Sharpe's Fortress

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Does he now?” Torrance asked. That was worth knowing.

  “Four years ago, sir,” Hakeswill said, “I had Sharpie flogged. Would have been a dead‘un too, he would, like he deserved, only Sir Arthur stopped the flogging after two hundred lashes. Stopped it!” The injustice of the act still galled the Sergeant. “Now he’s a bleedin’ officer. I tells you, sir, the army ain’t what it was. Gone to the dogs, it has.” He pulled the cloth from his left foot, then frowned at his toes. “I washed them in August,” he said in wonderment, “but it don’t look like it, does it?”

  “It is now December, Sergeant,” Torrance said reprovingly.

  “A good sluice should last six months, sir.”

  “Some of us engage in a more regular toilet,” Torrance hinted.

  “You would, sir, being a gentleman. Thing is, sir, I wouldn’t normally take the toe-rags off, only there’s a blister.” Hakeswill frowned. “Haven’t had a blister in years! Poor Naig. For a blackamoor he wasn’t a bad sort of fellow.”

  Naig, Torrance believed, had been as evil a creature as any on the surface of the earth, but he smiled piously at Hakeswill’s tribute. “We shall certainly miss him, Sergeant.”

  “Pity you had to hang him, sir, but what choice did you have? Between the devil and a deep blue buggeration, that’s where you were, sir. But poor Naig.” Hakeswill shook his head in sad remembrance. “You should have strung up Sharpie, sir, more’s the pity you couldn’t. Strung him up proper like what he deserves. A murdering bastard, he is, murdering!” And an indignant Hakeswill told Captain Torrance how Sharpe had tried to kill him, first by throwing him among the Tippoo’s tigers, then by trapping him in a courtyard with an elephant trained to kill by crushing men with its forefoot. “Only the tigers weren’t hungry, see, on account of being fed? And as for the elephant, sir, I had me knife, didn’t I? I jabbed it in the paw, I did.” He mimed the stabbing action. “Right in its paw, deep in! It didn’t like it. I can’t die, sir, I can’t die.” The Sergeant spoke hoarsely, believing every word. He had been hanged as a child, but he had survived the gallows and now believed he was protected from death by his own guardian angel.

  Mad, Torrance thought, Bedlam-mad, but he was nevertheless fascinated by Obadiah Hakeswill. To look at, the Sergeant appeared the perfect soldier; it was the twitch that suggested something more interesting lay behind the bland blue eyes. And what lay behind those childish eyes, Torrance had decided, was a breathtaking malevolence, yet one that was accompanied by an equally astonishing confidence. Hakeswill, Torrance had decided, would murder a baby and find justification for the act. “So you don’t like Mr. Sharpe?” Torrance asked.

  “I hates him, sir, and I don’t mind admitting it. I’ve watched him, I have, slither his way up the ranks like a bleeding eel up a drain.” Hakeswill had taken out a knife, presumably the one which he had stabbed into the elephant’s foot, and now cocked his right heel on his left knee and laid the blade against the blister.

  Torrance shut his eyes to spare himself the sight of Hakeswill performing surgery. “The thing is, Sergeant,” he said, “that Naig’s brother would rather like a private word with Mr. Sharpe.”

  “Does he now?” Hakeswill asked. He stabbed down. “Look at that, sir. Proper bit of pus. Soon be healed. Ain’t had a blister in years! Reckon it must be the new boots.” He spat on the blade and poked the blister again. “I’ll have to soak the boots in vinegar, sir. So Jama wants Sharpe’s goolies, does he?”

  “Literally, as it happens. Yes.”

  “He can join the bleeding queue.”

  “No!” Torrance said sternly. “It is important to me, Sergeant, that Mr. Sharpe is delivered to Jama. Alive. And that his disappearance occasions no curiosity.”

  “You mean no one must notice?” Hakeswill’s face twitched while he thought, then he shrugged. “Ain’t difficult, sir.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “I’ll have a word with Jama, sir. Then you can give Sharpie some orders, and I’ll be waiting for him. It’ll be easy, sir. Glad to do it for you.”

  “You are a comfort to me, Sergeant.”

  “That’s my job, sir,” Hakeswill said, then leered at the kitchen door where Clare Wall had appeared. “Sunshine of my life,” he said in what he hoped was a winning tone.

