The sappers who had em placed the gab ions were too excited to go to sleep and instead were milling about a pair of smoky fires. Their laughter rose and fell on the night wind. Major Stokes, pleased with their work, had produced three jars of arrack as a reward, and the jugs were being passed from hand to hand.
Sharpe watched the small celebration and then, keeping to the shadows among Syud Sevajee's encampment, he went to a small tent where he stripped off his borrowed Indian robes before crawling under the flap. In the dark he blundered into Clare who, kept awake by the sound of the bombardment and then by the voices of the sappers, put up a hand and felt bare flesh.
"You're undressed! " She sounded alarmed.
"Not quite, " Sharpe said, then understood her fear.
"My clothes were soaking, " he explained, 'so I took them off. Didn't want to wet the bed, eh? And I've still got my shirt on."
"Is it raining? I didn't hear it."
"It was blood, " he said, then rummaged under the blanket he had borrowed from Syud Sevajee and found Torrance's pouch.
Clare heard the rattle of stones.
"What is it?"
"Just stones, " he said, 'pebbles." He put the twenty jewels he had retrieved from Kendrick and Lowry into the pouch, stowed it safe under the blanket, then lay down. He doubted he had found every stone, but he reckoned he had retrieved most of them. They had been loose in the two privates' pockets, not even hidden away in their coat seams. God, he felt tired and his body had still not recovered from Hakeswill's kicking. It hurt to breathe, the bruises were tender and a tooth was still loose.
"What happened out there?" Clare asked.
"The engineers put the gab ions in place. When it's light they'll scrape the gun platform and make the magazines, and tomorrow night they'll bring up the guns."
"What happened to you?" Clare amended her question.
Sharpe was silent for a while.
"I looked up some old friends, " he said.
But he had missed Hakeswill, damn it, and Hakeswill would be doubly alert now. Still, a chance would come. He grinned as he remembered Morris's scared voice. The Captain was a bully to his men and a to adie to his superiors.
"Did you kill someone?" Clare asked.
"Two men, " he admitted, 'but it should have been three."
"Why?"
He sighed.
"Because they were bad men, " he said simply, then reflected it was a true answer.
"And because they tried to kill me, " he added, 'and they robbed me. You knew them, " he went on.
"Kendrick and Lowry."
"They were horrid, " Clare said softly.
"They used to stare at me."
"Can't blame them for that, love."
She was silent for a while. The laughter of the sappers was subsiding as men drifted towards their tents. The wind gusted at the tent's entrance and brought the smell of burnt powder from the rocky isthmus where patches of grass still flamed around the exhausted rocket tubes.
"Everything's gone wrong, hasn't it?" Clare said.
"It's being put right, " Sharpe replied.
"For you, " she said.
Again she was silent, and Sharpe suspected she was crying.
"I'll get you home to Madras, " he said.
"And what'll happen to me there?"
"You'll be all right, lass. I'll give you a pair of my magic pebbles."
"What I want, " she said softly, 'is to go home. But I can't afford it."
"Marry a soldier, " Sharpe said, 'and be carried home with him." He thought of Eli Lockhart who had been admiring Clare from a distance.
They would suit each other, Sharpe thought.
She was crying very softly.
"Torrance said he'd pay my way home when I'd paid off the debt, " she said.
"Why would he make you work for one passage, then give you another?" Sharpe asked.
"He was a lying bastard."
"He seemed so kind at first."
"We're all like that, " Sharpe said.
"Soft as lights when you first meet a woman, then you get what you want and it changes. I don't know.
Maybe not every time."
"Charlie wasn't like that, " Clare said.
"Charlie? Your husband?"
"He was always good to me."
Sharpe lay back. The light of the dying fires nickered in the tent's loose weave. If it rained, he thought, the cloth would leak like a pepper pot.
"There are good men and bad, " he said.
"What are you?" Clare asked.
"I think I'm good, " he said, 'but I don't know. All the time I get into trouble, and I only know one way out. I can fight. I can do that all right."
"Is that what you want? To fight?"
"God knows what I want." He laughed softly.
"I wanted to be an officer more than I'd wanted anything in my life! I dreamed of it, I did. I wanted it so bad that it hurt, and then the dream came true and it woke me up and I wondered why I'd wanted it so much." He paused.
Syud Sevajee's horses stamped their feet softly behind the tent.
"Some buggers are trying to persuade me to leave the army. Sell the commission, see? They don't want me."
"Why not?"
"Because I piss in their soup, lass."
"So will you leave?"
He shrugged.
"Don't want to." He thought about it.
"It's like a club, a society. They don't really want me, so they chuck me out, and then I have to fight my way back in. But why do I do it if they don't want me? I don't know. Maybe it'll be different in the Rifles. I'll try 'em, anyway, and see if they're different."
"You want to go on fighting?" Clare asked.
"It's what I'm good at, " Sharpe said.
"And I do enjoy it. I mean I know you shouldn't, but there ain't any other excitement like it."
"None?"
"Well, one." He grinned in the dark.
There was a long silence, and he thought Clare had fallen asleep, but then she spoke again.
"How about your French widow?"
"She's gone, " Sharpe said flatly.
"Gone?"
"She buggered off, love. Took some money of mine and went. Gone to America, I'm told."
Clare lay in silence again.
"Don't you worry about being alone?" she asked after a while.
"No."
"I do."
He turned towards her, propped himself on an elbow and stroked her hair. She stiffened as he touched her, then relaxed to the gentle pressure of his hand.
"You ain't alone, lass, " Sharpe said.
"Or only if you want to be. You got trapped, that's all. It happens to everyone. But you're out now. You're free." He stroked her hair down to her neck and felt warm bare skin under his hand. She did not move and he softly stroked farther down.
"You're undressed, " he said.
"I was warm, " she said in a small voice.
"What's worse?" Sharpe asked.
"Being warm or being lonely?"
He thought she smiled. He could not tell in the dark, but he thought she smiled.
"Being lonely, " she said very softly.
"We can look after that, " he said, lifting the thin blanket and moving to her side.
She had stopped crying. Somewhere outside a cock crowed and the eastern cliffs were touched with the first gold of the day. The fires on the rocky neck of land flickered and died, their smoke drifting like patches of thin mist. Bugles called from the main encampment, summoning the redcoats to the morning parade. The night picquets were relieved as the sun rose to flood the world with light.
