why the hell the army did not issue ready-wrapped bullets, then he pushed the ramrod down onto the ball, primed, knelt and fired again. Joana and Sarah, even though their muskets were futile at this range, both fired. The man who had fallen was on his feet again, showing no sign of being wounded because he was running hard to catch up with his companions. Harper fired and one of the men swerved violently as if the ball had gone frighteningly close to him, and then all five were on the higher ground and running for the buildings. Vicente fired his second shot just as the men vanished among the stone walls.

"Damn," Sharpe said, ramming a new bullet down.

"They won't stay there," Vicente said quietly. "They'll run south."

"We'll go through the marsh, then," Sharpe said, and he set off, splashing into mud and waterlogged grass. He was aiming to get south of the farmstead and so cut off the fugitives, but almost at once he realized the attempt was probably futile. The ground was a morass, there were floods ahead, and when he was up to his knees in water he stopped. He swore because he could see the five men leaving the farm and heading south, but they were also balked by floodwater and turned west again. Sharpe put the rifle to his shoulder, led Ferragus with the sights and pulled the trigger. Harper and Vicente also fired, but they were shooting at moving targets and all three bullets missed, then the five men were gone in the persistent mist. Sharpe fished out a new cartridge. "We tried," he said to Vicente.

"They'll be in Lisbon by this evening," Vicente said. He helped Sharpe struggle free of a patch of mud. "I will report Major Ferreira, of course."

"He'll be long gone, Jorge. Either that or it'll be his word against yours and he's a major and you're a captain, so you know what that means." He stared into the western mist. "It's a pity," he said. "I owed that big bastard a beating."

"Is that why you followed him?" Sarah asked.

"As much as anything else." He rammed a new bullet down the rifle, primed the lock, closed the frizzen and slung the rifle. "Let's find dry land," he said, "and go home."

"They're not gone!" Harper said suddenly, and Sharpe turned to see, miraculously, that the five men were coming back to the farm. They were hurrying, looking into the mist behind them and Sharpe, unslinging the rifle, wondered what in hell was happening.

Then he saw the skirmish line. For a moment he was sure it had to be a British or a Portuguese company, but then he saw the blue coats and white crossbelts, saw the epaulettes, and saw that some of the men wore short sabers and he knew they were the French. And there was more than one company, for out of the mist a whole horde of skirmishers was appearing.

Then, from the west, came a splintering crackle of muskets. The skirmishers turned towards the sound, paused. The Ferreiras were in the farm buildings now. Harper cocked his rifle. "What in God's name is happening?"

"It's called a battle, Pat."

"God save Ireland."

"He can start by saving us," Sharpe said. For it seemed that, though his enemies were trapped, the French had trapped him.

A VAGARY OF THE MIST SAVED BULLEN. He was alert, all his men were alert, for shots had sounded to the east, somewhere out in the inundated land towards the river and Bullen had been about to order Sergeant Huckfield to take a dozen men to investigate the sounds when a swirl of wind, driven down from the southern heights, shifted a patch of whiteness on the western side of the ruined barn and Bullen saw men running. Blue-coated men, carrying muskets, and for a second or two he was so astonished that he did nothing. The French, he could hardly believe they were French, were already south of him, evidently running to get between the barn and the forts, and he understood instantly that he could not extricate the men back to the hills. "Sir!" one of the riflemen called, and the word jarred Bullen out of his shock.

"Sergeant Read!" Bullen was trying to think of everything as he spoke. "Redcoats to the farm. The place we went last night. Take your packs!" Bullen had led a patrol to the big farmstead in the dusk. He had followed the raised track at low tide, crossed the stream on the small stone bridge, poked around the deserted buildings, then explored a little way towards the Tagus until he was stopped by marshland. The farm was his best refuge now, a place with stone walls, marsh all around it, and only one approach: the track from the bridge. So long as he could reach that rough road before the French. "Riflemen!" he ordered. "Here! Sergeant McGovern! Pick two men and get Captain Slingsby out of here. Rifles? You're the rearguard! Let's go!"

