Or was his instinct, that had served him so well through over fifteen years of fighting, telling him to be careful? "Keep your men here, love, " he said to Teresa, "because I think you're going to have frogs to kill."

He turned and ran towards the firestep that looked down onto the bridge.

"Sergeant Harper!»

Harper emerged from the shrine built on the far side of the roadway and blinked up at Sharpe who, standing on the fort parapet, was silhouetted against the sky. "Sir?"

"My compliments to Major Tubbs, Sergeant, and I want his ox-cart on the bridge. As a barricade, got it? And I want you and twenty riflemen up at that damn farm, " he pointed southwards, "and I want it all done now!»

Teresa put a hand on his green sleeve. "You really think the French are coming here, Richard?"

"I don't think it, I know it! I know it! I don't know how I know it, but I do. The buggers have slipped round the side gate and are coming in through the back door."

Major Tubbs, sweating in the day's heat, came lumbering up the stone stairway from the courtyard. "You can't block the bridge, Captain Sharpe!»

Tubbs protested. "You can't! It's a public thoroughfare."

"If I had the powder, Major, I'd blow the bloody bridge up."

Tubbs looked into Sharpe's grim face, then gazed southwards. "But the French aren't coming! Look!»

The southern landscape was wonderfully peaceful. Poppies fluttered in the breeze that rippled the crops and flickered the pale leaves of the olive groves. There was no smoke rising from burning villages to smear the sky, and no plume of dust kicked up by thousands of boots and hooves. There was just a peaceful summer landscape, basking in Castilian heat. God was in his heaven and all was well in the world. "But they're coming, " Sharpe said obstinately.