Читать книгу Sharpe’s Fortress: The Siege of Gawilghur, December 1803 - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 9

‘Fire!’ Swinton shouted.

The two Highland regiments fired together, close to a thousand muskets flaming to make an instant hedge of thick smoke in front of the battalions. The Arabs vanished behind the smoke as the redcoats reloaded. Men bit into the grease-coated cartridges, tugged ramrods that they whirled in the air before rattling them down into the barrels. The churning smoke began to thin, revealing small fires where the musket wadding burned in the dry grass.

‘Platoon fire!’ Major Swinton shouted. ‘From the flanks!’

‘Light Company!’ Captain Peters called on the left flank. ‘First platoon, fire!’

‘Kill them! Your mothers are watching!’ Colonel Harness shouted. The Colonel of the 78th was mad as a hatter and half delirious with a fever, but he had insisted on advancing behind his kilted Highlanders. He was being carried in a palanquin and, as the platoon fire began, he struggled from the litter to join the battle, his only weapon a broken riding crop. He had been recently bled, and a stained bandage trailed from a coat sleeve. ‘Give them a flogging, you dogs! Give them a flogging.’

The two battalions fired in half companies now, each half company firing two or three seconds after the neighbouring platoon so that the volleys rolled in from the outer wings of each battalion, met in the centre and then started again at the flanks. Clockwork fire, Sharpe called it, and it was the result of hours of tedious practice. Beyond the battalions’ flanks the six-pounders bucked back with each shot, their wheels jarring up from the turf as the canisters ripped apart at the muzzles. Wide swathes of burning grass lay under the cannon smoke. The gunners were working in shirtsleeves, swabbing, ramming, then ducking aside as the guns pitched back again. Only the gun commanders, most of them sergeants, seemed to look at the enemy, and then only when they were checking the alignment of the cannon. The other gunners fetched shot and powder, sometimes heaved on a handspike or pushed on the wheels as the gun was relaid, then swabbed and loaded again. ‘Water!’ a corporal shouted, holding up a bucket to show that the swabbing water was gone.

‘Fire low! Don’t waste your powder!’ Major Swinton called as he pushed his horse into the gap between the centre companies. He peered at the enemy through the smoke. Behind him, next to the 74th’s twin flags, General Wellesley and his aides also stared at the Arabs beyond the smoke clouds. Colonel Wallace, the brigade commander, trotted his horse to the battalion’s flank. He called something to Sharpe as he went by, but his words were lost in the welter of gunfire, then his horse half spun as a bullet struck its haunch. Wallace steadied the beast, looked back at the wound, but the horse did not seem badly hurt. Colonel Harness was thrashing one of the native palanquin bearers who had been trying to push the Colonel back into the curtained vehicle. One of Wellesley’s aides rode back to quieten the Colonel and to persuade him to go southwards.

‘Steady now!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. ‘Aim low!’

The Arab charge had been checked, but not defeated. The first volley must have hit the attackers cruelly hard for Sharpe could see a line of bodies lying on the turf. The bodies looked red and white, blood against robes, but behind that twitching heap the Arabs were firing back to make their own ragged cloud of musket smoke. They fired haphazardly, untrained in platoon volleys, but they reloaded swiftly and their bullets were striking home. Sharpe heard the butcher’s sound of metal hitting meat, saw men hurled backwards, saw some fall. The file-closers hauled the dead out of the line and tugged the living closer together. ‘Close up! Close up!’ The pipes played on, adding their defiant music to the noise of the guns. Private Hollister was hit in the head and Sharpe saw a cloud of white flour drift away from the man’s powdered hair as his hat fell off. Then blood soaked the whitened hair and Hollister fell back with glassy eyes.

‘One platoon, fire!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He was so short-sighted that he could barely see the enemy, but it hardly mattered. No one could see much in the smoke, and all that was needed was a steady nerve and Colquhoun was not a man to panic.

‘Two platoon, fire!’ Urquhart shouted.

‘Christ Jesus!’ a man called close to Sharpe. He reeled backwards, his musket falling, then he twisted and dropped to his knees. ‘Oh God, oh God, oh God,’ he moaned, clutching at his throat. Sharpe could see no wound there, but then he saw blood seeping down the man’s grey trousers. The dying man looked up at Sharpe, tears showed at his eyes, then he pitched forward.

Sharpe picked up the fallen musket, then turned the man over to unstrap the cartridge box. The man was dead, or so near as to make no difference.

‘Flint,’ a front rank man called. ‘I need a flint!’

Sergeant Colquhoun elbowed through the ranks, holding out a spare flint. ‘And where’s your own spare flint, John Hammond?’

‘Christ knows, Sergeant.’

‘Then ask Him, for you’re on a charge.’

A man swore as a bullet tore up his left arm. He backed out of the ranks, the arm hanging useless and dripping blood.

Sharpe pushed into the gap between the companies, put the musket to his shoulder and fired. The kick slammed into his shoulder, but it felt good. Something to do at last. He dropped the butt, fished a cartridge from the pouch and bit off the top, tasting the salt in the gunpowder. He rammed, fired again, loaded again. A bullet made an odd fluttering noise as it went past his ear, then another whined overhead. He waited for the rolling volley to come down the battalion’s face, then fired with the other men of six company’s first platoon. Drop the butt, new cartridge, bite, prime, pour, ram, ramrod back in the hoops, gun up, butt into the bruised shoulder and haul back the doghead, Sharpe did it as efficiently as any other man, but he had been trained to it. That was the difference, he thought grimly. He was trained, but no one trained the officers. They had bugger all to do, so why train them? Ensign Venables was right, the only duty of a junior officer was to stay alive, but Sharpe could not resist a fight. Besides, it felt better to stand in the ranks and fire into the enemy’s smoke than stand behind the company and do nothing.

The Arabs were fighting well. Damned well. Sharpe could not remember any other enemy who had stood and taken so much concentrated platoon fire. Indeed, the robed men were trying to advance, but they were checked by the ragged heap of bodies that had been their front ranks. How many damned ranks had they? A dozen? He watched a green flag fall, then the banner was picked up and waved in the air. Their big drums still beat, making a menacing sound to match the redcoats’ pipers. The Arab guns had unnaturally long barrels that spewed dirty smoke and licking tongues of flame. Another bullet whipped close enough to Sharpe to bat his face with a gust of warm air. He fired again, then a hand seized his coat collar and dragged him violently backwards.

‘Your place, Ensign Sharpe,’ Captain Urquhart said vehemently, ‘is here! Behind the line!’ The Captain was mounted and his horse had inadvertently stepped back as Urquhart seized Sharpe’s collar, and the weight of the horse had made the Captain’s tug far more violent than he had intended. ‘You’re not a private any longer,’ he said, steadying Sharpe who had almost been pulled off his feet.

‘Of course, sir,’ Sharpe said, and he did not meet Urquhart’s gaze, but stared bitterly ahead. He was blushing, knowing he had been reprimanded in front of the men. Damn it to hell, he thought.

‘Prepare to charge!’ Major Swinton called.

‘Prepare to charge!’ Captain Urquhart echoed, spurring his horse away from Sharpe.

The Scotsmen pulled out their bayonets and twisted them onto the lugs of their musket barrels.

‘Empty your guns!’ Swinton called, and those men who were still loaded raised their muskets and fired a last volley.

‘74th!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Forward! I want to hear some pipes! Let me hear pipes!’

‘Go on, Swinton, go on!’ Wallace shouted. There was no need to encourage the battalion forward, for it was going willingly, but the Colonel was excited. He drew his claymore and pushed his horse into the rear rank of number seven company. ‘Onto them, lads! Onto them!’ The redcoats marched forward, trampling through the scatter of little fires started by their musket wadding.

The Arabs seemed astonished that the redcoats were advancing. Some drew their own bayonets, while others pulled long curved swords from scabbards.

‘They won’t stand!’ Wellesley shouted. ‘They won’t stand.’

‘They bloody well will,’ a man grunted.

