What the enemy should do, Sharpe thought, is throw their infantry forward. All of it. Send a massive attack across the skyline and down toward the millet. Flood the riverbed with a horde of screaming warriors who could add to the panic and so snatch victory.
But the skyline stayed empty except for the guns and the stalled enemy lancers.
And so the redcoats waited.
Colonel William Dodd, commanding officer of Dodd’s Cobras, spurred his horse to the skyline from where he stared down the slope to see the British force in disarray. It looked to him as though two or more battalions had fled in panic, leaving a gaping hole on the right of the redcoat line. He turned his horse and kicked it to where the Mahratta warlord waited under his banners. Dodd forced his horse through the aides until he reached Prince Manu Bappoo. “Throw everything forward, sahib,” he advised Bappoo, “now!”
Manu Bappoo showed no sign of having heard Dodd. The Mahratta commander was a tall and lean man with a long, scarred face and a short black beard. He wore yellow robes, had a silver helmet with a long horse-tail plume, and carried a drawn sword that he claimed to have taken in single combat from a British cavalry officer. Dodd doubted the claim, for the sword was of no pattern that he recognized, but he was not willing to challenge Bappoo directly on the matter. Bappoo was not like most of the Mahratta leaders that Dodd knew. Bappoo might be a prince and the younger brother of the cowardly Rajah of Berar, but he was also a fighter.
“Attack now!” Dodd insisted. Much earlier in the day he had advised against fighting the British at all, but now it seemed that his advice had been wrong, for the British assault had dissolved in panic long before it reached musket range. “Attack with everything we’ve got, sahib,” Dodd urged Bappoo.
“If I throw everything forward, Colonel Dodd,” Bappoo said in his oddly sibilant voice, “then my guns will have to cease fire. Let the British walk into the cannon fire, then we shall release the infantry.” Bappoo had lost his front teeth to a lance thrust, and hissed his words so that, to Dodd, he sounded like a snake. He even looked reptilian. Maybe it was his hooded eyes, or perhaps it was just his air of silent menace. But at least he could fight. Bappoo’s brother, the Rajah of Berar, had fled before the battle at Assaye, but Bappoo, who had not been present at Assaye, was no coward. Indeed, he could bite like a serpent.
“The British walked into the cannon fire at Assaye,” Dodd growled, “and there were fewer of them and we had more guns, but still they won.”
Bappoo patted his horse which had shied away from the sound of a nearby cannon. It was a big, black Arab stallion, and its saddle was encrusted with silver. Both horse and saddle had been gifts from an Arabian sheik whose tribesmen sailed to India to serve in Bappoo’s own regiment. They were mercenaries from the pitiless desert who called themselves the Lions of Allah and they were reckoned to be the most savage regiment in all India. The Lions of Allah were arrayed behind Bappoo: a phalanx of dark-faced, white-robed warriors armed with muskets and long, curved scimitars. “You truly think we should fight them in front of our guns?” Bappoo asked Dodd.
“Muskets will kill more of them than cannon will,” Dodd said. One of the things he liked about Bappoo was that the man was willing to listen to advice. “Meet them halfway, sahib, thin the bastards out with musket fire, then pull back to let the guns finish them with canister. Better still, sahib, put the guns on the flank to rake them.”
“Too late to do that,” Bappoo said.
“Aye, well. Mebbe.” Dodd sniffed. Why the Indians stubbornly insisted on putting guns in front of infantry, he did not know. Daft idea, it was, but they would do it. He kept telling them to put their cannon between the regiments, so that the gunners could slant their fire across the face of the infantry, but Indian commanders reckoned that the sight of guns directly in front heartened their men. “But put some infantry out front, sahib,” he urged.
