Bernard Cornwell
Sharpe’s Triumph

Richard Sharpe and the Battle of Assaye, September 1803

Copyright

Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 1998

SHARPE’S TRIUMPH. Copyright © Bernard Cornwell 1998.

Map by Ken Lewis

Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2018. Cover photographs © AKG-Images

The Author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007338757

Ebook Edition © JUNE 2011 ISBN: 9780007338757

Version: 2018-04-13

Dedication

Sharpe’s Triumph is for Joel Gardner, who walked Ahmednuggur and Assaye with me

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Maps

Chapter 1

It was not Sergeant Richard Sharpe’s fault. He was not…

Chapter 2

Sharpe sat in the open shed where the armoury stored…

Chapter 3

Colonel McCandless led his small force into Sir Arthur Wellesley’s…

Chapter 4

Sharpe followed McCandless into the gatehouse’s high archway, using the…

Chapter 5

Sharpe was curiously relieved when Colonel McCandless found him next…

Chapter 6

Colonel McCandless excused himself from Pohlmann’s supper, but did not…

Chapter 7

Dodd called his new gelding Peter. ‘Because it’s got no…

Chapter 8

General Wellesley was like a gambler who had emptied his…

Chapter 9

‘There!’ Dodd said, pointing.

Chapter 10

The redcoats advanced in a line of two ranks. The…

Chapter 11

Colonel McCandless had stayed close to his friend Colonel Wallace,…

Chapter 12

Assaye alone remained in enemy hands, for the rest of…

Keep Reading

Historical Note

About the Author

The SHARPE Series (in chronological order)

The SHARPE Series (in order of publication)

Also by Bernard Cornwell

About the Publisher

Maps

CHAPTER 1

It was not Sergeant Richard Sharpe’s fault. He was not in charge. He was junior to at least a dozen men, including a major, a captain, a subadar and two jemadars, yet he still felt responsible. He felt responsible, angry, hot, bitter and scared. Blood crusted on his face where a thousand flies crawled. There were even flies in his open mouth.

But he dared not move.

The humid air stank of blood and of the rotted egg smell made by powder smoke. The very last thing he remembered doing was thrusting his pack, haversack and cartridge box into the glowing ashes of a fire, and now the ammunition from the cartridge box exploded. Each blast of powder fountained sparks and ashes into the hot air. A couple of men laughed at the sight. They stopped to watch it for a few seconds, poked at the nearby bodies with their muskets, then walked on.

Sharpe lay still. A fly crawled on his eyeball and he forced himself to stay absolutely motionless. There was blood on his face and more blood had puddled in his right ear, though it was drying now. He blinked, fearing that the small motion would attract one of the killers, but no one noticed.

Chasalgaon. That’s where he was. Chasalgaon: a miserable, thorn-walled fort on the frontier of Hyderabad, and because the Rajah of Hyderabad was a British ally the fort had been garrisoned by a hundred sepoys of the East India Company and fifty mercenary horsemen from Mysore, only when Sharpe arrived half the sepoys and all of the horsemen had been out on patrol.

Sharpe had come from Seringapatam, leading a detail of six privates and carrying a leather bag stuffed with rupees, and he had been greeted by Major Crosby who commanded at Chasalgaon. The Major proved to be a plump, red-faced, bilious man who disliked the heat and hated Chasalgaon, and he had slumped in his canvas chair as he unfolded Sharpe’s orders. He read them, grunted, then read them again. ‘Why the hell did they send you?’ he finally asked.

‘No one else to send, sir.’

Crosby frowned at the order. ‘Why not an officer?’

‘No officers to spare, sir.’

‘Bloody responsible job for a sergeant, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Won’t let you down, sir,’ Sharpe said woodenly, staring at the leprous yellow of the tent’s canvas a few inches above the Major’s head.

‘You’d bloody well better not let me down,’ Crosby said, pushing the orders into a pile of damp papers on his camp table. ‘And you look bloody young to be a sergeant.’

‘I was born late, sir,’ Sharpe said. He was twenty-six, or thought he was, and most sergeants were much older.

Crosby, suspecting he was being mocked, stared up at Sharpe, but there was nothing insolent on the Sergeant’s face. A good-looking man, Crosby thought sourly. Probably had the bibbis of Seringapatam falling out of their saris, and Crosby, whose wife had died of the fever ten years before and who consoled himself with a two-rupee village whore every Thursday night, felt a pang of jealousy. ‘And how the devil do you expect to get the ammunition back to Seringapatam?’ he demanded.

‘Hire ox carts, sir.’ Sharpe had long perfected the way to address unhelpful officers. He gave them precise answers, added nothing unnecessary and always sounded confident.

‘With what? Promises?’

‘Money, sir.’ Sharpe tapped his haversack where he had the bag of rupees.

‘Christ, they trust you with money?’

Sharpe decided not to respond to that question, but just stared impassively at the canvas. Chasalgaon, he decided, was not a happy place. It was a small fort built on a bluff above a river that should have been overflowing its banks, but the monsoon had failed and the land was cruelly dry. The fort had no ditch, merely a wall made of cactus thorn with a dozen wooden fighting platforms spaced about its perimeter. Inside the wall was a beaten-earth parade ground where a stripped tree served as a flagpole, and the parade ground was surrounded by three mud-walled barracks thatched with palm, a cookhouse, tents for the officers and a stone-walled magazine to store the garrison’s ammunition. The sepoys had their families with them, so the fort was overrun with women and children, but Sharpe had noted how sullen they were. Crosby, he thought, was one of those crabbed officers who were only happy when all about them were miserable.

‘I suppose you expect me to arrange the ox carts?’ Crosby said indignantly.

‘I’ll do it myself, sir.’

‘Speak the language, do you?’ Crosby sneered. ‘A sergeant, banker and interpreter, are you?’

‘Brought an interpreter with me, sir,’ Sharpe said. Which was over-egging the pudding a bit, because Davi Lal was only thirteen, an urchin off the streets of Seringapatam. He was a smart, mischievous child whom Sharpe had found stealing from the armoury cookhouse and, after giving the starving boy a clout around both ears to teach him respect for His Britannic Majesty’s property, Sharpe had taken him to Lali’s house and given him a proper meal, and Lali had talked to the boy and learned that his parents were dead, that he had no relatives he knew of, and that he lived by his wits. He was also covered in lice. ‘Get rid of him,’ she had advised Sharpe, but Sharpe had seen something of his own childhood in Davi Lal and so he had dragged him down to the River Cauvery and given him a decent scrubbing. After that Davi Lal had become Sharpe’s errand boy. He learned to pipeclay belts, blackball boots and speak his own version of English which, because it came from the lower ranks, was liable to shock the gentler born.

‘You’ll need three carts,’ Crosby said.

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘Thank you, sir.’ He had known exactly how many carts he would need, but he also knew it was stupid to pretend to knowledge in the face of officers like Crosby.

‘Find your damn carts,’ Crosby snapped, ‘then let me know when you’re ready to load up.’

‘Very good, sir. Thank you, sir.’ Sharpe stiffened to attention, about-turned and marched from the tent to find Davi Lal and the six privates waiting in the shade of one of the barracks. ‘We’ll have dinner,’ Sharpe told them, ‘then sort out some carts this afternoon.’

‘What’s for dinner?’ Private Atkins asked.

‘Whatever Davi can filch from the cookhouse,’ Sharpe said, ‘but be nippy about it, all right? I want to be out of this damn place tomorrow morning.’

Their job was to fetch eighty thousand rounds of prime musket cartridges that had been stolen from the East India Company armoury in Madras. The cartridges were the best quality in India, and the thieves who stole them knew exactly who would pay the highest price for the ammunition. The princedoms of the Mahratta Confederation were forever at war with each other or else raiding the neighbouring states, but now, in the summer of 1803, they faced an imminent invasion by British forces. The threatened invasion had brought two of the biggest Mahratta rulers into an alliance that now gathered its forces to repel the British, and those rulers had promised the thieves a king’s ransom in gold for the cartridges, but one of the thieves who had helped break into the Madras armoury had refused to let his brother join the band and share in the profit, and so the aggrieved brother had betrayed the thieves to the Company’s spies and, two weeks later, the caravan carrying the cartridges across India had been ambushed by sepoys not far from Chasalgaon. The thieves had died or fled, and the recaptured ammunition had been brought back to the fort’s small magazine for safekeeping. Now the eighty thousand cartridges were to be taken to the armoury at Seringapatam, three days to the south, from where they would be issued to the British troops who were readying themselves for the war against the Mahrattas. A simple job, and Sharpe, who had spent the last four years as a sergeant in the Seringapatam armoury, had been given the responsibility.

Spoilage, Sharpe was thinking while his men boiled a cauldron of river water on a bullock-dung fire. That was the key to the next few days, spoilage. Say seven thousand cartridges lost to damp? No one in Seringapatam would argue with that, and Sharpe reckoned he could sell the seven thousand cartridges on to Vakil Hussein, so long, of course, as there were eighty thousand cartridges to begin with. Still, Major Crosby had not quibbled with the figure, but just as Sharpe was thinking that, so Major Crosby appeared from his tent with a cocked hat on his head and a sword at his side. ‘On your feet!’ Sharpe snapped at his lads as the Major headed towards them.

‘Thought you were finding ox carts?’ Crosby snarled at Sharpe.

‘Dinner first, sir.’

‘Your food, I hope, and not ours? We don’t get rations to feed King’s troops here, Sergeant.’ Major Crosby was in the service of the East India Company and, though he wore a red coat like the King’s army, there was little love lost between the two forces.

‘Our food, sir,’ Sharpe said, gesturing at the cauldron in which rice and kid meat, both stolen from Crosby’s stores, boiled. ‘Carried it with us, sir.’

A havildar shouted from the fort gate, demanding Crosby’s attention, but the Major ignored the shout. ‘I forgot to mention one thing, Sergeant.’

‘Sir?’

Crosby looked sheepish for a moment, then remembered he was talking to a mere sergeant. ‘Some of the cartridges were spoiled. Damp got to them.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, sir,’ Sharpe said straight-faced.

‘So I had to destroy them,’ Crosby said. ‘Six or seven thousand as I remember.’

‘Spoilage, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘Happens all the time, sir.’

‘Exactly so,’ Crosby said, unable to hide his relief at Sharpe’s easy acceptance of his tale, ‘exactly so,’ then he turned towards the gate. ‘Havildar?’

‘Company troops approaching, sahib!’

‘Where’s Captain Leonard? Isn’t he officer of the day?’ Crosby demanded.

‘Here, sir, I’m here.’ A tall, gangling captain hurried from a tent, tripped on a guy rope, recovered his hat, then headed for the gate.

Sharpe ran to catch up with Crosby who was also walking towards the gate. ‘You’ll give me a note, sir?’

‘A note? Why the devil should I give you a note?’

‘Spoilage, sir,’ Sharpe said respectfully. ‘I’ll have to account for the cartridges, sir.’

‘Later,’ Crosby said, ‘later.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said. ‘And sod you backwards, you miserable bastard,’ he added, though too softly for Crosby to hear.

Captain Leonard clambered up to the platform beside the gate where Crosby joined him. The Major took a telescope from his tail pocket and slid the tubes open. The platform overlooked the small river that should have been swollen by the seasonal rains into a flood, but the failure of the monsoon had left only a trickle of water between the flat grey rocks. Beyond the shrunken river, up on the skyline behind a grove of trees, Crosby could see red-coated troops led by a European officer mounted on a black horse, and his first thought was that it must be Captain Roberts returning from patrol, but Roberts had a piebald horse and, besides, he had only taken fifty sepoys whereas this horseman led a company almost twice that size. ‘Open the gate,’ Crosby ordered, and wondered who the devil it was. He decided it was probably Captain Sullivan from the Company’s post at Milladar, another frontier fort like Chasalgaon, but what the hell was Sullivan doing here? Maybe he was marching some new recruits to toughen the bastards, not that the skinny little brutes needed any toughening, but it was uncivil of Sullivan not to warn Crosby of his coming. ‘Jemadar,’ Crosby shouted, ‘turn out the guard!’

‘Sahib!’ The Jemadar acknowledged the order. Other sepoys were dragging the thorn gates open.

He’ll want dinner, Crosby thought sourly, and wondered what his servants were cooking for the midday meal. Kid, probably, in boiled rice. Well, Sullivan would just have to endure the stringy meat as a price for not sending any warning, and damn the man if he expected Crosby to feed his sepoys as well. Chasalgaon’s cooks had not expected visitors and would not have enough rations for a hundred more hungry sepoys. ‘Is that Sullivan?’ he asked Leonard, handing the Captain the telescope.

Leonard stared for a long time at the approaching horseman. ‘I’ve never met Sullivan,’ he finally said, ‘so I couldn’t say.’

Crosby snatched back the telescope. ‘Give the bastard a salute when he arrives,’ Crosby ordered Leonard, ‘then tell him he can join me for dinner.’ He paused. ‘You too,’ he added grudgingly.

Crosby went back to his tent. It was better, he decided, to let Leonard welcome the stranger, rather than look too eager himself. Damn Sullivan, he thought, for not sending warning, though there was a bright side, inasmuch as Sullivan might have brought news. The tall, good-looking Sergeant from Seringapatam doubtless could have told Crosby the latest rumours from Mysore, but it would be a chill day in hell before Crosby sought news from a sergeant. But undoubtedly something was changing in the wider world, for it had been nine weeks since Crosby last saw a Mahratta raider, and that was decidedly odd. The purpose of the fort at Chasalgaon was to keep the Mahratta horse raiders out of the Rajah of Hyderabad’s wealthy territory, and Crosby fancied he had done his job well, but even so he found the absence of any enemy marauders oddly worrying. What were the bastards up to? He sat behind his table and shouted for his clerk. He would write the damned armoury Sergeant a note explaining that the loss of seven thousand cartridges was due to a leak in the stone roof of Chasalgaon’s magazine. He certainly could not admit that he had sold the ammunition to a merchant.

‘What the bastard did,’ Sharpe was saying to his men, ‘was sell the bloody stuff to some heathen bastard.’

‘That’s what you were going to do, Sergeant,’ Private Phillips said.

‘Never you bleeding mind what I was going to do,’ Sharpe said. ‘Ain’t that food ready?’

‘Five minutes,’ Davi Lal promised.

‘A bloody camel could do it faster,’ Sharpe grumbled, then hoisted his pack and haversack. ‘I’m going for a piss.’

‘He never goes anywhere without his bleeding pack,’ Atkins commented.

‘Doesn’t want you thieving his spare shirt,’ Phillips answered.

‘He’s got more than a shirt in that pack. Hiding something he is.’ Atkins twisted round. ‘Hey, Hedgehog!’ They all called Davi Lal ‘Hedgehog’ because his hair stuck up in spikes; no matter how greasy it was or how short it was cut, it still stuck up in unruly spikes. ‘What does Sharpie keep in the pack?’

Davi Lal rolled his eyes. ‘Jewels! Gold. Rubies, diamonds, emeralds, sapphires and pearls.’

‘Like sod he does.’

Davi Lal laughed, then turned back to the cauldron. Out by the fort’s gate Captain Leonard was greeting the visitors. The guard presented arms as the officer leading the sepoys rode through the gate. The visitor returned the salute by touching a riding crop to the brim of his cocked hat which, worn fore and aft, shadowed his face. He was a tall man, uncommonly tall, and he wore his stirrups long so that he looked much too big for his horse, which was a sorry, sway-backed beast with a mangy hide, though there was nothing odd in that. Good horses were a luxury in India, and most Company officers rode decrepit nags. ‘Welcome to Chasalgaon, sir,’ Leonard said. He was not certain he ought to call the stranger ‘sir’, for the man wore no visible badge of rank on his red coat, but he carried himself like a senior officer and he reacted to Leonard’s greeting with a lordly nonchalance. ‘You’re invited to dine with us, sir,’ Leonard added, hurrying after the horseman who, having tucked his riding crop under his belt, now led his sepoys straight onto the parade ground. He stopped his horse under the flagpole from which the British flag drooped in the windless air, then waited as his company of red-coated sepoys divided into two units of two ranks each that marched either side of the flagpole. Crosby watched from inside his tent. It was a flamboyant entrance, the Major decided.

‘Halt!’ the strange officer shouted when his company was in the very centre of the fort. The sepoys halted. ‘Outwards turn! Ground firelocks! Good morning!’ He at last looked down at Captain Leonard. ‘Are you Crosby?’

‘No, sir. I’m Captain Leonard, sir. And you, sir?’ The tall man ignored the question. He scowled about Chasalgaon’s fort as though he disapproved of everything he saw. What the hell was this? Leonard wondered. A surprise inspection? ‘Shall I have your horse watered, sir?’ Leonard offered.

‘In good time, Captain, all in good time,’ the mysterious officer said, then he twisted in his saddle and growled an order to his company. ‘Fix bayonets!’ The sepoys pulled out their seventeen-inch blades and slotted them onto the muzzles of their muskets. ‘I like to offer a proper salute to a fellow Englishman,’ the tall man explained to Leonard. ‘You are English, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Too many damned Scots in the Company,’ the tall man grumbled. ‘Have you ever noticed that, Leonard? Too many Scots and Irish. Glib sorts of fellow, they are, but they ain’t English. Not English at all.’ The visitor drew his sword, then took a deep breath. ‘Company!’ he shouted. ‘Level arms!’

The sepoys brought their muskets to their shoulders and Leonard saw, much too late, that the guns were aimed at the troops of the garrison. ‘No!’ he said, but not loudly, for he still did not believe what he saw.

‘Fire!’ the officer shouted, and the parade ground air was murdered by the double ripple of musket shots, heavy coughing explosions that blossomed smoke across the sun-crazed mud and slammed lead balls into the unsuspecting garrison.

‘Hunt them now!’ the tall officer called. ‘Hunt them! Fast, fast, fast!’ He spurred his horse close to Captain Leonard and, almost casually, slashed down with his sword, ripping the blade hard back once it had bitten into the Captain’s neck so that its edge sawed fast and deep through the sinew, muscle and flesh. ‘Hunt them! Hunt them!’ the officer shouted as Leonard fell. He drew a pistol from his saddle holster and rode towards the officers’ tents. His men were screaming their war cries as they spread through the small fort to chase down every last sepoy of Chasalgaon’s garrison. They had been ordered to leave the women and children to the last and hunt down the men first.

Crosby had been staring in horror and disbelief, and now, with shaking hands, he started to load one of his pistols, but suddenly the door of his tent darkened and he saw that the tall officer had dismounted from his horse. ‘Are you Crosby?’ the officer demanded.

Crosby found he could not speak. His hands quivered. Sweat was pouring down his face.

‘Are you Crosby?’ the man asked again in an irritated voice.

‘Yes,’ Crosby managed to say. ‘And who the devil are you?’

‘Dodd,’ the tall man said, ‘Major William Dodd, at your service.’ And Dodd raised his big pistol so that it pointed at Crosby’s face.

‘No!’ Crosby shouted.

Dodd smiled. ‘I assume you’re surrendering the fort to me, Crosby?’

‘Damn you,’ Crosby riposted feebly.

‘You drink too much, Major,’ Dodd said. ‘The whole Company knows you’re a sot. Didn’t put up much of a fight, did you?’ He pulled the trigger and Crosby’s head was snatched back in a mist of blood that spattered onto the canvas. ‘Pity you’re English,’ Dodd said. ‘I’d much rather shoot a Scotsman.’ The dying Major made a terrible gurgling sound, then his body jerked uncontrollably and was finally still. ‘Praise the Lord, pull down the flag and find the pay chest,’ Dodd said to himself, then he stepped over the Major’s corpse to see that the pay chest was where he expected it to be, under the bed. ‘Subadar!’

