Loup saw a tall man with a well-used rifle on one shoulder and a battered ugly-bladed sword at his hip. Sharpe's uniform was torn, stained and patched. The jacket's black cord hung in tatters between a few silver buttons that hung by threads, while beneath the jacket Sharpe wore a set of leather-reinforced French cavalry overalls. The remains of an officer's red sash encircled Sharpe's waist, while around his neck was a loosely knotted black choker. It was the uniform of a man who had long discarded the peacetime trappings of soldiering in exchange for the utilitarian comforts of a fighting man. A hard man, too, Loup guessed, not just from the evidence of the scar on Sharpe's cheek, but from the rifleman's demeanour which was awkward and raw-edged as though Sharpe would have preferred to be fighting than talking. Loup shrugged, abandoned his pleasantries and got down to business. "I came to fetch my two men," he said.

"Forget them, General," Sharpe replied. He was determined not to dignify this Frenchman by calling him 'sir' or 'monsieur'.

Loup raised his eyebrows. "They're dead?"

"They will be."

Loup waved a persistent fly away. The steel-plated straps of his helmet hung loose beside his face, resembling the cadenettes of braided hair that French hussars liked to wear hanging from their temples. He drew on his cigar again, then smiled. "Might I remind you, Captain, of the rules of war?"

Sharpe offered Loup a word that he doubted the Frenchman had heard much in Edinburgh's learned society. "I don't take lessons from murderers," Sharpe went on, "not in the rules of war. What your men did in that village wasn't war. It was a massacre."

"Of course it was war," Loup said equably, "and I don't need lectures from you, Captain."

"You might not need a lecture, General, but you damn well need a lesson."