Sharpe's Fortress

by Bernard Cornwell

  Sharpe climbed again. He balanced on the steep stones and hacked with the claymore, driving the enemy back. He scrambled up two more feet, wreathed in bitter smoke, and reached the spot where he could grip the wall at the edge of the breach. All he could do now was hold on to the stone with his left hand and thrust and swing with the sword. He drove men back, but then the big Arab saw him and came across the breach, bellowing at his comrades to leave the redcoat’s death to his scimitar. He raised the sword high over his head, like an executioner taking aim, and Sharpe was offbalance. “Push me, Tom!” he shouted, and Garrard put a hand on Sharpe’s arse and shoved him hard upward just as the scimitar started downward, but Sharpe had let go of the wall and reached out to hook his left hand behind the tall man’s ankle. He tugged hard and the man shouted in alarm as his feet slid out from under him and as he bumped down the breach’s flank. “Now kill him!” Sharpe bellowed and a half-dozen redcoats attacked the fallen man with bayonets as Sharpe hacked at the Arabs coming to the big man’s rescue. His claymore clashed with scimitars, the blades ringing like blacksmith’s hammers on anvils. The big man was twisting and twitching as the bayonets stabbed again and again through his robes. The Scots were back, thrusting and snarling up the center, and Sharpe forced himself up another step. Garrard was beside him now, and the two were only a step from the summit of the breach. “Bastards! Bastards!” Sharpe was panting as he hacked and lunged, but the Arabs’ robes seemed to soak up the blows, then suddenly, almost miraculously, they backed away from him. A musket fired from inside the fortress and one of the Arabs crumpled down onto the breach’s inner ramp, and Sharpe realized that the men who had fought their way through the left-hand breach must have turned and come to attack this breach from the inside. “Come on!” he roared, and he was on the summit at last and there were Scots and Light Company men all about him as they spilled down into the Outer Fortress where a company of the Scotch Brigade waited to welcome them. The defenders were fleeing to the southern gate which would lead them to the refuge of the Inner Fort.

  “Jesus,” Tom Garrard said, leaning over to catch his breath.

  “Are you hurt?” Sharpe asked.

  Garrard shook his head. “Jesus,” he said again. Some enemy gunners, who had stayed with their weapons till the last minute, jumped down from the fire step, dodged past the tired redcoats scattered inside the wall and fled southward. Most of the Scots and sepoys were too breathless to pursue them and contented themselves with some musket shots. A dog barked madly until a sepoy kicked the beast into silence.

  Sharpe stopped. It seemed suddenly quiet, for the big guns were silent at last and the only muskets firing were from the Mahrattas defending the gatehouse. A few small cannon were firing to the south, but Sharpe could not see them, nor guess what their target was. The highest part of the fort lay to his right, and there was nothing on the low summit but dry grassland and a few thorny trees. No defenders gathered there. To his left he could see Kenny’s men assaulting the gatehouse. They were storming the steps to the parapet where a handful of Arabs were making a stand, though they stood no chance, for over a hundred redcoats now gathered under the wall and were firing up at the fire step. The defenders’ robes turned red. They were trapped now between the musket balls and the bayonets of the men climbing the steps, and though some tried to surrender, they were all killed. The other Mahrattas had fled, gone over the high ground in the center of the Outer Fort to the ravine and to the larger fort beyond.

  A vat stood in an embrasure of the wall and Sharpe heaved himself up and found, as he had hoped, that the barrel contained water for the abandoned guns. They were very small cannon, mostly mounted on iron tripods, but they had inflicted a hard punishment on the men crammed along the fort’s approach. The dead and wounded had been pushed aside to make way for the stream of men approaching the breaches. Major Stokes was among them, Ahmed at his side, and Sharpe waved to them, though they did not see him. He dipped his hands in the water, slung it over his face and hair, then stooped and drank. It was filthy stuff, stagnant and bitter with powder debris, but he was desperately thirsty.