Bullen went last, walking backwards among the riflemen. The mist had closed again and the enemy was hidden, but when Bullen was only thirty paces from the barn the French appeared there, charging into the ruins, and one of them saw the greenjackets off to the east and shouted a warning. Voltigeurs turned and fired, but their volley was a ragged effort because they were in skirmish order, although enough of the balls went dangerously close to Bullen and he backed away faster. He could see a half-dozen of the Frenchmen running towards him and he was about to turn and flee when some rifles snapped and two of the Frenchmen went down. Blood was bright on grubby white breeches. He turned and saw that the greenjackets were in skirmish order. They were doing what they were trained to do, and now some of them fired again and another Frenchman jerked backwards.

"We can manage them, sir," Hagman said. "Probably just a patrol. Harris! Watch left! You hurry on, sir." He spoke to Bullen again. "We know what we're doing and that pistol ain't much use." Bullen had been unaware of even drawing the pistol that had been a gift from his father. He fired it anyway and fancied that the small bullet struck a Frenchman, though it was far more likely the man had been thrown backwards by a shot from one of the riflemen. Another rifle fired. The greenjackets were going backwards, one man retreating while his partner kept watch. The French were firing back, but at too long a range. Their musket smoke made thicker patches of mist. By a miracle the voltigeurs were not following hard on Bullen's footsteps. They had expected to trap the picquet in the ruined barn and no one had given them orders to divert the attack eastwards, and that delay gave Bullen precious minutes. He realized that Hagman was right and that the riflemen did not need his orders so he ran past them to the bridge where Sergeant Read was waiting with the redcoats. Captain Slingsby was drinking from a canteen, but at least he was causing no trouble. The rifles fired from the mist and Bullen wondered if he should strike directly south, following the marshes by the stream, then he saw there were Frenchmen out in that open space and he ordered the redcoats across the bridge and back to the farm. The riflemen were hurrying back now, threatened by a new skirmish chain of voltigeurs who had come from the mist. Dear God, Bullen thought, but the Crapauds were everywhere!

"Into the farm!" he shouted at the redcoats. The farmhouse was a sturdy building that had been built on the western face of a small rise so that its front door was approached by stone steps and its windows were eight feet above the ground. A perfect refuge, Bullen thought, so long as the French did not bring artillery. Two redcoats hauled Captain Slingsby up the steps and Bullen followed into a long room, parlor and kitchen united in one, with the door and the two high windows facing down the track leading to the bridge. Bullen could not see the bridge in the mist, but he could see the riflemen retreating fast down the track and he knew the French could not be far behind. "In here!" he shouted at the greenjackets, then explored the rest of his makeshift fort. A second door and a single window faced the back where a yard was edged with other low-tiled buildings, while, at one end of the room, a ladder led to an attic where there were three bedrooms. Bullen split the men into six squads, one for each window facing the track, one for the door, and one each for the small rooms upstairs. He posted a single sentry at the back door, hoping the French would not reach the yard. "Break through the roof," he told the men he posted upstairs. The first voltigeurs were on the track now and their musket balls rattled on the farm's stone walls.

"There are men in the yard, sir," the sentry at the back door said.

Bullen thought he meant Frenchmen and snatched open the back door, but saw that one of the strangers was in the uniform of a Portuguese major and the others were all civilians, one of whom was the biggest man Bullen had ever seen. The Portuguese Major stared wide-eyed at Bullen, apparently as astonished to see Bullen as Bullen was to see him, then the Major recovered. "Who are you?" he demanded.

"Lieutenant Bullen, sir."

"There are enemy over there," the Major said, pointing east, and Bullen cursed, for he had been thinking that perhaps his men could wade towards the river and so put themselves under the protection of the British gunboat that he had heard firing in the dawn. Now, it seemed, he was surrounded, so he had no choice but to make the best defense he could. "We will join you," the Major announced, and the five men came into the farmhouse where Bullen, on the Major's advice, put a handful of men in the eastern window to keep a look out for the enemy the Major had seen in the direction of the river. There was a clatter as shattered tiles cascaded from the roof where men broke through from the attic, then a bellow of gunfire as the Portuguese civilians fired at men coming from the east. Bullen turned to see what they were shooting at, and just then a volley crackled from the west and glass shattered in the windows and a redcoat spun back, a bullet in his lung. He began coughing up frothy blood. "Fire!" Bullen shouted.

Another man was hit, this time in the farm's doorway. Bullen went to a window, peered over the shoulder of a redcoat and saw Frenchmen running to the left, more going right and still more coming up the track. Muskets and rifles fired from the roof, but he did not see a single Frenchman fall. The long, low room echoed with the bangs of the guns, filled with smoke, and then the British and Portuguese cannon on the ridge added their own noise. The men in the back windows were firing as hard as the men in the front.