‘Go on!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Go on!’ And the 74th, released to the kill, ran the last few yards and jumped up onto the heaps of dead before slashing home with their bayonets. Off to the right the 78th were also charging home. The British cannon gave a last violent blast of canister, then fell silent as the Scots blocked the gunners’ aim.

Some of the Arabs wanted to fight, others wanted to retreat, but the charge had taken them by surprise and the rearward ranks were still not aware of the danger and so pressed forward, forcing the reluctant men at the front onto the Scottish bayonets. The Highlanders screamed as they killed. Sharpe still held the unloaded musket as he closed up on the rear rank. He had no bayonet and was wondering whether he should draw his sabre when a tall Arab suddenly hacked down a front rank man with a scimitar, then pushed forward to slash with the reddened blade at the second man in the file. Sharpe reversed the musket, swung it by the barrel and hammered the heavy stock down onto the swordsman’s head. The Arab sank down and a bayonet struck into his spine so that he twisted like a speared eel. Sharpe hit him on the head again, kicked him for good measure, then shoved on. Men were shouting, screaming, stabbing, spitting, and, right in the face of number six company, a knot of robed men were slashing with scimitars as though they could defeat the 74th by themselves. Urquhart pushed his horse up against the rear rank and fired his pistol. One of the Arabs was plucked back and the others stepped away at last, all except one short man who screamed in fury and slashed with his long curved blade. The front rank parted to let the scimitar cut the air between two files, then the second rank also split apart to allow the short man to come screaming through on his own, with only Sharpe in front.

‘He’s only a lad!’ a Scottish voice shouted in warning as the ranks closed again.

It was not a short man at all, but a boy. Maybe only twelve or thirteen years old, Sharpe guessed as he fended off the scimitar with the musket barrel. The boy thought he could win the battle single-handed and leaped at Sharpe, who parried the sword and stepped back to show he did not want to fight. ‘Put it down, lad,’ he said.

The boy spat, leaped and cut again. Sharpe parried a third time, then reversed the musket and slammed its stock into the side of the boy’s head. For a second the lad stared at Sharpe with an astonished look, then he crumpled to the turf.

‘They’re breaking!’ Wellesley shouted from somewhere close by. ‘They’re breaking!’

Colonel Wallace was in the front rank now, slicing down with his claymore. He hacked like a farmer, blow after blow. He had lost his cocked hat and his bald pate gleamed in the late sunlight. There was blood on his horse’s flank, and more blood spattered on the white turnbacks of his coat tails. Then the pressure of the enemy collapsed and the horse twisted into the gap and Wallace spurred it on. ‘Come on, boys! Come on!’ A man stooped to rescue Wallace’s cocked hat. Its plumes were blood-soaked.

The Arabs were fleeing. ‘Go!’ Swinton shouted. ‘Go! Keep ’em running! Go!’

A man paused to search a corpse’s robes and Sergeant Colquhoun dragged the man up and pushed him on. The file-closers were making sure none of the enemy bodies left behind the Scottish advance were dangerous. They kicked swords and muskets out of injured men’s hands, prodded apparently unwounded bodies with bayonets and killed any man who showed a spark of fight. Two pipers were playing their ferocious music, driving the Scots up the gentle slope where the big Arab drums had been abandoned. Man after man speared the drumskins with bayonets as they passed.

‘Forward on! Forward on!’ Urquhart bellowed as though he were on a hunting field.

‘To the guns!’ Wellesley called.

‘Keep going!’ Sharpe bellowed at some laggards. ‘Go on, you bastards, go on!’

The enemy gun line was at the crest of the low rise, but the Mahratta gunners dared not fire because the remnants of the Lions of Allah were between them and the redcoats. The gunners hesitated for a few seconds, then decided the day was lost and fled.

‘Take the guns!’ Wellesley called.

Colonel Wallace spurred among the fleeing enemy, striking down with the claymore, then reined in beside a gaudily painted eighteen-pounder. ‘Come on, lads! Come on! To me!’

The Scotsmen reached the guns. Most had reddened bayonets, all had sweat streaks striping their powder-blackened faces. Some began rifling the limbers where gunners stored food and valuables.

‘Load!’ Urquhart called. ‘Load!’

‘Form ranks!’ Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He ran forward and tugged men away from the limbers. ‘Leave the carts alone, boys! Form ranks! Smartly now!’

Sharpe, for the first time, could see down the long reverse slope. Three hundred paces away were more infantry, a great long line of it massed in a dozen ranks, and beyond that were some walled gardens and the roofs of a village. The shadows were very long for the sun was blazing just above the horizon. The Arabs were running towards the stationary infantry.

‘Where are the galloper guns?’ Wallace roared, and an aide spurred back down the slope to fetch the gunners.

‘Give them a volley, Swinton!’ Wellesley called.

The range was very long for a musket, but Swinton hammered the battalion’s fire down the slope, and maybe it was that volley, or perhaps it was the sight of the defeated Arabs that panicked the great mass of infantry. For a few seconds they stood under their big bright flags and then, like sand struck by a flood, they dissolved into a rabble.

Cavalry trumpets blared. British and sepoy horsemen charged forward with sabres, while the irregular horse, those mercenaries who had attached themselves to the British for the chance of loot, lowered their lances and raked back their spurs.

It was a cavalryman’s paradise, a broken enemy with nowhere to hide. Some Mahrattas sought shelter in the village, but most ran past it, throwing down their weapons as the terrible horsemen streamed into the fleeing horde with sabres and lances slicing and thrusting.

‘Puckalees!’ Urquhart shouted, standing in his stirrups to look for the men and boys who brought water to the troops. There was none in sight and the 74th was parched, the men’s thirst made acute by the saltpetre in the gunpowder which had fouled their mouths. ‘Where the …?’ Urquhart swore, then frowned at Sharpe. ‘Mister Sharpe? I’ll trouble you to find our puckalees.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, not bothering to hide his disappointment at the order. He had hoped to find some loot when the 74th searched the village, but instead he was to be a fetcher of water. He threw down the musket and walked back through the groaning, slow-moving litter of dead and dying men. Dogs were scavenging among the bodies.

‘Forward now!’ Wellesley called behind Sharpe, and the whole long line of British infantrymen advanced under their flags towards the village. The cavalry was already far beyond the houses, killing with abandon and driving the fugitives ever farther northwards.

Sharpe walked on southwards. He suspected the puckalees were still back with the baggage, which would mean a three-mile walk and, by the time he had found them, the battalion would have slaked its thirst from the wells in the village. Bugger it, he thought. Even when they gave him a job it was a useless errand.

A shout made him look to his right where a score of native cavalrymen were slicing apart the robes of the dead Arabs in search of coins and trinkets. The scavengers were Mahrattas who had sold their services to the British and Sharpe guessed that the horsemen had not joined the pursuit for fear of being mistaken for the defeated enemy. One of the Arabs had only been feigning death and now, despite being hugely outnumbered, defied his enemies with a pistol that he dragged from beneath his robe. The taunting cavalrymen had made a ring and the Arab kept twisting around to find that his tormentor had skipped away before he could aim the small gun.

The Arab was a short man, then he turned again and Sharpe saw the bruised, bloody face and recognized the child who had charged the 74th so bravely. The boy was doomed, for the ring of cavalrymen was slowly closing for the kill. One of the Mahrattas would probably die, or at least be horribly injured by the pistol ball, but that was part of the game. The boy had one shot, they had twenty. A man prodded the boy in the back with a lance point, making him whip round, but the man with the lance had stepped fast back and another man slapped the boy’s headdress with a tulwar. The other cavalrymen laughed.

Sharpe reckoned the boy deserved better. He was a kid, nothing more, but brave as a tiger, and so he crossed to the cavalrymen. ‘Let him be!’ he called.

The boy turned towards Sharpe. If he recognized that the British officer was trying to save his life he showed no sign of gratitude; instead he lifted the pistol so that its barrel pointed at Sharpe’s face. The cavalrymen, reckoning this was even better sport, urged him to shoot and one of them approached the boy with a raised tulwar, but did not strike. He would let the boy shoot Sharpe, then kill him. ‘Let him be,’ Sharpe said. ‘Stand back!’ The Mahrattas grinned, but did not move. Sharpe could take the single bullet, then they would tear the boy into sabre-shredded scraps of meat.

