Sharpe’s Fortress: The Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803
Sharpe’s Fortress: The Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803
Bernard Cornwell
It was the most impregnable fortress in all India – Gawlighur – and the opposing forces were safely holding it.But Sharpe, newly appointed an officer by Wellesley, has his own enemies to fight on every hand. The officers in his new regiment resent his arrival, Obadiah Hakeswill is determined to have his revenge, and renegades within the British army want to retain control of their own area…
SHARPE’S
FORTRESS
Richard Sharpe and the Siege
of Gawilghur, December 1803
BERNARD CORNWELL
Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction. The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1999
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 1999
Map © Ken Lewis
Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018. Cover photographs © Alamy Stock Photo
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006510314
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007346806
Version: 2018-04-13
Sharpe’s Fortress is for Christine Clarke, with many thanks
‘We cheer Sharpe on. He has a kind of angry courage, an inability to stay away from a fight, and a permanent inner battle between his inclinations and his sense of duty. Wellington wound up a dangerous spring on the day he raised Sharpe from the ranks. It’s our magnificent gain’
Terry Pratchett
Contents
Title Page (#ud130cd65-58fe-545a-92b9-b93bcc04e8ff)
Copyright (#uf9a681d4-f896-51c3-a3e1-82673d8e9add)
Dedication (#u8a18a297-521d-5500-b8e8-1775e30e62a6)
Praise (#u9e43a561-24aa-5d8f-bc84-312b592c5177)
Maps (#ucb1d7e44-b3c6-5f61-b2e8-37ea3b0c34d9)
Chapter One (#ubf656803-9f29-5b5c-b0ce-96d94622729a)
Chapter Two (#u3be9cfba-37ba-518e-9b4d-f7095a344ab8)
Chapter Three (#ue153e98a-f6c8-51c9-8c9a-f49e73808058)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading
Historical Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Sharpe’s Story (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
The SHARPE Series (in chronological order) (#litres_trial_promo)
The SHARPE Series (in order of publication) (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Bernard Cornwell (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
Richard Sharpe wanted to be a good officer. He truly did. He wanted it above all other things, but somehow it was just too difficult, like trying to light a tinderbox in a rain-filled wind. Either the men disliked him, or they ignored him, or they were over-familiar and he was unsure how to cope with any of the three attitudes, while the battalion’s other officers plain disapproved of him. You can put a racing saddle on a carthorse, Captain Urquhart had said one night in the ragged tent which passed for the officers’ mess, but that don’t make the beast quick. He had not been talking about Sharpe, not directly, but all the other officers glanced at him.
The battalion had stopped in the middle of nowhere. It was hot as hell and no wind alleviated the sodden heat. They were surrounded by tall crops that hid everything except the sky. A cannon fired somewhere to the north, but Sharpe had no way of knowing whether it was a British gun or an enemy cannon.
A dry ditch ran through the tall crops and the men of the company sat on the ditch lip as they waited for orders. One or two lay back and slept with their mouths wide open while Sergeant Colquhoun leafed though his tattered Bible. The Sergeant was short-sighted, so had to hold the book very close to his nose from which drops of sweat fell onto the pages. Usually the Sergeant read quietly, mouthing the words and sometimes frowning when he came across a difficult name, but today he was just slowly turning the pages with a wetted finger.
‘Looking for inspiration, Sergeant?’ Sharpe asked.
‘I am not, sir,’ Colquhoun answered respectfully, but somehow managed to convey that the question was still impertinent. He dabbed a finger on his tongue and carefully turned another page.
So much for that bloody conversation, Sharpe thought. Somewhere ahead, beyond the tall plants that grew higher than a man, another cannon fired. The discharge was muffled by the thick stems. A horse neighed, but Sharpe could not see the beast. He could see nothing through the high crops.
‘Are you going to read us a story, Sergeant?’ Corporal McCallum asked. He spoke in English instead of Gaelic, which meant that he wanted Sharpe to hear.
‘I am not, John. I am not.’
‘Go on, Sergeant,’ McCallum said. ‘Read us one of those dirty tales about tits.’
The men laughed, glancing at Sharpe to see if he was offended. One of the sleeping men jerked awake and looked about him, startled, then muttered a curse, slapped at a fly and lay back. The other soldiers of the company dangled their boots towards the ditch’s crazed mud bed that was decorated with a filigree of dried green scum. A dead lizard lay in one of the dry fissures. Sharpe wondered how the carrion birds had missed it.
‘The laughter of fools, John McCallum,’ Sergeant Colquhoun said, ‘is like the crackling of thorns under the pot.’
‘Away with you, Sergeant!’ McCallum said. ‘I heard it in the kirk once, when I was a wee kid, all about a woman whose tits were like bunches of grapes.’ McCallum twisted to look at Sharpe. ‘Have you ever seen tits like grapes, Mister Sharpe?’
‘I never met your mother, Corporal,’ Sharpe said.
The men laughed again. McCallum scowled. Sergeant Colquhoun lowered his Bible and peered at the Corporal. ‘The Song of Solomon, John McCallum,’ Colquhoun said, ‘likens a woman’s bosom to clusters of grapes, and I have no doubt it refers to the garments that modest women wore in the Holy Land. Perhaps their bodices possessed balls of knotted wool as decoration? I cannot see it is a matter for your merriment.’ Another cannon fired, and this time a round shot whipped through the tall plants close to the ditch. The stems twitched violently, discharging a cloud of dust and small birds into the cloudless sky. The birds flew about in panic for a few seconds, then returned to the swaying seedheads.
‘I knew a woman who had lumpy tits,’ Private Hollister said. He was a dark-jawed, violent man who spoke rarely. ‘Lumpy like a coal sack, they were.’ He frowned at the memory, then shook his head. ‘She died.’
‘This conversation is not seemly,’ Colquhoun said quietly, and the men shrugged and fell silent.
Sharpe wanted to ask the Sergeant about the clusters of grapes, but he knew such an enquiry would only cause ribaldry among the men and, as an officer, Sharpe could not risk being made to look a fool. All the same, it sounded odd to him. Why would anyone say a woman had tits like a bunch of grapes? Grapes made him think of grapeshot and he wondered if the bastards up ahead were equipped with canister. Well, of course they were, but there was no point in wasting canister on a field of bulrushes. Were they bulrushes? It seemed a strange thing for a farmer to grow, but India was full of oddities. There were naked sods who claimed to be holy men, snake-charmers who whistled up hooded horrors, dancing bears draped in tinkling bells, and contortionists draped in bugger all, a right bloody circus. And the clowns ahead would have canister. They would wait till they saw the redcoats, then load up the tin cans that burst like duckshot from the gun barrels. For what we are about to receive among the bulrushes, Sharpe thought, may the Lord make us truly thankful.
‘I’ve found it,’ Colquhoun said gravely.
‘Found what?’ Sharpe asked.
‘I was fairly sure in my mind, sir, that the good book mentioned millet. And so it does. Ezekiel, the fourth chapter and the ninth verse.’ The Sergeant held the book close to his eyes, squinting at the text. He had a round face, afflicted with wens, like a suet pudding studded with currants. ‘“Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley,”’ he read laboriously, ‘“and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof.”’ Colquhoun carefully closed his Bible, wrapped it in a scrap of tarred canvas and stowed it in his pouch. ‘It pleases me, sir,’ he explained, ‘if I can find everyday things in the scriptures. I like to see things, sir, and imagine my Lord and Saviour seeing the selfsame things.’
‘But why millet?’ Sharpe asked.
‘These crops, sir,’ Colquhoun said, pointing to the tall stems that surrounded them, ‘are millet. The natives call it jowari, but our name is millet.’ He cuffed the sweat from his face with his sleeve. The red dye of his coat had faded to a dull purple. ‘This, of course,’ he went on, ‘is pearl millet, but I doubt the scriptures mention pearl millet. Not specifically.’
‘Millet, eh?’ Sharpe said. So the tall plants were not bulrushes, after all. They looked like bulrushes, except they were taller. Nine or ten feet high. ‘Must be a bastard to harvest,’ he said, but got no response. Sergeant Colquhoun always tried to ignore swear words.
‘What are fitches?’ McCallum asked.
‘A crop grown in the Holy Land,’ Colquhoun answered. He plainly did not know.
‘Sounds like a disease, Sergeant,’ McCallum said. ‘A bad dose of the fitches. Leads to a course of mercury.’ One or two men sniggered at the reference to syphilis, but Colquhoun ignored the levity.
‘Do you grow millet in Scotland?’ Sharpe asked the Sergeant.
‘Not that I am aware of, sir,’ Colquhoun said ponderously, after reflecting on the question for a few seconds, ‘though I daresay it might be found in the Lowlands. They grow strange things there. English things.’ He turned pointedly away.
And sod you too, Sharpe thought. And where the hell was Captain Urquhart? Where the hell was anybody for that matter? The battalion had marched long before dawn, and at midday they had expected to make camp, but then came a rumour that the enemy was waiting ahead and so General Sir Arthur Wellesley had ordered the baggage to be piled and the advance to continue. The King’s 74th had plunged into the millet, then ten minutes later the battalion was ordered to halt beside the dry ditch while Captain Urquhart rode ahead to speak with the battalion commander, and Sharpe had been left to sweat and wait with the company.
Where he had damn all to do except sweat. Damn all. It was a good company, and it did not need Sharpe. Urquhart ran it well, Colquhoun was a magnificent sergeant, the men were as content as soldiers ever were, and the last thing the company needed was a brand new officer, an Englishman at that, who, just two months before, had been a sergeant.
The men were talking in Gaelic and Sharpe, as ever, wondered if they were discussing him. Probably not. Most likely they were talking about the dancing girls in Ferdapoor, where there had been no mere clusters of grapes, but bloody great naked melons. It had been some sort of festival and the battalion had marched one way and the half-naked girls had writhed in the opposite direction and Sergeant Colquhoun had blushed as scarlet as an unfaded coat and shouted at the men to keep their eyes front. Which had been a pointless order, when a score of undressed bibbis were bobbling down the highway with silver bells tied to their wrists and even the officers were staring at them like starving men seeing a plate of roast beef. And if the men were not discussing women, they were probably grumbling about all the marching they had done in the last weeks, criss-crossing the Mahratta countryside under a blazing sun without a sight or smell of the enemy. But whatever they were talking about they were making damn sure that Ensign Richard Sharpe was left out.
Which was fair enough, Sharpe reckoned. He had marched in the ranks long enough to know that you did not talk to officers, not unless you were spoken to or unless you were a slick-bellied crawling bastard looking for favours. Officers were different, except Sharpe did not feel different. He just felt excluded. I should have stayed a sergeant, he thought. He had increasingly thought that in the last few weeks, wishing he was back in the Seringapatam armoury with Major Stokes. That had been the life! And Simone Joubert, the Frenchwoman who had clung to Sharpe after the battle at Assaye, had gone back to Seringapatam to wait for him. Better to be there as a sergeant, he reckoned, than here as an unwanted officer.
No guns had fired for a while. Perhaps the enemy had packed up and gone? Perhaps they had hitched their painted cannon to their ox teams, stowed the canister in its limbers and buggered off northwards? In which case it would be a quick about-turn, back to the village where the baggage was stored, then another awkward evening in the officers’ mess. Lieutenant Cahill would watch Sharpe like a hawk, adding tuppence to Sharpe’s mess bill for every glass of wine, and Sharpe, as the junior officer, would have to propose the loyal toast and pretend not to see when half the bastards wafted their mugs over their canteens. King over the water. Toasting a dead Stuart pretender to the throne who had died in Roman exile. Jacobites who pretended George III was not the proper King. Not that any of them were truly disloyal, and the secret gesture of passing the wine over the water was not even a real secret, but rather was intended to goad Sharpe into English indignation. Except Sharpe did not give a fig. Old King Cole could have been King of Britain for all Sharpe cared.
Colquhoun suddenly barked orders in Gaelic and the men picked up their muskets, jumped into the irrigation ditch where they formed into four ranks and began trudging northwards. Sharpe, taken by surprise, meekly followed. He supposed he should have asked Colquhoun what was happening, but he did not like to display ignorance, and then he saw that the rest of the battalion was also marching, so plainly Colquhoun had decided number six company should advance as well. The Sergeant had made no pretence of asking Sharpe for permission to move. Why should he? Even if Sharpe did give an order the men automatically looked for Colquhoun’s nod before they obeyed. That was how the company worked; Urquhart commanded, Colquhoun came next, and Ensign Sharpe tagged along like one of the scruffy dogs adopted by the men.
Captain Urquhart spurred his horse back down the ditch. ‘Well done, Sergeant,’ he told Colquhoun, who ignored the praise. The Captain turned the horse, its hooves breaking through the ditch’s crust to churn up clots of dried mud. ‘The rascals are waiting ahead,’ Urquhart told Sharpe.
‘I thought they might have gone,’ Sharpe said.
‘They’re formed and ready,’ Urquhart said, ‘formed and ready.’ The Captain was a fine-looking man with a stern face, straight back and steady nerve. The men trusted him. In other days Sharpe would have been proud to serve a man like Urquhart, but the Captain seemed irritated by Sharpe’s presence. ‘We’ll be wheeling to the right soon,’ Urquhart called to Colquhoun, ‘forming line on the right in two ranks.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Urquhart glanced up at the sky. ‘Three hours of daylight left?’ he guessed. ‘Enough to do the job. You’ll take the left files, Ensign.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, and knew that he would have nothing to do there. The men understood their duty, the corporals would close the files and Sharpe would simply walk behind them like a dog tied to a cart.
There was a sudden crash of guns as a whole battery of enemy cannon opened fire. Sharpe heard the round shots whipping through the millet, but none of the missiles came near the 74th. The battalion’s pipers had started playing and the men picked up their feet and hefted their muskets in preparation for the grim work ahead. Two more guns fired, and this time Sharpe saw a wisp of smoke above the seedheads and he knew that a shell had gone overhead. The smoke trail from the burning fuse wavered in the windless heat as Sharpe waited for the explosion, but none sounded.
‘Cut his fuse too long,’ Urquhart said. His horse was nervous, or perhaps it disliked the treacherous footing in the bottom of the ditch. Urquhart spurred the horse up the bank where it trampled the millet. ‘What is this stuff?’ he asked Sharpe. ‘Maize?’
‘Colquhoun says it’s millet,’ Sharpe said, ‘pearl millet.’
Urquhart grunted, then kicked his horse on towards the front of the company. Sharpe cuffed sweat from his eyes. He wore an officer’s red tail coat with the white facings of the 74th. The coat had belonged to a Lieutenant Blaine who had died at Assaye and Sharpe had purchased the coat for a shilling in the auction of dead officers’ effects, then he had clumsily sewn up the bullet hole in the left breast, but no amount of scrubbing had rid the coat of Blaine’s blood which stained the faded red weave black. He wore his old trousers, the ones issued to him when he was a sergeant, red leather riding boots that he had taken from an Arab corpse in Ahmednuggur, and a tasselled red officer’s sash that he had pulled off a corpse at Assaye. For a sword he wore a light cavalry sabre, the same weapon he had used to save Wellesley’s life at the battle of Assaye. He did not like the sabre much. It was clumsy, and the curved blade was never where you thought it was. You struck with the sword, and just when you thought it would bite home, you found that the blade still had six inches to travel. The other officers carried claymores, big, straight-bladed, heavy and lethal, and Sharpe should have equipped himself with one, but he had baulked at the auction prices.
He could have bought every claymore in the auction if he had wished, but he had not wanted to give the impression of being wealthy. Which he was. But a man like Sharpe was not supposed to have money. He was up from the ranks, a common soldier, gutter-born and gutter-bred, but he had hacked down a half-dozen men to save Wellesley’s life and the General had rewarded Sergeant Sharpe by making him into an officer, and Ensign Sharpe was too canny to let his new battalion know that he possessed a king’s fortune. A dead king’s fortune: the jewels he had taken from the Tippoo Sultan in the blood and smoke-stinking Water Gate at Seringapatam.
Would he be more popular if it was known he was rich? He doubted it. Wealth did not give respectability, not unless it was inherited. Besides, it was not poverty that excluded Sharpe from both the officers’ mess and the ranks alike, but rather that he was a stranger. The 74th had taken a beating at Assaye. Not an officer had been left unwounded, and companies that had paraded seventy or eighty strong before the battle now had only forty to fifty men. The battalion had been ripped through hell and back, and its survivors now clung to each other. Sharpe might have been at Assaye, he might even have distinguished himself on the battlefield, but he had not been through the murderous ordeal of the 74th and so he was an outsider.
‘Line to the right!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted, and the company wheeled right and shook itself into a line of two ranks. The ditch had emerged from the millet to join a wide, dry riverbed, and Sharpe looked northwards to see a rill of dirty white gunsmoke on the horizon. Mahratta guns. But a long way away. Now that the battalion was free of the tall crops Sharpe could just detect a small wind. It was not strong enough to cool the heat, but it would waft the gunsmoke slowly away.
‘Halt!’ Urquhart called. ‘Face front!’
The enemy cannon might be far off, but it seemed that the battalion would march straight up the riverbed into the mouths of those guns. But at least the 74th was not alone. The 78th, another Highland battalion, was on their right, and on either side of those two Scottish battalions were long lines of Madrassi sepoys.
Urquhart rode back to Sharpe. ‘Stevenson’s joined.’ The Captain spoke loud enough for the rest of the company to hear. Urquhart was encouraging them by letting them know that the two small British armies had combined. General Wellesley commanded both, though for most of the time he split his forces into two parts, the smaller under Colonel Stevenson, but today the two small parts had combined so that twelve thousand infantry could attack together. But against how many? Sharpe could not see the Mahratta army beyond their guns, but doubtless the bastards were there in force.
‘Which means the 94th’s off to our left somewhere,’ Urquhart added loudly, and some of the men muttered their approval of the news. The 94th was another Scottish regiment, so today there were three Scottish battalions attacking the Mahrattas. Three Scottish and ten sepoy battalions, and most of the Scots reckoned that they could have done the job by themselves. Sharpe reckoned they could too. They may not have liked him much, but he knew they were good soldiers. Tough bastards. He sometimes tried to imagine what it must be like for the Mahrattas to fight against the Scots. Hell, he guessed. Absolute hell. ‘The thing is,’ Colonel McCandless had once told Sharpe, ‘it takes twice as much to kill a Scot as it does to finish off an Englishman.’
Poor McCandless. He had been finished off, shot in the dying moments of Assaye. Any of the enemy might have killed the Colonel, but Sharpe had convinced himself that the traitorous Englishman, William Dodd, had fired the fatal shot. And Dodd was still free, still fighting for the Mahrattas, and Sharpe had sworn over McCandless’s grave that he would take vengeance on the Scotsman’s behalf. He had made the oath as he had dug the Colonel’s grave, getting blisters as he had hacked into the dry soil. McCandless had been a good friend to Sharpe and now, with the Colonel deep buried so that no bird or beast could feast on his corpse, Sharpe felt friendless in this army.
‘Guns!’ A shout sounded behind the 74th. ‘Make way!’
Two batteries of six-pounder galloper guns were being hauled up the dry riverbed to form an artillery line ahead of the infantry. The guns were called gallopers because they were light and were usually hauled by horses, but now they were all harnessed to teams of ten oxen so they plodded rather than galloped. The oxen had painted horns and some had bells about their necks. The heavy guns were all back on the road somewhere, so far back that they would probably be too late to join this day’s party.
The land was more open now. There were a few patches of tall millet ahead, but off to the east there were arable fields and Sharpe watched as the guns headed for that dry grassland. The enemy was watching too, and the first round shots bounced on the grass and ricocheted over the British guns.
‘A few minutes before the gunners bother themselves with us, I fancy,’ Urquhart said, then kicked his right foot out of its stirrup and slid down beside Sharpe. ‘Jock!’ He called a soldier. ‘Hold onto my horse, will you?’ The soldier led the horse off to a patch of grass, and Urquhart jerked his head, inviting Sharpe to follow him out of the company’s earshot. The Captain seemed embarrassed, as was Sharpe, who was not accustomed to such intimacy with Urquhart. ‘D’you use a cigar, Sharpe?’ the Captain asked.
‘Sometimes, sir.’
‘Here.’ Urquhart offered Sharpe a roughly rolled cigar, then struck a light in his tinderbox. He lit his own cigar first, then held the box with its flickering flame to Sharpe. ‘The Major tells me a new draft has arrived in Madras.’
‘That’s good, sir.’
‘It won’t restore our strength, of course, but it’ll help,’ Urquhart said. He was not looking at Sharpe, but staring at the British guns that steadily advanced across the grassland. There were only a dozen of the cannon, far fewer than the Mahratta guns. A shell exploded by one of the ox teams, blasting the beasts with smoke and scraps of turf, and Sharpe expected to see the gun stop as the dying beasts tangled the traces, but the oxen trudged on, miraculously unhurt by the shell’s violence. ‘If they advance too far,’ Urquhart murmured, ‘they’ll become so much scrap metal. Are you happy here, Sharpe?’
‘Happy, sir?’ Sharpe was taken aback by the sudden question.
Urquhart frowned as if he found Sharpe’s response unhelpful. ‘Happy,’ he said again, ‘content?’
‘Not sure a soldier’s meant to be happy, sir.’
‘Not true, not true,’ Urquhart said disapprovingly. He was as tall as Sharpe. Rumour said that Urquhart was a very rich man, but the only sign of it was his uniform, which was cut very elegantly in contrast to Sharpe’s shabby coat. Urquhart rarely smiled, which made it difficult to be easy in his company. Sharpe wondered why the Captain had sought this conversation, which seemed untypical of the unbending Urquhart. Perhaps he was nervous about the imminent battle? It seemed unlikely to Sharpe after Urquhart had endured the cauldron of fire at Assaye, but he could think of no other explanation. ‘A fellow should be content in his work,’ Urquhart said with a flourish of his cigar, ‘and if he ain’t, it’s probably a sign that he’s in the wrong line of business.’
‘Don’t have much work to do, sir,’ Sharpe said, wishing he did not sound so surly.
‘Don’t suppose you do,’ Urquhart said slowly. ‘I do see your meaning. Indeed I do.’ He shuffled his feet in the dust. ‘Company runs itself, I suppose. Colquhoun’s a good fellow, and Sergeant Craig’s showing well, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe knew he did not need to call Urquhart ‘sir’ all the time, but old habits died hard.
‘They’re both good Calvinists, you see,’ Urquhart said. ‘Makes ’em trustworthy.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said. He was not exactly sure what a Calvinist was, and he was not going to ask. Maybe it was the same as a Freemason, and there were plenty of those in the 74th’s mess, though Sharpe again did not really know what they were. He just knew he was not one of them.
‘Thing is, Sharpe,’ Urquhart went on, though he did not look at Sharpe as he spoke, ‘you’re sitting on a fortune, if you follow me.’
‘A fortune, sir?’ Sharpe asked with some alarm. Had Urquhart somehow smelt out Sharpe’s hoard of emeralds, rubies, diamonds and sapphires?
‘You’re an ensign,’ Urquhart explained, ‘and if you ain’t happy you can always sell your commission. Plenty of fine fellows in Scotland who’ll pay you for the rank. Even some fellows here. I gather the Scotch Brigade has some gentlemen rankers.’
So Urquhart was not nervous about the coming fight, but rather about Sharpe’s reaction to this conversation. The Captain wanted to be rid of Sharpe, and the realization made Sharpe even more awkward. He had wanted to be made an officer so badly, and already he wished he had never dreamed of the promotion. What had he expected? To be slapped on the back and welcomed like a long-lost brother? To be given a company of troops? Urquhart was watching him expectantly, waiting for a response, but Sharpe said nothing.
‘Four hundred pounds, Sharpe,’ Urquhart said. ‘That’s the official rate for an ensign’s commission, but between you and me you can squeeze at least another fifty. Maybe even a hundred! And in guineas. But if you do sell to a ranker here, then make damn sure his note is good.’
Sharpe said nothing. Were there really gentlemen rankers in the 94th? Such men could afford to be officers, and had an officer’s breeding, but until a commission was vacant they served in the ranks, yet ate in the mess. They were neither fish nor fowl. Like Sharpe himself. And any one of them would snap at the chance to buy a commission in the 74th. But Sharpe hardly needed the money. He possessed a fortune already, and if he wanted to leave the army then all he needed to do was resign his commission and walk away. Walk away a rich man.
‘Of course,’ Urquhart went on, oblivious of Sharpe’s thoughts, ‘if the note’s written on a decent army agent then you won’t have any worries. Most of our fellows use John Borrey in Edinburgh, so if you see one of his notes then you can place full trust in it. Borrey’s an honest fellow. Another Calvinist, you see.’
‘And a Freemason, sir?’ Sharpe asked. He was not really sure why he asked, but the question just got blurted out. He supposed he wanted to know if it was the same thing as a Calvinist.
‘I really couldn’t say.’ Urquhart frowned at Sharpe and his voice became colder. ‘The point is, Sharpe, he’s trustworthy.’
Four hundred and fifty guineas, Sharpe thought. It was not to be spat on. It was another small fortune to add to his jewels, and he felt the temptation to accept Urquhart’s advice. He was never going to be welome in the 74th, and with his plunder he could set himself up in England.
‘Coins on the barrel-head,’ Urquhart said. ‘Think on it, Sharpe, think on it. Jock, my horse!’
Sharpe threw away the cigar. His mouth was dry with dust and the smoke was harsh, but as Urquhart mounted his horse he saw the scarcely smoked cigar lying on the ground and gave Sharpe an unfriendly look. For a second it seemed as if the Captain might say something, then he pulled on the reins and spurred away. Bugger it, Sharpe thought. Can’t do a thing right these days.
The Mahratta cannon had got the range of the British galloper guns now and one of their round shot landed plumb on a carriage. One wheel splintered, tipping the six-pounder gun onto its side. The gunners leaped off the limber, but before they could detach the spare wheel, the ox team bolted. They dragged the broken gun back towards the sepoys, leaving a vast plume of dust where the axle boss dragged through the dry soil. The gunners ran to head the oxen off, but then a second team panicked. The beasts had their painted horns down and were galloping away from the bombardment. The Mahratta guns were firing fast now. A round shot slashed into another gun team, spurting ox blood bright into the sky. The enemy guns were big brutes, and with a much longer range than the small British six-pounders. A pair of shells exploded behind the panicked oxen, driving them even faster towards the sepoy battalions on the right of Wellesley’s line. The limbers were bouncing frantically on the uneven ground and every lurch sent shot tumbling or powder spilling. Sharpe saw General Wellesley turn his horse towards the sepoys. He was doubtless shouting at them to open ranks and so allow the bolting oxen to pass through the line, but instead, quite suddenly, the men themselves turned and ran. ‘Jesus!’ Sharpe said aloud, earning himself a reproving look from Sergeant Colquhoun.
Two battalions of the sepoys were fleeing. Sharpe saw the General riding among the fugitives, and he imagined Wellesley shouting at the frightened men to stop and re-form, but instead they kept running towards the millet. They had been panicked by the oxen and by the weight of enemy shot that beat the dry grassland with dust and smoke. The men vanished in the high stalks, leaving nothing behind but a scatter of embarrassed officers and, astonishingly, the two panicked gun teams which had inexplicably stopped short of the millet and now waited patiently for the gunners to catch them.
‘Sit yourselves down!’ Urquhart called to his men, and the company squatted in the dry riverbed. One man took a stump of clay pipe from his pouch and lit it with a tinderbox. The tobacco smoke drifted slowly in the small wind. A few men drank from their canteens, but most were hoarding their water against the dryness that would come when they bit into their cartridges. Sharpe glanced behind, hoping to see the puckalees who brought the battalion water, but there was no sign of them. When he turned back to the north he saw that some enemy cavalry had appeared on the crest, their tall lances making a spiky thicket against the sky. Doubtless the enemy horsemen were tempted to attack the broken British line and so stampede more of the nervous sepoys, but a squadron of British cavalry emerged from a wood with their sabres drawn to threaten the flank of the enemy horsemen. Neither side charged, but instead they just watched each other. The 74th’s pipers had ceased their playing. The remaining British galloper guns were deploying now, facing up the long gentle slope to where the enemy cannon lined the horizon. ‘Are all the muskets loaded?’ Urquhart asked Colquhoun.
‘They’d better be, sir, or I’ll want to know why.’
Urquhart dismounted. He had a dozen full canteens of water tied to his saddle and he unstrung six of them and gave them to the company. ‘Share it out,’ he ordered, and Sharpe wished he had thought to bring some extra water himself. One man cupped some water in his hands and let his dog lap it up. The dog then sat and scratched its fleas while its master lay back and tipped his shako over his eyes.
What the enemy should do, Sharpe thought, is throw their infantry forward. All of it. Send a massive attack across the skyline and down towards the millet. Flood the riverbed with a horde of screaming warriors who could add to the panic and so snatch victory.
But the skyline stayed empty except for the guns and the stalled enemy lancers.
And so the redcoats waited.
Colonel William Dodd, commanding officer of Dodd’s Cobras, spurred his horse to the skyline from where he stared down the slope to see the British force in disarray. It looked to him as though two or more battalions had fled in panic, leaving a gaping hole on the right of the redcoat line. He turned his horse and kicked it to where the Mahratta warlord waited under his banners. Dodd forced his horse through the aides until he reached Prince Manu Bappoo. ‘Throw everything forward, sahib,’ he advised Bappoo, ‘now!’
Manu Bappoo showed no sign of having heard Dodd. The Mahratta commander was a tall and lean man with a long, scarred face and a short black beard. He wore yellow robes, had a silver helmet with a long horse-tail plume, and carried a drawn sword that he claimed to have taken in single combat from a British cavalry officer. Dodd doubted the claim, for the sword was of no pattern that he recognized, but he was not willing to challenge Bappoo directly on the matter. Bappoo was not like most of the Mahratta leaders that Dodd knew. Bappoo might be a prince and the younger brother of the cowardly Rajah of Berar, but he was also a fighter.
‘Attack now!’ Dodd insisted. Much earlier in the day he had advised against fighting the British at all, but now it seemed that his advice had been wrong, for the British assault had dissolved in panic long before it reached musket range. ‘Attack with everything we’ve got, sahib,’ Dodd urged Bappoo.
‘If I throw everything forward, Colonel Dodd,’ Bappoo said in his oddly sibilant voice, ‘then my guns will have to cease fire. Let the British walk into the cannon fire, then we shall release the infantry.’ Bappoo had lost his front teeth to a lance thrust, and hissed his words so that, to Dodd, he sounded like a snake. He even looked reptilian. Maybe it was his hooded eyes, or perhaps it was just his air of silent menace. But at least he could fight. Bappoo’s brother, the Rajah of Berar, had fled before the battle at Assaye, but Bappoo, who had not been present at Assaye, was no coward. Indeed, he could bite like a serpent.
‘The British walked into the cannon fire at Assaye,’ Dodd growled, ‘and there were fewer of them and we had more guns, but still they won.’
Bappoo patted his horse which had shied away from the sound of a nearby cannon. It was a big, black Arab stallion, and its saddle was encrusted with silver. Both horse and saddle had been gifts from an Arabian sheik whose tribesmen sailed to India to serve in Bappoo’s own regiment. They were mercenaries from the pitiless desert who called themselves the Lions of Allah and they were reckoned to be the most savage regiment in all India. The Lions of Allah were arrayed behind Bappoo: a phalanx of dark-faced, white-robed warriors armed with muskets and long, curved scimitars. ‘You truly think we should fight them in front of our guns?’ Bappoo asked Dodd.
‘Muskets will kill more of them than cannon will,’ Dodd said. One of the things he liked about Bappoo was that the man was willing to listen to advice. ‘Meet them halfway, sahib, thin the bastards out with musket fire, then pull back to let the guns finish them with canister. Better still, sahib, put the guns on the flank to rake them.’
‘Too late to do that,’ Bappoo said.
‘Aye, well. Mebbe.’ Dodd sniffed. Why the Indians stubbornly insisted on putting guns in front of infantry, he did not know. Daft idea, it was, but they would do it. He kept telling them to put their cannon between the regiments, so that the gunners could slant their fire across the face of the infantry, but Indian commanders reckoned that the sight of guns directly in front heartened their men. ‘But put some infantry out front, sahib,’ he urged.
Bappoo thought about Dodd’s proposal. He did not much like the Englishman who was a tall, ungainly and sullen man with long yellow teeth and a sarcastic manner, but Bappoo suspected his advice was good. The Prince had never fought the British before, but he was aware that they were somehow different from the other enemies he had slaughtered on a score of battlefields across western India. There was, he understood, a stolid indifference to death in those red ranks that let them march calmly into the fiercest cannonade. He had not seen it happen, but he had heard about it from enough men to credit the reports. Even so he found it hard to abandon the tried and tested methods of battle. It would seem unnatural to advance his infantry in front of the guns, and so render the artillery useless. He had thirty-eight cannon, all of them heavier than anything the British had yet deployed, and his gunners were as well trained as any in the world. Thirty-eight heavy cannon could make a fine slaughter of advancing infantry, yet if what Dodd said was true, then the red-coated ranks would stoically endure the punishment and keep coming. Except some had already run, which suggested they were nervous, so perhaps this was the day when the gods would finally turn against the British. ‘I saw two eagles this morning,’ Bappoo told Dodd, ‘outlined against the sun.’
So bloody what? Dodd thought. The Indians were great ones for auguries, forever staring into pots of oil or consulting holy men or worrying about the errant fall of a trembling leaf, but there was no better augury for victory than the sight of an enemy running away before they even reached the fight. ‘I assume the eagles mean victory?’ Dodd asked politely.
‘They do,’ Bappoo agreed. And the augury suggested the victory would be his whatever tactics he used, which inclined him against trying anything new. Besides, though Prince Manu Bappoo had never fought the British, nor had the British ever faced the Lions of Allah in battle. And the numbers were in Bappoo’s favour. He was barring the British advance with forty thousand men, while the redcoats were not even a third of that number. ‘We shall wait,’ Bappoo decided, ‘and let the enemy get closer.’ He would crush them with cannon fire first, then with musketry. ‘Perhaps I shall release the Lions of Allah when the British are closer, Colonel,’ he said to pacify Dodd.
‘One regiment won’t do it,’ Dodd said, ‘not even your Arabs, sahib. Throw every man forward. The whole line.’
‘Maybe,’ Bappoo said vaguely, though he had no intention of advancing all his infantry in front of the precious guns. He had no need to. The vision of eagles had persuaded him that he would see victory, and he believed the gunners would make that victory. He imagined dead red-coated bodies among the crops. He would avenge Assaye and prove that redcoats could die like any other enemy. ‘To your men, Colonel Dodd,’ he said sternly.
Dodd wheeled his horse and spurred towards the right of the line where his Cobras waited in four ranks. It was a fine regiment, splendidly trained, which Dodd had extricated from the siege of Ahmednuggur and then from the panicked chaos of the defeat at Assaye. Two disasters, yet Dodd’s men had never flinched. The regiment had been a part of Scindia’s army, but after Assaye the Cobras had retreated with the Rajah of Berar’s infantry, and Prince Manu Bappoo, summoned from the north country to take command of Berar’s shattered forces, had persuaded Dodd to change his allegiance from Scindia to the Rajah of Berar. Dodd would have changed allegiance anyway, for the dispirited Scindia was seeking to make peace with the British, but Bappoo had added the inducement of gold, silver and a promotion to colonel. Dodd’s men, mercenaries all, did not care which master they served so long as his purse was deep.
Gopal, Dodd’s second-in-command, greeted the Colonel’s return with a rueful look. ‘He won’t advance?’
‘He wants the guns to do the work.’
Gopal heard the doubt in Dodd’s voice. ‘And they won’t?’
‘They didn’t at Assaye,’ Dodd said sourly. ‘Damn it! We shouldn’t be fighting them here at all! Never give redcoats open ground. We should be making the bastards climb walls or cross rivers.’ Dodd was nervous of defeat, and he had cause to be for the British had put a price on his head. That price was now seven hundred guineas, nearly six thousand rupees, and all of it promised in gold to whoever delivered William Dodd’s body, dead or alive, to the East India Company. Dodd had been a lieutenant in the Company’s army, but he had encouraged his men to murder a goldsmith and, faced with prosecution, Dodd had deserted and taken over a hundred sepoys with him. That had been enough to put a price on his head, but the price rose after Dodd and his treacherous sepoys murdered the Company’s garrison at Chasalgaon. Now Dodd’s body was worth a fortune and William Dodd understood greed well enough to be fearful. If Bappoo’s army collapsed today as the Mahratta army had disintegrated at Assaye, then Dodd would be a fugitive on an open plain dominated by enemy cavalry. ‘We should fight them in the hills,’ he said grimly.
‘Then we should fight them at Gawilghur,’ Gopal said.
‘Gawilghur?’ Dodd asked.
‘It is the greatest of all the Mahratta fortresses, sahib. Not all the armies of Europe could take Gawilghur.’ Gopal saw that Dodd was sceptical of the claim. ‘Not all the armies of the world could take it, sahib,’ he added earnestly. ‘It stands on cliffs that touch the sky, and from its walls men are reduced to the size of lice.’
‘There’s a way in, though,’ Dodd said, ‘there’s always a way in.’
‘There is, sahib, but the way into Gawilghur is across a neck of high rock that leads only to an outer fortress. A man might fight his way through those outer walls, but then he will come to a deep ravine and find the real stronghold lies on the ravine’s far side. There are more walls, more guns, a narrow path, and vast gates barring the way!’ Gopal sighed. ‘I saw it once, years ago, and prayed I would never have to fight an enemy who had taken refuge there.’
Dodd said nothing. He was staring down the gentle slope to where the red-coated infantry waited. Every few seconds a puff of dust showed where a round shot struck the ground.
‘If things go badly today,’ Gopal said quietly, ‘then we shall go to Gawilghur and there we shall be safe. The British can follow us, but they cannot reach us. They will break themselves on Gawilghur’s rocks while we take our rest at the edge of the fortress’s lakes. We shall be in the sky, and they will die beneath us like dogs.’
If Gopal was right then not all the king’s horses nor all the king’s men could touch William Dodd at Gawilghur. But first he had to reach the fortress, and maybe it would not even be necessary, for Prince Manu Bappoo might yet beat the redcoats here. Bappoo believed there was no infantry in India that could stand against his Arab mercenaries.
