Sharpe's Fortress

by Bernard Cornwell

  “Sahib?” Gopal called, and Dodd turned to see that the Jemadar was pointing up the path that led to the palace. Beny Singh had appeared on the path, flanked by a servant carrying a parasol to protect the Killadar from the hot sun.

  “Send him up here, Jemadar!” Dodd shouted back.

  Dodd felt a quiet exaltation at the neatness of his tactics. Manu Bappoo was already cut off from safety, and only Beny Singh was now left as a rival to Dodd’s supremacy. Dodd was tempted to cut the Killadar down here and now, but the murder would have been witnessed by members of the garrison who were still loyal to Beny Singh, and so instead Dodd greeted the Killadar with a respectful bow. “What’s happening?” Beny Singh demanded. He was breathing hard from the effort of climbing to the fire step, then he cried out in dismay because the guns on the southern wall of the Outer Fort, those guns that overlooked the ravine, had suddenly opened fire to pump gouts of gray-white smoke.

  “I fear, sahib,” Dodd said, “that the enemy are overwhelming the fort.”

  “They’re doing what?” The Killadar, who was dressed for battle in a clean white robe girdled by a red cummerbund and hung with a jeweled scabbard, looked horrified. He watched the smoke spread across the ravine. He was puzzled because it was not at all clear what the nearer guns were firing at. “But the enemy can’t get in here!”

  “There are other British soldiers approaching, sahib,” Dodd said, and he pointed to the smoke cloud above the ravine. The guns on the near side of the Outer Fort, most of them small three- and five-pounder cannon, were aiming their pieces westward, which meant that British troops must be approaching up the steep road which led from the plain. Those troops were still out of Dodd’s sight, but the gunnery from the Outer Fort was eloquent proof of their presence. “There must be redcoats coming towards the ravine,” Dodd explained, “and we never foresaw that the British might assault in more than one place.” Dodd told the lie smoothly. “I have no doubt they have men coming up the southern road too.”

  “They do,” the Killadar confirmed.

  Dodd shuddered, as though the news overwhelmed him with despair. “We shall do our best,” he promised, “but I cannot defend everything at once. I fear the British will gain the victory this day.” He bowed to the Killadar again. “I am so very sorry, sahib. But you can gain an immortal reputation by joining the fight. We might lose today’s battle, but in years to come men will sing songs about the defiance of Beny Singh. And how better for a soldier to die, sahib, than with a sword in his hand and his enemies dead about his feet?”

  Beny Singh blanched at the thought. “My daughters!” he croaked.

  “Alas,” Dodd said gravely, “they will become soldiers’ toys. But you should not worry, sahib. In my experience the prettiest girls usually find a soldier to defend them. He is usually a big man, crude and forceful, but he stops the other men from raping his woman, except his friends, of course, who will be allowed some liberties. I am sure your wives and daughters will find men eager to protect them.”

  Beny Singh fled from Dodd’s reassurances. Dodd smiled as the Killadar ran, then turned and walked toward Hakeswill who was posted in the bastion above the innermost gate. The Sergeant had been issued with a sword to accompany his black sash. He slammed to attention as Dodd approached him. “Stand easy, Mr. Hakeswill,” Dodd said. Hakeswill relaxed slightly. He liked being called “Mr.,” it somehow seemed appropriate. If that little bastard Sharpe could be a mister and wear a sword, then so could he. “I shall have a job for you in a few minutes, Mr. Hakeswill,” Dodd said.

  “I shall be honored, sir,” Hakeswill replied.

  Dodd watched the Killadar hurry up the path toward the palace. “Our honored commander,” he said sarcastically, “is taking some bad news to the palace. We must give the news time to take root there.”

  “Bad news, sir?”

  “He thinks we’re going to lose,” Dodd explained.

  “I pray not, sir.”

  “As do I, Mr. Hakeswill, as do I. Fervently!” Dodd turned to watch the gunners in the Outer Fort and he saw how puny their small cannon were and he reckoned that such fire would not hold up the redcoats for long. The British would be in the ravine in half an hour, maybe less. “In ten minutes, Mr. Hakeswill, you will lead your Company to the palace and you will order the Arab guards to come and defend the walls.”

  Hakeswill’s face twitched. “Don’t speak their heathen language, sir, begging your pardon, sir.”

  “You don’t need their language. You’ve got a musket, use it. And if anyone questions your authority, Mr. Hakeswill, you have my permission to shoot them.”