The boy took a step towards Sharpe. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, lad,’ Sharpe said. The boy obviously did not speak English, but Sharpe’s tone was soothing. It made no difference. The lad’s hand was shaking and he looked frightened, but defiance had been bred into his bone. He knew he would die, but he would take an enemy soul with him and so he nerved himself to die well. ‘Put the gun down,’ Sharpe said softly. He was wishing he had not intervened now. The kid was just distraught enough and mad enough to fire, and Sharpe knew he could do nothing about it except run away and thus expose himself to the jeers of the Mahrattas. He was close enough now to see the scratches on the pistol’s blackened muzzle where the rammer had scraped the metal. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, boy,’ he said again. Still the boy pointed the pistol. Sharpe knew he should turn and run, but instead he took another pace forward. Just one more and he reckoned he would be close enough to swat the gun aside.

Then the boy shouted something in Arabic, something about Allah, and pulled the trigger.

The hammer did not move. The boy looked startled, then pulled the trigger again.

Sharpe began laughing. The expression of woe on the child’s face was so sudden, and so unfeigned, that Sharpe could only laugh. The boy looked as if he was about to cry.

The Mahratta behind the boy swung his tulwar. He reckoned he could slice clean through the boy’s grubby headdress and decapitate him, but Sharpe had taken the extra step and now seized the boy’s hand and tugged him into his belly. The sword hissed an inch behind the boy’s neck. ‘I said to leave him alone!’ Sharpe said. ‘Or do you want to fight me instead?’

‘None of us,’ a calm voice said behind Sharpe, ‘wants to fight Ensign Sharpe.’

Sharpe turned. One of the horsemen was still mounted, and it was this man who had spoken. He was dressed in a tattered European uniform jacket of green cloth hung with small silver chains, and he had a lean scarred face with a nose as hooked as Sir Arthur Wellesley’s. He now grinned down at Sharpe.

‘Syud Sevajee,’ Sharpe said.

‘I never did congratulate you on your promotion,’ Sevajee said, and leaned down to offer Sharpe his hand.

Sharpe shook it. ‘It was McCandless’s doing,’ he said.

‘No,’ Sevajee disagreed, ‘it was yours.’ Sevajee, who led this band of horsemen, waved his men away from Sharpe, then looked down at the boy who struggled in Sharpe’s grip. ‘You really want to save that little wretch’s life?’

‘Why not?’

‘A tiger cub plays like a kitten,’ Sevajee said, ‘but it still grows into a tiger and one day it eats you.’

‘This one’s no kitten,’ Sharpe said, thumping the boy on the ear to stop his struggles.

Sevajee spoke in quick Arabic and the boy went quiet. ‘I told him you saved his life,’ Sevajee explained to Sharpe, ‘and that he is now beholden to you.’ Sevajee spoke to the boy again who, after a shy look at Sharpe, answered. ‘His name’s Ahmed,’ Sevajee said, ‘and I told him you were a great English lord who commands the lives and deaths of a thousand men.’

‘You told him what?’

‘I told him you’d beat him bloody if he disobeys you,’ Sevajee said, looking at his men who, denied their entertainment, had gone back to looting the dead. ‘You like being an officer?’ he asked Sharpe.

‘I hate it.’

Sevajee smiled, revealing red-stained teeth. ‘McCandless thought you would, but didn’t know how to curb your ambition.’ Sevajee slid down from his saddle. ‘I am sorry McCandless died,’ the Indian said.

‘Me too.’

‘You know who killed him?’

‘I reckon it was Dodd.’

Sevajee nodded. ‘Me too.’ Syud Sevajee was a high-born Mahratta, the eldest son of one of the Rajah of Berar’s warlords, but a rival in the Rajah’s service had murdered his father, and Sevajee had been seeking revenge ever since. If that revenge meant marching with the enemy British, then that was a small price to pay for family pride. Sevajee had ridden with Colonel McCandless when the Scotsman had pursued Dodd, and thus he had met Sharpe. ‘Beny Singh was not with the enemy today,’ he told Sharpe.

Sharpe had to think for a few seconds before remembering that Beny Singh was the man who had poisoned Sevajee’s father. ‘How do you know?’

‘His banner wasn’t among the Mahratta flags. Today we faced Manu Bappoo, the Rajah’s brother. He’s a better man than the Rajah, but he refuses to take the throne for himself. He’s also a better soldier than the rest, but not good enough, it seems. Dodd was there.’

‘He was?’

‘He got away.’ Sevajee turned and gazed northwards. ‘And I know where they’re going.’

‘Where?’

‘To Gawilghur,’ Sevajee said softly, ‘to the sky fort.’

‘Gawilghur?’

‘I grew up there.’ Sevajee spoke softly, still gazing at the hazed northern horizon. ‘My father was Killadar of Gawilghur. It was a post of honour, Sharpe, for it is our greatest stronghold. It is the fortress in the sky, the impregnable refuge, the place that has never fallen to our enemies, and Beny Singh is now its killadar. Somehow we shall have to get inside, you and I. And I shall kill Singh and you will kill Dodd.’

‘That’s why I’m here,’ Sharpe said.

‘No.’ Sevajee gave Sharpe a sour glance. ‘You’re here, Ensign, because you British are greedy.’ He looked at the Arab boy and asked a question. There was a brief conversation, then Sevajee looked at Sharpe again. ‘I have told him he is to be your servant, and that you will beat him to death if he steals from you.’

‘I wouldn’t do that!’ Sharpe protested.

‘I would,’ Sevajee said, ‘and he believes you would, but it still won’t stop him thieving from you. Better to kill him now.’ He grinned, then hauled himself into his saddle. ‘I shall look for you at Gawilghur, Mister Sharpe.’

‘I shall look for you,’ Sharpe said.

Sevajee spurred away and Sharpe crouched to look at his new servant. Ahmed was as thin as a half-drowned cat. He wore dirty robes and a tattered headdress secured by a loop of frayed rope that was stained with blood, evidently where Sharpe’s blow with the musket had caught him during the battle. But he had bright eyes and a defiant face, and though his voice had not yet broken he was braver than many full-grown men. Sharpe unslung his canteen and pushed it into the boy’s hand, first taking away the broken pistol that he tossed away. ‘Drink up, you little bugger,’ Sharpe said, ‘then come for a walk.’

The boy glanced up the hill, but his army was long gone. It had vanished into the evening beyond the crest and was now being pursued by vengeful cavalry. He said something in Arabic, drank what remained of Sharpe’s water, then offered a grudging nod of thanks.

So Sharpe had a servant, a battle had been won, and now he walked south in search of puckalees.

Colonel William Dodd watched the Lions of Allah break, and spat with disgust. It had been foolish to fight here in the first place and now the foolery was turning to disaster. ‘Jemadar!’ he called.

‘Sahib?’

‘We’ll form square. Put our guns in the centre. And the baggage.’

‘Families, sahib?’

‘Families too.’ Dodd watched Manu Bappoo and his aides galloping back from the British advance. The gunners had already fled, which meant that the Mahrattas’ heavy cannon would all be captured, every last piece of it. Dodd was tempted to abandon his regiment’s small battery of five-pounders which were about as much use as pea-shooters, but a soldier’s pride persuaded him to drag the guns from the field. Bappoo might lose all his guns, but it would be a cold day in hell before William Dodd gave up artillery to an enemy.

His Cobras were on the Mahratta right flank and there, for the moment, they were out of the way of the British advance. If the rest of the Mahratta infantry remained firm and fought, then Dodd would stay with them, but he saw that the defeat of the Arabs had demoralized Bappoo’s army. The ranks began to dissolve, the first fugitives began to run north and Dodd knew this army was lost. First Assaye, now this. A goddamn disaster! He turned his horse and smiled at his white-jacketed men. ‘You haven’t lost a battle!’ he shouted to them. ‘You haven’t even fought today, so you’ve lost no pride! But you’ll have to fight now! If you don’t, if you break ranks, you’ll die. If you fight, you’ll live! Jemadar! March!’