"They're working their way around the sides, sir," Read said, meaning that the French were going to the flanks of the farmhouse where no windows pointed.

"Kill them, boys!" Slingsby suddenly shouted. "And God save King George."

"Bugger King George," a redcoat muttered, then cursed because he had been struck by a splinter of wood driven from the window frame by a musket ball. " 'Ware left, 'ware left!" a man shouted and three muskets banged together. Bullen dashed to the back door, peered through and saw powder smoke at the far end of the farmyard where cottages and cattle sheds huddled together. What the hell was happening? He had somehow hoped the French would stay on the track, attacking only from the west, but he realized now that had been a stupid hope. The voltigeurs were surrounding the farm and hammering it with musket fire. Bullen could sense panic in himself. He was twenty years old and over fifty men were looking to him for leadership, and so far he had given it, but he was being assailed by the sound of enemy musketry, the unending rattle of balls against the stone walls and by Captain Slingsby who was now on his feet and shouting at the men to look for the whites of the enemies' eyes.

Then the Portuguese Major solved some of his problems. "I'll look after this side," he told Bullen, pointing east. Bullen suspected there were fewer enemy out there, but he was grateful that he could forget them now. He looked back to the west which was taking the brunt of the fire, though most of it was being wasted on the stone walls. The problem, Bullen saw, lay north and south, for once the French realized that he had no guns covering the flanks of the building, they were bound to concentrate there.

"Loopholes in the gable ends, sir," Hagman suggested, intuitively understanding Bullen's problem, and he did not wait for the Lieutenant's answer, but went up the ladder to try and prise out the masonry at the gable ends of the roof. Bullen could hear the French shouting to each other now and, for want of anything better to do, fired his pistol through the open door, and then another gust of wind swirled more mist away and he saw, to his astonishment, that the whole valley beyond the bridge was filled with Frenchmen. Most were going away from him, advancing in a huge skirmish line towards the forts, and the gunners were firing at them from the hilltops and their shells exploded above the grassland, thickening the mist with their smoke and adding to the noise.

A redcoat fell back from a window, his skull spurting blood. Another was hit in the arm and dropped his musket which fired and the bullet hit a rifleman in the ankle. The noise outside was unceasing, the sound of the balls hitting the stone walls a devil's drumbeat, and Bullen could see the fear on the men's faces, and it was not helped by the fact that Slingsby had now drawn his sword and was shouting at the men to fire faster. The front of Slingsby's red coat was spattered with dribble and he was staggering slightly. "Fire!" he bellowed. "Fire! Give them hell!" He had an open canteen in his left hand and Bullen, suddenly angry, pushed the Captain aside so that Slingsby staggered and sat down. Another man was hit in the doorway, this one wounded in the arm by a splinter from a musket stock that had been struck by a bullet. Some men were refusing to go to the door now, and there was more than just fear on their faces, there was sheer terror. The sound of the guns was magnified by the room, the French shouts seemed horribly close, there were the incessant, deeper bangs of the big guns on the ridge, while in the farmhouse there was smoke and fresh blood and the beginnings of panic.

Then the bugle sounded. It was a strange call, one that Bullen had never heard, and slowly the musket fire died away as the bugle called again, and one of the redcoats guarding a west-facing window called that a Frenchman was waving a white rag on the end of a sword. "Hold your fire!" Bullen shouted. "Hold your fire!" He stepped cautiously to the doorway and saw a tall man in a French coat, white breeches and riding boots approaching up the track. Bullen decided he did not want the men to hear the parley and so he stepped outside, taking off his hat. He was not quite sure why he did that, but he had no white cloth and taking off his shako seemed the next best thing.

The two men met twenty paces from the farm. The Frenchman bowed, swept off his cocked hat, put it back on, then took the handkerchief from the tip of his sword. "I am Captain Jules Derain," he announced in impeccable English, "and I have the honor to be an aide to General Sarrut." He put the handkerchief in his breast pocket, then sheathed the sword so hard that the hilt clashed against the scabbard throat. It was an ominous noise.

"Lieutenant Jack Bullen," Bullen said.

Derain waited. "You have a regiment, Lieutenant?" he asked after the pause.

"The South Essex," Bullen said.