‘Sahib?’

‘Two men here to guard the pay chest.’

‘Sahib!’

Major Dodd hurried back onto the parade ground where a small group of redcoats, British redcoats, were offering defiance, and he wanted to make sure that his sepoys took care of them, but a havildar had anticipated Dodd’s orders and was leading a squad of men against the half-dozen soldiers. ‘Put the blades in!’ Dodd encouraged them. ‘Hard in! Twist them in! That’s the way! Watch your left! Left!’ His voice was urgent, for a tall sergeant had suddenly appeared from behind the cookhouse, a white man with a musket and bayonet in his hands, but one of the sepoys still had a loaded musket of his own and he twisted, aimed and fired and Dodd saw another mist of bright blood sparkle in the sunlight. The sergeant had been hit in the head. He stopped, looked surprised as the musket fell from his hands and as blood streamed down his face, then he fell backwards and was still.

‘Search for the rest of the bastards!’ Dodd ordered, knowing that there must still be a score of the garrison hidden in the barracks. Some of the men had escaped over the thorn wall, but they would be hunted down by the Mahratta horsemen who were Dodd’s allies and who should by now have spread either side of the fort. ‘Search hard!’ He himself went to look at the horses of the garrison’s officers and decided that one of them was marginally better than his own. He moved his saddle to the better horse, then led it into the sunlight and picketed it to the flagpole. A woman ran past him, screaming as she fled from the red-coated killers, but a sepoy caught and tripped her and another pulled the sari off her shoulder. Dodd was about to order them away from the woman, then he reckoned that the enemy was well beaten and so his men could take their pleasure in safety. ‘Subadar?’ he shouted.

‘Sahib?’

‘One squad to make sure everyone’s dead. Another to open the armoury. And there are a couple of horses in the stable. Pick one for yourself, and we’ll take the other back to Pohlmann. And well done, Gopal.’

‘Thank you, sahib,’ Subadar Gopal said.

Dodd wiped the blood from his sword, then reloaded his pistol. One of the fallen redcoats was trying to turn himself over, so Dodd crossed to the wounded man, watched his feeble efforts for a moment, then put a bullet into the man’s head. The man jerked in spasm, then was still. Major Dodd scowled at the blood that had sprayed his boots, but he spat, stooped and wiped the blood away. Sharpe watched the tall officer from the corner of his eye. He felt responsible, angry, hot, bitter and scared. The blood had poured from the wound in his scalp. He was dizzy, his head throbbed, but he was alive. There were flies in his mouth. And then his ammunition began to explode and the tall officer whipped round, thinking it was trouble, and a couple of men laughed at the sight of the ashes bursting into the air with each small crack of powder.

Sharpe dared not move. He listened to women screaming and children crying, then heard hooves and he waited until some horsemen came into view. They were Indians, of course, and all wild-looking men with sabres, matchlocks, spears, lances and even bows and arrows. They slid out of their saddles and joined the hunt for loot.

Sharpe lay like the dead. The crusting blood was thick on his face. The blow of the musket ball had stunned him, so that he did not remember dropping his own musket or falling to the ground, but he sensed that the blow was not deadly. Not even deep. He had a headache, and the skin of his face felt taut with the crusted blood, but he knew head wounds always bled profusely. He tried to make his breathing shallow, left his mouth open and did not even gag when a fly crawled down to the root of his tongue, and then he could smell tobacco, arrack, leather and sweat and a horseman was bending over him with a horrid-looking curved knife with a rusty blade and Sharpe feared his throat was about to be cut, but instead the horseman began slashing at the pockets of Sharpe’s uniform. He found the big key that opened Seringapatam’s main magazine, a key that Sharpe had ordered cut in the bazaar so that he would not always have to fill in the form in the armoury guardhouse. The man tossed the key away, slit another pocket, found nothing valuable and so moved on to another body. Sharpe stared up at the sun.

Somewhere nearby a garrison sepoy groaned, and almost immediately he was bayoneted and Sharpe heard the hoarse exhalation of breath as the man died and the sucking sound as the murderer dragged the blade back from the constricting flesh. It had all happened so fast! And Sharpe blamed himself, though he knew it was not his fault. He had not let the killers into the fort, but he had hesitated for a few seconds to throw his pack, pouches and cartridge box onto the fire, and now he chided himself because maybe he could have used those few seconds to save his six men. Except most of them had already been dead or dying when Sharpe had first realized there was a fight. He had been pissing against the back wall of the cookhouse store hut when a musket ball ripped through the reed-mat wall and for a second or two he had just stood there, incredulous, hardly believing the shots and screams his ears registered, and he had not bothered to button his trousers, but just turned and saw the dying campfire and had thrown his pack onto it, and by the time he had cocked the musket and run back to where his men had been expecting dinner the fight was almost over. The musket ball had jerked his head back and there had been a stabbing pain either side of his eyes, and the next he knew he was lying with blood crusting on his face and flies crawling down his gullet.

But maybe he could have snatched his men back. He tortured himself with the thought that he could have saved Davi Lal and a couple of the privates, maybe he could have crossed the cactus-thorn wall and run into the trees, but Davi Lal was dead and all six privates were dead and Sharpe could hear the killers laughing as they carried the ammunition out of the small magazine.

‘Subadar!’ the tall officer shouted. ‘Fetch that bloody flag down! I wanted it done an hour ago!’

Sharpe blinked again because he could not help himself, but no one noticed, and then he closed his eyes because the sun was blinding him, and he wanted to weep out of anger and frustration and hatred. Six men dead, and Davi Lal dead, and Sharpe had not been able to do a damned thing to help them, and he wondered who the tall officer was, and then a voice provided the answer.

‘Major Dodd, sahib?’

‘Subadar?’

‘Everything’s loaded, sahib.’

‘Then let’s go before their patrols get back. Well done, Subadar! Tell the men there’ll be a reward.’

Sharpe listened as the raiders left the fort. Who the hell were they? Major Dodd had been in East India Company uniform, and so had all his men for that matter, but they sure as hell were not Company troops. They were bastards, that’s what they were, bastards from hell and they had done a thorough piece of wicked work in Chasalgaon. Sharpe doubted they had lost a single man in their treacherous attack, and still he lay silent as the sounds faded away. A baby cried somewhere, a woman sobbed, and still Sharpe waited until at last he was certain that Major Dodd and his men were gone, and only then did Sharpe roll onto his side. The fort stank of blood and buzzed with flies. He groaned and got to his knees. The cauldron of rice and kid had boiled dry and so he stood and kicked it off its tripod. ‘Bastards,’ he said, and he saw the surprised look on Davi Lal’s face and he wanted to weep for the boy.

A half-naked woman, bleeding from the mouth, saw Sharpe stand from among the bloodied heap of the dead and she screamed before snatching her child back into a barracks hut. Sharpe ignored her. His musket was gone. Every damn weapon was gone. ‘Bastards!’ he shouted into the hot air, then he kicked at a dog that was sniffing at Phillips’s corpse. The smell of blood and powder and burned rice was thick in his throat. He gagged as he walked into the cookhouse and there found a jar of water. He drank deep, then splashed the water onto his face and rubbed away the clotted blood. He wet a rag and flinched as he cleaned the shallow wound in his scalp, then suddenly he was overcome with horror and pity and he fell onto his knees and half sobbed. He swore instead. ‘Bastards!’ He said the word again and again, helplessly and furiously, then he remembered his pack and so he stood again and went into the sunlight.

The ashes of the fire were still hot and the charred canvas remnants of his pack and pouches glowed red as he found a stick and raked through the embers. One by one he found what he had hidden in the fire. The rupees that had been for hiring the carts, then the rubies and emeralds, diamonds and pearls, sapphires and gold. He fetched a sack of rice from the cookhouse and he emptied the grains onto the ground and filled the sack with his treasure. A king’s ransom, it was, and it had been taken from a king four years before in the Water Gate at Seringapatam where Sharpe had trapped the Tippoo Sultan and shot him down before looting his corpse.

Then, with the treasure clutched to his midriff, he knelt in the stench of Chasalgaon and felt guilty. He had survived a massacre. Anger mingled with his guilt, then he knew he had duties to do. He must find any others who had survived, he must help them, and he must work out how he could take his revenge.

On a man called Dodd.

Major John Stokes was an engineer, and if ever a man was happy with his avocation, it was Major John Stokes. There was nothing he enjoyed so much as making things, whether it was a better gun carriage, a garden or, as he was doing now, improvements to a clock that belonged to the Rajah of Mysore. The Rajah was a young man, scarcely more than a boy indeed, and he owed his throne to the British troops who had ejected the usurping Tippoo Sultan and, as a result, relations between the palace and Seringapatam’s small British garrison were good. Major Stokes had found the clock in one of the palace’s antechambers and noted its appalling accuracy, which is why he had brought it back to the armoury where he was happily taking it apart. ‘It isn’t signed,’ he told his visitor, ‘and I suspect it’s local work. But a Frenchman had his hand in it, I can tell that. See the escapement? Typical French work, that.’

The visitor peered at the tangle of cogwheels. ‘Didn’t know the Frogs had it in them to make clocks, sir,’ he said.

‘Oh, indeed they do!’ Stokes said reprovingly. ‘And very fine clocks they make! Very fine. Think of Lépine! Think of Berthoud! How can you ignore Montandon? And Breguet!’ The Major shook his head in mute tribute to such great craftsmen, then peered at the Rajah’s sorry timepiece. ‘Some rust on the mainspring, I see. That don’t help. Soft metal, I suspect. It’s catch as catch can over here. I’ve noticed that. Marvellous decorative work, but Indians make shoddy mechanics. Look at that mainspring! A disgrace.’

‘Shocking, sir, shocking.’ Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill did not know a mainspring from a pendulum, and could not have cared less about either, but he needed information from Major Stokes so it was politic to show an interest.

‘It was striking nine when it should have struck eight,’ the Major said, poking a finger into the clock’s entrails, ‘or perhaps it was striking eight when it ought to have sounded nine. I don’t recall. One to seven it copes with admirably, but somewhere about eight it becomes wayward.’ The Major, who was in charge of Seringapatam’s armoury, was a plump, cheerful fellow with prematurely white hair. ‘Do you understand clocks, Sergeant?’

‘Can’t say as I does, sir. A simple soldier, me, sir, who has the sun as his clock.’ The Sergeant’s face twitched horribly. It was an uncontrollable spasm that racked his face every few seconds.

‘You were asking about Sharpe,’ Major Stokes said, peering into the clock. ‘Well, I never! This fellow has made the bearings out of wood! Good Lord above. Wood! No wonder she’s wayward! Harrison once made a wooden clock, did you know? Even the gearings! All from timber.’

‘Harrison, sir? Is he in the army, sir?’

‘He’s a clockmaker, Sergeant, a clockmaker. A very fine clockmaker too.’

‘Not a Frog, sir?’

‘With a name like Harrison? Good Lord, no! He’s English, and he makes a good honest clock.’

‘Glad to hear it, sir,’ Hakeswill said, then reminded the Major of the purpose of his visit to the armoury. ‘Sergeant Sharpe, sir, my good friend, sir, is he here?’

‘He is here,’ Stokes said, at last looking up from the clock, ‘or rather he was here. I saw him an hour ago. But he went to his quarters. He’s been away, you see. Involved in that dreadful business in Chasalgaon.’

‘Chiseldown, sir?’

‘Terrible business, terrible! So I told Sharpe to clean himself up. Poor fellow was covered in blood! Looked like a pirate. Now that is interesting.’

‘Blood, sir?’ Hakeswill asked.

‘A six-toothed scapewheel! With a bifurcated locking piece! Well, I never! That is enriching the pudding with currants. Rather like putting an Egg lock on a common pistol! I’m sure if you wait, Sergeant, Sharpe will be back soon. He’s a marvellous fellow. Never lets me down.’

Hakeswill forced a smile, for he hated Sharpe with a rare and single-minded venom. ‘He’s one of the best, sir,’ he said, his face twitching. ‘And will he be leaving Seringapatam soon, sir? Off on an errand again, would he be?’

‘Oh no!’ Stokes said, picking up a magnifying glass to look more closely into the clock. ‘I need him here, Sergeant. That’s it, you see! There’s a pin missing from the strike wheel. It engages the cogs here, do you see, and the gearing does the rest. Simple, I suppose.’ The Major looked up, but saw that the strange Sergeant with the twitching face was gone. Never mind, the clock was far more interesting.

Sergeant Hakeswill left the armoury and turned left towards the barracks where he had temporary accommodation. The King’s 33rd was quartered now in Hurryhur, a hundred and fifty miles to the north, and their job was to keep the roads of western Mysore clear of bandits and so the regiment ranged up and down the country and, finding themselves close to Seringapatam where the main armoury was located, Colonel Gore had sent a detachment for replacement ammunition. Captain Morris of the Light Company had drawn the duty, and he had brought half his men and Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill to protect the shipment which would leave the city next morning and be carried on ox carts to Arrakerry where the regiment was currently camped. An easy task, but one that had offered Sergeant Hakeswill an opportunity he had long sought.

The Sergeant stopped in one of the grog shops and demanded arrack. The shop was empty, all but for himself, the owner and a legless beggar who heaved himself towards the Sergeant and received a kick in the rump for his trouble. ‘Get out of here, you scabby bastard!’ Hakeswill shouted. ‘Bringing the flies in, you are. Go on! Piss off.’ The shop thus emptied to his satisfaction, Hakeswill sat in a dark corner contemplating life. ‘I chide myself,’ he muttered aloud, worrying the shop’s owner who feared the look of the twitching man in the red coat. ‘Your own fault, Obadiah,’ Hakeswill said. ‘You should have seen it years ago! Years! Rich as a Jew, he is. Are you listening to me, you heathen darkie bastard?’ The shop’s owner, thus challenged, fled into the back room, leaving Hakeswill grumbling at the table. ‘Rich as a Jew, Sharpie is, only he thinks he hides it, which he don’t, on account of me having tumbled to him. He don’t even live in barracks! Got himself some rooms over by the Mysore Gate. Got a bleeding servant boy. Always got cash on him, always! Buys drinks.’ Hakeswill shook his head at the injustice of it all. The 33rd had spent the last four years patrolling Mysore’s roads and Sharpe, all that while, had been living in Seringapatam’s comforts. It was not right, not fair, not just. Hakeswill had worried about it, wondering why Sharpe was so rich. At first he had assumed that Sharpe had been fiddling the armoury stores, but that could not explain Sharpe’s apparent wealth. ‘Only so much milk in a cow,’ Hakeswill muttered, ‘no matter how hard you squeeze the teats.’ Now he knew why Sharpe was rich, or he thought he knew, and what he had learned had filled Obadiah Hakeswill with a desperate jealousy. He scratched at a mosquito bite on his neck, revealing the old dark scar where the hangman’s rope had burned and abraded his skin. Obadiah Hakeswill had survived that hanging, and as a result he fervently believed that he could not be killed. Touched by God, he claimed he was, touched by God.

But he was not rich. Not rich at all, and Richard Sharpe was rich. Rumour had it that Richard Sharpe used Lali’s house, and that was an officers-only brothel, so why was Sergeant Sharpe allowed inside? Because he was rich, that was why, and Hakeswill had at last discovered Sharpe’s secret. ‘It was the Tippoo!’ he said aloud, then thumped the table with his tin mug to demand more drink. ‘And hurry up about it, you black-faced bastard!’

It had to be the Tippoo. Had not Hakeswill seen Sharpe lurking about the area where the Tippoo had been killed? And no soldier had ever claimed the credit for killing the Tippoo. It was widely thought that one of those Suffolk bastards from the 12th had caught the King in the chaos at the siege’s end, but Hakeswill had finally worked it out. It had been Sharpe, and the reason Sharpe had kept quiet about the killing was because he had stripped the Tippoo of all his gems and he did not want anyone, least of all the army’s senior officers, to know that he possessed the jewels. ‘Bloody Sharpe!’ Hakeswill said aloud.

So all that was needed now was an excuse to have Sharpe brought back to the regiment. No more clean and easy duty for Sharpie! No more merry rides in Lali’s house for him. It would be Obadiah Hakeswill’s turn to live in luxury, and all because of a dead king’s treasure. ‘Rubies,’ Hakeswill said aloud, lingering over the word, ‘and emeralds and sapphires, and diamonds like stars, and gold thick as butter.’ He chuckled. And all it would need, he reckoned, was a little cunning. A little cunning, a confident lie and an arrest. ‘And that will be your end, Sharpie, that will be your end,’ Hakeswill said, and he could feel the beauty of his scheme unfold like a lotus blossoming in Seringapatam’s moat. It would work! His visit to Major Stokes had established that Sharpe was in the town, which meant that the lie could be told and then, just like Major Stokes’s clockwork, everything would go right. Every cog and gear and wheel and spike would slot and click and tick and tock, and Sergeant Hakeswill’s face twitched and his hands contracted as though the tin mug in his grip were a man’s throat. He would be rich.

It took Major William Dodd three days to carry the ammunition back to Pohlmann’s compoo which was camped just outside the Mahratta city of Ahmednuggur. The compoo was an infantry brigade of eight battalions, each of them recruited from among the finest mercenary warriors of north India and all trained and commanded by European officers. Dowlut Rao Scindia, the Maharajah of Gwalior, whose land stretched from the fortress of Baroda in the north to the fastness of Gawilghur in the east and down to Ahmednuggur in the south, boasted that he led a hundred thousand men and that his army could blacken the land like a plague, yet this compoo, with its seven thousand men, was the hard heart of his army.

One of the compoo’s eight battalions was paraded a mile outside the encampment to greet Dodd. The cavalry that had accompanied the sepoys to Chasalgaon had ridden ahead to warn Pohlmann of Dodd’s return and Pohlmann had organized a triumphant reception. The battalion stood in white coats, their black belts and weapons gleaming, but Dodd, riding at the head of his small column, had eyes only for the tall elephant that stood beside a yellow-and-white-striped marquee. The huge beast glittered in the sunlight, for its body and head were armoured with a vast leather cape onto which squares of silver had been sewn in intricate patterns. The silver covered the elephant’s body, continued across its face and then, all but for two circles that had been cut for its eyes, cascaded on down the length of its trunk. Gems gleamed between the silver plates while ribbons of purple silk fluttered from the crown of the animal’s head. The last few inches of the animal’s big curved tusks were sheathed in silver, though the actual points of the tusks were tipped with needle-sharp points of steel. The elephant driver, the mahout, sweated in a coat of old-fashioned chain mail that had been burnished to the same gleaming polish as his animal’s silver armour, while behind him was a howdah made of cedarwood on which gold panels had been nailed and above which fluttered a fringed canopy of yellow silk. Long files of purple-jacketed infantrymen stood to attention on either flank of the elephant. Some of the men carried muskets, while others had long pikes with their broad blades polished to resemble silver.

The elephant knelt when Dodd came within twenty paces and the occupant of the howdah stepped carefully down onto a set of silver-plated steps placed there by one of his purple-coated bodyguards then strolled into the shade of the striped marquee. He was a European, a tall man and big, not fat, and though a casual glance might think him overweight, a second glance would see that most of that weight was solid muscle. He had a round sun-reddened face, big black moustaches and eyes that seemed to take delight in everything he saw. His uniform was of his own devising: white silk breeches tucked into English riding boots, a green coat festooned with gold lace and aiguillettes and, on the coat’s broad shoulders, thick white silk cushions hung with short golden chains. The coat had scarlet facings and loops of scarlet braid about its turned-back cuffs and gilded buttons. The big man’s hat was a bicorne crested with purple-dyed feathers held in place by a badge showing the white horse of Hanover; his sword’s hilt was made of gold fashioned into the shape of an elephant’s head, and gold rings glinted on his big fingers. Once in the shade of the open-sided marquee he settled himself on a divan where his aides gathered about him. This was Colonel Anthony Pohlmann and he commanded the compoo, together with five hundred cavalry and twenty-six field guns. Ten years before, when Scindia’s army had been nothing but a horde of ragged troopers on half-starved horses, Anthony Pohlmann had been a sergeant in a Hanoverian regiment of the East India Company; now he rode an elephant and needed two other beasts to carry the chests of gold coin that travelled everywhere with him.