Bappoo thought about Dodd’s proposal. He did not much like the Englishman who was a tall, ungainly and sullen man with long yellow teeth and a sarcastic manner, but Bappoo suspected his advice was good. The Prince had never fought the British before, but he was aware that they were somehow different from the other enemies he had slaughtered on a score of battlefields across western India. There was, he understood, a stolid indifference to death in those red ranks that let them march calmly into the fiercest cannonade. He had not seen it happen, but he had heard about it from enough men to credit the reports. Even so he found it hard to abandon the tried and tested methods of battle. It would seem unnatural to advance his infantry in front of the guns, and so render the artillery useless. He had thirty-eight cannon, all of them heavier than anything the British had yet deployed, and his gunners were as well trained as any in the world. Thirty-eight heavy cannon could make a fine slaughter of advancing infantry, yet if what Dodd said was true, then the red-coated ranks would stoically endure the punishment and keep coming. Except some had already run, which suggested they were nervous, so perhaps this was the day when the gods would finally turn against the British. “I saw two eagles this morning,” Bappoo told Dodd, “outlined against the sun.”
So bloody what? Dodd thought. The Indians were great ones for auguries, forever staring into pots of oil or consulting holy men or worrying about the errant fall of a trembling leaf, but there was no better augury for victory than the sight of an enemy running away before they even reached the fight. “I assume the eagles mean victory?” Dodd asked politely.
“They do,” Bappoo agreed. And the augury suggested the victory would be his whatever tactics he used, which inclined him against trying anything new. Besides, though Prince Manu Bappoo had never fought the British, neither had the British ever faced the Lions of Allah in battle. And the numbers were in Bappoo’s favor. He was barring the British advance with forty thousand men, while the redcoats were not even a third of that number. “We shall wait,” Bappoo decided, “and let the enemy get closer.” He would crush them with cannon fire first, then with musketry. “Perhaps I shall release the Lions of Allah when the British are closer, Colonel,” he said to pacify Dodd.
“One regiment won’t do it,” Dodd said, “not even your Arabs, sahib. Throw every man forward. The whole line.”
“Maybe,” Bappoo said vaguely, though he had no intention of advancing all his infantry in front of the precious guns. He had no need to. The vision of eagles had persuaded him that he would see victory, and he believed the gunners would make that victory. He imagined dead red-coated bodies among the crops. He would avenge Assaye and prove that redcoats could die like any other enemy. “To your men, Colonel Dodd,” he said sternly.
Dodd wheeled his horse and spurred toward the right of the line where his Cobras waited in four ranks. It was a fine regiment, splendidly trained, which Dodd had extricated from the siege of Ahmednuggur and then from the panicked chaos of the defeat at Assaye. Two disasters, yet Dodd’s men had never flinched. The regiment had been a part of Scindia’s army, but after Assaye the Cobras had retreated with the Rajah of Berar’s infantry, and Prince Manu Bappoo, summoned from the north country to take command of Berar’s shattered forces, had persuaded Dodd to change his allegiance from Scindia to the Rajah of Berar. Dodd would have changed allegiance anyway, for the dispirited Scindia was seeking to make peace with the British, but Bappoo had added the inducement of gold, silver and a promotion to colonel. Dodd’s men, mercenaries all, did not care which master they served so long as his purse was deep.
Gopal, Dodd’s second-in-command, greeted the Colonel’s return with a rueful look. “He won’t advance?”
“He wants the guns to do the work.”
Gopal heard the doubt in Dodd’s voice. “And they won’t?”
“They didn’t at Assaye,” Dodd said sourly. “Damn it! We shouldn’t be fighting them here at all! Never give redcoats open ground. We should be making the bastards climb walls or cross rivers.” Dodd was nervous of defeat, and he had cause to be for the British had put a price on his head. That p
rice was now seven hundred guineas, nearly six thousand rupees, and all of it promised in gold to whoever delivered William Dodd’s body, dead or alive, to the East India Company. Dodd had been a lieutenant in the Company’s army, but he had encouraged his men to murder a goldsmith and, faced with prosecution, Dodd had deserted and taken over a hundred sepoys with him. That had been enough to put a price on his head, but the price rose after Dodd and his treacherous sepoys murdered the Company’s garrison at Chasalgaon. Now Dodd’s body was worth a fortune and William Dodd understood greed well enough to be fearful. If Bappoo’s army collapsed today as the Mahratta army had disintegrated at Assaye, then Dodd would be a fugitive on an open plain dominated by enemy cavalry. “We should fight them in the hills,” he said grimly.
“Then we should fight them at Gawilghur,” Gopal said.
“Gawilghur?” Dodd asked.
