"When you're dead, monsieur." The Frenchman spoke cheerfully. He looked as young as Doggett. His horse, like Sharpe's, had been slowed by the plough furrows in the rye field, but the Frenchman rowelled it on as he got close to Sharpe.

Sharpe stood his ground, his right arm facing the attack. The Lieutenant, like all French skirmishing officers, carried a light curved sabre; a good slashing weapon, but not the most accurate blade for the lunge. This man, eager to draw first blood, swerved as he neared Sharpe, then leaned out of his saddle to give a gut-slicing sweep with the glittering blade.

Sharpe simply parried the blow by holding his own heavy sword vertically. The clash of steel jarred up his arm, then he kicked his heels back to force the stallion towards the road. The Frenchman had swept past him, and now tried to turn in the clinging rye.

Sharpe only wanted to reach the road. He had no need to prove anything in single combat. He glanced over his left shoulder and saw the three other officers were still two hundred yards away, then a shouted challenge from his right revealed that the French Lieutenant had succeeded in turning his horse and was now spurring back to make a new attack. He was approaching from behind and slightly to the right of Sharpe. That was foolish, for it meant the Frenchman would have to make his sabre cut across his own and his horse's body. "Don't be stupid!" Sharpe called back to him.

"Are you frightened, Englishman?" the Lieutenant laughed.

Sharpe felt the anger then; the cold anger that seemed to slow the pa.s.sage of time itself and make everything appear so very distinctly. He saw the Frenchman's small moustache above the bared teeth. The man's shako had a red, white and blue c.o.c.kade, and some of the shako's overlapping bra.s.s plates were missing from its leather chin-strap. The Lieutenant's horse was tossing its head, snorting, raising its bright hooves high as it trampled the crop. Husks of rye and sc.r.a.ps of straw were being splintered aside by the charging horse. The Lieutenant's sabre was raised reflecting the dying sun in its brilliant polish and ready for the downwards cut that was supposed to hack into Sharpe's skull. Sharpe was holding his own sword low beside his stirrup, almost as if he could not be bothered to fight. The long blade was whipped by the rye stalks. Sharpe was deliberately curbing the stallion to take shorter slower steps, thus letting the eager Frenchman overtake him, but, just a heartbeat before the sun-bright sabre whipped hard down, Sharpe jerked the long sword back and upwards.

The heavy blade smashed brutally hard into the mouth of the Lieutenant's horse. The beast reared up on its hind legs, screaming, with blood showing at its lips and teeth. Sharpe was already turning the stallion across its front. The Lieutenant was desperately trying to stay in his saddle. He flailed for balance with his sabre arm, then screamed because he saw the heavy sword coming at his throat. He tried to twist away, but instead his horse plunged back onto its forefeet and threw the Lieutenant's weight fast forward.

Sharpe held his straight-bladed sword pointed at the-Lieutenant's throat and locked his elbow as the Frenchman fell onto the blade. There was an instant's resistance, then the sword's point punctured skin and muscle to tear into the great blood vessels of the Frenchman's neck. His scream of fear was silenced instantly. He seemed to stare at Sharpe as he died; offering the Englishman a look of mingled surprise and remorse, then a gout of blood, bright as the sun itself, slashed out to soak Sharpe's right arm and shoulder. Specks of the blood spattered his face, then the Frenchman was falling away and his dying weight ripped his body clear of the long steel blade.

Sharpe twisted the stallion away. He thought briefly of taking the Lieutenant's horse, but he did not want to be enc.u.mbered by the beast. He saw the other three French officers check their advance. He flourished the b.l.o.o.d.y sword at them in a mocking salute, then trotted back to the road.

He stopped there, wiped the blade on his overalls, and sheathed the sword. His right arm was soaked with the Frenchman's blood that had saturated the flimsy green sleeve of his old uniform. He grimaced at the smell of fresh blood, then pulled the loaded rifle from its holster. The three officers watched him, but none tried to come close.