Away on the plain Dodd could see that the two battalions that had fled into the tall crops were now being brought back into the line. In a moment, he knew, that line would start forward again. ‘Tell our guns to hold their fire,’ he ordered Gopal. Dodd’s Cobras possessed five small cannon of their own, designed to give the regiment close support. Dodd’s guns were not in front of his white-coated men, but away on the right flank from where they could lash a murderous slanting fire across the face of the advancing enemy. ‘Load with canister,’ he ordered, ‘and wait till they’re close.’ The important thing was to win, but if fate decreed otherwise, then Dodd must live to fight again at a place where a man could not be beaten.
At Gawilghur.
The British line at last advanced. From east to west it stretched for three miles, snaking in and out of millet fields, through pastureland and across the wide, dry riverbed. The centre of the line was an array of thirteen red-coated infantry battalions, three of them Scottish and the rest sepoys, while two regiments of cavalry advanced on the left flank and four on the right. Beyond the regular cavalry were two masses of mercenary horsemen who had allied themselves to the British in hope of loot. Drums beat and pipes played. The colours hung above the shakos. A great swathe of crops was trodden flat as the cumbersome line marched north. The British guns opened fire, their small six-pound missiles aimed at the Mahratta guns.
Those Mahratta guns fired constantly. Sharpe, walking behind the left flank of number six company, watched one particular gun which stood just beside a bright clump of flags on the enemy-held skyline. He slowly counted to sixty in his head, then counted it again, and worked out that the gun had managed five shots in two minutes. He could not be certain just how many guns were on the horizon, for the great cloud of powder smoke hid them, but he tried to count the muzzle flashes that appeared as momentary bright flames amidst the grey-white vapour and, as best he could guess, he reckoned there were nearly forty cannon there. Forty times five was what? Two hundred. So a hundred shots a minute were being fired, and each shot, if properly aimed, might kill two men, one in the front rank and one behind. Once the attack was close, of course, the bastards would switch to canister and then every shot could pluck a dozen men out of the line, but for now, as the redcoats silently trudged forward, the enemy was sending round shot down the gentle slope. A good many of these missed. Some screamed overhead and a few bounced over the line, but the enemy gunners were good, and they were lowering their cannon barrels so that the round shot struck the ground well ahead of the redcoat line and, by the time the missile reached the target, it had bounced a dozen times and so struck at waist height or below. Grazing, the gunners called it, and it took skill. If the first graze was too close to the gun then the ball would lose its momentum and do nothing but raise jeers from the redcoats as it rolled to a harmless stop, while if the first graze was too close to the attacking line then the ball would bounce clean over the redcoats. The skill was to skim the ball low enough to be certain of a hit, and all along the line the round shots were taking their toll. Men were plucked back with shattered hips and legs. Sharpe passed one spent cannonball that was sticky with blood and thick with flies, lying twenty paces from the man it had eviscerated. ‘Close up!’ the sergeants shouted, and the file-closers tugged men to fill the gaps. The British guns were firing into the enemy smoke cloud, but their shots seemed to have no effect, and so the guns were ordered farther forward. The ox teams were brought up, the guns were attached to the limbers, and the six-pounders trundled on up the slope.
‘Like ninepins.’ Ensign Venables had appeared at Sharpe’s side. Roderick Venables was sixteen years old and attached to number seven company. He had been the battalion’s most junior officer till Sharpe joined, and Venables had taken it on himself to be a tutor to Sharpe in how officers should behave. ‘They’re bowling us over like ninepins, eh, Richard?’
Before Sharpe could reply a half-dozen men of number six company threw themselves aside as a cannonball bounced hard and low towards them. It whipped harmlessly through the gap they had made. The men laughed at having evaded it, then Sergeant Colquhoun ordered them back into their two ranks.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be on the left of your company?’ Sharpe asked Venables.
‘You’re still thinking like a sergeant, Richard,’ Venables said. ‘Pig-ears doesn’t mind where I am.’ Pig-ears was Captain Lomax, who had earned his nickname not because of any peculiarity about his ears, but because he had a passion for crisply fried pig-ears. Lomax was easy-going, unlike Urquhart who liked everything done strictly according to regulations. ‘Besides,’ Venables went on, ‘there’s damn all to do. The lads know their business.’
‘Waste of time being an ensign,’ Sharpe said.
‘Nonsense! An ensign is merely a colonel in the making,’ Venables said. ‘Our duty, Richard, is to be decorative and stay alive long enough to be promoted. But no one expects us to be useful! Good God! A junior officer being useful? That’ll be the day.’ Venables gave a hoot of laughter. He was a bumptious, vain youth, but one of the few officers in the 74th who offered Sharpe companionship. ‘Did you hear a new draft has come to Madras?’ he asked.
‘Urquhart told me.’
‘Fresh men. New officers. You won’t be junior any more.’
Sharpe shook his head. ‘Depends on the date the new men were commissioned, doesn’t it?’
‘Suppose it does. Quite right. And they must have sailed from Britain long before you got the jump up, eh? So you’ll still be the mess baby. Bad luck, old fellow.’
Old fellow? Quite right, Sharpe thought. He was old. Probably ten years older than Venables, though Sharpe was not exactly sure for no one had ever bothered to note down his birth date. Ensigns were youths and Sharpe was a man.
‘Whoah!’ Venables shouted in delight and Sharpe looked up to see that a round shot had struck the edge of an irrigation canal and bounced vertically upwards in a shower of soil. ‘Pig-ears says he once saw two cannonballs collide in mid-air,’ Venables said. ‘Well, he didn’t actually see it, of course, but he heard it. He says they suddenly appeared in the sky. Bang! Then flopped down.’
‘They’d have shattered and broken up,’ Sharpe said.
‘Not according to Pig-ears,’ Venables insisted. ‘He says they flattened each other.’ A shell exploded ahead of the company, whistling scraps of iron casing overhead. No one was hurt and the files stepped round the smoking fragments. Venables stooped and plucked up a scrap, juggling it because of the heat. ‘Like to have keepsakes,’ he explained, slipping the piece of iron into a pouch. ‘I’ll send it home for my sisters. Why don’t our guns stop and fire?’
‘Still too far away,’ Sharpe said. The advancing line still had half a mile to go and, while the six-pounders could fire at that distance, the gunners must have decided to get really close so that their shots could not miss. Get close, that was what Colonel McCandless had always told Sharpe. It was the secret of battle. Get close before you start slaughtering.
A round shot struck a file in seven company. It was on its first graze, still travelling at blistering speed, and the two men of the file were whipped backwards in a spray of mingling blood. ‘Jesus,’ Venables said in awe. ‘Jesus!’ The corpses were mixed together, a jumble of splintered bones, tangled entrails and broken weapons. A corporal, one of the file-closers, stooped to extricate the men’s pouches and haversacks from the scattered offal. ‘Two more names in the church porch,’ Venables remarked. ‘Who were they, Corporal?’
‘The McFadden brothers, sir.’ The Corporal had to shout to be heard over the roar of the Mahratta guns.
‘Poor bastards,’ Venables said. ‘Still, there are six more. A fecund lady, Rosie McFadden.’
Sharpe wondered what fecund meant, then decided he could guess. Venables, for all his air of carelessness, was looking slightly pale as though the sight of the churned corpses had sickened him. This was his first battle, for he had been sick with the Malabar Itch during Assaye, but the Ensign was forever explaining that he could not be upset by the sight of blood because, from his earliest days, he had assisted his father who was an Edinburgh surgeon, but now he suddenly turned aside, bent over and vomited. Sharpe kept stolidly walking. Some of the men turned at the sound of Venables’s retching.
‘Eyes front!’ Sharpe snarled.
Sergeant Colquhoun gave Sharpe a resentful look. The Sergeant believed that any order that did not come from himself or from Captain Urquhart was an unnecessary order.
Venables caught up with Sharpe. ‘Something I ate.’
‘India does that,’ Sharpe said sympathetically.
‘Not to you.’
‘Not yet,’ Sharpe said and wished he was carrying a musket so he could touch the wooden stock for luck.
Captain Urquhart sheered his horse leftwards. ‘To your company, Mister Venables.’
Venables scuttled away and Urquhart rode back to the company’s right flank without acknowledging Sharpe’s presence. Major Swinton, who commanded the battalion while Colonel Wallace had responsibility for the brigade, galloped his horse behind the ranks. The hooves thudded heavily on the dry earth. ‘All well?’ Swinton called to Urquhart.
‘All well.’
‘Good man!’ Swinton spurred on.
The sound of the enemy guns was constant now, like thunder that did not end. A thunder that pummelled the ears and almost drowned out the skirl of the pipers. Earth fountained where round shot struck. Sharpe, glancing to his left, could see a scatter of bodies lying in the wake of the long line. There was a village there. How the hell had he walked straight past a village without even seeing it? It was not much of a place, just a huddle of reed-thatched hovels with a few patchwork gardens protected by cactus-thorn hedges, but he had still walked clean past without noticing its existence. He could see no one there. The villagers had too much sense. They would have packed their few pots and pans and buggered off as soon as the first soldier appeared near their fields. A Mahratta round shot smacked into one of the hovels, scattering reed and dry timber, and leaving the sad roof sagging.
Sharpe looked the other way and saw enemy cavalry advancing in the distance, then he glimpsed the blue and yellow uniforms of the British 19th Dragoons trotting to meet them. The late-afternoon sunlight glittered on drawn sabres. He thought he heard a trumpet call, but maybe he imagined it over the hammering of the guns. The horsemen vanished behind a stand of trees. A cannonball screamed overhead, a shell exploded to his left, then the 74th’s Light Company edged inwards to give an ox team room to pass back southwards. The British cannon had been dragged well ahead of the attacking line where they had now been turned and deployed. Gunners rammed home shot, pushed priming quills into touch-holes, stood back. The sound of the guns crashed across the field, blotting the immediate view with grey-white smoke and filling the air with the nauseous stench of rotted eggs.
The drummers beat on, timing the long march north. For the moment it was a battle of artillerymen, the puny British six-pounders firing into the smoke cloud where the bigger Mahratta guns pounded at the advancing redcoats. Sweat trickled down Sharpe’s belly, it stung his eyes and it dripped from his nose. Flies buzzed by his face. He pulled the sabre free and found that its handle was slippery with perspiration, so he wiped it and his right hand on the hem of his red coat. Suddenly he badly wanted to piss, but this was not the time to stop and unbutton breeches. Hold it, he told himself, till the bastards are beaten. Or piss in your pants, he told himself, because in this heat no one would know it from sweat and it would dry quickly enough. Might smell, though. Better to wait. And if any of the men knew he had pissed his pants he would never live it down. Pisspants Sharpe. A ball thumped overhead, so close that its passage rocked Sharpe’s shako. A fragment of something whirred to his left. A man was on the ground, vomiting blood. A dog barked as another tugged blue guts from an opened belly. The beast had both paws on the corpse to give its tug purchase. A file-closer kicked the dog away, but as soon as the man was gone the dog ran back to the body. Sharpe wished he could have a good wash. He knew he was lousy, but then everyone was lousy. Even General Wellesley was probably lousy. Sharpe looked eastwards and saw the General spurring up behind the kilted 78th. Sharpe had been Wellesley’s orderly at Assaye and as a result he knew all the staff officers who rode behind the General. They had been much friendlier than the 74th’s officers, but then they had not been expected to treat Sharpe as an equal.
Bugger it, he thought. Maybe he should take Urquhart’s advice. Go home, take the cash, buy an inn and hang the sabre over the serving hatch. Would Simone Joubert go to England with him? She might like running an inn. The Buggered Dream, he could call it, and he would charge army officers twice the real price for any drink.
The Mahratta guns suddenly went silent, at least those that were directly ahead of the 74th, and the change in the battle’s noise made Sharpe peer ahead into the smoke cloud that hung over the crest just a quarter-mile away. More smoke wreathed the 74th, but that was from the British guns. The enemy gun smoke was clearing, carried northwards on the small wind, but there was nothing there to show why the guns at the centre of the Mahratta line had ceased fire. Perhaps the buggers had run out of ammunition. Some hope, he thought, some bloody hope. Or perhaps they were all reloading with canister to give the approaching redcoats a rajah’s welcome.
God, but he needed a piss and so he stopped, tucked the sabre into his armpit, then fumbled with his buttons. One came away. He swore, stooped to pick it up, then stood and emptied his bladder onto the dry ground. Then Urquhart was wheeling his horse. ‘Must you do that now, Mister Sharpe?’ he asked irritably.
Yes, sir, three bladders full, sir, and damn your bloody eyes, sir. ‘Sorry, sir,’ Sharpe said instead. So maybe proper officers didn’t piss? He sensed the company was laughing at him and he ran to catch up, fiddling with his buttons. Still there was no gunfire from the Mahratta centre. Why not? But then a cannon on one of the enemy flanks fired slantwise across the field and the ball grazed right through number six company, ripping a front rank man’s feet off and slashing a man behind through the knees. Another soldier was limping, his leg deeply pierced by a splinter from his neighbour’s bone. Corporal McCallum, one of the file-closers, tugged men into the gap while a piper ran across to bandage the wounded men. The injured would be left where they fell until after the battle when, if they still lived, they would be carried to the surgeons. And if they survived the knives and saws they would be shipped home, good for nothing except to be a burden on the parish. Or maybe the Scots did not have parishes; Sharpe was not sure, but he was certain the buggers had workhouses. Everyone had workhouses and paupers’ graveyards. Better to be buried out here in the black earth of enemy India than condemned to the charity of a workhouse.
Then he saw why the guns in the centre of the Mahratta line had ceased fire. The gaps between the guns were suddenly filled with men running forward. Men in long robes and headdresses. They streamed between the gaps, then joined together ahead of the guns beneath long green banners that trailed from silver-topped poles. Arabs, Sharpe thought. He had seen some at Ahmednuggur, but most of those had been dead. He remembered Sevajee, the Mahratta who fought alongside Colonel McCandless, saying that the Arab mercenaries were the best of all the enemy troops.
Now there was a horde of desert warriors coming straight for the 74th and their kilted neighbours.
The Arabs came in a loose formation. Their guns had decorated stocks that glinted in the sunlight, while curved swords were scabbarded at their waists. They came almost jauntily, as though they had utter confidence in their ability. How many were there? A thousand? Sharpe reckoned at least a thousand. Their officers were on horseback. They did not advance in ranks and files, but in a mass, and some, the bravest men, ran ahead as if eager to start the killing. The great robed mass was chanting a shrill war cry, while in its centre drummers were beating huge instruments that pulsed a belly-thumping beat across the field. Sharpe watched the nearest British gun load with canister. The green banners were being waved from side to side so that the silk trails snaked over the warriors’ heads. Something was written on the banners, but it was in no script that Sharpe recognized.
‘74th!’ Major Swinton called. ‘Halt!’
The 78th had also halted. The two Highland battalions, both under strength after their losses at Assaye, were taking the full brunt of the Arab charge. The rest of the battlefield seemed to melt away. All Sharpe could see was the robed men coming so eagerly towards him.
‘Make ready!’ Swinton called.
‘Make ready!’ Urquhart echoed.
‘Make ready!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. The men raised their muskets chest high and pulled back the heavy hammers.
Sharpe pushed into the gap between number six company and its left-hand neighbour, number seven. He wished he had a musket. The sabre felt flimsy.
‘Present!’ Swinton called.
‘Present!’ Colquhoun echoed, and the muskets went into the men’s shoulders. Heads bowed to peer down the barrels’ lengths.
‘You’ll fire low, boys,’ Urquhart said from behind the line, ‘you’ll fire low. To your place, Mister Sharpe.’
Bugger it, Sharpe thought, another bloody mistake. He stepped back behind the company where he was supposed to make sure no one tried to run.
The Arabs were close. Less than a hundred paces to go now. Some had their swords drawn. The air, miraculously smoke-free, was filled with their blood-chilling war cry which was a weird ululating sound. Not far now, not far at all. The Scotsmen’s muskets were angled slightly down. The kick drove the barrels upwards, and untrained troops, not ready for the heavy recoil, usually fired high. But this volley would be lethal.
‘Wait, boys, wait,’ Pig-ears called to number seven company. Ensign Venables slashed at weeds with his claymore. He looked nervous.
Urquhart had drawn a pistol. He dragged the cock back, and his horse’s ears flicked back as the pistol’s spring clicked.
Arab faces screamed hatred. Their great drums were thumping. The redcoat line, just two ranks deep, looked frail in front of the savage charge.
Major Swinton took a deep breath. Sharpe edged towards the gap again. Bugger it, he wanted to be in the front line where he could kill. It was too nerve-racking behind the line.
‘74th!’ Swinton shouted, then he paused. Men’s fingers curled about their triggers.
Let them get close, Swinton was thinking, let them get close.
Then kill them.
Prince Manu Bappoo’s brother, the Rajah of Berar, was not at the village of Argaum where the Lions of Allah now charged to destroy the heart of the British attack. The Rajah did not like battle. He liked the idea of conquest, he loved to see prisoners paraded and he craved the loot that filled his storehouses, but he had no belly for fighting.
Manu Bappoo had no such qualms. He was thirty-five years old, he had fought since he was fifteen, and all he asked was the chance to go on fighting for another twenty or forty years. He considered himself a true Mahratta; a pirate, a rogue, a thief in armour, a looter, a pestilence, a successor to the generations of Mahrattas who had dominated western India by pouring from their hill fastnesses to terrorize the plump princedoms and luxurious kingdoms in the plains. A quick sword, a fast horse and a wealthy victim, what more could a man want? And so Bappoo had ridden deep and far to bring plunder and ransom back to the small land of Berar.
But now all the Mahratta lands were threatened. One British army was conquering their northern territory, and another was here in the south. It was this southern redcoat force that had broken the troops of Scindia and Berar at Assaye, and the Rajah of Berar had summoned his brother to bring his Lions of Allah to claw and kill the invader. This was not a task for horsemen, the Rajah had warned Bappoo, but for infantry. It was a task for the Arabs.
But Bappoo knew this was a task for horsemen. His Arabs would win, of that he was sure, but they could only break the enemy on the immediate battlefield. He had thought to let the British advance right up to his cannon, then release the Arabs, but a whim, an intimation of triumph, had decided him to advance the Arabs beyond the guns. Let the Lions of Allah loose on the enemy’s centre and, when that centre was broken, the rest of the British line would scatter and run in panic, and that was when the Mahratta horsemen would have their slaughter. It was already early evening, and the sun was sinking in the reddened west, but the sky was cloudless and Bappoo was anticipating the joys of a moonlit hunt across the flat Deccan Plain. ‘We shall gallop through blood,’ he said aloud, then led his aides towards his army’s right flank so that he could charge past his Arabs when they had finished their fight. He would let his victorious Lions of Allah pillage the enemy’s camp while he led his horsemen on a wild victorious gallop through the moon-touched darkness.
And the British would run. They would run like goats from the tiger. But the tiger was clever. He had only kept a small number of horsemen with the army, a mere fifteen thousand, while the greater part of his cavalry had been sent southwards to raid the enemy’s long supply roads. The British would flee straight into those men’s sabres.
Bappoo trotted his horse just behind the right flank of the Lions of Allah. The British guns were firing canister and Bappoo saw how the ground beside his Arabs was being flecked by the blasts of shot, and he saw the robed men fall, but he saw how the others did not hesitate, but hurried on towards the pitifully thin line of redcoats. The Arabs were screaming defiance, the guns were hammering, and Bappoo’s soul soared with the music. There was nothing finer in life, he thought, than this sensation of imminent victory. It was like a drug that fired the mind with noble visions.
He might have spared a moment’s thought and wondered why the British did not use their muskets. They were holding their fire, waiting until every shot could kill, but the Prince was not worrying about such trifles. In his dreams he was scattering a broken army, slashing at them with his tulwar, carving a bloody path south. A fast sword, a quick horse and a broken enemy. It was the Mahratta paradise, and the Lions of Allah were opening its gates so that this night Manu Bappoo, Prince, warrior and dreamer, could ride into legend.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Fire!’ Swinton shouted.
The two Highland regiments fired together, close to a thousand muskets flaming to make an instant hedge of thick smoke in front of the battalions. The Arabs vanished behind the smoke as the redcoats reloaded. Men bit into the grease-coated cartridges, tugged ramrods that they whirled in the air before rattling them down into the barrels. The churning smoke began to thin, revealing small fires where the musket wadding burned in the dry grass.
‘Platoon fire!’ Major Swinton shouted. ‘From the flanks!’
‘Light Company!’ Captain Peters called on the left flank. ‘First platoon, fire!’
‘Kill them! Your mothers are watching!’ Colonel Harness shouted. The Colonel of the 78th was mad as a hatter and half delirious with a fever, but he had insisted on advancing behind his kilted Highlanders. He was being carried in a palanquin and, as the platoon fire began, he struggled from the litter to join the battle, his only weapon a broken riding crop. He had been recently bled, and a stained bandage trailed from a coat sleeve. ‘Give them a flogging, you dogs! Give them a flogging.’
The two battalions fired in half companies now, each half company firing two or three seconds after the neighbouring platoon so that the volleys rolled in from the outer wings of each battalion, met in the centre and then started again at the flanks. Clockwork fire, Sharpe called it, and it was the result of hours of tedious practice. Beyond the battalions’ flanks the six-pounders bucked back with each shot, their wheels jarring up from the turf as the canisters ripped apart at the muzzles. Wide swathes of burning grass lay under the cannon smoke. The gunners were working in shirtsleeves, swabbing, ramming, then ducking aside as the guns pitched back again. Only the gun commanders, most of them sergeants, seemed to look at the enemy, and then only when they were checking the alignment of the cannon. The other gunners fetched shot and powder, sometimes heaved on a handspike or pushed on the wheels as the gun was relaid, then swabbed and loaded again. ‘Water!’ a corporal shouted, holding up a bucket to show that the swabbing water was gone.
‘Fire low! Don’t waste your powder!’ Major Swinton called as he pushed his horse into the gap between the centre companies. He peered at the enemy through the smoke. Behind him, next to the 74th’s twin flags, General Wellesley and his aides also stared at the Arabs beyond the smoke clouds. Colonel Wallace, the brigade commander, trotted his horse to the battalion’s flank. He called something to Sharpe as he went by, but his words were lost in the welter of gunfire, then his horse half spun as a bullet struck its haunch. Wallace steadied the beast, looked back at the wound, but the horse did not seem badly hurt. Colonel Harness was thrashing one of the native palanquin bearers who had been trying to push the Colonel back into the curtained vehicle. One of Wellesley’s aides rode back to quieten the Colonel and to persuade him to go southwards.
‘Steady now!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. ‘Aim low!’
The Arab charge had been checked, but not defeated. The first volley must have hit the attackers cruelly hard for Sharpe could see a line of bodies lying on the turf. The bodies looked red and white, blood against robes, but behind that twitching heap the Arabs were firing back to make their own ragged cloud of musket smoke. They fired haphazardly, untrained in platoon volleys, but they reloaded swiftly and their bullets were striking home. Sharpe heard the butcher’s sound of metal hitting meat, saw men hurled backwards, saw some fall. The file-closers hauled the dead out of the line and tugged the living closer together. ‘Close up! Close up!’ The pipes played on, adding their defiant music to the noise of the guns. Private Hollister was hit in the head and Sharpe saw a cloud of white flour drift away from the man’s powdered hair as his hat fell off. Then blood soaked the whitened hair and Hollister fell back with glassy eyes.
‘One platoon, fire!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He was so short-sighted that he could barely see the enemy, but it hardly mattered. No one could see much in the smoke, and all that was needed was a steady nerve and Colquhoun was not a man to panic.
‘Two platoon, fire!’ Urquhart shouted.
‘Christ Jesus!’ a man called close to Sharpe. He reeled backwards, his musket falling, then he twisted and dropped to his knees. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,’ he moaned, clutching at his throat. Sharpe could see no wound there, but then he saw blood seeping down the man’s grey trousers. The dying man looked up at Sharpe, tears showed at his eyes, then he pitched forward.
Sharpe picked up the fallen musket, then turned the man over to unstrap the cartridge box. The man was dead, or so near as to make no difference.
‘Flint,’ a front rank man called. ‘I need a flint!’
Sergeant Colquhoun elbowed through the ranks, holding out a spare flint. ‘And where’s your own spare flint, John Hammond?’
‘Christ knows, Sergeant.’
‘Then ask Him, for you’re on a charge.’
A man swore as a bullet tore up his left arm. He backed out of the ranks, the arm hanging useless and dripping blood.
Sharpe pushed into the gap between the companies, put the musket to his shoulder and fired. The kick slammed into his shoulder, but it felt good. Something to do at last. He dropped the butt, fished a cartridge from the pouch and bit off the top, tasting the salt in the gunpowder. He rammed, fired again, loaded again. A bullet made an odd fluttering noise as it went past his ear, then another whined overhead. He waited for the rolling volley to come down the battalion’s face, then fired with the other men of six company’s first platoon. Drop the butt, new cartridge, bite, prime, pour, ram, ramrod back in the hoops, gun up, butt into the bruised shoulder and haul back the doghead, Sharpe did it as efficiently as any other man, but he had been trained to it. That was the difference, he thought grimly. He was trained, but no one trained the officers. They had bugger all to do, so why train them? Ensign Venables was right, the only duty of a junior officer was to stay alive, but Sharpe could not resist a fight. Besides, it felt better to stand in the ranks and fire into the enemy’s smoke than stand behind the company and do nothing.
The Arabs were fighting well. Damned well. Sharpe could not remember any other enemy who had stood and taken so much concentrated platoon fire. Indeed, the robed men were trying to advance, but they were checked by the ragged heap of bodies that had been their front ranks. How many damned ranks had they? A dozen? He watched a green flag fall, then the banner was picked up and waved in the air. Their big drums still beat, making a menacing sound to match the redcoats’ pipers. The Arab guns had unnaturally long barrels that spewed dirty smoke and licking tongues of flame. Another bullet whipped close enough to Sharpe to bat his face with a gust of warm air. He fired again, then a hand seized his coat collar and dragged him violently backwards.
‘Your place, Ensign Sharpe,’ Captain Urquhart said vehemently, ‘is here! Behind the line!’ The Captain was mounted and his horse had inadvertently stepped back as Urquhart seized Sharpe’s collar, and the weight of the horse had made the Captain’s tug far more violent than he had intended. ‘You’re not a private any longer,’ he said, steadying Sharpe who had almost been pulled off his feet.
‘Of course, sir,’ Sharpe said, and he did not meet Urquhart’s gaze, but stared bitterly ahead. He was blushing, knowing he had been reprimanded in front of the men. Damn it to hell, he thought.
‘Prepare to charge!’ Major Swinton called.
‘Prepare to charge!’ Captain Urquhart echoed, spurring his horse away from Sharpe.
The Scotsmen pulled out their bayonets and twisted them onto the lugs of their musket barrels.
‘Empty your guns!’ Swinton called, and those men who were still loaded raised their muskets and fired a last volley.
‘74th!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Forward! I want to hear some pipes! Let me hear pipes!’
‘Go on, Swinton, go on!’ Wallace shouted. There was no need to encourage the battalion forward, for it was going willingly, but the Colonel was excited. He drew his claymore and pushed his horse into the rear rank of number seven company. ‘Onto them, lads! Onto them!’ The redcoats marched forward, trampling through the scatter of little fires started by their musket wadding.
The Arabs seemed astonished that the redcoats were advancing. Some drew their own bayonets, while others pulled long curved swords from scabbards.
‘They won’t stand!’ Wellesley shouted. ‘They won’t stand.’
‘They bloody well will,’ a man grunted.
‘Go on!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Go on!’ And the 74th, released to the kill, ran the last few yards and jumped up onto the heaps of dead before slashing home with their bayonets. Off to the right the 78th were also charging home. The British cannon gave a last violent blast of canister, then fell silent as the Scots blocked the gunners’ aim.
Some of the Arabs wanted to fight, others wanted to retreat, but the charge had taken them by surprise and the rearward ranks were still not aware of the danger and so pressed forward, forcing the reluctant men at the front onto the Scottish bayonets. The Highlanders screamed as they killed. Sharpe still held the unloaded musket as he closed up on the rear rank. He had no bayonet and was wondering whether he should draw his sabre when a tall Arab suddenly hacked down a front rank man with a scimitar, then pushed forward to slash with the reddened blade at the second man in the file. Sharpe reversed the musket, swung it by the barrel and hammered the heavy stock down onto the swordsman’s head. The Arab sank down and a bayonet struck into his spine so that he twisted like a speared eel. Sharpe hit him on the head again, kicked him for good measure, then shoved on. Men were shouting, screaming, stabbing, spitting, and, right in the face of number six company, a knot of robed men were slashing with scimitars as though they could defeat the 74th by themselves. Urquhart pushed his horse up against the rear rank and fired his pistol. One of the Arabs was plucked back and the others stepped away at last, all except one short man who screamed in fury and slashed with his long curved blade. The front rank parted to let the scimitar cut the air between two files, then the second rank also split apart to allow the short man to come screaming through on his own, with only Sharpe in front.
‘He’s only a lad!’ a Scottish voice shouted in warning as the ranks closed again.
It was not a short man at all, but a boy. Maybe only twelve or thirteen years old, Sharpe guessed as he fended off the scimitar with the musket barrel. The boy thought he could win the battle single-handed and leaped at Sharpe, who parried the sword and stepped back to show he did not want to fight. ‘Put it down, lad,’ he said.
The boy spat, leaped and cut again. Sharpe parried a third time, then reversed the musket and slammed its stock into the side of the boy’s head. For a second the lad stared at Sharpe with an astonished look, then he crumpled to the turf.
‘They’re breaking!’ Wellesley shouted from somewhere close by. ‘They’re breaking!’
Colonel Wallace was in the front rank now, slicing down with his claymore. He hacked like a farmer, blow after blow. He had lost his cocked hat and his bald pate gleamed in the late sunlight. There was blood on his horse’s flank, and more blood spattered on the white turnbacks of his coat tails. Then the pressure of the enemy collapsed and the horse twisted into the gap and Wallace spurred it on. ‘Come on, boys! Come on!’ A man stooped to rescue Wallace’s cocked hat. Its plumes were blood-soaked.
The Arabs were fleeing. ‘Go!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Go! Keep ’em running! Go!’
A man paused to search a corpse’s robes and Sergeant Colquhoun dragged the man up and pushed him on. The file-closers were making sure none of the enemy bodies left behind the Scottish advance were dangerous. They kicked swords and muskets out of injured men’s hands, prodded apparently unwounded bodies with bayonets and killed any man who showed a spark of fight. Two pipers were playing their ferocious music, driving the Scots up the gentle slope where the big Arab drums had been abandoned. Man after man speared the drumskins with bayonets as they passed.
‘Forward on! Forward on!’ Urquhart bellowed as though he were on a hunting field.
‘To the guns!’ Wellesley called.
‘Keep going!’ Sharpe bellowed at some laggards. ‘Go on, you bastards, go on!’
The enemy gun line was at the crest of the low rise, but the Mahratta gunners dared not fire because the remnants of the Lions of Allah were between them and the redcoats. The gunners hesitated for a few seconds, then decided the day was lost and fled.
‘Take the guns!’ Wellesley called.
Colonel Wallace spurred among the fleeing enemy, striking down with the claymore, then reined in beside a gaudily painted eighteen-pounder. ‘Come on, lads! Come on! To me!’
The Scotsmen reached the guns. Most had reddened bayonets, all had sweat streaks striping their powder-blackened faces. Some began rifling the limbers where gunners stored food and valuables.
‘Load!’ Urquhart called. ‘Load!’
‘Form ranks!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He ran forward and tugged men away from the limbers. ‘Leave the carts alone, boys! Form ranks! Smartly now!’
Sharpe, for the first time, could see down the long reverse slope. Three hundred paces away were more infantry, a great long line of it massed in a dozen ranks, and beyond that were some walled gardens and the roofs of a village. The shadows were very long for the sun was blazing just above the horizon. The Arabs were running towards the stationary infantry.
‘Where are the galloper guns?’ Wallace roared, and an aide spurred back down the slope to fetch the gunners.
‘Give them a volley, Swinton!’ Wellesley called.
The range was very long for a musket, but Swinton hammered the battalion’s fire down the slope, and maybe it was that volley, or perhaps it was the sight of the defeated Arabs that panicked the great mass of infantry. For a few seconds they stood under their big bright flags and then, like sand struck by a flood, they dissolved into a rabble.
Cavalry trumpets blared. British and sepoy horsemen charged forward with sabres, while the irregular horse, those mercenaries who had attached themselves to the British for the chance of loot, lowered their lances and raked back their spurs.
It was a cavalryman’s paradise, a broken enemy with nowhere to hide. Some Mahrattas sought shelter in the village, but most ran past it, throwing down their weapons as the terrible horsemen streamed into the fleeing horde with sabres and lances slicing and thrusting.
‘Puckalees!’ Urquhart shouted, standing in his stirrups to look for the men and boys who brought water to the troops. There was none in sight and the 74th was parched, the men’s thirst made acute by the saltpetre in the gunpowder which had fouled their mouths. ‘Where the …?’ Urquhart swore, then frowned at Sharpe. ‘Mister Sharpe? I’ll trouble you to find our puckalees.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, not bothering to hide his disappointment at the order. He had hoped to find some loot when the 74th searched the village, but instead he was to be a fetcher of water. He threw down the musket and walked back through the groaning, slow-moving litter of dead and dying men. Dogs were scavenging among the bodies.
‘Forward now!’ Wellesley called behind Sharpe, and the whole long line of British infantrymen advanced under their flags towards the village. The cavalry was already far beyond the houses, killing with abandon and driving the fugitives ever farther northwards.
Sharpe walked on southwards. He suspected the puckalees were still back with the baggage, which would mean a three-mile walk and, by the time he had found them, the battalion would have slaked its thirst from the wells in the village. Bugger it, he thought. Even when they gave him a job it was a useless errand.
A shout made him look to his right where a score of native cavalrymen were slicing apart the robes of the dead Arabs in search of coins and trinkets. The scavengers were Mahrattas who had sold their services to the British and Sharpe guessed that the horsemen had not joined the pursuit for fear of being mistaken for the defeated enemy. One of the Arabs had only been feigning death and now, despite being hugely outnumbered, defied his enemies with a pistol that he dragged from beneath his robe. The taunting cavalrymen had made a ring and the Arab kept twisting around to find that his tormentor had skipped away before he could aim the small gun.
The Arab was a short man, then he turned again and Sharpe saw the bruised, bloody face and recognized the child who had charged the 74th so bravely. The boy was doomed, for the ring of cavalrymen was slowly closing for the kill. One of the Mahrattas would probably die, or at least be horribly injured by the pistol ball, but that was part of the game. The boy had one shot, they had twenty. A man prodded the boy in the back with a lance point, making him whip round, but the man with the lance had stepped fast back and another man slapped the boy’s headdress with a tulwar. The other cavalrymen laughed.
Sharpe reckoned the boy deserved better. He was a kid, nothing more, but brave as a tiger, and so he crossed to the cavalrymen. ‘Let him be!’ he called.
The boy turned towards Sharpe. If he recognized that the British officer was trying to save his life he showed no sign of gratitude; instead he lifted the pistol so that its barrel pointed at Sharpe’s face. The cavalrymen, reckoning this was even better sport, urged him to shoot and one of them approached the boy with a raised tulwar, but did not strike. He would let the boy shoot Sharpe, then kill him. ‘Let him be,’ Sharpe said. ‘Stand back!’ The Mahrattas grinned, but did not move. Sharpe could take the single bullet, then they would tear the boy into sabre-shredded scraps of meat.
The boy took a step towards Sharpe. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, lad,’ Sharpe said. The boy obviously did not speak English, but Sharpe’s tone was soothing. It made no difference. The lad’s hand was shaking and he looked frightened, but defiance had been bred into his bone. He knew he would die, but he would take an enemy soul with him and so he nerved himself to die well. ‘Put the gun down,’ Sharpe said softly. He was wishing he had not intervened now. The kid was just distraught enough and mad enough to fire, and Sharpe knew he could do nothing about it except run away and thus expose himself to the jeers of the Mahrattas. He was close enough now to see the scratches on the pistol’s blackened muzzle where the rammer had scraped the metal. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, boy,’ he said again. Still the boy pointed the pistol. Sharpe knew he should turn and run, but instead he took another pace forward. Just one more and he reckoned he would be close enough to swat the gun aside.
Then the boy shouted something in Arabic, something about Allah, and pulled the trigger.
The hammer did not move. The boy looked startled, then pulled the trigger again.
Sharpe began laughing. The expression of woe on the child’s face was so sudden, and so unfeigned, that Sharpe could only laugh. The boy looked as if he was about to cry.
The Mahratta behind the boy swung his tulwar. He reckoned he could slice clean through the boy’s grubby headdress and decapitate him, but Sharpe had taken the extra step and now seized the boy’s hand and tugged him into his belly. The sword hissed an inch behind the boy’s neck. ‘I said to leave him alone!’ Sharpe said. ‘Or do you want to fight me instead?’
‘None of us,’ a calm voice said behind Sharpe, ‘wants to fight Ensign Sharpe.’
Sharpe turned. One of the horsemen was still mounted, and it was this man who had spoken. He was dressed in a tattered European uniform jacket of green cloth hung with small silver chains, and he had a lean scarred face with a nose as hooked as Sir Arthur Wellesley’s. He now grinned down at Sharpe.
‘Syud Sevajee,’ Sharpe said.
‘I never did congratulate you on your promotion,’ Sevajee said, and leaned down to offer Sharpe his hand.
Sharpe shook it. ‘It was McCandless’s doing,’ he said.
‘No,’ Sevajee disagreed, ‘it was yours.’ Sevajee, who led this band of horsemen, waved his men away from Sharpe, then looked down at the boy who struggled in Sharpe’s grip. ‘You really want to save that little wretch’s life?’
‘Why not?’
‘A tiger cub plays like a kitten,’ Sevajee said, ‘but it still grows into a tiger and one day it eats you.’
‘This one’s no kitten,’ Sharpe said, thumping the boy on the ear to stop his struggles.
Sevajee spoke in quick Arabic and the boy went quiet. ‘I told him you saved his life,’ Sevajee explained to Sharpe, ‘and that he is now beholden to you.’ Sevajee spoke to the boy again who, after a shy look at Sharpe, answered. ‘His name’s Ahmed,’ Sevajee said, ‘and I told him you were a great English lord who commands the lives and deaths of a thousand men.’
‘You told him what?’
