ONE

      The tall young officer stood a few yards out in front of the company of redcoats and stared up at the fort that towered above them on the hill. For two hours now he had been awaiting the order to advance and with every passing moment the enemy position looked more forbidding. Like almost every man in the army, he had the greatest admiration and respect for his Commander-in-Chief. But at this precise moment he had begun to wonder whether, truly, this entire enterprise might not be doomed to failure. He tried to banish the thought. To maintain some degree of sang-froid before his men. But as he did so, the first cannonball fell in front of the three ranks of red-coated infantry, bounced up from the springy turf with grisly precision, and carried away four of them in a welter of blood and brains.

      ‘Feeling the heat, Mister Steel?’

      The Lieutenant looked up. Silhouetted against the sun a tall figure in a full-bottomed wig peered down at him from horseback.

      ‘A trifle, Sir James.’

      ‘A trifle, eh? I’d have thought that you’d have been used to it after, how many years a soldier?’

      ‘Nigh on a dozen, Colonel.’

      ‘But of course. How could I forget? You earned your spurs in the Northern wars, did you not? Fighting the