“It is the greatest of all the Mahratta fortresses, sahib. Not all the armies of Europe could take Gawilghur.” Gopal saw that Dodd was skeptical of the claim. “Not all the armies of the world could take it, sahib,” he added earnestly. “It stands on cliffs that touch the sky, and from its walls men are reduced to the size of lice.”
“There’s a way in, though,” Dodd said, “there’s always a way in.”
“There is, sahib, but the way into Gawilghur is across a neck of high rock that leads only to an outer fortress. A man might fight his way through those outer walls, but then he will come to a deep ravine and find the real stronghold lies on the ravine’s far side. There are more walls, more guns, a narrow path, and vast gates barring the way!” Gopal sighed. “I saw it once, years ago, and prayed I would never have to fight an enemy who had taken refuge there.”
Dodd said nothing. He was staring down the gentle slope to where the red-coated infantry waited. Every few seconds a puff of dust showed where a round shot struck the ground.
“If things go badly today,” Gopal said quietly, “then we shall go to Gawilghur and there we shall be safe. The British can follow us, but they cannot reach us. They will break themselves on Gawilghur’s rocks while we take our rest at the edge of the fortress’s lakes. We shall be in the sky, and they will die beneath us like dogs.”
If Gopal was right then not all the king’s horses nor all the king’s men could touch William Dodd at Gawilghur. But first he had to reach the fortress, and maybe it would not even be necessary, for Prince Manu Bappoo might yet beat the redcoats here. Bappoo believed mere was no infantry in India that could stand against his Arab mercenaries.
Away on the plain Dodd could see that the two battalions that had fled into the tall crops were now being brought back into the line. In a moment, he knew, that line would start forward again. “Tell our guns to hold their fire,” he ordered Gopal. Dodd’s Cobras possessed five small cannon of their own, designed to give the regiment close support. Dodd’s guns were not in front of his white-coated men, but away on the right flank from where they could lash a murderous slanting fire across the face of the advancing enemy. “Load with canister,” he ordered, “and wait till they’re close.” The important thing was to win, but if fate decreed otherwise, then Dodd must live to fight again at a place where a man could not be beaten.
At Gawilghur.
The British line at last advanced. From east to west it stretched for three miles, snaking in and out of millet fields, through pastureland and across the wide, dry riverbed. The center of the line was an array of thirteen red-coated infantry battalions, three of them Scottish and the rest sepoys, while two regiments of cavalry advanced on the left flank and four on the right. Beyond the regular cavalry were two masses of mercenary horsemen who had allied themselves to the British in hope of loot. Drums beat and pipes played. The colors hung above the shakos. A great swath of crops was trodden flat as the cumbersome line marched north. The British guns opened fire, their small six-pound missiles aimed at the Mahratta guns.
Those Mahratta guns fired constantly. Sharpe, walking behind the left flank of number six company, watched one particular gun which stood just beside a bright clump of flags on the enemy-held skyline. He slowly counted to sixty in his head, then counted it again, and worked out that the gun had managed five shots in two minutes. He could not be certain just how many guns were on the horizon, for the great cloud of powder smoke hid them, but he tried to count the muzzle flashes that appeared as momentary bright flames amid the gray-white vapor and, as best he could. guess, he reckoned there were nearly forty cannon there. Forty times five was what? Two hundred. So a hundred shots a minute were being fired, and each shot, if properly aimed, might kill two men, one in the front rank and one behind. Once the attack was close, of course, the bastards would switch to canister and then every shot could pluck a dozen men out of the line, but for now, as the redcoats silently trudged forward, the enemy was sending round shot down the gentle slope. A good many of these missed. Some screamed overhead and a few bounced over the line, but the enemy gunners were good, and they were lowering their cannon barrels so that the round shot struck the ground well ahead of the redcoat line and, by the time the missile reached the target, it had bounced a dozen times and so struck at waist height or below. Grazing, the gunners called it, and it took skill. If the first graze was too close to the gun then the ball would lose its momentum and do nothing but raise jeers from the redcoats as it rolled to a harmless stop, while if the first graze was too close to the attacking line then the ball would bounce clean over the redcoats. The skill was to skim the ball low enough to be certain of a hit, and all along the line the round shots were taking their toll. Men were plucked back with shattered hips and legs. Sharpe passed one spent cannonball that was sticky with blood and thick with flies, lying twenty paces from the man it had eviscerated. “Close, up!” the sergeants shouted, and the file-closers tugged men to fill the gaps. The British guns were firing into the enemy smoke cloud, but their shots seemed to have no effect, and so the guns were ordered farther forward. The ox teams were brought up, the guns were attached to the limbers, and the six-pounders trundled on up the slope.