  A cheer sounded as Colonel Kenny’s men hoisted the British flag above the captured Delhi Gate. Manu Bappoo’s flag was being folded by an aide, to be carried back to Britain. A squad of Scotsmen unbarred the big inner gate, then the outer one, to let even more redcoats into the fort that had fallen so quickly. Exhausted men slumped in the wall’s shade, but Kenny’s officers were shouting at them to find their units, to load their muskets and move on south.

  “I think our orders are to guard the breach,” Morris suggested as Sharpe jumped down from the fire step.

  “We go on,” Sharpe said savagely.

  “We—”

  “We go on, sir,” Sharpe said, investing the “sir” with a savage scorn.

  “Move, move, move!” a major shouted at Morris. “The job ain’t done yet! Move on!” He waved southward.

  “Sergeant Green,” Morris said reluctantly, “gather the men.”

  Sharpe walked up the hill, going to the high spot in the fort, and once there he stared southward. Beneath him the ground fell away, gently at first, then steeply until it disappeared in a rocky ravine that was deep in shadow. But the far slope was sunlit, and that slope was a precipitous climb to an unbreached wall, and at the wall’s eastern end was a massive gatehouse, far bigger than the one that had just been captured, and that far gatehouse was thick with soldiers. Some had white coats, and Sharpe knew those men. He had fought them before. “Bloody hell,” he said softly.

  “What is it?”

  Sharpe turned and saw Garrard had followed him. “Looks bloody nasty to me, Tom.”

  Garrard stared at the Inner Fort. From here he could see the palace, the gardens and the defenses, and suddenly those defenses were blotted out by smoke as the guns across the ravine opened fire on the redcoats who now spread across the Outer Fort. The round shot screamed past Sharpe and Garrard. “Bloody hell,” Sharpe said again. He had just fought his way through a breach to help capture a fort, only to find that the day’s real work had scarcely begun.

  Manu Bappoo had hoped to defend the breaches by concentrating his best fighters, the Lions of Allah, at their summits, but that hope had been defeated by the British guns that had continued to fire at the breaches until the redcoats were almost at the top of the ramps. No defender could stand in the breach and hope to live, not until the guns ceased fire, and by then the leading attackers were almost at the summit and so the Lions of Allah had been denied the advantage of higher ground.

  The attackers and defenders had clashed amid the dust and smoke at the top of the breach and there the greater height and strength of the Scotsmen had prevailed. Manu Bappoo had raged at his men, he had fought in their front rank and taken a wound in his shoulder, but his Arabs had retreated. They had gone back to the upper breaches, and there the redcoats, helped by their remorseless cannon, had prevailed again, and Bappoo knew the Outer Fort was lost. In itself that was no great loss. Nothing precious was stored in the Outer Fort, it was merely an elaborate defense to slow an attacker as he approached the ravine, but Bappoo was galled by the swiftness of the British victory. For a while he swore at the redcoats and tried to rally his men to defend the gatehouse, but the British were now swarming over the breaches, the gunners on the walls were abandoning their weapons, and Bappoo knew it was time to pull back into the stronghold of the Inner Fort. “Go back!” he shouted. “Go back!” His white tunic was soaked in his own blood, but the wound was to his left shoulder and he could still wield the gold-hilted tulwar that had been a gift from his brother. “Go back!”

  The defenders retreated swiftly and the attackers seemed too spent to pursue. Bappoo waited until the last, and then he walked backward, facing the enemy and daring them to come and kill him, but they simply watched him go. In a moment, he knew, they would reorganize themselves and advance to the ravine, but by then he and his troops would be safely locked within the greater fortress. />
  The last sight Bappoo had of the Delhi Gate was of an enemy flag being hauled to the top of the pole that had held his own flag, then he dropped down the steep slope and was hustled through the south gate by his bodyguard. The path now ran obliquely down the steep side of the ravine before turning a hairpin bend to climb to the Inner Fort. The first of his men were already scrambling up that farther path. The gunners on the southern wall, who had been trying to stop the redcoats approaching on the road from the plain, now abandoned their small cannon and joined the retreat. Bappoo could only follow them with tears in his eyes. It did not matter that the battle was not lost, that the Inner Fort still stood and was likely to stand through all eternity, he had been humiliated by the swiftness of the defeat. “Hurry, sahib,” one of his aides said.

