indistinguishable. Perhaps the ploy had worked, he thought, and El Catolico was searching miles away on the wrong road, and the longer they stayed undetected the more Sharpe dared to hope that the crude ploy of the false tracks had worked.
Every half hour or so the Company stopped and the men who had not been carrying the gold-filled packs took over from those who had. It was a painfully slow march. The packs chafed their shoulders, rubbed them raw, and the gold, far from being something from their wildest dreams, became a loathed burden that the men would happily have thrown away if Sharpe had not taken his position at the rear, driving them on, forcing the Company across the bleak plateau. He had no idea how far they had come, even what time of day it was, only that they must keep marching, putting distance between themselves and El Catolico, and his anger snapped when the Company suddenly stopped, dropped, and yelled at them, 'Get up!
'But, sir! Knowles, leading the Company, waved ahead. 'Look!
Even in the rain, in the crushing weather, it was a beautiful sight. The plateau suddenly ended, dropped to a wide valley through which meandered a stream and a track.
The Agueda. It had to be the river Agueda, off to the left, and the stream at the bottom of the valley flowed east to west to join the river where the track led to the ford. Sharpe's heart leapt. They had made it! He could see the road start again at the far side of the river; it was the ford at San Anton, and beside the track, on this side of the river, was an ancient fort on a rock bluff that once must have guarded the crossing. At this distance, he guessed a mile and a half, the walls looked broken, stubbled in the grey light, but the fortress had to mark the site of the ford. They had done it!
'Five minutes' rest!
The Company sat down, relieved, cheered up. Sharpe perched on a rock and searched the valley. Second by second his hopes revived. It was empty. No horsemen, no Partisans, nothing but the stream and the track going to the river. He took out his telescope, praying that the driving rain would not seep through the junctions of its cylinders, and searched the valley again. A second road, running north and south, ran this side of the river, but it, too, was empty. By God! They had done it!
'Come on! He clapped his hands, pulled men up and pushed them on. 'To the river! We cross tonight! Well done!
The rain still fell, blinding the men as they stumbled down the slope, but they had made it! They could see their goal, feel pride in an achievement, and tomorrow they would wake up on the west bank of the Agueda and march to the Coa. There were British patrols on the far bank, to be sure not as many as there were French, but the river Agueda marked some kind of limit, and after a day's effort like this they needed that limit. They almost ran the last part of the slope, splashed through the stream, boots crunching on its gravel bed, and then stamped on to the wet track as if it were a paved highway in the centre of London. The ford was a mile ahead, trees on both banks, and the Company knew that once they crossed they could rest, let the tiredness flow, and shut their eyes against the grey horror of the day and its journey.
'Sir. Harper spoke quietly, with a desperate resignation. 'Sir. Behind.
Horsemen. Bloody horsemen. Partisans who had ridden not over the plateau but up the direct road from Casatejada and who now appeared on the track behind them. Teresa smiled, gave Sharpe a look of victory, and he ignored it. He called wearily to the Company to halt.
'How many, Sergeant?
There was a pause. 'Reckon it's just a small party.
Sharpe could see no more than twenty or thirty horsemen, standing in the rain just three hundred yards behind the Company. He took a deep breath.
'They can't hurt us, lads. Bayonets. They won't charge bayonets!
There was something strangely comforting about the sound of the blades scraping from the scabbards, the sight of the men crouching with bent knees as they fixed on the long blades, to be doing something that was aimed at their enemy instead of the muscle-racking tramp through the rain. The band of horsemen came forward, spurred into a trot, and Sharpe stood with his men in the front rank.
'We'll teach them to respect the bayonet! Wait for it! Wait for it!