‘I told him you’d beat him bloody if he disobeys you,’ Sevajee said, looking at his men who, denied their entertainment, had gone back to looting the dead. ‘You like being an officer?’ he asked Sharpe.
‘I hate it.’
Sevajee smiled, revealing red-stained teeth. ‘McCandless thought you would, but didn’t know how to curb your ambition.’ Sevajee slid down from his saddle. ‘I am sorry McCandless died,’ the Indian said.
‘Me too.’
‘You know who killed him?’
‘I reckon it was Dodd.’
Sevajee nodded. ‘Me too.’ Syud Sevajee was a high-born Mahratta, the eldest son of one of the Rajah of Berar’s warlords, but a rival in the Rajah’s service had murdered his father, and Sevajee had been seeking revenge ever since. If that revenge meant marching with the enemy British, then that was a small price to pay for family pride. Sevajee had ridden with Colonel McCandless when the Scotsman had pursued Dodd, and thus he had met Sharpe. ‘Beny Singh was not with the enemy today,’ he told Sharpe.
Sharpe had to think for a few seconds before remembering that Beny Singh was the man who had poisoned Sevajee’s father. ‘How do you know?’
‘His banner wasn’t among the Mahratta flags. Today we faced Manu Bappoo, the Rajah’s brother. He’s a better man than the Rajah, but he refuses to take the throne for himself. He’s also a better soldier than the rest, but not good enough, it seems. Dodd was there.’
‘He was?’
‘He got away.’ Sevajee turned and gazed northwards. ‘And I know where they’re going.’
‘Where?’
‘To Gawilghur,’ Sevajee said softly, ‘to the sky fort.’
‘Gawilghur?’
‘I grew up there.’ Sevajee spoke softly, still gazing at the hazed northern horizon. ‘My father was Killadar of Gawilghur. It was a post of honour, Sharpe, for it is our greatest stronghold. It is the fortress in the sky, the impregnable refuge, the place that has never fallen to our enemies, and Beny Singh is now its killadar. Somehow we shall have to get inside, you and I. And I shall kill Singh and you will kill Dodd.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Sharpe said.
‘No.’ Sevajee gave Sharpe a sour glance. ‘You’re here, Ensign, because you British are greedy.’ He looked at the Arab boy and asked a question. There was a brief conversation, then Sevajee looked at Sharpe again. ‘I have told him he is to be your servant, and that you will beat him to death if he steals from you.’
‘I wouldn’t do that!’ Sharpe protested.
‘I would,’ Sevajee said, ‘and he believes you would, but it still won’t stop him thieving from you. Better to kill him now.’ He grinned, then hauled himself into his saddle. ‘I shall look for you at Gawilghur, Mister Sharpe.’
‘I shall look for you,’ Sharpe said.
Sevajee spurred away and Sharpe crouched to look at his new servant. Ahmed was as thin as a half-drowned cat. He wore dirty robes and a tattered headdress secured by a loop of frayed rope that was stained with blood, evidently where Sharpe’s blow with the musket had caught him during the battle. But he had bright eyes and a defiant face, and though his voice had not yet broken he was braver than many full-grown men. Sharpe unslung his canteen and pushed it into the boy’s hand, first taking away the broken pistol that he tossed away. ‘Drink up, you little bugger,’ Sharpe said, ‘then come for a walk.’
The boy glanced up the hill, but his army was long gone. It had vanished into the evening beyond the crest and was now being pursued by vengeful cavalry. He said something in Arabic, drank what remained of Sharpe’s water, then offered a grudging nod of thanks.
So Sharpe had a servant, a battle had been won, and now he walked south in search of puckalees.
Colonel William Dodd watched the Lions of Allah break, and spat with disgust. It had been foolish to fight here in the first place and now the foolery was turning to disaster. ‘Jemadar!’ he called.
‘Sahib?’
‘We’ll form square. Put our guns in the centre. And the baggage.’
‘Families, sahib?’
‘Families too.’ Dodd watched Manu Bappoo and his aides galloping back from the British advance. The gunners had already fled, which meant that the Mahrattas’ heavy cannon would all be captured, every last piece of it. Dodd was tempted to abandon his regiment’s small battery of five-pounders which were about as much use as pea-shooters, but a soldier’s pride persuaded him to drag the guns from the field. Bappoo might lose all his guns, but it would be a cold day in hell before William Dodd gave up artillery to an enemy.
His Cobras were on the Mahratta right flank and there, for the moment, they were out of the way of the British advance. If the rest of the Mahratta infantry remained firm and fought, then Dodd would stay with them, but he saw that the defeat of the Arabs had demoralized Bappoo’s army. The ranks began to dissolve, the first fugitives began to run north and Dodd knew this army was lost. First Assaye, now this. A goddamn disaster! He turned his horse and smiled at his white-jacketed men. ‘You haven’t lost a battle!’ he shouted to them. ‘You haven’t even fought today, so you’ve lost no pride! But you’ll have to fight now! If you don’t, if you break ranks, you’ll die. If you fight, you’ll live! Jemadar! March!’
The Cobras would now attempt one of the most difficult of all feats of soldiering, a fighting withdrawal. They marched in a loose square, the centre of which gradually filled with their women and children. Some other infantry tried to join the families, but Dodd snarled at his men to beat them away. ‘Fire if they won’t go!’ he shouted. The last thing he wanted was for his men to be infected by panic.
Dodd trailed the square. He heard cavalry trumpets and he twisted in his saddle to see a mass of irregular light horsemen come over the crest. ‘Halt!’ he shouted. ‘Close ranks! Charge bayonets!’
The white-jacketed Cobras sealed the loose square tight. Dodd pushed through the face of the square and turned his horse to watch the cavalrymen approach. He doubted they would come close, not when there were easier pickings to the east and, sure enough, as soon as the leading horsemen saw that the square was waiting with levelled muskets, they sheered away.
Dodd holstered his pistol. ‘March on, Jemadar!’
Twice more Dodd had to halt and form ranks, but both times the threatening horsemen were scared away by the calm discipline of his white-coated soldiers. The red-coated infantry was not pursuing. They had reached the village of Argaum and were content to stay there, leaving the pursuit to the horsemen, and those horsemen chased after the broken rabble that flooded northwards, but none chose to die by charging Dodd’s formed ranks.
Dodd inclined to the west, angling away from the pursuers. By nightfall he was confident enough to form the battalion into a column of companies, and by midnight, under a clear moon, he could no longer even hear the British trumpets. He knew that men would still be dying, ridden down by cavalry and pierced by lances or slashed by sabres, but Dodd had got clean away. His men were tired, but they were safe in a dark countryside of millet fields, drought-emptied irrigation ditches and scattered villages where dogs barked frantically when they caught the scent of the marching column.
Dodd did not trouble the villagers. He had sufficient food, and earlier in the night they had found an irrigation tank that had yielded enough water for men and beasts. ‘Do you know where we are, Jemadar?’ he asked.
‘No, sahib.’ Gopal grinned, his teeth showing white in the darkness.
‘Nor do I. But I know where we’re going.’
‘Where, sahib?’
‘To Gawilghur, Gopal. To Gawilghur.’
‘Then we must march north, sahib.’ Gopal pointed to the mountains that showed as a dark line against the northern stars. ‘It is there, sahib.’
Dodd was marching to the fortress that had never known defeat. To the impregnable fastness on the cliff. To Gawilghur.
Dawn came to the millet fields. Ragged-winged birds flopped down beside corpses. The smell of death was already rank, and would only grow worse as the sun rose to become a furnace in a cloudless sky. Bugles called reveille, and the picquets who had guarded the sleeping army around Argaum cleared their muskets by loosing off shots. The gunfire startled birds up from corpses and made the feasting dogs growl among the human dead.
Regiments dug graves for their own dead. There were few enough to bury, for no more than fifty redcoats had died, but there were hundreds of Mahratta and Arab corpses, and the lascars who did the army’s fetching and carrying began the task of gathering the bodies. Some enemies still lived, though barely, and the luckiest of those were despatched with a blow of a mattock before their robes were rifled. The unlucky were taken to the surgeons’ tents.
The enemy’s captured guns were inspected, and a dozen selected as suitable for British service. They were all well made, forged in Agra by French-trained gunsmiths, but some were the wrong calibre and a few were so overdecorated with writhing gods and goddesses that no self-respecting gunner could abide them. The twenty-six rejected guns would be double-shotted and exploded. ‘A dangerous business,’ Lieutenant Colonel William Wallace remarked to Sharpe.
‘Indeed, sir.’
‘You saw the accident at Assaye?’ Wallace asked. The Colonel took off his cocked hat and fanned his face. The hat’s white plumes were still stained with blood that had dried black.
‘I heard it, sir. Didn’t see it,’ Sharpe said. The accident had occurred after the battle of Assaye when the enemy’s captured cannon were being destroyed and one monstrous piece, a great siege gun, had exploded prematurely, killing two engineers.
‘Leaves us short of good engineers,’ Wallace remarked, ‘and we’ll need them if we’re going to Gawilghur.’
‘Gawilghur, sir?’
‘A ghastly fortress, Sharpe, quite ghastly.’ The Colonel turned and pointed north. ‘Only about twenty miles away, and if the Mahrattas have any sense that’s where they’ll be heading.’ Wallace sighed. ‘I’ve never seen the place, so maybe it isn’t as bad as they say, but I remember poor McCandless describing it as a brute. A real brute. Like Stirling Castle, he said, only much larger and the cliff’s twenty times higher.’
Sharpe had never seen Stirling Castle, so had no real idea what the Colonel meant. He said nothing. He had been idling the morning away when Wallace sent for him, and now he and the Colonel were walking through the battle’s litter. The Arab boy followed a dozen paces behind. ‘Yours, is he?’ Wallace asked.
‘Think so, sir. Sort of picked him up yesterday.’
‘You need a servant, don’t you? Urquhart tells me you don’t have one.’
So Urquhart had been discussing Sharpe with the Colonel. No good could come of that, Sharpe thought. Urquhart had been nagging Sharpe to find a servant, implying that Sharpe’s clothes were in need of cleaning and pressing, which they were, but as he only owned the clothes he wore, he could not really see the point in being too finicky. ‘I hadn’t really thought what to do with the lad, sir,’ Sharpe admitted.
Wallace turned and spoke to the boy in an Indian language, and Ahmed stared up at the Colonel and nodded solemnly as though he understood what had been said. Perhaps he did, though Sharpe did not. ‘I’ve told him he’s to serve you properly,’ Wallace said, ‘and that you’ll pay him properly.’ The Colonel seemed to disapprove of Ahmed, or maybe he just disapproved of everything to do with Sharpe, though he was doing his best to be friendly. It had been Wallace who had given Sharpe the commission in the 74th, and Wallace had been a close friend of Colonel McCandless, so Sharpe supposed that the balding Colonel was, in his way, an ally. Even so, Sharpe felt awkward in the Scotsman’s company. He wondered if he would ever feel relaxed among officers. ‘How’s that woman of yours, Sharpe?’ Wallace asked cheerfully.
‘My woman, sir?’ Sharpe asked, blushing.
‘The Frenchwoman, can’t recall her name. Took quite a shine to you, didn’t she?’
‘Simone, sir? She’s in Seringapatam, sir. Seemed the best place for her, sir.’
‘Quite, quite.’
Simone Joubert had been widowed at Assaye where her husband, who had served Scindia, had died. She had been Sharpe’s lover and, after the battle, she had stayed with him. Where else, she asked, was she to go? But Wellesley had forbidden his officers to take their wives on the campaign, and though Simone was not Sharpe’s wife, she was white, and so she had agreed to go to Seringapatam and there wait for him. She had carried a letter of introduction to Major Stokes, Sharpe’s friend who ran the armoury, and Sharpe had given her some of the Tippoo’s jewels so that she could find servants and live comfortably. He sometimes worried he had given her too many of the precious stones, but consoled himself that Simone would keep the surplus safe till he returned.
‘So are you happy, Sharpe?’ Wallace asked bluffly.
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said bleakly.
‘Keeping busy?’
‘Not really, sir.’
‘Difficult, isn’t it?’ Wallace said vaguely. He had stopped to watch the gunners loading one of the captured cannon, a great brute that looked to take a ball of twenty or more pounds. The barrel had been cast with an intricate pattern of lotus flowers and dancing girls, then painted with garish colours. The gunners had charged the gaudy barrel with a double load of powder and now they rammed two cannonballs down the blackened gullet. An engineer had brought some wedges and a gunner sergeant pushed one down the barrel, then hammered it home with the rammer so that the ball would jam when the gun was fired. The engineer took a ball of fuse from his pocket, pushed one end into the touch-hole, then backed away, uncoiling the pale line. ‘Best if we give them some space,’ Wallace said, gesturing that they should walk south a small way. ‘Don’t want to be beheaded by a scrap of gun, eh?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Very difficult,’ Wallace said, picking up his previous thought. ‘Coming up from the ranks? Admirable, Sharpe, admirable, but difficult, yes?’
‘I suppose so, sir,’ Sharpe said unhelpfully.
Wallace sighed, as though he was finding the conversation unexpectedly hard going. ‘Urquhart tells me you seem’ – the Colonel paused, looking for the tactful word – ‘unhappy?’
‘Takes time, sir.’
‘Of course, of course. These things do. Quite.’ The Colonel wiped a hand over his bald pate, then rammed his sweat-stained hat back into place. ‘I remember when I joined. Years ago now, of course, and I was only a little chap. Didn’t know what was going on! They said turn left, then turned right. Damned odd, I thought. I was arse over elbow for months, I can tell you.’ The Colonel’s voice tailed away. ‘Damned hot,’ he said after a while. ‘Damned hot. Ever heard of the 95th, Sharpe?’
‘95th, sir? Another Scottish regiment?’
‘Lord, no. The 95th Rifles. They’re a new regiment. Couple of years old. Used to be called the Experimental Corps of Riflemen!’ Wallace hooted with laughter at the clumsy name. ‘But a friend of mine is busy with the rascals. Willie Stewart, he’s called. The Honourable William Stewart. Capital fellow! But Willie’s got some damned odd ideas. His fellows wear green coats. Green! And he tells me his riflemen ain’t as rigid as he seems to think we are.’ Wallace smiled to show he had made some kind of joke. ‘Thing is, Sharpe, I wondered if you wouldn’t be better suited to Stewart’s outfit? His idea, you should understand. He wrote wondering if I had any bright young officers who could carry some experience of India to Shorncliffe. I was going to write back and say we do precious little skirmishing here, and it’s skirmishing that Willie’s rogues are being trained to do, but then I thought of you, Sharpe.’
Sharpe said nothing. Whichever way you wrapped it up, he was being dismissed from the 74th, though he supposed it was kind of Wallace to make the 95th sound like an interesting sort of regiment. Sharpe guessed they were the usual shambles of a hastily raised wartime battalion, staffed by the leavings of other regiments and composed of gutter rogues discarded by every other recruiting sergeant. The very fact they wore green coats sounded bad, as though the army could not be bothered to waste good red cloth on them. They would probably dissolve in panicked chaos in their first battle.
‘I’ve written to Willie about you,’ Wallace went on, ‘and I know he’ll have a place for you.’ Meaning, Sharpe thought, that the Honourable William Stewart owed Wallace a favour. ‘And our problem, frankly,’ Wallace continued, ‘is that a new draft has reached Madras. Weren’t expecting it till spring, but they’re here now, so we’ll be back to strength in a month or so.’ Wallace paused, evidently wondering if he had softened the blow sufficiently. ‘And the fact is, Sharpe,’ he resumed after a while, ‘that Scottish regiments are more like, well, families! Families, that’s it, just it. My mother always said so, and she was a pretty shrewd judge of these things. Like families! More so, I think, than English regiments, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, trying to hide his misery.
‘But I can’t let you go while there’s a war on,’ Wallace continued heartily. The Colonel had turned to watch the cannon again. The engineer had finished unwinding his fuse and the gunners now shouted at everyone within earshot to stand away. ‘I do enjoy this,’ the Colonel said warmly. ‘Nothing like a bit of gratuitous destruction to set the juices flowing, eh?’
The engineer stooped to the fuse with his tinderbox. Sharpe saw him strike the flint then blow the charred linen into flame. There was a pause, then he put the fuse end into the small fire and the smoke fizzed up.
The fuse burned fast, the smoke and sparks snaking through the dry grass and starting small fires, then the red hot trail streaked up the back of the gun and down into the touch-hole.
For a heartbeat nothing happened, then the whole gun just seemed to disintegrate. The charge had tried to propel the double shot up the wedged barrel, but the resistance was just big enough to restrict the explosion. The touch-hole shot out first, the shaped piece of metal tearing out a chunk of the upper breech, then the whole rear of the painted barrel split apart in smoke, flame and whistling lumps of jagged metal. The forward part of the barrel, jaggedly torn off, dropped to the grass as the gun’s wheels were splayed out. The gunners cheered. ‘One less Mahratta gun,’ Wallace said. Ahmed was grinning broadly. ‘Did you know Mackay?’ Wallace asked Sharpe.
‘No, sir.’
‘Captain Mackay. Hugh Mackay. East India Company officer. Fourth Native Cavalry. Very good fellow indeed, Sharpe. I knew his father well. Point is, though, that young Hugh was put in charge of the bullock train before Assaye. And he did a very good job! Very good. But he insisted on joining his troopers in the battle. Disobeyed orders, d’you see? Wellesley was adamant that Mackay must stay with his bullocks, but young Hugh wanted to be on the dance floor, and quite right too, except that the poor devil was killed. Cut in half by a cannonball!’ Wallace sounded shocked, as though such a thing was an outrage. ‘It’s left the bullock train without a guiding hand, Sharpe.’
Christ, Sharpe thought, but he was to be made bullock master!
‘Not fair to say they don’t have a guiding hand,’ Wallace continued, ‘because they do, but the new fellow don’t have any experience with bullocks. Torrance, he’s called, and I’m sure he’s a good fellow, but things are likely to get a bit more sprightly from now on. Going deeper into enemy territory, see? And there are still lots of their damned horsemen at large, and Torrance says he needs a deputy officer. Someone to help him. Thought you might be just the fellow for the job, Sharpe.’ Wallace smiled as though he was granting Sharpe a huge favour.
‘Don’t know anything about bullocks, sir,’ Sharpe said doggedly.
‘I’m sure you don’t! Who does? And there are dromedaries, and elephants. A regular menagerie, eh? But the experience, Sharpe, will do you good. Think of it as another string to your bow.’
Sharpe knew a further protest would do no good, so he nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
‘Good! Good! Splendid.’ Wallace could not hide his relief. ‘It won’t be for long, Sharpe. Scindia’s already suing for peace, and the Rajah of Berar’s bound to follow. We may not even have to fight at Gawilghur, if that’s where the rogues do take refuge. So go and help Torrance, then you can set a course for England, eh? Become a Greenjacket!’
So Ensign Sharpe had failed. Failed utterly. He had been an officer for two months and now he was being booted out of a regiment. Sent to the bullocks and the dromedaries, whatever the hell they were, and after that to the green-coated dregs of the army. Bloody hell fire, he thought, bloody hell fire.
The British and their allied cavalry rode all night, and in the dawn they briefly rested, watered their horses, then hauled themselves into their saddles and rode again. They rode till their horses were reeling with tiredness and white with sweat, and only then did they give up the savage pursuit of the Mahratta fugitives. Their sabre arms were weary, their blades blunted and their appetites slaked. The night had been a wild hunt of victory, a slaughter under the moon that had left the plain reeking with blood, and the sun brought more killing and wide-winged vultures that flapped down to the feast.
The pursuit ended close to a sudden range of hills that marked the northern limit of the Deccan Plain. The hills were steep and thickly wooded, no place for cavalry, and above the hills reared great cliffs, dizzyingly high cliffs that stretched from the eastern to the western horizon like the nightmare ramparts of a tribe of giants. In places there were deep re-entrants cut into the great cliff and some of the British pursuers, gaping at the vast wall of rock that barred their path, supposed that the wooded clefts would provide a path up to the cliff’s summit, though none could see how anyone could reach the highland if an enemy chose to defend it.
Between two of the deep re-entrants a great promontory of rock jutted from the cliff face like the prow of a monstrous stone ship. The summit of the jutting rock was two thousand feet above the horsemen on the plain, and one of them, scrubbing blood from his sabre blade with a handful of grass, glanced up at the high peak and saw a tiny puff of whiteness drifting from its crest. He thought it a small cloud, but then he heard a faint bang of gunfire, and a second later a round shot dropped vertically into a nearby patch of millet. His captain pulled out a telescope and trained it high into the sky. He stared for a long time, then gave a low whistle.
‘What is it, sir?’
‘It’s a fortress,’ the Captain said. He could just see black stone walls, shrunken by distance, poised above the grey-white rock. ‘It’s hell in the bloody sky,’ he said grimly, ‘that’s what it is. It’s Gawilghur.’
More guns fired from the fortress, but they were so high in the air that their shots lost all their forward momentum long before they reached the ground. The balls fell like nightmare rain and the Captain shouted at his men to lead their horses out of range. ‘Their final refuge,’ he said, then laughed, ‘but it’s nothing to do with us, boys! The infantry will have to deal with that big bastard.’
The cavalrymen slowly moved southwards. Some of their horses had lost shoes, which meant they had to be walked home, but their night’s work was well done. They had ravaged a broken army, and now the infantry must cope with the Mahrattas’ final refuge.
A sergeant shouted from the right flank and the Captain turned westwards to see a column of enemy infantry appearing from a grove of trees just over a mile away. The white-coated battalion still possessed their artillery, but they showed no sign of wanting a fight. A crowd of civilians and several companies of fugitive Mahrattas had joined the regiment, which was heading for a road that twisted into the hills beneath the fort, then zigzagged its way up the face of the rock promontory. If that road was the only way into the fort, the cavalry Captain thought, then God help the redcoats who had to attack Gawilghur. He stared at the infantry through his telescope. The white-coated troops were showing small interest in the British cavalry, but it still seemed prudent to quicken his pace southwards.
A moment later and the cavalry was hidden behind millet fields. The Captain turned a last time and gazed again at the fortress on the soaring cliffs. It seemed to touch the sky, so high it stood above all India. ‘Bastard of a place,’ the Captain said wonderingly, then turned and left. He had done his job, and now the infantry must climb to the clouds to do theirs.
Colonel William Dodd watched the blue-coated cavalrymen walk their tired horses southwards until they vanished beyond a field of standing millet. The subadar in charge of the regiment’s small cannon had wanted to unlimber and open fire on the horsemen, but Dodd had refused his permission. There would have been no point in attacking, for by the time the guns were loaded the cavalrymen would have walked out of range. He watched a last salvo of round shot plummet to earth from the fort’s high guns. Those cannon were of little use, Dodd thought, except to overawe people on the plain.
It took Dodd’s regiment over seven hours to climb to the fort of Gawilghur, and by the time he reached the summit Dodd’s lungs were burning, his muscles aching and his uniform soaked with sweat. He had walked every step of the way, refusing to ride his horse, for the beast was tired and, besides, if he expected his men to walk up the long road, then he would walk it as well. He was a tall, sallow-faced man with a harsh voice and an awkward manner, but William Dodd knew how to earn his men’s admiration. They saw that he walked when he could have ridden, and so they did not complain as the steep climb sapped their breath and stole their strength. The regiment’s families, its baggage and its battery of cannon were still far below on the twisting, treacherous track that, in its last few miles, was little more than a ledge hacked from the cliff.
Dodd formed his Cobras into four ranks as they approached Gawilghur’s southern entrance where the great metal-studded gates were being swung open in welcome. ‘March smartly now!’ Dodd called to his men. ‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of! You lost no battle!’ He pulled himself up into his saddle and drew his gold-hilted sword to salute the flag of Berar that flapped above the high gate-tower. Then he touched his heels to the mare’s flanks and led his undefeated men into the tower’s long entrance tunnel.
He emerged into the afternoon sun to find himself staring at a small town that was built within the stronghold’s ramparts and on the summit of Gawilghur’s promontory. The alleys of the town were crammed with soldiers, most of them Mahratta cavalrymen who had fled in front of the British pursuit, but, twisting in his saddle, Dodd saw some infantry of Gawilghur’s garrison standing on the firestep. He also saw Manu Bappoo who had outridden the British pursuit and now gestured to Dodd from the gate-tower’s turret.
Dodd told one of his men to hold his horse, then climbed the black walls to the top firestep of the tower where he stopped in awed astonishment at the view. It was like standing at the edge of the world. The plain was so far beneath and the southern horizon so far away that there was nothing in front of his eyes but endless sky. This, Dodd thought, was a god’s view of earth. The eagle’s view. He leaned over the parapet and saw his guns struggling up the narrow road. They would not reach the fort till long after nightfall.
‘You were right, Colonel,’ Manu Bappoo said ruefully.
Dodd straightened to look at the Mahratta prince. ‘It’s dangerous to fight the British in open fields,’ he said, ‘but here …?’ Dodd gestured at the approach road. ‘Here they will die, sahib.’
‘The fort’s main entrance,’ Bappoo said in his sibilant voice, ‘is on the other side. To the north.’
Dodd turned and gazed across the roof of the central palace. He could see little of the great fortress’s northern defences, though a long way away he could see another tower like the one on which he now stood. ‘Is the main entrance as difficult to approach as this one?’ he asked.
‘No, but it isn’t easy. The enemy has to approach along a narrow strip of rock, then fight through the Outer Fort. After that comes a ravine, and then the Inner Fort. I want you to guard the inner gate.’
Dodd looked suspiciously at Bappoo. ‘Not the Outer Fort?’ Dodd reckoned his Cobras should guard the place where the British would attack. That way the British would be defeated.
‘The Outer Fort is a trap,’ Bappoo explained. He looked tired, but the defeat at Argaum had not destroyed his spirit, merely sharpened his appetite for revenge. ‘If the British capture the Outer Fort they will think they have won. They won’t know that an even worse barrier waits beyond the ravine. That barrier has to be held. I don’t care if the Outer Fort falls, but we must hold the Inner. That means our best troops must be there.’
‘It will be held,’ Dodd said.
Bappoo turned and stared southwards. Somewhere in the heat-hazed distance the British forces were readying to march on Gawilghur. ‘I thought we could stop them at Argaum,’ he admitted softly.
Dodd, who had advised against fighting at Argaum, said nothing.
‘But here,’ Bappoo went on, ‘they will be stopped.’
Here, Dodd thought, they would have to be stopped. He had deserted from the East India Company’s army because he faced trial and execution, but also because he believed he could make a fortune as a mercenary serving the Mahrattas. So far he had endured three defeats, and each time he had led his men safe out of the disaster, but from Gawilghur there would be no escape. The British would block every approach, so the British must be stopped. They must fail in this high place, and so they would, Dodd consoled himself. For nothing imaginable could take this fort. He was on the world’s edge, lifted into the sky, and for the redcoats it would be like scaling the very heights of heaven.
So here, at last, deep inside India, the redcoats would be beaten.
Six cavalrymen in the blue and yellow coats of the 19th Light Dragoons waited outside the house where Captain Torrance was said to be billeted. They were under the command of a long-legged sergeant who was lounging on a bench beside the door. The Sergeant glanced up as Sharpe approached. ‘I hope you don’t want anything useful out of the bastards,’ he said acidly, then saw that the shabby-uniformed Sharpe, despite wearing a pack like any common soldier, also had a sash and a sabre. He scrambled to his feet. ‘Sorry, sir.’
Sharpe waved him back down onto the bench. ‘Useful?’ he asked.
‘Horseshoes, sir, that’s all we bleeding want. Horseshoes! Supposed to be four thousand in store, but can they find them?’ The Sergeant spat. ‘Tells me they’re lost! I’m to go to the bhinjarries and buy them! I’m supposed to tell my captain that? So now we have to sit here till Captain Torrance gets back. Maybe he knows where they are. That monkey in there’ – he jerked his thumb at the house’s front door – ‘doesn’t know a bloody thing.’
Sharpe pushed open the door to find himself in a large room where a half-dozen men argued with a harried clerk. The clerk, an Indian, sat behind a table covered with curling ledgers. ‘Captain Torrance is ill!’ the clerk snapped at Sharpe without waiting to discover the newcomer’s business. ‘And take that dirty Arab boy outside,’ the clerk added, jerking his chin at Ahmed who, armed with a musket he had taken from a corpse on the battlefield, had followed Sharpe into the house.
‘Muskets!’ A man tried to attract the clerk’s attention.
‘Horseshoes!’ an East India Company lieutenant shouted.
‘Buckets,’ a gunner said.
‘Come back tomorrow,’ the clerk said. ‘Tomorrow!’
‘You said that yesterday,’ the gunner said, ‘and I’m back.’
‘Where’s Captain Torrance?’ Sharpe asked.
‘He’s ill,’ the clerk said disapprovingly, as though Sharpe had risked the Captain’s fragile health even by asking the question. ‘He cannot be disturbed. And why is that boy here? He is an Arab!’
‘Because I told him to be here,’ Sharpe said. He walked round the table and stared down at the ledgers. ‘What a bleeding mess!’
‘Sahib!’ The clerk had now realized Sharpe was an officer. ‘Other side of the table, sahib, please, sahib! There is a system here, sahib. I stay this side of the table and you remain on the other. Please, sahib.’
‘What’s your name?’ Sharpe asked.
The clerk seemed affronted at the question. ‘I am Captain Torrance’s assistant,’ he said grandly.
‘And Torrance is ill?’
‘The Captain is very sick.’
‘So who’s in charge?’
‘I am,’ the clerk said.
‘Not any longer,’ Sharpe said. He looked up at the East India Company lieutenant. ‘What did you want?’
‘Horseshoes.’
‘So where are the bleeding horseshoes?’ Sharpe asked the clerk.
‘I have explained, sahib, I have explained,’ the clerk said. He was a middle-aged man with a lugubrious face and pudgy ink-stained fingers that now hastily tried to close all the ledgers so that Sharpe could not read them. ‘Now please, sahib, join the queue.’
‘Where are the horseshoes?’ Sharpe insisted, leaning closer to the sweating clerk.
‘This office is closed!’ the clerk shouted. ‘Closed till tomorrow! All business will be conducted tomorrow. Captain Torrance’s orders!’
‘Ahmed!’ Sharpe said. ‘Shoot the bugger.’
Ahmed spoke no English, but the clerk did not know that. He held his hands out. ‘I am closing the office! Work cannot be done like this! I shall complain to Captain Torrance! There will be trouble! Big trouble!’ The clerk glanced at a door that led to the inner part of the house.
‘Is that where Torrance is?’ Sharpe asked, gesturing at the door.
‘No, sahib, and you cannot go in there. The Captain is sick.’
Sharpe went to the door and pushed it open. The clerk yelped a protest, but Sharpe ignored him. A muslin screen hung on the other side of the door and entangled Sharpe as he pushed into the room where a sailor’s hammock hung from the beams. The room seemed empty, but then a whimper made him look into a shadowed corner. A young woman crouched there. She was dressed in a sari, but she looked European to Sharpe. She had been sewing gold braid onto the outer seams of a pair of breeches, but now stared in wide-eyed fright at the intruder. ‘Who are you, Ma’am?’ Sharpe asked.
The woman shook her head. She had very black hair and very white skin. Her terror was palpable. ‘Is Captain Torrance here?’ Sharpe asked.
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘He’s sick, is that right?’
‘If he says so, sir,’ she said softly. Her London accent confirmed that she was English.
‘I ain’t going to hurt you, love,’ Sharpe said, for fear was making her tremble. ‘Are you Mrs Torrance?’
‘No!’
‘So you work for him?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you don’t know where he is?’
‘No, sir,’ she said softly, looking up at Sharpe with huge eyes. She was lying, he reckoned, but he guessed she had good reason to lie, perhaps fearing Torrance’s punishment if she told the truth. He considered soothing the truth out of her, but reckoned it might take too long. He wondered who she was. She was pretty, despite her terror, and he guessed she was Torrance’s bibbi. Lucky Torrance, he thought ruefully. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Ma’am,’ he said, then he negotiated the muslin curtain back into the front room.
The clerk shook his head fiercely. ‘You should not have gone in there, sahib! That is private quarters! Private! I shall be forced to tell Captain Torrance.’
Sharpe took hold of the clerk’s chair and tipped it, forcing the man off. The men waiting in the room gave a cheer. Sharpe ignored them, sat on the chair himself and pulled the tangle of ledgers towards him. ‘I don’t care what you tell Captain Torrance,’ he said, ‘so long as you tell me about the horseshoes first.’
‘They are lost!’ the clerk protested.
‘How were they lost?’ Sharpe asked.
The clerk shrugged. ‘Things get lost,’ he said. Sweat was pouring down his plump face as he tentatively tried to tug some of the ledgers away from Sharpe, but he recoiled from the look on the Ensign’s face. ‘Things get lost,’ the clerk said again weakly. ‘It is the nature of things to get lost.’
‘Muskets?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Lost,’ the clerk admitted.
‘Buckets?’
‘Lost,’ the clerk said.
‘Paperwork,’ Sharpe said.
The clerk frowned. ‘Paperwork, sahib?’
‘If something’s lost,’ Sharpe said patiently, ‘there’s a record. This is the bloody army. You can’t have a piss without someone making a note of it. So show me the records of what’s been lost.’
The clerk sighed and pulled one of the big ledgers open. ‘Here, sahib,’ he said, pointing an inky finger. ‘One barrel of horseshoes, see? Being carried on an ox from Jamkandhi, lost in the Godavery on November 12th.’
‘How many horseshoes in a barrel?’ Sharpe asked.
‘A hundred and twenty.’ The long-legged cavalry Sergeant had come into the office and now leaned against the doorpost.
‘And there are supposed to be four thousand horseshoes in store?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Here!’ The clerk turned a page. ‘Another barrel, see?’
Sharpe peered at the ill-written entry. ‘Lost in the Godavery,’ he read aloud.
‘And here.’ The clerk stabbed his finger again.
‘Stolen,’ Sharpe read. A drop of sweat landed on the page as the clerk turned it back. ‘So who stole it?’
‘The enemy, sahib,’ the clerk said. ‘Their horsemen are everywhere.’
‘Their bloody horsemen run if you so much as look at them,’ the tall cavalry Sergeant said sourly. ‘They couldn’t steal an egg from a chicken.’
‘The convoys are ambushed, sahib,’ the clerk insisted, ‘and things are stolen.’
Sharpe pushed the clerk’s hand away and turned the pages back, looking for the date when the battle had been fought at Assaye. He found it, and discovered a different handwriting had been used for the previous entries. He guessed Captain Mackay must have kept the ledger himself, and in Mackay’s neat entries there were far fewer annotations reading ‘stolen’ or ‘lost’. Mackay had marked eight cannonballs as being lost in a river crossing and two barrels of powder had been marked down as stolen, but in the weeks since Assaye no fewer than sixty-eight oxen had lost their burdens to either accidents or thieves. More tellingly, each of those oxen had been carrying a scarce commodity. The army would not miss a load of round shot, but it would suffer grievously when its last reserve of horseshoes was gone. ‘Whose handwriting is this?’ Sharpe had turned to the most recent page.
‘Mine, sahib.’ The clerk was looking frightened.
‘How do you know when something is stolen?’
The clerk shrugged. ‘The Captain tells me. Or the Sergeant tells me.’
‘The Sergeant?’
‘He isn’t here,’ the clerk said. ‘He’s bringing a convoy of oxen north.’
‘What’s the Sergeant’s name?’ Sharpe asked, for he could find no record in the ledger.
‘Hakeswill,’ the cavalry Sergeant said laconically. ‘He’s the bugger we usually deal with, on account of Captain Torrance always being ill.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said, and pushed the chair back. Hakeswill! Obadiah bloody Hakeswill! ‘Why wasn’t he sent back to his regiment?’ Sharpe asked. ‘He isn’t supposed to be here at all!’
‘He knows the system,’ the clerk explained. ‘Captain Torrance wanted him to stay, sahib.’
And no bloody wonder, Sharpe thought. Hakeswill had worked himself into the army’s most profitable billet! He was milking the cow, but making sure it was the clerk’s handwriting in the ledger. No flies on Obadiah. ‘How does the system work?’ he asked the clerk.
‘Chitties,’ the clerk said.
‘Chitties?’
‘An ox driver is given a chitty, sahib, and when he has delivered his load the chitty is signed and brought here. Then he is paid. No chitty, no money. It is the rule, sahib. No chitty, no money.’
‘And no bloody horseshoes either,’ put in the lean Sergeant of the 19th.
‘And Sergeant Hakeswill pays the money?’ Sharpe asked.
‘If he is here, sahib,’ the clerk said.
‘That doesn’t get me my damned horseshoes,’ the Company Lieutenant protested.
‘Or my buckets,’ the gunner put in.
‘The bhinjarries have all the essentials,’ the clerk insisted. He made shooing gestures. ‘Go and see the bhinjarries! They have necessaries! This office is closed till tomorrow.’
‘But where did the bhinjarries get their necessaries, eh? Answer me that?’ Sharpe demanded, but the clerk merely shrugged. The bhinjarries were merchants who travelled with the army, contributing their own vast herds of pack oxen and carts. They sold food, liquor, women and luxuries, and now, it seemed, they were offering military supplies as well, which meant that the army would be paying for things that were normally issued free, and doubtless, if bloody Hakeswill had a finger in the pot, things which had been stolen from the army in the first place. ‘Where do I go for horseshoes?’ Sharpe asked the clerk.
The clerk was reluctant to answer, but he finally spread his hands and suggested Sharpe ask in the merchants’ encampment. ‘Someone will tell you, sahib.’
‘You tell me,’ Sharpe said.
‘I don’t know!’
‘So how do you know they have horseshoes?’
‘I hear these things!’ the clerk protested.
Sharpe stood and bullied the clerk back against the wall. ‘You do more than hear things,’ he said, leaning his forearm against the clerk’s neck, ‘you know things. So you bloody well tell me, or I’ll have my Arab boy chop off your goolies for his breakfast. He’s a hungry little bugger.’
The clerk fought for breath against the pressure of Sharpe’s arm. ‘Naig.’ He offered the name plaintively when Sharpe relaxed his arm.
‘Naig?’ Sharpe asked. The name rang a distant bell. A long-ago bell. Naig? Then he remembered a merchant of that name who had followed the army to Seringapatam. ‘Naig?’ Sharpe asked again. ‘A fellow with green tents?’