  “Your tea, sir,” Clare said, offering Torrance a cup.

  “A mug for the Sergeant, Brick! Where are your manners?”

  “She don’t need manners,” Hakeswill said, still leering at the terrified Clare, “not with what she’s got. Put some sugar in it, darling, if the Captain will spare me some.”

  “Give him sugar, Brick,” Torrance ordered.

  Hakeswill watched Brick go back to the kitchen. “A proper little woman, that, sir. A flower, that’s what she is, a flower!”

  “No doubt you would like to pluck her?”

  “It’s time I was married,” Hakeswill said. “A man should leave a son, sir, says so in the scriptures.”

  “You want to do some begetting, eh?” Torrance said, then frowned as someone knocked on the outer door. “Come!” he called.

  An infantry captain whom neither man recognized put his head round the door. “Captain Torrance?”

  “That’s me,” Torrance said grandly.

  “Sir Arthur Wellesley’s compliments,” the Captain said, his acid tone suggesting that the compliments would be remarkably thin, “but is there any reason why the supplies have not moved northwards?”

  Torrance stared at the man. For a second he was speechless, then he cursed under his breath. “My compliments to the General,” he said, “and my assurances that the bullock train will be on its way immediately.” He waited until the Captain had gone, then swore again.

  “What happened, sir?” Hakeswill asked.

  “The bloody chitties!” Torrance said. “Still here. Dilip must have come for them this morning, but I told him to bugger off.” He swore again. “Bloody Wellesley will pull my guts out backwards for this.”

  Hakeswill found the chitties on the table and went to the door, leaving small bloody marks on the floor from his opened blister. “Dilly! Dilly! You black bastard heathen swine! Here, take these. On your way!”

  “Damn!” Torrance said, standing and pacing the small room. “Damn, damn, damn.”

  “Nothing to worry about, sir,” Hakeswill said.

  “Easy for you to say, Sergeant.”

  Hakeswill grinned as his face was distorted by twitches. “Just blame someone else, sir,” he said, “as is usually done in the army.”

  “Who? Sharpe? You said yourself he’s Wellesley’s blue-eyed boy. I’m supposed to blame him? Or you, perhaps?”

  Hakeswill tried to calm the Captain down by giving him his cup of tea. “Blame Dilly, sir, on account of him being a heathen bastard as black as my new boots.”

  “He’ll simply deny everything when questioned!” Torrance protested.

  Hakeswill smiled. “Won’t be in a position to deny anything, sir, will he? On account of being ... “ He paused, stuck his tongue out, opened his eyes wide and made a choking noise.

  “Good God, Sergeant,” Torrance said, shuddering at the horrid picture suggested by Hakeswill’s contorted face. “Besides, he’s a good clerk! It’s damned difficult to replace good men.”

  “It’s easy, sir. Jama will give us a man. Give us a good man.” Hakeswill grinned. “It’ll make things much easier, sir, if we can trust the clerk as well as each other.”

  Torrance flinched at the thought of being in league with Obadiah Hakeswill, yet if he was ever to pay off his debts he needed the Sergeant’s cooperation. And Hakeswill was marvelously efficient. He could strip the supplies bare and not leave a trace of his handiwork, always making sure someone else took the blame. And doubtless the Sergeant was right. If Jama could provide a clerk, then the clerk could provide a false set of accounts. And if Dilip was blamed for the late arrival of the pioneers’ stores, then Torrance would be off that particularly sharp and nasty hook. As
ever, it seemed as though Hakeswill could find his way through the thorniest of problems.

  “Just leave it to me, sir,” Hakeswill said. “I’ll look after everything, sir, I will.” He bared his teeth at Clare who had brought his mug of tea. “You’re the flower of womanhood,” he told her, then watched appreciatively as she scuttled back to the kitchen. “Her and me, sir, are meant for each other. Says so in the scriptures.”

  “Not till Sharpe’s dead,” Torrance said.