"Ah," Derain said, a response that delicately implied he had never heard of the unit. "My General," he went on, "salutes your bravery, Lieutenant, but wishes you to understand that any farther defense is tantamount to suicide. You might like to avail yourself of this opportunity to surrender?"

"No, sir," Bullen said instinctively. He had not been brought up to give in so easily.

"I congratulate you on a fine sentiment, Lieutenant," Derain said, then drew a watch from his pocket. He clicked open the watch's lid. "In five minutes, Lieutenant, we shall have a cannon by the bridge." He gestured down the track that was misted and so crowded with voltigeurs that Bullen had no chance to see if Derain told the truth. "Three or four shots should persuade you," Derain went on, "but if you yield first then you shall of course live. If you force me to use the cannon then I shall not offer you another chance to surrender, nor will I be responsible for my men's behavior."

"In my army," Bullen said, "officers are held responsible."

"I daily thank my God that I am not in your army," Derain said smoothly, then took off his hat and bowed again. "Five minutes, Lieutenant. I wish you good day." He turned and walked away. A mass of voltigeurs and chasseurs were on the track, but, worse, Bullen could see more on either side of the farmhouse. If the farm was a virtual island in the marshes then it already belonged more to the French than to him. He pulled on his shako and walked back to the farmhouse, watched by the French soldiers.

"What did they want, Lieutenant?" It was the Portuguese officer who asked the question.

"Our surrender, sir."

"And your reply?"

"No," Bullen said, and heard the men murmuring, though whether they agreed with him or were grieved by his decision, he could not tell.

"My name is Major Ferreira," Ferreira said, drawing Bullen towards the hearth where they were assured of a little privacy, "and I am on the Portuguese staff. It is important, Lieutenant, that I reach our lines. What I wish you to do, and I know it will be hard for you, is to bargain with the French. Tell them you will surrender," he held up his hand to still Bullen's protest, "but tell them, too, that you have five civilians here and your condition for surrender is that the civilians go free."

"Five civilians?" Bullen managed to interrupt with the question.

"I shall pretend to be one," Ferreira said airily, "and once we have passed the French lines you will then yield, and I assure you that Lord Wellington will be told of your sacrifice. I also have no doubt you will be exchanged very soon."

"My men won't be," Bullen said belligerently.

Ferreira smiled. "I am giving you an order, Lieutenant." He paused to take off his uniform coat, evidently deciding the lack of it would disguise his military status. The big civilian with the frightening face came to stand beside him, using his bulk as an added persuasion, and the other civilians stood close behind, carrying their guns and their heavy bags.

"I recognize you!" Slingsby said suddenly from the hearth. He blinked at Ferragus. "Sharpe hit you."

"Who are you?" Ferreira demanded coldly.

"I command here," Slingsby said, and tried to salute with his sword, but only succeeded in striking the heavy wooden mantel. "Captain Slingsby," he said.

"Until Captain Slingsby recovers," Bullen said, ashamed to be admitting to a foreigner that his commanding officer was drunk, "I command."

"Then go, Lieutenant." Ferreira pointed to the door.

"Do as he says," Slingsby said, though in truth he had not understood the conversation.

"Best to do what he says, sir," Sergeant Read muttered. The Sergeant was no coward, but he reckoned staying where they were was to invite death. "Frogs will look after us."

"You can't give me orders," Bullen challenged Ferreira.

The Major restrained the big man, who had growled and started forward. "That is true," Ferreira said to Bullen, "but if you do not surrender, Lieutenant, and we are captured then eventually we shall be exchanged and I shall have things to tell Lord Wellington. Things, Lieutenant, that will not improve your chances of advancement." He paused, then lowered his voice. "This is important, Lieutenant."

"Important!" Slingsby echoed.

"On my honor," Ferreira said solemnly, "I have to reach Lord Wellington. It is a sacrifice I ask of you, Lieutenant, indeed I beg it of you, but by making it you will serve your country well."

"God save the gracious King," Slingsby said.

"On your honor?" Bullen asked Ferreira.

"Upon my most sacred honor," the Major replied.

So Bullen turned to the door. The light company would surrender.

COLONEL LAWFORD STARED INTO THE VALLEY. The mist was fast disappearing now, showing the whole area covered in French skirmishers. Hundreds of skirmishers! They were spread out so that the British and Portuguese guns were having little or no effect. The shells exploded, shrapnel burst in the air with black puffs of smoke, but Lawford could see no French casualties.

