Читать книгу Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe’s Tiger, Sharpe’s Triumph, Sharpe’s Fortress - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 17

The armies of Britain and Hyderabad reached Seringapatam four days later. The first evidence of their coming was a cloud of dust that thickened and rose to obscure the eastern horizon, a great fog of dust kicked up by thousands of hooves, boots and wheels. The two armies had crossed the river well to the city’s east and were now on its southern bank and Sharpe climbed with the rest of Gudin’s men to the firestep above the Mysore Gate to watch the first British cavalry patrols appear in the distance. A torrent of lancers clattered out of the gate to challenge the invaders. The Tippoo’s men rode with green and scarlet pennants on their lance heads and beneath silk banners showing the golden sun blazoned against a scarlet field. Once the lancers had passed through the gate a succession of painted ox carts squealed and ground their way into the city, each loaded with rice, grain or beans. There was plenty of water inside Seringapatam, for not only did the River Cauvery wash beneath two of the walls, but each street had its own well, and now the Tippoo was making certain that the granaries were filled to overflowing. The city’s magazines were already crammed with ammunition. There were guns in every embrasure and, behind the walls, spare guns waited to replace any that were dismounted. Sharpe had never seen so many guns. The Tippoo Sultan had great faith in artillery and he had collected cannon of every shape and size. There were guns with barrels disguised as crouching tigers, and guns inscribed with flowing Arabic letters, and guns supplied from France, some still with the ancient Bourbon cipher incised close to their touchholes. There were huge guns with barrels over twenty feet long that fired stone balls close to fifty pounds in weight and small guns, scarce longer than a musket, that fired individual balls of grape. The Tippoo intended to meet any British assault with a storm of cannon fire.

And not just cannon fire, for as the two enemy armies marched closer to the city the rocketmen brought their strange weapons to the firesteps. Sharpe had never seen rockets before and he gaped as the missiles were stacked against the parapets. Each was an iron tube some four or five inches wide and about eighteen inches long that was attached by leather thongs to a bamboo stick that stood higher than a man. A crude tin cone tipped the iron cylinder, and inside the cone was either a small solid shot or else an explosive charge that was ignited by the rocket’s own gunpowder propellant. The missiles were fired by lighting a twist of paper that emerged from the base of the iron cylinders. Some of the rocket tubes had been wrapped with paper, then painted with either snarling tigers or verses from the Koran. ‘There’s a man in Ireland working on a similar weapon,’ Lawford told Sharpe, ‘though I don’t think he puts tigers on his rocket heads.’

‘How do you aim the bloody things?’ Sharpe asked. Some of the rockets had been placed ready to fire, but there was no gun barrel to direct them, instead they were simply laid on the parapet and pointed in the general direction of the enemy.

‘You don’t really aim them,’ Lawford said, ‘at least I don’t think you do. They’re just pointed in the right direction and fired. They are notoriously inaccurate,’ he added, ‘at least I hope they are.’

‘We’ll see soon enough,’ Sharpe said as another handcart of the strange missiles was heaved up the ramp to the firestep.

Sharpe looked forward to seeing the rockets fired, but then it became apparent that the British and Hyderabad armies were not approaching the city directly and thus bringing themselves into range, but instead planned to march clear around Seringapatam’s southern margin. The progress of the two armies was painfully slow. They had appeared at dawn, but by nightfall they had still not completed their half-circuit of the island on which Seringapatam sat. A crowd of spectators thronged the city ramparts to watch the enormous sprawl of herds, battalions, cavalry squadrons, guns, civilians and wagons that filled the southern landscape. Dust surrounded the armies like an English fog. From time to time the fog thickened as a group of the Tippoo’s lancers attacked some vulnerable spot, but each time the lancers were met by a countercharge of allied cavalry and more dust would spew up from the horses’ hooves as the riders charged, clashed, circled and fought. One lancer rode back to the city with a British cavalryman’s hat held aloft on his spear point and the soldiers on the walls cheered his return, but gradually the greater number of allied cavalry gained the upper hand and the cheers died away as more and more of the Tippoo’s horsemen splashed back wounded through the South Cauvery’s ford. Some of the enemy, when the Tippoo’s cavalry was driven away, ventured closer to the city. Small groups of officers trotted their horses towards the river so that they could examine the city walls, and it was one such group that drew the first rocket fire.

Sharpe watched fascinated as an officer turned one of the long weapons on the flat top of the parapet so that its tin cone pointed directly towards the nearest group of horsemen. The rocketman waited beside his officer, swinging a length of slow match to keep its burning end bright and hot. The officer fussed with the rocket’s alignment, then, satisfied at last, he stepped back and nodded to the rocketman who grinned and touched his slow match to the twist of paper at the rocket’s base.

The fuse paper, Sharpe guessed, had been soaked in water diluted with gunpowder, then dried, because it immediately caught the glowing fire which ate its way swiftly up the fuse as the rocketman stepped hurriedly away. The glowing trail vanished into the iron cylinder, there was silence for a second, then the rocket twitched as a bright flame abruptly choked and spat from the tube’s base. The twitch of the igniting powder charge threw the heavy rocket out of its careful alignment, but there was no chance to correct the weapon’s aim for a jet of flame was spitting fiercely enough from the cylinder to scorch the rocket’s quivering bamboo stick, and then, very suddenly, the bright flame roared into a furnace-like intensity with a noise like a huge waterfall, only instead of water it was spewing sparks and smoke, as the rocket began to move. It trembled for an instant, scraped an inch or two across the parapet, then abruptly accelerated away into the air, leaving a thick cloud of smoke and a scorch mark on the parapet’s coping. For a few seconds it seemed as if the rocket was having trouble staying aloft, for the long scorched tail wobbled as the fiery tube fought against gravity and as the smoke trail stitched a crazy whorl above the ditch at the foot of the wall, but then at last it gained momentum and raced away across the glacis, the encampment and the river. It spewed a tail of sparks, fire and smoke as it flew, then, as the powder charge began to be exhausted, the rocket fell earthwards. Beneath the missile the group of horsemen had collapsed their spyglasses and were fleeing in every direction as the fire-tailed demon came shrieking out of the sky. The rocket struck the ground, bounced, tumbled, then exploded with a small crack of noise and a burst of flame and white smoke. None of the horsemen had been touched, but their panic delighted the Tippoo’s men on the bastions who gave the rocketmen a cheer. Sharpe cheered with them. Farther up the wall a cannon fired at a second group of horsemen. The smoke of the gun billowed out across the encampment beneath the walls and the heavy round shot screamed across the river to disembowel a horse a half-mile away, but no one cheered the gunners. Guns were not so spectacular as rockets.

‘He’s got thousands of those bloody things,’ Sharpe told Lawford, indicating a pile of the rockets.

‘They really aren’t very accurate,’ Lawford said with pedantic disapproval.

‘But fire enough at once and you wouldn’t know if you were in this world or the next. I wouldn’t fancy being on the wrong end of a dozen of those things.’

Behind them, from one of the tall white minarets of the city’s new mosque, the muezzin was chanting the summons for the evening prayer and the Muslim rocketmen hastened to unroll their small prayer mats and face westwards towards Mecca. Sharpe and Lawford also faced west, not out of any respect for the Tippoo’s religion, but because the vanguard of British and Indian cavalry was scouting the flat land beyond the South Cauvery which was plainly visible from the summit of the Mysore Gate. The main body of the two armies was making camp well to the south of the city, but the horsemen had ridden ahead to reconnoitre the western country in preparation for the next day’s short march. Sharpe could even see officers pacing out and marking where the lascars would pitch the armies’ tents. It seemed that General Harris had decided to attack from the west, the one direction that McCandless had warned against.

