Sharpe's Fortress

by Bernard Cornwell

  “The British will die in the breaches,” Bappoo retorted.

  “They cannot be stopped!” Beny Singh insisted. “They are djinns.”

  Bappoo suddenly shoved Beny Singh back toward the rock pit where the snakes were kept. The Killadar cried aloud as he tripped and fell backward, but Bappoo had kept hold of Beny Singh’s yellow silk robe and now he held on tight so that the Killadar did not fall. Hakeswill sidled to the pit’s edge and saw the monkey bones. Then he saw a curving, flickering shape slither across the pit’s shadowed floor and he quickly stepped back.

  Beny Singh whimpered. “I am the Killadar! I am trying to save lives!”

  “You’re supposed to be a soldier,” Bappoo said in his hissing voice, “and your job is to kill my brother’s enemies.” The women screamed, expecting to see their man fall to the pit’s floor, but Manu Bappoo kept a firm grip on the silk. “And when the British die in the breaches,” he said to Beny Singh, “and when their survivors are harried south across the plain, who do you think will get the credit for the victory? The Killadar of the fort, that is who! And you would throw that glory away?”

  “They are djinns,” Beny Singh said, and he looked sideways at Obadiah Hakeswill whose face was twitching, and he screamed. “They are djinnsl”

  “They are men, as feeble as other men,” Bappoo said. He reached out with his free hand and took hold of the white dog by the scruff of its neck. Beny Singh whimpered, but did not resist. The dog struggled in Manu Bappoo’s grip. “If you try to surrender the fortress again,” Manu Bappoo said, “then this will be your fate.” He let the dog drop. It yelped as it fell into the pit, then howled piteously as it struck the rock floor. There was a hiss, a scrabble of paws, a last howl, then silence. Beny Singh uttered a shriek of pity for his dog before babbling that he would rather give his women poison to drink than risk that they should become prey to the terrible besiegers.

  Manu Bappoo shook the hapless Killadar. “Do you understand me?” he demanded.

  “I understand!” Beny Singh said desperately.

  Manu Bappoo hauled the Killadar safely back from the pit’s edge. “You will go to the palace, Beny Singh,” he ordered, “and you will stay there, and you will send no more messages to the enemy.” He pushed the Killadar away, then turned his back on him. “Colonel Dodd?”

  “Sahib?”

  “A dozen of your men will make certain that the Killadar sends no messages from the palace. If he does, you may kill the messenger.”

  Dodd smiled. “Of course, sahib.”

  Bappoo went back to the beleaguered Outer Fort while the Killadar slunk back to the hilltop palace above its green-scummed lake. Dodd detailed a dozen men to guard the palace’s entrance, then went back to the rampart to brood over the ravine. Hakeswill followed him there. “Why’s the Killadar so scared, sir? Does he know something we don’t?”

  “He’s a coward, Sergeant.”

  But Beny Singh’s fear had infected Hakeswill who imagined a vengeful Sharpe come back from the dead to pursue him through the nightmare of a fortress fallen. “The bastards can’t get in, sir, can they?” he asked anxiously.

  Dodd recognized Hakeswill’s fear, the same fear he felt himself, the fear of the ignominy and shame of being recaptured by the British and then condemned by a merciless court. He smiled. “They will probably take the Outer Fort, Sergeant, because they’re very good, and because our old comrades do indeed fight like djinns, but they cannot cross the ravine. Not if all the powers of darkness help them, not if they besiege us for a year, not if they batter down all these walls and destroy the gates and flatten the palace by gunfire, because they will still have to cross the ravine, and it cannot be done. It cannot be done.”

  And who rules Gawilghur, Dodd thought, reigns in India.

  And within a week he would be Rajah here.

  Gawilghur’s walls, as Stokes had guessed, were rotten. The first breach, in the outer wall, took less than a day to make. In mid-afternoon the wall had still been standing, though a cave had been excavated into the dusty rubble where Stokes had pointed the guns, but quite suddenly the whole rampart collapsed. It slid down the brief slope in a cloud of dust which slowly settled to reveal a steep ramp of jumbled stone leading into the space between the two walls. A low stub of the wall’s rear face still survived, but an hour’s work served to throw that remnant down.

