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The boy turned towards Sharpe. If he recognized that the British officer was trying to save his life he showed no sign of gratitude; instead he lifted the pistol so that its barrel pointed at Sharpe’s face. The cavalrymen, reckoning this was even better sport, urged him to shoot and one of them approached the boy with a raised tulwar, but did not strike. He would let the boy shoot Sharpe, then kill him. ‘Let him be,’ Sharpe said. ‘Stand back!’ The Mahrattas grinned, but did not move. Sharpe could take the single bullet, then they would tear the boy into sabre-shredded scraps of meat.
The boy took a step towards Sharpe. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, lad,’ Sharpe said. The boy obviously did not speak English, but Sharpe’s tone was soothing. It made no difference. The lad’s hand was shaking and he looked frightened, but defiance had been bred into his bone. He knew he would die, but he would take an enemy soul with him and so he nerved himself to die well. ‘Put the gun down,’ Sharpe said softly. He was wishing he had not intervened now. The kid was just distraught enough and mad enough to fire, and Sharpe knew he could do nothing about it except run away and thus expose himself to the jeers of the Mahrattas. He was close enough now to see the scratches on the pistol’s blackened muzzle where the rammer had scraped the metal. ‘Don’t be a bloody fool, boy,’ he said again. Still the boy pointed the pistol. Sharpe knew he should turn and run, but instead he took another pace forward. Just one more and he reckoned he would be close enough to swat the gun aside.
Then the boy shouted something in Arabic, something about Allah, and pulled the trigger.
The hammer did not move. The boy looked startled, then pulled the trigger again.
Sharpe began laughing. The expression of woe on the child’s face was so sudden, and so unfeigned, that Sharpe could only laugh. The boy looked as if he was about to cry.
The Mahratta behind the boy swung his tulwar. He reckoned he could slice clean through the boy’s grubby headdress and decapitate him, but Sharpe had taken the extra step and now seized the boy’s hand and tugged him into his belly. The sword hissed an inch behind the boy’s neck. ‘I said to leave him alone!’ Sharpe said. ‘Or do you want to fight me instead?’
‘None of us,’ a calm voice said behind Sharpe, ‘wants to fight Ensign Sharpe.’
Sharpe turned. One of the horsemen was still mounted, and it was this man who had spoken. He was dressed in a tattered European uniform jacket of green cloth hung with small silver chains, and he had a lean scarred face with a nose as hooked as Sir Arthur Wellesley’s. He now grinned down at Sharpe.
‘Syud Sevajee,’ Sharpe said.
‘I never did congratulate you on your promotion,’ Sevajee said, and leaned down to offer Sharpe his hand.
Sharpe shook it. ‘It was McCandless’s doing,’ he said.
‘No,’ Sevajee disagreed, ‘it was yours.’ Sevajee, who led this band of horsemen, waved his men away from Sharpe, then looked down at the boy who struggled in Sharpe’s grip. ‘You really want to save that little wretch’s life?’
‘Why not?’
‘A tiger cub plays like a kitten,’ Sevajee said, ‘but it still grows into a tiger and one day it eats you.’
‘This one’s no kitten,’ Sharpe said, thumping the boy on the ear to stop his struggles.
Sevajee spoke in quick Arabic and the boy went quiet. ‘I told him you saved his life,’ Sevajee explained to Sharpe, ‘and that he is now beholden to you.’ Sevajee spoke to the boy again who, after a shy look at Sharpe, answered. ‘His name’s Ahmed,’ Sevajee said, ‘and I told him you were a great English lord who commands the lives and deaths of a thousand men.’
‘You told him what?’
‘I told him you’d beat him bloody if he disobeys you,’ Sevajee said, looking at his men who, denied their entertainment, had gone back to looting the dead. ‘You like being an officer?’ he asked Sharpe.
‘I hate it.’
Sevajee smiled, revealing red-stained teeth. ‘McCandless thought you would, but didn’t know how to curb your ambition.’ Sevajee slid down from his saddle. ‘I am sorry McCandless died,’ the Indian said.
‘Me too.’
‘You know who killed him?’
‘I reckon it was Dodd.’
