CHAPTER 7

Dodd needed to practise with the rifle and so, on the day that the British reached the top of the high escarpment, he settled himself in some rocks at the top of the cliff and gauged the range to the party of sepoys who were levelling the last few yards of the road. Unlike a musket, the rifle had proper sights, and he set the range at two hundred yards, then propped the barrel in a stone cleft and aimed at a blue-coated engineer who was standing just beneath the sweating sepoys. A gust of wind swept up the cliffs, driving some circling buzzards high up into the air.

Dodd waited until the wind settled, then squeezed the trigger.

The rifle slammed into his shoulder with surprising force. The smoke blotted his view instantly, but another billow of wind carried it away and he was rewarded by the sight of the engineer bent double. He thought he must have hit the man, but then saw the engineer had been picking up his straw hat that must have fallen as he reacted to the close passage of the spinning bullet. The engineer beat dust from the hat against his thigh and stared up at the drifting patch of smoke.

Dodd wriggled back out of view and reloaded the rifle. It was hard work. The barrel of a rifle, unlike a musket, had spiralling grooves cast into the barrel to spin the bullet. The spin made the weapon extraordinarily accurate, but the grooves resisted the rammer, and the resistance was made worse because the bullet, if it was to be spun by the grooves, had to fit the barrel tightly. Dodd wrapped a bullet in one of the small greased leather patches that gave the barrel purchase, then grunted as he shoved the ramrod hard down. One of the Mahratta cavalrymen who escorted Dodd on his daily rides shouted a warning, and Dodd peered over the rock to see that a company of sepoy infantry was scrambling to the top of the slope. The first of them were already on the plateau and coming towards him. He primed the rifle, settled it on the makeshift fire step again and reckoned that he had not allowed for the effect of the wind on the last bullet. He aimed at the sepoys' officer, a man whose small round spectacles reflected the sun, and, letting the barrel edge slightly windwards, he fired again.

The rifle hammered back onto his shoulder. Smoke billowed as Dodd ran to his horse and clambered into the saddle. He slung the rifle, turned the horse and saw that the red-coated officer was on the ground with two of his men kneeling beside him. He grinned. Two hundred paces!

A wild volley of musketry followed the Mahratta horsemen as they rode westwards towards Gawilghur. The balls rattled on rocks or whistled overhead, but none of the cavalrymen was touched. After half a mile Dodd stopped, dismounted and reloaded the rifle. A troop of sepoy cavalry was climbing the last few yards of the road, the men walking as they led their horses around the final steep bend. Dodd found another place to rest the rifle, then waited for the cavalry to approach along the cliff's edge.

He kept the sights at two hundred yards. He knew that was very long range, even for a rifle, but if he could hit at two hundred yards then he was confident of killing at a hundred or at fifty.

“Sahib!” The commander of his escort was worried by the more numerous sepoy cavalry who had now mounted and were trotting towards them.

“In a minute,” Dodd called back. He picked his target, another officer, and waited for the man to ride into the rifle's sights. The wind was fitful.

It gusted, blowing dust into Dodd's right eye and making him blink.

Sweat trickled down his face. The approaching cavalry had sabres drawn and the blades glittered in the sun. One man carried a dusty pennant on a short staff. They came raggedly, twisting between the rocks and low bushes. Their horses kept their heads low, tired after the effort of climbing the steep hill.

The officer curbed his horse to let his men catch up. The wind died to nothing and Dodd squeezed the trigger and flinched as the heavy stock slammed into his bruised shoulder.

“Sahib!”

“We're going,” Dodd said, and he put his left foot into the stirrup and heaved himself into the saddle. A glance behind showed a riderless horse and a score of men spurring forward to take revenge. Dodd laughed, slung the rifle, and kicked his horse into a canter. He heard a shout behind as the sepoy cavalry were urged into the pursuit, but Dodd and his escort were mounted on fresh horses and easily outstripped the sepoys.

Dodd curbed his horse on the neck of rocky land that led to Gawilghur's Outer Fort. The walls were thick with men who watched the enemy's approach, and the sight of those spectators gave Dodd an idea. He threw the rifle to the commander of his escort.

“Hold it for me!”

he ordered, then turned his horse to face the pursuing horsemen. He waved his escort on towards the fortress and drew his sword. It was a beautiful weapon, European made, then sent to India where craftsmen had given it a hilt of gold shaped like an elephant's head. The escort commander, charged with protecting Dodd's life, wanted to stay, but Dodd insisted he ride on.

“I'll join you in five minutes,” he promised.

Dodd barred the road. He glanced behind him once, just to check that the Outer Fort's ramparts were crowded with men, then he looked back to the approaching cavalry. They slowed as they reached the rock isthmus. They could have kept galloping, and Dodd would then have turned his horse and outrun them, but instead they curbed their sweating horses and just stood watching him from a hundred paces away. They knew what he wanted, but Dodd saluted them with his sword just to make certain they understood his challenge. A havildar urged his horse forward, but then an English voice summoned him back and the man reluctantly turned.

The English officer drew his sabre. He had lost his hat in the gallop along the edge of the clifF and had long fair hair that was matted with sweat and dirt. He wore a black and scarlet jacket and was mounted on a tall bay gelding that was white with sweat. He saluted Dodd by holding his sabre up, hilt before his face, then he touched the gelding's flanks with the tips of his spurs and the horse walked forward. Dodd spurred his own horse and the two slowly closed. The Englishman went into a trot, then clapped his heels to drive his horse into a canter and Dodd saw the puffs of dust spurting from the gelding's hooves. He kept his horse at a walk, only touching it into a trot at the very last second as the Englishman stood in his stirrups to deliver a scything cut with the sabre.

