Sharpe walked closer to the animal. It had large, brown, sad eyes. "I can't do it, Pat."

"One shot, sir. Imagine it's a Frenchman."

Sharpe lifted the rifle, cocked it and aimed straight between the bullock's eyes. The animal gazed at him ruefully. "You do it, " Sharpe said to Harper, lowering the gun.

"With this?" Harper held up the volley gun. "I'll blow its head off!»

"We don't want its head, do we?" Sharpe said. "Just its rumps and suet. Go on, do it."

"Not very accurate, sir, not a volley gun. Good for killing Frogs, it is. But not for slaughtering cattle."

"So have the rifle, " Sharpe said, offering the weapon.

Harper gazed at the rifle for a second, but did not take it. "The thing is, sir, " the huge Irishman said, "that I drank a drop too much last night. My hands are shaky, see? Best that you do it, sir."

Sharpe hesitated. The Light Company had set their hearts on a proper Christmas dinner: bloody roast beef, gravy thick enough to choke a rat and a brandy-soaked pudding clogged with plums and suet. "It's daft, isn't it?" he said. "I wouldn't think twice if it was a Frog. It's only a cow."

"Bullock, sir."

"What's the difference?"

"You can't milk this one, sir."

«Right,» Sharpe said, and aimed the rifle again. "Just hold still, " he ordered the bullock, then crept a half-pace closer so that the gun's blackened muzzle was only a few inches from the coarse black hair. "I shot a tiger once, " he said.

"Go on, sir, kill it."

Sharpe gazed into the beast's eyes. He had put wounded horses out of their misery and shot enough rabbits in his time, but somehow he could not squeeze the trigger. And then he was saved from having to shoot at all because a small, high eager voice hailed him from the field's far side.

"Mr. Sharpe, sir! Mr. Sharpe!»