‘Poor bloody fools,’ Sharpe said, though neither he nor Lawford yet knew what was dangerous about the western defences. Nor had they been given the slightest chance to escape from the city. They were never unwatched, they were never allowed to stand guard at night, and Sharpe knew that even the smallest attempt to break away from the city would lead to immediate death, yet they were not otherwise treated badly. They had been accepted well enough by their new comrades, but Sharpe could detect a reserve and he supposed that until he and Lawford proved their reliability there would always be an undercurrent of suspicion. ‘It ain’t that they don’t trust you,’ Henry Hickson had explained on their first night, ‘but till they’ve actually seen you bang a few balls off at your old mates, they won’t really know whether you’re stout.’ Hickson was sewing up the frayed edge of his leather thumbstall which protected his hand when a cannon was swabbed out. The gunner had to stop the touchhole so that the rammer could not drive a jet of fresh air down the barrel and so ignite any scraps of remaining powder, and Hickson’s old and blackened thumbstall betrayed how long he had been an artilleryman. ‘Had this in America,’ Hickson said, flourishing the ancient scrap of leather. ‘Stitched for me by a little girl in Charleston. Lovely little thing she was.’

‘How long have you been in the artillery?’ Lawford had asked the grey-haired Hickson.

‘Bleeding lifetime, Bill. Joined in ’76.’ Hickson laughed. ‘King and country! Go and save the colonies, eh? And all I did was march up and down like a little lost lamb and only ever fired a dozen shots. I should have stayed there, shouldn’t I, when they kicked us out, but, like a fool, I didn’t. Went to Gibraltar, polished cannon for a couple of years, then got posted out here.’

‘So why did you run?’ Lawford asked.

‘Money, of course. The Tippoo might be a black heathen bastard, but he pays well for gunners. When he pays at all, of course, which isn’t precisely frequent, but all the same he ain’t done bad by me. And if I’d stayed in the gunners I wouldn’t have met Suni, would I?’ He had jerked his calloused thumb towards his Indian woman who was cooking the evening meal with the wives of the other soldiers.

‘Don’t you ever worry that you’ll be recaptured?’ Lawford asked him.

‘Of course I bloody worry! All the bleeding time!’ Hickson held the thumbstall close to his right eye to judge the neatness of his stitching. ‘Christ, Bill, I don’t want to be stood up against a bleeding post with a dozen bastards staring down their musket barrels at me. I want to die in Suni’s bed.’ He grinned. ‘You do ask the most stupid questions, Bill, but what do you expect of a bleeding clerk! All that reading and writing, mate, it doesn’t do a man any bleeding good.’ He had shaken his head in despair of Lawford ever seeing sense. Like all of Gudin’s soldiers, Hickson was more suspicious of Lawford than of Sharpe. They all understood Sharpe for he was one of them and good at his trade, but Lawford was patently uncomfortable. They put it down to his having come from a comfortable home that had fallen on hard times, and while they were sympathetic to that misfortune they nevertheless expected him to make the best of it. Others in Gudin’s small battalion despised Lawford for his clumsiness with weapons, but Sharpe was his friend and so far no man had been willing to risk Sharpe’s displeasure by needling Lawford.

Sharpe and Lawford watched the invading armies make their camp well out of cannon range to the south of the city. A few Mysorean cavalrymen still circled the armies, watching for a chance to snap up a fugitive, but most of the Tippoo’s men were now back on the city’s island. There was an excited buzz in the city, almost a relief that the enemy was in sight and the waiting at last was over. There was also a feeling of confidence, for although the enemy horde looked vast, the Tippoo had formidable defences and plenty of men. Sharpe could detect no lack of enthusiasm among the Hindu troops. Lawford had told him there was bad blood between them and the Muslims, but on that evening, as the Tippoo’s men hung more defiant banners above their limewashed walls, the city seemed united in its defiance.

Sergeant Rothiere shouted at Sharpe and Lawford from the inner wall of the Mysore Gate, pointing to the big bastion at the city’s south-western corner. ‘Colonel Gudin wants us,’ Lawford translated for Sharpe.

‘Vite!’ Rothière bellowed.

‘Now,’ Lawford said nervously.

The two men threaded their way through the spectators who crowded the parapets until they found Colonel Gudin in a cavalier that jutted south from the huge square bastion. ‘How’s your back?’ the Frenchman greeted Sharpe.

‘Mending wonderfully, sir.’

Gudin smiled, pleased at the news. ‘It’s Indian medicine, Sharpe. If I ever go back to France I’ve a mind to take a native doctor with me. Much better than ours. All a French doctor would do is bleed you dry, then console your widow.’ The Colonel turned and gestured south across the river. ‘Your old friends,’ he said, indicating where the British and Indian cavalry were exploring the land between the army’s encampment and the city. Most were staying well out of range of Seringapatam’s cannon, but a few braver souls were galloping closer to the city, either to tempt the Tippoo’s cavalry to come out and dare single combat, or else to provoke the gunners on the city wall. One especially flamboyant group was shouting towards the city, and even waving, as though inviting cannon fire, and every now and then a cannon would boom or a rocket scream across the river, though somehow the jeering cavalrymen always remained untouched. ‘They’re distracting us,’ Gudin explained, ‘drawing attention away from some others. There, see? Some bushes. Beside the cistern.’ He was pointing across the river. ‘There are some scouts there. On foot. They are trying to see what defences we have close to the river. You see them? Look in the bushes under the two palm trees.’

Sharpe stared, but could see nothing. ‘You want us to go and get them, sir?’ he offered.

‘I want you to shoot them,’ Gudin said.

The bushes under the twin palms were nearly quarter of a mile away. ‘Long bloody range for a musket, sir,’ Sharpe said dubiously.

‘Try this, then,’ Gudin said and held out a gun. It must have been one of the Tippoo’s own weapons, for its stock was decorated with ivory, its tiger-head lock was chased with gold and its barrel engraved with Arabic writing.

Sharpe took and hefted the gun. ‘Might be pretty, sir,’ he said, ‘but no amount of fancy work on the outside will make it more accurate than that plain old thing.’ He patted his heavy French musket.

‘You’re wrong,’ Gudin said. ‘That’s a rifle.’

‘A rifle!’ Sharpe had heard of such weapons, but he had never handled one, and now he peered inside the muzzle and saw that the barrel was indeed cut in a pattern of spiralling grooves. He had heard that the grooves spun the bullet which somehow made a rifle far more accurate than a shot from a smoothbore musket. Why that should be the case he had not the slightest idea, but every man he had ever spoken to about rifles had sworn it was true. ‘Still,’ he said dubiously, ‘near a quarter-mile? Long ways for a bullet, sir, even if it is spinning.’

‘That rifle can kill at four hundred paces, Sharpe,’ Gudin said confidently. ‘It’s loaded, by the way,’ the Colonel added, and Sharpe, who had been peering down the muzzle again, jerked back. Gudin laughed. ‘Loaded with the best powder and with its bullet wrapped in oiled leather. I want to see how good a shot you are.’

‘No, you don’t, sir,’ Sharpe said, ‘you want to see if I’m willing to kill my own countrymen.’

