"Welcome to San Miguel, Captain, " Major Lucius Tubbs said to the officer beside him, "where God is in his heaven and all is well with the world."

"Amen to that, " said Sergeant Patrick Harper, standing behind the two officers who both ignored him. Major Tubbs, befitting his name, was a plump man with a cheerful, jowly face who now stood at the ramparts of the small fortress of San Miguel and bounced his hands on the parapet in time to some imaginary music. Next to him, and towering over the shorter Tubbs, was a lean and scarred man in a green Rifleman's jacket that was so patched with common brown cloth that from a distance it looked like a farm-labourer's coat. Beneath the patched coat he wore a pair of leather-trimmed cavalry overalls that had once belonged to a colonel of Napoleon's Imperial Guard, and at his side there hung a heavy-bladed cavalry sword that had killed the colonel.

"We shall not be disturbed here, Sharpe, " Tubbs said.

"Pleased to hear that, sir."

"The French are gone! " Tubbs waved a hand which suggested the French had simply evaporated. "We shall do our work in these Elysian fields! " Sharpe had no idea what an Elysian field was, and had no intention of asking, but it was plainly a pleasant sort of place for the landscape beyond the river was gentle, peaceful and bathed in Spanish sunlight. "There is just you and I, " Tubbs went on enthusiastically, "our splendid men, and enough wine in the store room to float a frigate."

"Amen to that, too, " Sergeant Harper said.

Sharpe turned on him. "Sergeant? Take three reliable men and break every damned bottle."

«Sharpe!» Tubbs remonstrated, staring at the rifleman as though he could not believe his ears. "Break the bottles?"

Sharpe looked down into Tubbs's eyes. "The Crapauds may have gone, sir, but the war ain't won yet. And if a troop of monsewers were to come down that road, " he pointed south along the road which led from the bridge that the small fortress guarded, "then you and I don't want to be relying on a pack of piss-eyed Riflemen who are so damned drunk that they won't be able to load a rifle, let alone fire one."