Where Sharpe and Clare slept.
"You abandoned the dead men?" Wellesley growled.
Captain Morris blinked as a gust of wind blew dust into one of his eyes.
"I tried to bring the bodies in, " he lied, 'but it was dark, sir. Very dark. Colonel Kenny can vouch for that, sir. He visited us."
"I visited you?" Kenny, lean, tall and irascible, was standing beside the General.
"I visited you?" he asked again, his inflection rising to outrage.
"Last night, sir, " Morris answered in plaintive indignation.
"On the picquet line."
"I did no such thing. Sun's gone to your head." Kenny glowered at Morris, then took a snuff box from a pocket and placed a pinch on his hand.
"Who the devil are you, anyway?" he added.
"Morris, sir. 33rd."
"I thought we had nothing but Scots and sepoys here, " Kenny said to Wellesley.
"Captain Morris's company escorted a convoy here, " Wellesley answered.
"A light company, eh?" Kenny said, glancing at Morris's epaulettes.
"You might even be useful. I could do with another company in the assault party." He snorted the snuff, stopping one nostril at a time.
"It cheers my boys up, " he added, 'seeing white men killed." Kenny commanded the first battalion of the tenth Madrassi Regiment.
"What's in your assault unit now?" Wellesley asked.
"Nine companies, " Kenny said.
"The grenadiers and two others from the Scotch Brigade, the flankers from my regiment and four others.
Good boys, all of them, but I daresay they won't mind sharing the honours with an English light company."
"And I've no doubt you'll welcome a chance to assault a breach, Morris?" Wellesley asked drily.
"Of course, sir, " Morris said, cursing Kenny inwardly.
"But in the meantime, " Wellesley went on coldly, 'bring your men's bodies in."
"Yes, sir."
"Do it now."
Sergeant Green took a half-dozen men down the neck of land, but they only found two bodies. They were expecting three, but Sergeant Hakeswill was missing. The enemy, seeing the redcoats among the rocks above the reservoir, opened fire and the musket balls smacked into stones and ricocheted up into the air. Green took a bullet in the heel of his boot. It did not break the skin of his foot, but the blow hurt and he hopped on the short, dry grass.
"Just grab the buggers and drag them away, " he said. He wondered why the enemy did not fire their cannon, and just then a gun discharged a barrel of canister at his squad.
The balls hissed all about the men, but miraculously none was hit as the soldiers seized Kendrick and Lowry by their feet and ran back towards the half-completed battery where Captain Morris waited. Both the dead men had slit throats.
Once safe behind the gab ions the corpses were treated more decorously by being placed on makeshift stretchers. Colonel Kenny intercepted the stretcher-bearers to examine the corpses which were already smelling foul.
"They must have sent a dozen cut-throats out of the fort, " he reckoned.
"You say there's a sergeant missing?"
"Yes, sir, " Morris answered.
"Poor fellow must be a prisoner. Be careful tonight, Captain! They'll probably try again. And I assure you, Captain, if I decide to take a stroll this evening, it won't be to your picquet line."
That night the 33rd's Light Company again formed a screen in front of the new batteries, this time to protect the men dragging up the guns. It was a nervous night, for the company was expecting throat-slitting Mahrattas to come silently through the darkness, but nothing stirred.
The fortress stayed silent and dark. Not a gun fired and not a rocket flew as the British cannon were hauled to their new emplacements and as powder charges and round shot were stacked in the newly made ready magazines.
Then the gunners waited.
The first sign of dawn was a grey lightening of the east, followed by the flare of reflected sun as the first rays lanced over the world's rim to touch the summit of the eastern cliffs. The fortress walls showed grey black Still the gunners waited. A solitary cloud glowed livid pink on the horizon. Smoke rose from the cooking fires inside the fortress where the flags hung limp in the windless air. Bugles roused the British camp which lay a half-mile behind the batteries where officers trained telescopes on Gawilghur's northern wall.
Major Stokes's job was almost finished. He had made the batteries, and now the gunners must unmake the walls, but first Stokes wanted to be certain that the outermost breach would be made in the right place.
He had fixed a telescope to a tripod and now he edged it from side to side, searching the lichen-covered stones just to the right of a bastion in the centre of the wall. The wall sloped back slightly, but he was sure he could see a place where the old stones bulged out of alignment, and he watched that spot as the sun rose and cast a hint of shadow where the stones were not quite true. Finally he screwed the telescope's mount tight shut, so that the tube could not move, then summoned the gun captain of the battery's eighteen-pounder. A major actually commanded this battery, but he insisted that his sergeant go to the spyglass.
"That's your target, " Stokes told the Sergeant.
The Sergeant stooped to the telescope, then straightened to see over the glass, then stooped again. He was chewing a wad of tobacco and had no lower front teeth so that the yellow spittle ran down his chin in a continuous dribble. He straightened, then stooped a third time. The telescope was powerful, and all he could see in the glass circle was a vertical joint between two great stones. The joint was some four feet above the wall's base, and when it gave way the wall would spill forward down the slope to make the ramp up which the attackers could swarm.
"Smack on the joint, sir?" the Sergeant asked in a Northumbrian accent so pronounced that Stokes did not at first understand him.
"Low on the joint, " Stokes said.
"Low it is, sir, " the Sergeant said, and stooped to squint through the glass once more.
"The joint gapes a bit, don't it?"
"It does, " Stokes said.
The Sergeant grunted. For a while, he reckoned, the battering would drive the stones in, sealing the gap, but there was pressure there and the wall must eventually give way as the battered stones weakened.
"That bugger'll burst like an abscess, " the Sergeant said happily, straightening from the telescope. He returned to his gun and barked at his men to make some minute adjustments to its trail. He himself heaved on the elevating screw, though as yet the gun was still masked by some half filled gab ions that blocked the embrasure. Every few seconds the Sergeant climbed onto the trail to see over the gab ions then he would demand that the gun was shifted a half-inch left or a finger's breadth to the right as he made another finicky adjustment to the screw. He tossed grass in the air to gauge the wind, then twisted the elevation again to raise the barrel a tiny amount.
"Stone cold shot, " he explained to Stokes, 'so I'm pointing her a bit high. Maybe a half turn more." He hammered the screw with the heel of his hand.
«Perfect,» he said.
