‘Sir?’

‘Sound the Reveille. Keep it sounding till the Lieutenant reaches the enemy.’

‘Yes, sir.’

The French, warned by the bugle, watched the lone horseman ride towards them with his white handkerchief held aloft. Politely, they ordered their own men to cease firing at the elusive Riflemen in the rocks.

The smoke of the fight drifted away in a shower of windblown rain as Trumper-Jones disappeared into a knot of French officers. Sharpe turned round. ‘Stand easy!’

The five companies relaxed. Sharpe looked to the river bank. ‘Sergeant Harper!’

‘Sir!’ A huge man, four inches taller than Sharpe’s six feet, came from the bank. He was one of the Riflemen who, with Sharpe, had been stranded in this Battalion of redcoats as part of the flotsam of war. Although the South Essex wore red and carried the short-range musket, this man, like the other Riflemen of Sharpe’s old Company, still wore the green uniform and carried the rifle. Harper stopped by Sharpe. ‘You think the buggers will give in?’

‘They haven’t got any choice. They know they’re trapped. If they can’t get rid of us within the hour, they’re done for.’

Harper laughed. If any man was a friend of Sharpe’s it was this Sergeant. They had shared every battlefield together in Spain and Portugal, and the only thing that Harper could not share was the guilt that haunted Sharpe since his wife’s death.

Sharpe rubbed his hands against the unseasonal cold. ‘I want some tea, Patrick. You have my permission to make some.’

Harper grinned. ‘Yes, sir.’ He spoke with the raw accent of Ulster.

The tea was still warm in Sharpe’s cupped hands when Lieutenant Michael Trumper-Jones returned with the French Colonel. Sharpe had already ordered the fake Colours to be lowered and now he went forward to meet his forlorn enemy. He refused to take the man’s sword. The Colonel, who knew he could not take this bridge without his guns, agreed to the terms. He took consolation, he said, in surrendering to a soldier of Major Sharpe’s repute.