Major Richard Sharpe awaits the opening shots of the army's new campaign with grim expectancy. Victory depends on the increasingly fragile alliance between Britain and Spain - an alliance tha must be mainteined at any cost.
But Sharpe's Enemy, the French intelligence officer Pierre Ducos, seizes a chance to destroy the alliance and take personal revenge on Sharpe. And when the lovely spy, La Marquesa, takes a hand in the game, Sharpe finds hinself caught in a web of deadly intrigue and becomes a fugitivek, hunted by enemy and ally alike...