Dodd tweaked the rein and his horse swerved to the left, then he was turning it back right, turning it all the way, and the sabre had missed his head by a scant two inches and he had not even bothered to parry with his sword. Now he spurred the horse on, following the officer who was trying to turn back, and the Englishman was still half turned, still tugging on the reins, as Dodd attacked. The sabre made an awkward parry that just managed to deflect the sword's thrust. Dodd hacked back as he passed, felt the blade thump home, then he hauled on the reins and was turning again, and the Englishman was also turning so that the two horses seemed to curl around each other, nose to tail, and the sabre and sword rang together. Dodd was taller than his opponent, but the young Englishman, who was a lieutenant and scarce looked a day over eighteen, was strong, and Dodd's blow had hardly broken the weave of his coat. He gritted his teeth as he hacked at Dodd, and Dodd parried, parried again and the two blades locked, hilt against hilt, and Dodd heaved to try and throw the young man off balance.

“You're Dodd, aren't you?” the Lieutenant said.

“Seven hundred guineas to you, boy.”

“Traitor,” the young Englishman spat.

Dodd heaved, then kicked the Lieutenant's horse so that it moved forward and he tried to slash back with his disengaged sword, but the Lieutenant turned the horse in again. The men were too close to fight properly, close enough to smell each other's breath. The Lieutenant's stank of tobacco. They could hit their opponent with their sword hilts, but not use the blades' lengths. If either horse had been properly schooled they could have been walked sideways away from the impasse, but the horses would only go forward and Dodd was the first to take the risk by using his spurs. He used them savagely, startling his horse so that it leaped ahead, and even so he flinched from the expected slash as the sabre whipped towards his spine, but the Lieutenant was slow and the blow missed.

Dodd rode twenty paces up the track towards the watching sepoys, then turned again. The Lieutenant was gaining confidence and he grinned as the tall man charged at him. He lowered the sabre, using its point like a spearhead, and urged his weary gelding into a trot. Dodd also had his sword at the lunge, elbow locked, and the two horses closed at frightening speed and then, at the very last second,

Dodd hauled on his rein and his horse went right, to the Lieutenant's unguarded side, and he brought the sword back across his body and then cut it forward in one fluid motion so that the blade raked across the Lieutenant's throat. The sabre was still coming across to the parry when the blood spurted. The Lieutenant faltered and his horse stopped. The young man's sword arm fell, and Dodd was turning. He came alongside his opponent whose jacket was now dark with blood, and he rammed the sword into the Lieutenant's neck a second time, this time point first, and the young man seemed to shake like a rat in a terrier's jaws.

Dodd hauled his sword free, then scabbarded it. He leaned over and took the sabre from the dying man's unresisting hand, then pushed the Lieutenant so that he toppled from the horse. One of his feet was trapped in a stirrup, but as Dodd seized the gelding's rein and hauled it round towards the fortress, the boot fell free and the young man was left sprawling amidst his blood on the dusty road as Dodd led his trophy homewards.

The Indians on the ramparts cheered. The sepoys spurred forward and Dodd hurried ahead of them, but the Madrassi cavalrymen only rode as far as their officer's body where they dismounted. Dodd rode on, waving the captured sabre aloft.

A gun fired from the fort and the ball screamed over the rocky isthmus to crash home among the cavalrymen gathered about their officer. A second gun fired, and suddenly the British cavalry and their riderless horses were running away and the cheers on the wall redoubled. Manu Bappoo was on the big buttress close to the gatehouse and he first pointed an admonitory finger at Dodd, chiding him for taking such a risk, then he touched his hands together, in thanks for Dodd's victory, and finally raised his arms above his head to salute the hero. Dodd laughed and bowed his head in acknowledgement and saw, to his surprise, that his white coat was red with the Lieutenant's blood.

“Who would have thought the young man had so much blood in him?” he asked the leader of his escort at the fortress gate.

“Sahib?” the man answered, puzzled.

“Never mind.” Dodd took the rifle back, then spurred his horse into Gawilghur's Delhi Gate. The men on the ramparts that edged the paved entranceway cheered him home.

He did not pause to speak to Manu Bappoo, but instead rode through the Outer Fortress and out of its southern gate, then led his captured horse down the steep path which slanted across the face of the ravine. At the bottom the path turned sharply to the left before climbing to the Inner Fort's massive gateway. The four heavy gates that barred the entranceway were all opened for him, and the hooves of his two horses echoed from the high walls as he clattered up the winding passage. One by one the gates crashed shut behind and the thick locking bars were dropped into their brackets.

His groom waited beyond the last gate. Dodd swung down from his horse and gave both reins to the man, ordering him to water the captured horse before he rubbed it down. He handed his sword to his servant and told him to clean the blood from the blade and only then did he turn to face Beny Singh who had come waddling from the palace garden. The Killadar was dressed in a green silk robe and was attended by two servants, one to hold a parasol above Beny Singh's perfumed head and the other clasping the Killadar's small white lap dog.