Pohlmann stood as Dodd climbed down from his horse. ‘Well done, Major!’ the Colonel called in his German-accented English. ‘Exceedingly well done!’ Pohlmann’s aides, half of them European and half Indian, joined their commander in applauding the returning hero, while the bodyguard made a double line through which Dodd could advance to meet the resplendent Colonel. ‘Eighty thousand cartridges,’ Pohlmann exulted, ‘snatched from our enemies!’

‘Seventy-three thousand, sir,’ Dodd said, beating dust off his breeches.

Pohlmann grinned. ‘Seven thousand spoiled, eh? Nothing changes.’

‘Not spoiled by me, sir,’ Dodd growled.

‘I never supposed so,’ Pohlmann said. ‘Did you have any difficulties?’

‘None,’ Dodd answered confidently. ‘We lost no one, sir, not even a scratch, while not a single enemy soldier survived.’ He smiled, cracking the dust on his cheeks. ‘Not one.’

‘A victory!’ Pohlmann said, then gestured Dodd into the tent. ‘We have wine, of sorts. There is rum, arrack, even water! Come, Major.’

Dodd did not move. ‘My men are tired, sir,’ he pointed out.

‘Then dismiss them, Major. They can take refreshment at my cook tent.’

Dodd went to dismiss his men. He was a gangling Englishman with a long sallow face and a sullen expression. He was also that rarest of things, an officer who had deserted from the East India Company, and deserted moreover with one hundred and thirty of his own sepoy troops. He had come to Pohlmann just three weeks before and some of Pohlmann’s European officers had been convinced that Lieutenant Dodd was a spy sent by the British whose army was readying to attack the Mahratta Confederation, but Pohlmann had not been so sure. It was true that no other British officer had ever deserted like Dodd, but few had reasons like Dodd, and Pohlmann had also recognized Dodd’s hunger, his awkwardness, his anger and his ability. Lieutenant Dodd’s record showed he was no mean soldier, his sepoys liked him, and he had a raging ambition, and Pohlmann had believed the Lieutenant’s defection to be both wholehearted and real. He had made Dodd into a major, then given him a test. He had sent him to Chasalgaon. If Dodd proved capable of killing his old comrades then he was no spy, and Dodd had passed the test triumphantly and Scindia’s army was now better off by seventy-three thousand cartridges.

Dodd came back to the marquee and was given the chair of honour on the right side of Pohlmann’s divan. The chair on the left was occupied by a woman, a European, and Dodd could scarcely keep his eyes from her, and no wonder, for she was a rare-looking woman to discover in India. She was young, scarce more than eighteen or nineteen, with a pale face and very fair hair. Her lips were maybe a trifle too thin and her forehead perhaps a half inch too wide, yet there was something oddly attractive about her. She had a face, Dodd decided, in which the imperfections added up to attractiveness, and her appeal was augmented by a timid air of vulnerability. At first Dodd assumed the woman was Pohlmann’s mistress, but then he saw that her white linen dress was frayed at the hem and some of the lace at its modest collar was crudely darned, and he decided that Pohlmann would never allow his mistress to appear so shabbily.

‘Let me introduce Madame Joubert to you,’ Pohlmann said, who had noticed how hungrily Dodd had stared at the woman. ‘This is Major William Dodd.’

‘Madame Joubert?’ Dodd stressed the ‘Madame’, half rising and bowing from his chair as he acknowledged her.

‘Major,’ she said in a low voice, then smiled nervously before looking down at the table that was spread with dishes of almonds.

Pohlmann snapped his fingers for a servant, then smiled at Major Dodd. ‘Simone is married to Captain Joubert, and that is Captain Joubert.’ He pointed into the sunlight where a short captain stood to attention in front of the paraded battalion that stood so stiff and still in the biting sun.

‘Joubert commands the battalion, sir?’ Dodd asked.

‘No one commands the battalion,’ Pohlmann answered. ‘But until three weeks ago it was led by Colonel Mathers. Back then it had five European officers; now it has Captain Joubert and Lieutenant Sillière.’ He pointed to a second European, a tall thin young man, and Dodd, who was observant, saw Simone Joubert blush at the mention of Sillière’s name. Dodd was amused. Joubert looked at least twenty years older than his wife, while Sillière was only a year or two her senior. ‘And we must have Europeans,’ Pohlmann went on, stretching back on the divan that creaked under his weight. ‘The Indians are fine soldiers, but we need Europeans who understand European tactics.’

‘How many European officers have you lost, sir?’ Dodd asked.

‘From this compoo? Eighteen,’ Pohlmann said. ‘Too many.’ The men who had gone were the British officers, and all had possessed contracts with Scindia that excused them from fighting against their own countrymen, and to make matters worse the East India Company had offered a bribe to any British officer who deserted the Mahrattas and, as a result, some of Pohlmann’s best men were gone. It was true that he still had some good officers left, most of them French, with a handful of Dutchmen, Swiss and Germans, but Pohlmann knew he could ill afford the loss of eighteen European officers. At least none of his artillerymen had deserted and Pohlmann put great faith in the battle-winning capacity of his guns. Those cannon were served by Portuguese, or by half-breed Indians from the Portuguese colonies in India, and those professionals had stayed loyal and were awesomely proficient.

Pohlmann drained a glass of rum and poured himself another. He had an extraordinary capacity for alcohol, a capacity Dodd did not share, and the Englishman, knowing his propensity for getting drunk, restrained himself to sips of watered wine. ‘I promised you a reward, Major, if you succeeded in rescuing the cartridges,’ Pohlmann said genially.

‘Knowing I’ve done my duty is reward enough,’ Dodd said. He felt shabby and ill-uniformed among Pohlmann’s gaudy aides and had decided that it was best to play the bluff soldier, a role he thought would appeal to a former sergeant. It was said that Pohlmann kept his old East India Company uniform as a reminder of just how far he had risen.

‘Men do not join Scindia’s army merely for the pleasures of doing their duty,’ Pohlmann said, ‘but for the rewards such service offers. We are here to become rich, are we not?’ He unhooked the elephant-hilted sword from his belt. The scabbard was made of soft red leather and was studded with small emeralds. ‘Here.’ Pohlmann offered the sword to Dodd.

‘I can’t take your sword!’ Dodd protested.

‘I have many, Major, and many finer. I insist.’

Dodd took the sword. He drew the blade from the scabbard and saw that it was finely made, much better than the drab sword he had worn as a lieutenant these last twenty years. Many Indian swords were made of soft steel and broke easily in combat, but Dodd guessed this blade had been forged in France or Britain, then given its beautiful elephant hilt in India. That hilt was of gold, the elephant’s head made the pommel, while the handguard was the beast’s curved trunk. The grip was of black leather bound with gold wire. ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said feelingly.

‘It is the first of many rewards,’ Pohlmann said airily, ‘and those rewards will shower on us when we beat the British. Which we shall, though not here.’ He paused to drink rum. ‘The British will attack any day now,’ he went on, ‘and they doubtless hope I’ll stay and fight them here, but I don’t have a mind to oblige them. Better to make the bastards march after us, eh? The rains may come while they pursue us and the rivers will hold them up. Disease will weaken them. And once they are weak and tired, we shall be strong. All Scindia’s compoos will join together and the Rajah of Berar has promised his army, and once we are all gathered we shall crush the British. But that means I have to give up Ahmednuggur.’

‘Not an important city,’ Dodd commented. He noticed that Simone Joubert was sipping wine. She kept her eyes lowered, only occasionally glancing up at her husband or at Lieutenant Sillière. She took no notice of Dodd, but she would, he promised himself, she would. Her nose was too small, he decided, but even so she was a thing of pale and fragile wonder in this hot, dark-skinned land. Her blonde hair, which was hung with ringlets in a fashion that had prevailed ten years before in Europe, was held in place by small mother-of-pearl clips.

‘Ahmednuggur is not important,’ Pohlmann agreed, ‘but Scindia hates losing any of his cities and he stuffed Ahmednuggur full of supplies and insisted I post one regiment inside the city.’ He nodded towards the white-coated troops. ‘That regiment, Major. It’s probably my best regiment, but I am forced to quarter it in Ahmednuggur.’

Dodd understood Pohlmann’s predicament. ‘You can’t take them out of the city without upsetting Scindia,’ he said, ‘but you don’t want to lose the regiment when the city falls.’

‘I can’t lose it!’ Pohlmann said indignantly. ‘A good regiment like that? Mathers trained it well, very well. Now he’s gone to join our enemies, but I can’t lose his regiment as well, so whoever takes over from Mathers must know how to extricate his men from trouble.’

Dodd felt a surge of excitement. He liked to think that it was not just for the money that he had deserted the Company, nor because of his legal troubles, but for the long overdue chance of leading his own regiment. He could do it well, he knew that, and he knew what Pohlmann was leading up to.

Pohlmann smiled. ‘Suppose I give you Mathers’s regiment, Major? Can you pull it out of the fire for me?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Dodd said simply. Simone Joubert, for the first time since she had been introduced to Dodd, looked up at him, but without any friendliness.

‘All of it?’ Pohlmann asked. ‘With its cannon?’

‘All of it,’ Dodd said firmly, ‘and with every damned gun.’

‘Then from now it is Dodd’s regiment,’ Pohlmann said, ‘and if you lead it well, Major, I shall make you a colonel and give you a second regiment to command.’

Dodd celebrated by draining his cup of wine. He was so overcome with emotion that he hardly dared speak, though the look on his face said it all. His own regiment at last! He had waited so long for this moment and now, by God, he would show the Company how well their despised officers could fight.

Pohlmann snapped his fingers so that a servant girl brought him more rum. ‘How many men will Wellesley bring?’ he asked Dodd.

‘No more than fifteen thousand infantry,’ the new commander of Dodd’s regiment answered confidently. ‘Probably fewer, and they’ll be split into two armies. Boy Wellesley will command one, Colonel Stevenson the other.’

‘Stevenson’s old, yes?’

‘Ancient and cautious,’ Dodd said dismissively.

‘Cavalry?’

‘Five or six thousand? Mostly Indians.’

‘Guns?’

‘Twenty-six at most. Nothing bigger than a twelve-pounder.’

‘And Scindia can field eighty guns,’ Pohlmann said, ‘some of them twenty-eight-pounders. And once the Rajah of Berar’s forces join us, we’ll have forty thousand infantry and at least fifty more guns.’ The Hanoverian smiled. ‘But battles aren’t just numbers. They’re also won by generals. Tell me about this Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley.’

‘Boy Wellesley?’ Dodd responded scathingly. The British General was younger than Dodd, but that was not the cause of the derisory nickname. Rather it was envy, for Wellesley had connections and wealth, while Dodd had neither. ‘He’s young,’ Dodd said, ‘only thirty-four.’

‘Youth is no barrier to good soldiering,’ Pohlmann said chidingly, though he well understood Dodd’s resentment. For years Dodd had watched younger men rise up through the ranks of the King’s army while he had been stuck in the Company’s hidebound ranks. A man could not buy promotion in the Company, nor were promotions given by merit, but only by seniority, and so forty-year-old men like Dodd were still lieutenants while, in the King’s army, mere boys were captains or majors. ‘Is Wellesley good?’ Pohlmann asked.

‘He’s never fought a battle,’ Dodd said bitterly, ‘not unless you count Malavelly.’

‘One volley?’ Pohlmann asked, half recalling stories of the skirmish.

‘One volley and a bayonet charge,’ Dodd said, ‘not a proper battle.’

‘He defeated Dhoondiah.’

‘A cavalry charge against a bandit,’ Dodd said scornfully. ‘My point, sir, is that Boy Wellesley has never faced artillery and infantry on a real battlefield. He was jumped up to major general solely because his brother is Governor General. If his name had been Dodd instead of Wellesley he’d be lucky to command a company, let alone an army.’

‘He’s an aristocrat?’ Pohlmann enquired.

‘Of course. What else?’ Dodd asked. ‘His father was an earl.’

‘So…’ Pohlmann put a handful of almonds in his mouth and paused to chew them. ‘So,’ he went on, ‘he’s the younger son of a nobleman, sent into the army because he wasn’t good for anything else, and his family purchased him up the ranks?’

‘Exactly, sir, exactly.’

‘But I hear he is efficient?’

‘Efficient?’ Dodd thought about it. ‘He’s efficient, sir, because his brother gives him the cash. He can afford a big bullock train. He carries his supplies with him, so his men are well fed. But he still ain’t ever seen a cannon’s muzzle, not facing him, not alongside a score of others and backed by steady infantry.’

‘He did well as Governor of Mysore,’ Pohlmann observed mildly.

‘So he’s an efficient governor? Does that make him a general?’

‘A disciplinarian, I hear,’ Pohlmann said.

‘He sets a lovely parade ground,’ Dodd agreed sarcastically.

‘But he isn’t a fool?’

‘No,’ Dodd admitted, ‘not a fool, but not a general either. He’s been promoted too fast and too young, sir. He’s beaten bandits, but he took a beating himself outside Seringapatam.’

‘Ah, yes. The night attack.’ Pohlmann had heard of that skirmish, how Arthur Wellesley had attacked a wood outside Seringapatam and there been roundly thrashed by the Tippoo’s troops. ‘Even so,’ he said, ‘it never serves to underestimate an enemy.’

‘Overestimate him as much as you like, sir,’ Dodd said stoutly, ‘but the fact remains that Boy Wellesley has never fought a proper battle, not with more than a thousand men under his command, and he’s never faced a real army, not a trained field army with gunners and disciplined infantry, and my guess is that he won’t stand. He’ll run back to his brother and demand more men. He’s a careful man.’

Pohlmann smiled. ‘So let us lure this careful man deep into our territory where he can’t retreat, eh? Then beat him.’ He smiled, then hauled a watch from his fob and snapped open the lid. ‘I have to be going soon,’ he said, ‘but some business first.’ He took an envelope from his gaudy coat’s pocket and handed the sealed paper to Dodd. ‘That is your authority to command Mathers’s regiment, Major,’ he said, ‘but remember, I want you to bring it safely out of Ahmednuggur. You can help the defence for a time, but don’t be trapped there. Young Wellesley can’t invest the whole city, he doesn’t have enough men, so you should be able to escape easily enough. Bloody his nose, Dodd, but keep your regiment safe. Do you understand?’

Dodd understood well enough. Pohlmann was setting Dodd a difficult and ignoble task, that of retreating from a fight with his command intact. There was little glory in such a manoeuvre, but it would still be a difficult piece of soldiering and Dodd knew he was being tested a second time. The first test had been Chasalgaon, the second would be Ahmednuggur. ‘I can manage it,’ he said dourly.

‘Good!’ Pohlmann said. ‘I shall make things easier for you by taking your regiment’s families northwards. You might march soldiers safely from the city’s fall, but I doubt you can manage a horde of women and children too. And what about you, Madame?’ He turned and laid a meaty hand on Simone Joubert’s knee. ‘Will you come with me?’ He talked to her as though she were a child. ‘Or stay with Major Dodd?’

Simone seemed startled by the question. She blushed and looked up at Lieutenant Sillière. ‘I shall stay here, Colonel,’ she answered in English.

‘Make sure you bring her safe home, Major,’ Pohlmann said to Dodd.

‘I shall, sir.’

Pohlmann stood. His purple-coated bodyguards, who had been standing in front of the tent, hurried to take their places on the elephant’s flanks while the mahout, who had been resting in the animal’s capacious shade, now mounted the somnolent beast by gripping its tail and clambering up its backside like a sailor swarming up a rope. He edged past the gilded howdah, took his seat on the elephant’s neck and turned the beast towards Pohlmann’s tent. ‘Are you sure’ – Pohlmann turned back to Simone Joubert – ‘that you would not prefer to travel with me? The howdah is so comfortable, as long as you do not suffer from seasickness.’

‘I shall stay with my husband,’ Simone said. She had stood and proved to be much taller than Dodd had supposed. Tall and somewhat gawky, he thought, but she still possessed an odd attraction.

‘A good woman should stay with her husband,’ Pohlmann said, ‘or someone’s husband, anyway.’ He turned to Dodd. ‘I shall see you in a few days, Major, with your new regiment. Don’t let me down.’

‘I won’t, sir, I won’t,’ Dodd promised as, holding his new sword, he watched his new commander climb the silver steps to the howdah. He had a regiment to save and a reputation to make, and by God, Dodd thought, he would do both things well.

CHAPTER 2

Sharpe sat in the open shed where the armoury stored its gun carriages. It had started to rain, though it was not the sheeting downpour of the monsoon, just a miserable steady grey drizzle that turned the mud in the yard into a slippery coating of red slime. Major Stokes, beginning the afternoon in a clean red coat, white silk stock and polished boots, paced obsessively about a newly made carriage. ‘It really wasn’t your fault, Sharpe,’ he said.

‘Feels like it, sir.’

‘It would, it would!’ Stokes said. ‘Reflects well on you, Sharpe, ’pon my soul, it does. But it weren’t your fault, not in any manner.’

‘Lost all six men, sir. And young Davi.’

‘Poor Hedgehog,’ Stokes said, squatting to peer along the trail of the carriage. ‘You reckon that timber’s straight, Sharpe? Bit hog-backed, maybe?’

‘Looks straight to me, sir.’

‘Ain’t tight-grained, this oak, ain’t tight-grained,’ the Major said, and he began to unbuckle his sword belt. Every morning and afternoon his servant sent him to the armoury in carefully laundered and pressed clothes, and within an hour Major Stokes would be stripped down to breeches and shirtsleeves and have his hands full of spokeshaves or saws or awls or adzes. ‘Like to see a straight trail,’ he said. ‘There’s a number four spokeshave on the wall, Sharpe, be a good fellow.’

‘You want me to sharpen it, sir?’

‘I did it last night, Sharpe. I put a lovely edge on her.’ Stokes unpeeled his red jacket and rolled up his sleeves. ‘Timber don’t season here properly, that’s the trouble.’ He stooped to the new carriage and began running the spokeshave along the trail, leaving curls of new white wood to fall away. ‘I’m mending a clock,’ he told Sharpe while he worked, ‘a lovely-made piece, all but for some crude local gearing. Have a look at it. It’s in my office.’

‘I will, sir.’

‘And I’ve found some new timber for axletrees, Sharpe. It’s really quite exciting!’

‘They’ll still break, sir,’ Sharpe said gloomily, then scooped up one of the many cats that lived in the armoury. He put the tabby on his lap and stroked her into a contented purr.

‘Don’t be so doom-laden, Sharpe! We’ll solve the axletree problem yet. It’s only a question of timber, nothing but timber. There, that looks better.’ The Major stepped back from his work and gave it a critical look. There were plenty of Indian craftsmen employed in the armoury, but Major Stokes liked to do things himself, and besides, most of the Indians were busy preparing for the feast of Dusshera which involved manufacturing three giant-sized figures that would be paraded to the Hindu temple and there burned. Those Indians were busy in another open-sided shed where they had glue bubbling on a fire, and some of the men were pasting lengths of pale cloth onto a wicker basket that would form one of the giants’ heads. Stokes was fascinated by their activity and Sharpe knew it would not be long before the Major joined them. ‘Did I tell you a sergeant was here looking for you this morning?’ Stokes asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘Came just before dinner,’ Stokes said, ‘a strange sort of fellow.’ The Major stooped to the trail and attacked another section of wood. ‘He twitched, he did.’