  “He’ll be dead, sir,” Hakeswill promised, and the Sergeant shivered as he anticipated the riches that would follow that death. Not just Clare Wall, but the jewels. The jewels! Hakeswill had divined that it had been Sharpe who had killed the Tippoo Sultan in Seringapatam, and Sharpe who must have stripped the ruler’s body of its diamonds and emeralds and sapphires and rubies, and Sharpe, Hakeswill reckoned, was still hiding those stones. From far away, dulled by the heat of the day, came the sound of artillery firing. Gawilghur, Hakeswill thought, where Sharpe should not reach, on account of Sharpe being Hakeswill’s business, and no one else’s. I will be rich, the Sergeant promised himself, I will be rich.

  Colonel William Dodd stood on the southernmost battlements of Gawilghur with his back against the parapet so that he was staring down into a palace courtyard where Beny Singh had erected a striped pavilion. Small silver bells that tinkled prettily in the small breeze were hung from the pavilion’s fringed hem, while under the canopy a group of musicians played the strange, long-necked stringed instruments which made a music that, to Dodd’s ears, sounded like the slow strangulation of cats. Beny Singh and a dozen pretty creatures in saris were playing some form of Blind Man’s BufF, and their laughter rose to the ramparts, making Dodd scowl, though if truth were told he was inordinately jealous of Beny Singh. The man was plump, short and timid, yet he seemed to work some magical spell on the ladies, while Dodd, who was tall, hard and scarred to prove his bravery, had to make do with a whore.

  Damn the Killadar. Dodd turned sharply away and stared over the heat-baked plain. Beneath him, and just far enough to the east to be out of range of Gawilghur’s largest guns, the edge of the British encampment showed. From this height the rows of dull white tents looked like speckles. To the south, still a long way off, Dodd could see the enemy baggage train trudging toward its new encampment. It was odd, he thought, that they should make the oxen carry their burdens through the hottest part of the day. Usually the baggage marched just after midnight and camped not long after dawn, but today the great herd was stirring the dust into the broiling afternoon air and it looked, Dodd thought, like a migrating tribe. There were thousands of oxen in the army’s train, all loaded with round shot, powder, tools, salt beef, arrack, horseshoes, bandages, flints, muskets, spices, rice, and with them came the merchants’ beasts and the merchants’ families, and the ox herdsmen had their own families and they all needed more beasts to carry their tents, clothes and food. A dozen elephants plodded in the herd’s center, while a score of dromedaries swayed elegantly behind the elephants. Mysore cavalry guarded the great caravan, while beyond the mounted pickets half-naked grass-cutters spread into the fields to collect fodder that they stuffed into nets and loaded onto yet more oxen.

  Dodd glanced at the sentries who guarded the southern stretch of Gawilghur’s walls and he saw the awe on their faces as they watched the enormous herd approach. The dust from the hooves rose to smear the southern skyline like a vast sea fog. “They’re only oxen!” Dodd growled to the men. “Only oxen! Oxen don’t fire guns. Oxen don’t climb walls.” None of them understood him, but they grinned dutifully.

  Dodd walked eastward. After a while the wall ended, giving way to the bare lip of a precipice. There was no need for walls around much of the perimeters of Gawilghur’s twin forts, for nature had provided the great cliffs that were higher than any rampart a man could make, but Dodd, as he walked to the bluff’s edge, noted places here and there where an agile man could, with the help of a rope, scramble down the rock face. A few men deserted Gawilghur’s garrison every day, and Dodd did not doubt that this was how they escaped, but he did not understand why they should want to go. The fort was impregnable! Why would a man not wish to stay with the victors?

  He reached a stretch of wall at the fort’s southeastern corner and there, high up on a gun platform, he opened his telescope and stared down into the foothills. He searched for a long time, his glass skittering over trees, shrubs and patches of dry grass, but at last he saw a group of men standing beside a narrow path. Some of the men were in red coats and one was in blue.

  “What are you watching, Colonel?” Prince Manu Bappoo had seen Dodd on the rampart and had climbed to join him.

  “British,” Dodd said, without taking his eye from the telescope. “They’re surveying a route up to the plateau.”

  Bappoo shaded his eyes and stared down, but without a telescope he could not see the group of men. “It will take them months to build a road up to the hills.”

  “It’ll take them two weeks,” Dodd said flatly. “Less. You don’t know how their engineers work, sahib, but I do. They’ll use powder to break through obstacles and a thousand axemen to widen the tracks. They’ll start their work tomorrow and in a fortnight they’ll be running guns up to the hills.” Dodd collapsed the telescope. “Let me go down and break the bastards,” he demanded.