The pucka lees were bringing water which they poured into great wooden tubs. The water was not just to slake the gunners' thirst and soak the sponges that cleaned out the barrels between shots, but was also intended to cool the great weapons. The sun was climbing, it promised to be a searing hot day, and if the huge guns were not drenched intermittently with water they could overheat and explode the powder charges prematurely. The Sergeant was choosing his shot now, rolling two eighteen-pounder balls up and down a stretch of bare earth to judge which was the more perfect sphere.
"That one, " he said, spitting tobacco juice onto his chosen missile.
Morris's Light Company trailed back up the road, going to the camp where they would sleep. Stokes watched them pass and thought of Sharpe. Poor Sharpe, but at least, from wherever he was imprisoned inside the fortress, he would hear the siege guns and know that the redcoats were coming. If they got through the breach, Stokes thought gloomily, or if they ever managed to cross the fortress's central ravine.
He tried to suppress his pessimism, telling himself that his job was simply to make the breach, not win the whole victory.
The chosen shot was rolled into the gun's muzzle, then rammed down onto the canvas bags of powder. The Sergeant took a length of wire that hung looped on his belt and rammed it through the cannon's touch-hole, piercing the canvas bag beneath, then selected a priming tube, a reed filled with finely milled powder, and slid it down into the powder charge, but leaving a half-inch of the reed protruding above the touchhole.
"Ready when you are, sir, " he told the Major commanding the battery who, in turn, looked at Stokes.
Stokes shrugged.
"I imagine we wait for Colonel Stevenson's permission."
The gunners in the second breaching battery which lay fifty yards west of the first had trained their telescopes over the gab ions to watch where the first shot fell. The scar it left in the wall would be their aiming mark. The two enfilading batteries also watched. Their work would begin properly when the first of the three breaches was made, but till then their twelve-pounders would be aimed at the cannon mounted on Gawilghur's ramparts, trying to dismount them or tumble their embrasures into rubble.
"That wall won't last long, " the battery Major, whose name was Plummer, opined. He was staring at the wall through Stokes's telescope.
"We'll have it opened up today, " Stokes agreed.
"Thank God there ain't a glacis, " Plummer said.
"Thank God, indeed, " Stokes echoed piously, but he had been thinking about that lack and was not so sure now that it was a blessing. Perhaps the Mahrattas understood that their real defence was the great central ravine, and so were offering nothing but a token defence of the Outer Fort. And how was that ravine to be crossed? Stokes feared that he would be asked for an engineering solution, but what could he do? Fill the thing with soil? That would take months.
Stokes's gloomy presentiments were interrupted by an aide who had been sent by Colonel Stevenson to enquire why the batteries were silent.
"I suspect those are your orders to open fire, Plummer, " Stokes said.
«Unmask!» Plummer shouted.
Four gunners clambered up onto the bastion and manhandled the half-filled gab ions out of the cannon's way. The Sergeant squinted down the barrel a last time, nodded to himself, then stepped aside.
The other gunners had their hands over their ears.
"You can fire, Ned!»
Plummer called to the Sergeant, who took a glowing linstock from a protective barrel, reached across the gun's high wheel and touched the fire to the reed.
The cannon hammered back a full five yards as the battery filled with acrid smoke. The ball screamed low across the stony neck of land to crack against the fort's wall. There was a pause. Defenders were running along the ramparts. Stokes was peering through the glass, waiting for the smoke to thin. It took a full minute, but then he saw that a slab of stone about the size of a soup plate had been chipped from the wall.
"Two inches to the right, Sergeant, " he called chidingly.
"Must have been a puff of wind, sir, " the Sergeant said, 'puff of bloody wind, 'cos there weren't a thing wrong with gun's laying, begging your pardon, sir."
"You did well, " Stokes said with a smile, 'very well." He cupped his hands and shouted at the second breaching battery.
"You have your mark! Fire on! " A billow of smoke erupted from the fortress wall, followed by the bang of a gun and a howl as a round shot whipped overhead. Stokes jumped down into the battery, clutching his hat.
"It seems we've woken them up, " he remarked as a dozen more Mahratta guns fired. The enemy's shots smacked into the gab ions or ricocheted wildly along the rocky ground. The second British battery fired, the noise of its guns echoing off the cliff face to tell the camp far beneath that the siege of Gawilghur had properly begun.
Private Tom Garrard of the 33rd's Light Company had wandered to the edge of the cliff to watch the bombardment of the fortress. Not that there was much to see other than the constantly replenished cloud of smoke that shrouded the rocky neck of land between the batteries and the fortress, but every now and then a large piece of stone would fall from Gawilghur's wall. The fire from the de fences was furious, but it seemed to Garrard that it was ill aimed. Many of the shots bounced over the batteries, or else buried themselves in the great piles of protective gab ions The British fire, on the other hand, was slow and sure. The eighteen-pound round shots gnawed at the wall and not one was wasted. The sky was cloudless, the sun rising ever higher and the guns were heating so that after every second shot the gunners poured buckets of water on the long barrels. The metal hissed and steamed, and sweating puckakes hurried up the battery road with yet more skins of water to replenish the great vats.
Garrard was sitting by himself, but he had noticed a ragged Indian was watching him. He ignored the man, hoping he would go away, but the Indian edged closer. Garrard picked up a fist-sized stone and tossed it up and down in his right hand as a hint that the man should go away, but the threat of the stone only made the Indian edge closer.
«Sahib!» the Indian hissed.
"Bugger off, " Garrard growled.
"Sahib! Please!»
"I've got nothing worth stealing, I don't want to buy anything, and I don't want to roger your sister."
"I'll roger your sister instead, sahib, " the Indian said, and Garrard twisted round, the stone drawn back ready to throw, then he saw that the dirty robed man had pushed back his grubby white head cloth and was grinning at him.
"You ain't supposed to chuck rocks at officers, Tom, " Sharpe said.
"Mind you, I always wanted to, so I can't blame you."
"Bloody hell! " Garrard dropped the stone and held out his right hand.
"Dick Sharpe! " He suddenly checked his outstretched hand.
"Do I have to call you "sir"?"
"Of course you don't, " Sharpe said, taking Garrard's hand.
"You and me? Friends from way back, eh? Red sash won't change that, Tom.
How are you?"
"Been worse. Yourself?"
"Been better."
Garrard frowned.