  The gunners changed their aim, starting the two breaches in the higher inner wall, while the enfilading batteries, which had been gnawing at the embrasures to dismount the enemy’s guns, began firing slantwise into the first breach to dissuade the defenders from building obstacles at the head of the ramp. The enemy guns, those which survived, redoubled their efforts to disable the British batteries, but their shots were wasted in the gabions or overhead. The big gun which had inflicted such slaughter fired three times more, but its balls cracked uselessly into the cliff face, after which the Mahratta gunners mysteriously gave up.

  Next day the two inner breaches were made, and now the big guns concentrated on widening all three gaps in the walls. The eighteen-pounder shots slammed into rotten stone, gouging out the wall’s fill to add to the ramps. By evening the breaches were clearly big enough and now the gunners aimed their pieces at the enemy’s remaining cannon. One by one they were unseated or their embrasures shattered. A constant shroud of smoke hung over the rocky neck of land. It hung thick and pungent, twitching every time a shot whipped through. The enfilading twelve-pounders fired shells into the breaches, while the howitzer lobbed more shells over the walls.

  The British guns fired deep into dusk, and minute by minute the enemy response grew feebler as their guns were wrecked or thrown off the fire steps. Only as black night dropped did the besiegers’ hot guns cease fire, but even now there would be no respite for the enemy. It was at night that the defenders could turn the breaches into deathtraps. They could bury mines in the stony ramps, or dig wide trenches across the breach summits or make new walls behind the raw new openings, but the British kept one heavy gun firing throughout the darkness. They loaded the eighteen-pounder with canister and, three times an hour, sprayed the area of the breaches with a cloud of musket balls to deter any Mahratta from risking his life on the rubbled slopes.

  Few slept well that night. The cough of the gun seemed unnaturally loud, and even in the British camp men could hear the rattle as the musket balls whipped against Gawilghur’s wounded walls. And in the morning, the soldiers knew, they would be asked to go to those walls and climb the tumbled ramps and fight their way through the shattered stones. And what would wait for them? At the very least, they suspected, the enemy would have mounted guns athwart the breaches to fire across the attack route. They expected blood and pain and death.

  “I’ve never been into a breach,” Garrard told Sharpe. The two men met at Syud Sevajee’s tents, and Sharpe had given his old friend a bottle of arrack.

  “Nor me,” Sharpe said.

  “They say it’s bad.”

  “They do,” Sharpe agreed bleakly. It was supposedly the worst ordeal that any soldier could face.

  Garrard drank from the stone bottle, wiped its lip, then handed it to Sharpe. He admired Sharpe’s coat in the light of the small campfire. “Smart bit of cloth, Mr. Sharpe.”

  The coat had been given new white turnbacks and cuffs by Clare Wall, and Sharpe had done his best to make the jacket wrinkled and dusty, but it still looked expensive. “Just an old coat, Tom,” he said dismissively.

  “Funny, isn’t it? Mr. Morris lost a coat.”

  “Did he?” Sharpe asked. “He should be more careful.” He gave Garrard the bottle, then climbed to his feet. “I’ve got an errand, Tom.” He held out his hand. “I’ll look for you tomorrow.”

  “I’ll look out for you, Dick.”

  Sharpe led Ahmed through the camp. Some men sang around their fires, others obsessively honed bayonets that were already razor sharp. A cavalryman had set up a grinding stone and a succession of officers’ servants brought
swords and sabres to be given a wicked edge. Sparks whipped off the stone. The sappers were doing their last job, making ladders from bamboo that had been carried up from the plain. Major Stokes supervised the job, and his eyes widened in joy as he saw Sharpe approaching through the firelight. “Richard! Is it you? Dear me, it is! Well, I never! And I thought you were locked up in the enemy’s dungeons! You escaped?”

  Sharpe shook Stokes’s hand. “I never got taken to Gawilghur. I was held by some horsemen,” he lied, “but they didn’t seem to know what to do with me, so the buggers just let me go.”

  “I’m delighted, delighted!”

  Sharpe turned and looked at the ladders. “I didn’t think we were making an escalade tomorrow?”