The Cobras would now attempt one of the most difficult of all feats of soldiering, a fighting withdrawal. They marched in a loose square, the centre of which gradually filled with their women and children. Some other infantry tried to join the families, but Dodd snarled at his men to beat them away. ‘Fire if they won’t go!’ he shouted. The last thing he wanted was for his men to be infected by panic.

Dodd trailed the square. He heard cavalry trumpets and he twisted in his saddle to see a mass of irregular light horsemen come over the crest. ‘Halt!’ he shouted. ‘Close ranks! Charge bayonets!’

The white-jacketed Cobras sealed the loose square tight. Dodd pushed through the face of the square and turned his horse to watch the cavalrymen approach. He doubted they would come close, not when there were easier pickings to the east and, sure enough, as soon as the leading horsemen saw that the square was waiting with levelled muskets, they sheered away.

Dodd holstered his pistol. ‘March on, Jemadar!’

Twice more Dodd had to halt and form ranks, but both times the threatening horsemen were scared away by the calm discipline of his white-coated soldiers. The red-coated infantry was not pursuing. They had reached the village of Argaum and were content to stay there, leaving the pursuit to the horsemen, and those horsemen chased after the broken rabble that flooded northwards, but none chose to die by charging Dodd’s formed ranks.

Dodd inclined to the west, angling away from the pursuers. By nightfall he was confident enough to form the battalion into a column of companies, and by midnight, under a clear moon, he could no longer even hear the British trumpets. He knew that men would still be dying, ridden down by cavalry and pierced by lances or slashed by sabres, but Dodd had got clean away. His men were tired, but they were safe in a dark countryside of millet fields, drought-emptied irrigation ditches and scattered villages where dogs barked frantically when they caught the scent of the marching column.

Dodd did not trouble the villagers. He had sufficient food, and earlier in the night they had found an irrigation tank that had yielded enough water for men and beasts. ‘Do you know where we are, Jemadar?’ he asked.

‘No, sahib.’ Gopal grinned, his teeth showing white in the darkness.

‘Nor do I. But I know where we’re going.’

‘Where, sahib?’

‘To Gawilghur, Gopal. To Gawilghur.’

‘Then we must march north, sahib.’ Gopal pointed to the mountains that showed as a dark line against the northern stars. ‘It is there, sahib.’

Dodd was marching to the fortress that had never known defeat. To the impregnable fastness on the cliff. To Gawilghur.

Dawn came to the millet fields. Ragged-winged birds flopped down beside corpses. The smell of death was already rank, and would only grow worse as the sun rose to become a furnace in a cloudless sky. Bugles called reveille, and the picquets who had guarded the sleeping army around Argaum cleared their muskets by loosing off shots. The gunfire startled birds up from corpses and made the feasting dogs growl among the human dead.

Regiments dug graves for their own dead. There were few enough to bury, for no more than fifty redcoats had died, but there were hundreds of Mahratta and Arab corpses, and the lascars who did the army’s fetching and carrying began the task of gathering the bodies. Some enemies still lived, though barely, and the luckiest of those were despatched with a blow of a mattock before their robes were rifled. The unlucky were taken to the surgeons’ tents.

The enemy’s captured guns were inspected, and a dozen selected as suitable for British service. They were all well made, forged in Agra by French-trained gunsmiths, but some were the wrong calibre and a few were so overdecorated with writhing gods and goddesses that no self-respecting gunner could abide them. The twenty-six rejected guns would be double-shotted and exploded. ‘A dangerous business,’ Lieutenant Colonel William Wallace remarked to Sharpe.

‘Indeed, sir.’

‘You saw the accident at Assaye?’ Wallace asked. The Colonel took off his cocked hat and fanned his face. The hat’s white plumes were still stained with blood that had dried black.

‘I heard it, sir. Didn’t see it,’ Sharpe said. The accident had occurred after the battle of Assaye when the enemy’s captured cannon were being destroyed and one monstrous piece, a great siege gun, had exploded prematurely, killing two engineers.

‘Leaves us short of good engineers,’ Wallace remarked, ‘and we’ll need them if we’re going to Gawilghur.’

‘Gawilghur, sir?’

‘A ghastly fortress, Sharpe, quite ghastly.’ The Colonel turned and pointed north. ‘Only about twenty miles away, and if the Mahrattas have any sense that’s where they’ll be heading.’ Wallace sighed. ‘I’ve never seen the place, so maybe it isn’t as bad as they say, but I remember poor McCandless describing it as a brute. A real brute. Like Stirling Castle, he said, only much larger and the cliff’s twenty times higher.’

Sharpe had never seen Stirling Castle, so had no real idea what the Colonel meant. He said nothing. He had been idling the morning away when Wallace sent for him, and now he and the Colonel were walking through the battle’s litter. The Arab boy followed a dozen paces behind. ‘Yours, is he?’ Wallace asked.

‘Think so, sir. Sort of picked him up yesterday.’

‘You need a servant, don’t you? Urquhart tells me you don’t have one.’

So Urquhart had been discussing Sharpe with the Colonel. No good could come of that, Sharpe thought. Urquhart had been nagging Sharpe to find a servant, implying that Sharpe’s clothes were in need of cleaning and pressing, which they were, but as he only owned the clothes he wore, he could not really see the point in being too finicky. ‘I hadn’t really thought what to do with the lad, sir,’ Sharpe admitted.

Wallace turned and spoke to the boy in an Indian language, and Ahmed stared up at the Colonel and nodded solemnly as though he understood what had been said. Perhaps he did, though Sharpe did not. ‘I’ve told him he’s to serve you properly,’ Wallace said, ‘and that you’ll pay him properly.’ The Colonel seemed to disapprove of Ahmed, or maybe he just disapproved of everything to do with Sharpe, though he was doing his best to be friendly. It had been Wallace who had given Sharpe the commission in the 74th, and Wallace had been a close friend of Colonel McCandless, so Sharpe supposed that the balding Colonel was, in his way, an ally. Even so, Sharpe felt awkward in the Scotsman’s company. He wondered if he would ever feel relaxed among officers. ‘How’s that woman of yours, Sharpe?’ Wallace asked cheerfully.

‘My woman, sir?’ Sharpe asked, blushing.

‘The Frenchwoman, can’t recall her name. Took quite a shine to you, didn’t she?’

‘Simone, sir? She’s in Seringapatam, sir. Seemed the best place for her, sir.’

‘Quite, quite.’

Simone Joubert had been widowed at Assaye where her husband, who had served Scindia, had died. She had been Sharpe’s lover and, after the battle, she had stayed with him. Where else, she asked, was she to go? But Wellesley had forbidden his officers to take their wives on the campaign, and though Simone was not Sharpe’s wife, she was white, and so she had agreed to go to Seringapatam and there wait for him. She had carried a letter of introduction to Major Stokes, Sharpe’s friend who ran the armoury, and Sharpe had given her some of the Tippoo’s jewels so that she could find servants and live comfortably. He sometimes worried he had given her too many of the precious stones, but consoled himself that Simone would keep the surplus safe till he returned.

‘So are you happy, Sharpe?’ Wallace asked bluffly.

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said bleakly.

‘Keeping busy?’

‘Not really, sir.’

‘Difficult, isn’t it?’ Wallace said vaguely. He had stopped to watch the gunners loading one of the captured cannon, a great brute that looked to take a ball of twenty or more pounds. The barrel had been cast with an intricate pattern of lotus flowers and dancing girls, then painted with garish colours. The gunners had charged the gaudy barrel with a double load of powder and now they rammed two cannonballs down the blackened gullet. An engineer had brought some wedges and a gunner sergeant pushed one down the barrel, then hammered it home with the rammer so that the ball would jam when the gun was fired. The engineer took a ball of fuse from his pocket, pushed one end into the touch-hole, then backed away, uncoiling the pale line. ‘Best if we give them some space,’ Wallace said, gesturing that they should walk south a small way. ‘Don’t want to be beheaded by a scrap of gun, eh?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Very difficult,’ Wallace said, picking up his previous thought. ‘Coming up from the ranks? Admirable, Sharpe, admirable, but difficult, yes?’