Sevajee nodded. ‘Me too.’ Syud Sevajee was a high-born Mahratta, the eldest son of one of the Rajah of Berar’s warlords, but a rival in the Rajah’s service had murdered his father, and Sevajee had been seeking revenge ever since. If that revenge meant marching with the enemy British, then that was a small price to pay for family pride. Sevajee had ridden with Colonel McCandless when the Scotsman had pursued Dodd, and thus he had met Sharpe. ‘Beny Singh was not with the enemy today,’ he told Sharpe.
Sharpe had to think for a few seconds before remembering that Beny Singh was the man who had poisoned Sevajee’s father. ‘How do you know?’
‘His banner wasn’t among the Mahratta flags. Today we faced Manu Bappoo, the Rajah’s brother. He’s a better man than the Rajah, but he refuses to take the throne for himself. He’s also a better soldier than the rest, but not good enough, it seems. Dodd was there.’
‘He was?’
‘He got away.’ Sevajee turned and gazed northwards. ‘And I know where they’re going.’
‘Where?’
‘To Gawilghur,’ Sevajee said softly, ‘to the sky fort.’
‘Gawilghur?’
‘I grew up there.’ Sevajee spoke softly, still gazing at the hazed northern horizon. ‘My father was Killadar of Gawilghur. It was a post of honour, Sharpe, for it is our greatest stronghold. It is the fortress in the sky, the impregnable refuge, the place that has never fallen to our enemies, and Beny Singh is now its killadar. Somehow we shall have to get inside, you and I. And I shall kill Singh and you will kill Dodd.’
‘That’s why I’m here,’ Sharpe said.
‘No.’ Sevajee gave Sharpe a sour glance. ‘You’re here, Ensign, because you British are greedy.’ He looked at the Arab boy and asked a question. There was a brief conversation, then Sevajee looked at Sharpe again. ‘I have told him he is to be your servant, and that you will beat him to death if he steals from you.’
‘I wouldn’t do that!’ Sharpe protested.
‘I would,’ Sevajee said, ‘and he believes you would, but it still won’t stop him thieving from you. Better to kill him now.’ He grinned, then hauled himself into his saddle. ‘I shall look for you at Gawilghur, Mister Sharpe.’
‘I shall look for you,’ Sharpe said.
Sevajee spurred away and Sharpe crouched to look at his new servant. Ahmed was as thin as a half-drowned cat. He wore dirty robes and a tattered headdress secured by a loop of frayed rope that was stained with blood, evidently where Sharpe’s blow with the musket had caught him during the battle. But he had bright eyes and a defiant face, and though his voice had not yet broken he was braver than many full-grown men. Sharpe unslung his canteen and pushed it into the boy’s hand, first taking away the broken pistol that he tossed away. ‘Drink up, you little bugger,’ Sharpe said, ‘then come for a walk.’
The boy glanced up the hill, but his army was long gone. It had vanished into the evening beyond the crest and was now being pursued by vengeful cavalry. He said something in Arabic, drank what remained of Sharpe’s water, then offered a grudging nod of thanks.
So Sharpe had a servant, a battle had been won, and now he walked south in search of puckalees.
Colonel William Dodd watched the Lions of Allah break, and spat with disgust. It had been foolish to fight here in the first place and now the foolery was turning to disaster. ‘Jemadar!’ he called.
‘Sahib?’
‘We’ll form square. Put our guns in the centre. And the baggage.’
‘Families, sahib?’
‘Families too.’ Dodd watched Manu Bappoo and his aides galloping back from the British advance. The gunners had already fled, which meant that the Mahrattas’ heavy cannon would all be captured, every last piece of it. Dodd was tempted to abandon his regiment’s small battery of five-pounders which were about as much use as pea-shooters, but a soldier’s pride persuaded him to drag the guns from the field. Bappoo might lose all his guns, but it would be a cold day in hell before William Dodd gave up artillery to an enemy.
His Cobras were on the Mahratta right flank and there, for the moment, they were out of the way of the British advance. If the rest of the Mahratta infantry remained firm and fought, then Dodd would stay with them, but he saw that the defeat of the Arabs had demoralized Bappoo’s army. The ranks began to dissolve, the first fugitives began to run north and Dodd knew this army was lost. First Assaye, now this. A goddamn disaster! He turned his horse and smiled at his white-jacketed men. ‘You haven’t lost a battle!’ he shouted to them. ‘You haven’t even fought today, so you’ve lost no pride! But you’ll have to fight now! If you don’t, if you break ranks, you’ll die. If you fight, you’ll live! Jemadar! March!’