‘Obadiah Hakeswill,’ Sharpe said.

‘I think that was his name. Didn’t seem very important,’ Stokes said. ‘Said he was just visiting town and looking up old companions. D’you know what I was thinking?’

‘Tell me, sir,’ Sharpe said, wondering why in holy hell Obadiah Hakeswill had been looking for him. For nothing good, that was certain.

‘Those teak beams in the Tippoo’s old throne room,’ Stokes said, ‘they’ll be seasoned well enough. We could break out a half-dozen of the things and make a batch of axletrees from them!’

‘The gilded beams, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Soon have the gilding off them, Sharpe. Plane them down in two shakes!’

‘The Rajah may not like it, sir,’ Sharpe said.

Stokes’s face fell. ‘There is that, there is that. A fellow don’t usually like his ceilings being pulled down to make gun carriages. Still, the Rajah’s usually most obliging if you can get past his damned courtiers. The clock is his. Strikes eight when it should ring nine, or perhaps it’s the other way round. You reckon that quoin’s true?’

Sharpe glanced at the wedge which lowered and raised the cannon barrel. ‘Looks good, sir.’

‘I might just plane her down a shade. I wonder if our templates are out of true? We might check that. Isn’t this rain splendid? The flowers were wilting, wilting! But I’ll have a fine show this year with a spot of rain. You must come and see them.’

‘You still want me to stay here, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Stay here?’ Stokes, who was placing the quoin in a vice, turned to look at Sharpe. ‘Of course I want you to stay here, Sergeant. Best man I’ve got!’

‘I lost six men, sir.’

‘And it wasn’t your fault, not your fault at all. I’ll get you another six.’

Sharpe wished it was that easy, but he could not chase the guilt of Chasalgaon out of his mind. When the massacre was finished he had wandered about the fort in a half-daze. Most of the women and children still lived, but they had been frightened and had shrunk away from him. Captain Roberts, the second in command of the fort, had returned from patrol that afternoon and he had vomited when he saw the horror inside the cactus-thorn wall.

Sharpe had made his report to Roberts who had sent it by messenger to Hurryhur, the army’s headquarters, then dismissed Sharpe. ‘There’ll be an enquiry, I suppose,’ Roberts had told Sharpe, ‘so doubtless your evidence will be needed, but you might as well wait in Seringapatam.’ And so Sharpe, with no other orders, had walked home. He had returned the bag of rupees to Major Stokes, and now, obscurely, he wanted some punishment from the Major, but Stokes was far more concerned about the angle of the quoin. ‘I’ve seen screws shatter because the angle was too steep, and it ain’t no good having broken screws in battle. I’ve seen Frog guns with metalled quoins, but they only rust. Can’t trust a Frog to keep them greased, you see. You’re brooding, Sharpe.’

‘Can’t help it, sir.’

‘Doesn’t do to brood. Leave brooding to poets and priests, eh? Those sorts of fellows are paid to brood. You have to get on with life. What could you have done?’

‘Killed one of the bastards, sir.’

‘And they’d have killed you, and you wouldn’t have liked that and nor would I. Look at that angle! Look at that! I do like a fine angle, I declare I do. We must check it against the templates. How’s your head?’

‘Mending, sir.’ Sharpe touched the bandage that wrapped his forehead. ‘No pain now, sir.’

‘Providence, Sharpe, that’s what it is, providence. The good Lord in His ineffable mercy wanted you to live.’ Stokes released the vice and restored the quoin to the carriage. ‘A touch of paint on that trail and it’ll be ready. You think the Rajah might give me one roof beam?’

‘No harm in asking him, sir.’

‘I will, I will. Ah, a visitor.’ Stokes straightened as a horseman, swathed against the rain in an oilcloth cape and with an oilcloth cover on his cocked hat, rode into the armoury courtyard leading a second horse by the reins. The visitor kicked his feet from the stirrups, swung down from the saddle, then tied both horses’ reins to one of the shed’s pillars. Major Stokes, his clothes just in their beginning stage of becoming dirty and dishevelled, smiled at the tall newcomer whose cocked hat and sword betrayed he was an officer. ‘Come to inspect us, have you?’ the Major demanded cheerfully. ‘You’ll discover chaos! Nothing in the right place, records all muddled, woodworm in the timber stacks, damp in the magazines and the paint completely addled.’

‘Better that paint is addled than wits,’ the newcomer said, then took off his cocked hat to reveal a head of white hair.

Sharpe, who had been sitting on one of the finished gun carriages, shot to his feet, tipping the surprised cat into the Major’s wood shavings. ‘Colonel McCandless, sir!’

‘Sergeant Sharpe!’ McCandless responded. The Colonel shook water from his cocked hat and turned to Stokes. ‘And you, sir?’

‘Major Stokes, sir, at your service, sir. John Stokes, commander of the armoury and, as you see, carpenter to His Majesty.’

‘You will forgive me, Major Stokes, if I talk to Sergeant Sharpe?’ McCandless shed his oilskin cape to reveal his East India Company uniform. ‘Sergeant Sharpe and I are old friends.’

‘My pleasure, Colonel,’ Stokes said. ‘I have business in the foundry. They’re pouring too fast. I tell them all the time! Fast pouring just bubbles the metal, and bubbled metal leads to disaster, but they won’t listen. Ain’t like making temple bells, I tell them, but I might as well save my breath.’ He glanced wistfully towards the happy men making the giant’s head for the Dusshera festival. ‘And I have other things to do,’ he added.

‘I’d rather you didn’t leave, Major,’ McCandless said very formally. ‘I suspect what I have to say concerns you. It is good to see you, Sharpe.’

‘You too, sir,’ Sharpe said, and it was true. He had been locked in the Tippoo’s dungeons with Colonel Hector McCandless and if it was possible for a sergeant and a colonel to be friends, then a friendship existed between the two men. McCandless, tall, vigorous and in his sixties, was the East India Company’s head of intelligence for all southern and western India, and in the last four years he and Sharpe had talked a few times whenever the Colonel passed through Seringapatam, but those had been social conversations and the Colonel’s grim face suggested that this meeting was anything but social.

‘You were at Chasalgaon?’ McCandless demanded.

‘I was, sir, yes.’

‘So you saw Lieutenant Dodd?’

Sharpe nodded. ‘Won’t ever forget the bastard. Sorry, sir.’ He apologized because McCandless was a fervent Christian who abhorred all foul language. The Scotsman was a stern man, honest as a saint, and Sharpe sometimes wondered why he liked him so much. Maybe it was because McCandless was always fair, always truthful and could talk to any man, rajah or sergeant, with the same honest directness.

‘I never met Lieutenant Dodd,’ McCandless said, ‘so describe him to me.’

‘Tall, sir, and thin like you or me.’

‘Not like me,’ Major Stokes put in.

‘Sort of yellow-faced,’ Sharpe went on, ‘as if he’d had the fever once. Long face, like he ate something bitter.’ He thought for a second. He had only caught a few glimpses of Dodd, and those had been sideways. ‘He’s got lank hair, sir, when he took off his hat. Brown hair. Long nose on him, like Sir Arthur’s, and a bony chin. He’s calling himself Major Dodd now, sir, not Lieutenant. I heard one of his men call him Major.’

‘And he killed every man in the garrison?’ McCandless asked.

‘He did, sir. Except me. I was lucky.’

‘Nonsense, Sharpe!’ McCandless said. ‘The hand of the Lord was upon you.’

‘Amen,’ Major Stokes intervened.

McCandless stared broodingly at Sharpe. The Colonel had a hard-planed face with oddly blue eyes. He was forever claiming that he wanted to retire to his native Scotland, but he always found some reason to stay on in India. He had spent much of his life riding the states that bordered the land administered by the Company, for his job was to explore those lands and report their threats and weaknesses to his masters. Little happened in India that escaped McCandless, but Dodd had escaped him, and Dodd was now McCandless’s concern. ‘We have placed a price on his head,’ the Colonel said, ‘of five hundred guineas.’

‘Bless me!’ Major Stokes said in astonishment.

‘He’s a murderer,’ McCandless went on. ‘He killed a goldsmith in Seedesegur, and he should be facing trial, but he ran instead and I want you, Sharpe, to help me catch him. And I’m not pursuing the rogue because I want the reward money; in fact I’ll refuse it. But I do want him, and I want your help.’

Major Stokes began to protest, saying that Sharpe was his best man and that the armoury would go to the dogs if the Sergeant was taken away, but McCandless shot the amiable Major a harsh look that was sufficient to silence him.

‘I want Lieutenant Dodd captured,’ McCandless said implacably, ‘and I want him tried, and I want him executed, and I need someone who will know him by sight.’

Major Stokes summoned the courage to continue his objections. ‘But I need Sergeant Sharpe,’ he protested. ‘He organizes everything! The duty rosters, the stores, the pay chest, everything!’

‘I need him more,’ McCandless snarled, turning on the hapless Major. ‘Do you know how many Britons are in India, Major? Maybe twelve thousand, and less than half of those are soldiers. Our power does not rest on the shoulders of white men, Major, but on the muskets of our sepoys. Nine men out of every ten who invade the Mahratta states will be sepoys, and Lieutenant Dodd persuaded over a hundred of those men to desert! To desert! Can you imagine our fate if the other sepoys follow them? Scindia will shower Dodd’s men with gold, Major, with lucre and with spoil, in the hope that others will follow them. I have to stop that, and I need Sharpe.’

Major Stokes recognized the inevitable. ‘You will bring him back, sir?’

‘If it is the Lord’s will, yes. Well, Sergeant? Will you come with me?’

Sharpe glanced at Major Stokes who shrugged, smiled, then nodded his permission. ‘I’ll come, sir,’ Sharpe said to the Scotsman.

‘How soon can you be ready?’

‘Ready now, sir.’ Sharpe indicated the newly issued pack and musket that lay at his feet.

‘You can ride a horse?’

Sharpe frowned. ‘I can sit on one, sir.’

‘Good enough,’ the Scotsman said. He pulled on his oilcloth cape, then untied the two reins and gave one set to Sharpe. ‘She’s a docile thing, Sharpe, so don’t saw on her bit.’

‘We’re going right now, sir?’ Sharpe asked, surprised by the suddenness of it all.

‘Right now,’ McCandless said. ‘Time waits for no man, Sharpe, and we have a traitor and a murderer to catch.’ He pulled himself into his saddle and watched as Sharpe clumsily mounted the second horse.

‘So where are you going?’ Stokes asked McCandless.

‘Ahmednuggur first, and after that God will decide.’ The Colonel touched his horse’s flanks with his spurs and Sharpe, his pack hanging from one shoulder and his musket slung on the other, followed.

He would redeem himself for the failure at Chasalgaon. Not with punishment, but with something better: with vengeance.

Major William Dodd ran a white-gloved finger down the spoke of a gunwheel. He inspected his fingertip and nearly nine hundred men, or at least as many of the nine hundred on parade who could see the Major, inspected him in return.

No mud or dust on the glove. Dodd straightened his back and glowered at the gun crews, daring any man to show pleasure in having achieved a near perfect turn-out. It had been hard work, too, for it had rained earlier in the day and the regiment’s five guns had been dragged through the muddy streets to the parade ground just inside Ahmednuggur’s southern gate, but the gunners had still managed to clean their weapons meticulously. They had removed every scrap of mud, washed the mahogany trails, then polished the barrels until their alloy of copper and tin gleamed like brass.

Impressive, Dodd thought, as he peeled off the glove. Pohlmann had left Ahmednuggur, retreating north to join his compoo to Scindia’s gathering army, and Dodd had ordered this surprise inspection of his new command. He had given the regiment just one hour’s notice, but so far he had found nothing amiss. They were impressive indeed; standing in four long white-coated ranks with their four cannon and single howitzer paraded at the right flank. The guns themselves, despite their gleam, were pitiful things. The four field guns were mere four-pounders, while the fifth was a five-inch howitzer, and not one of the pieces fired a ball of real weight. Not a killing ball. ‘Peashooters!’ Dodd said disparagingly.

‘Monsieur?’ Captain Joubert, the Frenchman who had desperately hoped to be given command of the regiment himself, asked.

‘You heard me, Monsewer. Peashooters!’ Dodd said as he lifted a limber’s lid and hoisted out one of the four-pounder shots. It was half the size of a cricket ball. ‘You might as well spit at them, Monsewer!’

Joubert, a small man, shrugged. ‘At close range, Monsieur…’ he began to defend the guns.

‘At close range, Monsewer, close range!’ Dodd tossed the shot to Joubert who fumbled the catch. ‘That’s no use at close range! No more use than a musket ball, and the gun’s ten times more cumbersome than a musket.’ He rummaged through the limber. ‘No canister? No grape?’

‘Canister isn’t issued for four-pounder guns,’ Joubert said. ‘It isn’t even made for them.’

‘Then we make our own,’ Dodd said. ‘Bags of scrap metal, Monsewer, strapped to a sabot and a charge. One and a half pounds of powder per round. Find a dozen women in the town and have them sew up the bags. Maybe your wife can help, Monsewer?’ He leered at Joubert who showed no reaction. Dodd could smell a man’s weakness, and the oddly attractive Simone Joubert was undoubtedly her husband’s weakness, for she clearly despised him and he, just as clearly, feared losing her. ‘I want thirty bags of grape for each gun by this time tomorrow,’ Dodd ordered.

‘But the barrels, Major!’ Joubert protested.

‘You mean they’ll be scratched?’ Dodd jeered. ‘What do you want, Monsewer? A scratched bore and a live regiment? Or a clean gun and a row of dead men? By tomorrow, thirty rounds of canister per gun, and if there ain’t room in the limbers then throw out that bloody round shot. Might as well spit cherrystones as fire those pebbles.’ Dodd slammed down the limber’s lid. Even if the guns fired makeshift grapeshot he was not certain that they were worth keeping. Every battalion in India had such close-support artillery, but in Dodd’s opinion the guns only served to slow down a regiment’s manoeuvres. The weapons themselves were cumbersome, and the livestock needed to haul them was a nuisance, and if he were ever given his own compoo he would strip the regiments of field guns, for if a battalion of infantry could not defend itself with firelocks, what use was it? But he was stuck with the five guns, so he would use them as giant shotguns and open fire at three hundred yards. The gunners would moan about the damage to their barrels, but damn the gunners.

Dodd inspected the howitzer, found it as clean as the other guns, and nodded to the gunner-subadar. He offered no compliment, for Dodd did not believe in praising men for merely doing their duty. Praise was due to those who exceeded their duty, punishment for those who fell short, and silence must serve the rest.

Once the five guns had been inspected Dodd walked slowly down the white-jacketed infantry ranks where he looked every man in the eye and did not change his grim expression once, even though the soldiers had taken particular care to be well turned out for their new commanding officer. Captain Joubert followed a pace behind Dodd and there was something ludicrous about the conjunction of the tall, long-legged Dodd and the diminutive Joubert who needed to scurry to keep up with the Englishman. Once in a while the Frenchman would make a comment. ‘He’s a good man, sir,’ he might say as they passed a soldier, but Dodd ignored all the praise and, after a while, Joubert fell silent and just scowled at Dodd’s back. Dodd sensed the Frenchman’s dislike, but did not care.

Dodd showed no reaction to the regiment’s appearance, though all the same he was impressed. These men were smart and their weapons were as clean as those of his own sepoys who, reissued with white jackets, now paraded as an extra company at the regiment’s left flank where, in British regiments, the skirmishers paraded. East India Company battalions had no skirmishers, for it was believed that sepoys were no good at the task, but Dodd had decided to make his loyal sepoys into the finest skirmishers in India. Let them prove the Company wrong, and in the proving they could help destroy the Company.

Most of the men looked up into Dodd’s eyes as he walked by, although few of them looked at him for long, but instead glanced quickly away. Joubert saw the reaction, and sympathized with it, for there was something distinctly unpleasant about the Englishman’s long sour face that edged on the frightening. Probably, Joubert decided, this Englishman was a flogger. The English were notorious for using the whip on their own men, reducing redcoats’ backs to welters of broken flesh and gleaming blood, but Joubert was quite wrong about Dodd. Major Dodd had never flogged a man in his life, and that was not just because the Company forbade it in their army, but because William Dodd disliked the lash and hated to see a soldier flogged. Major Dodd liked soldiers. He hated most officers, especially those senior to him, but he liked soldiers. Good soldiers won battles, and victories made officers famous, so to be successful an officer needed soldiers who liked him and who would follow him. Dodd’s sepoys were proof of that. He had looked after them, made sure they were fed and paid, and he had given them victory. Now he would make them wealthy in the service of the Mahratta princes who were famous for their generosity.

He broke away from the regiment and marched back to its colours, a pair of bright-green flags marked with crossed tulwars. The flags had been the choice of Colonel Mathers, the Englishman who had commanded the regiment for five years until he resigned rather than fight against his own countrymen, and now the regiment would be known as Dodd’s regiment. Or perhaps he should call it something else. The Tigers? The Eagles? The Warriors of Scindia? Not that the name mattered now. What mattered now was to save these nine hundred well-trained men and their five gleaming guns and take them safely back to the Mahratta army that was gathering in the north. Dodd turned beneath the colours. ‘My name is Dodd!’ he shouted, then paused to let one of his Indian officers translate his words into Marathi, a language Dodd did not speak. Few of the soldiers spoke Marathi either, for most were mercenaries from the north, but men in the ranks murmured their own translation and so Dodd’s message was relayed up and down the files. ‘I am a soldier! Nothing but a soldier! Always a soldier!’ He paused again. The parade was being held in the open space inside the gate and a crowd of townsfolk had gathered to gape at the troops, and among the crowd was a scatter of the robed Arab mercenaries who were reputed to be the fiercest of all the Mahratta troops. They were wild-looking men, armed with every conceivable weapon, but Dodd doubted they had the discipline of his regiment. ‘Together,’ he shouted at his men, ‘you and I shall fight and we shall win.’ He kept his words simple, for soldiers always liked simple things. Loot was simple, winning and losing were simple ideas, and even death, despite the way the damned preachers tried to tie it up in superstitious knots, was a simple concept. ‘It is my intent,’ he shouted, then waited for the translation to ripple up and down the ranks, ‘for this regiment to be the finest in Scindia’s service! Do your job well and I shall reward you. Do it badly, and I shall let your fellow soldiers decide on your punishment.’ They liked that, as Dodd had known they would.

‘Yesterday,’ Dodd declaimed, ‘the British crossed our frontier! Tomorrow their army will be here at Ahmednuggur, and soon we shall fight them in a great battle!’ He had decided not to say that the battle would be fought well north of the city, for that might discourage the listening civilians. ‘We shall drive them back to Mysore. We shall teach them that the army of Scindia is greater than any of their armies. We shall win!’ The soldiers smiled at his confidence. ‘We shall take their treasures, their weapons, their land and their women, and those things will be your reward if you fight well. But if you fight badly, you will die.’ That phrase sent a shudder through the four white-coated ranks. ‘And if any of you prove to be cowards,’ Dodd finished, ‘I shall kill you myself.’

He let that threat sink in, then abruptly ordered the regiment back to its duties before summoning Joubert to follow him up the red stone steps of the city wall to where Arab guards stood behind the merlons ranged along the firestep. Far to the south, beyond the horizon, a dusky cloud was just visible. It could have been mistaken for a distant rain cloud, but Dodd guessed it was the smear of smoke from the British campfires. ‘How long do you think the city will last?’ Dodd asked Joubert.