“The cheering,” Beny Singh asked anxiously, 'what was it? The guns were firing?" He stared in horror at the blood soaked into Dodd's coat.

“You're wounded, Colonel?”

“There was a fight,” Dodd said, and waited while one of the servants translated for the Killadar. Dodd spoke a crude Marathi, but it was easier to use interpreters.

“The djinns are here!” Beny Singh wailed. The dog whimpered and the two servants looked nervous.

“I killed a djinn,” Dodd snarled. He reached out and took hold of Beny Singh's plump hand and forced it against his wet coat.

"It isn't my blood.

But it is fresh." He rubbed the Killadar's hand into the gory patch, then raised the plump fingers to his mouth. Keeping his eyes on Beny Singh's eyes, he licked the blood from the Killadar's hand.

“I am a djinn, Killadar,” Dodd said, letting go of the hand, 'and I lap the blood of my enemies."

Beny Singh recoiled from the clammy touch of the blood. He shuddered, then wiped his hand on his silk robe.

“When will they assault?”

“A week?” Dodd guessed.

“And then they will be defeated.”

“But what if they get in?” Beny Singh asked anxiously.

“Then they will kill you,” Dodd said, 'and afterwards rape your wife, your concubines and your daughters. They'll line up for the pleasure, Killadar. They'll rut like hogs," and Dodd grunted like a pig and jerked his groin forward, driving Beny Singh back.

“They won't!” the Killadar declared.

“Because they won't get in,” Dodd said, 'because some of us are men, and we will fight."

“I have poison!” Beny Singh said, not comprehending Dodd's last words.

“If they look like winning, Colonel, you'll send me word?”

Dodd smiled.

“You have my promise, sahib,” he said with a pretended humility.

“Better my women should die,” Beny Singh insisted.

“Better that you should die,” Dodd said, 'unless you want to be forced to watch the white djinns take their pleasure on your dying women."

“They wouldn't!”

“What else do they want in here?” Dodd asked.

“Have they not heard of the beauty of your women? Each night they talk of them around their fires, and every day they dream of their thighs and their breasts. They can't wait, Killadar. The pleasures of your women pull the redcoats towards us.”

Beny Singh fled from the horrid words and Dodd smiled. He had come to realize that only one man could command here. Beny Singh was the fortress commander and though he was a despicable coward he was also a friend of the Rajah's, and that friendship ensured the loyalty of much of Gawilghur's standing garrison. The rest of the fortress defenders were divided into two camps. There were Manu Bappoo's soldiers, led by the remnants of the Lions of Allah and loyal to the Prince, and Dodd's Cobras. But if only one of the three leaders was left, then that man would rule Gawilghur, and whoever ruled Gawilghur could rule all India.

Dodd touched the stock of the rifle. That would help, and Beny Singh's abject terror would render the Killadar harmless. Dodd smiled and climbed to the ramparts from where, with a telescope, he watched the British heave the first gun up to the edge of the plateau. A week, he thought, maybe a day more, and then the British would come to his slaughter. And make his wildly ambitious dreams come true.

“The fellow was using a rifle!” Major Stokes said in wonderment. “I do declare, a rifle! Can't have been anything else at that range. Two hundred paces if it was an inch, and he fanned my head! A much underestimated weapon, the rifle, don't you think?”

“A toy,” Captain Morris said.

“Nothing will replace muskets.”

“But the accuracy!” Stokes declared.

“Soldiers can't use rifles,” Morris said.

“It would be like giving knives and forks to hogs.” He twisted in the camp chair and gestured at his men, the 33rd's Light Company.

“Look at them! Half of them can't work out which end of a musket is which. Useless buggers. Might as well arm the bastards with pikes.”

“If you say so,” Stokes said disapprovingly. His road had reached the plateau and now he had to begin the construction of the breaching batteries, and the 33rd's Light Company, which had escorted Stokes north from Mysore, had been charged with the job of protecting the sappers who would build the batteries. Captain Morris had been unhappy with the orders, for he would have much preferred to have been sent back south rather than be camped by the rock isthmus that promised to be such a lively place in these next few days. There was a chance that Gawilghur's garrison might sally out to destroy the batteries, and even if that danger did not materialize, it was a certainty that the Mahratta gunners on the Outer Fort's walls would try to break down the new works with cannon fire.

Sergeant Hakeswill approached Stokes's tent. He looked distracted, so much so that his salute was perfunctory.

“You heard the news, sir?” He spoke to Morris.

Morris squinted up at the Sergeant.

“News,” he said heavily, 'news?

Can't say I have, Sergeant. The enemy has surrendered, perhaps?"

“Nothing so good, sir, nothing so good.”

“You look pale, man!” Stokes said.

“Are you sickening?”

“Heart-sick, sir, that's what I am in my own self, sir, heart-sick.”

Sergeant Hakeswill sniffed heavily, and even cuffed at a non-existent tear on his twitching cheek.

“Captain Torrance,” he announced, 'is dead, sir." The Sergeant took off his shako and held it against his breast.

“Dead, sir.”

“Dead?” Stokes said lightly. He had not met Torrance.

"Took his own life, sir, that's what they do say. He killed his clerk with a knife, then turned his pistol on himself The Sergeant demonstrated the action by pretending to point a pistol at his own head and pulling the trigger. He sniffed again.

“And he was as good an officer as ever I did meet, and I've known many in my time. Officers and gentlemen, like your own good self, sir,” he said to Morris.