He watched the turn in the road by the chestnut trees. After a minute the first French skirmishers ran into sight. They stopped when they saw him, then dived right and left, but at fifty yards the rifle was lethal and Sharpe saw his bullet lift a man clean off the ground.

But at fifty yards the French muskets were almost as accurate as the Baker rifle. Sharpe slammed back his heels and took off down the road as if the demons of h.e.l.l were at his heels. He counted to eight, then swerved hard left into the tall rye, just as the French volley whipped through the dust cloud left by the stallion's hooves.

The small volley missed. Sharpe rode on down the slope till he reached the stream where, as the stallion drank, he reloaded the rifle and shoved the weapon into its holster. Then, satisfied that the French would check their advance till they were certain no picquet line waited in ambush, he stared westwards towards the clouds and let out a long heavy breath.

He was measuring the fear he had just felt. For months he had been haunted by his memories of the battle of Toulouse; reliving the bowel-loosening terror he had felt at that last conflict of the last war. There had been no horror particular to Toulouse to explain that extraordinary fear; the battle had been less threatening than a half-dozen of the Spanish engagements, yet Sharpe had never forgotten the awful fear, nor his relief when peace had been declared. He had hung the battered sword over the spice cupboard in Lucille's kitchen, and had claimed to be glad that he would never again have to draw the war-dulled blade from its metal scabbard. Yet, ever since Toulouse, he had wondered whether his nerve had gone for ever.

Now, holding his blood-soaked right hand to the evening light, he found his answer. The hand was motionless; yet at Toulouse that hand had shaken like a man afflicted with the palsy of St Vitus's dance. Sharpe slowly closed the hand into a fist. He felt an immense relief that his nerve had come back, but he also felt ashamed that he had enjoyed the discovery.

He looked up at the clouds. He had a.s.sured Lucille that he fought only because his pension would be jeopardized if he refused, but in truth he had wanted to know whether the old skills were still there or whether, like a cannon fired too fast and too often, he had simply worn himself out as a soldier. Now he knew, and it had all been so d.a.m.ned easy. The young Lieutenant had ridden on to the blade, and Sharpe had felt nothing. He doubted if his pulse had even quickened as he killed. Twenty-two years of war had honed that skill to near perfection, and as a result a mother in France would soon be weeping.

He looked southwards. Nothing moved among the tall crops. The French would be collecting their casualties, and their officers would be staring northwards in search of a non-existent picquet line.

Sharpe patted the stallion, then walked him downstream until he reached the ford where, once more, he waited for the enemy's advance. The woman had come back to the farm's archway from where she and two men stared nervously up the road towards Frasnes. A horsefly settled on the stallion's neck. Sharpe slapped it b.l.o.o.d.y, then unsheathed the rifle and held it across his saddle. He would give the French one more shot before retreating back to the crossroads.

Then, from behind him, from the north, he heard the thump of heavy drums and the jaunty thin notes of a flute playing. He twisted in the saddle to see a column of infantry at the crossroads of Quatre Bras. For a second Sharpe's heart leapt, thinking that a battalion of Riflemen had arrived, then he saw the yellow crossbelts over the green coats and he knew he was seeing Prince Bernhard of Saxe-Weimar's force of Na.s.sauers. The German brigade officers were already spurring down the road towards Sharpe.

Saxe-Weimar had arrived at the very nick of time. On the long slope above Sharpe the French battalion had spread into skirmish order. They were invisible in the tall rye, yet their purposeful advance could be traced by the disturbance of the crop through which they moved. The Na.s.sauers' battalion was doubling down the road, while their officers spurred towards the stream to mark the place where the infantry would form a line.

Sharpe rode back behind the advancing troops. Some of the men gave him curious looks because of the blood that had sheeted his right side. He uncorked his canteen and took a long drink of water. More Na.s.sauer infantry were running down the road, their heavy boots stirring a thick dust. Small drummer boys, their lips caked with the road's dust, beat a ragged advance as they ran. The troops seemed eager enough, but the next few seconds would be the acid test of their willingness to fight against their old master, Napoleon.

