Sharpe smiled. "You're a bad loser, General."

"And you're not?"

Sharpe walked away. "I've never lost," he called back across his shoulder, "so I wouldn't know."

"Your death warrant, Sharpe!" Loup called.

Sharpe lifted two fingers. He had heard that the English bowmen at Agincourt, threatened by the French with the loss of their bowstring fingers at the battle's end, had first won the battle and then invented the taunting gesture to show the overweening bastards just who were the better soldiers. Now Sharpe used it again.

Then went to kill the wolfman's men.

Major Michael Hogan discovered Wellington inspecting a bridge over the River Turones where a force of three French battalions had tried to hold off the advancing British. The resulting battle had been swift and brutal, and now a trail of French and British dead told the skirmish's tale. An initial tide line of bodies marked where the sides had clashed, a dreadful smear of bloodied turf showed where two British cannon had enfiladed the enemy, then a further scatter of corpses betrayed the French retreat across the bridge which their engineers had not had time to destroy. "Fletcher thinks the bridge is Roman work, Hogan," Wellington greeted the Irish Major.

"I sometimes wonder, my Lord, whether anyone has built a bridge in Portugal or Spain since the Romans." Hogan, swathed in a cloak because of the day's damp chill, nodded amicably to his Lordship's three aides, then handed the General a sealed letter. The seal, which showed the royal Spanish coat of arms, had been lifted. "I took the precaution of reading the letter, my Lord," Hogan explained.

"Trouble?" Wellington asked.

"I wouldn't have bothered you otherwise, my Lord," Hogan answered gloomily.