‘I suppose so, sir,’ Sharpe said unhelpfully.

Wallace sighed, as though he was finding the conversation unexpectedly hard going. ‘Urquhart tells me you seem’ – the Colonel paused, looking for the tactful word – ‘unhappy?’

‘Takes time, sir.’

‘Of course, of course. These things do. Quite.’ The Colonel wiped a hand over his bald pate, then rammed his sweat-stained hat back into place. ‘I remember when I joined. Years ago now, of course, and I was only a little chap. Didn’t know what was going on! They said turn left, then turned right. Damned odd, I thought. I was arse over elbow for months, I can tell you.’ The Colonel’s voice tailed away. ‘Damned hot,’ he said after a while. ‘Damned hot. Ever heard of the 95th, Sharpe?’

‘95th, sir? Another Scottish regiment?’

‘Lord, no. The 95th Rifles. They’re a new regiment. Couple of years old. Used to be called the Experimental Corps of Riflemen!’ Wallace hooted with laughter at the clumsy name. ‘But a friend of mine is busy with the rascals. Willie Stewart, he’s called. The Honourable William Stewart. Capital fellow! But Willie’s got some damned odd ideas. His fellows wear green coats. Green! And he tells me his riflemen ain’t as rigid as he seems to think we are.’ Wallace smiled to show he had made some kind of joke. ‘Thing is, Sharpe, I wondered if you wouldn’t be better suited to Stewart’s outfit? His idea, you should understand. He wrote wondering if I had any bright young officers who could carry some experience of India to Shorncliffe. I was going to write back and say we do precious little skirmishing here, and it’s skirmishing that Willie’s rogues are being trained to do, but then I thought of you, Sharpe.’

Sharpe said nothing. Whichever way you wrapped it up, he was being dismissed from the 74th, though he supposed it was kind of Wallace to make the 95th sound like an interesting sort of regiment. Sharpe guessed they were the usual shambles of a hastily raised wartime battalion, staffed by the leavings of other regiments and composed of gutter rogues discarded by every other recruiting sergeant. The very fact they wore green coats sounded bad, as though the army could not be bothered to waste good red cloth on them. They would probably dissolve in panicked chaos in their first battle.

‘I’ve written to Willie about you,’ Wallace went on, ‘and I know he’ll have a place for you.’ Meaning, Sharpe thought, that the Honourable William Stewart owed Wallace a favour. ‘And our problem, frankly,’ Wallace continued, ‘is that a new draft has reached Madras. Weren’t expecting it till spring, but they’re here now, so we’ll be back to strength in a month or so.’ Wallace paused, evidently wondering if he had softened the blow sufficiently. ‘And the fact is, Sharpe,’ he resumed after a while, ‘that Scottish regiments are more like, well, families! Families, that’s it, just it. My mother always said so, and she was a pretty shrewd judge of these things. Like families! More so, I think, than English regiments, don’t you think?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, trying to hide his misery.

‘But I can’t let you go while there’s a war on,’ Wallace continued heartily. The Colonel had turned to watch the cannon again. The engineer had finished unwinding his fuse and the gunners now shouted at everyone within earshot to stand away. ‘I do enjoy this,’ the Colonel said warmly. ‘Nothing like a bit of gratuitous destruction to set the juices flowing, eh?’

The engineer stooped to the fuse with his tinderbox. Sharpe saw him strike the flint then blow the charred linen into flame. There was a pause, then he put the fuse end into the small fire and the smoke fizzed up.

The fuse burned fast, the smoke and sparks snaking through the dry grass and starting small fires, then the red hot trail streaked up the back of the gun and down into the touch-hole.

For a heartbeat nothing happened, then the whole gun just seemed to disintegrate. The charge had tried to propel the double shot up the wedged barrel, but the resistance was just big enough to restrict the explosion. The touch-hole shot out first, the shaped piece of metal tearing out a chunk of the upper breech, then the whole rear of the painted barrel split apart in smoke, flame and whistling lumps of jagged metal. The forward part of the barrel, jaggedly torn off, dropped to the grass as the gun’s wheels were splayed out. The gunners cheered. ‘One less Mahratta gun,’ Wallace said. Ahmed was grinning broadly. ‘Did you know Mackay?’ Wallace asked Sharpe.

‘No, sir.’

‘Captain Mackay. Hugh Mackay. East India Company officer. Fourth Native Cavalry. Very good fellow indeed, Sharpe. I knew his father well. Point is, though, that young Hugh was put in charge of the bullock train before Assaye. And he did a very good job! Very good. But he insisted on joining his troopers in the battle. Disobeyed orders, d’you see? Wellesley was adamant that Mackay must stay with his bullocks, but young Hugh wanted to be on the dance floor, and quite right too, except that the poor devil was killed. Cut in half by a cannonball!’ Wallace sounded shocked, as though such a thing was an outrage. ‘It’s left the bullock train without a guiding hand, Sharpe.’

Christ, Sharpe thought, but he was to be made bullock master!

‘Not fair to say they don’t have a guiding hand,’ Wallace continued, ‘because they do, but the new fellow don’t have any experience with bullocks. Torrance, he’s called, and I’m sure he’s a good fellow, but things are likely to get a bit more sprightly from now on. Going deeper into enemy territory, see? And there are still lots of their damned horsemen at large, and Torrance says he needs a deputy officer. Someone to help him. Thought you might be just the fellow for the job, Sharpe.’ Wallace smiled as though he was granting Sharpe a huge favour.

‘Don’t know anything about bullocks, sir,’ Sharpe said doggedly.

‘I’m sure you don’t! Who does? And there are dromedaries, and elephants. A regular menagerie, eh? But the experience, Sharpe, will do you good. Think of it as another string to your bow.’

Sharpe knew a further protest would do no good, so he nodded. ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘Good! Good! Splendid.’ Wallace could not hide his relief. ‘It won’t be for long, Sharpe. Scindia’s already suing for peace, and the Rajah of Berar’s bound to follow. We may not even have to fight at Gawilghur, if that’s where the rogues do take refuge. So go and help Torrance, then you can set a course for England, eh? Become a Greenjacket!’

So Ensign Sharpe had failed. Failed utterly. He had been an officer for two months and now he was being booted out of a regiment. Sent to the bullocks and the dromedaries, whatever the hell they were, and after that to the green-coated dregs of the army. Bloody hell fire, he thought, bloody hell fire.

The British and their allied cavalry rode all night, and in the dawn they briefly rested, watered their horses, then hauled themselves into their saddles and rode again. They rode till their horses were reeling with tiredness and white with sweat, and only then did they give up the savage pursuit of the Mahratta fugitives. Their sabre arms were weary, their blades blunted and their appetites slaked. The night had been a wild hunt of victory, a slaughter under the moon that had left the plain reeking with blood, and the sun brought more killing and wide-winged vultures that flapped down to the feast.

The pursuit ended close to a sudden range of hills that marked the northern limit of the Deccan Plain. The hills were steep and thickly wooded, no place for cavalry, and above the hills reared great cliffs, dizzyingly high cliffs that stretched from the eastern to the western horizon like the nightmare ramparts of a tribe of giants. In places there were deep re-entrants cut into the great cliff and some of the British pursuers, gaping at the vast wall of rock that barred their path, supposed that the wooded clefts would provide a path up to the cliff’s summit, though none could see how anyone could reach the highland if an enemy chose to defend it.

Between two of the deep re-entrants a great promontory of rock jutted from the cliff face like the prow of a monstrous stone ship. The summit of the jutting rock was two thousand feet above the horsemen on the plain, and one of them, scrubbing blood from his sabre blade with a handful of grass, glanced up at the high peak and saw a tiny puff of whiteness drifting from its crest. He thought it a small cloud, but then he heard a faint bang of gunfire, and a second later a round shot dropped vertically into a nearby patch of millet. His captain pulled out a telescope and trained it high into the sky. He stared for a long time, then gave a low whistle.

‘What is it, sir?’