The Frenchman considered the question. ‘A month?’ he guessed.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ Dodd snarled. He might want the loyalty of his men, but he did not give a fig for the good opinion of its two European officers. Both were Frenchmen and Dodd had the usual Englishman’s opinion of the Frogs. Good dancing masters, and experts in tying a stock or arranging lace to fall prettily on a uniform, but about as much use in a fight as spavined lapdogs. Lieutenant Sillière, who had followed Joubert to the firestep, was tall and looked strong, but Dodd mistrusted a man who took such care with his uniform and he could have sworn he detected a whiff of lavender water coming from the young Lieutenant’s carefully brushed hair. ‘How long are the city walls?’ he asked Joubert.

The Captain thought for a moment. ‘Two miles?’

‘At least, and how many men in the garrison?’

‘Two thousand.’

‘So work it out, Monsewer,’ Dodd said. ‘One man every two yards? We’ll be lucky if the city holds for three days.’ Dodd climbed to one of the bastions from where he could stare between the crenellations at the great fort which stood close to the city. That two-hundred-year-old fortress was an altogether more formidable stronghold than the city, though its very size made it vulnerable, for the fort’s garrison, like the city’s, was much too small. But the fort’s high wall was faced by a big ditch, its embrasures were crammed with cannon and its bastions were high and strong, although the fort was worth nothing without the city. The city was the prize, not the fort, and Dodd doubted that General Wellesley would waste men against the fort’s garrison. Boy Wellesley would attack the city, breach the walls, storm the gap and send his men to slaughter the defenders in the rat’s tangle of alleys and courtyards, and once the city had fallen the redcoats would hunt for supplies that would help feed the British army. Only then, with the city in his possession, would Wellesley turn his guns against the fort, and it was possible that the fort would hold the British advance for two or three weeks and thus give Scindia more time to assemble his army, and the longer the fort held the better, for the overdue rains might come and hamper the British advance. But of one thing Dodd was quite certain: as Pohlmann had said, the war would not be won here, and to William Dodd the most important thing was to extricate his men so that they could share that victory. ‘You will take the regiment’s guns and three hundred men and garrison the north gate,’ Dodd ordered Joubert.

The Frenchman frowned. ‘You think the British will attack in the north?’

‘I think, Monsewer, that the British will attack here, in the south. Our orders are to kill as many as we can, then escape to join Colonel Pohlmann. We shall make that escape through the north gate, but even an idiot can see that half the city’s inhabitants will also try to escape through the north gate and your job, Joubert, is to keep the bastards from blocking our way. I intend to save the regiment, not lose it with the city. That means you open fire on any civilian who tries to leave the city, do you understand?’ Joubert wanted to argue, but one look at Dodd’s face persuaded him into hasty agreement. ‘I shall be at the north gate in one hour,’ Dodd said, ‘and God help you, Monsewer, if your three hundred men are not in position.’

Joubert ran off. Dodd watched him go, then turned to Sillière. ‘When were the men last paid?’

‘Four months ago, sir.’

‘Where did you learn English, Lieutenant?’

‘Colonel Mathers insisted we speak it, sir.’

‘And where did Madame Joubert learn it?’

Sillière gave Dodd a suspicious glance. ‘I would not know, sir.’

Dodd sniffed. ‘Are you wearing perfume, Monsewer?’

‘No!’ Sillière blushed.

‘Make sure you never do, Lieutenant. And in the meantime take your company, find the Killadar, and tell him to break open the city treasury. If you have any trouble, break the damn thing open yourself with one of our guns. Give every man three months’ pay and load the rest of the money on pack animals. We’ll take it with us.’

Sillière looked astonished at the order. ‘But the Killadar, Monsieur…’ he began.

‘The Killadar, Monsewer, is a wretched little man with the balls of a mouse! You are a soldier. If we don’t take the money, the British will get it. Now go!’ Dodd shook his head in exasperation as the Lieutenant went. Four months without pay! There was nothing unusual in such a lapse, but Dodd disapproved of it. A soldier risked his life for his country, and the least his country could do in return was pay him promptly.

He walked eastwards along the firestep, trying to anticipate where the British would site their batteries and where they would make a breach. There was always a chance that Wellesley would pass by Ahmednuggur and simply march north towards Scindia’s army, but Dodd doubted the enemy would choose that course, for then the city and fort would lie athwart the British supply lines and the garrison could play havoc with the convoys carrying ammunition, shot and food to the redcoats.

A small crowd was gathered on the southernmost ramparts to gaze towards the distant cloud that betrayed the presence of the enemy army. Simone Joubert was among them, sheltering her face from the westering sun with a frayed parasol. Dodd took off his cocked hat. He always felt oddly awkward with women, at least white women, but his new rank gave him an unaccustomed confidence. ‘I see you have come to observe the enemy, Ma’am,’ he said.

‘I like to walk about the walls, Major,’ Simone answered, ‘but today, as you see, the way is blocked with people.’

‘I can clear a path for you, Ma’am,’ Dodd offered, touching the gold hilt of his new sword.

‘It is not necessary, Major,’ Simone said.

‘You speak good English, Ma’am.’

‘I was taught it as a child. We had a Welsh governess.’

‘In France, Ma’am?’

‘In the Île de France, Monsieur,’ Simone said. She was not looking at Dodd as she spoke, but staring into the heat-hazed south.

‘Mauritius,’ Dodd said, giving the island the name used by the British.

‘The Île de France, Monsieur, as I said.’

‘A remote place, Ma’am.’

Simone shrugged. In truth she agreed with Dodd. Mauritius was remote, an island four hundred miles east of Africa and the only decent French naval base in the Indian Ocean. There she had been raised as the daughter of the port’s captain, and it was there, at sixteen, that she had been wooed by Captain Joubert who was on passage to India where he had been posted as an adviser to Scindia. Joubert had dazzled Simone with tales of the riches that a man could make for himself in India, and Simone, bored with the small petty society of her island, had allowed herself to be swept away, only to discover that Captain Joubert was a timid man at heart, and that his impoverished family in Lyons had first claim on his earnings, and whatever was left was assiduously saved so that the Captain could retire to France in comfort. Simone had expected a life of parties and jewels, of dancing and silks, and instead she scrimped, she sewed and she suffered. Colonel Pohlmann had offered her a way out of poverty, and now she sensed that the lanky Englishman was clumsily attempting to make the same offer, but Simone was not minded to become a man’s mistress just because she was bored. She might for love, and in the absence of any love in her life she was fighting an attraction for Lieutenant Sillière, although she knew that the Lieutenant was almost as worthless as her husband and the dilemma was making her think that she was going mad. She wept about it, and the tears only added to her self-diagnosis of insanity. ‘When will the British come, Major?’ she asked Dodd.

‘Tomorrow, Ma’am. They’ll establish batteries the next day, knock at the wall for two or three days, make their hole and then come in.’

She looked at Dodd beneath the hem of her parasol. Although he was a tall man, Simone could still look him in the eye. ‘They’ll take the city that quickly?’ she asked, showing a hint of worry.

‘Nothing to hold them, Ma’am. Not enough men, too much wall, not enough guns.’

‘So how will we escape?’

‘By trusting me, Ma’am,’ Dodd said, offering Simone a leering smile. ‘What you must do, my dear, is pack your luggage, as much as can be carried on whatever packhorses your husband might possess, and be ready to leave. I shall send you warning before the attack, and at that time you go to the north gate where you’ll find your husband. It would help, of course, Ma’am, if I knew where you were lodged?’

‘My husband knows, Monsieur,’ Simone said coldly. ‘So once the rosbifs arrive I need do nothing for three days except pack?’

Dodd noted her use of the French term of contempt for the English, but chose to make nothing of it. ‘Exactly, Ma’am.’

‘Thank you, Major,’ Simone said, and made a gesture so that two servants, whom Dodd had not noticed in the press of people, came to escort her back to her house.

‘Cold bitch,’ Dodd said to himself when she was gone, ‘but she’ll thaw, she’ll thaw.’

The dark fell swiftly. Torches flared on the city ramparts, lighting the ghostly robes of the Arab mercenaries who patrolled the bastions. Small offerings of food and flowers were piled in front of the garish gods and goddesses in their candlelit temples. The inhabitants of the city were praying to be spared, while to the south a faint glow in the sky betrayed where a red-coated army had come to bring Ahmednuggur death.

Lieutenant-Colonel Albert Gore had taken command of the King’s 33rd in succession to Sir Arthur Wellesley and it had not been a happy battalion when Gore arrived. That unhappiness was not Sir Arthur’s fault for he had long left the battalion for higher responsibilities, but in his absence the 33rd had been commanded by Major John Shee who was an incompetent drunk. Shee had died, Gore had received command, and now he was slowly mending the damage. That mending could have been a great deal swifter if Gore had been able to rid himself of some of the battalion’s officers, and of all those officers it was the lazy and dishonest Captain Morris of the Light Company whom he would have most liked to dismiss, but Gore was helpless in the matter. Morris had purchased his commission, he was guilty of no offences against the King’s regulations and thus he had to stay. And with him stayed the malevolent, unsettling, yellow-faced and perpetually twitching Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill.

‘Sharpe was always a bad man, sir. A disgrace to the army, sir,’ Hakeswill told the Colonel. ‘He should never have been made into a sergeant, sir, ’cos he ain’t the material of what sergeants are made, sir. He’s nothing but a scrap of filth, sir, what shouldn’t be a corporal, let alone a sergeant. It says so in the scriptures, sir.’ The Sergeant stood rigidly at attention, his right foot behind his left, his hands at his sides and his elbows straining towards the small of his back. His voice boomed in the small room, drowning out the sound of the pelting rain. Gore wondered whether the rain was the late beginning of the monsoon. He hoped so, for if the monsoon failed utterly then there would be a lot of hungry people in India the following year.

Gore watched a spider crawl across the table. The house belonged to a leather dealer who had rented it to the 33rd while they were based in Arrakerry and the place seethed with insects that crawled, flew, slunk and stung, and Gore, who was a fastidious and elegant man, rather wished he had used his tents. ‘Tell me what happened,’ Gore said to Morris, ‘again. If you would be so kind.’

Morris, slouching in a chair in front of Gore’s table with a thick bandage on his head, seemed surprised to be asked, but he straightened himself and offered the Colonel a feeble shrug. ‘I don’t really recall, sir. It was two nights ago, in Seringapatam, and I was hit, sir.’

Gore brushed the spider aside and made a note. ‘Hit,’ he said as he wrote the word in his fine copperplate hand. ‘Where exactly?’

‘On the head, sir,’ Morris answered.

Gore sighed. ‘I see that, Captain. I meant where in Seringapatam?’

‘By the armoury, sir.’

‘And this was at night?’

Morris nodded.

‘Black night, sir,’ Hakeswill put in helpfully, ‘black as a blackamoor’s backside, sir.’

The Colonel frowned at the Sergeant’s indelicacy. Gore was resisting the urge to push a hand inside his coat and scratch his belly. He feared he had caught the Malabar Itch, a foul complaint that would condemn him to weeks of living with a salve of lard on his skin, and if the lard failed he would be reduced to taking baths in a solution of nitric acid. ‘If it was dark,’ he said patiently, ‘then surely you had no chance to see your assailant?’

‘I didn’t, sir,’ Morris replied truthfully.

‘But I did, sir,’ Hakeswill said, ‘and it was Sharpie. Saw him clear as daylight, sir.’

‘At night?’ Gore asked sceptically.

‘He was working late, sir,’ Hakeswill said, ‘on account of him not having done his proper work in the daylight like a Christian should, sir, and he opened the door, sir, and the lantern was lit, sir, and he came out and hit the Captain, sir.’

‘And you saw that?’

‘Clear as I can see you now, sir,’ Hakeswill said, his face racked with a series of violent twitches.

Gore’s hand strayed to his coat buttons, but he resisted the urge. ‘If you saw it, Sergeant, why didn’t you have Sharpe arrested? There were sentries present, surely?’

‘More important to save the Captain’s life, sir. That’s what I deemed, sir. Get him back here, sir, into Mister Micklewhite’s care. Don’t trust other surgeons, sir. And I had to clean up Mister Morris, sir, I did.’

‘The blood, you mean?’

Hakeswill shook his head. ‘The substances, sir.’ He stared woodenly over Colonel Gore’s head as he spoke.

‘Substances?’

Hakeswill’s face twitched. ‘Begging your pardon, sir, as you being a gentleman as won’t want to hear it, sir, but Sergeant Sharpe hit Captain Morris with a jakes pot, sir. A full jakes pot, sir, liquid and solids.’

‘Oh, God,’ Gore said, laying down his pen and trying to ignore the fiery itch across his belly. ‘I still don’t understand why you did nothing in Seringapatam,’ the Colonel said. ‘The Town Major should have been told, surely?’

‘That’s just it, sir,’ Hakeswill said enthusiastically, ‘on account of there not being a Town Major, not proper, seeing as Major Stokes does the duties, sir, and the rest is up to the Rajah’s Killadar and I don’t like seeing a redcoat being arrested by a darkie, sir, not even Sharpe. It ain’t right, that. And Major Stokes, he won’t help, sir. He likes Sharpe, see? He lets him live comfortable, sir. Off the fat of the land, sir, like it says in the scriptures. Got himself a set of rooms and a bibbi, he has, and a servant, too. Ain’t right, sir. Too comfortable, sir, whiles the rest of us sweats like the soldiers we swore to be.’

The explanation made some sort of sense, or at least Gore appreciated that it might convince Sergeant Hakeswill, yet there was still something odd about the whole tale. ‘What were you doing at the armoury after dark, Captain?’

‘Making certain the full complement of wagons was there, sir,’ Morris answered. ‘Sergeant Hakeswill informed me that one was missing.’

‘And was it?’

‘No, sir,’ Morris said.

‘Miscounted, sir,’ Hakeswill said, ‘on account of it being dark, sir.’ Hakeswill had indeed summoned Morris to the armoury after dark, and there he had hit the Captain with a baulk of timber and, for good measure, had added the contents of a chamber pot that Major Stokes had left outside his office. The sentries had been sheltering from the rain in the guardhouse and none had questioned the sight of Hakeswill dragging the recumbent Morris back to his quarters, for the sight of drunken officers being taken home by sergeants or privates was too common to be remarkable. The important thing was that Morris had not seen who assaulted him and was quite prepared to believe Hakeswill’s version, for Morris relied utterly on Hakeswill in everything. ‘I blames myself, sir,’ Hakeswill went on, ‘on account of not chasing Sharpie, but I thought my duty was to look after my Captain, sir, on account of him being drenched by a slop pot.’

‘Enough, Sergeant!’ Gore said.

‘It ain’t a Christian act, sir,’ Hakeswill muttered resentfully. ‘Not with a jakes pot, sir. Says so in the scriptures.’

Gore rubbed his face. The rain had taken the edge off the damp heat, but not by much, and he found the atmosphere horribly oppressive. Maybe the itch was just a reaction to the heat. He rubbed his hand across his belly, but it did not help. ‘Why would Sergeant Sharpe assault you without warning, Captain?’ he asked.

Morris shrugged. ‘He’s a disagreeable sort, sir,’ he offered weakly.

‘He never liked the Captain, sir, Sharpie didn’t,’ Hakeswill said, ‘and it’s my belief, sir, that he thought the Captain had come to summon him back to the battalion, where he ought to be soldiering instead of living off the fat of the land, but he don’t want to come back, sir, on account of being comfortable, sir, like he’s got no right to be. He never did know his place, sir, not Sharpe, sir. Got above himself, sir, he has, and he’s got cash in his breeches. On the fiddle, I dare say.’

Gore ignored the last accusation. ‘How badly are you hurt?’ he asked Morris.

‘Only cuts and bruises, sir.’ Morris straightened in the chair. ‘But it’s still a court-martial offence, sir.’

‘A capital offence, sir,’ Hakeswill said. ‘Up against the wall, sir, and God have mercy on his black soul, which I very much doubts God will, God having better things to worry about than a sorry piece of scum like Sharpie.’

Gore sighed. He suspected there was a great deal more to the story than he was hearing, but whatever the real facts Captain Morris was still right. All that mattered was that Sergeant Sharpe was alleged to have struck an officer, and no excuse in the world could explain away such an offence. Which meant Sergeant Sharpe would have to be tried and very probably shot, and Gore would regret that for he had heard some very good things of the young Sergeant Sharpe. ‘I had great hopes of Sergeant Sharpe,’ the Colonel said sadly.

‘Got above himself, sir,’ Hakeswill snapped. ‘Just ’cos he blew the mine at Seringapatam, sir, he thinks he’s got wings and can fly. Needs to have his feathers clipped, sir, says so in the scriptures.’

Gore looked scornfully at the twitching Sergeant. ‘And what did you do at the assault of the city, Sergeant?’ he asked.

‘My duty, sir, my duty,’ Hakeswill answered. ‘What is all I ever expects any other man to do, sir.’

Gore shook his head regretfully. There really was no way out of this dilemma. If Sharpe had struck an officer, then Sharpe must be punished. ‘I suppose he’ll have to be fetched back here,’ Gore admitted.

‘Of course,’ Morris agreed.

Gore frowned in irritation. This was all such a damned nuisance! Gore had desperately hoped that the 33rd would be attached to Wellesley’s army, which was about to plunge into Mahratta territory, but instead the battalion had been ordered to stay behind and guard Mysore against the bandits who still plagued the roads and hills. Now, it seemed, over-stretched as the battalion was, Gore would have to detach a party to arrest Sergeant Sharpe. ‘Captain Lawford could go for him,’ he suggested.

‘Hardly a job for an officer, sir,’ Morris said. ‘A sergeant could do the thing just as well.’

Gore considered the matter. Sending a sergeant would certainly be less disruptive to the battalion than losing an officer, and a sergeant could surely do the job as well as anyone. ‘How many men would he need?’ Gore asked.

‘Six men, sir,’ Hakeswill snapped. ‘I could do the job with six men.’

‘And Sergeant Hakeswill’s the best man for the job,’ Morris urged. He had no particular wish to lose Hakeswill’s services for the few days that it would take to fetch Sharpe, but Hakeswill had hinted that there was money in this business. Morris was not sure how much money, but he was in debt and Hakeswill had been persuasive. ‘By far the best man,’ he added.

‘On account of me knowing the little bugger’s cunning ways, sir,’ Hakeswill explained, ‘if you’ll excuse my Hindi.’

Gore nodded. He would like nothing more than to rid himself of Hakeswill for a while, for the man was a baleful influence on the battalion. Hakeswill was hated, that much Gore had learned, but he was also feared, for the Sergeant declared that he could not be killed. He had survived a hanging once, indeed the scar of the rope was still concealed beneath the stiff leather stock, and the men believed that Hakeswill was somehow under the protection of an evil angel. The Colonel knew that was a nonsense, but even so the very presence of the Sergeant made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. ‘I’ll have my clerk write the orders for you, Sergeant,’ the Colonel said.

‘Thank you, sir!’ Hakeswill said. ‘You won’t regret it, sir. Obadiah Hakeswill has never shirked his duty, sir, not like some as I could name.’

Gore dismissed Hakeswill who waited for Captain Morris under the building’s porch and watched the rain pelt onto the street. The Sergeant’s face twitched and his eyes held a peculiar malevolence that made the single sentry edge away. But in truth Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill was a happy man. God had put Richard Sharpe into his grasp and he would pay Sharpe back for all the insults of the last few years and especially for the ghastly moment when Sharpe had hurled Hakeswill among the Tippoo Sultan’s tigers. Hakeswill had thought the beasts would savage him, but his luck had held and the tigers had ignored him. It seemed they had been fed not an hour before and thus the guardian angel who preserved Hakeswill had once again come to his rescue.