‘That too, of course,’ Gudin agreed placidly, and laughed at having had his small ploy discovered. ‘At that range you should aim about six or seven feet above your target. I have another rifle for you, Lawford, but I don’t suppose we can expect a clerk to be as accurate as a skirmisher like Sharpe?’

‘I’ll do my best, sir,’ Lawford said and took the second rifle from Gudin. Lawford might be clumsy at loading a gun, but he was a practised shot in the hunting field and had been firing rifled fowling pieces since he was eight years old. ‘Some men find it hard to shoot at their old comrades,’ Gudin told Lawford mildly, ‘and I want to make sure you’re not among them.’

‘Let’s hope the bastards are officers,’ Sharpe said, ‘begging your presence, sir.’

‘There they are!’ Gudin said, and, sure enough, just beside the cistern beneath the two palm trees across the river, were a pair of red coats. The men were examining the city walls through telescopes. Their horses were picketed behind them.

Sharpe knelt in a gun embrasure. He instinctively felt that the range was much too long for any firearm, but he had heard about the miracle of rifles and he was curious to see if the rumours were true. ‘You take the one on the left, Bill,’ he said, ‘and fire just after me.’ He glanced at Gudin and saw that the Colonel had moved a few feet down the cavalier to watch the effect of the shots from a place where the rifles’ smoke would not obscure his glass. ‘And aim well, Bill,’ Sharpe said in a low voice. ‘They’re probably only bloody cavalrymen, so who cares if we plug them with a pair of bloody goolies.’ He crouched behind the rifle and aligned its well-defined sights that were so much more impressive than the rudimentary stub that served a musket as a foresight. A man could stand fifty feet in front of a well-aimed musket and still stand a better than evens chance of walking away unscathed, but the delicacy of the rifle’s sights seemed to confirm what everyone had told Sharpe. This was a long-range killer.

He settled himself firmly, keeping the sights lined on the distant man, then gently raised the barrel so that the rifle’s muzzle obscured his target but would give the ball the needed trajectory. There was no wind to speak of, so he had no need to offset his aim. He had never fired a rifle, but it was just common sense really. Nor was he unduly worried about killing one of his own side. It was a sad necessity, something that needed to be done if he was to earn Gudin’s trust and thus the freedom that might let him escape from the city. He took a breath, half let it out, then pulled the trigger. The gun banged into his shoulder, its recoil much harder than an ordinary musket’s blow. Lawford fired a half-second later, the smoke of his gun joining the dense cloud pumped out by Sharpe’s rifle.

‘The clerk wins!’ Gudin exclaimed in astonishment. He lowered his spyglass. ‘Yours went six inches past the man’s head, Sharpe, but I think you killed your man, Lawford. Well done! Well done indeed!’

Lawford reddened, but said nothing. He looked very troubled and Gudin put his evident confusion down to a natural shyness. ‘Is that the first man you’ve ever killed?’ he asked gently.

‘Yes, sir,’ Lawford said, truthfully enough.

‘You deserve to be better than a clerk. Well done. Well done both of you.’ He took the rifles from them and laughed at Sharpe’s rueful expression. ‘You expected to do better, Sharpe?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘You will. Six inches off at that distance is very good shooting. Very good indeed.’ Gudin turned to watch as the uninjured redcoat dragged his companion back towards the horses. ‘I think, maybe,’ Gudin went on, ‘that you have a natural talent, Lawford. I congratulate you.’ The Colonel fished in his pouch and brought out a handful of coins. ‘An advance on your arrears of pay. Well done! Off you go, now!’

Sharpe glanced behind him, hoping to see what devilment the western walls held, but he could see nothing strange there and so he turned and followed Lawford down the ramp. Lawford was shaking. ‘I didn’t mean to kill him!’ the Lieutenant said when he was out of Gudin’s earshot.

‘I did,’ Sharpe muttered.

‘God, what have I done? I was aiming left!’

‘Don’t be a bloody fool,’ Sharpe said, ‘what you’ve done is earned our freedom. You did bloody well.’ He dragged Lawford into a tavern. The Tippoo might be a Muslim, and the Muslims might preach an extraordinary hatred of alcohol, but most of the city was Hindu and the Tippoo was sensible enough to keep the taverns open. This one, close to Gudin’s barracks, was a big room, open to the street, with a dozen tables where old men played chess and young men boasted of the slaughter they would inflict on the besiegers. The tavern-keeper, a big woman with hard eyes, sold a variety of strange drinks: wine and arrack mostly, but she also kept a weird-tasting beer. Sharpe could still hardly speak a word of the local language, but he pointed to the arrack barrel and held up two fingers. Now that he and Lawford were dressed in the tiger-striped tunics and carried muskets they attracted little attention in the city and no hostility. ‘Here.’ He put the arrack in front of Lawford. ‘Drink that.’

Lawford drank it in one go. ‘That was the first man I’ve. killed,’ he said, blinking from the harshness of the liquor.

‘Worry you?’

‘Of course it does! He was British!’

‘Can’t skin a cat without making a bloody mess,’ Sharpe said comfortingly.

‘Jesus!’ Lawford said angrily.

Sharpe poured half his liquor into Lawford’s glass, then beckoned to one of the serving girls who circled the tables refilling glasses. ‘You had to do it,’ he said.

‘If I’d have missed like you,’ Lawford said ruefully, ‘Gudin would have been just as impressed. That was a fine shot of yours.’

‘I was aiming to kill the bugger.’

‘You were?’ Lawford was shocked.

‘Jesus Christ, Bill! We have to convince these buggers!’ Sharpe smiled as the girl poured more liquor, then he tipped a handful of small brass coins into a wooden bowl on the table. Another bowl held a strange spice which the other drinkers nibbled between sips, but Sharpe found the stuff too pungent. Once the girl was gone he looked at the troubled Lieutenant. ‘Did you think this was going to be easy?’

Lawford was silent for a few seconds, then gave a shrug. ‘In truth I thought it would be impossible.’

‘So why did you come?’

Lawford cradled the glass in both hands and stared at Sharpe as if weighing up whether or not to answer. ‘To get away from Morris,’ he finally confessed, ‘and for the excitement.’ He seemed embarrassed to admit as much.

‘Morris is a bastard,’ Sharpe said feelingly.

Lawford frowned at the criticism. ‘He’s bored,’ he said chidingly, then he steered the conversation away from the danger area of criticizing a superior officer. ‘And I also came because I owe gratitude to my uncle.’

‘And because it would get you noticed?’

Lawford looked up with some surprise on his face, then he nodded. ‘That too.’

‘Same as me then,’ Sharpe said. ‘Exact same as me. Except till the General said you was coming with me I had half a mind to run proper.’

Lawford was shocked by the admission. ‘You really wanted to desert?’

‘For Christ’s sake! What do you think it’s like in the ranks if you’ve got an officer like Morris and a sergeant like Hakeswill? Those bastards think we’re just bleeding cattle, but we’re not. Most of us want to do a decent job. Not too decent, maybe. We want a bit of money and a bibbi from time to time, but we don’t actually enjoy being flogged. And we can fight like the bloody devil. If you bastard lot started trusting us instead of treating us like the enemy, you’d be bloody amazed what we could do.’

Lawford said nothing.

‘You’ve got some good men in the company,’ Sharpe insisted. ‘Tom Garrard is a better soldier than half the officers in the battalion, but you don’t even notice him. If a man can’t read and doesn’t speak like a bleeding choirboy you think he can’t be trusted.’