Morris, as unmoved by Torrance's death as Stokes, smirked.

“Killed his clerk, eh? That'll teach the bugger to keep a tidy ledger.”

“They do say, sir,” Hakeswill lowered his voice, 'that he must have been unnatural."

“Unnatural?” Stokes asked.

"With his clerk, sir, pardon me for breathing such a filthy thing.

Him and the clerk, sir.

“Cos he was naked, see, the Captain was, and the clerk was a handsome boy, even if he was a blackamoor. He washed a lot, and the Captain liked that.”

“Are you suggesting it was a lovers' tiff?” Morris asked, then laughed.

“No, sir,” Hakeswill said, turning to stare across the plateau's edge into the immense sky above the Deccan Plain, 'because it weren't. The Captain weren't ever unnatural, not like that. It weren't a lovers' tiff, sir, not even if he was naked as a needle. The Captain, sir, he liked to go naked. Kept him cool, he said, and kept his clothes clean, but there weren't nothing strange in it. Not in him. And he weren't a man to be filthy and unnatural. He liked the bibb is he did. He was a Christian. A Christian gentleman, that's what he was, and he didn't kill himself. I knows who killed him, I do."

Morris gave Stokes a shrug, as if Hakeswill's maunderings were beyond understanding.

“But the nub of the thing is, sir' - Hakeswill turned back to face Morris and stood to attention 'that I ain't with the bullocks no more, sir. I've got orders, sir, to be back with you where I belongs, sir, seeing as some other officer has got Captain Torrance's duties and he didn't want me no more on account of having his own sergeant.” He replaced his shako, then saluted Morris.

“Under orders, sir! With Privates Kendrick and Lowry, sir. Others have taken over our bullocking duties, sir, and we is back with you like we always wanted to be. Sir!”

“Welcome back, Sergeant,” Morris said laconically.

“I'm sure the company will be overjoyed at your return.”

“I knows they will, sir,” Hakeswill said.

“I'm like a father to them, sir, I am,” Hakeswill added to Stokes.

Stokes frowned.

“Who do you think killed Captain Torrance, Sergeant?” he asked, and when Hakeswill said nothing, but just stood with his face twitching, the Major became insistent.

“If you know, man, you must speak! This is a crime! You have a duty to speak.”

Hakeswill's face wrenched itself.

“It were him, sir.” The Sergeant's eyes widened.

“It were Sharpie, sir!”

Stokes laughed.

"Don't be so absurd, man. Poor Sharpe is a prisoner!

He's locked away in the fortress, I've no doubt."

“That's what we all hear, sir,” Hakeswill said, 'but I knows better."

“A touch of the sun,” Morris explained to Stokes, then waved the Sergeant away.

“Put your kit with the company, Sergeant. And I'm glad you're back.”

“Touched by your words, sir,” Hakeswill said fervently, 'and I'm glad to be home, sir, back in me own kind where I belong." He saluted again, then swivelled on his heel and marched away.

:“Salt of the earth,” Morris said.

Major Stokes, from his brief acquaintance with Hakeswill, was not sure of that verdict, but he said nothing. Instead he wandered a few paces northwards to watch the sappers who were busy scraping at the plateau's thin soil to fill gabions that had been newly woven from green bamboo. The gab ions great wicker baskets stuffed with earth, would be stacked as a screen to soak up the enemy gunfire while the battery sites were being levelled. Stokes had already decided to do the initial work at night, for the vulnerable time for making batteries close to a fortress was the first few hours, and at night the enemy gunfire was , likely to be inaccurate.

The Major was making four batteries. Two, the breaching ones, would be constructed far down the isthmus among an outcrop of great black boulders that lay less than a quarter-mile from the fortress. The rocks, with the gab ions would provide the gunners some protection : from the fortress's counter-fire. Sappers, hidden from the fort by the lie of the land, were already driving a road to the proposed site of the breaching guns. Two other batteries would be constructed to the east of the isthmus, on the edge of the plateau, and those guns would enfilade the growing breaches.

There would be three breaches. That decision had been made when Stokes, early in the dawn, had crept as close to the fortress as he had dared and, hidden among the tumbled rocks above the half-filled tank, had examined the Outer Fort's wall through his telescope. He had stared a long time, counting the gun embrasures and trying to estimate how many men were stationed on the bastions and fire steps Those were details that did not really concern him for Stokes's business was confined to breaking the walls, but what he saw encouraged him.

There were two walls, both built on the steep slope which faced the

, plateau. The slope was so steep that the base of the inner wall showed high above the parapet of the outer wall, and that was excellent news, for making a breach depended on being able to batter the base of a wall.

These walls, built so long ago, had never been designed to stop artillery, but to deter men. Stokes knew he could lay his guns so that they would hammer both walls at once, and that when the ancient stonework crumbled, the rubble would spill forward down the slope to make natural ramps up which the attackers could climb.

The masonry seemed to have stayed largely unrepaired since it had been built. Stokes could tell that, for the dark stones were covered with grey lichen and thick with weeds growing from the gaps between the blocks. The walls looked formidable, for they were high and well provided with massive bastions that would let the defenders provide flanking fire, but Stokes knew that the dressed stone of the two walls' outer faces merely disguised a thick heart of piled rubble, and once the facing masonry was shattered the rubble would spill out. A few shots would then suffice to break the inner faces. Two days' work, he reckoned. Two days of hard gunnery should bring the walls tumbling down.