So now Obadiah Hakeswill would have his revenge. He would choose six men, six bitter men who could be trusted, and they would take Sergeant Sharpe, and afterwards, somewhere on the road home from Seringapatam where there were no witnesses, they would find Sharpe’s money and then finish him. Shot while attempting to escape, that would be the explanation, and good riddance too. Hakeswill was happy and Sharpe was condemned.

Colonel McCandless led Sharpe north towards the wild country where the frontiers of Hyderabad, Mysore and the Mahratta states met. ‘Till I hear otherwise,’ McCandless told Sharpe, ‘I’m assuming our traitor is in Ahmednuggur.’

‘What’s that, sir? A city?’

‘A city and a fort next to each other,’ the Colonel said. McCandless’s big gelding seemed to eat up the miles, but Sharpe’s smaller mare offered a lumpy ride. Within an hour of leaving Seringapatam Sharpe’s muscles were sore, within two he felt as though the backs of his thighs were burning, and by late afternoon the stirrup leathers had abraded through his cotton trousers to grind his calves into bloody patches. ‘It’s one of Scindia’s frontier strongholds,’ the Colonel went on, ‘but I doubt it can hold out long. Wellesley plans to capture it, then strike on north.’

‘So we’re going to war, sir?’

‘Of course.’ McCandless frowned. ‘Does that worry you?’

‘No, sir,’ Sharpe said, nor did it. He had a good life in Seringapatam, maybe as good a life as any soldier had ever had anywhere, but in the four years between the fall of Seringapatam and the massacre at Chasalgaon Sharpe had not heard a shot fired in anger, and a part of him was envious of his old colleagues in the 33rd who fought brisk skirmishes against the bandits and rogues who plagued western Mysore.

‘We’re going to fight the Mahrattas,’ McCandless said. ‘You know who they are?’

‘I hear they’re bastards, sir.’

McCandless frowned at Sharpe’s foul language. ‘They are a confederation of independent states, Sharpe,’ he said primly, ‘that dominate much of western India. They are also warlike, piratical and untrustworthy, except, of course, for those which are our allies, who are romantic, gallant and heroic.’

‘Some are on our side, sir?’

‘A few. The Peshwa, for one, and he’s their titular leader, but small notice they take of him. Others are staying aloof from this war, but two of the biggest princes have decided to make a fight of it. One’s called Scindia, and he’s the Maharajah of Gwalior, and the other’s called Bhonsla, and he’s the Rajah of Berar.’

Sharpe tried standing in the stirrups to ease the pain in his seat, but it only made the chafing of his calves worse. ‘And what’s our quarrel with those two, sir?’

‘They’ve been much given to raiding into Hyderabad and Mysore lately, so now it’s time to settle them once and for all.’

‘And Lieutenant Dodd’s joined their army, sir?’

‘From what we hear, he’s joined Scindia’s army. But I haven’t heard much.’ The Colonel had already explained to Sharpe how he had been keeping his ears open for news of Dodd ever since the Lieutenant had persuaded his sepoys to defect, but then had come the terrible news of Chasalgaon, and McCandless, who had been travelling north to join Wellesley’s army, had seen Sharpe’s name in the report and so had turned around and hurried south to Seringapatam. At the same time he had sent some of his own Mahratta agents north to discover Dodd’s whereabouts. ‘We should meet those fellows today,’ the Colonel said, ‘or tomorrow at the latest.’

The rain had not stopped, but nor was it heavy. Mud spattered up the horses’ flanks and onto Sharpe’s boots and white trousers. He tried sitting half sideways, he tried leaning forward or tipping himself back, but the pain did not stop. He had never much liked horses, but now decided he hated them. ‘I’d like to meet Lieutenant Dodd again, sir,’ he told McCandless as the two men rode under dripping trees.

‘Be careful of him, Sharpe,’ McCandless warned. ‘He has a reputation.’

‘For what, sir?’

‘A fighter, of course. He’s no mean soldier. I’ve not met him, of course, but I’ve heard tales. He’s been up north, in Calcutta mostly, and made a name for himself there. He was first over the pettah wall at Panhapur. Not much of a wall, Sharpe, just a thicket of cactus thorn really, but it took his sepoys five minutes to follow him, and by the time they reached him he’d killed a dozen of the enemy. He’s a tall man who can use a sword and is a fine pistol shot too. He is, in brief, a killer.’

‘If he’s so good, sir, why is he still a lieutenant?’

The Colonel sighed. ‘I fear that is the way of the Company’s army, Sharpe. A man can’t buy his way up the ladder as he can in the King’s army, and there’s no promotion for good service. It all goes by seniority. Dead men’s shoes, Sharpe. A fellow must wait his turn in the Company, and there’s no way round it.’

‘So Dodd has been waiting, sir?’

‘A long time. He’s forty now, and I doubt he’d have got his captaincy much before he was fifty.’

‘Is that why he ran, sir?’

‘He ran because of the murder. He claimed a goldsmith cheated him of money and had his men beat the poor fellow so badly that he died. He was court-martialled, of course, but the only sentence he got was six months without pay. Six months without pay! That’s sanctioning murder, Sharpe! But Wellesley insisted the Company discharge him, and he planned to have Dodd tried before a civilian court and condemned to death, so Dodd ran.’ The Colonel paused. ‘I wish I could say we’re pursuing him because of the murder, Sharpe,’ he went on, ‘but that isn’t so. We’re pursuing him because he persuaded his men to defect. Once that rot starts, it might never stop, and we have to show the other sepoys that desertion will always be punished.’

Just before nightfall, when the rain had stopped and Sharpe thought his sore muscles and bleeding calves would make him moan aloud in agony, a group of horsemen came cantering towards them. To Sharpe they looked like silladars, the mercenary horsemen who hired themselves, their weapons and their horses to the British army, and he pulled his mare over to the left side of the road to give the heavily armed men room to pass, but their leader slowed as he approached, then raised a hand in greeting. ‘Colonel!’ he shouted.

‘Sevajee!’ McCandless cried and spurred his horse towards the oncoming Indian. He held out his hand and Sevajee clasped it.

‘You have news?’ McCandless asked.

Sevajee nodded. ‘Your fellow is inside Ahmednuggur, Colonel. He’s been given Mathers’s regiment.’ He was pleased with his news, grinning broadly to reveal red-stained teeth. He was a young man dressed in the remnants of a green uniform Sharpe did not recognize. The jacket had European epaulettes hung with silver chains, and over it was strapped a sword sling and a sash, both of white silk and both stained brown with dried blood.

‘Sergeant Sharpe,’ McCandless made the introductions, ‘this is Syud Sevajee.’

Sharpe nodded a wary greeting. ‘Sahib,’ he said, for there was something about Syud Sevajee that suggested he was a man of rank.

‘The Sergeant has seen Lieutenant Dodd,’ McCandless explained. ‘He’ll make sure we capture the right man.’

‘Kill all the Europeans,’ Sevajee suggested, ‘and you’ll be sure.’ The suggestion, it seemed to Sharpe, was not entirely flippant.

‘I want him captured alive,’ McCandless said irritably. ‘Justice must be seen to be done. Or would you rather that your people believe a British officer can beat a man to death without any punishment?’

‘They believe that anyway,’ Sevajee said carelessly, ‘but if you wish to be scrupulous, McCandless, then we shall capture Mister Dodd.’ Sevajee’s men, a dozen wild-looking warriors armed with everything from bows and arrows to lances, had fallen in behind McCandless.

‘Syud Sevajee is a Mahratta, Sharpe,’ McCandless explained.

‘One of the romantic ones, sir?’

‘Romantic?’ Sevajee repeated the word in surprise.

‘He’s on our side, if that’s what you mean,’ McCandless said.

‘No,’ Sevajee hurried to correct the Colonel. ‘I am opposed to Beny Singh, and so long as he lives I help the enemies of my enemy.’

‘Why’s this fellow your enemy, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?’ Sharpe asked.

Sevajee touched the hilt of his tulwar as if it was a fetish. ‘Because he killed my father, Sergeant.’

‘Then I hope you get the bastard, sir.’

‘Sharpe!’ McCandless said in reprimand.

Sevajee laughed. ‘My father,’ he explained to Sharpe, ‘led one of the Rajah of Berar’s compoos. He was a great warrior, Sergeant, and Beny Singh was his rival. He invited my father to a feast and served him poison. That was three years ago. My mother killed herself, but my younger brother serves Beny Singh and my sister is one of his concubines. They too will die.’

‘And you escaped, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘I was serving in the East India Company cavalry, Sergeant,’ Sevajee answered. ‘My father believed a man should know his enemy, so sent me to Madras.’

‘Where we met,’ McCandless said brusquely, ‘and now Sevajee serves me.’

‘Because in return,’ Sevajee explained, ‘your British bayonets will hand Beny Singh to my revenge. And with him, of course, the reward for Dodd. Four thousand, two hundred rupees, is it not?’

‘So long as he’s taken alive,’ McCandless said dourly, ‘and it might be increased once the Court of Directors hears what he did at Chasalgaon.’

‘And to think I almost caught him,’ Sevajee said, and described how he and his few men had visited Ahmednuggur posing as brindarries who were loyal to Scindia.

‘Brindarrie?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Like silladars,’ McCandless told him. ‘Freelance horsemen. And you saw Dodd?’ he asked Sevajee.

‘I heard him, Colonel, though I never got close. He was lecturing his regiment, telling them how they would chase you British out of India.’

McCandless scoffed. ‘He’ll be lucky to escape from Ahmednuggur! Why has he stayed there?’

‘To give Pohlmann a chance to attack?’ Sevajee suggested. ‘His compoo was still close to Ahmednuggur a few days ago.’

‘Just one compoo, sir?’ Sharpe suggested. ‘One compoo won’t beat Wellesley.’

Sevajee gave him a long, speculative look. ‘Pohlmann, Sergeant,’ he said, ‘is the best infantry leader in Indian service. He has never lost a battle, and his compoo is probably the finest infantry army in India. It already outnumbers Wellesley’s army, but if Scindia releases his other compoos, then together they will outnumber your Wellesley three to one. And if Scindia waits until Berar’s troops are with him, he’ll outnumber you ten to one.’

‘So why are we attacking, sir?’

‘Because we’re going to win,’ McCandless said firmly. ‘God’s will.’

‘Because, Sergeant,’ Sevajee said, ‘you British think that you are invincible. You believe you cannot be defeated, but you have not fought the Mahrattas. Your little army marches north full of confidence, but you are like mice waking an elephant.’

‘Some mice,’ McCandless snorted.

‘Some elephant,’ Sevajee said gently. ‘We are the Mahrattas, and if we did not fight amongst ourselves we would rule all India.’

‘You’ve not faced Scottish infantry yet,’ McCandless said confidently, ‘and Wellesley has two Scottish regiments with him. Besides, you forget that Stevenson has an army too, and he’s not so very far away.’ Two armies, both small, were invading the Mahratta Confederation, though Wellesley, as the senior officer, had control of both. ‘I reckon the mice will startle you yet,’ McCandless said.

They spent that night in a village. To the north, just beyond the horizon, the sky glowed red from the reflection of flames on the smoke of thousands of campfires, the sign that the British army was just a short march away. McCandless bargained with the headman for food and shelter, then frowned when Sevajee purchased a jar of fierce local arrack. Sevajee ignored the Scotsman’s disapproval, then went to join his men who were gaming in the village’s tavern. McCandless shook his head. ‘He fights for mercenary reasons, Sharpe, nothing else.’

‘That and vengeance, sir.’

‘Aye, he wants vengeance, I’ll grant him that, but once he’s got it he’ll turn on us like a snake.’ The Colonel rubbed his eyes. ‘He’s a useful man, all the same, but I wish I felt more confident about this whole business.’

‘The war, sir?’

McCandless shook his head. ‘We’ll win that. It doesn’t matter by how many they outnumber us, they won’t outfight us. No, Sharpe, I’m worried about Dodd.’

‘We’ll get him, sir,’ Sharpe said.

The Colonel said nothing for a while. An oil lamp flickered on the table, attracting huge winged moths, and in its dull light the Colonel’s thin face looked more cadaverous than ever. McCandless finally grimaced. ‘I’ve never been one for believing in the supernatural, Sharpe, other than the providences of Almighty God. Some of my countrymen claim they see and hear signs. They tell of foxes howling about the house when a death is imminent, or seals coming ashore when a man’s to be lost at sea, but I never credited such things. It’s mere superstition, Sharpe, pagan superstition, but I can’t chase away my dread about Dodd.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘Maybe it’s age.’

‘You’re not old, sir.’

McCandless smiled. ‘I’m sixty-three, Sharpe, and I should have retired ten years ago, except that the good Lord has seen fit to make me useful, but the Company isn’t so sure of my worth now. They’d like to give me a pension, and I can’t blame them. A full colonel’s salary is a heavy item on the Company’s accounts.’ McCandless offered Sharpe a rueful look. ‘You fight for King and country, Sharpe, but I fight and die for the shareholders.’

‘They’d never replace you, sir!’ Sharpe said loyally.

‘They already have,’ McCandless admitted softly, ‘or Wellesley has. He has his own head of intelligence now, and the Company knows it, so they tell me I am a “supernumerary upon the establishment”.’ He shrugged. ‘They want to put me out to pasture, Sharpe, but they did give me this one last errand, and that’s the apprehension of Lieutenant William Dodd, though I rather think he’s going to be the death of me.’

‘He won’t, sir, not while I’m here.’

‘That’s why you are here, Sharpe,’ McCandless said seriously. ‘He’s younger than I am, he’s fitter than I am and he’s a better swordsman than I am, and that’s why I thought of you. I saw you fight at Seringapatam and I doubt Dodd can stand up to you.’

‘He won’t, sir, he won’t,’ Sharpe said grimly. ‘And I’ll keep you alive, sir.’

‘If God wills it.’

Sharpe smiled. ‘Don’t they say God helps those who help themselves, sir? We’ll do the job, sir.’

‘I pray you’re right, Sharpe,’ McCandless said, ‘I pray you’re right.’ And they would start at Ahmednuggur, where Dodd waited and where Sharpe’s new war would begin.

CHAPTER 3

Colonel McCandless led his small force into Sir Arthur Wellesley’s encampment late the following afternoon. For most of the morning they had been shadowed by a band of enemy horsemen who sometimes galloped close as if inviting Sevajee’s men to ride out and fight, but McCandless kept Sevajee on a tight leash and at midday a patrol of horsemen in blue coats with yellow facings had chased the enemy away. The blue-coated cavalry were from the 19th Light Dragoons and the Captain leading the troop gave McCandless a cheerful wave as he cantered after the enemy who had been prowling the road in hope of finding a laggard supply wagon. Four hours later McCandless topped a gentle rise to see the army’s lines spread across the countryside while, four miles farther north, the red walls of Ahmednuggur stood in the westering sun. From this angle the fort and the city appeared as one continuous building, a vast red rampart studded with bastions. Sharpe cuffed sweat from his face. ‘Looks like a brute, sir,’ he said, nodding at the walls.

‘The wall’s big enough,’ the Colonel said, ‘but there’s no ditch, no glacis and no outworks. It’ll take us no more than three days to punch a hole.’

‘Then pity the poor souls who must go through the hole,’ Sevajee commented.

‘It’s what they’re paid to do,’ McCandless said brusquely.

The area about the camp seethed with men and animals. Every cavalry horse in the army needed two lascars to gather forage, and those men were busy with sickles, while nearer to the camp’s centre was a vast muddy expanse where the draught bullocks and pack oxen were picketed. Puckalees, the men who carried water for the troops and the animals, were filling their buckets from a tank scummed with green. A thorn hedge surrounded six elephants that belonged to the gunners, while next to the great beasts was the artillery park with its twenty-six cannon, and after that came the sepoys’ lines where children shrieked, dogs yapped and women carried patties of bullock dung on their heads to build the evening fires. The last part of the journey took them through the lines of the 78th, a kilted Highland regiment, and the soldiers saluted McCandless and then looked at the red facings on Sharpe’s coat and called out the inevitable insults. ‘Come to see how a real man fights, Sergeant?’

‘You ever done any proper fighting?’ Sharpe retorted.

‘What’s a Havercake doing here?’

‘Come to teach you boys a lesson.’

‘What in? Cooking?’

‘Where I come from,’ Sharpe said, ‘it’s the ones in skirts what does the cooking.’

‘Enough, Sharpe,’ McCandless snapped. The Colonel liked to wear a kilt himself, claiming it was a more suitable garment for India’s heat than trousers. ‘We must pay our respects to the General,’ McCandless said, and turned towards the larger tents in the centre of the encampment.

It had been two years since Sharpe had last seen his old Colonel and he doubted that Major-General Sir Arthur Wellesley would prove any friendlier now than he ever had. Sir Arthur had always been a cold fish, sparing with approval and frightening in his disapproval, and his most casual glance somehow managed to make Sharpe feel both insignificant and inadequate, and so, when McCandless dismounted outside the General’s tent, Sharpe deliberately hung back. The General, still a young man, was standing beside a line of six picketed horses and was evidently in a blazing temper. An orderly, in the blue-and-yellow coat of the 19th Dragoons, was holding a big grey stallion by its bridle and Wellesley was alternately patting the horse and snapping at the half-dozen aides who cowered nearby. A group of senior officers, majors and colonels, stood beside the General’s tent, suggesting that a council of war had been interrupted by the horse’s distress. The grey stallion was certainly suffering. It was shivering, its eyes were rolling white and sweat or spittle was dripping from its drooping head.

Wellesley turned as McCandless and Sevajee approached. ‘Can you bleed a horse, McCandless?’

‘I can put a knife in it, sir, if it helps,’ the Scotsman answered.

‘It does not help, damn it!’ Wellesley retorted savagely. ‘I don’t want him butchered, I want him bled. Where is the farrier?’

‘We’re looking for him, sir,’ an aide replied.

‘Then find him, damn it! Easy, boy, easy!’ These last three words were spoken in a soothing tone to the horse which had let out a feeble whinny. ‘He’s fevered,’ Wellesley explained to McCandless, ‘and if he ain’t bled, he’ll die.’

A groom hurried to the General’s side carrying a fleam and a blood stick, both of which he mutely offered to Wellesley. ‘No good giving them to me,’ the General snapped, ‘I can’t bleed a horse.’ He looked at his aides, then at the senior officers by the tent. ‘Someone must know how to do it,’ Wellesley pleaded. They were all men who lived with horses and professed to love them, though none knew how to bleed a horse, for that was a job left to servants, but finally a Scottish major averred that he had a shrewd idea of how the thing was done, and so he was given the fleam and its hammer. He took off his red coat, chose a fleam blade at random and stepped up to the shivering stallion. He placed the blade on the horse’s neck and drew back the hammer with his right hand.

‘Not like that!’ Sharpe blurted out. ‘You’ll kill him!’ A score of men stared at him while the Scottish Major, the blade unhit, looked rather relieved. ‘You’ve got the blade the wrong way round, sir,’ Sharpe explained. ‘You have to line it up along the vein, sir, not across it.’ He was blushing for having spoken out in front of the General and all the army’s senior officers.

Wellesley scowled at Sharpe. ‘Can you bleed a horse?’

‘I can’t ride the things, sir, but I do know how to bleed them. I worked in an inn yard,’ Sharpe added as though that was explanation enough.