‘It’s a fortress,’ the Captain said. He could just see black stone walls, shrunken by distance, poised above the grey-white rock. ‘It’s hell in the bloody sky,’ he said grimly, ‘that’s what it is. It’s Gawilghur.’

More guns fired from the fortress, but they were so high in the air that their shots lost all their forward momentum long before they reached the ground. The balls fell like nightmare rain and the Captain shouted at his men to lead their horses out of range. ‘Their final refuge,’ he said, then laughed, ‘but it’s nothing to do with us, boys! The infantry will have to deal with that big bastard.’

The cavalrymen slowly moved southwards. Some of their horses had lost shoes, which meant they had to be walked home, but their night’s work was well done. They had ravaged a broken army, and now the infantry must cope with the Mahrattas’ final refuge.

A sergeant shouted from the right flank and the Captain turned westwards to see a column of enemy infantry appearing from a grove of trees just over a mile away. The white-coated battalion still possessed their artillery, but they showed no sign of wanting a fight. A crowd of civilians and several companies of fugitive Mahrattas had joined the regiment, which was heading for a road that twisted into the hills beneath the fort, then zigzagged its way up the face of the rock promontory. If that road was the only way into the fort, the cavalry Captain thought, then God help the redcoats who had to attack Gawilghur. He stared at the infantry through his telescope. The white-coated troops were showing small interest in the British cavalry, but it still seemed prudent to quicken his pace southwards.

A moment later and the cavalry was hidden behind millet fields. The Captain turned a last time and gazed again at the fortress on the soaring cliffs. It seemed to touch the sky, so high it stood above all India. ‘Bastard of a place,’ the Captain said wonderingly, then turned and left. He had done his job, and now the infantry must climb to the clouds to do theirs.

Colonel William Dodd watched the blue-coated cavalrymen walk their tired horses southwards until they vanished beyond a field of standing millet. The subadar in charge of the regiment’s small cannon had wanted to unlimber and open fire on the horsemen, but Dodd had refused his permission. There would have been no point in attacking, for by the time the guns were loaded the cavalrymen would have walked out of range. He watched a last salvo of round shot plummet to earth from the fort’s high guns. Those cannon were of little use, Dodd thought, except to overawe people on the plain.

It took Dodd’s regiment over seven hours to climb to the fort of Gawilghur, and by the time he reached the summit Dodd’s lungs were burning, his muscles aching and his uniform soaked with sweat. He had walked every step of the way, refusing to ride his horse, for the beast was tired and, besides, if he expected his men to walk up the long road, then he would walk it as well. He was a tall, sallow-faced man with a harsh voice and an awkward manner, but William Dodd knew how to earn his men’s admiration. They saw that he walked when he could have ridden, and so they did not complain as the steep climb sapped their breath and stole their strength. The regiment’s families, its baggage and its battery of cannon were still far below on the twisting, treacherous track that, in its last few miles, was little more than a ledge hacked from the cliff.

Dodd formed his Cobras into four ranks as they approached Gawilghur’s southern entrance where the great metal-studded gates were being swung open in welcome. ‘March smartly now!’ Dodd called to his men. ‘You’ve nothing to be ashamed of! You lost no battle!’ He pulled himself up into his saddle and drew his gold-hilted sword to salute the flag of Berar that flapped above the high gate-tower. Then he touched his heels to the mare’s flanks and led his undefeated men into the tower’s long entrance tunnel.

He emerged into the afternoon sun to find himself staring at a small town that was built within the stronghold’s ramparts and on the summit of Gawilghur’s promontory. The alleys of the town were crammed with soldiers, most of them Mahratta cavalrymen who had fled in front of the British pursuit, but, twisting in his saddle, Dodd saw some infantry of Gawilghur’s garrison standing on the firestep. He also saw Manu Bappoo who had outridden the British pursuit and now gestured to Dodd from the gate-tower’s turret.

Dodd told one of his men to hold his horse, then climbed the black walls to the top firestep of the tower where he stopped in awed astonishment at the view. It was like standing at the edge of the world. The plain was so far beneath and the southern horizon so far away that there was nothing in front of his eyes but endless sky. This, Dodd thought, was a god’s view of earth. The eagle’s view. He leaned over the parapet and saw his guns struggling up the narrow road. They would not reach the fort till long after nightfall.

‘You were right, Colonel,’ Manu Bappoo said ruefully.

Dodd straightened to look at the Mahratta prince. ‘It’s dangerous to fight the British in open fields,’ he said, ‘but here …?’ Dodd gestured at the approach road. ‘Here they will die, sahib.’

‘The fort’s main entrance,’ Bappoo said in his sibilant voice, ‘is on the other side. To the north.’

Dodd turned and gazed across the roof of the central palace. He could see little of the great fortress’s northern defences, though a long way away he could see another tower like the one on which he now stood. ‘Is the main entrance as difficult to approach as this one?’ he asked.

‘No, but it isn’t easy. The enemy has to approach along a narrow strip of rock, then fight through the Outer Fort. After that comes a ravine, and then the Inner Fort. I want you to guard the inner gate.’

Dodd looked suspiciously at Bappoo. ‘Not the Outer Fort?’ Dodd reckoned his Cobras should guard the place where the British would attack. That way the British would be defeated.

‘The Outer Fort is a trap,’ Bappoo explained. He looked tired, but the defeat at Argaum had not destroyed his spirit, merely sharpened his appetite for revenge. ‘If the British capture the Outer Fort they will think they have won. They won’t know that an even worse barrier waits beyond the ravine. That barrier has to be held. I don’t care if the Outer Fort falls, but we must hold the Inner. That means our best troops must be there.’

‘It will be held,’ Dodd said.

Bappoo turned and stared southwards. Somewhere in the heat-hazed distance the British forces were readying to march on Gawilghur. ‘I thought we could stop them at Argaum,’ he admitted softly.

Dodd, who had advised against fighting at Argaum, said nothing.

‘But here,’ Bappoo went on, ‘they will be stopped.’

Here, Dodd thought, they would have to be stopped. He had deserted from the East India Company’s army because he faced trial and execution, but also because he believed he could make a fortune as a mercenary serving the Mahrattas. So far he had endured three defeats, and each time he had led his men safe out of the disaster, but from Gawilghur there would be no escape. The British would block every approach, so the British must be stopped. They must fail in this high place, and so they would, Dodd consoled himself. For nothing imaginable could take this fort. He was on the world’s edge, lifted into the sky, and for the redcoats it would be like scaling the very heights of heaven.

So here, at last, deep inside India, the redcoats would be beaten.

Six cavalrymen in the blue and yellow coats of the 19th Light Dragoons waited outside the house where Captain Torrance was said to be billeted. They were under the command of a long-legged sergeant who was lounging on a bench beside the door. The Sergeant glanced up as Sharpe approached. ‘I hope you don’t want anything useful out of the bastards,’ he said acidly, then saw that the shabby-uniformed Sharpe, despite wearing a pack like any common soldier, also had a sash and a sabre. He scrambled to his feet. ‘Sorry, sir.’

Sharpe waved him back down onto the bench. ‘Useful?’ he asked.

‘Horseshoes, sir, that’s all we bleeding want. Horseshoes! Supposed to be four thousand in store, but can they find them?’ The Sergeant spat. ‘Tells me they’re lost! I’m to go to the bhinjarries and buy them! I’m supposed to tell my captain that? So now we have to sit here till Captain Torrance gets back. Maybe he knows where they are. That monkey in there’ – he jerked his thumb at the house’s front door – ‘doesn’t know a bloody thing.’

Sharpe pushed open the door to find himself in a large room where a half-dozen men argued with a harried clerk. The clerk, an Indian, sat behind a table covered with curling ledgers. ‘Captain Torrance is ill!’ the clerk snapped at Sharpe without waiting to discover the newcomer’s business. ‘And take that dirty Arab boy outside,’ the clerk added, jerking his chin at Ahmed who, armed with a musket he had taken from a corpse on the battlefield, had followed Sharpe into the house.

‘Muskets!’ A man tried to attract the clerk’s attention.

‘Horseshoes!’ an East India Company lieutenant shouted.

‘Buckets,’ a gunner said.