Stokes had not made his reconnaissance alone, but had been accompanied by Lieutenant Colonel William Kenny of the East India Company who would lead the assault on the breaches. Kenny, a lantern jawed and taciturn man, had lain beside Stokes.

“Well?” he had finally asked after Stokes had spent a silent five minutes examining the walls.

“Two days' work, sir,” Stokes said. If the Mahrattas had taken the trouble to build a glacis it would have been two weeks' work, but such was their confidence that they had not bothered to protect the base of the outer wall.

Kenny grunted.

“If it's that easy, then give me two holes in the inner wall.”

“Not the outer?” Stokes asked.

“One will serve me there,” Kenny said, putting an eye to his own telescope.

“A good wide gap in the nearer wall, Stokes, but not too near the main gate.”

“We shall avoid that,” the Major said. The main gate lay to the left so that the approach to the fortress was faced by high walls and bastions rather than by a gate vulnerable to artillery fire. However, this gate was massively defended by bastions and towers, which suggested it would be thick with defenders.

“Straight up the middle,” Kenny said, wriggling back from his viewpoint.

“Give me a breach to the right of that main bastion, and two on either side of it through the inner wall, and we'll do the rest.”

It would be easy enough to break down the walls, but Stokes still feared for Kenny's men. Their approach was limited by the existence of the great reservoir that lay on the right of the isthmus. The water level was low, and scummed green, but the tank still constricted the assault route so that Kenny's men would be squeezed between the water and the sheer drop to the left. That slender space, scarce more than fifty feet at its narrowest, would be furious with gunfire, much of it coming from the fire steps above and around the main gate that flanked the approach.

Stokes had already determined that his enfilading batteries should spare some shot for that gate in an attempt to unseat its cannon and unsettle its defenders.

Now, under the midday sun, the Major wandered among the sappers filling the gab ions He tested each one, making certain that the sepoys i, were ramming the earth hard into the wicker baskets, for a loosely filled gabion was no use. The finished gab ions were being stacked on ox carts, while other carts piled with powder and shot waited nearby. All was being done properly, and the Major stared out across the plateau where the newly arrived troops were making their camp. The | closest tents, ragged and makeshift, belonged to a troop of Mahratta j horsemen who had allied themselves with the British. Stokes, watching i the robed guards who sat close to the tents, decided it would be best if he locked his valuables away and made sure his servant kept an eye on the trunk. The rest of the Mahratta horsemen had trotted northwards, going to seek springs or wells, for it was dry up here on the plateau. Dry and cooler than on the plain, though it was still damned hot. Dust devils whirled between the farther tent rows where muskets were stacked in neat tripods. Some shirt sleeved officers, presumably from the East India Company battalions, were playing cricket on a smoother stretch of turf, watched by bemused sepoys and men from the Scotch Brigade.

“Not their game, sir, is it, sir?” Hakeswill's voice disturbed Stokes.

The Major turned.

“Eh?”

“Cricket, sir. Too complicated for blackamoors and Scotchmen, sir, on account of it being a game that needs brains, sir.”

“Do you play, Sergeant?”

“Me, sir? No, sir. No time for frittering, sir, being as I'm a soldier back to front, sir.”

“It does a man good to have a pastime,” Stokes said.

“Your Colonel, now, he plays the violin.”

“Sir Arthur does, sir?” Hakeswill said, plainly not believing Stokes.

“He's never done it near me, sir.”

“I assure you he does,” Stokes said. He was irritated by Hakeswill's presence. He disliked the man intensely, even though Hakeswill had spent only a short time as Sharpe's substitute.

“So what is it, Sergeant?”

Hakeswill's face twitched.

“Come to be of use to you, sir.”

The reply puzzled Stokes.

“I thought you'd been returned to company duties?”

“That I am, sir, and not before time. But I was thinking of poor Sharpie, sir, as you tell me he languishes in the heathens' jail, sir, which I did not know, sir, until you told me.”

Stokes shrugged.

“He's probably being fairly treated. The Mahrattas aren't renowned for being unduly cruel to prisoners.”

“I was wondering if he left his pack with you, sir?”

“Why would he do that?” Stokes asked.

“I was just wondering, sir. Officers don't like carrying their baggage everywhere, sir, not if they want to keep their dignity, and if he did leave his pack with you, sir, then I thought as how we might relieve you of the responsibility, sir, seeing as how Mister Sharpe was a comrade of ours for so long. That's what I was thinking, sir.”

Stokes bridled, but was not certain why.

“It isn't a heavy responsibility, Sergeant.”

“Never thought it was, sir, but it might be a nuisance to you, sir, seeing as how you're charged with other duties, and I would relieve you of the responsibility, sir.”

Stokes shook his head.

“As it happens, Sergeant, Mister Sharpe did leave his pack with me, and I promised him I would keep it safe, and I'm not a man to break promises, Sergeant. I shall keep it.”

“As you chooses, sir!” Hakeswill said sourly.

“Just thought it was a Christian act, sir.” He turned and marched away. Stokes watched him, then shook his head and turned back to gaze at the growing encampment.

Tonight, he thought, tonight we shall make the batteries, and tomorrow the big guns will be hauled forward. Another day to fill the magazines with powder and shot and then the stone-breaking could begin. Two days of battering, of dust and rubble and smoke, and then the cricketers could lead the charge across the isthmus. Poor men, Stokes thought, poor men.