"Didn't I hear that you'd been captured?"
"Got away, I did. Ain't a bugger born who can hold me, Tom. Nor you." Sharpe sat next to his friend, a man with whom he had marched in the ranks for six years.
"Here." He gave Garrard a strip of dried meat.
"What is it?"
"Goat. Tastes all right, though."
The two sat and watched the gunners at work. The closest guns were in the two enfilading batteries, and the gunners were using their twelve pounders to systematically bring down the parapets of the ramparts above Gawilghur's gate. They had already unseated a pair of enemy guns and were now working on the next two embrasures. An ox-drawn limber had just delivered more ammunition, but, on leaving the battery, the limber's wheel had loosened and five men were now standing about the canted wheel arguing how best to mend it. Garrard pulled a piece of stringy meat from between his teeth.
"Pull the broken wheel off and put on a new one, " he said scornfully.
"It don't take a major and two lieutenants to work that out."
"They're officers, Tom, " Sharpe said chidingly, 'only half brained."
"You should know." Garrard grinned.
"Buggers make an inviting target, though." He pointed across the plunging chasm which separated the plateau from the Inner Fort.
"There's a bloody great gun over there.
Size of a bloody hay wain, it is. Buggers have been fussing about it for a half-hour now."
Sharpe stared past the beleaguered Outer Fort to the distant cliffs.
He thought he could see a wall where a gun might be mounted, but he was not sure.
"I need a bloody telescope."
"You need a bloody uniform."
"I'm doing something about that, " Sharpe said mysteriously.
Garrard slapped at a fly.
"What's it like then?"
"What's what like?"
"Being a Jack-pudding?"
Sharpe shrugged, thought for a while, then shrugged again.
"Don't seem real. Well, it does. I dunno." He sighed.
"I mean I wanted it, Tom, I wanted it real bad, but I should have known the bastards wouldn't want me. Some are all right. Major Stokes, he's a fine fellow, and there are others. But most of them? God knows. They don't like me, anyway."
"You got 'em worried, that's why, " Garrard said.
"If you can become an officer, so can others." He saw the unhappiness on Sharpe's face.
"Wishing you'd stayed a sergeant, are you?"
«No,» Sharpe said, and surprised himself by saying it so firmly.
"I
can do the job, Tom."
"What job's that, for Christ's sake? Sitting around while we do all the bloody work? Having a servant to clean your boots and scrub your arse?"
«No,» Sharpe said, and he pointed across the shadowed chasm to the Inner Fort.
"When we go in there, Tom, we're going to need fellows who know what the hell they're doing. That's the job. It's beating hell out of the other side and keeping your own men alive, and I can do that."
Garrard looked sceptical.
"If they let you."
"Aye, if they let me, " Sharpe agreed. He sat in silence for a while, watching the far gun emplacement. He could see men there, but was not sure what they were doing.
"Where's Hakeswill?" he asked.
"I looked for him yesterday, and the bugger wasn't on parade with the rest of you."
«Captured,» Garrard said.
"Captured?"
"That's what Morris says. Me, I think the bugger ran. Either ways, he's in the fort now."
"You think he ran?"
"We had two fellows murdered the other night. Morris says it were the enemy, but I didn't see any of the buggers, but there was some fellow creeping round saying he was a Company colonel, only he weren't." Garrard stared at Sharpe and a slow grin came to his face.
"It were you, Dick."
"Me?" Sharpe asked straight-faced.
"I was captured, Tom. Only escaped yesterday."
"And I'm the king of bloody Persia. Lowry and Kendrick were meant to arrest you, weren't they?"
"It was them who died?" Sharpe asked innocently.
Garrard laughed.
"Serve them bloody right. Bastards, both of them."
An enormous blossom of smoke showed at the distant wall on the top of the cliffs. Two seconds later the sound of the great gun bellowed all around Sharpe and Garrard, while the massive round shot struck the stalled limber just behind the enfilading battery. The wooden vehicle shattered into splinters and all five men were hurled to the ground where they jerked bloodily for a few seconds and then were still.
Fragments of stone and wood hissed past Sharpe.
"Bloody hell, " Garrard said admiringly, 'five men with one shot!»
"That'll teach 'em to keep their heads down, " Sharpe said. The sound of the enormous gun had drawn men from their tents towards the plateau's edge. Sharpe looked round and saw that Captain Morris was among them. The Captain was in his shirtsleeves, staring at the great cloud of smoke through a telescope.
"I'm going to stand up in a minute, " Sharpe said, 'and you're going to hit me."
"I'm going to do what?" Garrard asked.
"You're going to thump me. Then I'm going to run, and you're going to chase me. But you're not to catch me."
Garrard offered his friend a puzzled look.
"What are you up to, Dick?"
Sharpe grinned.
"Don't ask, Tom, just do it."
"You are a bloody officer, aren't you?" Garrard said, grinning back.
"Don't ask, just do it."
"Are you ready?" Sharpe asked "I've always wanted to clobber an officer."
"On your feet then." They stood.
"So hit me, " Sharpe said.
"I've tried to pinch some cartridges off you, right? So give me a thump in the belly."
"Bloody hell, " Garrard said.
"Go on, do it!»
Garrard gave Sharpe a half-hearted punch, and Sharpe shoved him back, making him fall, then he turned and ran along the cliff's edge.
Garrard shouted, scrambled to his feet and began to pursue. Some of the men who had gone to fetch the five bodies moved to intercept Sharpe, but he dodged to his left and disappeared among some bushes.
The rest of the 33rd's Light Company was whooping and shouting in pursuit, but Sharpe had a long lead on them and he twisted in and out of the shrubs to where he had picketed one of Syud Sevajee's horses. He pulled the peg loose, hauled himself into the saddle and kicked back his heels. Someone yelled an insult at him, but he was clear of the camp now and there were no mounted picquets to pursue him.
A half-hour later Sharpe returned, trotting with a group of native horsemen coming back from a reconnaissance. He peeled away from them and dismounted by his tent where Ahmed waited for him While Sharpe and Garrard had made the diversion the boy had been thieving and he grinned broadly as Sharpe ducked into the hot tent.
"I have every things, " Ahmed said proudly.
He had taken Captain Morris's red coat, his sash and his sword-belt with its sabre.