  “No,” Bappoo said. He had already had this argument with Dodd who wanted to take his Cobras down into the foothills and there harass the road-makers. Dodd did not want a stand-up fight, a battle of musket line against musket line, but instead wanted to raid, ambush and scare the enemy. He wanted to slow the British work, to dishearten the sappers and, by such delaying tactics, force Wellesley to send forage parties far into the countryside where they would be prey to the Mahratta horsemen who still roamed the Deccan Plain.

  Bappoo knew Dodd was right, and that the British road could be slowed by a campaign of harassment, but he feared to let the white-coated Cobras leave the fortress. The garrison was already nervous, awed by the victories of Wellesley’s small army, and if they saw the Cobras march out of the fort then many would think they were being abandoned and the trickle of deserters would become a flood.

  “We have to slow them!” Dodd snarled.

  “We shall,” Bappoo said. “I shall send silladars, Colonel, and reward them for every weapon they bring back to the fort. But you will stay here, and help prepare the defenses.” He spoke firmly, showing that the subject was beyond discussion, then offered Dodd a gap-toothed smile and gestured toward the palace at the center of the Inner Fort. “Come, Colonel, I want to show you something.”

  The two men walked through the small houses that surrounded the palace, past an Arab sentry who protected the palace precincts, then through some flowering trees where monkeys crouched. Dodd could hear the tinkle of the bells where Beny Singh was playing with his women, but that sound faded as the path twisted deeper into the trees. The path ended at a rock face that was pierced by an arched wooden door. Dodd looked up while Bappoo unlocked the door and saw that the great rock slab formed the palace foundations and, when Bappoo thrust back the creaking door, he understood that it led into the palace cellars.

  A lantern stood on a shelf just inside the door and there was a pause while Bappoo lit its wick. “Come,” Bappoo said, and led Dodd into the marvelous coolness of the huge low cellar. “It is rumored,” Bappoo said, “that we store the treasures of Berar in here, and in one sense it is true, but they are not the treasures that men usually dream of.” He stopped by a row of barrels and casually knocked off their lids, revealing that the tubs were filled with copper coins. “No gold or silver,” Bappoo said, “but money all the same. Money to hire new mercenaries, to buy new weapons and to make a new army.” Bappoo trickled a stream of the newly minted coins through his fingers. “We have been lax in paying our men,” he confessed. “My brother, for all his virtues, is not generous with his treasury.”

  Dodd grunted. He was not sure wha
t virtues the Rajah of Berar did possess. Certainly not valor, nor generosity, but the Rajah was fortunate in his brother, for Bappoo was loyal and evidently determined to make up for the Rajah’s shortcomings.

  “Gold and silver,” Dodd said, “would buy better arms and more men.”

  “My brother will not give me gold or silver, only copper. And we must work with what we have, not with what we dream of.” Bappoo put the lids back onto the barrels, then edged between them to where rack after rack of muskets stood. “These, Colonel,” he said, “are the weapons for that new army.”

  There were thousands of muskets, all brand new, and all equipped with bayonets and cartridge boxes. Some of the guns were locally made copies of French muskets, but several hundred looked to Dodd to be of British make. He lifted one from the racks and saw the Tower mark on its lock. “How did you get these?” he asked, surprised.

  Bappoo shrugged. “We have agents in the British camp. They arrange it. We meet some of their supply convoys well to the south and pay for their contents. It seems there are traitors in the British army who would rather make money than seek victory.”

  “You buy guns with copper?” Dodd asked scathingly. He could not imagine any man selling a Tower musket for a handful of copper.

  “No,” Bappoo confessed. “To buy the weapons and the cartridges we need gold, so I use my own. My brother, I trust, will repay me one day.”

  Dodd frowned at the hawk-faced Bappoo. “You’re using your money to keep your brother on the throne?” he asked and, though he waited for an answer, none came. Dodd shook his head, implying that Bappoo’s nobility was beyond understanding, then he cocked and fired the unloaded musket. The spark of the flint flashed a sparkle of red light against the stone ceiling. “A musket in its rack kills no one,” he said.