“I hate night actions,” Captain Morris complained to Hakeswill.

“Because of Serry-apatam, sir? A right dog's mess, that was.” The battalion had attacked a wood outside Seringapatam by night and the companies had become separated, some became lost, and the enemy had punished them.

Morris attached his scabbard to its slings and pulled his hat on. It was dark outside, and soon the oxen would drag the gab ions forward to the position Stokes had chosen for the breaching batteries. It would be a prime moment for the enemy to sally out of the fortress, so Morris and his company must form a picquet line ahead of the proposed batteries.

They must watch the fortress and, if an attack was made, they must resist it, then slowly fall back, protecting the sappers until the reserve troops, a battalion of sepoys, could be brought forward from the plateau. With any luck, Morris fervently hoped, the enemy would stay in bed.

“Evening, Morris!” Major Stokes was indecently cheerful.

“Your lads are ready?”

“They are, sir.”

Stokes led Morris a few yards from his tent and stared towards the fortress that was nothing but a dark shape in the night beyond the closer blackness of the rocks.

“The thing is,” Stokes said, 'that they're bound to see our lanterns and must hear the carts, so they're liable to unleash a pretty furious artillery barrage. Maybe rockets as well. But take no heed of it. Your only job is to watch for infantry coming from the gate."

“I know, sir.”

"So don't use your muskets! I hear musket fire, Captain, and I think infantry. Then I send for the Madrassi lads, and the next moment the whole place is swarming with redcoats who can't tell who's who in the dark. So no firing, you understand? Unless you see enemy infantry.

Then send a message to me, fight the good fight and wait for support."

Morris grunted. He had been told this twice already, and did not need the instructions a third time, but he still turned to the company which was paraded and ready.

“No one's to fire without my express permission, you understand?”

“They understands, sir,” Hakeswill answered for the company.

“One musket shot without permission and the culprit's earned himself a skinned back, sir.”

Morris took the company forward, following the old road that led directly to the gateway of the Outer Fort. The night was horribly dark, and within a few paces of leaving the engineers' encampment, Morris could hardly see the road at all. His men's boots scuffed loud on the hard-packed stones. They went slowly, feeling their way and using what small light came from the merest sliver of moon that hung like a silver blade above Gawilghur.

“Permission to speak, sir?” Hakeswill's hoarse voice sounded close to Morris.

“Not too loud, Sergeant.”

“Like a mouse, sir, quiet I will be, but, sir, if we're here, does that mean we'll be joining the assault on the fort, sir?”

“God, no,” Morris said fervently.

Hakeswill chuckled.

“I thought I should ask, sir, on account of making a will.”

“A will?” Morris asked.

“You need a will?”

“I have some wealth,” Hakeswill said defensively. And soon, he reckoned, he would have even more, for he had cleverly confirmed his surmise that Sharpe's missing pack was in Major Stokes's keeping.

“You have some wealth, do you?” Morris asked sarcastically.

“And who the hell will you leave it to?”

“Your own self, sir, if you'll forgive me, sir. No family, apart from the army, sir, which is mother's milk to me.”

“By all means make your will,” Morris said.

“Connors can draw one up for you.” Connors was the company clerk.

“I trust, of course, that the document proves redundant.”

“Whatever that means, sir, I hopes the same.”

The two men fell silent. The dark loom of the fortress was much closer now, and Morris was nervous. What was the point of this futile exercise anyway? He would be damned if he would be able to see any enemy infantrymen, not in this pitch black, unless the fools decided to carry a lantern. Some lights showed in Gawilghur. There was a glow above the Outer Fort that must have been cast by the fires and lights in the Inner Fort, while closer Morris could see a couple of flickering patches where fires or torches burned inside the nearer de fences But those scattered lights would not help him see an enemy force debouching from the gate.

“Far enough,” he called. He was not really sure if he had gone close enough to the fort, but he had no fancy to go further, and so he stopped and hissed at Hakeswill to spread the men westwards across the isthmus.

“Five paces between each pair of men, Sergeant.”

“Five paces it is, sir.”

“If anyone sees or hears anything, they're to pass the message back here to me.”

“They'll do so, sir.”

“And no fool's to light a pipe, you hear me? Don't want the enemy spraying us with canister because some blockhead needs tobacco.”

“Your orders is noted, sir. And where would you want me, sir?”

“Far end of the line, Sergeant.” Morris was the sole officer with the company, for both his lieutenant and ensign had the fever and so had stayed in Mysore. But Hakeswill, he reckoned, was as good as any lieutenant.

“You can order men to fire if you're certain you see the enemy, but God help you if you're wrong.”

“Very good, sir,” Hakeswill said, then hissed at the men to spread out. They vanished into the blackness. For a moment there was the sound of boots, the thump of musket stocks hitting rocks and the grunts as the redcoats settled, but then there was silence. Or near silence. The wind sighed at the cliff's edge while, from the fort, there drifted a plangent and discordant music that rose and fell with the wind's vagaries. Worse than bagpipes, Morris thought sourly.

The first axle squeals sounded as the oxen dragged the gab ions forward. The noise would be continuous now and, sooner or later, the enemy must react by opening fire. And what chance would he have of seeing anything then, Morris wondered. The gun flashes would blind him.

