"It would make good kindling," Harper repeated.

"One thing's certain," Sharpe said as he took the map back from Price, "we haven't crossed the watershed which means these streams must be flowing west." He paused. "Or they're probably flowing west. Unless the world's bloody upside down which it probably bloody is, but on the chance that it bloody isn't we'll follow the bloody streams. Here" — he tossed the map to Harper—"kindling."

"That's what my grand-da did," Harper said, tucking the crumpled map inside his faded and torn green jacket. "He followed the water—"

"Shut up," Sharpe said, but not angrily this time. Rather he spoke quietly, and at the same time gestured with his left hand to make his companions crouch. "Bloody Crapaud," he said softly, "or something. Never seen a uniform like it."

"Bloody hell," Price said, and dropped down to the path.

Because a horseman had appeared just two hundred yards away. The man had not seen the British infantrymen, nor did he appear to be on the lookout for enemies. Instead his horse just ambled out of a side valley until the reins checked it, then the rider swung himself wearily out of the saddle and looped the reins over an arm while he unbuttoned his baggy trousers and urinated beside the path. Smoke from his pipe drifted in the damp air.

Harper's rifle clicked as he pulled the cock fully back. Sharpe's men, even those who had been asleep, were all alert now and lying motionless in the grass, keeping so low that even if the horseman had turned he would probably not have noticed the infantry. Sharpe's company was a veteran unit of skirmishers, hardened by two years of fighting in Portugal and Spain and as well trained as any soldiers in Europe. "Recognize the uniform?" Sharpe asked Price softly.

"Never seen it before, sir."

"Pat?" Sharpe asked Harper.

"Looks like a bloody Russian," Harper said. Harper had never seen a Russian soldier, but had a perverse idea that such creatures wore grey and this mysterious horseman was all in grey. He had a short grey dragoon jacket, grey trousers and a grey horsehair plume on his steel-grey helmet. Or maybe, Sharpe thought, it was merely a cloth cover designed to stop the helmet's metal from reflecting the light.