The Cobras would now attempt one of the most difficult of all feats of soldiering, a fighting withdrawal. They marched in a loose square, the centre of which gradually filled with their women and children. Some other infantry tried to join the families, but Dodd snarled at his men to beat them away. ‘Fire if they won’t go!’ he shouted. The last thing he wanted was for his men to be infected by panic.
Dodd trailed the square. He heard cavalry trumpets and he twisted in his saddle to see a mass of irregular light horsemen come over the crest. ‘Halt!’ he shouted. ‘Close ranks! Charge bayonets!’
The white-jacketed Cobras sealed the loose square tight. Dodd pushed through the face of the square and turned his horse to watch the cavalrymen approach. He doubted they would come close, not when there were easier pickings to the east and, sure enough, as soon as the leading horsemen saw that the square was waiting with levelled muskets, they sheered away.
Dodd holstered his pistol. ‘March on, Jemadar!’
Twice more Dodd had to halt and form ranks, but both times the threatening horsemen were scared away by the calm discipline of his white-coated soldiers. The red-coated infantry was not pursuing. They had reached the village of Argaum and were content to stay there, leaving the pursuit to the horsemen, and those horsemen chased after the broken rabble that flooded northwards, but none chose to die by charging Dodd’s formed ranks.
Dodd inclined to the west, angling away from the pursuers. By nightfall he was confident enough to form the battalion into a column of companies, and by midnight, under a clear moon, he could no longer even hear the British trumpets. He knew that men would still be dying, ridden down by cavalry and pierced by lances or slashed by sabres, but Dodd had got clean away. His men were tired, but they were safe in a dark countryside of millet fields, drought-emptied irrigation ditches and scattered villages where dogs barked frantically when they caught the scent of the marching column.
Dodd did not trouble the villagers. He had sufficient food, and earlier in the night they had found an irrigation tank that had yielded enough water for men and beasts. ‘Do you know where we are, Jemadar?’ he asked.
‘No, sahib.’ Gopal grinned, his teeth showing white in the darkness.
‘Nor do I. But I know where we’re going.’
‘Where, sahib?’
‘To Gawilghur, Gopal. To Gawilghur.’
‘Then we must march north, sahib.’ Gopal pointed to the mountains that showed as a dark line against the northern stars. ‘It is there, sahib.’
Dodd was marching to the fortress that had never known defeat. To the impregnable fastness on the cliff. To Gawilghur.
Dawn came to the millet fields. Ragged-winged birds flopped down beside corpses. The smell of death was already rank, and would only grow worse as the sun rose to become a furnace in a cloudless sky. Bugles called reveille, and the picquets who had guarded the sleeping army around Argaum cleared their muskets by loosing off shots. The gunfire startled birds up from corpses and made the feasting dogs growl among the human dead.
Regiments dug graves for their own dead. There were few enough to bury, for no more than fifty redcoats had died, but there were hundreds of Mahratta and Arab corpses, and the lascars who did the army’s fetching and carrying began the task of gathering the bodies. Some enemies still lived, though barely, and the luckiest of those were despatched with a blow of a mattock before their robes were rifled. The unlucky were taken to the surgeons’ tents.
The enemy’s captured guns were inspected, and a dozen selected as suitable for British service. They were all well made, forged in Agra by French-trained gunsmiths, but some were the wrong calibre and a few were so overdecorated with writhing gods and goddesses that no self-respecting gunner could abide them. The twenty-six rejected guns would be double-shotted and exploded. ‘A dangerous business,’ Lieutenant Colonel William Wallace remarked to Sharpe.
‘Indeed, sir.’
‘You saw the accident at Assaye?’ Wallace asked. The Colonel took off his cocked hat and fanned his face. The hat’s white plumes were still stained with blood that had dried black.
‘I heard it, sir. Didn’t see it,’ Sharpe said. The accident had occurred after the battle of Assaye when the enemy’s captured cannon were being destroyed and one monstrous piece, a great siege gun, had exploded prematurely, killing two engineers.
‘Leaves us short of good engineers,’ Wallace remarked, ‘and we’ll need them if we’re going to Gawilghur.’
‘Gawilghur, sir?’
‘A ghastly fortress, Sharpe, quite ghastly.’ The Colonel turned and pointed north. ‘Only about twenty miles away, and if the Mahrattas have any sense that’s where they’ll be heading.’ Wallace sighed. ‘I’ve never seen the place, so maybe it isn’t as bad as they say, but I remember poor McCandless describing it as a brute. A real brute. Like Stirling Castle, he said, only much larger and the cliff’s twenty times higher.’