The first he would see of an enemy would be the glint of starlight on a blade. He spat. Waste of time.

“Morris!” a voice hissed from the dark.

“Captain Morris!”

“Here!” He turned towards the voice, which had come from behind him on the road back to the plateau.

“Here!”

“Colonel Kenny,” the voice said, still in a sibilant whisper.

“Don't mind me prowling around.”

“Of course not, sir.” Morris did not like the idea of a senior officer coming to the picquet line, but he could hardly send the man away.

“Honoured to have you, sir,” he said, then hissed a warning to his men.

“Senior officer present, don't be startled. Pass the word on.”

Morris heard Kenny's footsteps fade to his right. There was the low murmur of a brief conversation, then silence again, except for the demonic squeal of the ox-cart axles. A moment later a lantern light showed from behind the rocks where Stokes was making one of his main batteries. Morris braced himself for the enemy reaction, but the fortress stayed silent.

The noise grew louder as the sappers heaved the gab ions from the carts and manhandled them up onto the rocks to form the thick bastion. A man swore, others grunted and the great baskets thumped on stone.

Another lantern was unmasked, and this time the man carrying it stepped up onto the rocks to see where the gab ions were being laid. A voice ordered him to get down.

The fort at last woke up. Morris could hear footsteps hurrying along the nearer fire step and he saw a brief glow as a linstock was plucked from a barrel and blown into red life.

“Jesus,” he said under his breath, and a moment later the first gun fired. The flame stabbed bright as a lance from the walls, its glare momentarily lighting all the rocky isthmus and the green-scummed surface of the tank, before it was blotted out by the rolling smoke. The round shot screamed overhead, struck a rock and ricocheted wildly up into the sky. A second gun fired, its flame lighting the first smoke cloud from within so that it seemed as if the wall of the fort was edged with a brief vaporous luminance. The ball struck a gabion, breaking it apart in a spray of earth. A man groaned. Dogs were barking in the British camp and inside the fortress.

Morris stared towards the dark gateway. He could see nothing, because the guns' flames had robbed him of his night vision. Or rather he could see wraithlike shapes which he knew were more likely to be his imagination than the approach of some savage enemy. The guns were firing steadily now, aiming at the small patch of lantern light, but then more lights, brighter ones, appeared to the west of the isthmus, '99

and some of the gunners switched their aim, not knowing that Stokes had unveiled the second lights as a feint.

Then the first rockets were fired, and they were even more dazzling than the guns. The fiery trails seemed to limp up from the fort's bastions, seething smoke and sparks, then they leaped up into the air, wobbling in their flight, to sear over Morris's head and slash north towards the camp. None went near their targets, but their sound and the flaming exhausts were nerve-racking. The first shells were fired, and they added to the night's din as they cracked apart among the rocks to whistle shards of shattered casing over the struggling sappers. The firing was deliberate as the gun captains took care to lay their pieces before firing, but still there were six or seven shots every minute, while the rockets were more constant. Morris tried to use the brightness of the rocket trails to see the ground between his hiding place and the fort, but there was too much smoke, the shadows flickered wildly, and his imagination made movement where there was none. He held his fire, reckoning he would hear the gate open or the sound of enemy footsteps. He could hear the defenders shouting on the wall, either calling insults to the enemy hidden in the dark or else encouraging each other.

Hakeswill, at the very right-hand end of the line, cowered among the rocks. He had been sheltering with Kendrick and Lowry, but the enemy cannonade had driven him still further right to where there was a deep cleft. He knew he was safe there, but even so every screaming rocket made him flinch, while the sound of the shells exploding and the round shots cracking against stone made him draw his knees up into his chest. He knew there was a senior officer visiting the picquet line because the message telling of the Colonel's presence had been passed down the line. Kenny's visit struck Hakeswill as a daft thing for any man with gold braid on his coat to do, but when the Colonel hissed his name aloud he kept silent. At least he assumed it was the visiting officer, for the summons was insistent and authoritative, but Hakeswill ignored it. He did not want to draw attention to himself in case the heathen blackamoor gunners aimed their cannon at him. Let the officer hiss away, he decided, and a moment later the man went away.

“Who are you?” a low voice asked Private Kendrick just a few yards from Hakeswill's hiding place.

“Kendrick, sir.”

“To me, Private. I need your help.”

Kendrick slipped back towards the voice. Bastard interfering officer, he thought, but he had to obey.

“Where are you, sir?” he asked.

“Here, man! Hurry, now, hurry!”

Kendrick slipped on a slanting stone and sat down with a bump. A rocket slashed overhead, spewing fire and sparks, and in its brief light he saw a shadow above him, then felt a blade at his throat.

“One noise,” the voice hissed, 'and you're dead."

Kendrick went very still. He did not make any noise at all, but he still died.

A lucky shell struck a pair of oxen, disembowelling the beasts that lowed pitifully as they collapsed onto the road.

“Get them out of the way!” a voice roared, and sepoys struggled with the massive animals, cutting their harnesses and pulling the dying beasts into the rocks.

Other men ran the empty cart back to the encampment, making way for the next wagon to drag more gab ions forward.

“Kill them!” the officer ordered.

“Use your bayonets! No musket fire!” The sepoys finished off the oxen, stabbing again and again into their thick necks while the bloody hooves thrashed violently. Another shell landed nearby, slicing its fragments among the rocks. The road was slippery with spilled guts over which the next cart rolled impassively, its axle screeching like a demon.