‘The very one, sahib.’ The clerk nodded. ‘But I did not tell you this thing! These gentlemen are witnesses, I did not tell you!’
‘He runs a brothel!’ Sharpe said, remembering, and he remembered too how Naig had been a friend to Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill four years before. Sharpe had been a private then and Hakeswill had trumped up charges that had fetched Sharpe a flogging. ‘Nasty Naig’ had been the man’s nickname, and back then he had sold pale-skinned whores who travelled in green-curtained wagons. ‘Right!’ Sharpe said. ‘This office is closed!’ The gunner protested and the cavalry Sergeant looked disappointed. ‘We’re going to see Naig,’ Sharpe announced.
‘No!’ the clerk said too loud.
‘No?’ Sharpe asked.
‘He will be angry, sahib.’
‘Why should he be angry?’ Sharpe demanded. ‘I’m a customer, ain’t I? He’s got horseshoes, and we want horseshoes. He should be delighted to see us.’
‘He must be treated with respect, sahib,’ the clerk said nervously. ‘He is a powerful man, Naig. You have money for him?’
‘I just want to look at his horseshoes,’ Sharpe said, ‘and if they’re army issue then I’ll ram one of them down his bloody throat.’
The clerk shook his head. ‘He has guards, sahib. He has jettis!’
‘I think I might let you go on your own,’ the East India Company Lieutenant said, backing away.
‘Jettis?’ The light dragoon Sergeant asked.
‘Strongmen,’ Sharpe explained. ‘Big buggers who kill you by wringing your neck like a chicken.’ He turned back to the clerk. ‘Where did Naig get his jettis? From Seringapatam?’
‘Yes, sahib.’
‘I killed enough of the buggers,’ Sharpe said, ‘so I don’t mind killing a few more. Are you coming?’ he asked the cavalry Sergeant.
‘Why not?’ The man grinned.
‘Anyone else?’ Sharpe asked, but no one else seemed to want a fight that afternoon.
‘Please, sahib,’ the clerk said weakly.
Sharpe ignored him and, followed by Ahmed and the cavalryman, went back into the sunlight. ‘What’s your name?’ Sharpe asked the Sergeant.
‘Lockhart, sir. Eli Lockhart.’
‘I’m Dick Sharpe, Eli, and you don’t have to call me “sir”, I’m not a proper bleeding officer. I was made up at Assaye, and I wish the buggers had left me a sergeant now. They sent me to be a bloody bullock driver, because I’m not fit for anything else.’ He looked at Lockhart’s six troopers who were still waiting. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘Didn’t expect me to carry the bloody horseshoes myself, did you?’ Lockhart said, then gestured at the troopers. ‘Come on, boys. We’re going to have a scrap.’
‘Who said anything about a scrap?’ Sharpe asked.
‘He’s got horseshoes,’ Lockhart explained, ‘but we don’t have money. So there’s only one way to get them off him.’
‘True,’ Sharpe said, and grinned.
Lockhart suddenly looked oddly shy. ‘Was you in the Captain’s quarters, sir?’
‘Yes, why?’
The tough-looking Sergeant was actually blushing now. ‘You didn’t see a woman there, did you, sir?’
‘Dark-haired girl. Pretty?’
‘That’s her.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Torrance’s servant. A widow. He brought her and her husband out from England, but the fellow died and left her on her own. Torrance won’t let her go.’
‘And you’d like to take her off his hands, is that it?’
‘I’ve only ever seen her at a distance,’ the Sergeant admitted. ‘Torrance was in another regiment, one of the Madrassi’s, but we camped together often enough.’
‘She’s still there,’ Sharpe said drily, ‘still alive.’
‘He keeps her close, he does,’ Lockhart said, then kicked a dog out of his path. The eight men had left the village and entered the sprawling encampment where the merchants with their herds, wagons and families were camped. Great white oxen with painted horns were hobbled by pegs, and children scurried among the beasts collecting their dung which they slapped into cakes that would be dried for fuel. ‘So tell me about these jettis,’ Lockhart asked.
‘Like circus strongmen,’ Sharpe said, ‘only it’s some kind of religious thing. Don’t ask me. None of it makes bleeding sense to me. Got muscles like mountains, they have, but they’re slow. I killed four of the buggers at Seringapatam.’
‘And you know Hakeswill?’
‘I know bloody Hakeswill. Recruited me, he did, and he’s been persecuting me ever since. He shouldn’t even be with this army, he’s supposed to be with the Havercakes down south, but he came up here with a warrant to arrest me. That didn’t work, so he’s just stayed, hasn’t he? And he’s working the bleeding system! You can wager your last shilling that he’s the bastard who supplies Naig, and splits the profit.’ Sharpe stopped to look for green tents. ‘How come you don’t carry your own spare horseshoes?’
‘We do. But when they’ve gone you have to get more from the supplies. That’s how the system’s supposed to work. And yesterday’s pursuit left half the hooves wrecked. We need shoes.’
Sharpe had seen a cluster of faded green tents. ‘That’s where the bastard is,’ he said, then looked at Lockhart. ‘This could get nasty.’
Lockhart grinned. He was as tall as Sharpe and had a face that looked as though it had survived a lifetime of tavern brawls. ‘Come this far, ain’t I?’
‘Is that thing loaded?’ Sharpe nodded at the pistol at Lockhart’s belt. A sabre also hung there, just like the one at Sharpe’s hip.
‘It will be.’ Lockhart drew the pistol and Sharpe turned to Ahmed and mimed the actions of loading the musket. Ahmed grinned and pointed to the lock, indicating that his weapon was already charged.
‘How many of the buggers will be waiting for us?’ Lockhart asked.
‘A dozen?’ Sharpe guessed.
Lockhart glanced back at his six men. ‘We can deal with a dozen buggers.’
‘Right,’ Sharpe said, ‘so let’s bloody well make some trouble.’ He grinned, because for the first time since he had become an officer he was enjoying himself.
Which meant someone was about to get a thumping.
CHAPTER THREE
Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley rode northwards among a cavalcade of officers whose horses kicked up a wide trail of dust that lingered in the air long after the horsemen had passed. Two troops of East India Company cavalry provided the General’s escort. Manu Bappoo’s army might have been trounced and its survivors sent skeltering back into Gawilghur, but the Deccan Plain was still infested with Mahratta cavalry ready to pounce on supply convoys, wood-cutting parties or the grass-cutters who supplied the army’s animals with fodder and so the two troops rode with sabres drawn. Wellesley set a fast pace, revelling in the freedom to ride in the long open country. ‘Did you visit Colonel Stevenson this morning?’ he called back to an aide.
‘I did, sir, and he’s no better than he was.’
‘But he can get about?’
‘On his elephant, sir.’
Wellesley grunted. Stevenson was the commander of his smaller army, but the old Colonel was ailing. So was Harness, the commander of one of Wellesley’s two brigades, but there was no point in asking about Harness. It was not just physical disease that assaulted Harness, for the Scotsman’s wits were gone as well. The doctors claimed it was the heat that had desiccated his brains, but Wellesley doubted the diagnosis. Heat and rum, maybe, but not the heat alone, though he did not doubt that India’s climate was bad for a European’s health. Few men lived long without falling prey to some wasting fever, and Wellesley was thinking it was time he left himself. Time to go back home before his health was abraded and, more important, before his existence was forgotten in London. French armies were unsettling all Europe and it could not be long before London despatched an army to fight the old foe, and Wellesley wanted to be a part of it. He was in his middle thirties and he had a reputation to make, but first he had to finish off the Mahrattas, and that meant taking Gawilghur, and to that end he was now riding towards the great rampart of cliffs that sealed off the plain’s northern edge.
An hour’s ride brought him to the summit of a small rise which offered a view northwards. The plain looked dun, starved of water by the failed monsoon, though here and there patches of millet grew tall. In a good year, Wellesley guessed, the millet would cover the plain from horizon to horizon, a sea of grain bounded by the Gawilghur cliffs. He dismounted on the small knoll and took out a telescope that he settled on his horse’s saddle. It was a brand new glass, a gift from the merchants of Madras to mark Wellesley’s pacification of Mysore. Trade now moved freely on India’s eastern flank, and the telescope, which had been specially ordered from Matthew Berge of London, was a generous token of the merchants’ esteem, but Wellesley could not get used to it. The shape of the eyepiece was less concave than the one he was used to, and after a moment he snapped the new telescope shut and pulled out his old glass which, though lower powered, was more comfortable. He stared for a long time, gazing at the fort which crowned the rock promontory. The black stone of the fortress walls looked particularly sinister, even in the sunlight. ‘Good God,’ the General muttered after a while. Fail up there, he thought, and there would be no point in going home. He could go to London with some victories under his belt, and men would respect him even if the victories had not been against the French, but go with a defeat and they would despise him. Gawilghur, he thought sourly, had the look of a career-breaker.
Colonel Wallace, Wellesley’s healthy brigade commander, had also dismounted and was inspecting the fortress through his own glass. ‘Devil of a place, Sir Arthur,’ Wallace said.
‘How high is it, Blackiston?’ Wellesley called to one of his aides, an engineer.
‘I took a triangulation yesterday, sir,’ Blackiston said, ‘and discovered the fortress walls are eighteen hundred feet above the plain.’
‘Is there water up there?’ Colonel Butters, the chief engineer, asked.
‘We hear there is, sir,’ Blackiston said. ‘There are tanks in the fort; huge things like lakes.’
‘But the water level must be low this year?’ Butters suggested.
‘I doubt it’s low enough, sir,’ Blackiston murmured, knowing that Butters had been hoping that thirst might defeat the garrison.
‘And the rascals will have food, no doubt,’ Wellesley commented.
‘Doubtless,’ Wallace agreed drily.
‘Which means they’ll have to be prised out,’ the General said, then bent to the glass again and lowered the lens to look at the foothills below the bluff. Just south of the fort was a conical hill that rose almost halfway up the flank of the great promontory. ‘Can we get guns on that near hill?’ he asked.
There was a pause while the other officers decided which hill he was referring to. Colonel Butters flinched. ‘We can get them up there, sir, but I doubt they’ll have the elevation to reach the fort.’
‘You’ll get nothing bigger than a twelve-pounder up there,’ Wallace said dubiously, then slid the telescope’s view up the bluff to the walls. ‘And you’ll need bigger shot than twelve-pounders to break down that wall.’
‘Sir Arthur!’ The warning call came from the officer commanding the East India Company cavalry who was pointing to where a group of Mahratta horsemen had appeared in the south. They had evidently been following the lingering dust cloud left by the General’s party and, though the approaching horsemen only numbered about twenty men, the sepoy cavalry wheeled to face them and spread into a line.
‘It’s all right,’ Wellesley called, ‘they’re ours. I asked them to meet us here.’ He had inspected the approaching horsemen through his telescope and now, waving the sepoy cavalry back, he walked to greet the silladars. ‘Syud Sevajee,’ Wellesley acknowledged the man in the shabby green and silver coat who led the cavalrymen, ‘thank you for coming.’
Syud Sevajee nodded brusquely at Wellesley, then stared up at Gawilghur. ‘You think you can get in?’
‘I think we must,’ Wellesley said.
‘No one ever has,’ Sevajee said with a sly smile.
Wellesley returned the smile, but slowly, as if accepting the implied challenge, and then, as Sevajee slid down from his saddle, the General turned to Wallace. ‘You’ve met Syud Sevajee, Wallace?’
‘I’ve not had that pleasure, sir.’
Wellesley made the introduction, then added that Syud Sevajee’s father had been one of the Rajah of Berar’s generals.
‘But is no longer?’ Wallace asked Sevajee.
‘Beny Singh murdered him,’ Sevajee said grimly, ‘so I fight with you, Colonel, to gain my chance to kill Beny Singh. And Beny Singh now commands that fortress.’ He nodded towards the distant promontory.
‘So how do we get inside?’ Wellesley asked.
The officers gathered around Sevajee as the Indian drew his tulwar and used its tip to draw a figure eight in the dust. He tapped the lower circle of the eight, which he had drawn far larger than the upper. ‘That’s what you’re looking at,’ he said, ‘the Inner Fort. And there are only two entrances. There’s a road that climbs up from the plain and goes to the Southern Gate.’ He drew a squiggly line that tailed away from the bottom of the figure eight. ‘But that road is impossible. You will climb straight into their guns. A child with a pile of rocks could keep an army from climbing that road. The only possible route into the Inner Fort is through the main entrance.’ He scratched a brief line across the junction of the two circles.
‘Which will not be easy?’ Wellesley asked drily.
Sevajee offered the General a grim smile. ‘The main entrance is a long corridor, barred by four gates and flanked by high walls. But even to reach it, Sir Arthur, you will have to take the Outer Fort.’ He tapped the small upper circle of the figure eight.
Wellesley nodded. ‘And that, too, is difficult?’
‘Again, two entrances,’ Sevajee said. ‘One is a road that climbs from the plain. You can’t see it from here, but it twists up the hills to the west and it comes to the fort here.’ He tapped the waist of the figure eight. ‘It’s an easier climb than the southern road, but for the last mile of the journey your men will be under the guns of the Outer Fort. And the final half-mile, General, is steep.’ He stressed the last word. ‘On one side of the road is a cliff, and on the other is a precipice, and the guns of the Outer Fort can fire straight down that half-mile of road.’
Colonel Butters shook his head in gloomy contemplation of Sevajee’s news. ‘How come you know all this?’ he asked.
‘I grew up in Gawilghur,’ Sevajee said. ‘My father, before he was murdered, was killadar of the fortress.’
‘He knows,’ Wellesley said curtly. ‘And the main entrance of the Outer Fort?’
‘That,’ Sevajee said, ‘is the fortress’s weakest point.’ He scratched a line that pierced the uppermost curve of the small circle. ‘It’s the only level approach to the fortress, but it’s very narrow. On one side’ – he tapped the eastern flank of the line – ‘the ground falls steeply away. On the other side is a reservoir tank. So to reach the fort you must risk a narrow neck of land that is swept by two ramparts of guns, one above the other.’
‘Two walls?’ Wallace asked.
‘Set on a steep hill,’ Sevajee said, nodding. ‘You must fight uphill across both walls. There is an entrance, but it’s like the Inner Fort’s entrance: a series of gates with a narrow passage leading from one to the other, and men above you on both sides hurling down rocks and round shot.’
‘And once we’ve captured the Outer Fort,’ Wellesley asked, ‘what then?’
Sevajee offered a wolfish smile. ‘Then your troubles are just beginning, Sir Arthur.’ He scuffed out the diagram he had made in the dust and scratched another, this one showing two circles, one large and one small, with a space between them. ‘The two forts are not connected. They are separated here’ – he tapped the space between the circles with his tulwar – ‘and that is a ravine. A deep ravine. So once you have the Outer Fort, you still have to assault the Inner Fort, and its defences will be untouched. It has a wall which stands at the top of the ravine’s cliff, and that is where your enemy will be taking refuge; inside the wall of the Inner Fort. My father reckoned no enemy could ever capture Gawilghur’s Inner Fort. If all India should fall, he said, then its heart would still beat at Gawilghur.’
Wellesley walked a few paces north to stare at the high promontory. ‘How big is the garrison?’
‘Normally,’ Sevajee said, ‘about a thousand men, but now? It could be six or seven times that many. There is room inside for a whole army.’
And if the fort did not fall, Wellesley thought, then the Mahrattas would take heart. They would gather a new army and, in the new year, raid southwards again. There would be no peace in western India till Gawilghur fell. ‘Major Blackiston?’
‘Sir?’
‘You’ll make an exploration of the plateau.’ The General turned to Sevajee. ‘Will you escort Major Blackiston up into the hills? I want sketches, Blackiston, of the neck of land leading to the main entrance. I want you to tell me where we can place breaching batteries. I need to know how we can get guns up to the tops of the hills, and I need to know it all within two days.’
‘Two days?’ Blackiston sounded appalled.
‘We don’t want the rascals to take root up there, do we? Speed, Blackiston, speed! Can you leave now?’ This question was directed at Sevajee.
‘I can,’ Sevajee answered.
Wellesley waved Blackiston on his way. ‘Two days, Major! I want you back tomorrow evening!’
Colonel Butters frowned at the far hills. ‘You’re taking the army to the top?’
‘Half the army,’ Wellesley said, ‘the other half will stay on the plain.’ He would need to hold Gawilghur between his redcoats like a nut, and hope that when he squeezed it was the nut, and not the nutcracker, that broke. He pulled himself back into the saddle, then waited as the other officers mounted. Then he turned his mare and started back towards the camp. ‘It’ll be up to the engineers to get us onto the heights,’ he said, ‘then a week’s hard carrying to lift the ammunition to the batteries.’ The thought of that job made the General frown. ‘What’s the problem with the bullock train?’ he demanded of Butters. ‘I’m hearing complaints. Over two thousand muskets stolen from convoys, and Huddlestone tells me there are no spare horseshoes; that can’t be right!’
‘Torrance says that bandits have been active, sir,’ Butters said. ‘And I gather there have been accidents,’ he added lamely.
‘Who’s Torrance?’ Wellesley asked.
‘Company man, sir, a captain. He took over poor Mackay’s duties.’
‘I could surmise all that for myself,’ the General said acidly. ‘Who is he?’
Butters blushed at the reproof. ‘His father’s a canon at Wells, I think. Or maybe Salisbury? But more to the point, sir, he has an uncle in Leadenhall Street.’
Wellesley grunted. An uncle in Leadenhall Street meant that Torrance had a patron who was senior in the East India Company, someone to wield the influence that a clergyman father might not have. ‘Is he as good as Mackay?’
Butters, a heavy-set man who rode his horse badly, shrugged. ‘He was recommended by Huddlestone.’
‘Which means Huddlestone wanted to be rid of him,’ Wellesley snapped.
‘I’m sure he’s doing his best,’ Butters said defensively. ‘Though he did ask me for an assistant, but I had to turn him down. I’ve no one to spare. I’m short of engineers already, sir, as you well know.’
‘I’ve sent for more,’ Wellesley said.
Wallace intervened. ‘I gave Torrance one of my ensigns, Sir Arthur.’
‘You can spare an ensign, Wallace?’
‘Sharpe, sir.’
‘Ah.’ Wellesley grimaced. ‘Never does work out, does it? You lift a man from the ranks and you do him no favours.’
‘He might be happier in an English regiment,’ Wallace said, ‘so I’m recommending he exchanges into the Rifles.’
‘You mean they’re not particular?’ Wellesley asked, then scowled. ‘How the devil are we to fight a war without horseshoes?’ He kicked back at the mare, angry at the predicament. ‘My God, Butters, but your Captain Torrance must do his job!’ Wellesley, better than anyone, knew that he would never take Gawilghur if the supply train failed.
And Gawilghur had never been taken.
Dear God, Wellesley thought, but how was it ever to be done?
‘Big buggers,’ Sergeant Eli Lockhart murmured as they neared the two green tents. The cavalryman was speaking of the guards who lolled in chairs outside Naig’s tents. There were four in view, and two of them had bare, oiled chests that bulged with unnatural muscle. Their hair was never cut, but was instead coiled around their heads. They were keeping guard outside the larger of the tents, the one Sharpe guessed was Naig’s brothel. The other tent might have been the merchant’s living quarters, but its entrance was tightly laced, so Sharpe could not glimpse inside.
‘The two greasy fellows are the jettis,’ Sharpe said.
‘Big as bloody beeves, they are,’ Lockhart said. ‘Do they really wring your neck?’
‘Back to front,’ Sharpe said. ‘Or else they drive a nail into your skull with their bare hand.’ He swerved aside to go past the tents. It was not that he feared to pick a fight with Naig’s guards, indeed he expected a scrap, but there was no point in going bald-headed into battle. A bit of cleverness would not go amiss. ‘I’m being canny,’ he explained to Lockhart, then turned to make sure that Ahmed was keeping up. The boy was holding Sharpe’s pack as well as his musket.
The four guards, all of them armed with firelocks and tulwars, watched the British soldiers walk out of sight. ‘They didn’t like the look of us,’ Lockhart said.
‘Mangy buggers, they are,’ Sharpe said. He was glancing about the encampment and saw what he wanted just a few paces away. It was some straw, and near it was a smouldering campfire, and he screwed a handful of the straw stalks into a spill that he lit and carried to the rear of the smaller tent. He pushed the flaming spill into a fold of the canvas. A child watched, wide-eyed. ‘If you say anything,’ Sharpe told the half-naked child, ‘I’ll screw your head off back to front.’ The child, who did not understand a word, grinned broadly.
‘You’re not really supposed to be doing this, are you?’ Lockhart asked.
‘No,’ Sharpe said. Lockhart grinned, but said nothing. Instead he just watched as the flames licked at the faded green canvas which, for a moment or two, resisted the fire. The material blackened, but did not burn, then suddenly it burst into fire that licked greedily up the tent’s high side. ‘That’ll wake ’em up,’ Sharpe said.
‘What now?’ Lockhart asked, watching the flame sear up the tent’s side.
‘We rescue what’s inside, of course.’ Sharpe drew his sabre. ‘Come on, lads!’ He ran back to the front of the tent. ‘Fire!’ he shouted. ‘Fire! Fetch water! Fire!’
The four guards stared uncomprehendingly at the Englishman, then leaped to their feet as Sharpe slashed at the laces of the small tent’s doorway. One of them called a protest to Sharpe.
‘Fire!’ Lockhart bellowed at the guards who, still unsure of what was happening, did not try to stop Sharpe. Then one of them saw the smoke billowing over the ridge of the tent. He yelled a warning into the larger tent as his companions suddenly moved to pull the Englishman away from the tent’s entrance.
‘Hold them off!’ Sharpe called, and Lockhart’s six troopers closed on the three men. Sharpe slashed at the lacing, hacking down through the tough rope as the troopers thumped into the guards. Someone swore, there was a grunt as a fist landed, then a yelp as a trooper’s boot slammed into a jetti’s groin. Sharpe sawed through the last knot, then pushed through the loosened tent flaps. ‘Jesus!’ He stopped, staring at the boxes and barrels and crates that were stacked in the tent’s smoky gloom.
Lockhart had followed him inside. ‘Doesn’t even bother to hide the stuff properly, does he?’ the Sergeant said in amazement, then crossed to a barrel and pointed to a 19 that had been cut into one of the staves. ‘That’s our mark! The bugger’s got half our supplies!’ He looked up at the flames that were now eating away the tent roof. ‘We’ll lose the bloody lot if we don’t watch it.’
‘Cut the tent ropes,’ Sharpe suggested, ‘and push it all down.’
The two men ran outside and slashed at the guy ropes with their sabres, but more of Naig’s men were coming from the larger tent now. ‘Watch your back, Eli!’ Sharpe called, then turned and sliced the curved blade towards a jetti’s face. The man stepped back, and Sharpe followed up hard, slashing again, driving the huge man farther back. ‘Now bugger off!’ he shouted at the vast brute. ‘There’s a bloody fire! Fire!’
Lockhart had put his attacker on the ground and was now stamping on his face with a spurred boot. The troopers were coming to help and Sharpe let them deal with Naig’s men while he cut through the last of the guy ropes, then ran back into the tent and heaved on the nearest pole. The air inside the tent was choking with swirling smoke, but at last the whole heavy array of canvas sagged towards the fire, lifting the canvas wall behind Sharpe into the air.
‘Sahib!’ Ahmed’s shrill voice shouted and Sharpe turned to see a man aiming a musket at him. The lifting tent flap was exposing Sharpe, but he was too far away to rush the man, then Ahmed fired his own musket and the man shuddered, turned to look at the boy, then winced as the pain in his shoulder struck home. He dropped the gun and clapped a hand onto the wound. The sound of the shot startled the other guards and some reached for their own muskets, but Sharpe ran at them and used his sabre to beat the guns down. ‘There’s a bloody fire!’ he shouted into their faces. ‘A fire! You want everything to burn?’ They did not understand him, but some realized that the fire threatened their master’s supplies and so ran to haul the half-collapsed burning canvas away from the wooden crates.
‘But who started the fire?’ a voice said behind Sharpe, and he turned to see a tall, fat Indian dressed in a green robe that was embroidered with looping fish and long-legged water-birds. The fat man was holding a half-naked child by the hand, the same small boy who had watched Sharpe push the burning straw into a crease of the canvas. ‘British officers,’ the fat man said, ‘have a deal of freedom in this country, but does that mean they can destroy an honest man’s property?’
‘Are you Naig?’ Sharpe asked.
The fat man waved to his guards so that they gathered behind him. The tent had been dragged clear of the crates and was burning itself out harmlessly. The green-robed man now had sixteen or seventeen men with him, four of them jettis and all of them armed, while Sharpe had Lockhart and his battered troopers and one defiant child who was reloading a musket as tall as himself. ‘I will give you my name,’ the fat man said unpleasantly, ‘when you tell me yours.’
‘Sharpe. Ensign Sharpe.’
‘A mere ensign!’ The fat man raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought ensigns were children, like this young man.’ He patted the half-naked boy’s head. ‘I am Naig.’
‘So perhaps you can tell me,’ Sharpe said, ‘why that tent was stuffed full of our supplies?’
‘Your supplies!’ Naig laughed. ‘They are my goods, Ensign Sharpe. Perhaps some of them are stored in old boxes that once belonged to your army, but what of that? I buy the boxes from the quartermaster’s department.’
‘Lying bastard,’ Sergeant Lockhart growled. He had prised open the barrel with the number 19 incised on its side and now flourished a horseshoe. ‘Ours!’ he said.
Naig seemed about to order his guards to finish off Sharpe’s small band, but then he glanced to his right and saw that two British officers had come from the larger tent. The presence of the two, both captains, meant that Naig could not just drive Sharpe away, for now there were witnesses. Naig might take on an ensign and a few troopers, but captains carried too much authority. One of the captains, who wore the red coat of the Scotch Brigade, crossed to Sharpe. ‘Trouble?’ he asked. His revels had plainly been interrupted, for his trousers were still unbuttoned and his sword and sash were slung across one shoulder.
‘This bastard, sir, has been pilfering our supplies.’ Sharpe jerked his thumb at Naig then nodded towards the crates. ‘It’s all marked as stolen in the supply ledgers, but I’ll wager it’s all there. Buckets, muskets, horseshoes.’
The Captain glanced at Naig, then crossed to the crates. ‘Open that one,’ he ordered, and Lockhart obediently stooped to the box and levered up its nailed lid with his sabre.
‘I have been storing these boxes,’ Naig explained. He turned to the second captain, an extraordinarily elegant cavalryman in Company uniform, and he pleaded with him in an Indian language. The Company Captain turned away and Naig went back to the Scotsman. The merchant was in trouble now, and he knew it. ‘I was asked to store the boxes!’ he shouted at the Scotsman.
But the infantry Captain was staring down into the opened crate where ten brand new muskets lay in their wooden cradles. He stooped for one of the muskets and peered at the lock. Just forward of the hammer and behind the pan was an engraved crown with the letters GR beneath it, while behind the hammer the word Tower was engraved. ‘Ours,’ the Scotsman said flatly.
‘I bought them.’ Naig was sweating now.
‘I thought you said you were storing them?’ the Scotsman said. ‘Now you say you bought them. Which is it?’
‘My brother and I bought the guns from silladars,’ Naig said.
‘We don’t sell these Tower muskets,’ the Captain said, hefting the gun that was still coated with grease.
Naig shrugged. ‘They must have been captured from the supply convoys. Please, sahib, take them. I want no trouble. How was I to know they were stolen?’ He turned and pleaded again with the Company cavalry Captain who was a tall, lean man with a long face, but the cavalryman turned and walked a short distance away. A crowd had collected now and watched the drama silently, and Sharpe, looking along their faces, suspected there was not much sympathy for Naig. Nor, Sharpe thought, was there much hope for the fat man. Naig had been playing a dangerous game, but with such utter confidence that he had not even bothered to conceal the stolen supplies. At the very least he could have thrown away the government issue boxes and tried to file the lock markings off the muskets, but Naig must have believed he had powerful friends who would protect him. The cavalryman seemed to be one of those friends, for Naig had followed him and was hissing in his ear, but the cavalryman merely pushed the Indian away, then turned to Sharpe. ‘Hang him,’ he said curtly.
‘Hang him?’ Sharpe asked in puzzlement.
‘It’s the penalty for theft, ain’t it?’ the cavalryman insisted.
Sharpe looked to the Scottish Captain, who nodded uncertainly. ‘That’s what the General said,’ the Scotsman confirmed.
‘I’d like to know how he got the supplies, sir,’ Sharpe said.
‘You’ll give the fat bastard time to concoct a story?’ the cavalryman demanded. He had an arrogance that annoyed Sharpe, but everything about the cavalryman irritated Sharpe. The man was a dandy. He wore tall, spurred boots that sheathed his calves and knees in soft, polished leather. His white breeches were skin tight, his waistcoat had gold buttons, while his red tail coat was clean, uncreased and edged with gold braid. He wore a frilled stock, a red silk sash was draped across his right shoulder and secured at his left hip by a knot of golden braid, his sabre was scabbarded in red leather, while his cocked hat was plumed with a lavishly curled feather that had been dyed pale green. The clothes had cost a fortune, and clearly his servants must spend hours on keeping their master so beautifully dressed. He looked askance at Sharpe, a slight wrinkle of his nostrils suggesting that he found Sharpe’s appearance distressing. The cavalryman’s face suggested he was a clever man, but also that he despised those who were less clever than himself. ‘I don’t suppose Sir Arthur will be vastly pleased when he hears that you let the fellow live, Ensign,’ he said acidly. ‘Swift and certain justice, ain’t that the penalty for theft? Hang the fat beast.’
‘That is what the standing orders say,’ the Scotch Brigade Captain agreed, ‘but does it apply to civilians?’
‘He should have a trial!’ Sharpe protested, not because he was so committed to Naig’s right to a hearing, but because he feared the whole episode was getting out of hand. He had thought to find the supplies, maybe have a mill with Naig’s guards, but no one was supposed to die. Naig deserved a good kicking, but death?
‘Standing orders apply to anyone within the picquet lines,’ the cavalry Captain averred confidently. ‘So for God’s sake get on with it! Dangle the bastard!’ He was sweating, and Sharpe sensed that the elegant cavalryman was not quite so confident as he appeared.
‘Bugger a trial,’ Sergeant Lockhart said happily. ‘I’ll hang the bastard.’ He snapped at his troopers to fetch a nearby ox cart. Naig had tried to retreat to the protection of his guards, but the cavalry Captain had drawn a pistol that he now held close to Naig’s head as the grinning troopers trundled the empty ox cart into the open space in front of the pilfered supplies.
Sharpe crossed to the tall cavalryman. ‘Shouldn’t we talk to him, sir?’
‘My dear fellow, have you ever tried to get the truth out of an Indian?’ the Captain asked. ‘They swear by a thousand gaudy gods that they’ll tell the truth, then lie like a rug! Be quiet!’ Naig had begun to protest and the cavalryman rammed the pistol into the Indian’s mouth, breaking a tooth and gashing Naig’s gum. ‘Another damned word, Naig, and I’ll castrate you before I hang you.’ The cavalryman glanced at Sharpe, who was frowning. ‘Are you squeamish, Ensign?’
‘Don’t seem right, sir. I mean I agree he deserves to be hung, but shouldn’t we talk to him first?’
‘If you like conversation so much,’ the cavalryman drawled, ‘institute a Philosophical Society. Then you can enjoy all the hot air you like. Sergeant?’ This last was to Lockhart. ‘Take the bastard off my hands, will you?’
‘Pleasure, sir.’ Lockhart seized Naig and shoved him towards the cart. One of the cavalry troopers had cut a length of guy rope from the burnt remnants of the tent and he now tied one end to the tip of the single shaft that protruded from the front of the ox cart. He made a loop in the rope’s end.
Naig screamed and tried to pull away. Some of his guards started forward, but then a hard voice ordered them back and Sharpe turned to see that a tall, thin Indian in a black and green striped robe had come from the larger tent. The newcomer, who looked to be in his forties, walked with a limp. He crossed to the cavalry Captain and spoke quietly, and Sharpe saw the cavalryman shake his head vehemently, then shrug as if to suggest that he was powerless. Then the Captain gestured to Sharpe and the tall Indian gave the Ensign a look of such malevolence that Sharpe instinctively put his hand on his sabre’s hilt. Lockhart had pulled the noose over Naig’s head. ‘Are you sure, sir?’ he asked the cavalry Captain.
‘Of course I’m sure, Sergeant,’ the cavalryman said angrily. ‘Just get on with it.’
‘Sir?’ Sharpe appealed to the Scots Captain, who frowned uncertainly, then turned and walked away as though he wanted nothing more to do with the affair. The tall Indian in the striped robe spat into the dust, then limped back to the tent.
Lockhart ordered his troopers to the back of the cart. Naig was attempting to pull the noose free of his neck, but Lockhart slapped his hands down. ‘Now, boys!’ he shouted.
The troopers reached up and hauled down on the back-board so that the cart tipped like a seesaw on its single axle and, as the troopers pulled down, so the shaft rose into the air. The rope stretched and tightened. Naig screamed, then the cavalryman jumped up to sit on the cart’s back and the shaft jerked higher still and the scream was abruptly choked off. Naig was dangling now, his feet kicking wildly under the lavishly embroidered robe. None of the crowd moved, none protested.
Naig’s face was bulging and his hands were scrabbling uselessly at the noose which was tight about his neck. The cavalry officer watched with a small smile. ‘A pity,’ he said in his elegant voice. ‘The wretched man ran the best brothel I ever found.’
‘We’re not killing his girls, sir,’ Sharpe said.
‘That’s true, Ensign, but will their next owner treat them as well?’ The cavalryman turned to the big tent’s entrance and took off his plumed hat to salute a group of sari-clad girls who now watched wide-eyed as their employer did the gallows dance. ‘I saw Nancy Merrick hang in Madras,’ the cavalryman said, ‘and she did the jig for thirty-seven minutes! Thirty-seven! I’d wagered on sixteen, so lost rather a lot of tin. Don’t think I can watch Naig dance for half an hour. It’s too damned hot. Sergeant? Help his soul to perdition, will you?’
Lockhart crouched beneath the dying man and caught hold of his heels. Then he tugged down hard, swearing when Naig pissed on him. He tugged again, and at last the body went still. ‘Do you see what happens when you steal from us?’ the cavalry Captain shouted at the crowd, then repeated the words in an Indian language. ‘If you steal from us, you will die!’ Again he translated his words, then gave Sharpe a crooked grin. ‘But only, of course, if you’re stupid enough to be caught, and I didn’t think Naig was stupid at all. Rather the reverse. Just how did you happen to discover the supplies, Ensign?’
‘Tent was on fire, sir,’ Sharpe said woodenly. ‘Me and Sergeant Lockhart decided to rescue whatever was inside.’
‘How very public-spirited of you.’ The Captain gave Sharpe a long, speculative look, then turned back to Lockhart. ‘Is he dead, Sergeant?’
‘Near as makes no difference, sir,’ Lockhart called back.
‘Use your pistol to make sure,’ the Captain ordered, then sighed. ‘A shame,’ he said. ‘I rather liked Naig. He was a rogue, of course, but rogues are so much more amusing than honest men.’ He watched as Lockhart lowered the shaft, then stooped over the prostrate body and put a bullet into its skull. ‘I suppose I’ll have to find some carts to fetch these supplies back where they belong,’ the Captain said.
‘I’ll do that, sir,’ Sharpe said.
‘You will?’ The Captain seemed astonished to discover such willingness. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that, Ensign?’
‘It’s my job, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘I’m Captain Torrance’s assistant.’
‘You poor benighted bastard,’ the Captain said pityingly.
‘Poor, sir? Why?’
‘Because I’m Captain Torrance. Good day to you, Ensign.’ Torrance turned on his heel and walked away through the crowd.
‘Bastard,’ Sharpe said, for he had suddenly understood why Torrance had been so keen to hang Naig.
He spat after the departed Captain, then went to find some bullocks and carts. The army had its supplies back, but Sharpe had made a new enemy. As if Hakeswill were not enough, he now had Torrance as well.
The palace in Gawilghur was a sprawling one-storey building that stood on the highest point within the Inner Fort. To its north was a garden that curled about the largest of the fortress’s lakes. The lake was a tank, a reservoir, but its banks had been planted with flowering trees, and a flight of steps led from the palace to a small stone pavilion on the lake’s northern shore. The pavilion had an arched ceiling on which the reflections of the lake’s small waves should have rippled, but the season had been so dry that the lake had shrunk and the water level was some eight or nine feet lower than usual. The water and the exposed banks were rimed with a green, foul-smelling scum, but Beny Singh, the Killadar of Gawilghur, had arranged for spices to be burned in low, flat braziers so that the dozen men inside the pavilion were not too offended by the lake’s stench.
‘If only the Rajah was here,’ Beny Singh said, ‘we should know what to do.’ Beny Singh was a short, plump man with a curling moustache and nervous eyes. He was the fortress commander, but he was a courtier by avocation, not a soldier, and he had always regarded his command of the great fortress as a licence to make his fortune rather than to fight the Rajah’s enemies.
Prince Manu Bappoo was not surprised that his brother had chosen not to come to Gawilghur, but had instead fled farther into the hills. The Rajah was like Beny Singh, he had no belly for a fight, but Bappoo had watched the first British troops creep across the plain beneath the fort’s high walls and he welcomed their coming. ‘We don’t need my brother here to know what we must do,’ he said. ‘We fight.’ The other men, all commanders of the various troops that had taken refuge in Gawilghur, voiced their agreement.
‘The British cannot be stopped by walls,’ Beny Singh said. He was cradling a small white lap dog which had eyes as wide and frightened as its master’s.
‘They can, and they will,’ Bappoo insisted.
Singh shook his head. ‘Were they stopped at Seringapatam? At Ahmednuggur? They crossed those city walls as though they had wings! They are – what is the word your Arabs use? – djinns!’ He looked about the gathered council and saw no one who would support him. ‘They must have the djinns on their side,’ he added weakly.
‘So what would you do?’ Bappoo asked.
