Herault explained to the Major who was not really a Major, "is going through the mountains."

"Because of the guerilleros?" Ducos asked, "so travel at night."

"But however fast we travel, Major, they will still outrun us and so give warning to this fortlet at San Miguel, " Herault tapped the map, "and the fort's garrison will send to Salamanca for reinforcements, and we shall arrive and find a small army waiting for us." He frowned, staring at the map and tapping his teeth with a pencil. «Avila,» he said after a while, prodding the town with the pencil. It lay well to the east of San Miguel, high in the hills.

"Avila?" Ducos asked.

"If I march towards Avila it will draw the guerilleros like flies to a corpse. And I shall send a vanguard, say three hundred infantry? We give the bastards a victory, Major, by sacrificing those three hundred men on the Avila road, and when the guerilleros are busy destroying them, the rest of us will go straight across the hills." He slashed the pencil over the map. "My two thousand cavalrymen will go first, and we shall ride like demons, Major. Any horse that falls will be left, its rider abandoned. We will ride straight for San Miguel, and you will follow with the infantry.

It will take the footsoldiers two days, less if General Michaud forces them hard, and we shall hold the bridge at San Miguel until you come."

Michaud would force the infantry hard. Ducos would see to that, using all the Emperor's surrogate authority to make Michaud crack the whip. "But what about the British reinforcements from Salamanca?" Ducos asked.

"Suppose they arrive before Michaud?"

"They won't know where to go, Major, " Herault said, "because I won't just wait for Michaud to catch up. I shall send cavalry all across the plain, right to the gates of Ciudad Rodrigo. We shall burn supplies, ambush convoys, kill every small garrison. We shall set southern Castile afire, Major, and the British will march in circles trying to find us." He let the map roll up.