"Haul him out of the saddle, Gopal, " Dodd ordered, 'hold him in the guardroom and send a man to fetch Manu Bappoo."
The young man attempted a momentary resistance, even half drawing his tulwar from its precious scabbard, but a dozen of Dodd's men easily overpowered him. Dodd himself turned away and climbed the steps to the rampart, motioning Hakeswill to follow him.
"It's obvious what the Killadar is doing, " Dodd growled.
"He's trying to make peace."
"I thought we couldn't be defeated here, sir, " Hakeswill said in some alarm.
"We can't, " Dodd said, 'but Beny Singh is a coward. He thinks life should be nothing but women, music and games."
Which sounded just splendid to Obadiah Hakeswill, but he said nothing. He had presented himself to Dodd as an aggrieved British soldier who believed the war against the Mahrattas was unfair.
"We ain't got no business here, sir, " he had said, 'not in heathen land. It belongs to the blackamoors, don't it? And there ain't nothing here for a redcoat."
Dodd had not believed a word of it. He suspected Hakeswill had fled the British army to avoid trouble, but he could hardly blame the Sergeant for that. Dodd himself had done the same, and Dodd did not care about Hakeswill's motives, only that the Sergeant was willing to fight. And Dodd believed his men fought better when white men gave them orders.
"There's a steadiness about the English, Sergeant, " he had told Hakeswill, 'and it gives the natives bottom."
"It gives them what, sir?" Hakeswill had asked.
Dodd had frowned at the Sergeant's obtuseness.
"You ain't Scotch, are you?"
"Christ no, sir! I ain't a bleeding Scotchman, nor a Welshman.
English, sir, I am, through and through, sir." His face twitched.
"English, sir, and proud of it."
So Dodd had given Hakeswill a white jacket and a black sash, then put him in charge of a company of his Cobras.
"Fight well for me here, Sergeant, " he told Hakeswill when the two men reached the top of the rampart, 'and I'll make you an officer."
"I shall fight, sir, never you mind, sir. Fight like a demon, I will."
And Dodd believed him, for if Hakeswill did not fight then he risked being captured by the British, and God alone knew what trouble he would then face. Though in truth Dodd did not see how the British could penetrate the Inner Fort. He expected them to take the Outer Fort, for there they had a flat approach and their guns were already blasting down the breaches, but they would have a far greater problem in capturing the Inner Fort. He showed that problem now to Hakeswill.
"There's only one way in, Sergeant, and that's through this gate. They can't assault the walls, because the slope of the ravine is too steep. See?"
Hakeswill looked to his left and saw that the wall of the Inner Fort was built on an almost sheer slope. No man could climb that and hope to assail a wall, even a breached wall, which meant that Dodd was right and the attackers would have to try — and batter down the four gates that barred the entranceway, and those gates were defended by Dodd's Cobras.
"And my men have never known defeat, Sergeant, " Dodd said.
"They've watched other men beaten, but they've not been outfought themselves. And here the enemy will have to beat us. Have to! But they can't. They can't." He fell silent, his clenched fists resting on the fire step
The sound of the guns was constant, but the only sign of the bombardment was the misting smoke that hung over the far side of the Outer Fort. Manu Bappoo, who commanded there, was now hurrying back towards the Inner Fort and Dodd watched the Prince climb the steep path to the gates. The hinges squealed as, one after the other, the gates were opened to let Bappoo and his aides in. Dodd smiled as the last gate was unbarred.
"Let's go and make some mischief, " he said, turning back to the steps.
Manu Bappoo had already opened the letter that Gopal had given to him. He looked up as Dodd approached.
"Read it, " he said simply, thrusting the folded paper towards the Colonel.
"He wants to surrender?" Dodd asked, taking the letter.
"Just read it, " Bappoo said grimly.
The letter was clumsily written, but intelligible. Beny Singh, as Killa-dar of the Rajah of Berar's fortress of Gawilghur, was offering to yield the fort to the British on the sole condition that the lives of all the garrison and their dependants were spared. None was to be hurt, none was to be imprisoned. The British were welcome to confiscate all the weaponry in the fort, but they were to allow Gawilghur's inhabitants to leave with such personal property as could be carried away on foot or horseback.
"Of course the British will accept! " Manu Bappoo said.
"They don't want to die in the breaches!»
"Has Beny Singh the authority to send this?" Dodd asked.
Bappoo shrugged, "He's Killadar."
"You're the general of the army. And the Rajah's brother."
Bappoo stared up at the sky between the high walls of the entranceway.
"One can never tell with my brother, " he said.
"Maybe he wants to surrender? But he hasn't told me. Maybe, if we lose, he can blame me, saying he always wanted to yield."
"But you won't yield?"
"We can win here! " Bappoo said fiercely, then turned towards the palace as Gopal announced that the Killadar himself was approaching.
Beny Singh must have been watching his messenger's progress from the palace, for now he hurried down the path and behind him came his wives, concubines and daughters. Bappoo walked towards him, followed by Dodd and a score of his white-coated soldiers. The Killadar must have reckoned that the sight of the women would soften Bappoo's heart, but the Prince's face just became harder.
"If you want to surrender, " he shouted at Beny Singh, 'then talk to me first!»
"I have authority here, " Beny Singh squeaked. His little lap dog was in his arms, its small tongue hanging out as it panted in the heat.
"You have nothing! " Bappoo retorted. The women, pretty in their silk and cotton, huddled together as the two men met beside the snake pit.
"The British are making their breaches, " Beny Singh protested, 'and tomorrow or the day after they'll come through! We shall all be killed!»
He wailed the prophecy.
"My daughters will be their playthings and my wives their servants." The women shuddered.
"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 towards the rock pit where the snakes were kept. The Killadar cried aloud as he tripped and fell backwards, 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, nickering 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 gab ions 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 rub bled 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, Mister Sharpe."
The coat had been given new white turn backs 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? Mister 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-turn. 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 thi
ngs.
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 towards 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. Afterwards 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.
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