"I was honest."

"And were you expendable? As an ensign?"

"I climbed a cliff, love. I climbed a cliff. And they reckoned I would die, and none, I reckon, would have cared much if I had."

And who would be climbing the cliff in the morning, he wondered, who? And where? And how? And what had he forgotten? And would the bastards come?

And could he stop them? And Jesus, he was nervous. He had listened to his instinct, and he was ready for the French, but it still felt all wrong. It felt like defeat, and it had not even started yet.

Teresa's men, three miles south of San Miguel in the foothills of the Sierra de Gredos, roasted a hare over an open fire. They lit the fire in a grove of trees, deep in a rocky cleft, and were sure that its light could not be seen on the road which lay white beneath their position. If one Frenchman dared breathe on that road the partisans would fire their muskets and so warn the fort that the enemy was coming.

But Captain Pailleterie saw a gleam of their fire. It was tiny, merely a reflection of a leaping flame on a high rock, but only two kinds of men had fires in the hills; partisans or soldiers, and both kind were his enemies. He held up his hand and checked the company.

The gleam had been to the left of the road, at least he thought so, for he was still not in sight of the stretch of road that ran directly beneath the rocky bluff where he had seen the faint glimmer. Off to his right there was a dark valley and it seemed to him that it curled around to the north and so might offer a way to the river and the bridge which would be hidden from whoever had carelessly lit a fire in this dark night.

His men all had muffled scabbards so that the metal did not clash against a buckle or stirrup. Pailleterie could do little about the sound of their hooves, so that was a risk that must be taken. "We go slowly now, " he told his men, "slow and quiet."