Sharpe had never seen Stirling Castle, so had no real idea what the Colonel meant. He said nothing. He had been idling the morning away when Wallace sent for him, and now he and the Colonel were walking through the battle’s litter. The Arab boy followed a dozen paces behind. ‘Yours, is he?’ Wallace asked.
‘Think so, sir. Sort of picked him up yesterday.’
‘You need a servant, don’t you? Urquhart tells me you don’t have one.’
So Urquhart had been discussing Sharpe with the Colonel. No good could come of that, Sharpe thought. Urquhart had been nagging Sharpe to find a servant, implying that Sharpe’s clothes were in need of cleaning and pressing, which they were, but as he only owned the clothes he wore, he could not really see the point in being too finicky. ‘I hadn’t really thought what to do with the lad, sir,’ Sharpe admitted.
Wallace turned and spoke to the boy in an Indian language, and Ahmed stared up at the Colonel and nodded solemnly as though he understood what had been said. Perhaps he did, though Sharpe did not. ‘I’ve told him he’s to serve you properly,’ Wallace said, ‘and that you’ll pay him properly.’ The Colonel seemed to disapprove of Ahmed, or maybe he just disapproved of everything to do with Sharpe, though he was doing his best to be friendly. It had been Wallace who had given Sharpe the commission in the 74th, and Wallace had been a close friend of Colonel McCandless, so Sharpe supposed that the balding Colonel was, in his way, an ally. Even so, Sharpe felt awkward in the Scotsman’s company. He wondered if he would ever feel relaxed among officers. ‘How’s that woman of yours, Sharpe?’ Wallace asked cheerfully.
‘My woman, sir?’ Sharpe asked, blushing.
‘The Frenchwoman, can’t recall her name. Took quite a shine to you, didn’t she?’
‘Simone, sir? She’s in Seringapatam, sir. Seemed the best place for her, sir.’
‘Quite, quite.’
Simone Joubert had been widowed at Assaye where her husband, who had served Scindia, had died. She had been Sharpe’s lover and, after the battle, she had stayed with him. Where else, she asked, was she to go? But Wellesley had forbidden his officers to take their wives on the campaign, and though Simone was not Sharpe’s wife, she was white, and so she had agreed to go to Seringapatam and there wait for him. She had carried a letter of introduction to Major Stokes, Sharpe’s friend who ran the armoury, and Sharpe had given her some of the Tippoo’s jewels so that she could find servants and live comfortably. He sometimes worried he had given her too many of the precious stones, but consoled himself that Simone would keep the surplus safe till he returned.
‘So are you happy, Sharpe?’ Wallace asked bluffly.
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said bleakly.
‘Keeping busy?’
‘Not really, sir.’
‘Difficult, isn’t it?’ Wallace said vaguely. He had stopped to watch the gunners loading one of the captured cannon, a great brute that looked to take a ball of twenty or more pounds. The barrel had been cast with an intricate pattern of lotus flowers and dancing girls, then painted with garish colours. The gunners had charged the gaudy barrel with a double load of powder and now they rammed two cannonballs down the blackened gullet. An engineer had brought some wedges and a gunner sergeant pushed one down the barrel, then hammered it home with the rammer so that the ball would jam when the gun was fired. The engineer took a ball of fuse from his pocket, pushed one end into the touch-hole, then backed away, uncoiling the pale line. ‘Best if we give them some space,’ Wallace said, gesturing that they should walk south a small way. ‘Don’t want to be beheaded by a scrap of gun, eh?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Very difficult,’ Wallace said, picking up his previous thought. ‘Coming up from the ranks? Admirable, Sharpe, admirable, but difficult, yes?’
‘I suppose so, sir,’ Sharpe said unhelpfully.
Wallace sighed, as though he was finding the conversation unexpectedly hard going. ‘Urquhart tells me you seem’ – the Colonel paused, looking for the tactful word – ‘unhappy?’
‘Takes time, sir.’
‘Of course, of course. These things do. Quite.’ The Colonel wiped a hand over his bald pate, then rammed his sweat-stained hat back into place. ‘I remember when I joined. Years ago now, of course, and I was only a little chap. Didn’t know what was going on! They said turn left, then turned right. Damned odd, I thought. I was arse over elbow for months, I can tell you.’ The Colonel’s voice tailed away. ‘Damned hot,’ he said after a while. ‘Damned hot. Ever heard of the 95th, Sharpe?’
