Sharpe and Bullen led the way to the Spanish bank. The women followed hesitantly. The three French officers waited and, as Sharpe drew near, one of them took off his cocked hat in salute. “My name is Lecroix,” he said as he introduced himself. He spoke in English. Lecroix was a young man, exquisitely uniformed, with a lean handsome face and very white teeth. “Captain Lecroix of the 8th,” he added.

“Captain Sharpe.”

Lecroix’s eyes widened slightly, perhaps because Sharpe did not look like a captain. His uniform was torn and dirty and, though he wore a sword, as officers did, the blade was a Heavy Cavalry trooper’s weapon, which was a huge and unwieldy blade better suited for butchering. He carried a rifle too, and officers did not usually carry longarms. Then there was his face, tanned and scarred, a face you might meet in some fetid alley, not in a salon. It was a frightening face and Lecroix, who was no coward, almost recoiled from the hostility in Sharpe’s eyes. “Colonel Vandal,” he said, putting the stress on the name’s second syllable, “sends his compliments, monsieur, and requests that you permit us to recover our wounded”—he paused, glancing at the handcart that had been stripped of the women’s luggage, thus revealing the powder kegs—“before you attempt to destroy the bridge.”

“Attempt?” Sharpe asked.

Lecroix ignored the scorn. “Or do you intend to leave our wounded for the amusements of the Portuguese?”

Sharpe was tempted to say that any French wounded deserved whatever they got from the Portuguese, but he resisted the urge. The request, he reckoned, was fair enough and so he drew Jack Bullen away far enough so that the French officers could not overhear him. “Go and see the brigadier,” he told the lieutenant, “and tell him these buggers want to fetch their wounded over the river before we destroy the bridge.”

Bullen set off back across the bridge while two of the French officers started back toward Fort Josephine, followed by all the women except the two Spaniards who, barefooted and ragged, hurried south down the river’s bank. Lecroix watched them go. “Those two didn’t want to stay with us?” He sounded surprised.