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the gold out days ago. The longer it's

    there, the riskier it gets.'
    There had been a fraction of silence in the room. The moth had burned its wings, was

    flapping on the table, and Sharpe crushed it. 'You don't think we'll succeed, do you.' It

    was a statement, not a question.
    Hogan looked up from the dead moth. 'No.'
    'So the war's lost?' Hogan nodded. Sharpe flicked the moth on to the floor. 'But the

    General says there are other tricks up his sleeve. That this isn't the only hope.'
    Hogan's eyes were tired. 'He has to say that.'
    Sharpe had stood up 'So why the hell don't you send three bloody regiments in? Four. Send

    the bloody army! Make sure you get the gold."
    'It's too far, Richard. There are no roads beyond Almeida. If we attract attention,

    then the French will be there before us. The regiments could never get across both rivers

    without a fight, and they'd be outnumbered. No. We're sending you.'
    And now he was climbing the tight bends of the border road, watching the dull horizon

    for the telltale gleam of a drawn enemy sabre, and marching in the knowledge that he was

    expected to fail. He hoped Major Kearsey, who waited for the Company in Almeida, had

    more faith, but Hogan had been diffident about the Major. Sharpe had probed again. 'Is he

    unreliable?'
    Hogan shook his head. 'He's one of the best, Richard, one of the very best. But he's not

    exactly the man we'd have chosen for this job.'
    He had refused to elaborate. Kearsey, he had told Sharpe, was an exploring officer,

    one of the men who rode fast horses behind enemy lines, in full uniform, and sent back a

    stream of information, despatches captured from the French by the Partisans and maps of

    the countryside. It was Kearsey who had discovered the gold, informed Wellington, and

    only Kearsey knew its exact location. Kearsey, suitable or not, was the key to

    success.
    The road flattened on the high crest of the Coa's east bank, and ahead, silhouetted in

    the dawn light, was Portugal's northern fortress, Almeida. It dominated the countryside

    for miles around, a town built on a hill that rose to the huge bulk of a cathedral and a

    castle side by side. Below those buildings, massive and challenging, the thick-tiled

    houses fell away down the steep streets until they met Almeida's real defences. In this

    early light, at this distance, it was the castle that impressed, with its four huge

    turrets and crenellated walls, but Sharpe knew that the high battlements had long been out

    of date, replaced by the low, grey ramparts that spread a vast, grim pattern round the town.

    He did not envy the French. They would have to attack across open ground, through a

    scientifically designed maze of ditches and hidden walls, and all the time they would be

    enfiladed by dozens of masked batteries that could pour canister and grape into the

    killing-ground between the long, sleek arms of the star-like fortifications. Almeida

    had been fortified, its defences rebuilt only seven years before, and the old,

    redundant castle looked down on the modern, unglamorous, granite monster that was

    designed only to lure, to trap, and to destroy.
    Closer, the defences seemed less threatening. It was an illusion. The old days of

    sheer, high walls were past and the best modern fortresses were surrounded by smooth

    hummocks, like the ones the Light Company approached, that were so gently sloping that

    even a cripple could walk up without losing breath. The hummocks were there to deflect the

    besiegers' cannon shots, to send the balls and shells ricocheting into the air, over the

    defences, so that when the infantry attacked, up the gentle, innocent grass slopes, they

    would find the murderous traps intact. At the top of that slope was hidden a vast ditch, at

    the far side of which was a granite-faced wall, topped by belching guns, and even if that

    were taken there was another behind, and another, and Sharpe was glad he was not

    summoning the