The Partisans had no intention of charging the small Company. The horsemen split into two groups and galloped either side of the bedraggled soldiers, almost ignoring them. El Catolico was there, a smile of triumph on his face, and he swept off his hat in an ironic gesture as he went past, thirty yards away and untouchable. Teresa jerked towards him, but Harper held her firm, and she watched as the horsemen went on towards the fortress and the river. Sharpe knew what they were doing. The Company would be blocked in, trapped in the valley, and El Catolico would wait until the rest of the Partisans, summoned from the south, came to his support.
He wiped rain from his face. 'Come on. There was nowhere to go, so the best thing was to go on. Perhaps El Catolico could be threatened, a bayonet at Teresa's throat, but in Sharpe's mind he could envisage only failure, defeat. El Catolico had never been fooled. They must have known Sharpe had gone north, and while the Company struggled over the foul uplands the Spaniard had brought his followers along the easy road. Sharpe cursed himself for a fool, for an optimistic fool, but there was nothing to be done. He listened to the boots scuffing on the wet surface, the hiss of the rain, the splashing of the ever-rising stream, and he let his eyes look at the far, shrouded hills across the river, then at the stone of the small fort that had been built, centuries before, to protect the upland valleys from marauders crossing from Portugal, and then he looked right, farther north, at the spur of the hills that almost reached the river, and saw, on the blurred horizon, the shape of a horseman who had a strange, square hat.
'Down! Down! Down!
Something, an instinct, a half-perceived blur, told him the French patrol had only just arrived on the skyline. He forced the men down, into the streambed, burying the Light Company into cover. They scrambled behind the shallow turf-bank, wet faces looking to him for explanation, receiving none as he pushed them down.
El Catolico was much, much slower. Sharpe, lying next to Harper and the girl, watched the Partisans ride towards the ford, and it was not until the French lancers were moving, trotting almost sedately down the slope, that the grey figure wheeled, waved his arm, and the Partisans urged their tired mounts into a gallop. The Spaniards rode back into the valley, scattering as they picked their own course, and the lancers, a different regiment from the Poles', chose their targets and went for them with levelled blades and spurts of bright water from their hooves. Sharpe, peering between tufts of grass, could see twenty lancers, but, looking back to the northern skyline, he saw more appear, and then a group at the place where the hills almost met the river, and he realized that a full French regiment was there, coming south, and as he tried to find rhyme or reason in their presence he saw the girl jerk the rope free, scrabble backwards, and she was up, white dress brilliant in the murk, and running south towards the hills, to where El Catolico and his men were desperately fleeing. He pushed Harper down.
'Stay there!
The girl stumbled on the far bank of the stream, lost her balance, turned and saw Sharpe coming. She seemed to panic, for she ran downstream, past a wide bend in the water, and turned south again. They must see her! Sharpe shouted at her to get down, but the wind snatched away the words and he forced himself on, getting closer, and leapt at her. He crashed into her as she turned to look where he was and his weight drove her into the gravel beside the stream. She fought at him, snarling, her fingernails scratching at his eyes, but he bore' her down, his weight crushing her, took her wrists and forced them apart, ground them into the small sharp stones, and used all his strength to keep them still. She kicked at him and he hooked his legs over hers, hammered them down, not caring if he hurt her, thinking only of the eight feet ten inches of lance that could pin them both like wriggling insects. The stream ran cold round his ankles and he knew that Teresa must be lying in water to her waist, but there was no time to care about that because there were hooves near, and he thrust down his head, cracking her forehead, as a horse splashed by them in the stream.
He looked up, saw Jose, the man who had escorted them to the river, shouting down at the girl, his words lost in the whipping rain; then the Partisan's elbows and heels moved, the horse spurred into a frantic gallop, and Sharpe saw three lancers, their mouths open in the gaping, silent scream of a cavalry charge, galloping across to trap the Spaniard.
Jose twisted, slashed at his horse, found level ground and put his head down, but the lancers were too close. Sharpe watched, saw a Frenchman rise in his stirrups, draw back his lance, and lunge forward so the lance had all the rider's weight behind the steel point that rammed into Jose's back. He arched, screamed into the wind,