The first Na.s.sauer battalion was formed in a line of four ranks on the left-hand side of the road. The battalion's Colonel stared at the thrashing of unseen men in the rye field on the stream's far bank, then ordered his men to make ready.

The muskets were lifted to the men's shoulders.

The Colonel paused. "Fire!"

There was a split second's silence, then the volley crashed hugely loud in the still evening air. The musket-b.a.l.l.s slammed across the small stream and bent the rye crop as though a squall of wind had struck the stalks. Rooks protested the disturbance by flapping angrily up from the roadside.

"Reload!" To Sharpe's eyes the battalion's musket drill was lamentably slow, but it did not matter; they were fighting.

A few French skirmishers returned the fire, but they were ma.s.sively outnumbered and their shooting was wild. Another Na.s.sauer battalion had formed a line to the right of the stream. "Fire!" Again a volley hammered at the evening's perfection. A bank of smoke, thick and vile smelling, rolled across the stream.

"Fire!" That was the first battalion again. Yet more men were coming from the crossroads and deploying left and right beyond the first two units. Staff officers were galloping busily behind the lines where the battalion's colours were bright in the dusk. The drummers kept up their din.

"How many of them?" The Brigade Major, who spoke English with a thick German accent, reined in beside Sharpe.

"I only saw one battalion of skirmishers."

"Guns? Cavalry?"

"None that I saw, but they can't be far behind."

"We'll hold them here as long as we can." The Brigade Major glanced at the sun. It was not long now till nightfall, and the French advance would certainly stop with the darkness.

,I'll let headquarters know you're here," Sharpe said.

"We'll need help by morning," the Brigade Major said fervently.

"You'll get it." Sharpe hoped he spoke the truth.

Lieutenant Simon Doggett waited at the crossroads and frowned when he saw the blood on Sharpe's arm. "Are you hurt, sir?"

"That's someone else's blood." Sharpe brushed at the bloodstain, but it was still wet. "You're to go back to Braine-le-Comte. Tell Rebecque that the crossroads at Quatre Bras are safe, but that the French are bound to attack in greater strength in the morning. Tell him we need men here; as many as possible!"

"And you, sir? Are you staying here?"

"No. I'll take the spare horse." Sharpe slid out of the saddle and began unbuckling its gir,th. "You take this horse back to headquarters."

"Where are you going, sir?" Doggett, seeing the flicker of irritation on Sharpe's face, justified his question. "The Baron's bound to ask me, sir."

"Tell Rebecque I'm going to Brussels. The Prince wants me to go to a b.l.o.o.d.y ball."

Simon Doggett's face blanched as he looked at Sharpe's frayed and blood-drenched uniform. "Like that, sir? You're going to a ball dressed like that?"

"There's a b.l.o.o.d.y war on. What does the Young Frog expect? b.l.o.o.d.y lace and pantaloons?" He handed Doggett the stallion's bridle, then carried the saddle over to the spare horse. "Tell Rebecque I'm riding to Brussels to see the Duke. Someone has to tell him what's happening here. Go on with you!"

Behind Sharpe the firing had died away. The French had retreated, presumably back to Frasnes, while Saxe-Weimar's men had begun to make their bivouacs. Their axes sounded loud in the long wood as they cut the timber for their cooking fires. The people of the hamlet, sensing what destruction would follow the coming of these soldiers, were packing their few belongings into the farm cart. The small girl was crying, looking for her lost kittens. A man cursed at Sharpe, then went to help harness a thin mule to the cart.

Sharpe wearily mounted his fresh horse. The crossroads were safe, at least for this one night. He clicked his fingers for Nosey to follow him, then rode northwards in the dusk. He was going to a dance.

CHAPTER 6.

Lucille Castineau stared gravely at her reflection in the mirror which, because it was only a small broken sliver, was being held by her maid, Jeanette, who was forced to tilt the gla.s.s up and down in an effort to show her mistress the whole dress. "It looks lovely," Jeanette said rea.s.suringly.

"It's very plain. Oh, well. I am plain."

"That's not true, madame," Jeanette protested.