 Sharp's Havoc, by Bernard Cornwall, read by Paul McGahn. Miss Savage was missing, and the French were coming. The splintering noise of sustained musket fire was sounding just outside the city, and in the last ten minutes five or six cannonballs had battered through the houses, high on the river's northern bank. The Savage house was a few yards down the slope, and for the moment was protected, but already the warm spring air hummed with spent musket balls that struck the roof tiles with a loud crack or else ripped through the dark glossy pines to shower needles over the garden. It was a large square house built of white painted stone. House Beautiful. It seemed an odd name for a building high on the steep hillside where the city of Aporto overlooked the river Duro in northern Portugal, especially as the house was ugly. Fugitives were fleeing past House Beautiful, running down the hill towards the ferries and the pontoon bridge that would take them safe across the Duro. Richard Sharp, lieutenant in the Second Battalion of His Majesty's Ninety-Fifth Rifles, unbuttoned his britches and pissed on the Narcissae in the house Beautiful's front flower bed. A howitzer shell arched overhead, sounding like a ponderous barrel rolling swiftly over attic floorboards. It left a small gray trace of smoke from its burning fuse. They're getting too bloody close, Sharp said to no one in particular. You'll be drowning those poor bloody flowers, so you will, Sergeant Harper said, then added a hasty sir when he saw Sharp's face. The howitzer shell exploded above the tangle of alleys close to the river, and the French cannonade rose to a sustained thunder. Some of the guns were very close. A new battery, Sharp thought. It must have unlimbed just outside the city, maybe half a mile away from Sharp, and was probably whacking the big northern redoubt in the flank, and the musketry that had been sounding like the burning of a dry-thorn bush now faded to an intermittent crackle, suggesting that the defending infantry was retreating. Some indeed were running, and Sharp could hardly blame them. A large and disorganized Portuguese force, led by the bishop of a porto, was trying to stop Marshal Soot's army from capturing the city, the second largest in Portugal, and the French were winning. The Portuguese road to safety led past the house beautiful, and the bishop's blue coated soldiers were skidaddling down the hill as fast as their legs could take them. Meanwhile, Miss Savage was still missing. Captain Hogan appeared on the front porch and swore fluently. Sharp buttoned his britches, and his two dozen riflemen inspected their weapons as though they'd never seen such things before. Captain Hogan spat as a French round shot trundled overhead. What it is, Richard, he said, is a shambles, a pocked bollocks of a shambles. Captain Hogan took out his snuff box and inhaled a mighty pinch. Bless you, Sergeant Harper, said. Captain Hogan sneezed. Kate Savage, Hogan said, is nineteen years old and in need of a thrashing. A bloody good walloping, Richard. So where the hell is she, Sharp asked? A mother thinks she may have gone to Villa Real de Zedis. The family has an estate there. He rolled his eyes in exasperation. So why would she go there, sir? Sergeant Harper asked. Because she's a fatherless, nineteen-year-old girl, Hogan said, who insists on having her own way because she's fallen out with her mother because, oh, I don't know why. Hogan was stocky, middle-aged, a royal engineer with a shrewd face, graying hair, and a charitable disposition. Because she's a bloody half-wit, that's why, he finished. This Villa Real de whatever, Sharp said, is it far? Why don't we just fetch her? Which is precisely what I've told the mother you will do, Richard. You will find the wretched girl and you will get her across the river to Villa Nova. He paused as he penciled these instructions on the scrap of paper. Don't get the silly girl pregnant, he went on. Don't give her the thrashing she bloody well deserves, and don't, for the love of Christ, lose her, and don't lose Colonel Christopher either. Am I plain? Colonel Christopher's coming with us? Sharp asked. Appalled. Didn't I just tell you that, Hogan inquired innocently, then turned as a clatter of hooves announced the appearance of the widow's savages' traveling coach and a coachman leading Hogan's black mare. The captain hoisted himself into the saddle. You'll be back with us in a couple of days, he assured Sharp. Say, seven hours to Villa Real de Zedis? The same back to the ferry at Barca de Pintas? And then a quiet stroll home, you know where Barca de Pintas is? No, sir. That way, Hogan pointed eastwards, four country miles. What I don't understand, Sharp began, then po- Sample complete. Ready to continue?