"You're a good lad, " Sharpe said. He needed a red coat, for Colonel Stevenson had given orders that every man who went into Gawilghur with the attackers must be in uniform so that they were not mistaken for the enemy. Syud Sevajee's men, who planned to hunt down Beny Singh, had been issued with some threadbare old sepoys' jackets, some of them still stained with the blood of their previous owners, but none of the jackets had fitted Sharpe. Even Morris's coat would be a tight fit, but at least he had a uniform now.
"No trouble?"
Sharpe asked Ahmed.
"No bugger saw me, " the boy said proudly. His English was improving every day, though Sharpe worried that it was not quite the King's English. Ahmed grinned again as Sharpe gave him a coin that he stuffed into his robes.
Sharpe folded the jacket over his arm and stooped out of the tent.
He was looking for Clare and saw her a hundred paces away, walking with a tall soldier who was dressed in a shirt, black trousers and spurred boots. She was deep in conversation, and Sharpe felt a curious pang of jealousy as he approached, but then the soldier turned round, frowned at Sharpe's ragged appearance, then recognized the man under the head cloth. He grinned.
"Mister Sharpe, " he said.
"Eli Lockhart, " Sharpe said.
"What the hell are the cavalry doing here?" He jerked his thumb towards the fort that was edged with white smoke as the defenders tried to hammer the British batteries.
"This is a job for real soldiers."
"Our Colonel persuaded the General that Mister Dodd might make a run for it. He reckoned a dozen cavalrymen could head him off."
"Dodd won't run, " Sharpe said.
"He won't have space to get a horse out."
"So we'll go in with you, " Lockhart said.
"We've got a quarrel with Mister Dodd, remember?"
Clare was looking shy and alarmed, and Sharpe reckoned she did not want Sergeant Lockhart to know that she had spent time with Ensign Sharpe.
"I was looking for Mrs. Wall, " he explained to Lockhart.
"If you can spare me a few minutes, Ma'am?"
Clare shot Sharpe a look of gratitude.
"Of course, Mister Sharpe."
"It's this jacket, see?" He held out Morris's coat.
"It's got red facings and turn backs and I need white ones He took off his head cloth.
"I
wondered if you could use this. I know it's a bit filthy, and I hate to trouble you, Ma'am, but I don't reckon my sewing's up to making turn backs cuffs and collars."
"You could take that captain's badge off while you're about it, love, " Lockhart suggested to Clare, 'and the skirmisher's wings. Don't reckon Mister Sharpe wants that coat's real owner to recognize it."
"I'd rather he didn't, " Sharpe admitted.
Clare took the coat, gave Sharpe another grateful look, then hurried towards Sevajee's tents. Lockhart watched her go.
"Been wanting a chance to talk to her for three years, " he said wonderingly.
"So you found it, eh?"
Lockhart still watched her.
"A rare-looking woman, that."
"Is she? I hadn't really noticed, " Sharpe lied.
"She said you'd been kind to her, " Lockhart said.
"Well, I tried to help, you know how it is, " Sharpe said awkwardly.
"That bloody man Torrance killed himself and she had nowhere to go. And you found her, eh? Most officers would try to take advantage of a woman like that, " Lockhart said.
"I'm not a proper officer, am I?" Sharpe replied. He had seen the way that Clare looked at the tall cavalryman, and how Lockhart had stared at her, and Sharpe reckoned that it was best to stand aside.
"I had a wife, " Lockhart said, 'only she died on the voyage out. Good little woman, she was."
"I'm sorry, " Sharpe said.
"And Mrs. Wall, " Lockhart went on, 'lost her husband." Widow meets widower. Any minute now, Sharpe thought, and the word fate would be used.
"It's destiny, " Lockhart said in a tone of wonderment.
"So what are you going to do about her?" Sharpe asked.
"She says she ain't got a proper home now, " Lockhart said, 'except the tent you lent her, and my Colonel won't mind me taking a wife."
"Have you asked her?"
"More or less, " Lockhart said, blushing.
"And she said yes?"
"More or less, " Lockhart said again, blushing more deeply.
"Bloody hell, " Sharpe said admiringly, 'that's quick!»
"Real soldiers don't wait, " Lockhart said, then frowned.
"I heard a rumour you'd been snaffled by the enemy?"
"Got away, " Sharpe said vaguely.
"Buggers were careless." He turned and watched as an errant rocket from the fort soared up into the cloudless sky to leave a thickening pile of smoke through which, eventually, it tumbled harmlessly to earth.
"Are you really joining the attack?" he asked Lockhart.
"Not in the front rank, " Lockhart said.
"I ain't a fool. But Colonel Huddlestone says we can go in and look for Dodd. So we'll wait for you boys to do the hard work, then follow."
"I'll look out for you."
"And we'll keep an eye on you, " Lockhart promised.
"But in the meantime I'll go and see if someone needs a needle threaded."
"You do that, " Sharpe said. He watched the cavalryman walk away, and saw, at the same time, that Ahmed had been evicted from Clare's tent with Sharpe's few belongings. The boy looked indignant, but Sharpe guessed their exile from the tent would not last long, for Clare would surely move to the cavalryman's quarters before nightfall. Ding dong, he thought, wedding bells. He took the pouch with its jewels from Ahmed, then, while his uniform was being tailored, he went to watch the guns gnaw and batter at the fort.
The young horseman who presented himself at the gate of Gawilghur's Inner Fort was tall, arrogant and self-assured. He was dressed in a white silk robe that was tied at the waist with a red leather belt from which a golden-hilted tulwar hung in a gem-encrusted scabbard, and he did not request that the gates be opened, but rather demanded it. There was, in truth, no good reason to deny his orders, for men were constantly traversing the ravine between the two forts and Dodd's Cobras were accustomed to opening and closing the gates a score of times each day, but there was something in the young man's demeanour that annoyed Gopal. So he sent for Colonel Dodd.
Dodd arrived a few moments later with the twitching English Sergeant at his side. The horseman rounded on Dodd, shouting at him to punish Gopal, but Dodd just spat, then turned to Hakeswill.
"Why would a man be riding a horse out of this gate?"
"Wouldn't know, sir, " Hakeswill said. The Sergeant was now dressed in a white coat that was crossed with a black sash as a sign of rank, though quite what rank the sash denoted was uncertain.
"There's nowhere to exercise a horse, " Dodd said, 'not unless he plans to ride through the Outer Fort into the English camp. Ask him his business, Gopal."