‘The army’s changing,’ Lawford said defensively.

‘Like hell it is. Why do you make us powder our hair like bleeding women? Or wear that bloody stock?’

‘Change takes time,’ Lawford said weakly.

‘Too much bloody time,’ Sharpe said fervently, then leaned against the wall and eyed the girls who were cooking at the tavern’s far end. Were they whores, he wondered? Hickson and Blake had told him they knew where the best whores were, then he remembered Mary and suddenly felt guilty. He had not seen her once since their arrival in Seringapatam, but nor had he thought that much about her. In truth he was having too good a time here; the food was good, the liquor cheap and the company acceptable, and to that was added the heady spice of danger. ‘After that brilliant piece of sharpshooting,’ he encouraged Lawford, ‘we’re going to be all right. We’ll have a chance to get out of here.’

‘What about Mrs Bickerstaff?’ Lawford asked.

‘I was just thinking of her. And maybe you were right. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her. Couldn’t leave her with the army though, could I? Not with Hakeswill planning to sell her to a kin.’

‘A kin?’

‘A pimp.’

‘He really planned that?’ Lawford asked.

‘Him and Morris. In it together, they were. Bloody Hakeswill told me as much, the night he got me to hit him. And Morris was there with that little bastard Hicks, just waiting for me to do it. I was a bloody fool to fall for it, but there it is.’

‘Can you prove it?’

‘Prove it!’ Sharpe asked derisively. ‘Of course I can’t prove it, but it’s true.’ He blew out a rueful breath. ‘Just what am I going to do with Mary?’

‘Take her with you, of course,’ Lawford said sternly.

‘Might not have a chance,’ Sharpe said.

Lawford stared at him for a few seconds. ‘God, you’re ruthless,’ he finally said.

‘I’m a soldier. It fits.’ Sharpe said it proudly, but he was not proud, merely defiant. What was he to do with Mary? And where was she? He drank the rest of his arrack and clapped his hands for more. ‘You want to find a bibbi tonight?’ he asked Lawford.

‘A whore?’ Lawford asked in horror.

‘I don’t suppose a respectable woman will help us out much. Not unless you want a spot of polite conversation.’

Lawford stared aghast at Sharpe. ‘What we should do,’ the Lieutenant said softly, ‘is find this man Ravi Shekhar. He may have a way of getting news out of the city.’

‘And how the hell are we supposed to find him?’ Sharpe asked defiantly. ‘We can’t wander the bloody streets asking for this fellow in English. No one will know what the heck we’re doing! I’ll ask Mary to find him when we see her.’ He grinned. ‘Bugger Shekhar. How about a bibbi instead?’

‘Maybe I’ll read.’

‘Your choice,’ Sharpe said carelessly.

Lawford hesitated, his face reddening. ‘It’s just that I’ve seen men with the pox,’ he explained.

‘Christ! You’ve seen men vomit, but it don’t stop you drinking. Besides, don’t worry about the pox. That’s why God gave us mercury. The stuff worked for bloody Hakeswill, didn’t it? Though God knows why. Besides, Harry Hickson says he knows some clean girls, but of course they always say that. Still, if you want to ruin your eyes reading the Bible, go ahead, but there ain’t no mercury that will give you your sight back.’

Lawford said nothing for a few seconds. ‘Maybe I will come with you,’ he finally said shyly, staring down at the table.

‘Learning how the other half lives?’ Sharpe asked with a grin.

‘Something like that,’ Lawford mumbled.

‘Well enough, I tell you. Give us some cash and a willing couple of frows and we can live like kings. We’ll make this the last drink, eh? Don’t want to lower the flag, do we?’

Lawford was now deep red. ‘You won’t, of course, tell anyone about this when we’re back?’

‘Me?’ Sharpe pretended to be astonished at the very idea. ‘My lips are gummed together. Not a word, promise.’

Lawford worried that he was letting his dignity slide, but he did not want to lose Sharpe’s approval. The Lieutenant was becoming fascinated by the younger man’s confidence, and envied the way in which Sharpe so instinctively negotiated a wicked world and he wished he could find the same easy ability in himself. He thought briefly of the Bible waiting back in the barracks, and of his mother’s advice to read it diligently, but then he decided to hell with them both. He drained his arrack, picked up his musket and followed Sharpe into the dusk.

Every house in the city was prepared for the siege. Store-houses were filled with food and valuables were being hastily concealed in case the enemy armies broke through the wall. Holes were dug in gardens and filled with coins and jewellery, and in some of the wealthier houses whole rooms were concealed by false walls so that the women could be hidden away when the invaders rampaged through the streets.

Mary helped General Appah Rao’s household prepare for that ordeal. She felt guilty, not because she came from the army that was imposing this threatened misery on the city, but because she had unexpectedly found herself happy in Rao’s sprawling home.

When General Appah Rao had first taken her away from Sharpe she had been frightened, but the General had taken her to his own house and there reassured her of her safety. ‘We must clean you,’ the General told her, ‘and let that eye heal.’ He treated her gently, but with a measure of reserve that sprang from her dishevelled looks and her presumed history. The General did not believe that Mary was the most suitable addition to his household, but she spoke English and Appah Rao was shrewd enough to reckon that a command of English would be a profitable accomplishment in Mysore’s future and he had three sons who would have to survive in that future. ‘In time,’ Rao told Mary, ‘you can join your man, but it’s best he should settle in first.’

But now, after a week in the General’s household, Mary did not want to leave. For a start the house was filled with women who had taken her into their care and treated her with a kindness that astonished her. The General’s wife, Lakshmi, was a tall plump woman with prematurely grey hair and an infectious laugh. She had two grown unmarried daughters and, though there was a score of female servants, Mary was surprised to discover that Lakshmi and her daughters shared the work of the big house. They did not sweep it or draw water – those tasks were for the lowest of the servants – but Lakshmi loved to be in the kitchen from where her laughter rippled out into the rest of the house.

It had been Lakshmi who had scolded Mary for being so dirty, had stripped her from her western clothes, forced her into a bath and there untangled and washed her filthy hair. ‘You’d be beautiful if you took some trouble,’ Lakshmi had said.

‘I didn’t want to draw attention to myself.’

‘When you’re my age, my dear, no one pays you any attention at all, so you should take all you can get while you’re young. You say you’re a widow?’

‘He was an Englishman,’ Mary said nervously, explaining the lack of the marriage mark on her forehead and worried lest the older woman thought she should have thrown herself onto her husband’s pyre.

‘Well, you’re a free woman now, so let’s make you expensive.’ Lakshmi laughed and then, helped by her daughters, she first brushed and then combed Mary’s hair, drawing it back and then gathering it into a bun at the nape of her neck. A cheerful maid brought in an armful of clothes and the women tossed cholis at her. ‘Choose one,’ Lakshmi said. The choli was a brief blouse that covered Mary’s breasts, shoulders and upper arms, but left most of her back naked and Mary instinctively selected the most modest, but Lakshmi would have none of it. ‘That lovely pale skin of yours, show it off!’ she said, and chose a brief choli patterned in extravagant swirls of scarlet flowers and yellow leaves. Lakshmi tugged the short sleeves straight. ‘So why did you run with those two men?’ Lakshmi asked.

‘There was a man back in the army. A bad man. He wanted to …’ Mary stopped and shrugged. ‘You know.’

‘Soldiers!’ Lakshmi said disapprovingly. ‘But the two men you ran away with, did they treat you well?’

