Sharpe’s Battle: The Battle of Fuentes de Oñoro, May 1811. Bernard Cornwell

stir them into wakefulness. Then Captain Braudel stirred Loup himself into wakefulness. ‘But some of them were unblocking a well,’ the Captain said, ‘only they weren’t redcoats. They were wearing green.’

      Loup stared at him. ‘Dark green?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      Riflemen. Damned riflemen. And Loup remembered the insolent face of the man who had insulted him, the man who had once insulted all France by taking an eagle touched by the Emperor himself. Maybe Sharpe was in the San Isidro Fort? Ducos had denigrated Loup’s thirst for vengeance, calling it unworthy of a great soldier, but Loup believed that a soldier made his reputation by picking his fights and winning them famously. Sharpe had defied Loup, the first man to openly defy him in many a long month, and Sharpe was a champion among France’s enemies, so Loup’s vengeance was not just personal, but would send ripples throughout the armies that waited to fight the battle that would decide whether Britain lunged into Spain or was sent reeling back into Portugal.

      So that afternoon Loup himself visited the hill top, taking his finest spyglass which he trained on the old fort with its weed-grown walls and half-filled dry moat. Two flags hung limply in the windless air. One flag was British, but Loup could not tell what the second was. Beyond the flags the red-coated soldiers were doing musket drill, but Loup did not watch them long, instead he inched the telescope southwards until, at last, he saw two men in green coats strolling along the deserted ramparts. He could not see their faces at this distance, but he could tell that one of the men was wearing a long straight sword and Loup knew that British light infantry officers wore curved sabres. ‘Sharpe,’ he said aloud as he collapsed the telescope.

      A scuffle behind made him turn round. Four of his wolf-grey men were guarding a pair of prisoners. One captive was in a gaudily trimmed red coat while the other was presumably the man’s wife or lover. ‘Found them hiding in the rocks down there,’ said the Sergeant who was holding one of the soldier’s arms.

      ‘He says he’s a deserter, sir,’ Captain Braudel added, ‘and that’s his wife.’ Braudel spat a stream of tobacco juice onto a rock.

      Loup scrambled down from the ridge. The soldier’s uniform, he now saw, was not British. The waistcoat and sash, the half boots and the plumed bicorne were all too fancy for British taste, indeed they were so fancy that for a second Loup wondered if the captive was an officer, then he realized that Braudel would never have treated a captured officer with such disdain. Braudel clearly liked the woman who now raised shy eyes to stare at Loup. She was dark-haired, attractive and probably, Loup guessed, about fifteen or sixteen. Loup had heard that the Spanish and Portuguese peasants sold such daughters as wives to allied soldiers for a hundred francs apiece, the cost of a good meal in Paris. The French army, on the other hand, just took their girls for nothing. ‘What’s your name?’ Loup asked the deserter in Spanish.

      ‘Grogan, sir. Sean Grogan.’

      ‘Your unit, Grogan?’

      ‘Real Compañía Irlandesa, señor.’ Guardsman Grogan was plainly willing to cooperate with his captors and so Loup signalled the Sergeant to release him.

      Loup questioned Grogan for ten minutes, hearing how the Real Compañía Irlandesa had travelled by sea from Valencia, and how the men had been happy enough with the idea of joining the rest of the Spanish army at Cadiz, but how they resented being forced to serve with the British. Many of the men, the fugitive claimed, had fled from British servitude, and they had not enlisted with the King of Spain just to return to King George’s tyranny.

      Loup cut short the protests. ‘When did you run?’ he asked.

      ‘Last night, sir. Half a dozen of us did. And a good many ran the night before.’

      ‘There is an Englishman in the fort, a rifle officer. You know him?’

      Grogan frowned, as though he found the question odd, but then he nodded. ‘Captain Sharpe, sir. He’s supposed to be training us.’

      ‘To do what?’

      ‘To fight, sir,’ Grogan said nervously. He found this one-eyed, calm-spoken Frenchman very disconcerting. ‘But we know how to fight already,’ he added defiantly.

      ‘I’m sure you do,’ Loup said sympathetically. He poked at his teeth for a second, then spat the makeshift toothpick away. ‘So you ran away, soldier, because you didn’t want to serve King George, is that it?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘But you’d certainly fight for His Majesty the Emperor?’

      Grogan hesitated. ‘I would, sir,’ he finally said, but without any conviction.

      ‘Is that why you deserted?’ Loup asked. ‘To fight for the Emperor? Or were you hoping to get back to your comfortable barracks in the Escorial?’

      Grogan shrugged. ‘We were going to her family’s house in Madrid, sir.’ He jerked his head towards his wife. ‘Her father’s a cobbler, and I’m not such a bad hand with a needle and thread myself. I thought I’d learn the trade.’

      ‘It’s always good to have a trade, soldier,’ Loup said with a smile. He took a pistol from his belt and toyed with it for a moment before he pulled back the heavy cock. ‘My trade is killing,’ he added in the same pleasant voice and then, without showing a trace of emotion, he lifted the gun, aimed it at Grogan’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

      The woman screamed as her husband’s blood splashed across her face. Grogan was thrown violently back, blood spraying and misting the air, then his body thumped and slid backwards down the hill. ‘He didn’t really want to fight for us at all,’ Loup said. ‘He’d have been just another useless mouth to feed.’

      ‘And the woman, sir?’ Braudel asked. She was bending over her dead husband and screaming at the French.

      ‘She’s yours, Paul,’ Loup said. ‘But only after you have delivered a message to Madame Juanita de Elia. Give madame my undying compliments, tell her that her toy Irish soldiers have arrived and are conveniently close to us, and that tomorrow morning we shall mount a little drama for their amusement. Tell her also that she would do well to spend the night with us.’

      Braudel smirked. ‘She’ll be pleased, sir.’

      ‘Which is more than your woman will be,’ Loup said, glancing at the howling Spanish girl. ‘Tell this widow, Paul, that if she does not shut up I will tear her tongue out and feed it to the Doña Juanita’s hounds. Now come on.’ He led his men down the hill to where the horses had been picketed. Tonight the Doña Juanita de Elia would come to the wolf’s stronghold, and tomorrow she would ride to the enemy like a plague rat sent to destroy them from within.

      And somewhere, some time before victory was final, Sharpe would feel France’s vengeance for two dead men. For Loup was a soldier, and he did not forget, did not forgive and never lost.

      CHAPTER THREE

      Eleven men deserted during the Real Compañía Irlandesa’s first night in the San Isidro Fort and eight men, including four picquets set to stop such desertions, ran on the second night. The guardsmen were providing their own sentries and Colonel Runciman suggested Sharpe’s riflemen took over the duty. Sharpe argued against such a change. His riflemen were supposed to be training the Real Compañía Irlandesa and they could not work all day and stand guard all night. ‘I’m sure you’re right, General,’ Sharpe said tactfully, ‘but unless headquarters sends us more men we can’t work round the clock.’

      Colonel Runciman, Sharpe had discovered, was malleable so long as he was addressed as ‘General’. He only wanted to be left alone to sleep, to eat and to grumble about the amount of work expected from him. ‘Even a general is only human,’ he liked to inform Sharpe, then he would inquire how he was supposed to discharge the onerous duties of liaising with the Real Compañía