‘Have you actually bled a horse?’ Wellesley demanded. He showed not the slightest surprise at seeing a man from his old battalion in the camp, but in truth he was far too distracted by his stallion’s distress to worry about mere men.

‘I’ve bled dozens, sir,’ Sharpe said, which was true, but those horses had been big heavy carriage beasts, and this white stallion was plainly a thoroughbred.

‘Then do it, damn it,’ the General said. ‘Don’t just stand there, do it!’

Sharpe took the fleam and the blood stick from the Major. The fleam looked like a misshapen penknife, and inside its brass case were folded a dozen blades. Two of the blades were shaped as hooks, while the rest were spoon-shaped. He selected a middle-sized spoon, checked that its edge was keen, folded the other blades away and then approached the horse. ‘You’ll have to hold him hard,’ he told the dragoon orderly.

‘He can be lively, Sergeant,’ the orderly warned in a low voice, anxious not to provoke another outburst from Wellesley.

‘Then hang on hard,’ Sharpe said to the orderly, then he stroked the horse’s neck, feeling for the jugular.

‘How much are you going to let out?’ Wellesley asked.

‘Much as it takes, sir,’ Sharpe said, who really had no idea how much blood he should spill. Enough to make it look good, he reckoned. The horse was nervous and tried to pull away from the orderly. ‘Give him a stroke, sir,’ Sharpe said to the General. ‘Let him know it ain’t the end of the world.’

Wellesley took the stallion’s head from the orderly and gave the beast’s nose a fondling. ‘It’s all right, Diomed,’ he said, ‘we’re going to make you better. Get on with it, Sharpe.’

Sharpe had found the jugular and now placed the sharp curve of the spoon-blade over the vein. He held the knife in his left hand and the blood stick in his right. The stick was a small wooden club that was needed to drive the fleam’s blade through a horse’s thick skin. ‘All right, boy,’ he murmured to the horse, ‘just a prick, nothing bad,’ and then he struck the blade hard with the stick’s blunt head.

The fleam sliced through hair and skin and flesh straight into the vein, and the horse reared up, but Sharpe, expecting the reaction, held the fleam in place as warm blood spurted out over his shako. ‘Hold him!’ he snapped at Wellesley, and the General seemed to find nothing odd in being ordered about by a sergeant and he obediently hauled Diomed’s head down. ‘That’s good,’ Sharpe said, ‘that’s good, just keep him there, sir, keep him there,’ and he skewed the blade slightly to open the slit in the vein and so let the blood pulse out. It ran red down the white horse’s flank, it soaked Sharpe’s red coat and puddled at his feet.

The horse shivered, but Sharpe sensed that the stallion was calming. By relaxing the pressure on the fleam he could lessen the blood flow and after a while he slowed it to a trickle and then, when the horse had stopped shivering, Sharpe pulled the blade free. His right hand and arm were drenched in blood.

He spat on his clean left hand, then wiped the small wound. ‘I reckon he’ll live, sir,’ he told the General, ‘but a bit of ginger in his feed might help.’ That was another trick he had learned at the coaching tavern.

Wellesley stroked Diomed’s nose and the horse, suddenly unconcerned by the fuss all about him, lowered his head and cropped at a miserable tuft of grass. The General smiled, his bad mood gone. ‘I’m greatly obliged to you, Sharpe,’ Wellesley said, relinquishing the bridle into the orderly’s grasp. ‘ ’Pon my soul, I’m greatly obliged to you,’ he repeated enthusiastically. ‘As neat a blood-letting as ever I did see.’ He put a hand into his pocket and brought out a haideri that he offered to Sharpe. ‘Well done, Sergeant.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Sharpe said, taking the gold coin. It was a generous reward.

‘Good as new, eh?’ Wellesley said, admiring the horse. ‘He was a gift.’

‘An expensive one,’ McCandless observed drily.

‘A valued one,’ Wellesley said. ‘Poor Ashton left him to me in his will. You knew Ashton, McCandless?’

‘Of course, sir.’ Henry Ashton had been Colonel of the 12th, a Suffolk regiment posted to India, and he had died after taking a bullet in the liver during a duel.

‘A damned shame,’ Wellesley said, ‘but a fine gift. Pure Arab blood, McCandless.’

Most of the pure Arab blood seemed to be on Sharpe, but the General was delighted with the horse’s sudden improvement. Indeed, Sharpe had never seen Wellesley so animated. He grinned as he watched the horse, then he told the orderly to walk Diomed up and down, and he grinned even more widely as he watched the horse move. Then, suddenly aware that the men about him were taking an amused pleasure from his own delight, his face drew back into its accustomed cold mask. ‘Obliged to you, Sharpe,’ he said yet again, then he turned and walked towards his tent. ‘McCandless! Come and give me your news!’

McCandless and Sevajee followed the General and his aides into the tent, leaving Sharpe trying to wipe the blood from his hands. The dragoon orderly grinned at him. ‘That’s a six-hundred-guinea horse you just bled, Sergeant,’ he said.

‘Bloody hell!’ Sharpe said, staring in disbelief at the dragoon. ‘Six hundred!’

‘Must be worth that. Best horse in India, Diomed is.’

‘And you look after him?’ Sharpe asked.

The orderly shook his head. ‘He’s got grooms to look after his horses, and the farrier to bleed and shoe them. My job is to follow him into battle, see? And when one horse gets tired I give him another.’

‘You drag all those six horses around?’ Sharpe asked, astonished.

‘Not all six of them,’ the dragoon said, ‘only two or three. But he shouldn’t have six horses anyway. He only wants five, but he can’t find anyone to buy the spare. You don’t know anyone who wants to buy a horse, do you?’

‘Hundreds of the buggers,’ Sharpe said, gesturing at the encampment. ‘Every bleeding infantryman over there for a start.’

‘It’s theirs if they’ve got four hundred guineas,’ the orderly said. ‘It’s that bay gelding, see?’ He pointed. ‘Six years old and good as gold.’

‘No use looking at me,’ Sharpe said. ‘I hate the bloody things.’

‘You do?’

‘Lumpy, smelly beasts. I’m happier on my feet.’

‘You see the world from a horse’s back,’ the dragoon said, ‘and catch women’s eyes.’

‘So they’re not entirely useless,’ Sharpe said and the orderly grinned. He was a happy, round-faced young man with tousled brown hair and a ready smile. ‘How come you’re the General’s orderly?’ Sharpe asked him.

The dragoon shrugged. ‘He asked my Colonel to give him someone and I was chosen.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘He’s all right,’ the orderly said, jerking his head towards Wellesley’s tent. ‘Don’t crack a smile often, leastwise not with the likes of you and me, but he’s a fair man.’

‘Good for him.’ Sharpe stuck out his bloodied hand. ‘My name’s Dick Sharpe.’

‘Daniel Fletcher,’ the orderly said, ‘from Stoke Poges.’

‘Never heard of it,’ Sharpe said. ‘Where can I get a scrub?’

‘Cook tent, Sergeant.’

‘And riding boots?’ Sharpe asked.

‘Find a dead man in Ahmednuggur,’ Fletcher said. ‘It’ll be cheaper than buying them off me.’

‘That’s true,’ Sharpe said, then he limped to the cook tent. The limp was caused by the sore muscles from long hours in the saddle. He had purchased a length of cotton cloth in the village where they had spent the night, then torn the cloth into strips that he had wrapped about his calves to protect them from the stirrup leathers, but his calves still hurt. God, he thought, but he hated bloody horses.

He washed the worst of Diomed’s blood from his hands and face, diluted what was on his uniform, then went back to wait for McCandless. Sevajee’s men still sat on their horses and stared at the distant city that was topped by a smear of smoke. Sharpe could hear the murmur of voices inside the General’s tent, but he paid no attention. It wasn’t his business. He wondered if he could scrounge a tent for his own use, for it had already rained earlier in the day and Sharpe suspected it might rain again, but Colonel McCandless was not a man much given to tents. He derided them as women’s luxuries, preferring to seek shelter with local villagers or, if no peasant house or cattle byre was available, happily sleeping beneath the stars or in the rain. A pint of rum, Sharpe thought, would not go amiss either.

‘Sergeant Sharpe!’ Wellesley’s familiar voice broke into his thoughts and Sharpe turned to see his old commanding officer coming from the big tent.

‘Sir!’ Sharpe stiffened to attention.

‘So Colonel McCandless has borrowed you from Major Stokes?’ Wellesley asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said. The General was bareheaded and Sharpe saw that his temples had turned prematurely grey. He seemed to have forgotten Sharpe’s handiwork with his horse, for his long-nosed face was as unfriendly as ever.

‘And you saw this man Dodd at Chasalgaon?’

‘I did, sir.’

‘Repugnant business,’ Wellesley said, ‘repugnant. Did he kill the wounded?’

‘All of them, sir. All but me.’

‘And why not you?’ Wellesley asked coldly.

‘I was covered in blood, sir. Fair drenched in it.’

‘You seem to be in that condition much of the time, Sergeant,’ Wellesley said with just a hint of a smile, then he turned back to McCandless. ‘I wish you joy of the hunt, Colonel. I’ll do my best to help you, but I’m short of men, woefully short.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ the Scotsman said, then watched as the General went back into his big tent which was crammed with red-coated officers. ‘It seems,’ McCandless said to Sharpe when the General was gone, ‘that we’re not invited to supper.’

‘Were you expecting to be, sir?’

‘No,’ McCandless said, ‘and I’ve no business in that tent tonight either. They’re planning an assault for first light tomorrow.’

Sharpe thought for a moment that he must have misheard. He looked northwards at the big city wall. ‘Tomorrow, sir? An assault? But they only got here today and there isn’t a breach!’

‘You don’t need a breach for an escalade, Sergeant,’ McCandless said. ‘An escalade is nothing but ladders and murder.’

Sharpe frowned. ‘Escalade?’ He had heard the word, but was not really sure he knew what it meant.

‘March straight up to the wall, Sharpe, throw your ladders against the ramparts and climb.’ McCandless shook his head. ‘No artillery to help you, no breach, no trenches to get you close, so you must accept the casualties and fight your way through the defenders. It isn’t pretty, Sharpe, but it can work.’ The Scotsman still sounded disapproving. He was leading Sharpe away from the General’s tent, seeking a place to spread his blanket. Sevajee and his men were following, and Sevajee was walking close enough to listen to McCandless’s words. ‘Escalades can work well against an unsteady enemy,’ the Colonel went on, ‘but I’m not at all convinced the Mahrattas are shaky. I doubt they’re shaky at all, Sharpe. They’re dangerous as snakes and they usually have Arab mercenaries in their ranks.’

‘Arabs, sir? From Arabia?’

‘That’s where they usually come from,’ McCandless confirmed. ‘Nasty fighters, Sharpe.’

‘Good fighters,’ Sevajee intervened. ‘We hire hundreds of them every year. Hungry men, Sergeant, who come from their bare land with sharp swords and long muskets.’

‘Doesn’t serve to underestimate an Arab,’ McCandless agreed. ‘They fight like demons, but Wellesley’s an impatient man and he wants the business over. He insists they won’t be expecting an escalade and thus won’t be ready for one, and I pray to God he’s right.’

‘So what do we do, sir?’ Sharpe asked.

‘We go in behind the assault, Sharpe, and beseech Almighty God that our ladder parties do get into the city. And once we’re inside we hunt for Dodd. That’s our job.’

‘Yes, sir,’ Sharpe said.

‘And once we have the traitor we take him to Madras, put him on trial and have him hanged,’ McCandless said with satisfaction, as though the job was as good as done. His gloomy forebodings of the previous night seemed to have vanished. He had stopped at a bare patch of ground. ‘This looks like a fair billet. No more rain in the offing, I think, so we should be comfortable.’

Like hell, Sharpe thought. A bare bed, no rum, a fight in the morning, and God only knew what kind of devils waiting across the wall, but he slept anyway.

And woke when it was still dark to see shadowy men straggling past with long ladders across their shoulders. Dawn was near and it was time for an escalade. Time for ladders and murder.

Sanjit Pandee was Killadar of the city, which meant that he commanded Ahmednuggur’s garrison in the name of his master, Dowlut Rao Scindia, Maharajah of Gwalior, and in principle every soldier in the city, though not in the adjacent fortress, was under Pandee’s command. So why had Major Dodd ejected Pandee’s troops from the northern gatehouse and substituted his own men? Pandee had sent no orders, but the deed had been done anyway and no one could explain why, and when Sanjit Pandee sent a message to Major Dodd and demanded an answer, the messenger was told to wait and, so far as the Killadar knew, was still waiting.

Sanjit Pandee finally summoned the courage to confront the Major himself. It was dawn, a time when the Killadar was not usually stirring, and he discovered Dodd and a group of his white-coated officers on the southern wall from where the Major was watching the British camp through a heavy telescope mounted on a tripod. Sanjit Pandee did not like to disturb the tall Dodd who was being forced to stoop awkwardly because the tripod was incapable of raising the glass to the level of his eye. The Killadar cleared his throat, but that had no effect, and then he scraped a foot on the firestep, and still Dodd did not even glance at him, so finally the Killadar demanded his explanation, though in very flowery terms just in case he gave the Englishman offence. Sanjit Pandee had already lost the battle over the city treasury which Dodd had simply commandeered without so much as a by-your-leave, and the Killadar was nervous of the scowling foreigner.

‘Tell the bloody man,’ Dodd told his interpreter without taking his eye from the telescope, ‘that he’s wasting my bloody time. Tell him to go and boil his backside.’

Dodd’s interpreter, who was one of his younger Indian officers, courteously suggested to the Killadar that Major Dodd’s attention was wholly consumed by the approaching enemy, but that as soon as he had a moment of leisure, the Major would be delighted to hold a conversation with the honoured Killadar.

The Killadar gazed southwards. Horsemen, British and Indian, were ranging far ahead of the approaching enemy column. Not that Sanjit Pandee could see the column properly, only a dark smudge among the distant green that he supposed was the enemy. Their feet kicked up no dust, but that was because of the rain that had fallen the day before. ‘Are the enemy truly coming?’ he enquired politely.

‘Of course they’re not bloody coming,’ Dodd said, standing upright and massaging the small of his back. ‘They’re running away in terror.’

‘The enemy are indeed approaching, sahib,’ the interpreter said deferentially.

The Killadar glanced along his defences and was reassured to see the bulk of Dodd’s regiment on the firestep, and alongside them the robed figures of his Arab mercenaries. ‘Your regiment’s guns,’ he said to the interpreter, ‘they are not here?’

‘Tell the interfering little bugger that I’ve sold all the bloody cannon to the enemy,’ Dodd growled.

‘The guns are placed where they will prove most useful, sahib,’ the interpreter assured the Killadar with a dazzling smile, and the Killadar, who knew that the five small guns were at the north gate where they were pointing in towards the city rather than out towards the plain, sighed in frustration. Europeans could be so very difficult.

‘And the three hundred men the Major has placed at the north gate?’ Sanjit Pandee said. ‘Is it because he expects an attack there?’

‘Ask the idiot why else they would be there,’ Dodd instructed the interpreter, but there was no time to tell the Killadar anything further because shouts from the ramparts announced the approach of three enemy horsemen. The emissaries rode beneath a white flag, but some of the Arabs were aiming their long-barrelled matchlocks at the approaching horsemen and the Killadar quickly sent some aides to tell the mercenaries to hold their fire. ‘They’ve come to offer us cowle,’ the Killadar said as he hurried towards the south gate. Cowle was an offer of terms, a chance for the defenders to surrender rather than face the horrors of assault, and the Killadar hoped he could prolong the negotiations long enough to persuade Major Dodd to bring the three hundred men back from the north gate.

The Killadar could see that the three horsemen were riding towards the south gate which was topped by a squat tower from which flew Scindia’s gaudy green and scarlet flag. To reach the tower the Killadar had to run down some stone steps because the stretch of wall just west of the gate possessed no firestep, but was simply a high, blank wall of red stone. He hurried along the foot of the wall, then climbed more steps to reach the gate tower just as the three horsemen reined in beneath.

Two of the horsemen were Indians while the third was a British officer, and the three men had indeed come to offer the city cowle. If the Killadar surrendered, one of the Indians shouted, the city’s defenders would be permitted to march from Ahmednuggur with all their hand weapons and whatever personal belongings they could carry. General Wellesley would guarantee the garrison safe passage as far as the River Godavery, beyond which Pohlmann’s compoo had withdrawn. The officer finished by demanding an immediate answer.

Sanjit Pandee hesitated. The cowle was generous, surprisingly generous, and he was tempted to accept because no man would die if he took the terms. He could see the approaching column clearly now, and it looked to him like a red stain smothering the plain. There would be guns there, and the gods alone knew how many muskets. Then he glanced to his left and right and he saw the reassuring height of his walls, and he saw the white robes of his fearsome Arabs, and he contemplated what Dowlut Rao Scindia would say if he meekly surrendered Ahmednuggur. Scindia would be angry, and an angry Scindia was liable to put whoever had angered him beneath the elephant’s foot. The Killadar’s task was to delay the British in front of Ahmednuggur while Scindia gathered his allies and so prepared the vast army that would crush the invader. Sanjit Pandee sighed. ‘There can be no cowle,’ he called down to Wellesley’s three messengers, and the horsemen did not try to change his mind. They just tugged on their reins, spurred their horses and rode away. ‘They want battle,’ the Killadar said sadly, ‘they want loot.’

‘That’s why they come here,’ an aide replied. ‘Their own land is barren.’

‘I hear it is green,’ Sanjit Pandee said.

‘No, sahib, barren and dry. Why else would they be here?’

News spread along the walls that cowle had been refused. No one had expected otherwise, but the Killadar’s reluctant defiance cheered the defenders whose ranks thickened as townsfolk climbed to the firestep to see the approaching enemy.

Dodd scowled when he saw that women and children were thronging the ramparts to view the enemy. ‘Clear them away!’ he ordered his interpreter. ‘I want only the duty companies up here.’ He watched as his orders were obeyed. ‘Nothing’s going to happen for three days now,’ he assured his officers. ‘They’ll send skirmishers to harass us, but skirmishers can’t hurt us if we don’t show our heads above the wall. So tell the men to keep their heads down. And no one’s to fire at the skirmishers, you understand? No point in wasting good balls on skirmishers. We’ll open fire after three days.’

‘In three days, sahib?’ a young Indian officer asked.

‘It will take the bastards one day to establish batteries and two to make a breach,’ Dodd forecast confidently. ‘And on the fourth day the buggers will come, so there’s nothing to get excited about now.’ The Major decided to set an example of insouciance in the face of the enemy. ‘I’m going for breakfast,’ he told his officers. ‘I’ll be back when the bastards start digging their breaching batteries.’

The tall Major ran down the steps and disappeared into the city’s alleys. The interpreter looked back at the approaching column, then put his eye to the telescope. He was looking for guns, but at first he could see only a mass of men in red coats with the odd horseman among their ranks, and then he saw something odd. Something he did not comprehend.

Some of the men in the front ranks were carrying ladders. He frowned, then saw something more familiar beyond the red ranks and tilted the glass so that he could see the enemy’s cannon. There were only five guns, one being hauled by men and the four larger by elephants, and behind the artillery were more redcoats. Those redcoats wore patterned skirts and had high black hats, and the interpreter was glad that he was behind the wall, for somehow the men in skirts looked fearsome.

He looked back at the ladders and did not really understand what he saw. There were only four ladders, so plainly they did not mean to lean them against the wall. Maybe, he thought, the British planned to make an observation tower so that they could see over the defences, and that explanation made sense and so he did not comprehend that there was to be no siege at all, but an escalade. The enemy was not planning to knock a hole in the wall, but to swarm straight over it. There would be no waiting, no digging, no saps, no batteries and no breach. There would just be a charge, a scream, a torrent of fire, and then death in the morning sun.