The young man refused to answer. Dodd shrugged, drew his pistol and aimed it at the horseman's head. He cocked the gun and the sound of the hammer engaging echoed loudly from the ramparts. The young man blanched and shouted at Gopal.
"He says, sahib, that he is on an errand for the Killadar, " Gopal explained to Dodd.
"What errand?" Dodd demanded. The young man plainly did not want to answer, but Dodd's grim face and the levelled pistol persuaded him to take a sealed packet from the pouch that hung from his belt.
He showed Dodd the Killadar's seal, but Dodd was not impressed by the red wax with its impression of a snake curled about a knife blade.
"Who is it addressed to?" he demanded, gesturing that the young man turn the package over.
The horseman obeyed and Dodd saw that the packet was addressed to the commanding officer of the British camp. It must have been written by a clerk who was unfamiliar with the English language, for it was atrociously spelt, but the words were unmistakable and Dodd stepped forward and seized the horse's bridle.
"Haul him out of the saddle, Gopal, " Dodd ordered, 'hold him in the guardroom and send a man to fetch Manu Bappoo."
The young man attempted a momentary resistance, even half drawing his tulwar from its precious scabbard, but a dozen of Dodd's men easily overpowered him. Dodd himself turned away and climbed the steps to the rampart, motioning Hakeswill to follow him.
"It's obvious what the Killadar is doing, " Dodd growled.
"He's trying to make peace."
"I thought we couldn't be defeated here, sir, " Hakeswill said in some alarm.
"We can't, " Dodd said, 'but Beny Singh is a coward. He thinks life should be nothing but women, music and games."
Which sounded just splendid to Obadiah Hakeswill, but he said nothing. He had presented himself to Dodd as an aggrieved British soldier who believed the war against the Mahrattas was unfair.
"We ain't got no business here, sir, " he had said, 'not in heathen land. It belongs to the blackamoors, don't it? And there ain't nothing here for a redcoat."
Dodd had not believed a word of it. He suspected Hakeswill had fled the British army to avoid trouble, but he could hardly blame the Sergeant for that. Dodd himself had done the same, and Dodd did not care about Hakeswill's motives, only that the Sergeant was willing to fight. And Dodd believed his men fought better when white men gave them orders.
"There's a steadiness about the English, Sergeant, " he had told Hakeswill, 'and it gives the natives bottom."
"It gives them what, sir?" Hakeswill had asked.
Dodd had frowned at the Sergeant's obtuseness.
"You ain't Scotch, are you?"
"Christ no, sir! I ain't a bleeding Scotchman, nor a Welshman.
English, sir, I am, through and through, sir." His face twitched.
"English, sir, and proud of it."
So Dodd had given Hakeswill a white jacket and a black sash, then put him in charge of a company of his Cobras.
"Fight well for me here, Sergeant, " he told Hakeswill when the two men reached the top of the rampart, 'and I'll make you an officer."
"I shall fight, sir, never you mind, sir. Fight like a demon, I will."
And Dodd believed him, for if Hakeswill did not fight then he risked being captured by the British, and God alone knew what trouble he would then face. Though in truth Dodd did not see how the British could penetrate the Inner Fort. He expected them to take the Outer Fort, for there they had a flat approach and their guns were already blasting down the breaches, but they would have a far greater problem in capturing the Inner Fort. He showed that problem now to Hakeswill.
"There's only one way in, Sergeant, and that's through this gate. They can't assault the walls, because the slope of the ravine is too steep. See?"
Hakeswill looked to his left and saw that the wall of the Inner Fort was built on an almost sheer slope. No man could climb that and hope to assail a wall, even a breached wall, which meant that Dodd was right and the attackers would have to try — and batter down the four gates that barred the entranceway, and those gates were defended by Dodd's Cobras.
"And my men have never known defeat, Sergeant, " Dodd said.
"They've watched other men beaten, but they've not been outfought themselves. And here the enemy will have to beat us. Have to! But they can't. They can't." He fell silent, his clenched fists resting on the fire step
The sound of the guns was constant, but the only sign of the bombardment was the misting smoke that hung over the far side of the Outer Fort. Manu Bappoo, who commanded there, was now hurrying back towards the Inner Fort and Dodd watched the Prince climb the steep path to the gates. The hinges squealed as, one after the other, the gates were opened to let Bappoo and his aides in. Dodd smiled as the last gate was unbarred.
"Let's go and make some mischief, " he said, turning back to the steps.
Manu Bappoo had already opened the letter that Gopal had given to him. He looked up as Dodd approached.
"Read it, " he said simply, thrusting the folded paper towards the Colonel.
"He wants to surrender?" Dodd asked, taking the letter.
"Just read it, " Bappoo said grimly.
The letter was clumsily written, but intelligible. Beny Singh, as Killa-dar of the Rajah of Berar's fortress of Gawilghur, was offering to yield the fort to the British on the sole condition that the lives of all the garrison and their dependants were spared. None was to be hurt, none was to be imprisoned. The British were welcome to confiscate all the weaponry in the fort, but they were to allow Gawilghur's inhabitants to leave with such personal property as could be carried away on foot or horseback.
"Of course the British will accept! " Manu Bappoo said.
"They don't want to die in the breaches!»
"Has Beny Singh the authority to send this?" Dodd asked.
Bappoo shrugged, "He's Killadar."
"You're the general of the army. And the Rajah's brother."
Bappoo stared up at the sky between the high walls of the entranceway.
"One can never tell with my brother, " he said.
"Maybe he wants to surrender? But he hasn't told me. Maybe, if we lose, he can blame me, saying he always wanted to yield."
"But you won't yield?"
"We can win here! " Bappoo said fiercely, then turned towards the palace as Gopal announced that the Killadar himself was approaching.
Beny Singh must have been watching his messenger's progress from the palace, for now he hurried down the path and behind him came his wives, concubines and daughters. Bappoo walked towards him, followed by Dodd and a score of his white-coated soldiers. The Killadar must have reckoned that the sight of the women would soften Bappoo's heart, but the Prince's face just became harder.
"If you want to surrender, " he shouted at Beny Singh, 'then talk to me first!»
"I have authority here, " Beny Singh squeaked. His little lap dog was in his arms, its small tongue hanging out as it panted in the heat.