‘Yes, oh yes.’ Mary suddenly wanted Lakshmi’s good opinion, and that opinion would not be good if she thought that Mary had run from the army with a lover. ‘One of them’ – she told the lie shyly – ‘is my half-brother.’

‘Ah!’ Lakshmi said as though everything was clear now. Her husband had told her that Mary had run with her lover, but Lakshmi decided to accept Mary’s story. ‘And the other man?’ she asked.

‘He’s just a friend of my brother’s.’ Mary blushed at the lie, but Lakshmi did not seem to notice. ‘They were both protecting me,’ Mary explained.

‘That’s good. That’s good. Now, this.’ She held out a white petticoat that Mary stepped into. Lakshmi laced it tight at the back, then began hunting through the pile of saris. ‘Green,’ she said, ‘that’ll suit you,’ and she unfolded a vast bolt of green silk that was four feet wide and over twenty feet long. ‘You know how to wear a sari?’ Lakshmi asked.

‘My mother taught me.’

‘In Calcutta?’ Lakshmi hooted. ‘What do they know of saris in Calcutta? Skimpy little northern things, that’s all they are. Here, let me.’ Lakshmi wrapped the first length of sari about Mary’s slender waist and tucked it firmly into the petticoat’s waistband, then she wrapped a further length about the girl, but this she skilfully flicked into pleated folds that were again firmly anchored in the petticoat’s waistband. Mary could easily have done the job herself, but Lakshmi took such pleasure in it that it would have been cruel to have denied her. By the time the pleats were tucked in about half of the sari had been used up, and the rest Lakshmi looped over Mary’s left shoulder, then tugged at the silk so that it fell in graceful folds. Then she stepped back. ‘Perfect! Now you can come and help us in the kitchens. We’ll burn those old clothes.’

In the mornings Mary taught the General’s three small boys English. They were bright children and learned quickly and the hours passed pleasantly enough. In the afternoons she helped in the household chores, but in the early evening it was her job to light the oil lamps about the house and it was that duty that threw Mary into the company of Kunwar Singh who, at about the same time as the lamps were lit, went round the house ensuring that the shutters were barred and the outer doors and gates either locked or guarded. He was the chief of Appah Rao’s bodyguard, but his duties were more concerned with the household than with the General who had enough soldiers surrounding him wherever he went in the city. Kunwar Singh, Mary learned, was a distant relation of the General, but there was something oddly sad about the tall young man whose manners were so courteous but also so distant.

‘We don’t talk about it,’ Lakshmi said to Mary one afternoon when they were both hulling rice.

‘I’m sorry I asked.’

‘His father was disgraced, you see,’ Lakshmi went on enthusiastically. ‘And so the whole family was disgraced. Kunwar’s father managed some of our land near Sedasseer, and he stole from us! Stole! And when he was found out, instead of throwing himself on my husband’s mercy, he became a bandit. The Tippoo’s men caught him in the end and cut his head off. Poor Kunwar. It’s hard to live down that sort of disgrace.’

‘Is it a worse disgrace than having been married to an Englishman?’ Mary asked miserably, for somehow, in this lively house, she did feel obscurely ashamed. She was half English herself, but under Lakshmi’s swamping affection, she kept remembering her mother who had been rejected by her own people for marrying an Englishman.

‘A disgrace? Married to an Englishman? What nonsense you do talk, girl!’ Lakshmi said, and the next day she took care to send Mary to deliver a present of food to the young deposed Rajah of Mysore who survived at the Tippoo’s mercy in a small house just east of the Inner Palace. ‘But you can’t go alone,’ Lakshmi said, ‘not with the streets full of soldiers. Kunwar!’ And Lakshmi saw the blush of happiness on Mary’s face as she set off in the tall Kunwar Singh’s protective company.

Mary was happy, but she felt guilty. She knew she ought to try and find Sharpe for she suspected he must be missing her, but she was suddenly so content in Appah Rao’s household that she did not want to disturb that happiness by returning to her old world. She felt at home and, though the city was surrounded by enemies, she felt oddly safe. One day, she supposed, she would have to find Sharpe, and perhaps everything would turn out well on that day, but Mary did nothing to hasten it. She just felt guilty and made sure that she did not start lighting the lamps until she heard the first shutter bar fall.

And Lakshmi, who had been wondering just where she might find poor disgraced Kunwar Singh a suitable bride, chuckled.

Once the British and Hyderabad armies had made their permanent encampment to the west of Seringapatam the siege settled into a pattern that both sides recognized. The allied armies stayed well out of the range of even the largest cannon on the city’s wall and far beyond the reach of any rocket, but they established a picquet line facing an earth-banked aqueduct that wended its way through the fields about a mile west of the city and there they posted some field artillery and infantry to cover the land across which they would dig their approach ditches. The sooner those ditches were begun the sooner the breaching batteries could be built, but to the south of that chosen ground the steeply banked aqueduct made a deep loop that penetrated a half-mile westwards and the inside of that bend was filled by a tope, a thick wood, and from its leafy cover the Tippoo’s men kept up a galling musket fire on the British picquet line, while his rocketmen rained an erratic but troublesome barrage of missiles onto the forward British works. One lucky rocket streaked a thousand yards to hit an ammunition limber and the resultant explosion caused a cheer to sound from the distant walls of the city.

General Harris endured the rocket bombardment for two days, then decided it was time to capture the whole length of the aqueduct and clear the tope. Orders were written and trickled down from general to colonel to captains, and the captains sought out their sergeants. ‘Get the men ready, Sergeant,’ Morris told Hakeswill.

Hakeswill was sitting in his own tent, a luxury he alone enjoyed among the 33rd’s sergeants. The tent had belonged to Captain Hughes and should have been auctioned with the rest of the Captain’s belongings after Hughes died of the fever, but Hakeswill had simply claimed the tent and no one had liked to cross him. His servant Raziv, a miserable half-witted creature from Calcutta, was polishing Hakeswill’s boots so the Sergeant had to come bare-footed from his tent to face Morris. ‘Ready, sir?’ he said. ‘They are ready, sir.’ He stared suspiciously about the Light Company’s lines. ‘Better be ready, sir, or we’ll have the skin off the lot of them.’ His face jerked.

‘Sixty rounds of ammunition,’ Morris said.

‘Always carry it, sir! Regulations, sir!’

Morris had drunk the best part of three bottles of wine at luncheon and was in no mood to deal with Hakeswill’s equivocations. He swore at the Sergeant, then pointed south to where another rocket was smoking up from the tope. ‘Tonight, you idiot, we’re cleaning those bastards out of those trees.’

‘Us, sir?’ Hakeswill was alarmed at the prospect. ‘Just us, sir?’

‘The whole battalion. Night attack. Inspection at sundown. Any man who looks drunk gets flogged.’

Officers excepted, Hakeswill thought, then quivered as he offered Morris a cracking salute. ‘Sir! Inspection at sundown, sir. Permission to carry on, sir?’ He did not wait for Morris’s permission, but turned back into his tent. ‘Boots! Give ’em here! Come on, you black bastard!’ He gave Raziv a cuff round the ear and snatched his half-cleaned boots. He tugged them on, then dragged Raziv by the ear to where the halberd was planted like a banner in front of the tent. ‘Sharpen!’ Hakeswill bawled in the unfortunate boy’s bruised ear. ‘Sharpen! Understand, you toad-witted heathen? I want it sharp!’ Hakeswill gave the boy a parting slap as an encouragement, then stumped off through the lines. ‘On your bleeding feet!’ he shouted. ‘Look lively now! Time to earn your miserable pay. Are you drunk, Garrard? If you’re drunk, boy, I’ll have your bones given a stroking.’