  “Shoot them, sir? Yes, sir. With pleasure, sir.”

  “Anyone at all, Mr. Hakeswill.”

  Hakeswill’s face twitched again. “That fat little bugger, sir, him what was just here with the curly moustache ... “

  “The Killadar? If he questions you ... “

  “I shoot the bugger, sir.”

  “Exactly.” Dodd smiled. He had seen into Hakeswill’s soul and discovered it was black as filth, and perfect for his purposes. “Do it for me, Mr. Hakeswill, and I shall gazette you as a captain in the Cobras. Your havildar speaks some English, doesn’t he?”

  “A kind of English, sir,” Hakeswill said.

  “Make sure he understands you. The palace guards are to be dispatched to the walls.”

  “They will, sir, or else they’ll be dead ‘uns.” “Very good,” Dodd said. “But wait ten minutes.” “I shall, sir. And good day to you, sir.” Hakeswill saluted, about-faced and marched down the ramparts.

  Dodd turned back to the Outer Fort. Rockets seared out of the smoke cloud above which Manu Bappoo’s flag still hung. Faintly, very faintly, Dodd could hear men shouting, but the sound was being drowned by the roar of the guns which unsettled the silver-gray monkeys in the ravine. The beasts turned puzzled black faces up toward the men on the Inner Fort’s walls as though they could find an answer to the noise and stink that was consuming the day.

  A day which, to Dodd’s way of thinking, was going perfectly.

  The 33rd’s Light Company had been waiting a little to the side of the track and Captain Morris deliberately stayed there, allowing almost all of Kenny’s assault troops to go past before he led his men out of the rocks. He thus ensured that he was at the rear of the assault, a place which offered the greatest measure of safety.

  Once Morris moved his men onto the fort’s approach road he deliberately fell in behind a sepoy ladder party so that his progress was impeded. He walked at the head of his men, but turned repeatedly. “Keep in files, Sergeant!” he snapped at Green more than once.

  Sharpe walked alongside the company, curbing his long stride to the slow pace set by Morris. It took a moment to reach the small crest in the road, but then they were in sight of the fortress and Sharpe could only stare in awe at the weight of fire that seemed to pour from the battered walls.

  The Mahrattas’ bigger guns had been unseated, but they possessed a myriad of smaller cannon, some little larger than blunderbusses, and those weapons now roared and coughed and spat their flames toward the advancing troops so that the black walls were half obscured behind the patchwork of smoke that vented from every embrasure. Rockets added to the confusion. Some hissed up into the sky, but others seared into the advancing men to slice fiery passages through the ranks.

  The leading company had not yet reached the outer breach, but was hurrying into the narrow space between the precipice to the east and the tank to the west. They jostled as their files were compressed, and then the gunfire seemed to concentrate on those men and Sharpe had an impression of blood misting the air as the round shot slammed home at a range of a mere hundred paces. There were big round bastions on either flank of the breach, and their summits were edged with perpetual flame as the defenders took turns to blast muskets down into the mass of attackers. The British guns were still firing, their shots exploding bursts of dust and stone from the breach, or else hammering into the embras
ures in an effort to dull the enemy’s fire.

  An aide came running back down the path. “Hurry!” he called. “Hurry!”

  Morris made no effort to hasten his pace. The leading Scots were past the tank now and climbing the gentle slope toward the walls, but that slope became ever steeper as it neared the breach. The man with the flag was in front, then he was engulfed by Highlanders racing to reach the stones. Kenny led them, sword in hand. Muskets suddenly flamed from the breach summit, obscuring it with smoke, and then an eighteen-pounder shot churned up the smoke and threw up a barrowload of broken stone amid which an enemy musket wheeled. Sharpe quickened his pace. He could feel a kind of rage inside, and he wondered if that was fear, but there was an excitement too, and an anxiety that he would miss the fight.