“Like ninepins.” Ensign Venables had appeared at Sharpe’s side. Roderick Venables was sixteen years old and attached to number seven company. He had been the battalion’s most junior officer till Sharpe joined, and Venables had taken it on himself to be a tutor to Sharpe in how officers should behave. “They’re bowling us over like ninepins, eh, Richard?”
Before Sharpe could reply a half-dozen men of number six company threw themselves aside as a cannonball bounced hard and low toward them. It whipped harmlessly through the gap they had made. The men laughed at having evaded it, then Sergeant Colquhoun ordered them back into their two ranks.
“Aren’t you supposed to be on the left of your company?” Sharpe asked Venables.
“You’re still thinking like a sergeant, Richard,” Venables said. “Pig-ears doesn’t mind where I am.” Pig-ears was Captain Lomax, who had earned his nickname not because of any peculiarity about his ears, but because he had a passion for crisply fried pig-ears. Lomax was easygoing, unlike Urquhart who liked everything done strictly according to regulations. “Besides,” Venables went on, “there’s damn all to do. The lads know their business.”
“Waste of time being an ensign,” Sharpe said.
“Nonsense! An ensign is merely a colonel in the making,” Venables said. “Our duty, Richard, is to be decorative and stay alive long enough to be promoted. But no one expects us to be useful! Good God! A junior officer being useful? That’ll be the day.” Venables gave a hoot of laughter. He was a bumptious, vain youth, but one of the few officers in the 74th who offered Sharpe companionship. “Did you hear a new draft has come to Madras?” he asked.
“Urquhart told me.”
“Fresh men. New officers. You won’t be junior anymore.”
Sharpe shook his head. “Depends on the date the new men were commissioned, doesn’t it?”
“Suppose it does. Quite right. And they must have sailed, from Britain long
before you got the jump up, eh? So you’ll still be the mess baby. Bad luck, old fellow.”
Old fellow? Quite right, Sharpe thought. He was old. Probably ten years older than Venables, though Sharpe was not exactly sure for no one had ever bothered to note down his birth date. Ensigns were youths and Sharpe was a man.
“Whoah!” Venables shouted in delight and Sharpe looked up to see that a round shot had struck the edge of an irrigation canal and bounced vertically upward in a shower of soil. “Pig-ears says he once saw two cannonballs collide in midair,” Venables said. “Well, he didn’t actually see it, of course, but he heard it. He says they suddenly appeared in the sky. Bang! Then flopped down.”
“They’d have shattered and broken up,” Sharpe said.
“Not according to Pig-ears,” Venables insisted. “He says they flattened each other.” A shell exploded ahead of the company, whistling scraps of iron casing overhead. No one was hurt and the files stepped around the smoking fragments. Venables stooped and plucked up a scrap, juggling it because of the heat. “Like to have keepsakes,” he explained, slipping the piece of iron into a pouch. “I’ll send it home for my sisters. Why don’t our guns stop and fire?”
“Still too far away,” Sharpe said. The advancing line still had half a mile to go and, while the six-pounders could fire at that distance, the gunners must have decided to get really close so that their shots could not miss. Get close, that was what Colonel McCandless had always told Sharpe. It was the secret of battle. Get close before you start slaughtering.
A round shot struck a file in seven company. It was on its first graze, still traveling at blistering speed, and the two men of the file were whipped backward in a spray of mingling blood. “Jesus,” Venables said in awe. “Jesus!” The corpses were mixed together, a jumble of splintered bones, tangled entrails and broken weapons. A corporal, one of the file-closers, stooped to extricate the men’s pouches and haversacks from the scattered offal. “two more names in the church porch,” Venables remarked. “Who were they, Corporal?”
Sharpe 3-Book Collection 1: Sharpe's Tiger, Sharpe's Triumph, Sharpe's Fortress Page 76