when they came down into the valley of the River Turones, there was no sign of any pursuit. There was no stink of saddle-sore horses, no glint of grey light from grey steel, indeed there had been no sign nor smell of any pursuit all afternoon except just once, just as the light faded and as the first small candle flames flickered yellow in the cottages beside the river, when suddenly a wolf had howled its melancholy cry in the darkening hills.
Its howl was long and desolate, and the echo lingered.
And Sharpe shivered.
CHAPTER II
The view from the castle in Ciudad Rodrigo looked across the River Agueda towards the hills where the British forces gathered, yet this night was so dark and wet that nothing was visible except the flicker of two torches burning deep inside an arched tunnel that burrowed through the city's enormous ramparts. The rain flickered silver-red past the flame light to make the cobbles slick. Every few moments a sentry would appear at the entrance of the tunnel and the fiery light would glint off the shining spike of his fixed bayonet, but otherwise there was no sign of life. The tricolour of France flew above the gate, but there was no light to show it flapping dispiritedly in the rain which was being gusted around the castle walls and sometimes even being driven into the deep embrasured window where a man leaned to watch the arch. The flickering torchlight was reflected in the thick pebbled lenses of his wire-bound spectacles.
'Maybe he's not coming,' the woman said from the fireplace.
'If Loup says he will be here,' the man answered without turning round, 'then he will be here.' The man had a remarkably deep voice that belied his appearance for he was slim, almost fragile-looking, with a thin scholarly face, myopic eyes and cheeks pocked with the scars of childhood smallpox. He wore a plain dark-blue uniform with no badges of rank, but Pierre Ducos needed no gaudy chains or stars, no tassels or epaulettes or aiguillettes to signify his authority. Major Ducos was Napoleon's man in Spain and everyone who mattered, from King Joseph downwards, knew it.
'Loup,' the woman said. 'It means 'wolf', yes?'
This time Ducos did turn round. 'Your countrymen call him El Lobo,' he said, 'and he frightens them.'
'Superstitious people frighten easily,' the woman said scornfully.
She was tall and thin, and had a face that was memorable rather than beautiful. A hard, clever and singular face, once seen never forgotten, with a full mouth, deep-set eyes and a scornful expression. She was maybe thirty years old, but it was hard to tell for her skin had been so darkened by the sun that it looked like a peasant woman's. Other well-born women took care to keep their skins as pale as chalk and soft as curds, but this woman did not care for fashionable looks nor for fashionable clothes. Her passion was hunting and when she followed her hounds she rode astride like a man and so she dressed like a man: in breeches, boots and spurs. This night she was uniformed as a French hussar with skintight sky-blue breeches that had an intricate pattern of Hungarian lace down the front of the thighs, a plum-coloured dolman with blue cuffs and plaited white-silk cordings and a scarlet pelisse edged with black fur. It was rumoured that Dona Juanita de Elia possessed a uniform from the regiment of every man she had ever slept with and that her wardrobe needed to be as large as most people's parlours. To Major Ducos's eyes the Dona Juanita de Elia was nothing but a flamboyant whore and a soldier's plaything, and in Ducos's murky world flamboyance was a lethal liability, but in Juanita's own eyes she was an adventuress and an afrancesada, and any Spaniard willing to side with France in this war was useful to Pierre Ducos. And, he grudgingly allowed, this war-loving adventuress was willing to run great risks for France and so Ducos was willing to treat her with a respect he would not usually accord to women. 'Tell me about El Lobo,' the Dona Juanita demanded.
'He's a brigadier of dragoons,' Ducos said, 'who began his army career as a groom in the royal army. He's brave, he's demanding, he's successful and, above all, he is ruthless.' On the whole Ducos had little time for soldiers whom he considered to be romantic fools much given to posturing and gestures, but he approved of Loup. Loup was single-minded, fierce and utterly without illusions, qualities that Ducos himself possessed, and Ducos liked to think that had he ever been a proper soldier, he would have been like Loup. It was true that Loup, like Juanita de Elia, affected a certain flamboyance, but Ducos forgave the Brigadier his wolf-fur pretensions because, quite simply, he was the best soldier Ducos had discovered in Spain and the Major was determined that Loup should be properly rewarded. 'Loup will one day be a marshal of France,' Ducos said, 'and the sooner the better.'