  He could see the fight clearly enough, for the breach was high above the approach road and the Scots, scrambling up using their hands, were clearly visible. The British gunners were still firing, hammering round shot just inches over the Scotsmen’s heads to keep the summit of the breach clear of the enemy, and then, abruptly, the guns stopped and the redcoats climbed into the dust that hung thick above the shattered stones. A mass of Arabs climbed the breach’s inner slope, coming to oppose the Scots, and scimitars rang against bayonets. The red coats of the attackers were turned pink by the stone dust. Colonel Kenny was in the front rank, straddling a chunk of masonry as he parried a scimitar. He lunged, piercing an enemy’s throat, then stepped forward, downward, knowing he was across the summit and oblivious of the muskets that flamed above him from the upper wall. The British gunners, their weapons relaid, started to fire at the upper wall, driving the defenders away from the fire step. The Scots rammed their bayonets forward, kicked the dead off the blades, stepped over the corpses and followed Kenny down to the space inside the walls. “This way!” Kenny shouted. “This way!” He led the rush of men to the left, to where the inner breach waited, its slope twitching as the round shot slammed home. Some Arabs, fleeing the Scotsmen’s snarling rage, died as they tried to climb the inner breach and were struck by the cannonballs. Blood spattered across the inner wall, smeared the ramp, then was whitened by the dust.

  Kenny glanced behind to make sure that the column was close behind him. “Keep them coming,” he shouted to an aide who stood on the summit of the first breach. “Keep them coming!” Kenny spat a mouthful of dust, then shouted at the Scots to start the ascent of the second breach.

  “Hurry! Hurry!” Kenny’s aides who were still outside the walls urged on the column. The rearmost ranks of the Colonel’s assault party were stringing out, and the second storming group was not far behind. “Close up!” the aides urged the laggards. “Close up!”

  Morris reluctantly quickened. The sepoys carrying the ladders were running down the slight slope which led to the narrow space beside the tank where the enemy’s guns were aimed. All along Gawilghur’s walls the smoke jetted, the flames spat and the rockets blasted out in gouts of smoke and streams of sparks. Even arrows were being fired. One clattered on a rock near Sharpe, then spun into the grass.

  The Scots were climbing the inner breach now, and a stream of men was vanishing over the rocky summit of the outer breach. No mines had awaited the attackers, and no cannon had been placed athwart the breach to blast them as they flooded through the wall. Sepoys scrambled up the stones.

  “Hurry!” the aides shouted. “Hurry!”

  Sharpe ran down the slope toward the tank. His canteen and haversack thumped on his waist, and sweat poured down his face. “Slow down!” Morris shouted at him, but Sharpe ignored the call. The company was breaking apart as the more eager of the men hurried to catch up with Sharpe and the others dallied with Morris. “Slow down, damn you!” Morris called to Sharpe again.

  “Keep going!” Kenny’s aides shouted. Two of them had been posted beside the tank and they gestured the men on. The round shot of the breaching batteries hammered above their heads making a noise like great barrels rolling across floorboards, then cracked into the smokerimmed upper wall. A green and red flag waved there. Sharpe saw an Arab aim a musket, then smoke obscured the sight. A small cannonball struck a sepoy, throwing him back and smearing the stony road with blood and guts. Sharpe leaped the sprawling body and saw he had reached the reservoir. The water was low and scummed green. Two Scots and a sepoy lay on the sun-baked mud, their blood seeping into the cracks that crazed the bank. A musket ball hammered into the mud, then a small round shot lashed into the rear of Morris’s company and bowled over two men. “Leave them!” an aide shouted. “Just leave them!” A rocket smashed close by Sharpe’s head, enveloping him in smoke and sparks. A wounded man crawled back beside the road, trailing a shattered leg. Another, blood oozing from his belly, collapsed on the mud and lapped at the filthy water.

  Sharpe half choked on the thick smoke as he stumbled up the rising ground. Big black round shot lay here, left from the cannonade that had made the first breach. Two redcoat bodies had been heaved aside, three others twitched and called for help, but Kenny had posted another aide here to keep the troops moving. Dust spurted where musket balls lashed into the ground, then Sharpe was on the breach itself, half lost his balance as he climbed the ramp, and then was pushed from behind. Men jostled up the stones, clambered up, hauled themselves up with one hand while the other gripped their n/iusket. Sharpe put his hand on a smear of blood. The dusty rubble was almost too hot to touch, and the ramp was much longer than Sharpe had anticipated. Men shouted hoarsely as they climbed, and still the bullets thudded down. An arrow struck and quivered in a musket stock. A rocket crashed into the flood of men, parting it momentarily as the carcass flamed madly where it had lodged between a boulder and a cannonball. Someone unceremoniously dumped a dead Scotsman on top of the hissing rocket and the press of men clambered on up over the corpse.

  Once at the summit the attackers turned to their left and ran down the inside of the breach to the dry grass that separated the two walls. A fight was going on in the left-hand breach, and men were bunching behind it, but Sharpe could see the Scots were gradually inching up the slope. By God, he thought, but they were almost in! The British guns had ceased firing for fear of hitting their own men.