  “We’re not,” Stokes said, “but you never know what obstacles have to be overcome inside a fortress. Sensible to carry ladders.” He peered at Ahmed who was now dressed in one of the sepoy’s coats that had been given to Syud Sevajee. The boy wore the red jacket proudly, even though it was a poor, threadbare and bloodstained thing. “I say,” Stokes admired the boy, “but you do look like a proper soldier. Don’t he just?” Ahmed stood to attention, shouldered his musket and made a smart about-face. Major Stokes applauded. “Well done, lad. I’m afraid you’ve missed all the excitement, Sharpe.”

  “Excitement?”

  “Your Captain Torrance died. Shot himself, by the look of things. Terrible way to go. I feel sorry for his father. He’s a cleric, did you know? Poor man, poor man. Would you like some tea, Sharpe? Or do you need to sleep?”

  “I’d like some tea, sir.”

  “We’ll go to my tent,” Stokes said, leading the way. “I’ve still got your pack, by the way. You can take it with you.”

  “I’d rather you kept it another day,” Sharpe said, “I’ll be busy tomorrow.”

  “Busy?” Stokes asked.

  “I’m going in with Kenny’s troops, sir.”

  “Dear God,” Stokes said. He stopped and frowned. “I’ve no doubt we’ll get through the breaches, Richard, for they’re good breaches. A bit steep, perhaps, but we should get through, but God only knows what waits beyond. And I fear that the Inner Fort may be a much bigger obstacle than any of us have anticipated.” He shook his head. “I ain’t sanguine, Sharpe, I truly ain’t.”

  Sharpe had no idea what sanguine meant, though he did not doubt that Stokes’s lack of it did not augur well for the attack. “I have to go into the fort, sir. I have to. But I wondered if you’d keep an eye on Ahmed here.” He took hold of the boy’s shoulder and pulled him forward. “The little bugger will insist on coming with me,” Sharpe said, “but if you keep him out of trouble then he might survive another day.”

  “He can be my assistant,” Stokes said happily. “But, Richard, can’t I persuade you to the same employment? Are you ordered to accompany Kenny?”

  “I’m not ordered, sir, but I have to go. It’s personal business.”

  “It will be bloody in there,” Stokes warned. He walked on to his tent and shouted for his servant.

  Sharpe pushed Ahmed toward Stokes’s tent. “You stay here, Ahmed, you hear me? You stay here!”

  “I come with you,” Ahmed insisted.

  “You bloody well stay,” Sharpe said. He twitched Ahmed’s red coat. “You’re a soldier now. That means you take orders, understand? You obey. And I’m ordering you to stay here.”

  The boy scowled, but he seemed to accept the orders, and Stokes showed him a place where he could sleep. Afterward the two men talked, or rather Sharpe listened as Stokes enthused about some fine quartz he had discovered in rocks broken open by the enemy’s counter-battery fire. Eventually the Major began yawning. Sharpe finished his tea, said his good night and then, making certain that Ahmed did not see him go, he slipped away into the dark.

  He still could not sleep. He wished Clare had not gone to Eli Lockhart, although he was glad for the cavalryman that she had, but her absence made Sharpe feel lonely. He walked to the cliff’s edge and he stood staring across the great gulf toward the fortress. A few lights showed in Gawilghur, and every twenty minutes or so the rocky isthmus would be lit by the monstrous flame of the eighteen-pounder gun. The balls would rattle against stone, then there would be silence except for the distant sound of singing, the crackle of insects and the soft sigh of the wind against the cliffs. Once, when the great gun fired, Sharpe distinctly saw the three ragged holes in the two walls. And why, he wondered, was he so intent on going into those deathtraps? Was it revenge? Just to find Hakeswill and Dodd? He could wait for the attackers to do their work, then stroll into the fort unopposed, but he knew he would not choose that easy path. He would go with Kenny’s men and he would fight his way into Gawilghur for no other reason than pride. He was failing as an officer. The 74th had rejected him, the Rifles did not yet know him, so Sharpe must take a reputation back to England if he was to stand any chance of success.

  So tomorrow he must fight. Or else he must sell his commission and leave the army. He had thought about that, but he wanted to stay in uniform. He enjoyed the army, he even suspected he was good at the army’s business of fighting the King’s enemies. So tomorrow he would do it again, and thus demonstrate that he deserved the red sash and the sword.