Nor could he see his light company. "Damn," he said quietly, then stooped to the telescope on its tripod and stared at the ruined barn that was half shrouded in the remaining mist, and though he could see men moving close to the broken walls he was fairly sure they wore neither green nor red coats. "Damn," he said again.

"What the devil are the benighted buggers doing? Morning, Lawford. What the devil do the bloody bastards think they're doing?" It was General Picton, dressed in a shabby black coat, who bounded up the steps and scowled down at the enemy. He was wearing the same tasseled nightcap he had worn during the battle on Bussaco's ridge. "Bloody silly maneuver," he said, "whatever it is." His aides, out of breath, followed him onto the bastion where a twelve-pounder fired, deafening everyone and shrouding the air with smoke. "Stop your damned firing!" Picton bellowed. "So, Lawford, what the devil are they doing?"

"They've sent out a brigade of skirmishers, sir," Lawford said, which was not a particularly helpful answer, but all he could think of saying.

"They've sent out skirmishers?" Picton asked. "But nothing heavy? Just out for a bloody stroll, are they?"

Musket fire crackled in the valley. It seemed to come from the big abandoned farm that was hidden by the mist, which lay thicker above the swampy ground, yet it was plain something was happening there, for three or four hundred of the French skirmishers, instead of advancing across the valley, were crossing the bridge and moving towards the farm. The floods were receding with the ebbing tide, showing the big curve of the stream that cradled the farm.

"They're there," Major Leroy announced. He had his own telescope propped on the parapet and was staring into the shredding mist. He could only see the farm's rooftops and there was no sign of the missing light company, but Leroy could see dozens of voltigeurs firing at the buildings. He pointed down into the valley. "They must be at the farm, sir."

"Who's at the farm?" Picton demanded. "What farm? Who the devil are you talking about?"

That was the question Lawford had dreaded, but he had no choice but to confess what he had done. "I put our light company out as a picquet, sir," he said.

"You did what?" Picton asked, his tone dangerous.

"They were in the barn," Lawford said, pointing at the ruined building. He could hardly explain that he had put them there as an opportunity for his brother-in-law to get a grip on the light company, and that he had supposed that even Slingsby would have the wit to retreat the moment he was faced with overwhelming force.

"Just the barn?" Picton asked.

"They were ordered to patrol," Lawford replied.

"God damn it, man," Picton exploded. "God damn it! One picquet's about as much use as a tit on a broomstick! Chain of picquets, man, chain of picquets! One bloody picquet? The bloody French quickstepped round them, didn't they? You might as well have ordered the poor devils to line up and shoot themselves in the head. It would have been a quicker end. So where the hell are they now?"

"There's a farm," Leroy said, pointing, and just then the mist cleared enough to show the western face of the farm from which musket smoke spurted.

"Sweet Jesus bloody Christ," Picton grumbled. "You don't want to lose them, do you, Lawford? Looks bad in His Majesty's bloody army when you lose a whole light company. It reeks of carelessness. I suppose we'd best rescue them." The last words, spoken in an exaggerated Welsh accent, were scornful.

"My battalion's standing to," Lawford said with as much dignity as he could muster.

"What's left of it," Picton said. "And we have the Portuguese, don't we?" He turned to an aide.

"Both battalions are ready, sir," the aide said.

"Then bloody go," Picton ordered. "Draw them off, Lawford." Lawford and the other South Essex officers ran down the steps. Picton shook his head. "It's too late, of course," he said to an aide, "much too late." He watched the powder smoke thicken the lingering mist around the distant farmstead. "Poor buggers will be in the net long before Lawford has a chance, but we can't do nothing, can we? We can't just do nothing." He turned furiously on the gunners. "Why are you standing around like barrack-gate whores? Put some fire on those bastards." He pointed to the skirmishers threatening the farm. "Kill the vermin."

The guns were realigned, then bucked back and their smoke vented out into the valley as the shells screamed away, leaving their traces of fuse smoke behind. Picton scowled. "Bloody picquet in a barn," he said to no one in particular. "No Welsh regiment would have been so cretinous! That's what we need. More Welsh regiments. I could clear bloody Europe if I had enough Welsh regiments, instead of which I have to rescue the bloody English. God only knows why the Almighty made bloody foreigners."

"Tea, sir," an aide said, bringing the General a generous tin mug and that, at least, silenced him for the moment. The guns fired on.