"You have nothing! " Bappoo retorted. The women, pretty in their silk and cotton, huddled together as the two men met beside the snake pit.
"The British are making their breaches, " Beny Singh protested, 'and tomorrow or the day after they'll come through! We shall all be killed!»
He wailed the prophecy.
"My daughters will be their playthings and my wives their servants." The women shuddered.
"The British will die in the breaches, " Bappoo retorted.
"They cannot be stopped! " Beny Singh insisted.
"They are djinns."
Bappoo suddenly shoved Beny Singh back towards the rock pit where the snakes were kept. The Killadar cried aloud as he tripped and fell backwards, but Bappoo had kept hold of Beny Singh's yellow silk robe and now he held on tight so that the Killadar did not fall.
Hakeswill sidled to the pit's edge and saw the monkey bones. Then he saw a curving, nickering shape slither across the pit's shadowed floor and he quickly stepped back.
Beny Singh whimpered.
"I am the Killadar! I am trying to save lives!»
"You're supposed to be a soldier, " Bappoo said in his hissing voice, 'and your job is to kill my brother's enemies." The women screamed, expecting to see their man fall to the pit's floor, but Manu Bappoo kept a firm grip on the silk.
"And when the British die in the breaches, " he said to Beny Singh, 'and when their survivors are harried south across the plain, who do you think will get the credit for the victory? The Killadar of the fort, that is who! And you would throw that glory away?"
"They are djinns, " Beny Singh said, and he looked sideways at Obadiah Hakeswill whose face was twitching, and he screamed.
"They are djinnsl' "They are men, as feeble as other men, " Bappoo said. He reached out with his free hand and took hold of the white dog by the scruff of its neck. Beny Singh whimpered, but did not resist. The dog struggled in Manu Bappoo's grip.
"If you try to surrender the fortress again, " Manu Bappoo said, 'then this will be your fate." He let the dog drop. It yelped as it fell into the pit, then howled piteously as it struck the rock floor.
There was a hiss, a scrabble of paws, a last howl, then silence. Beny Singh uttered a shriek of pity for his dog before babbling that he would rather give his women poison to drink than risk that they should become prey to the terrible besiegers.
Manu Bappoo shook the hapless Killadar.
"Do you understand me?" he demanded.
"I understand! " Beny Singh said desperately.
Manu Bappoo hauled the Killadar safely back from the pit's edge.
"You will go to the palace, Beny Singh, " he ordered, 'and you will stay there, and you will send no more messages to the enemy." He pushed the Killadar away, then turned his back on him.
"Colonel Dodd?"
"Sahib?"
"A dozen of your men will make certain that the Killadar sends no messages from the palace. If he does, you may kill the messenger."
Dodd smiled.
"Of course, sahib."
Bappoo went back to the beleaguered Outer Fort while the Killadar slunk back to the hilltop palace above its green-scummed lake. Dodd detailed a dozen men to guard the palace's entrance, then went back to the rampart to brood over the ravine. Hakeswill followed him there.
"Why's the Killadar so scared, sir? Does he know something we don't?"
"He's a coward, Sergeant."
But Beny Singh's fear had infected Hakeswill who imagined a vengeful Sharpe come back from the dead to pursue him through the nightmare of a fortress fallen.
"The bastards can't get in, sir, can they?" he asked anxiously.
Dodd recognized Hakeswill's fear, the same fear he felt himself, the fear of the ignominy and shame of being recaptured by the British and then condemned by a merciless court. He smiled.
"They will probably take the Outer Fort, Sergeant, because they're very good, and because our old comrades do indeed fight like djinns, but they cannot cross the ravine. Not if all the powers of darkness help them, not if they besiege us for a year, not if they batter down all these walls and destroy the gates and flatten the palace by gunfire, because they will still have to cross the ravine, and it cannot be done. It cannot be done."
And who rules Gawilghur, Dodd thought, reigns in India.
And within a week he would be Rajah here.
Gawilghur's walls, as Stokes had guessed, were rotten. The first breach, in the outer wall, took less than a day to make. In mid-afternoon the wall had still been standing, though a cave had been excavated into the dusty rubble where Stokes had pointed the guns, but quite suddenly the whole rampart collapsed. It slid down the brief slope in a cloud of dust which slowly settled to reveal a steep ramp of jumbled stone leading into the space between the two walls. A low stub of the wall's rear face still survived, but an hour's work served to throw that remnant down.
The gunners changed their aim, starting the two breaches in the higher inner wall, while the enfilading batteries, which had been gnawing at the embrasures to dismount the enemy's guns, began firing slantwise into the first breach to dissuade the defenders from building obstacles at the head of the ramp. The enemy guns, those which survived, redoubled their efforts to disable the British batteries, but their shots were wasted in the gab ions or overhead. The big gun which had inflicted such slaughter fired three times more, but its balls cracked uselessly into the cliff face, after which the Mahratta gunners mysteriously gave up.
Next day the two inner breaches were made, and now the big guns concentrated on widening all three gaps in the walls. The eighteen pounder shots slammed into rotten stone, gouging out the wall's fill to add to the ramps. By evening the breaches were clearly big enough and now the gunners aimed their pieces at the enemy's remaining cannon.
One by one they were unseated or their embrasures shattered. A constant shroud of smoke hung over the rocky neck of land. It hung thick and pungent, twitching every time a shot whipped through. The enfilading twelve-pounders fired shells into the breaches, while the howitzer lobbed more shells over the walls.
The British guns fired deep into dusk, and minute by minute the enemy response grew feebler as their guns were wrecked or thrown off the fire steps Only as black night dropped did the besiegers' hot guns cease fire, but even now there would be no respite for the enemy. It was at night that the defenders could turn the breaches into deathtraps. They could bury mines in the stony ramps, or dig wide trenches across the breach summits or make new walls behind the raw new openings, but the British kept one heavy gUn firing throughout the darkness. They loaded the eighteen-pounder with canister and,
three times an hour, sprayed the area of the breaches with a cloud of musket balls to deter any Mahratta from risking his life on the rub bled slopes.
Few slept well that night. The cough of the gun seemed unnaturally loud, and even in the British camp men could hear the rattle as the musket balls whipped against Gawilghur's wounded walls. And in the morning, the soldiers knew, they would be asked to go to those walls and climb the tumbled ramps and fight their way through the shattered stones. And what would wait for them? At the very least, they suspected, the enemy would have mounted guns athwart the breaches to fire across the attack route. They expected blood and pain and death.