The battalion paraded at dusk and, to its surprise, found itself being inspected by its Colonel, Arthur Wellesley. There was a feeling of relief in the ranks when Wellesley appeared, for by now every man knew that they were due for a fight and none wished to go into battle under the uncertain leadership of Major Shee who had drunk so much arrack that he was visibly swaying on his horse. Wellesley might be a cold-hearted bastard, but the men knew he was a careful soldier and they even looked cheerful as he trotted down their ranks on his white horse. Each man had to demonstrate possession of sixty cartridges, and those who failed had their names taken for punishment. Two sepoy battalions from the East India Company’s forces paraded behind the 33rd and, just as the sun disappeared behind them, all three battalions marched south-eastwards towards the aqueduct. Their colours were flying and Colonel Wellesley led them on horseback. Other King’s battalions marched to their left, going to attack the northern stretch of the aqueduct.

‘So what are we doing, Lieutenant?’ Tom Garrard asked the newly promoted Lieutenant Fitzgerald.

‘Silence in the ranks!’ Hakeswill bawled.

‘He was talking to me, Sergeant,’ Fitzgerald said, ‘and you will do me the honour of not interfering in my private conversations.’ Fitzgerald’s retort improved the Irishman’s stock with the company twentyfold. He was popular anyway, for he was a cheerful and easy-going young man.

Hakeswill growled. Fitzgerald claimed his brother was the Knight of Kerry, whatever the holy hell that was, but the claim did not impress Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill. Proper officers left discipline to sergeants, they did not curry favour with the men by telling jokes and chatting away like magpies. It was also plain that Brevet-Lieutenant bloody Fitzgerald did not like Sergeant Hakeswill for he took every chance he could to countermand Hakeswill’s authority, and Hakeswill was determined to change that. The Sergeant’s face twitched. There was nothing he could do at this moment, but Mister Fitzgerald, he told himself, would be taught his lesson, and the sooner it was taught the better.

‘You see those trees ahead?’ Fitzgerald explained to Garrard. ‘We’re going to clear the Tippoo’s boys out of them.’

‘How many of the bastards, sir?’

‘Hundreds!’ Fitzgerald answered cheerfully. ‘And all of them quaking at the knees to think that the Havercakes are coming to give them a thrashing.’

The Tippoo’s boys might be quaking, but they could clearly see the three battalions approaching and their rocketmen sent up a fiery barrage in greeting. The missiles climbed through the darkening sky, their exhaust flames unnaturally bright as they spewed volcanoes of sparks into the smoke trails that mingled as the rockets reached their apogee and then plunged towards the British and Indian infantry. ‘No breaking ranks!’ an officer shouted, and the three battalions marched stolidly on as the opening barrage plunged down to explode all around them. Some jeers greeted the barrage’s inaccuracy, but the officers and sergeants shouted for silence. More rockets climbed and fell. Most screamed erratically off course, but a few came close enough to make men duck, and one exploded just a few feet from the 33rd’s Light Company so that the sharp-edged scraps of its shattered tin nose cone whistled about their ears. Men laughed at their narrow escape, then someone saw that Lieutenant Fitzgerald was staggering. ‘Sir!’

‘It’s nothing, boys, nothing,’ Fitzgerald called. A scrap of the rocket’s cylinder had torn open his left arm, and there was a gash on the back of his head that was dripping blood from the ends of his hair, but he shook off any help. ‘Takes more than a black man’s rocket to knock down an Irishman,’ he said happily. ‘Ain’t that right, O’Reilly?’

‘It is, sir,’ the Irish Private answered.

‘Got skulls like bloody buckets, we have,’ Fitzgerald said, and crammed his tattered shako back on his head. His left arm was numb, and blood had soaked his sleeve to the wrist, but he was determined to keep going. He had taken worse injuries on the hunting field and still been in his saddle at the death of the fox.

Hakeswill’s resentment of Fitzgerald seethed. How dare a mere lieutenant overrule him? A bloody child! Not nineteen years old yet, and still with the bog water wet behind his ears. Hakeswill slashed at a cactus with his halberd, and the savagery of the gesture dislodged the musket that was slung on his left shoulder. The Sergeant never usually carried a musket, but tonight he was armed with the halberd, the musket, a bayonet and a brace of pistols. Except for the brief fight at Malavelly it had been years since Hakeswill had been in a battle and he was not sure he wanted to fight another this night, but if he did then he would make damned sure that he carried more weapons than any heathen enemy he might meet.

The sun had long gone by the time Wellesley halted the three battalions, though a lambent light still suffused the western sky and, under its pale glow, the 33rd formed line. The two sepoy battalions waited a quarter of a mile behind the 33rd. The rocket trails seemed brighter now as they climbed into a cloudless twilight sky where the first few stars pricked the dark. The missiles hissed as they streaked overhead, their smoke trails made lurid by the spitting flames. Spent rockets lay on the ground with small pale flames flickering feebly from their exhausts. The weapons were spectacular, but so inaccurate that even the inexperienced 33rd no longer feared them, but their relief was tempered by a sudden display of bright sparks at the lip of the aqueduct’s embankment. The sparks were instantly extinguished by a cloud of powder smoke, and the sound of musketry followed a few seconds later, but the range was too great and the balls spent themselves harmlessly.

Wellesley galloped his horse to Major Shee’s side, spoke briefly, then spurred on. ‘Flank companies!’ the Colonel shouted. ‘Advance in line!’

‘That’s us, boys,’ Fitzgerald said and drew his sabre. His left arm was throbbing now, but he did not need it to fight with a blade. He would keep going.

The Grenadier and Light companies advanced from the two flanks of the battalion. Wellesley halted them, formed them into a line of two ranks and ordered them to load their muskets. Ramrods rattled into barrels. ‘Fix bayonets!’ the Colonel called and the men drew out their seventeen-inch blades and slotted them onto the musket muzzles. It was full night now, but the heat was still like a wet blanket. The sound of slaps echoed through the ranks as men swatted at mosquitoes. The Colonel curbed his white horse at the front of the two ranks. ‘We’re going to chase the enemy off the embankment,’ he said in his cold, precise voice, ‘and once we’ve cleared them away Major Shee will bring on the rest of the battalion to drive the enemy out of the trees altogether. Captain West?’

‘Sir!’ Francis West, the commander of the Grenadier Company, was senior to Morris and so was in charge of the two companies.

‘You may advance.’

‘At once, sir,’ West said. ‘Detachment! Forward!’

‘I’m in your hands, Mother,’ Hakeswill said under his breath as the two companies began their advance. ‘Look after me now! Oh God in his heaven, but the black bastards are firing at us. Mother! It’s your Obadiah here, Mother!’

‘Steady in the line!’ Sergeant Green’s voice called. ‘Don’t hurry! Keep your ranks!’

Morris had discarded his horse and drawn his sabre. He felt distinctly unwell. ‘Give them steel when we get there,’ he called to his company.

‘We should give the buggers some bleeding artillery,’ someone muttered.

‘Who said that?’ Hakeswill shouted. ‘Keep your bleeding tongues still!’