‘Treat with them,’ Beny Singh said. ‘Ask for cowle
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Bernard Cornwell
It was the most impregnable fortress in all India – Gawlighur – and the opposing forces were safely holding it.But Sharpe, newly appointed an officer by Wellesley, has his own enemies to fight on every hand. The officers in his new regiment resent his arrival, Obadiah Hakeswill is determined to have his revenge, and renegades within the British army want to retain control of their own area…
SHARPE’S
FORTRESS
Richard Sharpe and the Siege
of Gawilghur, December 1803
BERNARD CORNWELL
Copyright
This novel is a work of fiction. The incidents and some of the characters portrayed in it, while based on real historical events and figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1999
Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 1999
Map © Ken Lewis
Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018. Cover photographs © Alamy Stock Photo
Bernard Cornwell asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780006510314
Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007346806
Version: 2018-04-13
Sharpe’s Fortress is for Christine Clarke, with many thanks
‘We cheer Sharpe on. He has a kind of angry courage, an inability to stay away from a fight, and a permanent inner battle between his inclinations and his sense of duty. Wellington wound up a dangerous spring on the day he raised Sharpe from the ranks. It’s our magnificent gain’
Terry Pratchett
Contents
Title Page (#ud130cd65-58fe-545a-92b9-b93bcc04e8ff)
Copyright (#uf9a681d4-f896-51c3-a3e1-82673d8e9add)
Dedication (#u8a18a297-521d-5500-b8e8-1775e30e62a6)
Praise (#u9e43a561-24aa-5d8f-bc84-312b592c5177)
Maps (#ucb1d7e44-b3c6-5f61-b2e8-37ea3b0c34d9)
Chapter One (#ubf656803-9f29-5b5c-b0ce-96d94622729a)
Chapter Two (#u3be9cfba-37ba-518e-9b4d-f7095a344ab8)
Chapter Three (#ue153e98a-f6c8-51c9-8c9a-f49e73808058)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading
Historical Note (#litres_trial_promo)
Sharpe’s Story (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
The SHARPE Series (in chronological order) (#litres_trial_promo)
The SHARPE Series (in order of publication) (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Bernard Cornwell (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
Richard Sharpe wanted to be a good officer. He truly did. He wanted it above all other things, but somehow it was just too difficult, like trying to light a tinderbox in a rain-filled wind. Either the men disliked him, or they ignored him, or they were over-familiar and he was unsure how to cope with any of the three attitudes, while the battalion’s other officers plain disapproved of him. You can put a racing saddle on a carthorse, Captain Urquhart had said one night in the ragged tent which passed for the officers’ mess, but that don’t make the beast quick. He had not been talking about Sharpe, not directly, but all the other officers glanced at him.
The battalion had stopped in the middle of nowhere. It was hot as hell and no wind alleviated the sodden heat. They were surrounded by tall crops that hid everything except the sky. A cannon fired somewhere to the north, but Sharpe had no way of knowing whether it was a British gun or an enemy cannon.
A dry ditch ran through the tall crops and the men of the company sat on the ditch lip as they waited for orders. One or two lay back and slept with their mouths wide open while Sergeant Colquhoun leafed though his tattered Bible. The Sergeant was short-sighted, so had to hold the book very close to his nose from which drops of sweat fell onto the pages. Usually the Sergeant read quietly, mouthing the words and sometimes frowning when he came across a difficult name, but today he was just slowly turning the pages with a wetted finger.
‘Looking for inspiration, Sergeant?’ Sharpe asked.
‘I am not, sir,’ Colquhoun answered respectfully, but somehow managed to convey that the question was still impertinent. He dabbed a finger on his tongue and carefully turned another page.
So much for that bloody conversation, Sharpe thought. Somewhere ahead, beyond the tall plants that grew higher than a man, another cannon fired. The discharge was muffled by the thick stems. A horse neighed, but Sharpe could not see the beast. He could see nothing through the high crops.
‘Are you going to read us a story, Sergeant?’ Corporal McCallum asked. He spoke in English instead of Gaelic, which meant that he wanted Sharpe to hear.
‘I am not, John. I am not.’
‘Go on, Sergeant,’ McCallum said. ‘Read us one of those dirty tales about tits.’
The men laughed, glancing at Sharpe to see if he was offended. One of the sleeping men jerked awake and looked about him, startled, then muttered a curse, slapped at a fly and lay back. The other soldiers of the company dangled their boots towards the ditch’s crazed mud bed that was decorated with a filigree of dried green scum. A dead lizard lay in one of the dry fissures. Sharpe wondered how the carrion birds had missed it.
‘The laughter of fools, John McCallum,’ Sergeant Colquhoun said, ‘is like the crackling of thorns under the pot.’
‘Away with you, Sergeant!’ McCallum said. ‘I heard it in the kirk once, when I was a wee kid, all about a woman whose tits were like bunches of grapes.’ McCallum twisted to look at Sharpe. ‘Have you ever seen tits like grapes, Mister Sharpe?’
‘I never met your mother, Corporal,’ Sharpe said.
The men laughed again. McCallum scowled. Sergeant Colquhoun lowered his Bible and peered at the Corporal. ‘The Song of Solomon, John McCallum,’ Colquhoun said, ‘likens a woman’s bosom to clusters of grapes, and I have no doubt it refers to the garments that modest women wore in the Holy Land. Perhaps their bodices possessed balls of knotted wool as decoration? I cannot see it is a matter for your merriment.’ Another cannon fired, and this time a round shot whipped through the tall plants close to the ditch. The stems twitched violently, discharging a cloud of dust and small birds into the cloudless sky. The birds flew about in panic for a few seconds, then returned to the swaying seedheads.
‘I knew a woman who had lumpy tits,’ Private Hollister said. He was a dark-jawed, violent man who spoke rarely. ‘Lumpy like a coal sack, they were.’ He frowned at the memory, then shook his head. ‘She died.’
‘This conversation is not seemly,’ Colquhoun said quietly, and the men shrugged and fell silent.
Sharpe wanted to ask the Sergeant about the clusters of grapes, but he knew such an enquiry would only cause ribaldry among the men and, as an officer, Sharpe could not risk being made to look a fool. All the same, it sounded odd to him. Why would anyone say a woman had tits like a bunch of grapes? Grapes made him think of grapeshot and he wondered if the bastards up ahead were equipped with canister. Well, of course they were, but there was no point in wasting canister on a field of bulrushes. Were they bulrushes? It seemed a strange thing for a farmer to grow, but India was full of oddities. There were naked sods who claimed to be holy men, snake-charmers who whistled up hooded horrors, dancing bears draped in tinkling bells, and contortionists draped in bugger all, a right bloody circus. And the clowns ahead would have canister. They would wait till they saw the redcoats, then load up the tin cans that burst like duckshot from the gun barrels. For what we are about to receive among the bulrushes, Sharpe thought, may the Lord make us truly thankful.
‘I’ve found it,’ Colquhoun said gravely.
‘Found what?’ Sharpe asked.
‘I was fairly sure in my mind, sir, that the good book mentioned millet. And so it does. Ezekiel, the fourth chapter and the ninth verse.’ The Sergeant held the book close to his eyes, squinting at the text. He had a round face, afflicted with wens, like a suet pudding studded with currants. ‘“Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley,”’ he read laboriously, ‘“and beans, and lentils, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof.”’ Colquhoun carefully closed his Bible, wrapped it in a scrap of tarred canvas and stowed it in his pouch. ‘It pleases me, sir,’ he explained, ‘if I can find everyday things in the scriptures. I like to see things, sir, and imagine my Lord and Saviour seeing the selfsame things.’
‘But why millet?’ Sharpe asked.
‘These crops, sir,’ Colquhoun said, pointing to the tall stems that surrounded them, ‘are millet. The natives call it jowari, but our name is millet.’ He cuffed the sweat from his face with his sleeve. The red dye of his coat had faded to a dull purple. ‘This, of course,’ he went on, ‘is pearl millet, but I doubt the scriptures mention pearl millet. Not specifically.’
‘Millet, eh?’ Sharpe said. So the tall plants were not bulrushes, after all. They looked like bulrushes, except they were taller. Nine or ten feet high. ‘Must be a bastard to harvest,’ he said, but got no response. Sergeant Colquhoun always tried to ignore swear words.
‘What are fitches?’ McCallum asked.
‘A crop grown in the Holy Land,’ Colquhoun answered. He plainly did not know.
‘Sounds like a disease, Sergeant,’ McCallum said. ‘A bad dose of the fitches. Leads to a course of mercury.’ One or two men sniggered at the reference to syphilis, but Colquhoun ignored the levity.
‘Do you grow millet in Scotland?’ Sharpe asked the Sergeant.
‘Not that I am aware of, sir,’ Colquhoun said ponderously, after reflecting on the question for a few seconds, ‘though I daresay it might be found in the Lowlands. They grow strange things there. English things.’ He turned pointedly away.
And sod you too, Sharpe thought. And where the hell was Captain Urquhart? Where the hell was anybody for that matter? The battalion had marched long before dawn, and at midday they had expected to make camp, but then came a rumour that the enemy was waiting ahead and so General Sir Arthur Wellesley had ordered the baggage to be piled and the advance to continue. The King’s 74th had plunged into the millet, then ten minutes later the battalion was ordered to halt beside the dry ditch while Captain Urquhart rode ahead to speak with the battalion commander, and Sharpe had been left to sweat and wait with the company.
Where he had damn all to do except sweat. Damn all. It was a good company, and it did not need Sharpe. Urquhart ran it well, Colquhoun was a magnificent sergeant, the men were as content as soldiers ever were, and the last thing the company needed was a brand new officer, an Englishman at that, who, just two months before, had been a sergeant.
The men were talking in Gaelic and Sharpe, as ever, wondered if they were discussing him. Probably not. Most likely they were talking about the dancing girls in Ferdapoor, where there had been no mere clusters of grapes, but bloody great naked melons. It had been some sort of festival and the battalion had marched one way and the half-naked girls had writhed in the opposite direction and Sergeant Colquhoun had blushed as scarlet as an unfaded coat and shouted at the men to keep their eyes front. Which had been a pointless order, when a score of undressed bibbis were bobbling down the highway with silver bells tied to their wrists and even the officers were staring at them like starving men seeing a plate of roast beef. And if the men were not discussing women, they were probably grumbling about all the marching they had done in the last weeks, criss-crossing the Mahratta countryside under a blazing sun without a sight or smell of the enemy. But whatever they were talking about they were making damn sure that Ensign Richard Sharpe was left out.
Which was fair enough, Sharpe reckoned. He had marched in the ranks long enough to know that you did not talk to officers, not unless you were spoken to or unless you were a slick-bellied crawling bastard looking for favours. Officers were different, except Sharpe did not feel different. He just felt excluded. I should have stayed a sergeant, he thought. He had increasingly thought that in the last few weeks, wishing he was back in the Seringapatam armoury with Major Stokes. That had been the life! And Simone Joubert, the Frenchwoman who had clung to Sharpe after the battle at Assaye, had gone back to Seringapatam to wait for him. Better to be there as a sergeant, he reckoned, than here as an unwanted officer.
No guns had fired for a while. Perhaps the enemy had packed up and gone? Perhaps they had hitched their painted cannon to their ox teams, stowed the canister in its limbers and buggered off northwards? In which case it would be a quick about-turn, back to the village where the baggage was stored, then another awkward evening in the officers’ mess. Lieutenant Cahill would watch Sharpe like a hawk, adding tuppence to Sharpe’s mess bill for every glass of wine, and Sharpe, as the junior officer, would have to propose the loyal toast and pretend not to see when half the bastards wafted their mugs over their canteens. King over the water. Toasting a dead Stuart pretender to the throne who had died in Roman exile. Jacobites who pretended George III was not the proper King. Not that any of them were truly disloyal, and the secret gesture of passing the wine over the water was not even a real secret, but rather was intended to goad Sharpe into English indignation. Except Sharpe did not give a fig. Old King Cole could have been King of Britain for all Sharpe cared.
Colquhoun suddenly barked orders in Gaelic and the men picked up their muskets, jumped into the irrigation ditch where they formed into four ranks and began trudging northwards. Sharpe, taken by surprise, meekly followed. He supposed he should have asked Colquhoun what was happening, but he did not like to display ignorance, and then he saw that the rest of the battalion was also marching, so plainly Colquhoun had decided number six company should advance as well. The Sergeant had made no pretence of asking Sharpe for permission to move. Why should he? Even if Sharpe did give an order the men automatically looked for Colquhoun’s nod before they obeyed. That was how the company worked; Urquhart commanded, Colquhoun came next, and Ensign Sharpe tagged along like one of the scruffy dogs adopted by the men.
Captain Urquhart spurred his horse back down the ditch. ‘Well done, Sergeant,’ he told Colquhoun, who ignored the praise. The Captain turned the horse, its hooves breaking through the ditch’s crust to churn up clots of dried mud. ‘The rascals are waiting ahead,’ Urquhart told Sharpe.
‘I thought they might have gone,’ Sharpe said.
‘They’re formed and ready,’ Urquhart said, ‘formed and ready.’ The Captain was a fine-looking man with a stern face, straight back and steady nerve. The men trusted him. In other days Sharpe would have been proud to serve a man like Urquhart, but the Captain seemed irritated by Sharpe’s presence. ‘We’ll be wheeling to the right soon,’ Urquhart called to Colquhoun, ‘forming line on the right in two ranks.’
‘Aye, sir.’
Urquhart glanced up at the sky. ‘Three hours of daylight left?’ he guessed. ‘Enough to do the job. You’ll take the left files, Ensign.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, and knew that he would have nothing to do there. The men understood their duty, the corporals would close the files and Sharpe would simply walk behind them like a dog tied to a cart.
There was a sudden crash of guns as a whole battery of enemy cannon opened fire. Sharpe heard the round shots whipping through the millet, but none of the missiles came near the 74th. The battalion’s pipers had started playing and the men picked up their feet and hefted their muskets in preparation for the grim work ahead. Two more guns fired, and this time Sharpe saw a wisp of smoke above the seedheads and he knew that a shell had gone overhead. The smoke trail from the burning fuse wavered in the windless heat as Sharpe waited for the explosion, but none sounded.
‘Cut his fuse too long,’ Urquhart said. His horse was nervous, or perhaps it disliked the treacherous footing in the bottom of the ditch. Urquhart spurred the horse up the bank where it trampled the millet. ‘What is this stuff?’ he asked Sharpe. ‘Maize?’
‘Colquhoun says it’s millet,’ Sharpe said, ‘pearl millet.’
Urquhart grunted, then kicked his horse on towards the front of the company. Sharpe cuffed sweat from his eyes. He wore an officer’s red tail coat with the white facings of the 74th. The coat had belonged to a Lieutenant Blaine who had died at Assaye and Sharpe had purchased the coat for a shilling in the auction of dead officers’ effects, then he had clumsily sewn up the bullet hole in the left breast, but no amount of scrubbing had rid the coat of Blaine’s blood which stained the faded red weave black. He wore his old trousers, the ones issued to him when he was a sergeant, red leather riding boots that he had taken from an Arab corpse in Ahmednuggur, and a tasselled red officer’s sash that he had pulled off a corpse at Assaye. For a sword he wore a light cavalry sabre, the same weapon he had used to save Wellesley’s life at the battle of Assaye. He did not like the sabre much. It was clumsy, and the curved blade was never where you thought it was. You struck with the sword, and just when you thought it would bite home, you found that the blade still had six inches to travel. The other officers carried claymores, big, straight-bladed, heavy and lethal, and Sharpe should have equipped himself with one, but he had baulked at the auction prices.
He could have bought every claymore in the auction if he had wished, but he had not wanted to give the impression of being wealthy. Which he was. But a man like Sharpe was not supposed to have money. He was up from the ranks, a common soldier, gutter-born and gutter-bred, but he had hacked down a half-dozen men to save Wellesley’s life and the General had rewarded Sergeant Sharpe by making him into an officer, and Ensign Sharpe was too canny to let his new battalion know that he possessed a king’s fortune. A dead king’s fortune: the jewels he had taken from the Tippoo Sultan in the blood and smoke-stinking Water Gate at Seringapatam.
Would he be more popular if it was known he was rich? He doubted it. Wealth did not give respectability, not unless it was inherited. Besides, it was not poverty that excluded Sharpe from both the officers’ mess and the ranks alike, but rather that he was a stranger. The 74th had taken a beating at Assaye. Not an officer had been left unwounded, and companies that had paraded seventy or eighty strong before the battle now had only forty to fifty men. The battalion had been ripped through hell and back, and its survivors now clung to each other. Sharpe might have been at Assaye, he might even have distinguished himself on the battlefield, but he had not been through the murderous ordeal of the 74th and so he was an outsider.
‘Line to the right!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted, and the company wheeled right and shook itself into a line of two ranks. The ditch had emerged from the millet to join a wide, dry riverbed, and Sharpe looked northwards to see a rill of dirty white gunsmoke on the horizon. Mahratta guns. But a long way away. Now that the battalion was free of the tall crops Sharpe could just detect a small wind. It was not strong enough to cool the heat, but it would waft the gunsmoke slowly away.
‘Halt!’ Urquhart called. ‘Face front!’
The enemy cannon might be far off, but it seemed that the battalion would march straight up the riverbed into the mouths of those guns. But at least the 74th was not alone. The 78th, another Highland battalion, was on their right, and on either side of those two Scottish battalions were long lines of Madrassi sepoys.
Urquhart rode back to Sharpe. ‘Stevenson’s joined.’ The Captain spoke loud enough for the rest of the company to hear. Urquhart was encouraging them by letting them know that the two small British armies had combined. General Wellesley commanded both, though for most of the time he split his forces into two parts, the smaller under Colonel Stevenson, but today the two small parts had combined so that twelve thousand infantry could attack together. But against how many? Sharpe could not see the Mahratta army beyond their guns, but doubtless the bastards were there in force.
‘Which means the 94th’s off to our left somewhere,’ Urquhart added loudly, and some of the men muttered their approval of the news. The 94th was another Scottish regiment, so today there were three Scottish battalions attacking the Mahrattas. Three Scottish and ten sepoy battalions, and most of the Scots reckoned that they could have done the job by themselves. Sharpe reckoned they could too. They may not have liked him much, but he knew they were good soldiers. Tough bastards. He sometimes tried to imagine what it must be like for the Mahrattas to fight against the Scots. Hell, he guessed. Absolute hell. ‘The thing is,’ Colonel McCandless had once told Sharpe, ‘it takes twice as much to kill a Scot as it does to finish off an Englishman.’
Poor McCandless. He had been finished off, shot in the dying moments of Assaye. Any of the enemy might have killed the Colonel, but Sharpe had convinced himself that the traitorous Englishman, William Dodd, had fired the fatal shot. And Dodd was still free, still fighting for the Mahrattas, and Sharpe had sworn over McCandless’s grave that he would take vengeance on the Scotsman’s behalf. He had made the oath as he had dug the Colonel’s grave, getting blisters as he had hacked into the dry soil. McCandless had been a good friend to Sharpe and now, with the Colonel deep buried so that no bird or beast could feast on his corpse, Sharpe felt friendless in this army.
‘Guns!’ A shout sounded behind the 74th. ‘Make way!’
Two batteries of six-pounder galloper guns were being hauled up the dry riverbed to form an artillery line ahead of the infantry. The guns were called gallopers because they were light and were usually hauled by horses, but now they were all harnessed to teams of ten oxen so they plodded rather than galloped. The oxen had painted horns and some had bells about their necks. The heavy guns were all back on the road somewhere, so far back that they would probably be too late to join this day’s party.
The land was more open now. There were a few patches of tall millet ahead, but off to the east there were arable fields and Sharpe watched as the guns headed for that dry grassland. The enemy was watching too, and the first round shots bounced on the grass and ricocheted over the British guns.
‘A few minutes before the gunners bother themselves with us, I fancy,’ Urquhart said, then kicked his right foot out of its stirrup and slid down beside Sharpe. ‘Jock!’ He called a soldier. ‘Hold onto my horse, will you?’ The soldier led the horse off to a patch of grass, and Urquhart jerked his head, inviting Sharpe to follow him out of the company’s earshot. The Captain seemed embarrassed, as was Sharpe, who was not accustomed to such intimacy with Urquhart. ‘D’you use a cigar, Sharpe?’ the Captain asked.
‘Sometimes, sir.’
‘Here.’ Urquhart offered Sharpe a roughly rolled cigar, then struck a light in his tinderbox. He lit his own cigar first, then held the box with its flickering flame to Sharpe. ‘The Major tells me a new draft has arrived in Madras.’
‘That’s good, sir.’
‘It won’t restore our strength, of course, but it’ll help,’ Urquhart said. He was not looking at Sharpe, but staring at the British guns that steadily advanced across the grassland. There were only a dozen of the cannon, far fewer than the Mahratta guns. A shell exploded by one of the ox teams, blasting the beasts with smoke and scraps of turf, and Sharpe expected to see the gun stop as the dying beasts tangled the traces, but the oxen trudged on, miraculously unhurt by the shell’s violence. ‘If they advance too far,’ Urquhart murmured, ‘they’ll become so much scrap metal. Are you happy here, Sharpe?’
‘Happy, sir?’ Sharpe was taken aback by the sudden question.
Urquhart frowned as if he found Sharpe’s response unhelpful. ‘Happy,’ he said again, ‘content?’
‘Not sure a soldier’s meant to be happy, sir.’
‘Not true, not true,’ Urquhart said disapprovingly. He was as tall as Sharpe. Rumour said that Urquhart was a very rich man, but the only sign of it was his uniform, which was cut very elegantly in contrast to Sharpe’s shabby coat. Urquhart rarely smiled, which made it difficult to be easy in his company. Sharpe wondered why the Captain had sought this conversation, which seemed untypical of the unbending Urquhart. Perhaps he was nervous about the imminent battle? It seemed unlikely to Sharpe after Urquhart had endured the cauldron of fire at Assaye, but he could think of no other explanation. ‘A fellow should be content in his work,’ Urquhart said with a flourish of his cigar, ‘and if he ain’t, it’s probably a sign that he’s in the wrong line of business.’
‘Don’t have much work to do, sir,’ Sharpe said, wishing he did not sound so surly.
‘Don’t suppose you do,’ Urquhart said slowly. ‘I do see your meaning. Indeed I do.’ He shuffled his feet in the dust. ‘Company runs itself, I suppose. Colquhoun’s a good fellow, and Sergeant Craig’s showing well, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Sharpe knew he did not need to call Urquhart ‘sir’ all the time, but old habits died hard.
‘They’re both good Calvinists, you see,’ Urquhart said. ‘Makes ’em trustworthy.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said. He was not exactly sure what a Calvinist was, and he was not going to ask. Maybe it was the same as a Freemason, and there were plenty of those in the 74th’s mess, though Sharpe again did not really know what they were. He just knew he was not one of them.
‘Thing is, Sharpe,’ Urquhart went on, though he did not look at Sharpe as he spoke, ‘you’re sitting on a fortune, if you follow me.’
‘A fortune, sir?’ Sharpe asked with some alarm. Had Urquhart somehow smelt out Sharpe’s hoard of emeralds, rubies, diamonds and sapphires?
‘You’re an ensign,’ Urquhart explained, ‘and if you ain’t happy you can always sell your commission. Plenty of fine fellows in Scotland who’ll pay you for the rank. Even some fellows here. I gather the Scotch Brigade has some gentlemen rankers.’
So Urquhart was not nervous about the coming fight, but rather about Sharpe’s reaction to this conversation. The Captain wanted to be rid of Sharpe, and the realization made Sharpe even more awkward. He had wanted to be made an officer so badly, and already he wished he had never dreamed of the promotion. What had he expected? To be slapped on the back and welcomed like a long-lost brother? To be given a company of troops? Urquhart was watching him expectantly, waiting for a response, but Sharpe said nothing.
‘Four hundred pounds, Sharpe,’ Urquhart said. ‘That’s the official rate for an ensign’s commission, but between you and me you can squeeze at least another fifty. Maybe even a hundred! And in guineas. But if you do sell to a ranker here, then make damn sure his note is good.’
Sharpe said nothing. Were there really gentlemen rankers in the 94th? Such men could afford to be officers, and had an officer’s breeding, but until a commission was vacant they served in the ranks, yet ate in the mess. They were neither fish nor fowl. Like Sharpe himself. And any one of them would snap at the chance to buy a commission in the 74th. But Sharpe hardly needed the money. He possessed a fortune already, and if he wanted to leave the army then all he needed to do was resign his commission and walk away. Walk away a rich man.
‘Of course,’ Urquhart went on, oblivious of Sharpe’s thoughts, ‘if the note’s written on a decent army agent then you won’t have any worries. Most of our fellows use John Borrey in Edinburgh, so if you see one of his notes then you can place full trust in it. Borrey’s an honest fellow. Another Calvinist, you see.’
‘And a Freemason, sir?’ Sharpe asked. He was not really sure why he asked, but the question just got blurted out. He supposed he wanted to know if it was the same thing as a Calvinist.
‘I really couldn’t say.’ Urquhart frowned at Sharpe and his voice became colder. ‘The point is, Sharpe, he’s trustworthy.’
Four hundred and fifty guineas, Sharpe thought. It was not to be spat on. It was another small fortune to add to his jewels, and he felt the temptation to accept Urquhart’s advice. He was never going to be welome in the 74th, and with his plunder he could set himself up in England.
‘Coins on the barrel-head,’ Urquhart said. ‘Think on it, Sharpe, think on it. Jock, my horse!’
Sharpe threw away the cigar. His mouth was dry with dust and the smoke was harsh, but as Urquhart mounted his horse he saw the scarcely smoked cigar lying on the ground and gave Sharpe an unfriendly look. For a second it seemed as if the Captain might say something, then he pulled on the reins and spurred away. Bugger it, Sharpe thought. Can’t do a thing right these days.
The Mahratta cannon had got the range of the British galloper guns now and one of their round shot landed plumb on a carriage. One wheel splintered, tipping the six-pounder gun onto its side. The gunners leaped off the limber, but before they could detach the spare wheel, the ox team bolted. They dragged the broken gun back towards the sepoys, leaving a vast plume of dust where the axle boss dragged through the dry soil. The gunners ran to head the oxen off, but then a second team panicked. The beasts had their painted horns down and were galloping away from the bombardment. The Mahratta guns were firing fast now. A round shot slashed into another gun team, spurting ox blood bright into the sky. The enemy guns were big brutes, and with a much longer range than the small British six-pounders. A pair of shells exploded behind the panicked oxen, driving them even faster towards the sepoy battalions on the right of Wellesley’s line. The limbers were bouncing frantically on the uneven ground and every lurch sent shot tumbling or powder spilling. Sharpe saw General Wellesley turn his horse towards the sepoys. He was doubtless shouting at them to open ranks and so allow the bolting oxen to pass through the line, but instead, quite suddenly, the men themselves turned and ran. ‘Jesus!’ Sharpe said aloud, earning himself a reproving look from Sergeant Colquhoun.
Two battalions of the sepoys were fleeing. Sharpe saw the General riding among the fugitives, and he imagined Wellesley shouting at the frightened men to stop and re-form, but instead they kept running towards the millet. They had been panicked by the oxen and by the weight of enemy shot that beat the dry grassland with dust and smoke. The men vanished in the high stalks, leaving nothing behind but a scatter of embarrassed officers and, astonishingly, the two panicked gun teams which had inexplicably stopped short of the millet and now waited patiently for the gunners to catch them.
‘Sit yourselves down!’ Urquhart called to his men, and the company squatted in the dry riverbed. One man took a stump of clay pipe from his pouch and lit it with a tinderbox. The tobacco smoke drifted slowly in the small wind. A few men drank from their canteens, but most were hoarding their water against the dryness that would come when they bit into their cartridges. Sharpe glanced behind, hoping to see the puckalees who brought the battalion water, but there was no sign of them. When he turned back to the north he saw that some enemy cavalry had appeared on the crest, their tall lances making a spiky thicket against the sky. Doubtless the enemy horsemen were tempted to attack the broken British line and so stampede more of the nervous sepoys, but a squadron of British cavalry emerged from a wood with their sabres drawn to threaten the flank of the enemy horsemen. Neither side charged, but instead they just watched each other. The 74th’s pipers had ceased their playing. The remaining British galloper guns were deploying now, facing up the long gentle slope to where the enemy cannon lined the horizon. ‘Are all the muskets loaded?’ Urquhart asked Colquhoun.
‘They’d better be, sir, or I’ll want to know why.’
Urquhart dismounted. He had a dozen full canteens of water tied to his saddle and he unstrung six of them and gave them to the company. ‘Share it out,’ he ordered, and Sharpe wished he had thought to bring some extra water himself. One man cupped some water in his hands and let his dog lap it up. The dog then sat and scratched its fleas while its master lay back and tipped his shako over his eyes.
What the enemy should do, Sharpe thought, is throw their infantry forward. All of it. Send a massive attack across the skyline and down towards the millet. Flood the riverbed with a horde of screaming warriors who could add to the panic and so snatch victory.
But the skyline stayed empty except for the guns and the stalled enemy lancers.
And so the redcoats waited.
Colonel William Dodd, commanding officer of Dodd’s Cobras, spurred his horse to the skyline from where he stared down the slope to see the British force in disarray. It looked to him as though two or more battalions had fled in panic, leaving a gaping hole on the right of the redcoat line. He turned his horse and kicked it to where the Mahratta warlord waited under his banners. Dodd forced his horse through the aides until he reached Prince Manu Bappoo. ‘Throw everything forward, sahib,’ he advised Bappoo, ‘now!’
Manu Bappoo showed no sign of having heard Dodd. The Mahratta commander was a tall and lean man with a long, scarred face and a short black beard. He wore yellow robes, had a silver helmet with a long horse-tail plume, and carried a drawn sword that he claimed to have taken in single combat from a British cavalry officer. Dodd doubted the claim, for the sword was of no pattern that he recognized, but he was not willing to challenge Bappoo directly on the matter. Bappoo was not like most of the Mahratta leaders that Dodd knew. Bappoo might be a prince and the younger brother of the cowardly Rajah of Berar, but he was also a fighter.
‘Attack now!’ Dodd insisted. Much earlier in the day he had advised against fighting the British at all, but now it seemed that his advice had been wrong, for the British assault had dissolved in panic long before it reached musket range. ‘Attack with everything we’ve got, sahib,’ Dodd urged Bappoo.
‘If I throw everything forward, Colonel Dodd,’ Bappoo said in his oddly sibilant voice, ‘then my guns will have to cease fire. Let the British walk into the cannon fire, then we shall release the infantry.’ Bappoo had lost his front teeth to a lance thrust, and hissed his words so that, to Dodd, he sounded like a snake. He even looked reptilian. Maybe it was his hooded eyes, or perhaps it was just his air of silent menace. But at least he could fight. Bappoo’s brother, the Rajah of Berar, had fled before the battle at Assaye, but Bappoo, who had not been present at Assaye, was no coward. Indeed, he could bite like a serpent.
‘The British walked into the cannon fire at Assaye,’ Dodd growled, ‘and there were fewer of them and we had more guns, but still they won.’
Bappoo patted his horse which had shied away from the sound of a nearby cannon. It was a big, black Arab stallion, and its saddle was encrusted with silver. Both horse and saddle had been gifts from an Arabian sheik whose tribesmen sailed to India to serve in Bappoo’s own regiment. They were mercenaries from the pitiless desert who called themselves the Lions of Allah and they were reckoned to be the most savage regiment in all India. The Lions of Allah were arrayed behind Bappoo: a phalanx of dark-faced, white-robed warriors armed with muskets and long, curved scimitars. ‘You truly think we should fight them in front of our guns?’ Bappoo asked Dodd.
‘Muskets will kill more of them than cannon will,’ Dodd said. One of the things he liked about Bappoo was that the man was willing to listen to advice. ‘Meet them halfway, sahib, thin the bastards out with musket fire, then pull back to let the guns finish them with canister. Better still, sahib, put the guns on the flank to rake them.’
‘Too late to do that,’ Bappoo said.
‘Aye, well. Mebbe.’ Dodd sniffed. Why the Indians stubbornly insisted on putting guns in front of infantry, he did not know. Daft idea, it was, but they would do it. He kept telling them to put their cannon between the regiments, so that the gunners could slant their fire across the face of the infantry, but Indian commanders reckoned that the sight of guns directly in front heartened their men. ‘But put some infantry out front, sahib,’ he urged.
Bappoo thought about Dodd’s proposal. He did not much like the Englishman who was a tall, ungainly and sullen man with long yellow teeth and a sarcastic manner, but Bappoo suspected his advice was good. The Prince had never fought the British before, but he was aware that they were somehow different from the other enemies he had slaughtered on a score of battlefields across western India. There was, he understood, a stolid indifference to death in those red ranks that let them march calmly into the fiercest cannonade. He had not seen it happen, but he had heard about it from enough men to credit the reports. Even so he found it hard to abandon the tried and tested methods of battle. It would seem unnatural to advance his infantry in front of the guns, and so render the artillery useless. He had thirty-eight cannon, all of them heavier than anything the British had yet deployed, and his gunners were as well trained as any in the world. Thirty-eight heavy cannon could make a fine slaughter of advancing infantry, yet if what Dodd said was true, then the red-coated ranks would stoically endure the punishment and keep coming. Except some had already run, which suggested they were nervous, so perhaps this was the day when the gods would finally turn against the British. ‘I saw two eagles this morning,’ Bappoo told Dodd, ‘outlined against the sun.’
So bloody what? Dodd thought. The Indians were great ones for auguries, forever staring into pots of oil or consulting holy men or worrying about the errant fall of a trembling leaf, but there was no better augury for victory than the sight of an enemy running away before they even reached the fight. ‘I assume the eagles mean victory?’ Dodd asked politely.
‘They do,’ Bappoo agreed. And the augury suggested the victory would be his whatever tactics he used, which inclined him against trying anything new. Besides, though Prince Manu Bappoo had never fought the British, nor had the British ever faced the Lions of Allah in battle. And the numbers were in Bappoo’s favour. He was barring the British advance with forty thousand men, while the redcoats were not even a third of that number. ‘We shall wait,’ Bappoo decided, ‘and let the enemy get closer.’ He would crush them with cannon fire first, then with musketry. ‘Perhaps I shall release the Lions of Allah when the British are closer, Colonel,’ he said to pacify Dodd.
‘One regiment won’t do it,’ Dodd said, ‘not even your Arabs, sahib. Throw every man forward. The whole line.’
‘Maybe,’ Bappoo said vaguely, though he had no intention of advancing all his infantry in front of the precious guns. He had no need to. The vision of eagles had persuaded him that he would see victory, and he believed the gunners would make that victory. He imagined dead red-coated bodies among the crops. He would avenge Assaye and prove that redcoats could die like any other enemy. ‘To your men, Colonel Dodd,’ he said sternly.
Dodd wheeled his horse and spurred towards the right of the line where his Cobras waited in four ranks. It was a fine regiment, splendidly trained, which Dodd had extricated from the siege of Ahmednuggur and then from the panicked chaos of the defeat at Assaye. Two disasters, yet Dodd’s men had never flinched. The regiment had been a part of Scindia’s army, but after Assaye the Cobras had retreated with the Rajah of Berar’s infantry, and Prince Manu Bappoo, summoned from the north country to take command of Berar’s shattered forces, had persuaded Dodd to change his allegiance from Scindia to the Rajah of Berar. Dodd would have changed allegiance anyway, for the dispirited Scindia was seeking to make peace with the British, but Bappoo had added the inducement of gold, silver and a promotion to colonel. Dodd’s men, mercenaries all, did not care which master they served so long as his purse was deep.
Gopal, Dodd’s second-in-command, greeted the Colonel’s return with a rueful look. ‘He won’t advance?’
‘He wants the guns to do the work.’
Gopal heard the doubt in Dodd’s voice. ‘And they won’t?’
‘They didn’t at Assaye,’ Dodd said sourly. ‘Damn it! We shouldn’t be fighting them here at all! Never give redcoats open ground. We should be making the bastards climb walls or cross rivers.’ Dodd was nervous of defeat, and he had cause to be for the British had put a price on his head. That price was now seven hundred guineas, nearly six thousand rupees, and all of it promised in gold to whoever delivered William Dodd’s body, dead or alive, to the East India Company. Dodd had been a lieutenant in the Company’s army, but he had encouraged his men to murder a goldsmith and, faced with prosecution, Dodd had deserted and taken over a hundred sepoys with him. That had been enough to put a price on his head, but the price rose after Dodd and his treacherous sepoys murdered the Company’s garrison at Chasalgaon. Now Dodd’s body was worth a fortune and William Dodd understood greed well enough to be fearful. If Bappoo’s army collapsed today as the Mahratta army had disintegrated at Assaye, then Dodd would be a fugitive on an open plain dominated by enemy cavalry. ‘We should fight them in the hills,’ he said grimly.
‘Then we should fight them at Gawilghur,’ Gopal said.
‘Gawilghur?’ Dodd asked.
‘It is the greatest of all the Mahratta fortresses, sahib. Not all the armies of Europe could take Gawilghur.’ Gopal saw that Dodd was sceptical of the claim. ‘Not all the armies of the world could take it, sahib,’ he added earnestly. ‘It stands on cliffs that touch the sky, and from its walls men are reduced to the size of lice.’
‘There’s a way in, though,’ Dodd said, ‘there’s always a way in.’
‘There is, sahib, but the way into Gawilghur is across a neck of high rock that leads only to an outer fortress. A man might fight his way through those outer walls, but then he will come to a deep ravine and find the real stronghold lies on the ravine’s far side. There are more walls, more guns, a narrow path, and vast gates barring the way!’ Gopal sighed. ‘I saw it once, years ago, and prayed I would never have to fight an enemy who had taken refuge there.’
Dodd said nothing. He was staring down the gentle slope to where the red-coated infantry waited. Every few seconds a puff of dust showed where a round shot struck the ground.
‘If things go badly today,’ Gopal said quietly, ‘then we shall go to Gawilghur and there we shall be safe. The British can follow us, but they cannot reach us. They will break themselves on Gawilghur’s rocks while we take our rest at the edge of the fortress’s lakes. We shall be in the sky, and they will die beneath us like dogs.’
If Gopal was right then not all the king’s horses nor all the king’s men could touch William Dodd at Gawilghur. But first he had to reach the fortress, and maybe it would not even be necessary, for Prince Manu Bappoo might yet beat the redcoats here. Bappoo believed there was no infantry in India that could stand against his Arab mercenaries.
Away on the plain Dodd could see that the two battalions that had fled into the tall crops were now being brought back into the line. In a moment, he knew, that line would start forward again. ‘Tell our guns to hold their fire,’ he ordered Gopal. Dodd’s Cobras possessed five small cannon of their own, designed to give the regiment close support. Dodd’s guns were not in front of his white-coated men, but away on the right flank from where they could lash a murderous slanting fire across the face of the advancing enemy. ‘Load with canister,’ he ordered, ‘and wait till they’re close.’ The important thing was to win, but if fate decreed otherwise, then Dodd must live to fight again at a place where a man could not be beaten.
