“Good.” Ducos picked up one of the cockades. Challon hesitated, then picked up the other, and thus their pact was sealed.

Two mornings later there was a sea-fog that rolled from the Garonne estuary to shroud Bordeaux in a white, clinging dampness through which nine horsemen rode eastwards in the dawn. Pierre Ducos led them. He was dressed in civilian clothes with a sword and two pistols at his belt. Sergeant Challon and his men were in the vestiges of their green uniforms, though all the troopers had discarded their heavy metal helmets. Their saddle bags bulged, as did the panniers of the pack horses that three of the troopers led.

To deceive, cheat, disguise, and outwit; those were the skills Ducos had given to his Emperor; which skills must now serve his own ends. The horses clattered through the city’s outer gate, stirred the fog with their passing, and then were gone.

CHAPTER 1

“Of course the Peer knew about it,” Major-General Nairn was speaking of the duel, “but between you and me I don’t think he was unhappy about it. The Navy’s been rather irritating him lately.”

“I expected to be arrested,” Sharpe said.

“If you’d have killed the bugger, you would have been. Even Wellington can’t absolutely ignore a deceased Naval Captain, but it was clever of you just to crease the man’s bum.” Nairn gave a joyful bark of laughter at the thought of Bampfylde’s wound.

“I was trying to kill him,” Sharpe confessed.

“It was much cleverer of you to give him a sore arse. And let me say how very good it is to see you, my dear Sharpe. I trust Jane is well?”

“Indeed, sir.”

Sharpe’s tone caused Nairn to give the Rifleman an amused look. “Do I detect that you are in marital bad odour, Sharpe?”

“I stink, sir.”