"I've never been into a breach, " Garrard told Sharpe. The two men met at Syud Sevajee's tents, and Sharpe had given his old friend a bottle of arrack.
"Nor me, " Sharpe said.
"They say it's bad."
"They do, " Sharpe agreed bleakly. It was supposedly the worst ordeal that any soldier could face.
Garrard drank from the stone bottle, wiped its lip, then handed it to Sharpe. He admired Sharpe's coat in the light of the small campfire.
"Smart bit of cloth, Mister Sharpe."
The coat had been given new white turn backs and cuffs by Clare Wall, and Sharpe had done his best to make the jacket wrinkled and dusty, but it still looked expensive.
"Just an old coat, Tom, " he said dismissively.
"Funny, isn't it? Mister Morris lost a coat."
"Did he?" Sharpe asked.
"He should be more careful." He gave Garrard the bottle, then climbed to his feet.
"I've got an errand, Tom." He held out his hand.
"I'll look for you tomorrow."
"I'll look out for you, Dick."
Sharpe led Ahmed through the camp. Some men sang around their fires, others obsessively honed bayonets that were already razor sharp. A cavalryman had set up a grinding stone and a succession of officers' servants brought swords and sabres to be given a wicked edge. Sparks whipped off the stone. The sappers were doing their last job, making ladders from bamboo that had been carried up from the plain. Major Stokes supervised the job, and his eyes widened in joy as he saw Sharpe approaching through the firelight.
"Richard! Is it you? Dear me, it is!
Well, I never! And I thought you were locked up in the enemy's dungeons! You escaped?"
Sharpe shook Stokes's hand.
"I never got taken to Gawilghur. I was held by some horsemen, " he lied, 'but they didn't seem to know what to do with me, so the buggers just let me go."
"I'm delighted, delighted!»
Sharpe turned and looked at the ladders.
"I didn't think we were making an escalade tomorrow?"
"We're not, " Stokes said, 'but you never know what obstacles have to be overcome inside a fortress. Sensible to carry ladders." He peered at Ahmed who was now dressed in one of the sepoy's coats that had been given to Syud Sevajee. The boy wore the red jacket proudly, even though it was a poor, threadbare and bloodstained thing.
"I say, " Stokes admired the boy, 'but you do look like a proper soldier. Don't he just?"
Ahmed stood to attention, shouldered his musket and made a smart about-turn. Major Stokes applauded.
"Well done, lad. I'm afraid you've missed all the excitement, Sharpe."
"Excitement?"
"Your Captain Torrance died. Shot himself, by the look of things.
Terrible way to go. I feel sorry for his father. He's a cleric, did you know? Poor man, poor man. Would you like some tea, Sharpe? Or do you need to sleep?"
"I'd like some tea, sir."
"We'll go to my tent, " Stokes said, leading the way.
"I've still got your pack, by the way. You can take it with you."
"I'd rather you kept it another day, " Sharpe said, "I'll be busy tomorrow."
"Busy?" Stokes asked.
"I'm going in with Kenny's troops, sir."
"Dear God, " Stokes said. He stopped and frowned. "I've no doubt we'll get through the breaches, Richard, for they're good breaches. A bit steep, perhaps, but we should get through, but God only knows what waits beyond. And I fear that the Inner Fort may be a much bigger obstacle than any of us have anticipated." He shook his head.
"I
ain't sanguine, Sharpe, I truly ain't."
Sharpe had no idea what sanguine meant, though he did not doubt that Stokes's lack of it did not augur well for the attack.
"I have to go into the fort, sir. I have to. But I wondered if you'd keep an eye on
Ahmed here." He took hold of the boy's shoulder and pulled him forward.
"The little bugger will insist on coming with me, " Sharpe said, 'but if you keep him out of trouble then he might survive another day."
"He can be my assistant, " Stokes said happily.
"But, Richard, can't I persuade you to the same employment? Are you ordered to accompany Kenny?"
"I'm not ordered, sir, but I have to go. It's personal business."
"It will be bloody in there, " Stokes warned. He walked on to his tent and shouted for his servant.
Sharpe pushed Ahmed towards Stokes's tent.
"You stay here, Ahmed, you hear me? You stay here!»
"I come with you, " Ahmed insisted.
"You bloody well stay, " Sharpe said. He twitched Ahmed's red coat.
"You're a soldier now. That means you take orders, understand? You obey. And I'm ordering you to stay here."
The boy scowled, but he seemed to accept the orders, and Stokes showed him a place where he could sleep. Afterwards the two men talked, or rather Sharpe listened as Stokes enthused about some fine quartz he had discovered in rocks broken open by the enemy's counter battery fire. Eventually the Major began yawning. Sharpe finished his tea, said his good night and then, making certain that Ahmed did not see him go, he slipped away into the dark.
He still could not sleep. He wished Clare had not gone to Eli Lockhart, although he was glad for the cavalryman that she had, but her absence made Sharpe feel lonely. He walked to the cliff's edge and he stood staring across the great gulf towards the fortress. A few lights showed in Gawilghur, and every twenty minutes or so the rocky isthmus would be lit by the monstrous flame of the eighteen-pounder gun. The balls would rattle against stone, then there would be silence except for the distant sound of singing, the crackle of insects and the soft sigh of the wind against the cliffs. Once, when the great gun fired, Sharpe distinctly saw the three ragged holes in the two walls. And why, he wondered, was he so intent on going into those deathtraps? Was it revenge? Just to find Hakeswill and Dodd? He could wait for the attackers to do their work, then stroll into the fort unopposed, but he knew he would not choose that easy path. He would go with Kenny's men and he would fight his way into Gawilghur for no other reason than pride. He was failing as an officer. The 74th had rejected him,
the Rifles did not yet know him, so Sharpe must take a reputation back to England if he was to stand any chance of success.
So tomorrow he must fight. Or else he must sell his commission and leave the army. He had thought about that, but he wanted to stay in uniform. He enjoyed the army, he even suspected he was good at the army's business of fighting the King's enemies. So tomorrow he would do it again, and thus demonstrate that he deserved the red sash and the sword.
So in the morning, when the drums beat and the enemy guns beat even harder, Sharpe would go into Gawilghur.