At Gawilghur.
The British line at last advanced. From east to west it stretched for three miles, snaking in and out of millet fields, through pastureland and across the wide, dry riverbed. The centre of the line was an array of thirteen red-coated infantry battalions, three of them Scottish and the rest sepoys, while two regiments of cavalry advanced on the left flank and four on the right. Beyond the regular cavalry were two masses of mercenary horsemen who had allied themselves to the British in hope of loot. Drums beat and pipes played. The colours hung above the shakos. A great swathe of crops was trodden flat as the cumbersome line marched north. The British guns opened fire, their small six-pound missiles aimed at the Mahratta guns.
Those Mahratta guns fired constantly. Sharpe, walking behind the left flank of number six company, watched one particular gun which stood just beside a bright clump of flags on the enemy-held skyline. He slowly counted to sixty in his head, then counted it again, and worked out that the gun had managed five shots in two minutes. He could not be certain just how many guns were on the horizon, for the great cloud of powder smoke hid them, but he tried to count the muzzle flashes that appeared as momentary bright flames amidst the grey-white vapour and, as best he could guess, he reckoned there were nearly forty cannon there. Forty times five was what? Two hundred. So a hundred shots a minute were being fired, and each shot, if properly aimed, might kill two men, one in the front rank and one behind. Once the attack was close, of course, the bastards would switch to canister and then every shot could pluck a dozen men out of the line, but for now, as the redcoats silently trudged forward, the enemy was sending round shot down the gentle slope. A good many of these missed. Some screamed overhead and a few bounced over the line, but the enemy gunners were good, and they were lowering their cannon barrels so that the round shot struck the ground well ahead of the redcoat line and, by the time the missile reached the target, it had bounced a dozen times and so struck at waist height or below. Grazing, the gunners called it, and it took skill. If the first graze was too close to the gun then the ball would lose its momentum and do nothing but raise jeers from the redcoats as it rolled to a harmless stop, while if the first graze was too close to the attacking line then the ball would bounce clean over the redcoats. The skill was to skim the ball low enough to be certain of a hit, and all along the line the round shots were taking their toll. Men were plucked back with shattered hips and legs. Sharpe passed one spent cannonball that was sticky with blood and thick with flies, lying twenty paces from the man it had eviscerated. ‘Close up!’ the sergeants shouted, and the file-closers tugged men to fill the gaps. The British guns were firing into the enemy smoke cloud, but their shots seemed to have no effect, and so the guns were ordered farther forward. The ox teams were brought up, the guns were attached to the limbers, and the six-pounders trundled on up the slope.
‘Like ninepins.’ Ensign Venables had appeared at Sharpe’s side. Roderick Venables was sixteen years old and attached to number seven company. He had been the battalion’s most junior officer till Sharpe joined, and Venables had taken it on himself to be a tutor to Sharpe in how officers should behave. ‘They’re bowling us over like ninepins, eh, Richard?’
Before Sharpe could reply a half-dozen men of number six company threw themselves aside as a cannonball bounced hard and low towards them. It whipped harmlessly through the gap they had made. The men laughed at having evaded it, then Sergeant Colquhoun ordered them back into their two ranks.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be on the left of your company?’ Sharpe asked Venables.
‘You’re still thinking like a sergeant, Richard,’ Venables said. ‘Pig-ears doesn’t mind where I am.’ Pig-ears was Captain Lomax, who had earned his nickname not because of any peculiarity about his ears, but because he had a passion for crisply fried pig-ears. Lomax was easy-going, unlike Urquhart who liked everything done strictly according to regulations. ‘Besides,’ Venables went on, ‘there’s damn all to do. The lads know their business.’
‘Waste of time being an ensign,’ Sharpe said.
‘Nonsense! An ensign is merely a colonel in the making,’ Venables said. ‘Our duty, Richard, is to be decorative and stay alive long enough to be promoted. But no one expects us to be useful! Good God! A junior officer being useful? That’ll be the day.’ Venables gave a hoot of laughter. He was a bumptious, vain youth, but one of the few officers in the 74th who offered Sharpe companionship. ‘Did you hear a new draft has come to Madras?’ he asked.
‘Urquhart told me.’
‘Fresh men. New officers. You won’t be junior any more.’
Sharpe shook his head. ‘Depends on the date the new men were commissioned, doesn’t it?’
‘Suppose it does. Quite right. And they must have sailed from Britain long before you got the jump up, eh? So you’ll still be the mess baby. Bad luck, old fellow.’
Old fellow? Quite right, Sharpe thought. He was old. Probably ten years older than Venables, though Sharpe was not exactly sure for no one had ever bothered to note down his birth date. Ensigns were youths and Sharpe was a man.
‘Whoah!’ Venables shouted in delight and Sharpe looked up to see that a round shot had struck the edge of an irrigation canal and bounced vertically upwards in a shower of soil. ‘Pig-ears says he once saw two cannonballs collide in mid-air,’ Venables said. ‘Well, he didn’t actually see it, of course, but he heard it. He says they suddenly appeared in the sky. Bang! Then flopped down.’
‘They’d have shattered and broken up,’ Sharpe said.
‘Not according to Pig-ears,’ Venables insisted. ‘He says they flattened each other.’ A shell exploded ahead of the company, whistling scraps of iron casing overhead. No one was hurt and the files stepped round the smoking fragments. Venables stooped and plucked up a scrap, juggling it because of the heat. ‘Like to have keepsakes,’ he explained, slipping the piece of iron into a pouch. ‘I’ll send it home for my sisters. Why don’t our guns stop and fire?’
‘Still too far away,’ Sharpe said. The advancing line still had half a mile to go and, while the six-pounders could fire at that distance, the gunners must have decided to get really close so that their shots could not miss. Get close, that was what Colonel McCandless had always told Sharpe. It was the secret of battle. Get close before you start slaughtering.
A round shot struck a file in seven company. It was on its first graze, still travelling at blistering speed, and the two men of the file were whipped backwards in a spray of mingling blood. ‘Jesus,’ Venables said in awe. ‘Jesus!’ The corpses were mixed together, a jumble of splintered bones, tangled entrails and broken weapons. A corporal, one of the file-closers, stooped to extricate the men’s pouches and haversacks from the scattered offal. ‘Two more names in the church porch,’ Venables remarked. ‘Who were they, Corporal?’
‘The McFadden brothers, sir.’ The Corporal had to shout to be heard over the roar of the Mahratta guns.
‘Poor bastards,’ Venables said. ‘Still, there are six more. A fecund lady, Rosie McFadden.’
Sharpe wondered what fecund meant, then decided he could guess. Venables, for all his air of carelessness, was looking slightly pale as though the sight of the churned corpses had sickened him. This was his first battle, for he had been sick with the Malabar Itch during Assaye, but the Ensign was forever explaining that he could not be upset by the sight of blood because, from his earliest days, he had assisted his father who was an Edinburgh surgeon, but now he suddenly turned aside, bent over and vomited. Sharpe kept stolidly walking. Some of the men turned at the sound of Venables’s retching.
‘Eyes front!’ Sharpe snarled.
Sergeant Colquhoun gave Sharpe a resentful look. The Sergeant believed that any order that did not come from himself or from Captain Urquhart was an unnecessary order.
Venables caught up with Sharpe. ‘Something I ate.’
‘India does that,’ Sharpe said sympathetically.
‘Not to you.’
‘Not yet,’ Sharpe said and wished he was carrying a musket so he could touch the wooden stock for luck.
Captain Urquhart sheered his horse leftwards. ‘To your company, Mister Venables.’
Venables scuttled away and Urquhart rode back to the company’s right flank without acknowledging Sharpe’s presence. Major Swinton, who commanded the battalion while Colonel Wallace had responsibility for the brigade, galloped his horse behind the ranks. The hooves thudded heavily on the dry earth. ‘All well?’ Swinton called to Urquhart.
‘All well.’
‘Good man!’ Swinton spurred on.
The sound of the enemy guns was constant now, like thunder that did not end. A thunder that pummelled the ears and almost drowned out the skirl of the pipers. Earth fountained where round shot struck. Sharpe, glancing to his left, could see a scatter of bodies lying in the wake of the long line. There was a village there. How the hell had he walked straight past a village without even seeing it? It was not much of a place, just a huddle of reed-thatched hovels with a few patchwork gardens protected by cactus-thorn hedges, but he had still walked clean past without noticing its existence. He could see no one there. The villagers had too much sense. They would have packed their few pots and pans and buggered off as soon as the first soldier appeared near their fields. A Mahratta round shot smacked into one of the hovels, scattering reed and dry timber, and leaving the sad roof sagging.
Sharpe looked the other way and saw enemy cavalry advancing in the distance, then he glimpsed the blue and yellow uniforms of the British 19th Dragoons trotting to meet them. The late-afternoon sunlight glittered on drawn sabres. He thought he heard a trumpet call, but maybe he imagined it over the hammering of the guns. The horsemen vanished behind a stand of trees. A cannonball screamed overhead, a shell exploded to his left, then the 74th’s Light Company edged inwards to give an ox team room to pass back southwards. The British cannon had been dragged well ahead of the attacking line where they had now been turned and deployed. Gunners rammed home shot, pushed priming quills into touch-holes, stood back. The sound of the guns crashed across the field, blotting the immediate view with grey-white smoke and filling the air with the nauseous stench of rotted eggs.
The drummers beat on, timing the long march north. For the moment it was a battle of artillerymen, the puny British six-pounders firing into the smoke cloud where the bigger Mahratta guns pounded at the advancing redcoats. Sweat trickled down Sharpe’s belly, it stung his eyes and it dripped from his nose. Flies buzzed by his face. He pulled the sabre free and found that its handle was slippery with perspiration, so he wiped it and his right hand on the hem of his red coat. Suddenly he badly wanted to piss, but this was not the time to stop and unbutton breeches. Hold it, he told himself, till the bastards are beaten. Or piss in your pants, he told himself, because in this heat no one would know it from sweat and it would dry quickly enough. Might smell, though. Better to wait. And if any of the men knew he had pissed his pants he would never live it down. Pisspants Sharpe. A ball thumped overhead, so close that its passage rocked Sharpe’s shako. A fragment of something whirred to his left. A man was on the ground, vomiting blood. A dog barked as another tugged blue guts from an opened belly. The beast had both paws on the corpse to give its tug purchase. A file-closer kicked the dog away, but as soon as the man was gone the dog ran back to the body. Sharpe wished he could have a good wash. He knew he was lousy, but then everyone was lousy. Even General Wellesley was probably lousy. Sharpe looked eastwards and saw the General spurring up behind the kilted 78th. Sharpe had been Wellesley’s orderly at Assaye and as a result he knew all the staff officers who rode behind the General. They had been much friendlier than the 74th’s officers, but then they had not been expected to treat Sharpe as an equal.
Bugger it, he thought. Maybe he should take Urquhart’s advice. Go home, take the cash, buy an inn and hang the sabre over the serving hatch. Would Simone Joubert go to England with him? She might like running an inn. The Buggered Dream, he could call it, and he would charge army officers twice the real price for any drink.
The Mahratta guns suddenly went silent, at least those that were directly ahead of the 74th, and the change in the battle’s noise made Sharpe peer ahead into the smoke cloud that hung over the crest just a quarter-mile away. More smoke wreathed the 74th, but that was from the British guns. The enemy gun smoke was clearing, carried northwards on the small wind, but there was nothing there to show why the guns at the centre of the Mahratta line had ceased fire. Perhaps the buggers had run out of ammunition. Some hope, he thought, some bloody hope. Or perhaps they were all reloading with canister to give the approaching redcoats a rajah’s welcome.
God, but he needed a piss and so he stopped, tucked the sabre into his armpit, then fumbled with his buttons. One came away. He swore, stooped to pick it up, then stood and emptied his bladder onto the dry ground. Then Urquhart was wheeling his horse. ‘Must you do that now, Mister Sharpe?’ he asked irritably.
Yes, sir, three bladders full, sir, and damn your bloody eyes, sir. ‘Sorry, sir,’ Sharpe said instead. So maybe proper officers didn’t piss? He sensed the company was laughing at him and he ran to catch up, fiddling with his buttons. Still there was no gunfire from the Mahratta centre. Why not? But then a cannon on one of the enemy flanks fired slantwise across the field and the ball grazed right through number six company, ripping a front rank man’s feet off and slashing a man behind through the knees. Another soldier was limping, his leg deeply pierced by a splinter from his neighbour’s bone. Corporal McCallum, one of the file-closers, tugged men into the gap while a piper ran across to bandage the wounded men. The injured would be left where they fell until after the battle when, if they still lived, they would be carried to the surgeons. And if they survived the knives and saws they would be shipped home, good for nothing except to be a burden on the parish. Or maybe the Scots did not have parishes; Sharpe was not sure, but he was certain the buggers had workhouses. Everyone had workhouses and paupers’ graveyards. Better to be buried out here in the black earth of enemy India than condemned to the charity of a workhouse.
Then he saw why the guns in the centre of the Mahratta line had ceased fire. The gaps between the guns were suddenly filled with men running forward. Men in long robes and headdresses. They streamed between the gaps, then joined together ahead of the guns beneath long green banners that trailed from silver-topped poles. Arabs, Sharpe thought. He had seen some at Ahmednuggur, but most of those had been dead. He remembered Sevajee, the Mahratta who fought alongside Colonel McCandless, saying that the Arab mercenaries were the best of all the enemy troops.
Now there was a horde of desert warriors coming straight for the 74th and their kilted neighbours.
The Arabs came in a loose formation. Their guns had decorated stocks that glinted in the sunlight, while curved swords were scabbarded at their waists. They came almost jauntily, as though they had utter confidence in their ability. How many were there? A thousand? Sharpe reckoned at least a thousand. Their officers were on horseback. They did not advance in ranks and files, but in a mass, and some, the bravest men, ran ahead as if eager to start the killing. The great robed mass was chanting a shrill war cry, while in its centre drummers were beating huge instruments that pulsed a belly-thumping beat across the field. Sharpe watched the nearest British gun load with canister. The green banners were being waved from side to side so that the silk trails snaked over the warriors’ heads. Something was written on the banners, but it was in no script that Sharpe recognized.
‘74th!’ Major Swinton called. ‘Halt!’
The 78th had also halted. The two Highland battalions, both under strength after their losses at Assaye, were taking the full brunt of the Arab charge. The rest of the battlefield seemed to melt away. All Sharpe could see was the robed men coming so eagerly towards him.
‘Make ready!’ Swinton called.
‘Make ready!’ Urquhart echoed.
‘Make ready!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. The men raised their muskets chest high and pulled back the heavy hammers.
Sharpe pushed into the gap between number six company and its left-hand neighbour, number seven. He wished he had a musket. The sabre felt flimsy.
‘Present!’ Swinton called.
‘Present!’ Colquhoun echoed, and the muskets went into the men’s shoulders. Heads bowed to peer down the barrels’ lengths.
‘You’ll fire low, boys,’ Urquhart said from behind the line, ‘you’ll fire low. To your place, Mister Sharpe.’
Bugger it, Sharpe thought, another bloody mistake. He stepped back behind the company where he was supposed to make sure no one tried to run.
The Arabs were close. Less than a hundred paces to go now. Some had their swords drawn. The air, miraculously smoke-free, was filled with their blood-chilling war cry which was a weird ululating sound. Not far now, not far at all. The Scotsmen’s muskets were angled slightly down. The kick drove the barrels upwards, and untrained troops, not ready for the heavy recoil, usually fired high. But this volley would be lethal.
‘Wait, boys, wait,’ Pig-ears called to number seven company. Ensign Venables slashed at weeds with his claymore. He looked nervous.
Urquhart had drawn a pistol. He dragged the cock back, and his horse’s ears flicked back as the pistol’s spring clicked.
Arab faces screamed hatred. Their great drums were thumping. The redcoat line, just two ranks deep, looked frail in front of the savage charge.
Major Swinton took a deep breath. Sharpe edged towards the gap again. Bugger it, he wanted to be in the front line where he could kill. It was too nerve-racking behind the line.
‘74th!’ Swinton shouted, then he paused. Men’s fingers curled about their triggers.
Let them get close, Swinton was thinking, let them get close.
Then kill them.
Prince Manu Bappoo’s brother, the Rajah of Berar, was not at the village of Argaum where the Lions of Allah now charged to destroy the heart of the British attack. The Rajah did not like battle. He liked the idea of conquest, he loved to see prisoners paraded and he craved the loot that filled his storehouses, but he had no belly for fighting.
Manu Bappoo had no such qualms. He was thirty-five years old, he had fought since he was fifteen, and all he asked was the chance to go on fighting for another twenty or forty years. He considered himself a true Mahratta; a pirate, a rogue, a thief in armour, a looter, a pestilence, a successor to the generations of Mahrattas who had dominated western India by pouring from their hill fastnesses to terrorize the plump princedoms and luxurious kingdoms in the plains. A quick sword, a fast horse and a wealthy victim, what more could a man want? And so Bappoo had ridden deep and far to bring plunder and ransom back to the small land of Berar.
But now all the Mahratta lands were threatened. One British army was conquering their northern territory, and another was here in the south. It was this southern redcoat force that had broken the troops of Scindia and Berar at Assaye, and the Rajah of Berar had summoned his brother to bring his Lions of Allah to claw and kill the invader. This was not a task for horsemen, the Rajah had warned Bappoo, but for infantry. It was a task for the Arabs.
But Bappoo knew this was a task for horsemen. His Arabs would win, of that he was sure, but they could only break the enemy on the immediate battlefield. He had thought to let the British advance right up to his cannon, then release the Arabs, but a whim, an intimation of triumph, had decided him to advance the Arabs beyond the guns. Let the Lions of Allah loose on the enemy’s centre and, when that centre was broken, the rest of the British line would scatter and run in panic, and that was when the Mahratta horsemen would have their slaughter. It was already early evening, and the sun was sinking in the reddened west, but the sky was cloudless and Bappoo was anticipating the joys of a moonlit hunt across the flat Deccan Plain. ‘We shall gallop through blood,’ he said aloud, then led his aides towards his army’s right flank so that he could charge past his Arabs when they had finished their fight. He would let his victorious Lions of Allah pillage the enemy’s camp while he led his horsemen on a wild victorious gallop through the moon-touched darkness.
And the British would run. They would run like goats from the tiger. But the tiger was clever. He had only kept a small number of horsemen with the army, a mere fifteen thousand, while the greater part of his cavalry had been sent southwards to raid the enemy’s long supply roads. The British would flee straight into those men’s sabres.
Bappoo trotted his horse just behind the right flank of the Lions of Allah. The British guns were firing canister and Bappoo saw how the ground beside his Arabs was being flecked by the blasts of shot, and he saw the robed men fall, but he saw how the others did not hesitate, but hurried on towards the pitifully thin line of redcoats. The Arabs were screaming defiance, the guns were hammering, and Bappoo’s soul soared with the music. There was nothing finer in life, he thought, than this sensation of imminent victory. It was like a drug that fired the mind with noble visions.
He might have spared a moment’s thought and wondered why the British did not use their muskets. They were holding their fire, waiting until every shot could kill, but the Prince was not worrying about such trifles. In his dreams he was scattering a broken army, slashing at them with his tulwar, carving a bloody path south. A fast sword, a quick horse and a broken enemy. It was the Mahratta paradise, and the Lions of Allah were opening its gates so that this night Manu Bappoo, Prince, warrior and dreamer, could ride into legend.
CHAPTER TWO
‘Fire!’ Swinton shouted.
The two Highland regiments fired together, close to a thousand muskets flaming to make an instant hedge of thick smoke in front of the battalions. The Arabs vanished behind the smoke as the redcoats reloaded. Men bit into the grease-coated cartridges, tugged ramrods that they whirled in the air before rattling them down into the barrels. The churning smoke began to thin, revealing small fires where the musket wadding burned in the dry grass.
‘Platoon fire!’ Major Swinton shouted. ‘From the flanks!’
‘Light Company!’ Captain Peters called on the left flank. ‘First platoon, fire!’
‘Kill them! Your mothers are watching!’ Colonel Harness shouted. The Colonel of the 78th was mad as a hatter and half delirious with a fever, but he had insisted on advancing behind his kilted Highlanders. He was being carried in a palanquin and, as the platoon fire began, he struggled from the litter to join the battle, his only weapon a broken riding crop. He had been recently bled, and a stained bandage trailed from a coat sleeve. ‘Give them a flogging, you dogs! Give them a flogging.’
The two battalions fired in half companies now, each half company firing two or three seconds after the neighbouring platoon so that the volleys rolled in from the outer wings of each battalion, met in the centre and then started again at the flanks. Clockwork fire, Sharpe called it, and it was the result of hours of tedious practice. Beyond the battalions’ flanks the six-pounders bucked back with each shot, their wheels jarring up from the turf as the canisters ripped apart at the muzzles. Wide swathes of burning grass lay under the cannon smoke. The gunners were working in shirtsleeves, swabbing, ramming, then ducking aside as the guns pitched back again. Only the gun commanders, most of them sergeants, seemed to look at the enemy, and then only when they were checking the alignment of the cannon. The other gunners fetched shot and powder, sometimes heaved on a handspike or pushed on the wheels as the gun was relaid, then swabbed and loaded again. ‘Water!’ a corporal shouted, holding up a bucket to show that the swabbing water was gone.
‘Fire low! Don’t waste your powder!’ Major Swinton called as he pushed his horse into the gap between the centre companies. He peered at the enemy through the smoke. Behind him, next to the 74th’s twin flags, General Wellesley and his aides also stared at the Arabs beyond the smoke clouds. Colonel Wallace, the brigade commander, trotted his horse to the battalion’s flank. He called something to Sharpe as he went by, but his words were lost in the welter of gunfire, then his horse half spun as a bullet struck its haunch. Wallace steadied the beast, looked back at the wound, but the horse did not seem badly hurt. Colonel Harness was thrashing one of the native palanquin bearers who had been trying to push the Colonel back into the curtained vehicle. One of Wellesley’s aides rode back to quieten the Colonel and to persuade him to go southwards.
‘Steady now!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. ‘Aim low!’
The Arab charge had been checked, but not defeated. The first volley must have hit the attackers cruelly hard for Sharpe could see a line of bodies lying on the turf. The bodies looked red and white, blood against robes, but behind that twitching heap the Arabs were firing back to make their own ragged cloud of musket smoke. They fired haphazardly, untrained in platoon volleys, but they reloaded swiftly and their bullets were striking home. Sharpe heard the butcher’s sound of metal hitting meat, saw men hurled backwards, saw some fall. The file-closers hauled the dead out of the line and tugged the living closer together. ‘Close up! Close up!’ The pipes played on, adding their defiant music to the noise of the guns. Private Hollister was hit in the head and Sharpe saw a cloud of white flour drift away from the man’s powdered hair as his hat fell off. Then blood soaked the whitened hair and Hollister fell back with glassy eyes.
‘One platoon, fire!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He was so short-sighted that he could barely see the enemy, but it hardly mattered. No one could see much in the smoke, and all that was needed was a steady nerve and Colquhoun was not a man to panic.
‘Two platoon, fire!’ Urquhart shouted.
‘Christ Jesus!’ a man called close to Sharpe. He reeled backwards, his musket falling, then he twisted and dropped to his knees. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,’ he moaned, clutching at his throat. Sharpe could see no wound there, but then he saw blood seeping down the man’s grey trousers. The dying man looked up at Sharpe, tears showed at his eyes, then he pitched forward.
Sharpe picked up the fallen musket, then turned the man over to unstrap the cartridge box. The man was dead, or so near as to make no difference.
‘Flint,’ a front rank man called. ‘I need a flint!’
Sergeant Colquhoun elbowed through the ranks, holding out a spare flint. ‘And where’s your own spare flint, John Hammond?’
‘Christ knows, Sergeant.’
‘Then ask Him, for you’re on a charge.’
A man swore as a bullet tore up his left arm. He backed out of the ranks, the arm hanging useless and dripping blood.
Sharpe pushed into the gap between the companies, put the musket to his shoulder and fired. The kick slammed into his shoulder, but it felt good. Something to do at last. He dropped the butt, fished a cartridge from the pouch and bit off the top, tasting the salt in the gunpowder. He rammed, fired again, loaded again. A bullet made an odd fluttering noise as it went past his ear, then another whined overhead. He waited for the rolling volley to come down the battalion’s face, then fired with the other men of six company’s first platoon. Drop the butt, new cartridge, bite, prime, pour, ram, ramrod back in the hoops, gun up, butt into the bruised shoulder and haul back the doghead, Sharpe did it as efficiently as any other man, but he had been trained to it. That was the difference, he thought grimly. He was trained, but no one trained the officers. They had bugger all to do, so why train them? Ensign Venables was right, the only duty of a junior officer was to stay alive, but Sharpe could not resist a fight. Besides, it felt better to stand in the ranks and fire into the enemy’s smoke than stand behind the company and do nothing.
The Arabs were fighting well. Damned well. Sharpe could not remember any other enemy who had stood and taken so much concentrated platoon fire. Indeed, the robed men were trying to advance, but they were checked by the ragged heap of bodies that had been their front ranks. How many damned ranks had they? A dozen? He watched a green flag fall, then the banner was picked up and waved in the air. Their big drums still beat, making a menacing sound to match the redcoats’ pipers. The Arab guns had unnaturally long barrels that spewed dirty smoke and licking tongues of flame. Another bullet whipped close enough to Sharpe to bat his face with a gust of warm air. He fired again, then a hand seized his coat collar and dragged him violently backwards.
‘Your place, Ensign Sharpe,’ Captain Urquhart said vehemently, ‘is here! Behind the line!’ The Captain was mounted and his horse had inadvertently stepped back as Urquhart seized Sharpe’s collar, and the weight of the horse had made the Captain’s tug far more violent than he had intended. ‘You’re not a private any longer,’ he said, steadying Sharpe who had almost been pulled off his feet.
‘Of course, sir,’ Sharpe said, and he did not meet Urquhart’s gaze, but stared bitterly ahead. He was blushing, knowing he had been reprimanded in front of the men. Damn it to hell, he thought.
‘Prepare to charge!’ Major Swinton called.
‘Prepare to charge!’ Captain Urquhart echoed, spurring his horse away from Sharpe.
The Scotsmen pulled out their bayonets and twisted them onto the lugs of their musket barrels.
‘Empty your guns!’ Swinton called, and those men who were still loaded raised their muskets and fired a last volley.
‘74th!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Forward! I want to hear some pipes! Let me hear pipes!’
‘Go on, Swinton, go on!’ Wallace shouted. There was no need to encourage the battalion forward, for it was going willingly, but the Colonel was excited. He drew his claymore and pushed his horse into the rear rank of number seven company. ‘Onto them, lads! Onto them!’ The redcoats marched forward, trampling through the scatter of little fires started by their musket wadding.
The Arabs seemed astonished that the redcoats were advancing. Some drew their own bayonets, while others pulled long curved swords from scabbards.
‘They won’t stand!’ Wellesley shouted. ‘They won’t stand.’
‘They bloody well will,’ a man grunted.
‘Go on!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Go on!’ And the 74th, released to the kill, ran the last few yards and jumped up onto the heaps of dead before slashing home with their bayonets. Off to the right the 78th were also charging home. The British cannon gave a last violent blast of canister, then fell silent as the Scots blocked the gunners’ aim.
Some of the Arabs wanted to fight, others wanted to retreat, but the charge had taken them by surprise and the rearward ranks were still not aware of the danger and so pressed forward, forcing the reluctant men at the front onto the Scottish bayonets. The Highlanders screamed as they killed. Sharpe still held the unloaded musket as he closed up on the rear rank. He had no bayonet and was wondering whether he should draw his sabre when a tall Arab suddenly hacked down a front rank man with a scimitar, then pushed forward to slash with the reddened blade at the second man in the file. Sharpe reversed the musket, swung it by the barrel and hammered the heavy stock down onto the swordsman’s head. The Arab sank down and a bayonet struck into his spine so that he twisted like a speared eel. Sharpe hit him on the head again, kicked him for good measure, then shoved on. Men were shouting, screaming, stabbing, spitting, and, right in the face of number six company, a knot of robed men were slashing with scimitars as though they could defeat the 74th by themselves. Urquhart pushed his horse up against the rear rank and fired his pistol. One of the Arabs was plucked back and the others stepped away at last, all except one short man who screamed in fury and slashed with his long curved blade. The front rank parted to let the scimitar cut the air between two files, then the second rank also split apart to allow the short man to come screaming through on his own, with only Sharpe in front.
‘He’s only a lad!’ a Scottish voice shouted in warning as the ranks closed again.
It was not a short man at all, but a boy. Maybe only twelve or thirteen years old, Sharpe guessed as he fended off the scimitar with the musket barrel. The boy thought he could win the battle single-handed and leaped at Sharpe, who parried the sword and stepped back to show he did not want to fight. ‘Put it down, lad,’ he said.
The boy spat, leaped and cut again. Sharpe parried a third time, then reversed the musket and slammed its stock into the side of the boy’s head. For a second the lad stared at Sharpe with an astonished look, then he crumpled to the turf.
‘They’re breaking!’ Wellesley shouted from somewhere close by. ‘They’re breaking!’
Colonel Wallace was in the front rank now, slicing down with his claymore. He hacked like a farmer, blow after blow. He had lost his cocked hat and his bald pate gleamed in the late sunlight. There was blood on his horse’s flank, and more blood spattered on the white turnbacks of his coat tails. Then the pressure of the enemy collapsed and the horse twisted into the gap and Wallace spurred it on. ‘Come on, boys! Come on!’ A man stooped to rescue Wallace’s cocked hat. Its plumes were blood-soaked.
The Arabs were fleeing. ‘Go!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Go! Keep ’em running! Go!’
A man paused to search a corpse’s robes and Sergeant Colquhoun dragged the man up and pushed him on. The file-closers were making sure none of the enemy bodies left behind the Scottish advance were dangerous. They kicked swords and muskets out of injured men’s hands, prodded apparently unwounded bodies with bayonets and killed any man who showed a spark of fight. Two pipers were playing their ferocious music, driving the Scots up the gentle slope where the big Arab drums had been abandoned. Man after man speared the drumskins with bayonets as they passed.
‘Forward on! Forward on!’ Urquhart bellowed as though he were on a hunting field.
‘To the guns!’ Wellesley called.
‘Keep going!’ Sharpe bellowed at some laggards. ‘Go on, you bastards, go on!’
The enemy gun line was at the crest of the low rise, but the Mahratta gunners dared not fire because the remnants of the Lions of Allah were between them and the redcoats. The gunners hesitated for a few seconds, then decided the day was lost and fled.
‘Take the guns!’ Wellesley called.
Colonel Wallace spurred among the fleeing enemy, striking down with the claymore, then reined in beside a gaudily painted eighteen-pounder. ‘Come on, lads! Come on! To me!’
The Scotsmen reached the guns. Most had reddened bayonets, all had sweat streaks striping their powder-blackened faces. Some began rifling the limbers where gunners stored food and valuables.
‘Load!’ Urquhart called. ‘Load!’
‘Form ranks!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He ran forward and tugged men away from the limbers. ‘Leave the carts alone, boys! Form ranks! Smartly now!’
Sharpe, for the first time, could see down the long reverse slope. Three hundred paces away were more infantry, a great long line of it massed in a dozen ranks, and beyond that were some walled gardens and the roofs of a village. The shadows were very long for the sun was blazing just above the horizon. The Arabs were running towards the stationary infantry.
‘Where are the galloper guns?’ Wallace roared, and an aide spurred back down the slope to fetch the gunners.
‘Give them a volley, Swinton!’ Wellesley called.
The range was very long for a musket, but Swinton hammered the battalion’s fire down the slope, and maybe it was that volley, or perhaps it was the sight of the defeated Arabs that panicked the great mass of infantry. For a few seconds they stood under their big bright flags and then, like sand struck by a flood, they dissolved into a rabble.
Cavalry trumpets blared. British and sepoy horsemen charged forward with sabres, while the irregular horse, those mercenaries who had attached themselves to the British for the chance of loot, lowered their lances and raked back their spurs.
It was a cavalryman’s paradise, a broken enemy with nowhere to hide. Some Mahrattas sought shelter in the village, but most ran past it, throwing down their weapons as the terrible horsemen streamed into the fleeing horde with sabres and lances slicing and thrusting.
‘Puckalees!’ Urquhart shouted, standing in his stirrups to look for the men and boys who brought water to the troops. There was none in sight and the 74th was parched, the men’s thirst made acute by the saltpetre in the gunpowder which had fouled their mouths. ‘Where the …?’ Urquhart swore, then frowned at Sharpe. ‘Mister Sharpe? I’ll trouble you to find our puckalees.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, not bothering to hide his disappointment at the order. He had hoped to find some loot when the 74th searched the village, but instead he was to be a fetcher of water. He threw down the musket and walked back through the groaning, slow-moving litter of dead and dying men. Dogs were scavenging among the bodies.
‘Forward now!’ Wellesley called behind Sharpe, and the whole long line of British infantrymen advanced under their flags towards the village. The cavalry was already far beyond the houses, killing with abandon and driving the fugitives ever farther northwards.
Sharpe walked on southwards. He suspected the puckalees were still back with the baggage, which would mean a three-mile walk and, by the time he had found them, the battalion would have slaked its thirst from the wells in the village. Bugger it, he thought. Even when they gave him a job it was a useless errand.
A shout made him look to his right where a score of native cavalrymen were slicing apart the robes of the dead Arabs in search of coins and trinkets. The scavengers were Mahrattas who had sold their services to the British and Sharpe guessed that the horsemen had not joined the pursuit for fear of being mistaken for the defeated enemy. One of the Arabs had only been feigning death and now, despite being hugely outnumbered, defied his enemies with a pistol that he dragged from beneath his robe. The taunting cavalrymen had made a ring and the Arab kept twisting around to find that his tormentor had skipped away before he could aim the small gun.
The Arab was a short man, then he turned again and Sharpe saw the bruised, bloody face and recognized the child who had charged the 74th so bravely. The boy was doomed, for the ring of cavalrymen was slowly closing for the kill. One of the Mahrattas would probably die, or at least be horribly injured by the pistol ball, but that was part of the game. The boy had one shot, they had twenty. A man prodded the boy in the back with a lance point, making him whip round, but the man with the lance had stepped fast back and another man slapped the boy’s headdress with a tulwar. The other cavalrymen laughed.
Sharpe reckoned the boy deserved better. He was a kid, nothing more, but brave as a tiger, and so he crossed to the cavalrymen. ‘Let him be!’ he called.
The boy turned towards Sharpe. If he recognized that the British officer was trying to save his life he showed no sign of gratitude; instead he lifted the pistol so that its barrel pointed at Sharpe’s face. The cavalrymen, reckoning this was even better sport, urged him to shoot and one of them approached the boy with a raised tulwar, but did not strike. He would let the boy shoot Sharpe, then kill him. ‘Let him be,’ Sharpe said. ‘Stand back!’ The Mahrattas grinned, but did not move. Sharpe could take the single bullet, then they would tear the boy into sabre-shredded scraps of meat.
The boy took a step towards Sharpe. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, lad,’ Sharpe said. The boy obviously did not speak English, but Sharpe’s tone was soothing. It made no difference. The lad’s hand was shaking and he looked frightened, but defiance had been bred into his bone. He knew he would die, but he would take an enemy soul with him and so he nerved himself to die well. ‘Put the gun down,’ Sharpe said softly. He was wishing he had not intervened now. The kid was just distraught enough and mad enough to fire, and Sharpe knew he could do nothing about it except run away and thus expose himself to the jeers of the Mahrattas. He was close enough now to see the scratches on the pistol’s blackened muzzle where the rammer had scraped the metal. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, boy,’ he said again. Still the boy pointed the pistol. Sharpe knew he should turn and run, but instead he took another pace forward. Just one more and he reckoned he would be close enough to swat the gun aside.
Then the boy shouted something in Arabic, something about Allah, and pulled the trigger.
The hammer did not move. The boy looked startled, then pulled the trigger again.
Sharpe began laughing. The expression of woe on the child’s face was so sudden, and so unfeigned, that Sharpe could only laugh. The boy looked as if he was about to cry.
The Mahratta behind the boy swung his tulwar. He reckoned he could slice clean through the boy’s grubby headdress and decapitate him, but Sharpe had taken the extra step and now seized the boy’s hand and tugged him into his belly. The sword hissed an inch behind the boy’s neck. ‘I said to leave him alone!’ Sharpe said. ‘Or do you want to fight me instead?’
‘None of us,’ a calm voice said behind Sharpe, ‘wants to fight Ensign Sharpe.’
Sharpe turned. One of the horsemen was still mounted, and it was this man who had spoken. He was dressed in a tattered European uniform jacket of green cloth hung with small silver chains, and he had a lean scarred face with a nose as hooked as Sir Arthur Wellesley’s. He now grinned down at Sharpe.
‘Syud Sevajee,’ Sharpe said.
‘I never did congratulate you on your promotion,’ Sevajee said, and leaned down to offer Sharpe his hand.
Sharpe shook it. ‘It was McCandless’s doing,’ he said.
‘No,’ Sevajee disagreed, ‘it was yours.’ Sevajee, who led this band of horsemen, waved his men away from Sharpe, then looked down at the boy who struggled in Sharpe’s grip. ‘You really want to save that little wretch’s life?’
‘Why not?’
‘A tiger cub plays like a kitten,’ Sevajee said, ‘but it still grows into a tiger and one day it eats you.’
‘This one’s no kitten,’ Sharpe said, thumping the boy on the ear to stop his struggles.
Sevajee spoke in quick Arabic and the boy went quiet. ‘I told him you saved his life,’ Sevajee explained to Sharpe, ‘and that he is now beholden to you.’ Sevajee spoke to the boy again who, after a shy look at Sharpe, answered. ‘His name’s Ahmed,’ Sevajee said, ‘and I told him you were a great English lord who commands the lives and deaths of a thousand men.’
‘You told him what?’
‘I told him you’d beat him bloody if he disobeys you,’ Sevajee said, looking at his men who, denied their entertainment, had gone back to looting the dead. ‘You like being an officer?’ he asked Sharpe.