The first balls were whistling past their ears now and the crackle of the enemy’s musketry filled the night. The Tippoo’s men were firing from the aqueduct’s embankment and the flames of their fusillade sparked bright against the dark background of the tope. The two companies instinctively spread out as they advanced and the corporals, charged to be file-closers, bawled at them to close up. The ground was night dark, but the skyline above the trees still showed clearly enough. Lieutenant Fitzgerald glanced behind once and was appalled to see that the western sky was still touched by a blazing streak and he knew that crimson glow would silhouette the company once it climbed the embankment, but there was no going back now. He stretched his long legs, eager to be first into the enemy lines. Wellesley was advancing behind the companies and Fitzgerald wanted to impress the Colonel.

The musketry fire blazed along the embankment’s lip, each shot a spark of brightness that glowed briefly in the dark smoke, but the fire was wildly inaccurate for the attackers were still in the night-shadowed low ground and concealed by the defenders’ own powder smoke. Far off to their left other battalions were assaulting the northern stretch of the embankment and Fitzgerald heard a cheer as those men charged home, then Captain West gave the order to charge and the men of the 33rd’s two flank companies let loose their own cheer as they were released from the leash.

They ran hard towards the embankment. Musket balls whipped overhead. All the redcoats wanted now was to get this attack over and done. Kill a few bastards, loot a few bodies, then get the hell back to the camp. They cheered as they reached the embankment and clambered up its short steep slope. ‘Kill them, boys!’ Fitzgerald shouted as he reached the crest, but there was suddenly no enemy there, only a still stretch of dark gleaming water and, as the attackers joined him, they all checked rather than plunge into the aqueduct.

A blast of musketry erupted from the farther bank. The Light Company, poised on the lip of the western bank, was silhouetted against the remnants of the daylight while the Tippoo’s men were shrouded by the tope’s night-dark trees.

Redcoats fell as the bullets thumped home. The aqueduct was only about ten paces wide and, at that range, the Mysorean infantry could not miss. One man was lifted right off his feet and thrown back onto the ground behind the embankment. Rockets slashed across the dark water, their fiery trails slicing just inches above the twin embankments. For a few seconds no one knew what to do. A man gasped as a rocket snatched off his foot, then he slid down into the weed-thick water where his blood swirled dark. Some redcoats fired back at the trees, but they fired blind and their bullets hit nothing. The wounded stumbled back down the embankment, the dead twitched as they were struck by bullets, while the living were dazed by the noise and dazzled by the rockets’ dreadful red tails. Captain Morris stared in confusion. He had somehow not expected to cross the aqueduct. He had thought the trees were on this side of the water and he did not know what to do, but then Lieutenant Fitzgerald gave a shout of defiance and jumped down into the waterway. The black water came up to his waist. ‘Come on, boys! Come on! There’s not so many of the bastards!’ He waded forward, his naked sabre bright in the starlight. ‘Let’s flush them out! Come on, Havercakes!’

‘Follow him, lads!’ Sergeant Green shouted and about half the Light Company jumped into the green-scummed water. The others crouched, waiting for Morris’s orders, but Morris was still confused and Sergeant Hakeswill was crouching at the foot of the embankment out of the enemy’s sight.

‘Go on!’ Wellesley shouted, angered at their hesitation. ‘Go on! Don’t let them stand there! Captain West! On! On! Captain Morris, move!’

‘Oh Jesus, Mother!’ Hakeswill called as he scrambled up the embankment. ‘Mother, Mother!’ he shouted as he dropped into the warm water. Fitzgerald and the first half of the company was already across the farther embankment and inside the tope now and Hakeswill could hear shouts and shots and a chilling clash as steel scraped on steel.

Wellesley saw his two flank companies at last advance across the aqueduct and he sent an aide back to summon Major Shee and the rest of the battalion. The musket fire in the tope was dense, an unending crackle of shots, each flash momentarily illuminating the fog of powder smoke that spread between the leaves. It looked like something from hell: flash after flash of fire blooming in the dark, rocket trails blazing among the trees, and always the moans of dying men and shrieks of pain. A sergeant yelled at his men to close up, another man shouted desperately, wanting to know where his comrades were. Fitzgerald was cheering his men forward, but too many of the redcoats were being penned back against the embankment where they were in danger of being overwhelmed. Wellesley sensed he had done this all wrong. He should have used the whole battalion instead of just the two flank companies, and the realization of his mistake annoyed him. He took pride in his profession, but if a professional soldier could not hurl a few enemy infantry and rocketmen out of a small wood, then what good was he? He thought about spurring Diomed, his horse, across the aqueduct and into the flaring smoke patches among the tope, but he resisted the impulse for then he would be among the trees and out of touch with the rest of the 33rd and he knew he needed Shee’s remaining eight companies to reinforce the attackers. If necessary he could summon the two sepoy battalions as reinforcements, but he was sure the remainder of the 33rd would be sufficient to retrieve victory from confusion and so he turned and galloped back to hurry the battalion forward.

Hakeswill slithered down the farther embankment into the black shadows among the trees. He held the musket in his left hand and the halberd in his right. He crouched beside a tree trunk and tried to make sense of the chaos around him. He could see muskets flashing, their garish flames momentarily suffusing the smoke with light and glinting off the leaves, he could hear a man crying and he could hear shouts, but he had no idea what was happening. A handful of his men had stayed close to him, but Hakeswill did not know what to tell them; then a terrible war cry sounded close to his left and he whirled round to see a group of tiger-striped infantry charging towards him. He screamed in pure panic, fired the musket one-handed and dropped the weapon immediately as he fled into the trees to avoid the assault. Some of the redcoats scattered blindly, but others were too slow and were overrun by the Indians. Their shouts were cut short as bayonets did their work, and Hakeswill, knowing that the Tippoo’s men were slaughtering the small group of redcoats, blundered desperately through the tangling trees to get clear. Captain Morris was calling Hakeswill’s name, a note of panic in his voice. ‘I’m here, sir!’ Hakeswill called back. ‘I’m here, sir!’

‘Where?’

‘Here, sir!’ A volley of musketry crashed in the trees and the balls slashed through leaves and thumped into trunks. Rockets screamed up to clatter among the high branches. Their fiery exhausts blinded the men and the explosions of their powder-filled cones rained down shards of hot metal and fluttering scraps of leaves. ‘Mother!’ Hakeswill shouted and shrank down beside a tree.

‘Form line!’ Morris shouted. ‘Form line!’ He had a dozen men with him and they formed a nervous line and crouched among the trees. The reflected flames of the burning rockets flickered red on their bayonets. Somewhere nearby a man panted as he died, the blood bubbling in his gullet at the end of every laboured breath. A volley crackled and splintered a few yards away, but it was fired away from Morris who nevertheless ducked. Then, for a few blessed seconds, the confusing noise of battle diminished and in the comparative silence Morris looked around to try and find some bearings. ‘Lieutenant Fitzgerald!’ he shouted.

‘I’m here, sir!’ Fitzgerald called confidently from the darkness ahead. ‘Up afront of you. Cleared the buggers out of here, sir, but some of the rascals are working about your flank. Watch the left, sir.’ The Irishman sounded indecently cheerful.

‘Ensign Hicks!’ Morris called.

‘I’m here, sir, right beside you, sir,’ a small voice said from almost beneath Morris.

‘Jesus Christ!’ Morris swore. He had been hoping that Hicks could have brought reinforcements, but it seemed that no one except Fitzgerald had any control in the chaos. ‘Fitzgerald!’ Morris shouted.

