“Hardly possible, is it?”

“Unless we… that is…“ The Sergeant, a squat, red-faced man, could not say what was in his mind.

“Unless we surrender to the French?” Sharpe asked acidly.

Williams looked into the Lieutenant’s eyes. They were curious eyes, almost reptilian in their present coldness. The Sergeant found a truculence to brace his argument. “At least the crapauds have got surgeons, sir.”

“In one hour,” Sharpe’s voice implied that he had not even heard Williams’s words, Til inspect every man’s rifle. Make sure they’re ready.“

Williams stared belligerently at the officer, but could not summon the courage necessary for disobedience. He nodded curtly and turned away.

Captain Murray was propped against a pile of packs inside the barn. He offered Sharpe a feeble smile. “What will you do?”

“Sergeant Williams thinks I should take you to a French surgeon.”

Murray grimaced. “I asked what you wanted to do.”

Sharpe sat beside the Captain. “Rejoin.”

Murray nodded. He was cradling a mug of tea, a precious gift from one of the Riflemen who had hoarded the leaves in the bottom of his ammunition pouch. “You can leave me here.”

“I can’t…“

“I’m dying.” Murray made a deprecatory shrug to show that he wanted no sympathy. His wound was not bleeding overmuch, but the Captain’s belly was swelling blue to show that there was bleeding inside. He nodded towards the other three badly wounded men, all of them with great sword cuts on their faces or chests. “Leave them too. Where will you go? The coast?”

Sharpe shook his head. “We’ll never catch the army now.”

“Probably not.” Murray closed his eyes.

Sharpe waited. It had started to rain again and a leak in the stone roof dripped insistently into the fire. He was thinking of his options. The most inviting choice was to attempt to follow Sir John Moore’s army, but they were retreating so fast, and the French now controlled the road that Sharpe must take, and thus he knew he must resist that temptation for it would only lead into captivity. Instead he must go south. Sir John had marched from Lisbon, and a few troops had been left to protect the Portuguese capital, and perhaps that garrison still existed and Sharpe could find it. “How far is Lisbon?” he asked Murray.