  “The British aren’t following,” Bappoo said tiredly, “not yet.”

  “Those British,” the aide said, and pointed west to where the road from the plain climbed to the ravine. And there, at the bend where the road disappeared about the flank of the steep slope, was a company of redcoats. They wore kilts, and Bappoo remembered them from Argaum. If those men hurried, they might cut off Bappoo’s retreat and so he quickened his pace.

  It was not till he reached the bottom of the ravine that he realized something was wrong. The leading groups of his men had reached the Inner Fort, but instead of streaming into the gate they were milling about on the slope beneath. “What’s happening?” he asked.

  “The gates are shut, sahib,” his aide said in wonderment.

  “They’ll open any minute,” Bappoo said, and turned as a musket bullet whistled down from the slope behind him. The British who had captured the Outer Fort had at last advanced to the edge of the ravine and beneath them they saw the mass of retreating enemy, so they began to fire down. “Hurry!” Bappoo shouted, and his men pushed on up the hill, but still the gates did not open.

  The British fire became heavier. Redcoats were lining the hilltop now and pouring musket fire into the ravine. Bullets ricocheted from the stone sides and flicked down into the press of men. Panic began to infect them, and Bappoo shouted at them to be calm and return the fire, while he pushed through the throng to discover why the Inner Fort’s gates were closed. “Dodd!” he shouted as he came close. “Dodd!”

  Colonel Dodd’s face appeared above the rampart. He looked quite calm, though he said nothing.

  “Open the gate!” Bappoo shouted angrily.

  Dodd’s response was to raise the rifle to his shoulder.

  Bappoo stared up into the muzzle. He knew he should run or twist away, but the horror of fate kept him rooted to the path. “Dodd?” he said in puzzlement, and then the rifle was blotted out by the smoke of its discharge.

  The bullet struck Bappoo on the breastbone, shattering it and driving scraps of bone deep into his heart. The Prince took two shuddering breaths and then was dead.

  His men gave a great wail as the news of their Prince’s death spread, and then, unable to endure the plunging fire from the Outer Fort, and denied entrance to the Inner, they fled west toward the road which dropped to the plain.

  But the road was blocked. The Highlanders of the 48th were nearing its summit and they now saw a great panicked mass surging toward them. The Scotsmen had endured the artillery fire of the Outer Fort during their long climb, but now those guns had been abandoned. To their right the cliffs soared up to the Inner Fort, while to their left was a precipice above a dizzying gorge.

  There was only room for twelve men to stand abreast on the road, but Colonel Chalmers, who led the 48th, knew that was space enough. He formed his leading half-company into three ranks with the front row kneeling. “You’ll fire by ranks,” he said quietly.

  The panicked defenders ran toward the kilted Highlanders, who waited until every shot could kill. “Front rank, fire!” Chalmers said.

  The muskets started, and one by one the three ranks fired, and the steady fusillade tore into the approaching fugitives. Some tried to turn and retreat, but the press behind was too great, and still the relentless fire ripped into them, while behind them redcoats came down from the Outer Fort to attack their rear.

  The first men jumped off the cliff, and their terrible screams faded as they plunged down to the rocks far beneath. The road was thick with bodies and running with blood.

  “Advance twenty paces!” Chalmers ordered.

  The Highlanders marched, halted, knelt and began firing again. Bappoo’s survivors, betrayed by Dodd, were trapped between two forces. They were stranded in a hell above emptiness, a slaughter in the high hills. There were screams as men tumbled to their deaths far beneath and still the fire kept coming. It kept coming until there was nothing left but quivering men crouching in terror on a road that was rank with the stench of blood, and then the redcoats moved forward with bayonets.

  The Outer Fort had fallen and its garrison had been massacred.

  And William Dodd, renegade, was Lord of Gawilghur.

