D'Alembord aimed the glass, then swore quietly. "A whole brigade, sir." "Coming from the wrong direction, too, " Sharpe said. Without the telescope he could not see the distant enemy, but he could guess what they were about. The garrison would be escaping on this road and the French brigade had been sent to make sure the frontier was open for them.

"They'll not make it this far tonight, " Sharpe said. The sun had already sunk beneath the western peaks and the night shadows were stretching fast.

"But they'll be here tomorrow, " d'Alembord said nervously.

"Aye, tomorrow. Christmas Eve, " Sharpe said.

"An awful lot of them, " d'Alembord said.

«Barrels,» Sharpe answered.

"Barrels, sir?" d'Alembord gazed at Sharpe as though the major had gone mad.

"That tavern in Irati, Dally, has to be full of barrels. I want them here tonight, all of them."

Because tomorrow there would be an enemy behind and an enemy in front, and a road to hold and a battle to win. At Christmas time.

PART TWO

GENERAL Maximillien Picard was an unhappy man. His brigade was late. He had expected to be at Irati by midday, but his men had marched like a herd of lame goats. By nightfall, they still had one steep-sided valley to cross and a precipitous hill to climb, and so he punished them by making them bivouac in the valley.

He knew they would hate him for that, but let them. Most were conscripts who needed to be toughened, and a night among the cold rocks would help scour the mother's milk from their gullets.

The only fuel for fires was a few stunted trees in the hollows where the winter's first snow had drifted, but most of the conscripts had no idea how to light a fire from damp, tough wood, and so they suffered. Their only food was rings of hard bread they carried on strings about their necks, but at least the stream offered plenty of clean, cold water.