‘I hate it.’
Sevajee smiled, revealing red-stained teeth. ‘McCandless thought you would, but didn’t know how to curb your ambition.’ Sevajee slid down from his saddle. ‘I am sorry McCandless died,’ the Indian said.
‘Me too.’
‘You know who killed him?’
‘I reckon it was Dodd.’
Sevajee nodded. ‘Me too.’ Syud Sevajee was a high-born Mahratta, the eldest son of one of the Rajah of Berar’s warlords, but a rival in the Rajah’s service had murdered his father, and Sevajee had been seeking revenge ever since. If that revenge meant marching with the enemy British, then that was a small price to pay for family pride. Sevajee had ridden with Colonel McCandless when the Scotsman had pursued Dodd, and thus he had met Sharpe. ‘Beny Singh was not with the enemy today,’ he told Sharpe.
Sharpe had to think for a few seconds before remembering that Beny Singh was the man who had poisoned Sevajee’s father. ‘How do you know?’
‘His banner wasn’t among the Mahratta flags. Today we faced Manu Bappoo, the Rajah’s brother. He’s a better man than the Rajah, but he refuses to take the throne for himself. He’s also a better soldier than the rest, but not good enough, it seems. Dodd was there.’
‘He was?’
‘He got away.’ Sevajee turned and gazed northwards. ‘And I know where they’re going.’
‘Where?’
‘To Gawilghur,’ Sevajee said softly, ‘to the sky fort.’
‘Gawilghur?’
‘I grew up there.’ Sevajee spoke softly, still gazing at the hazed northern horizon. ‘My father was Killadar of Gawilghur. It was a post of honour, Sharpe, for it is our greatest stronghold. It is the fortress in the sky, the impregnable refuge, the place that has never fallen to our enemies, and Beny Singh is now its killadar. Somehow we shall have to get inside, you and I. And I shall kill Singh and you will kill Dodd.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Sharpe said.
‘No.’ Sevajee gave Sharpe a sour glance. ‘You’re here, Ensign, because you British are greedy.’ He looked at the Arab boy and asked a question. There was a brief conversation, then Sevajee looked at Sharpe again. ‘I have told him he is to be your servant, and that you will beat him to death if he steals from you.’
‘I wouldn’t do that!’ Sharpe protested.
‘I would,’ Sevajee said, ‘and he believes you would, but it still won’t stop him thieving from you. Better to kill him now.’ He grinned, then hauled himself into his saddle. ‘I shall look for you at Gawilghur, Mister Sharpe.’
‘I shall look for you,’ Sharpe said.
Sevajee spurred away and Sharpe crouched to look at his new servant. Ahmed was as thin as a half-drowned cat. He wore dirty robes and a tattered headdress secured by a loop of frayed rope that was stained with blood, evidently where Sharpe’s blow with the musket had caught him during the battle. But he had bright eyes and a defiant face, and though his voice had not yet broken he was braver than many full-grown men. Sharpe unslung his canteen and pushed it into the boy’s hand, first taking away the broken pistol that he tossed away. ‘Drink up, you little bugger,’ Sharpe said, ‘then come for a walk.’
The boy glanced up the hill, but his army was long gone. It had vanished into the evening beyond the crest and was now being pursued by vengeful cavalry. He said something in Arabic, drank what remained of Sharpe’s water, then offered a grudging nod of thanks.
So Sharpe had a servant, a battle had been won, and now he walked south in search of puckalees.
Colonel William Dodd watched the Lions of Allah break, and spat with disgust. It had been foolish to fight here in the first place and now the foolery was turning to disaster. ‘Jemadar!’ he called.
‘Sahib?’
‘We’ll form square. Put our guns in the centre. And the baggage.’
‘Families, sahib?’
‘Families too.’ Dodd watched Manu Bappoo and his aides galloping back from the British advance. The gunners had already fled, which meant that the Mahrattas’ heavy cannon would all be captured, every last piece of it. Dodd was tempted to abandon his regiment’s small battery of five-pounders which were about as much use as pea-shooters, but a soldier’s pride persuaded him to drag the guns from the field. Bappoo might lose all his guns, but it would be a cold day in hell before William Dodd gave up artillery to an enemy.
His Cobras were on the Mahratta right flank and there, for the moment, they were out of the way of the British advance. If the rest of the Mahratta infantry remained firm and fought, then Dodd would stay with them, but he saw that the defeat of the Arabs had demoralized Bappoo’s army. The ranks began to dissolve, the first fugitives began to run north and Dodd knew this army was lost. First Assaye, now this. A goddamn disaster! He turned his horse and smiled at his white-jacketed men. ‘You haven’t lost a battle!’ he shouted to them. ‘You haven’t even fought today, so you’ve lost no pride! But you’ll have to fight now! If you don’t, if you break ranks, you’ll die. If you fight, you’ll live! Jemadar! March!’
The Cobras would now attempt one of the most difficult of all feats of soldiering, a fighting withdrawal. They marched in a loose square, the centre of which gradually filled with their women and children. Some other infantry tried to join the families, but Dodd snarled at his men to beat them away. ‘Fire if they won’t go!’ he shouted. The last thing he wanted was for his men to be infected by panic.
Dodd trailed the square. He heard cavalry trumpets and he twisted in his saddle to see a mass of irregular light horsemen come over the crest. ‘Halt!’ he shouted. ‘Close ranks! Charge bayonets!’
The white-jacketed Cobras sealed the loose square tight. Dodd pushed through the face of the square and turned his horse to watch the cavalrymen approach. He doubted they would come close, not when there were easier pickings to the east and, sure enough, as soon as the leading horsemen saw that the square was waiting with levelled muskets, they sheered away.
Dodd holstered his pistol. ‘March on, Jemadar!’
Twice more Dodd had to halt and form ranks, but both times the threatening horsemen were scared away by the calm discipline of his white-coated soldiers. The red-coated infantry was not pursuing. They had reached the village of Argaum and were content to stay there, leaving the pursuit to the horsemen, and those horsemen chased after the broken rabble that flooded northwards, but none chose to die by charging Dodd’s formed ranks.
Dodd inclined to the west, angling away from the pursuers. By nightfall he was confident enough to form the battalion into a column of companies, and by midnight, under a clear moon, he could no longer even hear the British trumpets. He knew that men would still be dying, ridden down by cavalry and pierced by lances or slashed by sabres, but Dodd had got clean away. His men were tired, but they were safe in a dark countryside of millet fields, drought-emptied irrigation ditches and scattered villages where dogs barked frantically when they caught the scent of the marching column.
Dodd did not trouble the villagers. He had sufficient food, and earlier in the night they had found an irrigation tank that had yielded enough water for men and beasts. ‘Do you know where we are, Jemadar?’ he asked.
‘No, sahib.’ Gopal grinned, his teeth showing white in the darkness.
‘Nor do I. But I know where we’re going.’
‘Where, sahib?’
‘To Gawilghur, Gopal. To Gawilghur.’
‘Then we must march north, sahib.’ Gopal pointed to the mountains that showed as a dark line against the northern stars. ‘It is there, sahib.’
Dodd was marching to the fortress that had never known defeat. To the impregnable fastness on the cliff. To Gawilghur.
Dawn came to the millet fields. Ragged-winged birds flopped down beside corpses. The smell of death was already rank, and would only grow worse as the sun rose to become a furnace in a cloudless sky. Bugles called reveille, and the picquets who had guarded the sleeping army around Argaum cleared their muskets by loosing off shots. The gunfire startled birds up from corpses and made the feasting dogs growl among the human dead.
Regiments dug graves for their own dead. There were few enough to bury, for no more than fifty redcoats had died, but there were hundreds of Mahratta and Arab corpses, and the lascars who did the army’s fetching and carrying began the task of gathering the bodies. Some enemies still lived, though barely, and the luckiest of those were despatched with a blow of a mattock before their robes were rifled. The unlucky were taken to the surgeons’ tents.
The enemy’s captured guns were inspected, and a dozen selected as suitable for British service. They were all well made, forged in Agra by French-trained gunsmiths, but some were the wrong calibre and a few were so overdecorated with writhing gods and goddesses that no self-respecting gunner could abide them. The twenty-six rejected guns would be double-shotted and exploded. ‘A dangerous business,’ Lieutenant Colonel William Wallace remarked to Sharpe.
‘Indeed, sir.’
‘You saw the accident at Assaye?’ Wallace asked. The Colonel took off his cocked hat and fanned his face. The hat’s white plumes were still stained with blood that had dried black.
‘I heard it, sir. Didn’t see it,’ Sharpe said. The accident had occurred after the battle of Assaye when the enemy’s captured cannon were being destroyed and one monstrous piece, a great siege gun, had exploded prematurely, killing two engineers.
‘Leaves us short of good engineers,’ Wallace remarked, ‘and we’ll need them if we’re going to Gawilghur.’
‘Gawilghur, sir?’
‘A ghastly fortress, Sharpe, quite ghastly.’ The Colonel turned and pointed north. ‘Only about twenty miles away, and if the Mahrattas have any sense that’s where they’ll be heading.’ Wallace sighed. ‘I’ve never seen the place, so maybe it isn’t as bad as they say, but I remember poor McCandless describing it as a brute. A real brute. Like Stirling Castle, he said, only much larger and the cliff’s twenty times higher.’
Sharpe had never seen Stirling Castle, so had no real idea what the Colonel meant. He said nothing. He had been idling the morning away when Wallace sent for him, and now he and the Colonel were walking through the battle’s litter. The Arab boy followed a dozen paces behind. ‘Yours, is he?’ Wallace asked.
‘Think so, sir. Sort of picked him up yesterday.’
‘You need a servant, don’t you? Urquhart tells me you don’t have one.’
So Urquhart had been discussing Sharpe with the Colonel. No good could come of that, Sharpe thought. Urquhart had been nagging Sharpe to find a servant, implying that Sharpe’s clothes were in need of cleaning and pressing, which they were, but as he only owned the clothes he wore, he could not really see the point in being too finicky. ‘I hadn’t really thought what to do with the lad, sir,’ Sharpe admitted.
Wallace turned and spoke to the boy in an Indian language, and Ahmed stared up at the Colonel and nodded solemnly as though he understood what had been said. Perhaps he did, though Sharpe did not. ‘I’ve told him he’s to serve you properly,’ Wallace said, ‘and that you’ll pay him properly.’ The Colonel seemed to disapprove of Ahmed, or maybe he just disapproved of everything to do with Sharpe, though he was doing his best to be friendly. It had been Wallace who had given Sharpe the commission in the 74th, and Wallace had been a close friend of Colonel McCandless, so Sharpe supposed that the balding Colonel was, in his way, an ally. Even so, Sharpe felt awkward in the Scotsman’s company. He wondered if he would ever feel relaxed among officers. ‘How’s that woman of yours, Sharpe?’ Wallace asked cheerfully.
‘My woman, sir?’ Sharpe asked, blushing.
‘The Frenchwoman, can’t recall her name. Took quite a shine to you, didn’t she?’
‘Simone, sir? She’s in Seringapatam, sir. Seemed the best place for her, sir.’
‘Quite, quite.’
Simone Joubert had been widowed at Assaye where her husband, who had served Scindia, had died. She had been Sharpe’s lover and, after the battle, she had stayed with him. Where else, she asked, was she to go? But Wellesley had forbidden his officers to take their wives on the campaign, and though Simone was not Sharpe’s wife, she was white, and so she had agreed to go to Seringapatam and there wait for him. She had carried a letter of introduction to Major Stokes, Sharpe’s friend who ran the armoury, and Sharpe had given her some of the Tippoo’s jewels so that she could find servants and live comfortably. He sometimes worried he had given her too many of the precious stones, but consoled himself that Simone would keep the surplus safe till he returned.
‘So are you happy, Sharpe?’ Wallace asked bluffly.
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said bleakly.
‘Keeping busy?’
‘Not really, sir.’
‘Difficult, isn’t it?’ Wallace said vaguely. He had stopped to watch the gunners loading one of the captured cannon, a great brute that looked to take a ball of twenty or more pounds. The barrel had been cast with an intricate pattern of lotus flowers and dancing girls, then painted with garish colours. The gunners had charged the gaudy barrel with a double load of powder and now they rammed two cannonballs down the blackened gullet. An engineer had brought some wedges and a gunner sergeant pushed one down the barrel, then hammered it home with the rammer so that the ball would jam when the gun was fired. The engineer took a ball of fuse from his pocket, pushed one end into the touch-hole, then backed away, uncoiling the pale line. ‘Best if we give them some space,’ Wallace said, gesturing that they should walk south a small way. ‘Don’t want to be beheaded by a scrap of gun, eh?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Very difficult,’ Wallace said, picking up his previous thought. ‘Coming up from the ranks? Admirable, Sharpe, admirable, but difficult, yes?’
‘I suppose so, sir,’ Sharpe said unhelpfully.
Wallace sighed, as though he was finding the conversation unexpectedly hard going. ‘Urquhart tells me you seem’ – the Colonel paused, looking for the tactful word – ‘unhappy?’
‘Takes time, sir.’
‘Of course, of course. These things do. Quite.’ The Colonel wiped a hand over his bald pate, then rammed his sweat-stained hat back into place. ‘I remember when I joined. Years ago now, of course, and I was only a little chap. Didn’t know what was going on! They said turn left, then turned right. Damned odd, I thought. I was arse over elbow for months, I can tell you.’ The Colonel’s voice tailed away. ‘Damned hot,’ he said after a while. ‘Damned hot. Ever heard of the 95th, Sharpe?’
‘95th, sir? Another Scottish regiment?’
‘Lord, no. The 95th Rifles. They’re a new regiment. Couple of years old. Used to be called the Experimental Corps of Riflemen!’ Wallace hooted with laughter at the clumsy name. ‘But a friend of mine is busy with the rascals. Willie Stewart, he’s called. The Honourable William Stewart. Capital fellow! But Willie’s got some damned odd ideas. His fellows wear green coats. Green! And he tells me his riflemen ain’t as rigid as he seems to think we are.’ Wallace smiled to show he had made some kind of joke. ‘Thing is, Sharpe, I wondered if you wouldn’t be better suited to Stewart’s outfit? His idea, you should understand. He wrote wondering if I had any bright young officers who could carry some experience of India to Shorncliffe. I was going to write back and say we do precious little skirmishing here, and it’s skirmishing that Willie’s rogues are being trained to do, but then I thought of you, Sharpe.’
Sharpe said nothing. Whichever way you wrapped it up, he was being dismissed from the 74th, though he supposed it was kind of Wallace to make the 95th sound like an interesting sort of regiment. Sharpe guessed they were the usual shambles of a hastily raised wartime battalion, staffed by the leavings of other regiments and composed of gutter rogues discarded by every other recruiting sergeant. The very fact they wore green coats sounded bad, as though the army could not be bothered to waste good red cloth on them. They would probably dissolve in panicked chaos in their first battle.
‘I’ve written to Willie about you,’ Wallace went on, ‘and I know he’ll have a place for you.’ Meaning, Sharpe thought, that the Honourable William Stewart owed Wallace a favour. ‘And our problem, frankly,’ Wallace continued, ‘is that a new draft has reached Madras. Weren’t expecting it till spring, but they’re here now, so we’ll be back to strength in a month or so.’ Wallace paused, evidently wondering if he had softened the blow sufficiently. ‘And the fact is, Sharpe,’ he resumed after a while, ‘that Scottish regiments are more like, well, families! Families, that’s it, just it. My mother always said so, and she was a pretty shrewd judge of these things. Like families! More so, I think, than English regiments, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, trying to hide his misery.
‘But I can’t let you go while there’s a war on,’ Wallace continued heartily. The Colonel had turned to watch the cannon again. The engineer had finished unwinding his fuse and the gunners now shouted at everyone within earshot to stand away. ‘I do enjoy this,’ the Colonel said warmly. ‘Nothing like a bit of gratuitous destruction to set the juices flowing, eh?’
The engineer stooped to the fuse with his tinderbox. Sharpe saw him strike the flint then blow the charred linen into flame. There was a pause, then he put the fuse end into the small fire and the smoke fizzed up.
The fuse burned fast, the smoke and sparks snaking through the dry grass and starting small fires, then the red hot trail streaked up the back of the gun and down into the touch-hole.
For a heartbeat nothing happened, then the whole gun just seemed to disintegrate. The charge had tried to propel the double shot up the wedged barrel, but the resistance was just big enough to restrict the explosion. The touch-hole shot out first, the shaped piece of metal tearing out a chunk of the upper breech, then the whole rear of the painted barrel split apart in smoke, flame and whistling lumps of jagged metal. The forward part of the barrel, jaggedly torn off, dropped to the grass as the gun’s wheels were splayed out. The gunners cheered. ‘One less Mahratta gun,’ Wallace said. Ahmed was grinning broadly. ‘Did you know Mackay?’ Wallace asked Sharpe.
‘No, sir.’
‘Captain Mackay. Hugh Mackay. East India Company officer. Fourth Native Cavalry. Very good fellow indeed, Sharpe. I knew his father well. Point is, though, that young Hugh was put in charge of the bullock train before Assaye. And he did a very good job! Very good. But he insisted on joining his troopers in the battle. Disobeyed orders, d’you see? Wellesley was adamant that Mackay must stay with his bullocks, but young Hugh wanted to be on the dance floor, and quite right too, except that the poor devil was killed. Cut in half by a cannonball!’ Wallace sounded shocked, as though such a thing was an outrage. ‘It’s left the bullock train without a guiding hand, Sharpe.’
Christ, Sharpe thought, but he was to be made bullock master!
‘Not fair to say they don’t have a guiding hand,’ Wallace continued, ‘because they do, but the new fellow don’t have any experience with bullocks. Torrance, he’s called, and I’m sure he’s a good fellow, but things are likely to get a bit more sprightly from now on. Going deeper into enemy territory, see? And there are still lots of their damned horsemen at large, and Torrance says he needs a deputy officer. Someone to help him. Thought you might be just the fellow for the job, Sharpe.’ Wallace smiled as though he was granting Sharpe a huge favour.
‘Don’t know anything about bullocks, sir,’ Sharpe said doggedly.
‘I’m sure you don’t! Who does? And there are dromedaries, and elephants. A regular menagerie, eh? But the experience, Sharpe, will do you good. Think of it as another string to your bow.’
Sharpe knew a further protest would do no good, so he nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.
‘Good! Good! Splendid.’ Wallace could not hide his relief. ‘It won’t be for long, Sharpe. Scindia’s already suing for peace, and the Rajah of Berar’s bound to follow. We may not even have to fight at Gawilghur, if that’s where the rogues do take refuge. So go and help Torrance, then you can set a course for England, eh? Become a Greenjacket!’
So Ensign Sharpe had failed. Failed utterly. He had been an officer for two months and now he was being booted out of a regiment. Sent to the bullocks and the dromedaries, whatever the hell they were, and after that to the green-coated dregs of the army. Bloody hell fire, he thought, bloody hell fire.
The British and their allied cavalry rode all night, and in the dawn they briefly rested, watered their horses, then hauled themselves into their saddles and rode again. They rode till their horses were reeling with tiredness and white with sweat, and only then did they give up the savage pursuit of the Mahratta fugitives. Their sabre arms were weary, their blades blunted and their appetites slaked. The night had been a wild hunt of victory, a slaughter under the moon that had left the plain reeking with blood, and the sun brought more killing and wide-winged vultures that flapped down to the feast.
The pursuit ended close to a sudden range of hills that marked the northern limit of the Deccan Plain. The hills were steep and thickly wooded, no place for cavalry, and above the hills reared great cliffs, dizzyingly high cliffs that stretched from the eastern to the western horizon like the nightmare ramparts of a tribe of giants. In places there were deep re-entrants cut into the great cliff and some of the British pursuers, gaping at the vast wall of rock that barred their path, supposed that the wooded clefts would provide a path up to the cliff’s summit, though none could see how anyone could reach the highland if an enemy chose to defend it.
Between two of the deep re-entrants a great promontory of rock jutted from the cliff face like the prow of a monstrous stone ship. The summit of the jutting rock was two thousand feet above the horsemen on the plain, and one of them, scrubbing blood from his sabre blade with a handful of grass, glanced up at the high peak and saw a tiny puff of whiteness drifting from its crest. He thought it a small cloud, but then he heard a faint bang of gunfire, and a second later a round shot dropped vertically into a nearby patch of millet. His captain pulled out a telescope and trained it high into the sky. He stared for a long time, then gave a low whistle.
‘What is it, sir?’
‘It’s a fortress,’ the Captain said. He could just see black stone walls, shrunken by distance, poised above the grey-white rock. ‘It’s hell in the bloody sky,’ he said grimly, ‘that’s what it is. It’s Gawilghur.’
More guns fired from the fortress, but they were so high in the air that their shots lost all their forward momentum long before they reached the ground. The balls fell like nightmare rain and the Captain shouted at his men to lead their horses out of range. ‘Their final refuge,’ he said, then laughed, ‘but it’s nothing to do with us, boys! The infantry will have to deal with that big bastard.’
The cavalrymen slowly moved southwards. Some of their horses had lost shoes, which meant they had to be walked home, but their night’s work was well done. They had ravaged a broken army, and now the infantry must cope with the Mahrattas’ final refuge.
A sergeant shouted from the right flank and the Captain turned westwards to see a column of enemy infantry appearing from a grove of trees just over a mile away. The white-coated battalion still possessed their artillery, but they showed no sign of wanting a fight. A crowd of civilians and several companies of fugitive Mahrattas had joined the regiment, which was heading for a road that twisted into the hills beneath the fort, then zigzagged its way up the face of the rock promontory. If that road was the only way into the fort, the cavalry Captain thought, then God help the redcoats who had to attack Gawilghur. He stared at the infantry through his telescope. The white-coated troops were showing small interest in the British cavalry, but it still seemed prudent to quicken his pace southwards.
A moment later and the cavalry was hidden behind millet fields. The Captain turned a last time and gazed again at the fortress on the soaring cliffs. It seemed to touch the sky, so high it stood above all India. ‘Bastard of a place,’ the Captain said wonderingly, then turned and left. He had done his job, and now the infantry must climb to the clouds to do theirs.
Colonel William Dodd watched the blue-coated cavalrymen walk their tired horses southwards until they vanished beyond a field of standing millet. The subadar in charge of the regiment’s small cannon had wanted to unlimber and open fire on the horsemen, but Dodd had refused his permission. There would have been no point in attacking, for by the time the guns were loaded the cavalrymen would have walked out of range. He watched a last salvo of round shot plummet to earth from the fort’s high guns. Those cannon were of little use, Dodd thought, except to overawe people on the plain.
It took Dodd’s regiment over seven hours to climb to the fort of Gawilghur, and by the time he reached the summit Dodd’s lungs were burning, his muscles aching and his uniform soaked with sweat. He had walked every step of the way, refusing to ride his horse, for the beast was tired and, besides, if he expected his men to walk up the long road, then he would walk it as well. He was a tall, sallow-faced man with a harsh voice and an awkward manner, but William Dodd knew how to earn his men’s admiration. They saw that he walked when he could have ridden, and so they did not complain as the steep climb sapped their breath and stole their strength. The regiment’s families, its baggage and its battery of cannon were still far below on the twisting, treacherous track that, in its last few miles, was little more than a ledge hacked from the cliff.
Dodd formed his Cobras into four ranks as they approached Gawilghur’s southern entrance where the great metal-studded gates were being swung open in welcome. ‘March smartly now!’ Dodd called to his men. ‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of! You lost no battle!’ He pulled himself up into his saddle and drew his gold-hilted sword to salute the flag of Berar that flapped above the high gate-tower. Then he touched his heels to the mare’s flanks and led his undefeated men into the tower’s long entrance tunnel.
He emerged into the afternoon sun to find himself staring at a small town that was built within the stronghold’s ramparts and on the summit of Gawilghur’s promontory. The alleys of the town were crammed with soldiers, most of them Mahratta cavalrymen who had fled in front of the British pursuit, but, twisting in his saddle, Dodd saw some infantry of Gawilghur’s garrison standing on the firestep. He also saw Manu Bappoo who had outridden the British pursuit and now gestured to Dodd from the gate-tower’s turret.
Dodd told one of his men to hold his horse, then climbed the black walls to the top firestep of the tower where he stopped in awed astonishment at the view. It was like standing at the edge of the world. The plain was so far beneath and the southern horizon so far away that there was nothing in front of his eyes but endless sky. This, Dodd thought, was a god’s view of earth. The eagle’s view. He leaned over the parapet and saw his guns struggling up the narrow road. They would not reach the fort till long after nightfall.
‘You were right, Colonel,’ Manu Bappoo said ruefully.
Dodd straightened to look at the Mahratta prince. ‘It’s dangerous to fight the British in open fields,’ he said, ‘but here …?’ Dodd gestured at the approach road. ‘Here they will die, sahib.’
‘The fort’s main entrance,’ Bappoo said in his sibilant voice, ‘is on the other side. To the north.’
Dodd turned and gazed across the roof of the central palace. He could see little of the great fortress’s northern defences, though a long way away he could see another tower like the one on which he now stood. ‘Is the main entrance as difficult to approach as this one?’ he asked.
‘No, but it isn’t easy. The enemy has to approach along a narrow strip of rock, then fight through the Outer Fort. After that comes a ravine, and then the Inner Fort. I want you to guard the inner gate.’
Dodd looked suspiciously at Bappoo. ‘Not the Outer Fort?’ Dodd reckoned his Cobras should guard the place where the British would attack. That way the British would be defeated.
‘The Outer Fort is a trap,’ Bappoo explained. He looked tired, but the defeat at Argaum had not destroyed his spirit, merely sharpened his appetite for revenge. ‘If the British capture the Outer Fort they will think they have won. They won’t know that an even worse barrier waits beyond the ravine. That barrier has to be held. I don’t care if the Outer Fort falls, but we must hold the Inner. That means our best troops must be there.’
‘It will be held,’ Dodd said.
Bappoo turned and stared southwards. Somewhere in the heat-hazed distance the British forces were readying to march on Gawilghur. ‘I thought we could stop them at Argaum,’ he admitted softly.
Dodd, who had advised against fighting at Argaum, said nothing.
‘But here,’ Bappoo went on, ‘they will be stopped.’
Here, Dodd thought, they would have to be stopped. He had deserted from the East India Company’s army because he faced trial and execution, but also because he believed he could make a fortune as a mercenary serving the Mahrattas. So far he had endured three defeats, and each time he had led his men safe out of the disaster, but from Gawilghur there would be no escape. The British would block every approach, so the British must be stopped. They must fail in this high place, and so they would, Dodd consoled himself. For nothing imaginable could take this fort. He was on the world’s edge, lifted into the sky, and for the redcoats it would be like scaling the very heights of heaven.
So here, at last, deep inside India, the redcoats would be beaten.
Six cavalrymen in the blue and yellow coats of the 19th Light Dragoons waited outside the house where Captain Torrance was said to be billeted. They were under the command of a long-legged sergeant who was lounging on a bench beside the door. The Sergeant glanced up as Sharpe approached. ‘I hope you don’t want anything useful out of the bastards,’ he said acidly, then saw that the shabby-uniformed Sharpe, despite wearing a pack like any common soldier, also had a sash and a sabre. He scrambled to his feet. ‘Sorry, sir.’
Sharpe waved him back down onto the bench. ‘Useful?’ he asked.
‘Horseshoes, sir, that’s all we bleeding want. Horseshoes! Supposed to be four thousand in store, but can they find them?’ The Sergeant spat. ‘Tells me they’re lost! I’m to go to the bhinjarries and buy them! I’m supposed to tell my captain that? So now we have to sit here till Captain Torrance gets back. Maybe he knows where they are. That monkey in there’ – he jerked his thumb at the house’s front door – ‘doesn’t know a bloody thing.’
Sharpe pushed open the door to find himself in a large room where a half-dozen men argued with a harried clerk. The clerk, an Indian, sat behind a table covered with curling ledgers. ‘Captain Torrance is ill!’ the clerk snapped at Sharpe without waiting to discover the newcomer’s business. ‘And take that dirty Arab boy outside,’ the clerk added, jerking his chin at Ahmed who, armed with a musket he had taken from a corpse on the battlefield, had followed Sharpe into the house.
‘Muskets!’ A man tried to attract the clerk’s attention.
‘Horseshoes!’ an East India Company lieutenant shouted.
‘Buckets,’ a gunner said.
‘Come back tomorrow,’ the clerk said. ‘Tomorrow!’
‘You said that yesterday,’ the gunner said, ‘and I’m back.’
‘Where’s Captain Torrance?’ Sharpe asked.
‘He’s ill,’ the clerk said disapprovingly, as though Sharpe had risked the Captain’s fragile health even by asking the question. ‘He cannot be disturbed. And why is that boy here? He is an Arab!’
‘Because I told him to be here,’ Sharpe said. He walked round the table and stared down at the ledgers. ‘What a bleeding mess!’
‘Sahib!’ The clerk had now realized Sharpe was an officer. ‘Other side of the table, sahib, please, sahib! There is a system here, sahib. I stay this side of the table and you remain on the other. Please, sahib.’
‘What’s your name?’ Sharpe asked.
The clerk seemed affronted at the question. ‘I am Captain Torrance’s assistant,’ he said grandly.
‘And Torrance is ill?’
‘The Captain is very sick.’
‘So who’s in charge?’
‘I am,’ the clerk said.
‘Not any longer,’ Sharpe said. He looked up at the East India Company lieutenant. ‘What did you want?’
‘Horseshoes.’
‘So where are the bleeding horseshoes?’ Sharpe asked the clerk.
‘I have explained, sahib, I have explained,’ the clerk said. He was a middle-aged man with a lugubrious face and pudgy ink-stained fingers that now hastily tried to close all the ledgers so that Sharpe could not read them. ‘Now please, sahib, join the queue.’
‘Where are the horseshoes?’ Sharpe insisted, leaning closer to the sweating clerk.
‘This office is closed!’ the clerk shouted. ‘Closed till tomorrow! All business will be conducted tomorrow. Captain Torrance’s orders!’
‘Ahmed!’ Sharpe said. ‘Shoot the bugger.’
Ahmed spoke no English, but the clerk did not know that. He held his hands out. ‘I am closing the office! Work cannot be done like this! I shall complain to Captain Torrance! There will be trouble! Big trouble!’ The clerk glanced at a door that led to the inner part of the house.
‘Is that where Torrance is?’ Sharpe asked, gesturing at the door.
‘No, sahib, and you cannot go in there. The Captain is sick.’
Sharpe went to the door and pushed it open. The clerk yelped a protest, but Sharpe ignored him. A muslin screen hung on the other side of the door and entangled Sharpe as he pushed into the room where a sailor’s hammock hung from the beams. The room seemed empty, but then a whimper made him look into a shadowed corner. A young woman crouched there. She was dressed in a sari, but she looked European to Sharpe. She had been sewing gold braid onto the outer seams of a pair of breeches, but now stared in wide-eyed fright at the intruder. ‘Who are you, Ma’am?’ Sharpe asked.
The woman shook her head. She had very black hair and very white skin. Her terror was palpable. ‘Is Captain Torrance here?’ Sharpe asked.
‘No,’ she whispered.
‘He’s sick, is that right?’
‘If he says so, sir,’ she said softly. Her London accent confirmed that she was English.
‘I ain’t going to hurt you, love,’ Sharpe said, for fear was making her tremble. ‘Are you Mrs Torrance?’
‘No!’
‘So you work for him?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And you don’t know where he is?’
‘No, sir,’ she said softly, looking up at Sharpe with huge eyes. She was lying, he reckoned, but he guessed she had good reason to lie, perhaps fearing Torrance’s punishment if she told the truth. He considered soothing the truth out of her, but reckoned it might take too long. He wondered who she was. She was pretty, despite her terror, and he guessed she was Torrance’s bibbi. Lucky Torrance, he thought ruefully. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Ma’am,’ he said, then he negotiated the muslin curtain back into the front room.
The clerk shook his head fiercely. ‘You should not have gone in there, sahib! That is private quarters! Private! I shall be forced to tell Captain Torrance.’
Sharpe took hold of the clerk’s chair and tipped it, forcing the man off. The men waiting in the room gave a cheer. Sharpe ignored them, sat on the chair himself and pulled the tangle of ledgers towards him. ‘I don’t care what you tell Captain Torrance,’ he said, ‘so long as you tell me about the horseshoes first.’
‘They are lost!’ the clerk protested.
‘How were they lost?’ Sharpe asked.
The clerk shrugged. ‘Things get lost,’ he said. Sweat was pouring down his plump face as he tentatively tried to tug some of the ledgers away from Sharpe, but he recoiled from the look on the Ensign’s face. ‘Things get lost,’ the clerk said again weakly. ‘It is the nature of things to get lost.’
‘Muskets?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Lost,’ the clerk admitted.
‘Buckets?’
‘Lost,’ the clerk said.
‘Paperwork,’ Sharpe said.
The clerk frowned. ‘Paperwork, sahib?’
‘If something’s lost,’ Sharpe said patiently, ‘there’s a record. This is the bloody army. You can’t have a piss without someone making a note of it. So show me the records of what’s been lost.’
The clerk sighed and pulled one of the big ledgers open. ‘Here, sahib,’ he said, pointing an inky finger. ‘One barrel of horseshoes, see? Being carried on an ox from Jamkandhi, lost in the Godavery on November 12th.’
‘How many horseshoes in a barrel?’ Sharpe asked.
‘A hundred and twenty.’ The long-legged cavalry Sergeant had come into the office and now leaned against the doorpost.
‘And there are supposed to be four thousand horseshoes in store?’ Sharpe asked.
‘Here!’ The clerk turned a page. ‘Another barrel, see?’
Sharpe peered at the ill-written entry. ‘Lost in the Godavery,’ he read aloud.
‘And here.’ The clerk stabbed his finger again.
‘Stolen,’ Sharpe read. A drop of sweat landed on the page as the clerk turned it back. ‘So who stole it?’
‘The enemy, sahib,’ the clerk said. ‘Their horsemen are everywhere.’
‘Their bloody horsemen run if you so much as look at them,’ the tall cavalry Sergeant said sourly. ‘They couldn’t steal an egg from a chicken.’
‘The convoys are ambushed, sahib,’ the clerk insisted, ‘and things are stolen.’
Sharpe pushed the clerk’s hand away and turned the pages back, looking for the date when the battle had been fought at Assaye. He found it, and discovered a different handwriting had been used for the previous entries. He guessed Captain Mackay must have kept the ledger himself, and in Mackay’s neat entries there were far fewer annotations reading ‘stolen’ or ‘lost’. Mackay had marked eight cannonballs as being lost in a river crossing and two barrels of powder had been marked down as stolen, but in the weeks since Assaye no fewer than sixty-eight oxen had lost their burdens to either accidents or thieves. More tellingly, each of those oxen had been carrying a scarce commodity. The army would not miss a load of round shot, but it would suffer grievously when its last reserve of horseshoes was gone. ‘Whose handwriting is this?’ Sharpe had turned to the most recent page.
‘Mine, sahib.’ The clerk was looking frightened.
‘How do you know when something is stolen?’
The clerk shrugged. ‘The Captain tells me. Or the Sergeant tells me.’
‘The Sergeant?’
‘He isn’t here,’ the clerk said. ‘He’s bringing a convoy of oxen north.’
‘What’s the Sergeant’s name?’ Sharpe asked, for he could find no record in the ledger.
‘Hakeswill,’ the cavalry Sergeant said laconically. ‘He’s the bugger we usually deal with, on account of Captain Torrance always being ill.’
‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said, and pushed the chair back. Hakeswill! Obadiah bloody Hakeswill! ‘Why wasn’t he sent back to his regiment?’ Sharpe asked. ‘He isn’t supposed to be here at all!’
‘He knows the system,’ the clerk explained. ‘Captain Torrance wanted him to stay, sahib.’
And no bloody wonder, Sharpe thought. Hakeswill had worked himself into the army’s most profitable billet! He was milking the cow, but making sure it was the clerk’s handwriting in the ledger. No flies on Obadiah. ‘How does the system work?’ he asked the clerk.
‘Chitties,’ the clerk said.
‘Chitties?’
‘An ox driver is given a chitty, sahib, and when he has delivered his load the chitty is signed and brought here. Then he is paid. No chitty, no money. It is the rule, sahib. No chitty, no money.’
‘And no bloody horseshoes either,’ put in the lean Sergeant of the 19th.
‘And Sergeant Hakeswill pays the money?’ Sharpe asked.
‘If he is here, sahib,’ the clerk said.
‘That doesn’t get me my damned horseshoes,’ the Company Lieutenant protested.
‘Or my buckets,’ the gunner put in.
‘The bhinjarries have all the essentials,’ the clerk insisted. He made shooing gestures. ‘Go and see the bhinjarries! They have necessaries! This office is closed till tomorrow.’
‘But where did the bhinjarries get their necessaries, eh? Answer me that?’ Sharpe demanded, but the clerk merely shrugged. The bhinjarries were merchants who travelled with the army, contributing their own vast herds of pack oxen and carts. They sold food, liquor, women and luxuries, and now, it seemed, they were offering military supplies as well, which meant that the army would be paying for things that were normally issued free, and doubtless, if bloody Hakeswill had a finger in the pot, things which had been stolen from the army in the first place. ‘Where do I go for horseshoes?’ Sharpe asked the clerk.
The clerk was reluctant to answer, but he finally spread his hands and suggested Sharpe ask in the merchants’ encampment. ‘Someone will tell you, sahib.’
‘You tell me,’ Sharpe said.
‘I don’t know!’
‘So how do you know they have horseshoes?’
‘I hear these things!’ the clerk protested.
Sharpe stood and bullied the clerk back against the wall. ‘You do more than hear things,’ he said, leaning his forearm against the clerk’s neck, ‘you know things. So you bloody well tell me, or I’ll have my Arab boy chop off your goolies for his breakfast. He’s a hungry little bugger.’
The clerk fought for breath against the pressure of Sharpe’s arm. ‘Naig.’ He offered the name plaintively when Sharpe relaxed his arm.
‘Naig?’ Sharpe asked. The name rang a distant bell. A long-ago bell. Naig? Then he remembered a merchant of that name who had followed the army to Seringapatam. ‘Naig?’ Sharpe asked again. ‘A fellow with green tents?’
‘The very one, sahib.’ The clerk nodded. ‘But I did not tell you this thing! These gentlemen are witnesses, I did not tell you!’