‘Still here, sir! Got the buggers worried, we have.’

‘I want you here, Lieutenant!’ Morris insisted. ‘Hakeswill! Where are you?’

‘Here, sir,’ Hakeswill said, but not moving from his hiding place among the bushes. He guessed he was a few paces north of Morris, but Hakeswill did not want to risk being ambushed by a tiger-striped soldier as he blundered about in search of his Captain and so he stayed put. ‘Coming to join you, sir,’ he called, then crouched even lower among the shrouding leaves.

‘Fitzgerald!’ Morris shouted irritably. ‘Come here!’

‘The bloody man,’ Fitzgerald said under his breath. His left arm was useless now, and he sensed it had been injured more badly than he had supposed. He had ordered a man to tie a handkerchief round the wound and hoped the pressure would staunch the blood. The thought of gangrene was nagging at him, but he pushed that worry away to concentrate on keeping his men alive. ‘Sergeant Green?’

‘Sir?’ Green responded stoically.

‘Stay with the men here, Sergeant,’ Fitzgerald ordered. The Irishman had led a score of the Light Company deep into the tope and he saw no point in surrendering the ground just because Morris was nervous. Besides, Fitzgerald was fairly sure that the Tippoo’s troops were just as confused as the British and if Green stayed steady and used volley fire he should be safe enough. ‘I’ll bring the rest of the company back here,’ Fitzgerald promised Sergeant Green, then the Lieutenant turned and called back through the trees. ‘Where are you, sir?’

‘Here!’ Morris called irritably. ‘Hurry, damn you!’

‘Back in a minute, Sergeant,’ Fitzgerald reassured Green, and headed off through the trees in search of Morris.

He strayed too far north, and suddenly a rocket flared up from the tope’s eastern edge to lodge with a tearing crash among the tangling branches of a tall tree. For a few seconds the trapped missile thrashed wildly, startling scared birds up into the dark, then it became firmly wedged in the crook of a branch. The exhaust poured an impotent torrent of fire and smoke to illuminate a whole patch of the thick woodland, and in the sudden blaze Hakeswill saw the Lieutenant stumbling towards him. ‘Mister Fitzgerald!’ Hakeswill called.

‘Sergeant Hakeswill?’ Fitzgerald asked.

‘It’s me, sir. Right here, sir. This way, sir.’

‘Thank God.’ Fitzgerald crossed the clearing at a run, his left arm hanging useless at his side. ‘No one knows what the hell they’re doing. Or where they are.’

‘I know what I’m doing, sir,’ Hakeswill said, and as the fierce crackling fire in the high leaves died away he lunged upwards with the halberd’s spear point at the Lieutenant’s belly. His face twitched as the newly sharpened blade ripped through the Lieutenant’s clothes and into his stomach. ‘It isn’t the soldierly thing, sir, to contradict a sergeant in front of his men, sir,’ he said respectfully. ‘You do understand that, sir, don’t you, sir?’ Hakeswill said, and grinned with joy for the pleasure of the moment. The spear point was deep in Fitzgerald’s belly, so deep that Hakeswill was certain he had felt its razor-sharp point lodge against the man’s backbone. Fitzgerald was on the ground now and his body was jerking like a gaffed and landed fish. His mouth was opening and closing, but he seemed unable to speak, only to moan as Hakeswill gave the spear a savage twist in an effort to free its blade. ‘We is talking about proper respect, sir,’ Hakeswill hissed at the Lieutenant. ‘Respect! Sergeants must be supported, sir, says so in the scriptures, sir. Don’t worry, sir, won’t hurt, sir. Just a prick,’ and he jerked the bloodied blade free and thrust it down again, this time into the Lieutenant’s throat. ‘Won’t be showing me up again, sir, will you, sir? Not in front of the men. Sorry about that, sir. And good night, sir.’

‘Fitzgerald!’ Morris shouted frantically. ‘For Christ’s sake, Lieutenant! Where the hell are you?’

‘He’s gone to hell.’ Hakeswill chuckled softly. He was searching the Lieutenant’s body for coins. He dared not take anything that might be recognized as the Lieutenant’s property, so he left the dead man’s sabre and the gilded gorget he had worn about his throat, but he did find a handful of unidentifiable small change which he pushed into his pouch before scrambling a few feet away to make sure no one saw him with his victim.

‘Who’s that?’ Morris called as he heard Hakeswill pushing through the undergrowth.

‘Me, sir!’ Hakeswill called. ‘I’m looking for Lieutenant Fitzgerald, sir.’

‘Come here instead!’ Morris snapped.

Hakeswill ran the last few yards and dropped down between Morris and a frightened Ensign Hicks. ‘I’m worried about Mister Fitzgerald, sir,’ Hakeswill said. ‘Heard him up in the bushes, and there was heathens there, sir. I know, sir, ’cos I killed a couple of the black bastards.’ He flinched as some muskets flamed and banged some yards away, but he could not tell who fired, or at what.

‘You think the bastards found Fitzgerald?’ Morris asked.

‘I reckon so,’ Hakeswill said. ‘Poor little bastard. I tried to find him, sir, but there was just heathens there.’

‘Jesus.’ Morris ducked as a volley of bullets flicked through the leaves overhead. ‘What about Sergeant Green?’

‘Probably skulking, sir. Hiding his precious hide, I don’t wonder.’

‘We’re all bloody skulking,’ Morris answered truthfully enough.

‘Not me, sir. Not Obadiah Hakeswill, sir. Got me halberd proper wet, sir. Want to feel it, sir?’ Hakeswill held out the spear point. ‘Heathen blood, sir, still warm.’

Morris shuddered at the thought of touching the spear, but took some comfort in having Hakeswill at his side. The tope was filled with shouts as a group of the Tippoo’s troops charged. Muskets hammered. A rocket exploded nearby, while another, this one with a solid shot in its cone, ripped through bushes and crashed into a tree. A man screamed, then the scream was abruptly chopped off. ‘Jesus,’ Morris cursed uselessly.

‘Maybe we should go back?’ Ensign Hicks suggested. ‘Back across the aqueduct?’

‘Can’t, sir,’ Hakeswill said. ‘Buggers are behind us.’

‘You’re sure?’ Morris asked.

‘Fought the black buggers there myself, sir. Couldn’t hold them. A whole tribe of the bastards, sir. Did my best. Lost some good men.’ Hakeswill sniffed with pretended emotion.

‘You’re a brave man, Hakeswill,’ Morris said gruffly.

‘Just following your lead, sir,’ Hakeswill said, then ducked as another enemy volley whipped overhead. A huge cheer sounded, followed by the screaming roar of rockets as the Tippoo’s reinforcements, sent from the city, came shouting and fighting through the trees to drive every last infidel from the tope. ‘Bleeding hell,’ Hakeswill said. ‘But not to worry! I can’t die, sir! I can’t die!’

Behind him there was another cheer as the rest of the 33rd at last crossed the aqueduct.

‘Forward!’ a voice shouted from somewhere behind the Light Company’s scattered fugitives. ‘Forward!’

‘Bloody hell!’ Morris snapped. ‘Who the hell is that?’

‘33rd!’ the voice shouted. ‘To me! To me!’

‘Stay where you are!’ Morris called to a few eager men, and so they crouched in the warm dark that was loud with the ripping of bullets and filled by the whimpers of dying men and bright with the glare of rockets and foul with the stench of blood that was being spilt in a black place where only chaos and fear prevailed.