‘Come back tomorrow,’ the clerk said. ‘Tomorrow!’

‘You said that yesterday,’ the gunner said, ‘and I’m back.’

‘Where’s Captain Torrance?’ Sharpe asked.

‘He’s ill,’ the clerk said disapprovingly, as though Sharpe had risked the Captain’s fragile health even by asking the question. ‘He cannot be disturbed. And why is that boy here? He is an Arab!’

‘Because I told him to be here,’ Sharpe said. He walked round the table and stared down at the ledgers. ‘What a bleeding mess!’

‘Sahib!’ The clerk had now realized Sharpe was an officer. ‘Other side of the table, sahib, please, sahib! There is a system here, sahib. I stay this side of the table and you remain on the other. Please, sahib.’

‘What’s your name?’ Sharpe asked.

The clerk seemed affronted at the question. ‘I am Captain Torrance’s assistant,’ he said grandly.

‘And Torrance is ill?’

‘The Captain is very sick.’

‘So who’s in charge?’

‘I am,’ the clerk said.

‘Not any longer,’ Sharpe said. He looked up at the East India Company lieutenant. ‘What did you want?’

‘Horseshoes.’

‘So where are the bleeding horseshoes?’ Sharpe asked the clerk.

‘I have explained, sahib, I have explained,’ the clerk said. He was a middle-aged man with a lugubrious face and pudgy ink-stained fingers that now hastily tried to close all the ledgers so that Sharpe could not read them. ‘Now please, sahib, join the queue.’

‘Where are the horseshoes?’ Sharpe insisted, leaning closer to the sweating clerk.

‘This office is closed!’ the clerk shouted. ‘Closed till tomorrow! All business will be conducted tomorrow. Captain Torrance’s orders!’

‘Ahmed!’ Sharpe said. ‘Shoot the bugger.’

Ahmed spoke no English, but the clerk did not know that. He held his hands out. ‘I am closing the office! Work cannot be done like this! I shall complain to Captain Torrance! There will be trouble! Big trouble!’ The clerk glanced at a door that led to the inner part of the house.

‘Is that where Torrance is?’ Sharpe asked, gesturing at the door.

‘No, sahib, and you cannot go in there. The Captain is sick.’

Sharpe went to the door and pushed it open. The clerk yelped a protest, but Sharpe ignored him. A muslin screen hung on the other side of the door and entangled Sharpe as he pushed into the room where a sailor’s hammock hung from the beams. The room seemed empty, but then a whimper made him look into a shadowed corner. A young woman crouched there. She was dressed in a sari, but she looked European to Sharpe. She had been sewing gold braid onto the outer seams of a pair of breeches, but now stared in wide-eyed fright at the intruder. ‘Who are you, Ma’am?’ Sharpe asked.

The woman shook her head. She had very black hair and very white skin. Her terror was palpable. ‘Is Captain Torrance here?’ Sharpe asked.

‘No,’ she whispered.

‘He’s sick, is that right?’

‘If he says so, sir,’ she said softly. Her London accent confirmed that she was English.

‘I ain’t going to hurt you, love,’ Sharpe said, for fear was making her tremble. ‘Are you Mrs Torrance?’

‘No!’

‘So you work for him?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘And you don’t know where he is?’

‘No, sir,’ she said softly, looking up at Sharpe with huge eyes. She was lying, he reckoned, but he guessed she had good reason to lie, perhaps fearing Torrance’s punishment if she told the truth. He considered soothing the truth out of her, but reckoned it might take too long. He wondered who she was. She was pretty, despite her terror, and he guessed she was Torrance’s bibbi. Lucky Torrance, he thought ruefully. ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Ma’am,’ he said, then he negotiated the muslin curtain back into the front room.

The clerk shook his head fiercely. ‘You should not have gone in there, sahib! That is private quarters! Private! I shall be forced to tell Captain Torrance.’

Sharpe took hold of the clerk’s chair and tipped it, forcing the man off. The men waiting in the room gave a cheer. Sharpe ignored them, sat on the chair himself and pulled the tangle of ledgers towards him. ‘I don’t care what you tell Captain Torrance,’ he said, ‘so long as you tell me about the horseshoes first.’

‘They are lost!’ the clerk protested.

‘How were they lost?’ Sharpe asked.

The clerk shrugged. ‘Things get lost,’ he said. Sweat was pouring down his plump face as he tentatively tried to tug some of the ledgers away from Sharpe, but he recoiled from the look on the Ensign’s face. ‘Things get lost,’ the clerk said again weakly. ‘It is the nature of things to get lost.’

‘Muskets?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Lost,’ the clerk admitted.

‘Buckets?’

‘Lost,’ the clerk said.

‘Paperwork,’ Sharpe said.

The clerk frowned. ‘Paperwork, sahib?’

‘If something’s lost,’ Sharpe said patiently, ‘there’s a record. This is the bloody army. You can’t have a piss without someone making a note of it. So show me the records of what’s been lost.’

The clerk sighed and pulled one of the big ledgers open. ‘Here, sahib,’ he said, pointing an inky finger. ‘One barrel of horseshoes, see? Being carried on an ox from Jamkandhi, lost in the Godavery on November 12th.’

‘How many horseshoes in a barrel?’ Sharpe asked.

‘A hundred and twenty.’ The long-legged cavalry Sergeant had come into the office and now leaned against the doorpost.

‘And there are supposed to be four thousand horseshoes in store?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Here!’ The clerk turned a page. ‘Another barrel, see?’

Sharpe peered at the ill-written entry. ‘Lost in the Godavery,’ he read aloud.

‘And here.’ The clerk stabbed his finger again.

‘Stolen,’ Sharpe read. A drop of sweat landed on the page as the clerk turned it back. ‘So who stole it?’

‘The enemy, sahib,’ the clerk said. ‘Their horsemen are everywhere.’

‘Their bloody horsemen run if you so much as look at them,’ the tall cavalry Sergeant said sourly. ‘They couldn’t steal an egg from a chicken.’

‘The convoys are ambushed, sahib,’ the clerk insisted, ‘and things are stolen.’

Sharpe pushed the clerk’s hand away and turned the pages back, looking for the date when the battle had been fought at Assaye. He found it, and discovered a different handwriting had been used for the previous entries. He guessed Captain Mackay must have kept the ledger himself, and in Mackay’s neat entries there were far fewer annotations reading ‘stolen’ or ‘lost’. Mackay had marked eight cannonballs as being lost in a river crossing and two barrels of powder had been marked down as stolen, but in the weeks since Assaye no fewer than sixty-eight oxen had lost their burdens to either accidents or thieves. More tellingly, each of those oxen had been carrying a scarce commodity. The army would not miss a load of round shot, but it would suffer grievously when its last reserve of horseshoes was gone. ‘Whose handwriting is this?’ Sharpe had turned to the most recent page.

‘Mine, sahib.’ The clerk was looking frightened.

‘How do you know when something is stolen?’

The clerk shrugged. ‘The Captain tells me. Or the Sergeant tells me.’

‘The Sergeant?’

‘He isn’t here,’ the clerk said. ‘He’s bringing a convoy of oxen north.’

‘What’s the Sergeant’s name?’ Sharpe asked, for he could find no record in the ledger.

‘Hakeswill,’ the cavalry Sergeant said laconically. ‘He’s the bugger we usually deal with, on account of Captain Torrance always being ill.’

‘Bloody hell,’ Sharpe said, and pushed the chair back. Hakeswill! Obadiah bloody Hakeswill! ‘Why wasn’t he sent back to his regiment?’ Sharpe asked. ‘He isn’t supposed to be here at all!’

‘He knows the system,’ the clerk explained. ‘Captain Torrance wanted him to stay, sahib.’

And no bloody wonder, Sharpe thought. Hakeswill had worked himself into the army’s most profitable billet! He was milking the cow, but making sure it was the clerk’s handwriting in the ledger. No flies on Obadiah. ‘How does the system work?’ he asked the clerk.

‘Chitties,’ the clerk said.

‘Chitties?’

‘An ox driver is given a chitty, sahib, and when he has delivered his load the chitty is signed and brought here. Then he is paid. No chitty, no money. It is the rule, sahib. No chitty, no money.’