'But not if Marshal Massйna can help it?' Juanita asked.
Ducos grunted. He collected gossip more assiduously than any man, but he disliked confirming it, yet Marshal Massйna's dislike of Loup was so well known in the army that Ducos had no need to dissemble about it. 'Soldiers are like stags, madame,' Ducos said. 'They fight to prove they are the best in their tribe and they dislike their fiercest rivals far more than the beasts that offer them no competition. So I would suggest to you, madame, that the Marshal's dislike of Brigadier Loup is confirmation of Loup's genuine abilities.' It was also, Ducos thought, a typical piece of wasteful posturing. No wonder the war in Spain was taking so long and proving so troublesome when a marshal of France wasted petulance on the best brigadier in the army.
He turned back to the window as the sound of hooves echoed in the fortress's entrance tunnel. Ducos listened as the challenge was given, then he heard the squeal of the gate hinges opening and a second later he saw a group of grey horsemen appear in the flamelit archway.
The Dona Juanita de Elia had come to stand beside Ducos. She was so close that he could smell the perfume on her gaudy uniform. 'Which one is he?' she asked.
'The one in front,' Ducos replied.
'He rides well,' Juanita de Elia said with grudging respect.
'A natural horseman,' Ducos said. 'Not fancy. He doesn't make his horse dance, he makes it fight.' He moved away from the woman. He disliked perfume as much as he disliked opinionated whores.
The two waited in silent awkwardness. Juanita de Elia had long sensed that her weapons did not work on Ducos. She believed he disliked women, but the truth was that Pierre Ducos was oblivious of them. Once in a while he would use a soldier's brothel, but only after a surgeon had provided him with the name of a clean girl. Most of the time he went without such distractions, preferring a monkish dedication to the Emperor's cause. Now he sat at his table and leafed through papers as he tried to ignore the woman's presence. Somewhere in the town a church clock struck nine, then a sergeant's voice echoed from an inner courtyard as a squad of men was marched towards the ramparts. The rain fell relentlessly. Then, at last, boots and spurs sounded loud on the stairway leading to Ducos's big chamber and the Dona Juanita looked up expectantly.
Brigadier Loup did not bother to knock on Ducos's door. He burst in, already fuming with anger. 'I lost two men! God damn it! Two good men! Lost to riflemen, Ducos, to British riflemen. Executed! They were put against a wall and shot like vermin!' He had crossed to Ducos's table and helped himself from the decanter of brandy. 'I want a price put on the head of their captain, Ducos. I want the man's balls in my men's stewpot.' He stopped suddenly, checked by the exotic sight of the uniformed woman standing beside the fire. For a second Loup had thought the figure in cavalry uniform was an especially effeminate young man, one of the dandified Parisians who spent more money on their tailor than on their horse and weapons, but then he realized that the dandy was a woman and that the cascading black plume was her hair and not a helmet's embellishment. 'Is she yours, Ducos?' Loup asked nastily.
'Monsieur,' Ducos said very formally, 'allow me to name the Dona Juanita de Elia. Madame? This is Brigadier General Guy Loup.'
Brigadier Loup stared at the woman by the fire and what he saw, he liked, and the Dona Juanita de Elia returned the Dragoon General's stare and what she saw, she also liked. She saw a compact, one-eyed man with a brutal, weather-beaten face who wore his grey hair and beard short, and his grey, fur-trimmed uniform like an executioner's costume. The fur glinted with rainwater that had brought out the smell of the pelts, a smell that mingled with the heady aromas of saddles, tobacco, sweat, gun oil, powder and horses. 'Brigadier,' she said politely.
'Madame,' Loup acknowledged her, then shamelessly looked up and down her skin-tight uniform, 'or should it be Colonel?'