  So in the morning, when the drums beat and the enemy guns beat even harder, Sharpe would go into Gawilghur.

  Chapter 9

  At dawn there was a mist in Deogaum, a mist that sifted through the rain trees and pooled in the valleys and beaded on the tents. “A touch of winter, don’t you think?” Sir Arthur Wellesley commented to his aide, Campbell.

  “The thermometer’s showing seventy-eight degrees, sir,” the young Scotsman answered dryly.

  “Only a touch of winter, Campbell, only a touch,” the General said. He was standing outside his tent, a cup and saucer in one hand, staring up through the wisps of mist to where the rising sun threw a brilliant light on Gawilghur’s soaring cliffs. A servant stood behind with Wellesley’s coat, hat and sword, a second servant held his horse, while a third waited to take the cup and saucer. “How’s Harness?” the General asked Campbell.

  “I believe he now sleeps most of the time, sir,” Campbell replied. Colonel Harness had been relieved of the command of his brigade. He had been found ranting in the camp, demanding that his Highlanders form fours and follow him southward to fight against dragons, papists and Whigs.

  “Sleeps?” the General asked. “What are the doctors doing? Pouring rum down his gullet?”

  “I believe it is tincture of opium, sir, but most likely flavored with rum.”

  “Poor Harness,” Wellesley grunted, then sipped his tea. From high above him there came the sound of a pair of twelve-pounder guns that had been hauled to the summit of the conical hill that reared just south of the fortress. Wellesley knew those guns were doing no good, but he had stubbornly insisted that they fire at the fortress gate that looked out across the vast plain. The gunners had warned the General that the weapons would be ineffective, that they would be firing too far and too high above them, but Wellesley had wanted the fortress to know that an assault might come from the south as well as across the rocky isthmus to the north, and so he had ordered the sappers to drag the two weapons up through the entangling jungle and to make a battery on the hilltop. The guns, firing at their maximum elevation, were just able to throw their missiles to Gawilghur’s southern entrance, but by the time the round shot reached the gate it was spent of all force and simply bounced back down the steep slope. But that was not the point. The point was to keep some of the garrison looking southward, so that not every man could be thrown against the assault on the breaches.

  That assault would not start for five hours yet, for before Lieutenant Colonel Kenny led his men against the breaches, Wellesley wanted his other attackers to be in place. Those were two columns of redcoats that were even now climbing the two steep roads that twisted up the great cliffs. Colonel Wallace, with his own 74th and a battalion of sepoys, would approach the Southern
Gate, while the 78th and another native battalion would climb the road which led to the ravine between the forts. Both columns could expect to come under heavy artillery fire, and neither could hope to break into the fortress, but their job was only to distract the defenders while Kenny’s men made for the breaches.

  Wellesley drained the tea, made a wry face at its bitter taste and held out the cup and saucer for the servant. “Time to go, Campbell.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Wellesley had thought about riding to the plateau and entering the fortress behind Kenny, but he guessed his presence would merely distract men who had enough problems to face without worrying about their commander’s approval. Instead he would ride the steep southern road and join Wallace and the 74th. All those men could hope for was that the other attackers got inside the Inner Fort and opened the Southern Gate, or else they would have to march ignominiously back down the hill to their encampment. It was all or nothing, Wellesley thought. Victory or disgrace.

  He mounted, waited for his aides to assemble, then touched his horse’s flank with his spurs. God help us now, he prayed, God help us now.

  Lieutenant Colonel Kenny examined the breaches through a telescope that he had propped on a rock close to one of the breaching batteries. The guns were firing, but he ignored the vast noise as he gazed at the stone ramps which his men must climb. “They’re steep, man,” he grumbled, “damned steep.”

  “The walls are built on a slope,” Major Stokes pointed out, “so the breaches are steep of necessity.”

  “Damned hard to climb though,” Kenny said.

  “They’re practical,” Stokes declared. He knew the breaches were steep, and that was why the guns were still firing. There was no hope of making the breaches less steep, the slope of the hill saw to that, but at least the continued bombardment gave the attacking infantry the impression that the gunners were attempting to alleviate the difficulties.

  “You’ve made holes in the walls,” Kenny said, “I’ll grant you that. You’ve made holes, but that don’t make them practical holes, Stokes. They’re damned steep.”