It is Portugal in 1826. Newly returned from India, Matthew Hervey joins a party of officers sent to lend support to the Portuguese regent. But the Peninsula is a place redolent with memories. For, it was here as a seventeen-year-old cornet that Hervey had his first taste of military action. The French had forced the British army into ignominious retreat until, under the leadership of Sir John Moore, they made a defiant stand at Corunna. As he prepares for battle once more, Hervey finds himself confronting ghosts from his past...