‘And no bloody horseshoes either,’ put in the lean Sergeant of the 19th.

‘And Sergeant Hakeswill pays the money?’ Sharpe asked.

‘If he is here, sahib,’ the clerk said.

‘That doesn’t get me my damned horseshoes,’ the Company Lieutenant protested.

‘Or my buckets,’ the gunner put in.

‘The bhinjarries have all the essentials,’ the clerk insisted. He made shooing gestures. ‘Go and see the bhinjarries! They have necessaries! This office is closed till tomorrow.’

‘But where did the bhinjarries get their necessaries, eh? Answer me that?’ Sharpe demanded, but the clerk merely shrugged. The bhinjarries were merchants who travelled with the army, contributing their own vast herds of pack oxen and carts. They sold food, liquor, women and luxuries, and now, it seemed, they were offering military supplies as well, which meant that the army would be paying for things that were normally issued free, and doubtless, if bloody Hakeswill had a finger in the pot, things which had been stolen from the army in the first place. ‘Where do I go for horseshoes?’ Sharpe asked the clerk.

The clerk was reluctant to answer, but he finally spread his hands and suggested Sharpe ask in the merchants’ encampment. ‘Someone will tell you, sahib.’

‘You tell me,’ Sharpe said.

‘I don’t know!’

‘So how do you know they have horseshoes?’

‘I hear these things!’ the clerk protested.

Sharpe stood and bullied the clerk back against the wall. ‘You do more than hear things,’ he said, leaning his forearm against the clerk’s neck, ‘you know things. So you bloody well tell me, or I’ll have my Arab boy chop off your goolies for his breakfast. He’s a hungry little bugger.’

The clerk fought for breath against the pressure of Sharpe’s arm. ‘Naig.’ He offered the name plaintively when Sharpe relaxed his arm.

‘Naig?’ Sharpe asked. The name rang a distant bell. A long-ago bell. Naig? Then he remembered a merchant of that name who had followed the army to Seringapatam. ‘Naig?’ Sharpe asked again. ‘A fellow with green tents?’

‘The very one, sahib.’ The clerk nodded. ‘But I did not tell you this thing! These gentlemen are witnesses, I did not tell you!’

‘He runs a brothel!’ Sharpe said, remembering, and he remembered too how Naig had been a friend to Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill four years before. Sharpe had been a private then and Hakeswill had trumped up charges that had fetched Sharpe a flogging. ‘Nasty Naig’ had been the man’s nickname, and back then he had sold pale-skinned whores who travelled in green-curtained wagons. ‘Right!’ Sharpe said. ‘This office is closed!’ The gunner protested and the cavalry Sergeant looked disappointed. ‘We’re going to see Naig,’ Sharpe announced.

‘No!’ the clerk said too loud.

‘No?’ Sharpe asked.

‘He will be angry, sahib.’

‘Why should he be angry?’ Sharpe demanded. ‘I’m a customer, ain’t I? He’s got horseshoes, and we want horseshoes. He should be delighted to see us.’

‘He must be treated with respect, sahib,’ the clerk said nervously. ‘He is a powerful man, Naig. You have money for him?’

‘I just want to look at his horseshoes,’ Sharpe said, ‘and if they’re army issue then I’ll ram one of them down his bloody throat.’

The clerk shook his head. ‘He has guards, sahib. He has jettis!’

‘I think I might let you go on your own,’ the East India Company Lieutenant said, backing away.

‘Jettis?’ The light dragoon Sergeant asked.

‘Strongmen,’ Sharpe explained. ‘Big buggers who kill you by wringing your neck like a chicken.’ He turned back to the clerk. ‘Where did Naig get his jettis? From Seringapatam?’

‘Yes, sahib.’

‘I killed enough of the buggers,’ Sharpe said, ‘so I don’t mind killing a few more. Are you coming?’ he asked the cavalry Sergeant.

‘Why not?’ The man grinned.

‘Anyone else?’ Sharpe asked, but no one else seemed to want a fight that afternoon.

‘Please, sahib,’ the clerk said weakly.

Sharpe ignored him and, followed by Ahmed and the cavalryman, went back into the sunlight. ‘What’s your name?’ Sharpe asked the Sergeant.

‘Lockhart, sir. Eli Lockhart.’

‘I’m Dick Sharpe, Eli, and you don’t have to call me “sir”, I’m not a proper bleeding officer. I was made up at Assaye, and I wish the buggers had left me a sergeant now. They sent me to be a bloody bullock driver, because I’m not fit for anything else.’ He looked at Lockhart’s six troopers who were still waiting. ‘What are they doing here?’

‘Didn’t expect me to carry the bloody horseshoes myself, did you?’ Lockhart said, then gestured at the troopers. ‘Come on, boys. We’re going to have a scrap.’

‘Who said anything about a scrap?’ Sharpe asked.

‘He’s got horseshoes,’ Lockhart explained, ‘but we don’t have money. So there’s only one way to get them off him.’

‘True,’ Sharpe said, and grinned.

Lockhart suddenly looked oddly shy. ‘Was you in the Captain’s quarters, sir?’

‘Yes, why?’

The tough-looking Sergeant was actually blushing now. ‘You didn’t see a woman there, did you, sir?’

‘Dark-haired girl. Pretty?’

‘That’s her.’

‘Who is she?’

‘Torrance’s servant. A widow. He brought her and her husband out from England, but the fellow died and left her on her own. Torrance won’t let her go.’

‘And you’d like to take her off his hands, is that it?’

‘I’ve only ever seen her at a distance,’ the Sergeant admitted. ‘Torrance was in another regiment, one of the Madrassi’s, but we camped together often enough.’

‘She’s still there,’ Sharpe said drily, ‘still alive.’

‘He keeps her close, he does,’ Lockhart said, then kicked a dog out of his path. The eight men had left the village and entered the sprawling encampment where the merchants with their herds, wagons and families were camped. Great white oxen with painted horns were hobbled by pegs, and children scurried among the beasts collecting their dung which they slapped into cakes that would be dried for fuel. ‘So tell me about these jettis,’ Lockhart asked.

‘Like circus strongmen,’ Sharpe said, ‘only it’s some kind of religious thing. Don’t ask me. None of it makes bleeding sense to me. Got muscles like mountains, they have, but they’re slow. I killed four of the buggers at Seringapatam.’

‘And you know Hakeswill?’

‘I know bloody Hakeswill. Recruited me, he did, and he’s been persecuting me ever since. He shouldn’t even be with this army, he’s supposed to be with the Havercakes down south, but he came up here with a warrant to arrest me. That didn’t work, so he’s just stayed, hasn’t he? And he’s working the bleeding system! You can wager your last shilling that he’s the bastard who supplies Naig, and splits the profit.’ Sharpe stopped to look for green tents. ‘How come you don’t carry your own spare horseshoes?’

‘We do. But when they’ve gone you have to get more from the supplies. That’s how the system’s supposed to work. And yesterday’s pursuit left half the hooves wrecked. We need shoes.’

Sharpe had seen a cluster of faded green tents. ‘That’s where the bastard is,’ he said, then looked at Lockhart. ‘This could get nasty.’

Lockhart grinned. He was as tall as Sharpe and had a face that looked as though it had survived a lifetime of tavern brawls. ‘Come this far, ain’t I?’

‘Is that thing loaded?’ Sharpe nodded at the pistol at Lockhart’s belt. A sabre also hung there, just like the one at Sharpe’s hip.

‘It will be.’ Lockhart drew the pistol and Sharpe turned to Ahmed and mimed the actions of loading the musket. Ahmed grinned and pointed to the lock, indicating that his weapon was already charged.

‘How many of the buggers will be waiting for us?’ Lockhart asked.

‘A dozen?’ Sharpe guessed.

Lockhart glanced back at his six men. ‘We can deal with a dozen buggers.’

‘Right,’ Sharpe said, ‘so let’s bloody well make some trouble.’ He grinned, because for the first time since he had become an officer he was enjoying himself.

Which meant someone was about to get a thumping.