‘The thing is, Sharpe,’ McCandless said, ‘not to get yourself killed.’

‘Wasn’t planning on it, sir.’

‘No heroics, Sharpe. It’s not your job. We just follow the heroes into the city, look for Mister Dodd, then go back home.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘So stay close to me, and I’m staying close to Colonel Wallace’s party, so if you lose me, look for him. That’s Wallace there, see him?’ McCandless indicated a tall, bare-headed officer riding at the front of the 74th.

‘I see him, sir,’ Sharpe said. He was mounted on McCandless’s spare horse and the extra height allowed him to see over the heads of the King’s 74th who marched in front of him. Beyond the Highlanders the city wall looked dark red in the early sun, and on its summit he could see the occasional glint of a musket showing between the dome-shaped merlons that topped the wall. Big round bastions stood every hundred yards and those bastions had black embrasures which Sharpe assumed hid the defenders’ cannon. The brightly coloured statues of a temple’s tower showed above the rampart while a slew of flags drooped over the gate. No one fired yet. The British were within cannon range, but the defenders were keeping their guns quiet.

Most of the British force now checked a half-mile from the walls while the three assault parties organized themselves. Two of the attacking groups would escalade the wall, one to the left of the gate and the other to the right, and both would be led by Scottish soldiers with sepoys in support. The King’s 78th, the kilted regiment, would attack the wall to the left while their fellow Highlanders of the 74th would assault to the right. The third attack was in the centre and would be led by the 74th’s Colonel, William Wallace, who was also commander of one of the two infantry brigades and evidently an old friend of McCandless for, seeing his fellow Scot, Wallace rode back through his regiment’s ranks to greet him with a warm familiarity. Wallace would be leading men of the 74th in an assault against the gate itself and his plan was to run a six-pounder cannon hard up against the big timber gates then fire the gun to blast the entrance open. ‘None of our gunners have ever done it before,’ Wallace told McCandless, ‘and they’ve insisted on putting a round shot down the gun, but I swear my mother told me you should never load shot to open gates. A double powder charge, she instructed me, and nothing else.’

‘Your mother told you that, Wallace?’ McCandless asked.

‘Her father was an artilleryman, you see, and he brought her up properly. But I can’t persuade our gunners to leave out the ball. Stubborn fellows, they are. English to a man, of course. Can’t teach them anything.’ Wallace offered McCandless his canteen. ‘It’s cold tea, McCandless, nothing that will send your soul to perdition.’

McCandless took a swig of the tea, then introduced Sharpe. ‘He was the fellow who blew the Tippoo’s mine in Seringapatam,’ he told Wallace.

‘I heard about you, Sharpe!’ Wallace said. ‘A damn fine day’s work, Sergeant, well done.’ And the Scotsman leaned across to give Sharpe his hand. He was a middle-aged man, balding, with a pleasant face and a quick smile. ‘I can tempt you to some cold tea, Sharpe?’

‘I’ve got water, sir, thank you,’ Sharpe said, patting his canteen which was filled with rum, a gift from Daniel Fletcher, the General’s orderly.

‘You’ll forgive me if I’m about my business,’ Wallace said to McCandless, retrieving his canteen. ‘I’ll see you inside the city, McCandless. Joy of the day to you both.’ Wallace spurred back to the head of his column.

‘A very good man,’ McCandless said warmly, ‘a very good man indeed.’

Sevajee and his dozen men cantered up to join McCandless. They all wore red jackets, for they planned to ride into the city with McCandless and none wanted to be mistaken for the enemy, yet somehow the unbuttoned jackets, which had been borrowed from a sepoy battalion, made them look more piratical than ever. They all carried naked tulwars, curved sabres that they had honed to a razor’s edge at dawn. Sevajee reckoned there would be no time for aiming firelocks once they were inside Ahmednuggur. Ride in, charge whoever still put up a fight and cut down hard.

The two escalade parties started forward. Each had a pair of ladders, and each party was led by those men who had volunteered to be first up the rungs. The sun was fully above the horizon now and Sharpe could see the wall more plainly. He reckoned it was twenty foot high, give or take a few inches, and the glint of guns in every embrasure and loophole showed that it would be heavily defended. ‘Ever seen an escalade, Sharpe?’ McCandless asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘Risky business. Frail things, ladders. Nasty being first up.’

‘Very nasty, sir.’

‘And if it fails it gives the enemy confidence.’

‘So why do it, sir?’

‘Because if it succeeds, Sharpe, it lowers the enemy’s spirits. It will make us seem invincible. Veni, vidi, vici.’

‘I don’t speak any Indian, sir, not proper.’

‘Latin, Sharpe, Latin. I came, I saw, I conquered. How’s your reading these days?’

‘It’s good, sir, very good,’ Sharpe answered enthusiastically, though in truth he had not read very much in the last four years other than lists of stores and duty rosters and Major Stokes’s repair orders. But it had been Colonel McCandless and his nephew, Lieutenant Lawford, who had first taught Sharpe to read when they shared a cell in the Tippoo Sultan’s prison. That was four years ago now.

‘I shall give you a Bible, Sharpe,’ McCandless said, watching the escalade parties march steadily forward. ‘It’s the one book worth reading.’

‘I’d like that, sir,’ Sharpe said straight-faced, then saw that the picquets of the day were running ahead to make a skirmish line that would pepper the wall with musket fire. Still no one fired from the city wall, though by now both the picquets and the two ladder parties were well inside musket range. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, sir,’ Sharpe said to McCandless, ‘what’s to stop that bugger – sorry, sir – what’s to stop Mister Dodd from escaping out the other side of the city, sir?’

‘They are, Sharpe,’ McCandless said, indicating the cavalry that now galloped off on both sides of the city. The British 19th Dragoons rode in a tight squadron, but the other horsemen were Mahratta allies or else silladars from Hyderabad or Mysore, and they rode in a loose swarm. ‘Their job is to harass anyone leaving the city,’ McCandless went on. ‘Not the civilians, of course, but any troops.’

‘But Dodd’s got a whole regiment, sir.’

McCandless dismissed the problem. ‘I doubt that two whole regiments will serve him. In a minute or two there’ll be sheer panic inside Ahmednuggur, and how’s Dodd to get away? He’ll have to fight his way through a crowd of terrified civilians. No, we’ll find him inside the place if he’s still there.’

‘He is,’ Sevajee put in. He was staring at the wall through a small telescope. ‘I can see the uniforms of his men on the firestep. White jackets.’ He pointed westwards, beyond the stretch of wall that would be attacked by the 78th.

The picquets suddenly opened fire. They were scattered along the southern edge of the city, and their musketry was sporadic and, to Sharpe, futile. Men firing at a city? The musket balls smacked into the red stone of the wall which echoed back the crackle of the gunfire, but the defenders ignored the threat. Not a musket replied, not a cannon fired. The wall was silent. Shreds of smoke drifted from the skirmish line which went on chipping the big red stones with lead.

Colonel Wallace’s assault party was late in starting, while the kilted men of the 78th, who were assaulting the wall to the left of the gate, were now far in advance of the other attackers. They were running across open ground, their two ladders in plain sight of the enemy, but still the defenders ignored them. A regiment of sepoys was wheeling left, going to add their musket fire to the picquet line. A bagpiper was playing, but he must have been running for his instrument kept giving small ignominious hiccups. In truth it all seemed ignominious to Sharpe. The battle, if it could even be called a battle, had begun so casually, and the enemy was not even appearing to regard it as a threat. The skirmishers’ fire was scattered, the assault parties looked under strength and there seemed to be no urgency and no ceremony. There ought to be ceremony, Sharpe considered. A band should be playing, flags should be flying, and the enemy should be visible and threatening, but instead it was ramshackle and almost unreal.

‘This way, Sharpe,’ McCandless said, and swerved away to where Colonel Wallace was chivvying his men into formation. A dozen blue-coated gunners were clustered about a six-pounder cannon, evidently the gun that would be rammed against the city gate, while just beyond them was a battery of four twelve-pounder cannon drawn by elephants and, as Sharpe and McCandless urged their horses towards Wallace, the four mahouts halted their elephants and the gunners hurried to unharness the four guns. Sharpe guessed the battery would spray the wall with canister, though the silence of the defenders seemed to suggest that they had nothing to fear from these impudent attackers. Sir Arthur Wellesley, mounted on Diomed who seemed no worse for his blood-letting, rode up behind the guns and called some instruction to the battery commander who raised a hand in acknowledgement. The General was accompanied by three scarlet-coated aides and two Indians who, from the richness of their robes, had to be commanders of the allied horsemen who had ridden to stop the flight of fugitives from the city’s northern gate.

The attackers from the 78th were just a hundred paces from the wall now. They had no packs, only their weapons. And still the enemy treated them with lordly disdain. Not a gun fired, not a musket flamed, not a single rocket slashed out from the wall.

‘Looks like it will be easy, McCandless!’ Wallace called.

‘I pray as much!’ McCandless said.

‘The enemy has been praying too,’ Sevajee said, but McCandless ignored the remark.

Then, suddenly and appallingly, the silence ended.

The enemy was not ignoring the attack. Instead, from serried loopholes in the wall and from the bastions’ high embrasures and from the merlons along the parapet, a storm of gunfire erupted. One moment the wall had been clear in the morning sun, now it was fogged by a thick screen of powder smoke. A whole city was rimmed white, and the ground about the attacking troops was pitted and churned by the strike of bullets. ‘Ten minutes of seven,’ McCandless shouted over the noise, as though the time was important. Rockets, like those Sharpe had seen at Seringapatam, seared out from the walls to stitch their smoke trails in crazy tangles above the assaulting parties’ heads, yet, despite the volume of fire, the defenders’ opening volley appeared to do little harm. One redcoat was staggering, but the assault parties still went forward, and then a pain-filled squeal made Sharpe look to his right to see that an elephant had been struck by a cannonball. The beast’s mahout was dragging on its tether, but the elephant broke free and, maddened by its wound, charged straight towards Wallace’s men. The Highlanders scattered. The gunners had begun to drag their loaded six-pounder forward, but they were right in the injured beast’s path and now sensibly abandoned the gun to flee from the crazed animal’s charge. The wrinkled skin of the elephant’s left flank was sheeted in red. Wallace shouted incoherently, then spurred his horse out of the way. The elephant, trunk raised and eyes white, thumped past McCandless and Sharpe. ‘Poor girl,’ McCandless said.

‘It’s a she?’ Sharpe asked.

‘All draught animals are female, Sharpe. More docile.’

‘She ain’t docile, sir,’ Sharpe said, watching the elephant burst free of the army’s rear and trample through a field of stubble pursued by her mahout and an excited crowd of small skinny children who had followed the attacking troops from the encampment and now whooped shrilly as they enjoyed the chase. Sharpe watched them, then involuntarily ducked as a musket ball whipped just over his shako and another ricocheted off the six-pounder’s barrel with a surprisingly musical note.

‘Not too close now, Sharpe,’ McCandless warned, and Sharpe obediently reined in his mare.

Colonel Wallace was calling his men back into formation. ‘Damned animals!’ he snarled at McCandless.

‘Your mother had no advice on elephants, Wallace?’

‘None I’d repeat to a godly man, McCandless,’ Wallace said, then spurred his horse towards the six-pounder’s disordered gunners. ‘Pick up the traces, you rogues. Hurry!’

The 78th had reached the wall to the left of the gate. They rammed the foot of their two ladders into the soil, then swung the tops up and over onto the wall’s parapet. ‘Good boys,’ McCandless shouted warmly, though he was far too distant for the attackers to hear his encouragement. ‘Good boys!’ The first kilted Highlanders were already scrambling up the rungs, but then a man was hit by a bullet from the flanking bastion and he stopped, clung to the ladder, then slowly toppled sideways. A crowd of Highlanders jostled at the bottom of the ladders to be the next up the rungs. Poor bastards, Sharpe thought, so eager to climb to death, and he saw that the leading men on both ladders were officers. They had swords. The men climbed with their bayonet-tipped muskets slung over their shoulders, but the officers climbed sword in hand. One of them was struck and the man behind unceremoniously shoved him off the ladder and hurried up to the parapet and there, inexplicably, he stopped.

His comrades shouted at him to get a bloody move on and scramble over the wall, but the man did nothing except to unsling his musket, and then he was hurled backwards in a misting spray of blood. Another man took his place, and the same happened to him. The officer at the top of the second ladder was crouching on the top rung, occasionally peering over the coping of the wall between two of the dome-shaped merlons, but he was making no attempt to cross the parapet. ‘They should have more than two ladders, sir,’ Sharpe grumbled.

‘Wasn’t time, laddie, wasn’t time,’ McCandless said. ‘What’s holding them?’ he asked as he stared with an agonized expression at the stalled men. The Arab defenders in the nearest bastion were being given a fine target and their musketry was having a terrible effect on the crowded ladders. The noise of the defenders’ fire was continuous; a staccato crackle of musketry, the hiss of rockets and the thunderous crash of cannon. Men were blasted off the ladders, and their place was immediately taken by others, but still the men at the top of the rungs did not try to cross the wall, and still the defenders fired and the dead and injured heaped up at the foot of the ladders and the living pushed them aside to reach the rungs and so offer themselves as targets to the unending gunfire. One man at last heaved himself onto the wall and straddled the coping where he unslung his musket and fired a shot down into the city, but almost immediately he was hit by a blast of musket fire. He swayed for a second, his musket clattered down the wall’s red face, then he followed it to the ground. The new man at the top of the ladder heaved himself up, then, just like the rest, he checked and ducked back.

‘What’s holding them?’ McCandless cried in frustration. ‘In God’s name! Go!’

‘There’s no bloody firestep,’ Sharpe said grimly.

McCandless glanced at him. ‘What?’

‘Sorry, sir. Forgot not to curse, sir.’

But McCandless was not worried about Sharpe’s language. ‘What did you say, man?’ he insisted.

‘There’s no firestep there, sir.’ Sharpe pointed at the wall where the Scotsmen were dying. ‘There’s no musket smoke on the parapet, sir.’

McCandless looked back. ‘By God, you’re right.’

The wall had merlons and embrasures, but not a single patch of musket smoke showed in those defences, which meant that the castellation was false and there was no firestep on the wall’s far side where defenders could stand. From the outside the stretch of wall looked like any other part of the city’s defences, but Sharpe guessed that once the Highlanders reached the wall’s summit they were faced with a sheer drop on the far side, and doubtless there was a crowd of enemies waiting at the foot of that inner wall to massacre any man who survived the fall. The 78th were attacking into thin air and being bloodied mercilessly by the jubilant defenders.

The two ladders emptied as the officers at last realized their predicament and shouted at their men to come down. The defenders cheered the repulse and kept firing as the two ladders were carried back from the ramparts.

‘Dear God,’ McCandless said, ‘dear God.’

‘I warned you,’ Sevajee said, unable to conceal his pride in the fighting qualities of the Mahratta defenders.

‘You’re on our side!’ McCandless snarled, and the Indian just shrugged.

‘It ain’t over yet, sir,’ Sharpe tried to cheer up the Scotsman.

‘Escalades work by speed, Sharpe,’ McCandless said, ‘and we’ve lost surprise now.’

‘It will have to be done properly,’ Sevajee remarked smugly, ‘with guns and a breach.’

But the escalade was not defeated yet. The assault party of the 74th had now reached the wall to the right of the gate and their two ladders were swung up against the high red stones, but this stretch of wall did possess a firestep and it was crowded with eager defenders who rained a savage fire down onto the attackers. The British twelve-pounders had opened fire, and their canister was savaging the defenders, but the dead and wounded were dragged away to be replaced by reinforcements who quickly learned that if they let the attackers come up the two ladders then the cannon would cease fire, and so they let the Scots climb the rungs and then hurled down baulks of wood that could scrape a ladder clear in seconds. Then a cannon in one of the flanking bastions hammered a barrel load of stones and scrap iron into the men crowding about the foot of the ladders. ‘Oh, dear God,’ McCandless prayed again, ‘dear God.’ More men began to climb the ladders while the wounded crawled and limped back from the walls, pursued by the musket fire of the defenders. A Scottish officer, claymore in hand, ran up one of the ladders with the facility of a sailor swarming up rigging. He cut the claymore at a lunging bayonet, somehow survived a musket blast, put a hand on the coping, but then a spear took him in the throat and he seemed to shake like a gaffed fish before tumbling backwards and carrying two men down to the ground with him. The sound of the defenders’ musketry was punctuated by the deeper crash of the small cannon that were mounted in the hidden galleries of the bastions. One of those cannon now struck a ladder in the flank and Sharpe watched appalled as the whole flimsy thing buckled and broke, carrying seven men down to the ground in its wreckage. The 78th had been repulsed and the 74th had lost one of their two ladders. ‘This is not good,’ McCandless said grimly, ‘not good at all.’

‘Fighting Mahrattas,’ Sevajee said smugly, ‘is not like fighting men from Mysore.’

Colonel Wallace’s party was still a good hundred yards from the gate, slowed by the weight of their six-pounder cannon. It seemed to Sharpe that Wallace needed more men to handle the cumbersome gun and the enemy’s musket fire was taking its toll of the few men he did have shoving at the wheels or dragging at the traces. Wellesley was not far behind Wallace, and just behind the General, mounted on one of his spare horses and with a second on a leading rein, was Daniel Fletcher. The musket fire spurted scraps of dried mud all around Wellesley and his aides, but the General seemed to have a charmed life.

The 78th returned to the attack on the left, only this time they ran their two ladders directly at the bastion which flanked the wall where their first attempt had failed. The threatened bastion reacted with an angry explosion of musket fire. One of the ladders fell, its carriers hard hit by the volley, but the other swung on up and as soon as its top struck the bastion’s summit a kilted officer climbed the rungs. ‘No!’ McCandless cried, as the officer was hit and fell. Other men took his place, but the defenders tipped a basket of stones over the parapet and the tumbling rocks scoured the ladder clear. A volley of musketry made the defenders duck and when the smoke cleared Sharpe saw that the kilted officer was again ascending the ladder, this time without his tall hat. He carried his claymore in his right hand and the big sword hampered him. An Arab fleetingly appeared at the top of the ladder with a lump of timber that he hurled down at the attacker, and the officer was thrown back a second time. ‘No!’ McCandless lamented again, but then the same officer appeared a third time. He was determined to have the honour of being first into the city, and this time he had tied his red waist-sash to his wrist and let his claymore hang by its hilt from a loop of the silk, thus leaving both hands free and allowing him to climb much faster. He kept climbing, and his men crowded behind him in their big bearskin hats, and the loopholes in the bastion’s galleries spat flame and smoke as they scrambled past the bastion’s storeys, but magically the officer survived the fusillade and Sharpe had his heart in his mouth as the man drew nearer and nearer to the top. He expected to see a defender appear at any moment, but the attackers who were not queuing at the foot of the ladder were now hammering the bastion’s summit with musket fire and under its cover the bare-headed officer scrambled up the last few rungs, paused to take hold of his claymore’s hilt, then leaped over the top of the wall. Someone cheered, and Sharpe caught a distinct view of the officer’s claymore rising and falling above the red wall’s coping. More Highlanders were clambering up the ladder and though some were blasted off by musket fire from the bastion’s loopholes, others were at last reaching the high parapet and following their officer onto the defences. The second ladder was swung into place and the trickle of attackers became a stream. ‘Thank God,’ McCandless said fervently, ‘thank God indeed.’

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