Sharpe turned and stared south. He could not see Irati, for the village was well over a mile away and his picquet a half-mire further away still, and he suddenly worried that he would not hear Captain Smith's warning shots. But it was too late to change the arrangements. So stop worrying, he told himself. No point in fretting about what you cannot change.

"Enemy, sir, " Harper said softly, and Sharpe wheeled around to gaze down the road.

The French had come. Not many yet, just a half company of grenadiers, the elite of the enemy infantry, because they wore high bearskin hats with a yellow grenade badge, though none, he saw through his telescope, flaunted the high red plume on their hats. French grenadiers were very protective of that plume and on campaign they liked to keep it in a leather tube attached to their bayonet sling.

«Thirty,» he counted the men as they appeared, "forty, forty-five. All grenadiers, Pat."

"Sending their best up front, are they?"

"Got them worried, we have, " Sharpe said. The grenadiers had stopped at the sight of the barrels. Some of them gazed up the steep slope beyond, but the Prince of Wales's Own Volunteers were well hidden, and Sharpe and Harper were concealed behind the frontier cairn.

An officer came to the front of the grenadiers, stared at the barrels for a minute, then shrugged and walked forward. "It's his lucky day, " Sharpe said.

The grenadiers hung back as their officer approached the strange obstacle. He was cautious, as any man would be on the Spanish frontier, but the barrels looked innocent enough.

He stooped to the nearest, sniffed at the bung, then drew his sword and worked the tip of its blade into the cork plug. He levered the tight bung free and then stooped to sniff again. "He's found the wine, " Sharpe said.