  Sharpe turned right, going to the second inner breach that Morris’s company was supposed to seal off. High above him, from the fire step of the inner wall, defenders leaned over to fire down into the space between the ramparts. Sharpe seemed to be running through a hail of bullets that magically did not touch him. Smoke wreathed about him, then he saw the broken stones of the breach in front and he leaped onto them and clambered upward. “I’m with you, Dick!” Tom Garrard shouted just behind, then a man appeared in the smoke above Sharpe and heaved down a balk of wood.

  The timber struck Sharpe on the chest, throwing him back onto Garrard who clutched at him as the two men fell on the stones. Sharpe swore as a fusillade of musket fire came down from the breach summit. A handful of men was with him, maybe six or seven, but none seemed to be hit. They crouched behind him, waiting for orders. “No farther!” Morris shouted. “No farther!”

  “Bugger him,” Sharpe said, and he picked up his musket. Just then the British guns, seeing that the right-hand breach was still occupied by the Mahrattas, opened fire again and the balls hammered into the stones just a few feet over Sharpe’s head. One defender was caught smack in the belly by an eighteen-pounder shot and it seemed to Sharpe that the man simply disintegrated in a red shower. Sharpe ducked as the blood poured down the stones, trickling past him and Garrard in small torrents. “Jesus,” Sharpe said. Another round shot slammed into the breach, the sound of the ball’s strike as loud as thunder. Shards of stone whipped past Sharpe, and he seemed to be breathing nothing but hot dust.

  “No farther!” Morris said. “Here! To me! Rally! Rally!” He was crouched under the inner wall, safe from the defenders on the breach, though high above him, on the undamaged fire step, Arab soldiers still leaned out to fire straight down. “Sharpe! Come here!” Morris order
ed.

  “Come on!” Sharpe shouted. Bugger Morris, and bugger all the other officers who said you could put a racing saddle on a carthorse, but the beast would not go quick. “Come on!” he shouted again as he clambered up the stones, and suddenly there were more men to his right, but they were Scots, and he saw that the leading men of the second assault group had reached the fortress. A red-haired lieutenant led them, a claymore in his hand.

  The Lieutenant was climbing the center of the breach, while Sharpe was trying to clamber up the steeper flank. The Highlanders went past Sharpe, screaming at the enemy, and the sight of their red coats made the British gunners cease fire, and immediately the breach summit filled with robed men who carried curved swords with blades as thick as cleavers. Swords clashed, muskets crashed, and the red-haired Lieutenant shook like a gaffed eel as a scimitar sliced into his belly. He turned and fell toward Sharpe, dropping his claymore. A line of defenders was now firing down the breach, while a huge Arab, who looked seven feet tall to Sharpe, stood in the center with a reddened scimitar and dared any man to challenge him. Two did, and both he threw back in a shower of blood. “Light Company!” Sharpe shouted. “Give those bastards fire! Fire!”

  Some muskets banged behind him and the row of defenders seemed to stagger back, but they closed up again, rallied by the huge man with the bloodstained scimitar. Sharpe had his left hand on the broken shoulder of the wall and he used it to haul himself up, then twisted aside as the closest Arabs turned and fired at him. The balls whiplashed past as a flaming lump of wadding struck Sharpe on the cheek. He let go of the wall and fell backward as a grinning man tried to stab him with a bayonet. Dear God, but the breach was steep! His cheek was burned and his new coat scorched. The Scots tried again, surging up the center of the breach to be met by a line of Arab blades. More Arabs came from inside the fortress and poured a volley of musket fire down the face of the ramp. Sharpe aimed his musket at the tall Arab and pulled the trigger. The gun hammered into his shoulder, but when the smoke cleared the big man was still standing and still fighting. The Arabs were winning here, they were pressing down the face of the breach and chanting a bloodcurdling war cry as they killed. A man rammed a bayonet at Sharpe, he parried it with his own, but then an enemy grasped Sharpe’s musket by the muzzle and tugged it upward. Sharpe cursed, but held on, then saw a scimitar slashing toward him and so he let go of the musket and fell back again. “Bastards,” he swore, then saw the dead Scottish Lieutenant’s claymore lying on the stones. He picked it up and swept it at the ankles of the Arabs above him, and the blade bit home and threw one man down, and the Scots were charging up the breach again, climbing over their own dead and screaming a raw shout of hate that was matched by the Arabs’ cries of victory.