‘He runs a brothel!’ Sharpe said, remembering, and he remembered too how Naig had been a friend to Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill four years before. Sharpe had been a private then and Hakeswill had trumped up charges that had fetched Sharpe a flogging. ‘Nasty Naig’ had been the man’s nickname, and back then he had sold pale-skinned whores who travelled in green-curtained wagons. ‘Right!’ Sharpe said. ‘This office is closed!’ The gunner protested and the cavalry Sergeant looked disappointed. ‘We’re going to see Naig,’ Sharpe announced.
‘No!’ the clerk said too loud.
‘No?’ Sharpe asked.
‘He will be angry, sahib.’
‘Why should he be angry?’ Sharpe demanded. ‘I’m a customer, ain’t I? He’s got horseshoes, and we want horseshoes. He should be delighted to see us.’
‘He must be treated with respect, sahib,’ the clerk said nervously. ‘He is a powerful man, Naig. You have money for him?’
‘I just want to look at his horseshoes,’ Sharpe said, ‘and if they’re army issue then I’ll ram one of them down his bloody throat.’
The clerk shook his head. ‘He has guards, sahib. He has jettis!’
‘I think I might let you go on your own,’ the East India Company Lieutenant said, backing away.
‘Jettis?’ The light dragoon Sergeant asked.
‘Strongmen,’ Sharpe explained. ‘Big buggers who kill you by wringing your neck like a chicken.’ He turned back to the clerk. ‘Where did Naig get his jettis? From Seringapatam?’
‘Yes, sahib.’
‘I killed enough of the buggers,’ Sharpe said, ‘so I don’t mind killing a few more. Are you coming?’ he asked the cavalry Sergeant.
‘Why not?’ The man grinned.
‘Anyone else?’ Sharpe asked, but no one else seemed to want a fight that afternoon.
‘Please, sahib,’ the clerk said weakly.
Sharpe ignored him and, followed by Ahmed and the cavalryman, went back into the sunlight. ‘What’s your name?’ Sharpe asked the Sergeant.
‘Lockhart, sir. Eli Lockhart.’
‘I’m Dick Sharpe, Eli, and you don’t have to call me “sir”, I’m not a proper bleeding officer. I was made up at Assaye, and I wish the buggers had left me a sergeant now. They sent me to be a bloody bullock driver, because I’m not fit for anything else.’ He looked at Lockhart’s six troopers who were still waiting. ‘What are they doing here?’
‘Didn’t expect me to carry the bloody horseshoes myself, did you?’ Lockhart said, then gestured at the troopers. ‘Come on, boys. We’re going to have a scrap.’
‘Who said anything about a scrap?’ Sharpe asked.
‘He’s got horseshoes,’ Lockhart explained, ‘but we don’t have money. So there’s only one way to get them off him.’
‘True,’ Sharpe said, and grinned.
Lockhart suddenly looked oddly shy. ‘Was you in the Captain’s quarters, sir?’
‘Yes, why?’
The tough-looking Sergeant was actually blushing now. ‘You didn’t see a woman there, did you, sir?’
‘Dark-haired girl. Pretty?’
‘That’s her.’
‘Who is she?’
‘Torrance’s servant. A widow. He brought her and her husband out from England, but the fellow died and left her on her own. Torrance won’t let her go.’
‘And you’d like to take her off his hands, is that it?’
‘I’ve only ever seen her at a distance,’ the Sergeant admitted. ‘Torrance was in another regiment, one of the Madrassi’s, but we camped together often enough.’
‘She’s still there,’ Sharpe said drily, ‘still alive.’
‘He keeps her close, he does,’ Lockhart said, then kicked a dog out of his path. The eight men had left the village and entered the sprawling encampment where the merchants with their herds, wagons and families were camped. Great white oxen with painted horns were hobbled by pegs, and children scurried among the beasts collecting their dung which they slapped into cakes that would be dried for fuel. ‘So tell me about these jettis,’ Lockhart asked.
‘Like circus strongmen,’ Sharpe said, ‘only it’s some kind of religious thing. Don’t ask me. None of it makes bleeding sense to me. Got muscles like mountains, they have, but they’re slow. I killed four of the buggers at Seringapatam.’
‘And you know Hakeswill?’
‘I know bloody Hakeswill. Recruited me, he did, and he’s been persecuting me ever since. He shouldn’t even be with this army, he’s supposed to be with the Havercakes down south, but he came up here with a warrant to arrest me. That didn’t work, so he’s just stayed, hasn’t he? And he’s working the bleeding system! You can wager your last shilling that he’s the bastard who supplies Naig, and splits the profit.’ Sharpe stopped to look for green tents. ‘How come you don’t carry your own spare horseshoes?’
‘We do. But when they’ve gone you have to get more from the supplies. That’s how the system’s supposed to work. And yesterday’s pursuit left half the hooves wrecked. We need shoes.’
Sharpe had seen a cluster of faded green tents. ‘That’s where the bastard is,’ he said, then looked at Lockhart. ‘This could get nasty.’
Lockhart grinned. He was as tall as Sharpe and had a face that looked as though it had survived a lifetime of tavern brawls. ‘Come this far, ain’t I?’
‘Is that thing loaded?’ Sharpe nodded at the pistol at Lockhart’s belt. A sabre also hung there, just like the one at Sharpe’s hip.
‘It will be.’ Lockhart drew the pistol and Sharpe turned to Ahmed and mimed the actions of loading the musket. Ahmed grinned and pointed to the lock, indicating that his weapon was already charged.
‘How many of the buggers will be waiting for us?’ Lockhart asked.
‘A dozen?’ Sharpe guessed.
Lockhart glanced back at his six men. ‘We can deal with a dozen buggers.’
‘Right,’ Sharpe said, ‘so let’s bloody well make some trouble.’ He grinned, because for the first time since he had become an officer he was enjoying himself.
Which meant someone was about to get a thumping.
CHAPTER THREE
Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley rode northwards among a cavalcade of officers whose horses kicked up a wide trail of dust that lingered in the air long after the horsemen had passed. Two troops of East India Company cavalry provided the General’s escort. Manu Bappoo’s army might have been trounced and its survivors sent skeltering back into Gawilghur, but the Deccan Plain was still infested with Mahratta cavalry ready to pounce on supply convoys, wood-cutting parties or the grass-cutters who supplied the army’s animals with fodder and so the two troops rode with sabres drawn. Wellesley set a fast pace, revelling in the freedom to ride in the long open country. ‘Did you visit Colonel Stevenson this morning?’ he called back to an aide.
‘I did, sir, and he’s no better than he was.’
‘But he can get about?’
‘On his elephant, sir.’
Wellesley grunted. Stevenson was the commander of his smaller army, but the old Colonel was ailing. So was Harness, the commander of one of Wellesley’s two brigades, but there was no point in asking about Harness. It was not just physical disease that assaulted Harness, for the Scotsman’s wits were gone as well. The doctors claimed it was the heat that had desiccated his brains, but Wellesley doubted the diagnosis. Heat and rum, maybe, but not the heat alone, though he did not doubt that India’s climate was bad for a European’s health. Few men lived long without falling prey to some wasting fever, and Wellesley was thinking it was time he left himself. Time to go back home before his health was abraded and, more important, before his existence was forgotten in London. French armies were unsettling all Europe and it could not be long before London despatched an army to fight the old foe, and Wellesley wanted to be a part of it. He was in his middle thirties and he had a reputation to make, but first he had to finish off the Mahrattas, and that meant taking Gawilghur, and to that end he was now riding towards the great rampart of cliffs that sealed off the plain’s northern edge.
An hour’s ride brought him to the summit of a small rise which offered a view northwards. The plain looked dun, starved of water by the failed monsoon, though here and there patches of millet grew tall. In a good year, Wellesley guessed, the millet would cover the plain from horizon to horizon, a sea of grain bounded by the Gawilghur cliffs. He dismounted on the small knoll and took out a telescope that he settled on his horse’s saddle. It was a brand new glass, a gift from the merchants of Madras to mark Wellesley’s pacification of Mysore. Trade now moved freely on India’s eastern flank, and the telescope, which had been specially ordered from Matthew Berge of London, was a generous token of the merchants’ esteem, but Wellesley could not get used to it. The shape of the eyepiece was less concave than the one he was used to, and after a moment he snapped the new telescope shut and pulled out his old glass which, though lower powered, was more comfortable. He stared for a long time, gazing at the fort which crowned the rock promontory. The black stone of the fortress walls looked particularly sinister, even in the sunlight. ‘Good God,’ the General muttered after a while. Fail up there, he thought, and there would be no point in going home. He could go to London with some victories under his belt, and men would respect him even if the victories had not been against the French, but go with a defeat and they would despise him. Gawilghur, he thought sourly, had the look of a career-breaker.
Colonel Wallace, Wellesley’s healthy brigade commander, had also dismounted and was inspecting the fortress through his own glass. ‘Devil of a place, Sir Arthur,’ Wallace said.
‘How high is it, Blackiston?’ Wellesley called to one of his aides, an engineer.
‘I took a triangulation yesterday, sir,’ Blackiston said, ‘and discovered the fortress walls are eighteen hundred feet above the plain.’
‘Is there water up there?’ Colonel Butters, the chief engineer, asked.
‘We hear there is, sir,’ Blackiston said. ‘There are tanks in the fort; huge things like lakes.’
‘But the water level must be low this year?’ Butters suggested.
‘I doubt it’s low enough, sir,’ Blackiston murmured, knowing that Butters had been hoping that thirst might defeat the garrison.
‘And the rascals will have food, no doubt,’ Wellesley commented.
‘Doubtless,’ Wallace agreed drily.
‘Which means they’ll have to be prised out,’ the General said, then bent to the glass again and lowered the lens to look at the foothills below the bluff. Just south of the fort was a conical hill that rose almost halfway up the flank of the great promontory. ‘Can we get guns on that near hill?’ he asked.
There was a pause while the other officers decided which hill he was referring to. Colonel Butters flinched. ‘We can get them up there, sir, but I doubt they’ll have the elevation to reach the fort.’
‘You’ll get nothing bigger than a twelve-pounder up there,’ Wallace said dubiously, then slid the telescope’s view up the bluff to the walls. ‘And you’ll need bigger shot than twelve-pounders to break down that wall.’
‘Sir Arthur!’ The warning call came from the officer commanding the East India Company cavalry who was pointing to where a group of Mahratta horsemen had appeared in the south. They had evidently been following the lingering dust cloud left by the General’s party and, though the approaching horsemen only numbered about twenty men, the sepoy cavalry wheeled to face them and spread into a line.
‘It’s all right,’ Wellesley called, ‘they’re ours. I asked them to meet us here.’ He had inspected the approaching horsemen through his telescope and now, waving the sepoy cavalry back, he walked to greet the silladars. ‘Syud Sevajee,’ Wellesley acknowledged the man in the shabby green and silver coat who led the cavalrymen, ‘thank you for coming.’
Syud Sevajee nodded brusquely at Wellesley, then stared up at Gawilghur. ‘You think you can get in?’
‘I think we must,’ Wellesley said.
‘No one ever has,’ Sevajee said with a sly smile.
Wellesley returned the smile, but slowly, as if accepting the implied challenge, and then, as Sevajee slid down from his saddle, the General turned to Wallace. ‘You’ve met Syud Sevajee, Wallace?’
‘I’ve not had that pleasure, sir.’
Wellesley made the introduction, then added that Syud Sevajee’s father had been one of the Rajah of Berar’s generals.
‘But is no longer?’ Wallace asked Sevajee.
‘Beny Singh murdered him,’ Sevajee said grimly, ‘so I fight with you, Colonel, to gain my chance to kill Beny Singh. And Beny Singh now commands that fortress.’ He nodded towards the distant promontory.
‘So how do we get inside?’ Wellesley asked.
The officers gathered around Sevajee as the Indian drew his tulwar and used its tip to draw a figure eight in the dust. He tapped the lower circle of the eight, which he had drawn far larger than the upper. ‘That’s what you’re looking at,’ he said, ‘the Inner Fort. And there are only two entrances. There’s a road that climbs up from the plain and goes to the Southern Gate.’ He drew a squiggly line that tailed away from the bottom of the figure eight. ‘But that road is impossible. You will climb straight into their guns. A child with a pile of rocks could keep an army from climbing that road. The only possible route into the Inner Fort is through the main entrance.’ He scratched a brief line across the junction of the two circles.
‘Which will not be easy?’ Wellesley asked drily.
Sevajee offered the General a grim smile. ‘The main entrance is a long corridor, barred by four gates and flanked by high walls. But even to reach it, Sir Arthur, you will have to take the Outer Fort.’ He tapped the small upper circle of the figure eight.
Wellesley nodded. ‘And that, too, is difficult?’
‘Again, two entrances,’ Sevajee said. ‘One is a road that climbs from the plain. You can’t see it from here, but it twists up the hills to the west and it comes to the fort here.’ He tapped the waist of the figure eight. ‘It’s an easier climb than the southern road, but for the last mile of the journey your men will be under the guns of the Outer Fort. And the final half-mile, General, is steep.’ He stressed the last word. ‘On one side of the road is a cliff, and on the other is a precipice, and the guns of the Outer Fort can fire straight down that half-mile of road.’
Colonel Butters shook his head in gloomy contemplation of Sevajee’s news. ‘How come you know all this?’ he asked.
‘I grew up in Gawilghur,’ Sevajee said. ‘My father, before he was murdered, was killadar of the fortress.’
‘He knows,’ Wellesley said curtly. ‘And the main entrance of the Outer Fort?’
‘That,’ Sevajee said, ‘is the fortress’s weakest point.’ He scratched a line that pierced the uppermost curve of the small circle. ‘It’s the only level approach to the fortress, but it’s very narrow. On one side’ – he tapped the eastern flank of the line – ‘the ground falls steeply away. On the other side is a reservoir tank. So to reach the fort you must risk a narrow neck of land that is swept by two ramparts of guns, one above the other.’
‘Two walls?’ Wallace asked.
‘Set on a steep hill,’ Sevajee said, nodding. ‘You must fight uphill across both walls. There is an entrance, but it’s like the Inner Fort’s entrance: a series of gates with a narrow passage leading from one to the other, and men above you on both sides hurling down rocks and round shot.’
‘And once we’ve captured the Outer Fort,’ Wellesley asked, ‘what then?’
Sevajee offered a wolfish smile. ‘Then your troubles are just beginning, Sir Arthur.’ He scuffed out the diagram he had made in the dust and scratched another, this one showing two circles, one large and one small, with a space between them. ‘The two forts are not connected. They are separated here’ – he tapped the space between the circles with his tulwar – ‘and that is a ravine. A deep ravine. So once you have the Outer Fort, you still have to assault the Inner Fort, and its defences will be untouched. It has a wall which stands at the top of the ravine’s cliff, and that is where your enemy will be taking refuge; inside the wall of the Inner Fort. My father reckoned no enemy could ever capture Gawilghur’s Inner Fort. If all India should fall, he said, then its heart would still beat at Gawilghur.’
Wellesley walked a few paces north to stare at the high promontory. ‘How big is the garrison?’
‘Normally,’ Sevajee said, ‘about a thousand men, but now? It could be six or seven times that many. There is room inside for a whole army.’
And if the fort did not fall, Wellesley thought, then the Mahrattas would take heart. They would gather a new army and, in the new year, raid southwards again. There would be no peace in western India till Gawilghur fell. ‘Major Blackiston?’
‘Sir?’
‘You’ll make an exploration of the plateau.’ The General turned to Sevajee. ‘Will you escort Major Blackiston up into the hills? I want sketches, Blackiston, of the neck of land leading to the main entrance. I want you to tell me where we can place breaching batteries. I need to know how we can get guns up to the tops of the hills, and I need to know it all within two days.’
‘Two days?’ Blackiston sounded appalled.
‘We don’t want the rascals to take root up there, do we? Speed, Blackiston, speed! Can you leave now?’ This question was directed at Sevajee.
‘I can,’ Sevajee answered.
Wellesley waved Blackiston on his way. ‘Two days, Major! I want you back tomorrow evening!’
Colonel Butters frowned at the far hills. ‘You’re taking the army to the top?’
‘Half the army,’ Wellesley said, ‘the other half will stay on the plain.’ He would need to hold Gawilghur between his redcoats like a nut, and hope that when he squeezed it was the nut, and not the nutcracker, that broke. He pulled himself back into the saddle, then waited as the other officers mounted. Then he turned his mare and started back towards the camp. ‘It’ll be up to the engineers to get us onto the heights,’ he said, ‘then a week’s hard carrying to lift the ammunition to the batteries.’ The thought of that job made the General frown. ‘What’s the problem with the bullock train?’ he demanded of Butters. ‘I’m hearing complaints. Over two thousand muskets stolen from convoys, and Huddlestone tells me there are no spare horseshoes; that can’t be right!’
‘Torrance says that bandits have been active, sir,’ Butters said. ‘And I gather there have been accidents,’ he added lamely.
‘Who’s Torrance?’ Wellesley asked.
‘Company man, sir, a captain. He took over poor Mackay’s duties.’
‘I could surmise all that for myself,’ the General said acidly. ‘Who is he?’
Butters blushed at the reproof. ‘His father’s a canon at Wells, I think. Or maybe Salisbury? But more to the point, sir, he has an uncle in Leadenhall Street.’
Wellesley grunted. An uncle in Leadenhall Street meant that Torrance had a patron who was senior in the East India Company, someone to wield the influence that a clergyman father might not have. ‘Is he as good as Mackay?’
Butters, a heavy-set man who rode his horse badly, shrugged. ‘He was recommended by Huddlestone.’
‘Which means Huddlestone wanted to be rid of him,’ Wellesley snapped.
‘I’m sure he’s doing his best,’ Butters said defensively. ‘Though he did ask me for an assistant, but I had to turn him down. I’ve no one to spare. I’m short of engineers already, sir, as you well know.’
‘I’ve sent for more,’ Wellesley said.
Wallace intervened. ‘I gave Torrance one of my ensigns, Sir Arthur.’
‘You can spare an ensign, Wallace?’
‘Sharpe, sir.’
‘Ah.’ Wellesley grimaced. ‘Never does work out, does it? You lift a man from the ranks and you do him no favours.’
‘He might be happier in an English regiment,’ Wallace said, ‘so I’m recommending he exchanges into the Rifles.’
‘You mean they’re not particular?’ Wellesley asked, then scowled. ‘How the devil are we to fight a war without horseshoes?’ He kicked back at the mare, angry at the predicament. ‘My God, Butters, but your Captain Torrance must do his job!’ Wellesley, better than anyone, knew that he would never take Gawilghur if the supply train failed.
And Gawilghur had never been taken.
Dear God, Wellesley thought, but how was it ever to be done?
‘Big buggers,’ Sergeant Eli Lockhart murmured as they neared the two green tents. The cavalryman was speaking of the guards who lolled in chairs outside Naig’s tents. There were four in view, and two of them had bare, oiled chests that bulged with unnatural muscle. Their hair was never cut, but was instead coiled around their heads. They were keeping guard outside the larger of the tents, the one Sharpe guessed was Naig’s brothel. The other tent might have been the merchant’s living quarters, but its entrance was tightly laced, so Sharpe could not glimpse inside.
‘The two greasy fellows are the jettis,’ Sharpe said.
‘Big as bloody beeves, they are,’ Lockhart said. ‘Do they really wring your neck?’
‘Back to front,’ Sharpe said. ‘Or else they drive a nail into your skull with their bare hand.’ He swerved aside to go past the tents. It was not that he feared to pick a fight with Naig’s guards, indeed he expected a scrap, but there was no point in going bald-headed into battle. A bit of cleverness would not go amiss. ‘I’m being canny,’ he explained to Lockhart, then turned to make sure that Ahmed was keeping up. The boy was holding Sharpe’s pack as well as his musket.
The four guards, all of them armed with firelocks and tulwars, watched the British soldiers walk out of sight. ‘They didn’t like the look of us,’ Lockhart said.
‘Mangy buggers, they are,’ Sharpe said. He was glancing about the encampment and saw what he wanted just a few paces away. It was some straw, and near it was a smouldering campfire, and he screwed a handful of the straw stalks into a spill that he lit and carried to the rear of the smaller tent. He pushed the flaming spill into a fold of the canvas. A child watched, wide-eyed. ‘If you say anything,’ Sharpe told the half-naked child, ‘I’ll screw your head off back to front.’ The child, who did not understand a word, grinned broadly.
‘You’re not really supposed to be doing this, are you?’ Lockhart asked.
‘No,’ Sharpe said. Lockhart grinned, but said nothing. Instead he just watched as the flames licked at the faded green canvas which, for a moment or two, resisted the fire. The material blackened, but did not burn, then suddenly it burst into fire that licked greedily up the tent’s high side. ‘That’ll wake ’em up,’ Sharpe said.
‘What now?’ Lockhart asked, watching the flame sear up the tent’s side.
‘We rescue what’s inside, of course.’ Sharpe drew his sabre. ‘Come on, lads!’ He ran back to the front of the tent. ‘Fire!’ he shouted. ‘Fire! Fetch water! Fire!’
The four guards stared uncomprehendingly at the Englishman, then leaped to their feet as Sharpe slashed at the laces of the small tent’s doorway. One of them called a protest to Sharpe.
‘Fire!’ Lockhart bellowed at the guards who, still unsure of what was happening, did not try to stop Sharpe. Then one of them saw the smoke billowing over the ridge of the tent. He yelled a warning into the larger tent as his companions suddenly moved to pull the Englishman away from the tent’s entrance.
‘Hold them off!’ Sharpe called, and Lockhart’s six troopers closed on the three men. Sharpe slashed at the lacing, hacking down through the tough rope as the troopers thumped into the guards. Someone swore, there was a grunt as a fist landed, then a yelp as a trooper’s boot slammed into a jetti’s groin. Sharpe sawed through the last knot, then pushed through the loosened tent flaps. ‘Jesus!’ He stopped, staring at the boxes and barrels and crates that were stacked in the tent’s smoky gloom.
Lockhart had followed him inside. ‘Doesn’t even bother to hide the stuff properly, does he?’ the Sergeant said in amazement, then crossed to a barrel and pointed to a 19 that had been cut into one of the staves. ‘That’s our mark! The bugger’s got half our supplies!’ He looked up at the flames that were now eating away the tent roof. ‘We’ll lose the bloody lot if we don’t watch it.’
‘Cut the tent ropes,’ Sharpe suggested, ‘and push it all down.’
The two men ran outside and slashed at the guy ropes with their sabres, but more of Naig’s men were coming from the larger tent now. ‘Watch your back, Eli!’ Sharpe called, then turned and sliced the curved blade towards a jetti’s face. The man stepped back, and Sharpe followed up hard, slashing again, driving the huge man farther back. ‘Now bugger off!’ he shouted at the vast brute. ‘There’s a bloody fire! Fire!’
Lockhart had put his attacker on the ground and was now stamping on his face with a spurred boot. The troopers were coming to help and Sharpe let them deal with Naig’s men while he cut through the last of the guy ropes, then ran back into the tent and heaved on the nearest pole. The air inside the tent was choking with swirling smoke, but at last the whole heavy array of canvas sagged towards the fire, lifting the canvas wall behind Sharpe into the air.
‘Sahib!’ Ahmed’s shrill voice shouted and Sharpe turned to see a man aiming a musket at him. The lifting tent flap was exposing Sharpe, but he was too far away to rush the man, then Ahmed fired his own musket and the man shuddered, turned to look at the boy, then winced as the pain in his shoulder struck home. He dropped the gun and clapped a hand onto the wound. The sound of the shot startled the other guards and some reached for their own muskets, but Sharpe ran at them and used his sabre to beat the guns down. ‘There’s a bloody fire!’ he shouted into their faces. ‘A fire! You want everything to burn?’ They did not understand him, but some realized that the fire threatened their master’s supplies and so ran to haul the half-collapsed burning canvas away from the wooden crates.
‘But who started the fire?’ a voice said behind Sharpe, and he turned to see a tall, fat Indian dressed in a green robe that was embroidered with looping fish and long-legged water-birds. The fat man was holding a half-naked child by the hand, the same small boy who had watched Sharpe push the burning straw into a crease of the canvas. ‘British officers,’ the fat man said, ‘have a deal of freedom in this country, but does that mean they can destroy an honest man’s property?’
‘Are you Naig?’ Sharpe asked.
The fat man waved to his guards so that they gathered behind him. The tent had been dragged clear of the crates and was burning itself out harmlessly. The green-robed man now had sixteen or seventeen men with him, four of them jettis and all of them armed, while Sharpe had Lockhart and his battered troopers and one defiant child who was reloading a musket as tall as himself. ‘I will give you my name,’ the fat man said unpleasantly, ‘when you tell me yours.’
‘Sharpe. Ensign Sharpe.’
‘A mere ensign!’ The fat man raised his eyebrows. ‘I thought ensigns were children, like this young man.’ He patted the half-naked boy’s head. ‘I am Naig.’
‘So perhaps you can tell me,’ Sharpe said, ‘why that tent was stuffed full of our supplies?’
‘Your supplies!’ Naig laughed. ‘They are my goods, Ensign Sharpe. Perhaps some of them are stored in old boxes that once belonged to your army, but what of that? I buy the boxes from the quartermaster’s department.’
‘Lying bastard,’ Sergeant Lockhart growled. He had prised open the barrel with the number 19 incised on its side and now flourished a horseshoe. ‘Ours!’ he said.
Naig seemed about to order his guards to finish off Sharpe’s small band, but then he glanced to his right and saw that two British officers had come from the larger tent. The presence of the two, both captains, meant that Naig could not just drive Sharpe away, for now there were witnesses. Naig might take on an ensign and a few troopers, but captains carried too much authority. One of the captains, who wore the red coat of the Scotch Brigade, crossed to Sharpe. ‘Trouble?’ he asked. His revels had plainly been interrupted, for his trousers were still unbuttoned and his sword and sash were slung across one shoulder.
‘This bastard, sir, has been pilfering our supplies.’ Sharpe jerked his thumb at Naig then nodded towards the crates. ‘It’s all marked as stolen in the supply ledgers, but I’ll wager it’s all there. Buckets, muskets, horseshoes.’
The Captain glanced at Naig, then crossed to the crates. ‘Open that one,’ he ordered, and Lockhart obediently stooped to the box and levered up its nailed lid with his sabre.
‘I have been storing these boxes,’ Naig explained. He turned to the second captain, an extraordinarily elegant cavalryman in Company uniform, and he pleaded with him in an Indian language. The Company Captain turned away and Naig went back to the Scotsman. The merchant was in trouble now, and he knew it. ‘I was asked to store the boxes!’ he shouted at the Scotsman.
But the infantry Captain was staring down into the opened crate where ten brand new muskets lay in their wooden cradles. He stooped for one of the muskets and peered at the lock. Just forward of the hammer and behind the pan was an engraved crown with the letters GR beneath it, while behind the hammer the word Tower was engraved. ‘Ours,’ the Scotsman said flatly.
‘I bought them.’ Naig was sweating now.
‘I thought you said you were storing them?’ the Scotsman said. ‘Now you say you bought them. Which is it?’
‘My brother and I bought the guns from silladars,’ Naig said.
‘We don’t sell these Tower muskets,’ the Captain said, hefting the gun that was still coated with grease.
Naig shrugged. ‘They must have been captured from the supply convoys. Please, sahib, take them. I want no trouble. How was I to know they were stolen?’ He turned and pleaded again with the Company cavalry Captain who was a tall, lean man with a long face, but the cavalryman turned and walked a short distance away. A crowd had collected now and watched the drama silently, and Sharpe, looking along their faces, suspected there was not much sympathy for Naig. Nor, Sharpe thought, was there much hope for the fat man. Naig had been playing a dangerous game, but with such utter confidence that he had not even bothered to conceal the stolen supplies. At the very least he could have thrown away the government issue boxes and tried to file the lock markings off the muskets, but Naig must have believed he had powerful friends who would protect him. The cavalryman seemed to be one of those friends, for Naig had followed him and was hissing in his ear, but the cavalryman merely pushed the Indian away, then turned to Sharpe. ‘Hang him,’ he said curtly.
‘Hang him?’ Sharpe asked in puzzlement.
‘It’s the penalty for theft, ain’t it?’ the cavalryman insisted.
Sharpe looked to the Scottish Captain, who nodded uncertainly. ‘That’s what the General said,’ the Scotsman confirmed.
‘I’d like to know how he got the supplies, sir,’ Sharpe said.
‘You’ll give the fat bastard time to concoct a story?’ the cavalryman demanded. He had an arrogance that annoyed Sharpe, but everything about the cavalryman irritated Sharpe. The man was a dandy. He wore tall, spurred boots that sheathed his calves and knees in soft, polished leather. His white breeches were skin tight, his waistcoat had gold buttons, while his red tail coat was clean, uncreased and edged with gold braid. He wore a frilled stock, a red silk sash was draped across his right shoulder and secured at his left hip by a knot of golden braid, his sabre was scabbarded in red leather, while his cocked hat was plumed with a lavishly curled feather that had been dyed pale green. The clothes had cost a fortune, and clearly his servants must spend hours on keeping their master so beautifully dressed. He looked askance at Sharpe, a slight wrinkle of his nostrils suggesting that he found Sharpe’s appearance distressing. The cavalryman’s face suggested he was a clever man, but also that he despised those who were less clever than himself. ‘I don’t suppose Sir Arthur will be vastly pleased when he hears that you let the fellow live, Ensign,’ he said acidly. ‘Swift and certain justice, ain’t that the penalty for theft? Hang the fat beast.’
‘That is what the standing orders say,’ the Scotch Brigade Captain agreed, ‘but does it apply to civilians?’
‘He should have a trial!’ Sharpe protested, not because he was so committed to Naig’s right to a hearing, but because he feared the whole episode was getting out of hand. He had thought to find the supplies, maybe have a mill with Naig’s guards, but no one was supposed to die. Naig deserved a good kicking, but death?
‘Standing orders apply to anyone within the picquet lines,’ the cavalry Captain averred confidently. ‘So for God’s sake get on with it! Dangle the bastard!’ He was sweating, and Sharpe sensed that the elegant cavalryman was not quite so confident as he appeared.
‘Bugger a trial,’ Sergeant Lockhart said happily. ‘I’ll hang the bastard.’ He snapped at his troopers to fetch a nearby ox cart. Naig had tried to retreat to the protection of his guards, but the cavalry Captain had drawn a pistol that he now held close to Naig’s head as the grinning troopers trundled the empty ox cart into the open space in front of the pilfered supplies.
Sharpe crossed to the tall cavalryman. ‘Shouldn’t we talk to him, sir?’
‘My dear fellow, have you ever tried to get the truth out of an Indian?’ the Captain asked. ‘They swear by a thousand gaudy gods that they’ll tell the truth, then lie like a rug! Be quiet!’ Naig had begun to protest and the cavalryman rammed the pistol into the Indian’s mouth, breaking a tooth and gashing Naig’s gum. ‘Another damned word, Naig, and I’ll castrate you before I hang you.’ The cavalryman glanced at Sharpe, who was frowning. ‘Are you squeamish, Ensign?’
‘Don’t seem right, sir. I mean I agree he deserves to be hung, but shouldn’t we talk to him first?’
‘If you like conversation so much,’ the cavalryman drawled, ‘institute a Philosophical Society. Then you can enjoy all the hot air you like. Sergeant?’ This last was to Lockhart. ‘Take the bastard off my hands, will you?’
‘Pleasure, sir.’ Lockhart seized Naig and shoved him towards the cart. One of the cavalry troopers had cut a length of guy rope from the burnt remnants of the tent and he now tied one end to the tip of the single shaft that protruded from the front of the ox cart. He made a loop in the rope’s end.
Naig screamed and tried to pull away. Some of his guards started forward, but then a hard voice ordered them back and Sharpe turned to see that a tall, thin Indian in a black and green striped robe had come from the larger tent. The newcomer, who looked to be in his forties, walked with a limp. He crossed to the cavalry Captain and spoke quietly, and Sharpe saw the cavalryman shake his head vehemently, then shrug as if to suggest that he was powerless. Then the Captain gestured to Sharpe and the tall Indian gave the Ensign a look of such malevolence that Sharpe instinctively put his hand on his sabre’s hilt. Lockhart had pulled the noose over Naig’s head. ‘Are you sure, sir?’ he asked the cavalry Captain.
‘Of course I’m sure, Sergeant,’ the cavalryman said angrily. ‘Just get on with it.’
‘Sir?’ Sharpe appealed to the Scots Captain, who frowned uncertainly, then turned and walked away as though he wanted nothing more to do with the affair. The tall Indian in the striped robe spat into the dust, then limped back to the tent.
Lockhart ordered his troopers to the back of the cart. Naig was attempting to pull the noose free of his neck, but Lockhart slapped his hands down. ‘Now, boys!’ he shouted.
The troopers reached up and hauled down on the back-board so that the cart tipped like a seesaw on its single axle and, as the troopers pulled down, so the shaft rose into the air. The rope stretched and tightened. Naig screamed, then the cavalryman jumped up to sit on the cart’s back and the shaft jerked higher still and the scream was abruptly choked off. Naig was dangling now, his feet kicking wildly under the lavishly embroidered robe. None of the crowd moved, none protested.
Naig’s face was bulging and his hands were scrabbling uselessly at the noose which was tight about his neck. The cavalry officer watched with a small smile. ‘A pity,’ he said in his elegant voice. ‘The wretched man ran the best brothel I ever found.’
‘We’re not killing his girls, sir,’ Sharpe said.
‘That’s true, Ensign, but will their next owner treat them as well?’ The cavalryman turned to the big tent’s entrance and took off his plumed hat to salute a group of sari-clad girls who now watched wide-eyed as their employer did the gallows dance. ‘I saw Nancy Merrick hang in Madras,’ the cavalryman said, ‘and she did the jig for thirty-seven minutes! Thirty-seven! I’d wagered on sixteen, so lost rather a lot of tin. Don’t think I can watch Naig dance for half an hour. It’s too damned hot. Sergeant? Help his soul to perdition, will you?’
Lockhart crouched beneath the dying man and caught hold of his heels. Then he tugged down hard, swearing when Naig pissed on him. He tugged again, and at last the body went still. ‘Do you see what happens when you steal from us?’ the cavalry Captain shouted at the crowd, then repeated the words in an Indian language. ‘If you steal from us, you will die!’ Again he translated his words, then gave Sharpe a crooked grin. ‘But only, of course, if you’re stupid enough to be caught, and I didn’t think Naig was stupid at all. Rather the reverse. Just how did you happen to discover the supplies, Ensign?’
‘Tent was on fire, sir,’ Sharpe said woodenly. ‘Me and Sergeant Lockhart decided to rescue whatever was inside.’
‘How very public-spirited of you.’ The Captain gave Sharpe a long, speculative look, then turned back to Lockhart. ‘Is he dead, Sergeant?’
‘Near as makes no difference, sir,’ Lockhart called back.
‘Use your pistol to make sure,’ the Captain ordered, then sighed. ‘A shame,’ he said. ‘I rather liked Naig. He was a rogue, of course, but rogues are so much more amusing than honest men.’ He watched as Lockhart lowered the shaft, then stooped over the prostrate body and put a bullet into its skull. ‘I suppose I’ll have to find some carts to fetch these supplies back where they belong,’ the Captain said.
‘I’ll do that, sir,’ Sharpe said.
‘You will?’ The Captain seemed astonished to discover such willingness. ‘Why on earth would you want to do that, Ensign?’
‘It’s my job, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘I’m Captain Torrance’s assistant.’
‘You poor benighted bastard,’ the Captain said pityingly.
‘Poor, sir? Why?’
‘Because I’m Captain Torrance. Good day to you, Ensign.’ Torrance turned on his heel and walked away through the crowd.
‘Bastard,’ Sharpe said, for he had suddenly understood why Torrance had been so keen to hang Naig.
He spat after the departed Captain, then went to find some bullocks and carts. The army had its supplies back, but Sharpe had made a new enemy. As if Hakeswill were not enough, he now had Torrance as well.
The palace in Gawilghur was a sprawling one-storey building that stood on the highest point within the Inner Fort. To its north was a garden that curled about the largest of the fortress’s lakes. The lake was a tank, a reservoir, but its banks had been planted with flowering trees, and a flight of steps led from the palace to a small stone pavilion on the lake’s northern shore. The pavilion had an arched ceiling on which the reflections of the lake’s small waves should have rippled, but the season had been so dry that the lake had shrunk and the water level was some eight or nine feet lower than usual. The water and the exposed banks were rimed with a green, foul-smelling scum, but Beny Singh, the Killadar of Gawilghur, had arranged for spices to be burned in low, flat braziers so that the dozen men inside the pavilion were not too offended by the lake’s stench.
‘If only the Rajah was here,’ Beny Singh said, ‘we should know what to do.’ Beny Singh was a short, plump man with a curling moustache and nervous eyes. He was the fortress commander, but he was a courtier by avocation, not a soldier, and he had always regarded his command of the great fortress as a licence to make his fortune rather than to fight the Rajah’s enemies.
Prince Manu Bappoo was not surprised that his brother had chosen not to come to Gawilghur, but had instead fled farther into the hills. The Rajah was like Beny Singh, he had no belly for a fight, but Bappoo had watched the first British troops creep across the plain beneath the fort’s high walls and he welcomed their coming. ‘We don’t need my brother here to know what we must do,’ he said. ‘We fight.’ The other men, all commanders of the various troops that had taken refuge in Gawilghur, voiced their agreement.
‘The British cannot be stopped by walls,’ Beny Singh said. He was cradling a small white lap dog which had eyes as wide and frightened as its master’s.
‘They can, and they will,’ Bappoo insisted.
Singh shook his head. ‘Were they stopped at Seringapatam? At Ahmednuggur? They crossed those city walls as though they had wings! They are – what is the word your Arabs use? – djinns!’ He looked about the gathered council and saw no one who would support him. ‘They must have the djinns on their side,’ he added weakly.
‘So what would you do?’ Bappoo asked.
‘Treat with them,’ Beny Singh said. ‘Ask for cowle
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Bernard Cornwell
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: It was the most impregnable fortress in all India – Gawlighur – and the opposing forces were safely holding it.But Sharpe, newly appointed an officer by Wellesley, has his own enemies to fight on every hand. The officers in his new regiment resent his arrival, Obadiah Hakeswill is determined to have his revenge, and renegades within the British army want to retain control of their own area…