‘95th, sir? Another Scottish regiment?’
‘Lord, no. The 95th Rifles. They’re a new regiment. Couple of years old. Used to be called the Experimental Corps of Riflemen!’ Wallace hooted with laughter at the clumsy name. ‘But a friend of mine is busy with the rascals. Willie Stewart, he’s called. The Honourable William Stewart. Capital fellow! But Willie’s got some damned odd ideas. His fellows wear green coats. Green! And he tells me his riflemen ain’t as rigid as he seems to think we are.’ Wallace smiled to show he had made some kind of joke. ‘Thing is, Sharpe, I wondered if you wouldn’t be better suited to Stewart’s outfit? His idea, you should understand. He wrote wondering if I had any bright young officers who could carry some experience of India to Shorncliffe. I was going to write back and say we do precious little skirmishing here, and it’s skirmishing that Willie’s rogues are being trained to do, but then I thought of you, Sharpe.’
Sharpe said nothing. Whichever way you wrapped it up, he was being dismissed from the 74th, though he supposed it was kind of Wallace to make the 95th sound like an interesting sort of regiment. Sharpe guessed they were the usual shambles of a hastily raised wartime battalion, staffed by the leavings of other regiments and composed of gutter rogues discarded by every other recruiting sergeant. The very fact they wore green coats sounded bad, as though the army could not be bothered to waste good red cloth on them. They would probably dissolve in panicked chaos in their first battle.
‘I’ve written to Willie about you,’ Wallace went on, ‘and I know he’ll have a place for you.’ Meaning, Sharpe thought, that the Honourable William Stewart owed Wallace a favour. ‘And our problem, frankly,’ Wallace continued, ‘is that a new draft has reached Madras. Weren’t expecting it till spring, but they’re here now, so we’ll be back to strength in a month or so.’ Wallace paused, evidently wondering if he had softened the blow sufficiently. ‘And the fact is, Sharpe,’ he resumed after a while, ‘that Scottish regiments are more like, well, families! Families, that’s it, just it. My mother always said so, and she was a pretty shrewd judge of these things. Like families! More so, I think, than English regiments, don’t you think?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said, trying to hide his misery.
‘But I can’t let you go while there’s a war on,’ Wallace continued heartily. The Colonel had turned to watch the cannon again. The engineer had finished unwinding his fuse and the gunners now shouted at everyone within earshot to stand away. ‘I do enjoy this,’ the Colonel said warmly. ‘Nothing like a bit of gratuitous destruction to set the juices flowing, eh?’
The engineer stooped to the fuse with his tinderbox. Sharpe saw him strike the flint then blow the charred linen into flame. There was a pause, then he put the fuse end into the small fire and the smoke fizzed up.
The fuse burned fast, the smoke and sparks snaking through the dry grass and starting small fires, then the red hot trail streaked up the back of the gun and down into the touch-hole.
For a heartbeat nothing happened, then the whole gun just seemed to disintegrate. The charge had tried to propel the double shot up the wedged barrel, but the resistance was just big enough to restrict the explosion. The touch-hole shot out first, the shaped piece of metal tearing out a chunk of the upper breech, then the whole rear of the painted barrel split apart in smoke, flame and whistling lumps of jagged metal. The forward part of the barrel, jaggedly torn off, dropped to the grass as the gun’s wheels were splayed out. The gunners cheered. ‘One less Mahratta gun,’ Wallace said. Ahmed was grinning broadly. ‘Did you know Mackay?’ Wallace asked Sharpe.
‘No, sir.’
‘Captain Mackay. Hugh Mackay. East India Company officer. Fourth Native Cavalry. Very good fellow indeed, Sharpe. I knew his father well. Point is, though, that young Hugh was put in charge of the bullock train before Assaye. And he did a very good job! Very good. But he insisted on joining his troopers in the battle. Disobeyed orders, d’you see? Wellesley was adamant that Mackay must stay with his bullocks, but young Hugh wanted to be on the dance floor, and quite right too, except that the poor devil was killed. Cut in half by a cannonball!’ Wallace sounded shocked, as though such a thing was an outrage. ‘It’s left the bullock train without a guiding hand, Sharpe.’
