Davila shivered beneath his ragged cloaks. “If you go west, Don Bias, you may find the British?”

Vivar spat to show his opinion of the British army.

“They would help you?” Davila insisted.

“Would you trust the English with what is in the strongbox?”

Davila considered his answer, then shrugged. “No.”

Vivar eased himself to the crest once more and stared down at the village. “Perhaps those devils will meet the British. Then one pack of barbarians can kill the other.” He shuddered with the cold. “If I had enough men, Diego, I would fill hell with the souls of those Frenchmen. But I do not have the men. So fetch them for me!”

“I will try, Don Bias.” It was as much of a promise as Davila dared offer, for no Spaniard could feel hopeful in these early days of 1809. The Spanish King was a prisoner in France, and the brother of the French Emperor had been enthroned in Madrid. The armies of Spain, that had shown such fine defiance the previous year, had been crushed by Napoleon, and the British army, sent to help them, was being chased ignominiously towards the sea. All that was left to Spain were fragments of its broken armies, the defiance of its proud people, and the strongbox.

The next morning, Vivar’s men carried the strongbox to the west. Lieutenant Davila watched as the French Dragoons saddled their horses and abandoned a village that had been plundered and from which the smoke rose into a cold sky. The Dragoons might not know where Bias Vivar was, but the man in the black coat and white boots knew precisely where the Major was going, and so the French forced their horses to the west. Davila waited a full day; then, in a downpour of rain that turned the snow to slush and the paths to thick mud, he went south.

The hunters and the hunted were moving again, inching their intricate paths across a wintry land, and the hunted were seeking the miracle that might yet save Spain and snatch a glorious victory from defeat.