  Chapter 10

  Mr. Hakeswill was not sure whether he was a lieutenant in William Dodd’s eyes, but he knew he was a Mr. and he dimly apprehended that he could be much more. William Dodd was going to win, and his victory would make him ruler of Gawilghur and tyrant of all the wide land that could be seen from its soaring battlements. Mr. Hakeswill was therefore well placed, as Dodd’s only white officer, to profit from the victory and, as he approached the palace on Gawilghur’s summit, Hakeswill was already imagining a future that was limited only by the bounds of his fancy. He could be a rajah, he decided. “I shall have an harem,” he said aloud, earning a worried look from his havildar. “An harem I’ll have, all of me own. Bibbis in silk, but only when it’s cold, eh? Rest of the time they’ll have to be naked as needles.” He laughed, scratched at the lice in his crotch, then lunged with his sword at one of the peacocks that decorated the palace gardens. “Bad luck, them birds,” Hakeswill told the havildar as the bird fled in a flurry of bright severed feathers. “Bad luck, they are. Got the evil eye, they do. Know what you should do with a peacock? Roast the bugger. Roast it and serve it with ‘taters. Very nice, that.”

  “Yes, sahib,” the havildar said nervously. He was not certain he liked this new white officer whose face twitched so compulsively, but Colonel Dodd had appointed him and the Colonel could do no wrong as far as the havildar was concerned.

  “Haven’t tasted a ‘tater in months,” Hakeswill said wistfully. “Christian food, that, see? Makes us white.”

  “Yes, sahib.”

  “And I won’t be sahib, will I? Your highness, that’s what I’ll be. Your bleeding highness with a bedful of bare bibbis.” His face twitched as a bright idea occurred to him. “I could have Sharpie as a servant.

  Cut off his goolies first, though. Snip snip.” He bounded enthusiastically up a stone staircase, oblivious of the sound of gunfire that had erupted in the ravine just north of the Inner Fort. Two Arab guards moved to bar the way, but Hakeswill shouted at them. “Off to the walls, you scum! No more shirking! You ain’t guarding the royal pisspot any longer, but has to be soldiers. So piss off!”

  The havildar ordered the two men away and, though they were reluctant to abandon their post, they were overawed by the number of bayonets that faced them. So, just like the guards who had stood at the garden gate, they fled. “So now we look for the little fat man,” Hakeswill said, “and give him a bloodletting.”

  “We must hurry, sahib,” the havildar said, glancing back at the wall above the ravine where the gunners were suddenly at work.

  “God’s work can’t be hurried,” Hakeswill answered, pulling at one of the latticed doors that led into the palace, “and Colonel Dodd will die of old age on that wall, sonny. Ain’t a man alive who can get through that gate, and certainly not a pack of bleeding Scotchmen. Bugger this door.” He raised his right foot and battered down the locked lattice with his boot.

  Hakeswill had expected a palace dripping with gold, festooned with silk and paved with polished marble, b
ut Gawilghur had only ever been a summer refuge, and Berar had never been as wealthy as other Indian states, and so the floors were common stone, the walls were painted in limewash and the curtains were of cotton. Some fine furniture of ebony inlaid with ivory stood in the hallway, but Hakeswill had no eye for such chairs, only for jewels, and he saw none. Two bronze jars and an iron cuspidor stood by the walls where lizards waited motionless, while a brass poker, tongs and fire shovel, cast in Birmingham, mounted on a stand and long bereft of any hearth, had pride of place in a niche. The hallway had no guards, indeed no one was in sight and the palace seemed silent except for a faint sound of choking and moaning that came from a curtained doorway at the far end of the hall. The noise of the guns was muffled. Hakeswill hefted his sword and edged towards the curtain. His men followed slowly, bayonets ready, eyes peering into every shadow.

  Hakeswill swept the curtain aside with the blade, and gasped.

  The Killadar, with a tulwar slung at his side and a small round shield strapped to his left arm, stared at Hakeswill above the bodies of his wives, concubines and daughters. Eighteen women were on the floor. Most were motionless, but some still writhed as the slow pain of the poison worked its horrors. The Killadar was in tears. “I could not leave them for the English,” he said.