“All well, soldier?” a voice asked Private Lowry.

“Yes, sir.”

“I'm Colonel Kenny,” the man said, dropping down beside Lowry.

“Yes, sir,” Lowry acknowledged nervously.

“See anything?”

“Nothing, sir,” Lowry said, then gasped as he felt a blade at his throat.

“Where's Hakeswill?” the voice hissed in his ear, and Lowry suddenly knew this was not Colonel Kenny who had him in a tight grip.

“Dunno, sir,” Lowry said, then began to cry out, but the cry was cut off as the blade sawed deep into his gullet.

A ball, fired low, struck plumb on the great boulder that sheltered Hakeswill and the Sergeant whimpered as he tried to wriggle deeper into the cleft. A rocket landed thirty paces behind him and began to chase its tail, whirling about on the turf, scattering sparks, until it finally lodged against a rock and burned itself out in a display of small blue flames. Another round shot hammered into the gab ions but now they were well stacked and the ball's impact was soaked up by the tight packed soil.

A whistle blew from the battery site, then blew twice more. Morris, relieved by the sound, called to the men to his right.

"Back to the road!

Pass it on! Back to the road!" Thank God the worst of the ordeal was over! Now he was supposed to withdraw to the battery, ready to protect it through the remaining hours of the dark night, but Morris knew he would feel a good deal safer once he was behind the gab ions just as he knew that the cessation of the work would probably persuade the Mahrattas to cease fire.

“Close on me!” he called to his company.

“Hurry!”

The message was passed along the picquet line and the men ran at a crouch back to where Morris waited. They bumped into each other as they gathered, then squatted as Morris called for Hakeswill.

“Not here, sir,” Sergeant Green finally decided.

“Count the men, Sergeant,” Morris ordered.

Sergeant Green numbered the men off.

“Three missing, sir,” he reported.

“Hakeswill, Lowry and Kendrick.”

“Damn them,” Morris said. A rocket hissed up from the gatehouse, twisted in the night to leave a crazy trail of flame-edged smoke, then dived down to the left, far down, plunging into the ravine that edged the isthmus. The light of the exhaust flashed down the steep cliffs, finally vanishing a thousand feet below Morris. Two guns fired together, their balls hammering towards the fake lanterns. The battery lanterns had vanished, evidence that the sappers had finished their work.

“Take the men to the battery,” Morris ordered Green.

“Garrard? You stay with me.”

Morris did not want to do anything heroic, but he knew he could not report that he had simply lost three men, so he took Private Tom Garrard west across the tumbled ground where the picquet line had been stretched. They called out the names of the missing men, but no reply came.

It was Garrard who stumbled over the first body.

“Don't know who it is, sir, but he's dead. Bloody mess, he is.”

Morris swore and crouched beside the body. A rocket's bright passage showed him a slit throat and a spill of blood. It also revealed that the man had been stripped of his coat which lay discarded beside the corpse. The sight of the gaping throat made Morris gag.

“There's another here, sir,” Garrard called from a few paces away.

“Jesus!” Morris twisted aside, willing himself not to throw up, but the bile was sour in his throat. He shuddered, then managed to take a deep breath.

“We're going.”

“You want me to look for the other fellow, sir?” Garrard asked.

“Come on!” Morris fled, not wanting to stay in this dark charnel house.

Garrard followed.

The gunfire died. A last rocket stitched sparks across the stars, then Gawilghur was silent again.

Hakeswill cowered in his hiding place, shuddering as the occasional flare of an exploding shell or passing rocket cast lurid shadows into the narrow cleft. He thought he heard Lowry call aloud, but the sound was so unexpected, and so quickly over, he decided it was his nerves. Then, blessedly, he heard the whistle that signalled that the sappers were done with their work, and a moment later he heard the message being called along the line.

“Back to the road! Back to the road!”

The rockets and guns were still battering the night, so Hakeswill stayed where he was until he sensed that the fury of the fire was diminishing, then he crept out of his cleft and, still keeping low, scuttled eastwards.

“Hakeswill!” a voice called nearby.

He froze.

“Hakeswill?” The voice was insistent.

Some instinct told the Sergeant that there was mischief in the dark, and so Hakeswill crouched lower still. He heard something moving in the night, the scrape of leather on stone, the sound of breathing, but the man did not come close to Hakeswill who, petrified, edged on another pace. His hand, feeling the ground ahead of him, suddenly found something wet and sticky. He flinched, brought his fingers to his nose and smelt blood.

“Jesus,” he swore under his breath. He groped again, and this time found a corpse. His hands explored the face, the open mouth, then found the gaping wound in the neck. He jerked his hand back.

It had to be Lowry or Kendrick, for this was about where he had left the two privates, and if they were dead, or even if only one of them was dead, then it meant that Captain Torrance's death had been no lovers' tiff. Not that Hakeswill had ever believed it was. He knew who it was. Bloody Sharpe was alive. Bloody Sharpe was hunting his enemies, and three, maybe four, were already dead. And Hakeswill knew he would be next.

“Hakeswill!” the voice hissed, but farther away now.

A gun fired from the fort and in its flash Hakeswill saw a cloaked shape to his north. The man was crossing the skyline, not far from Hakeswill, but at least he was going away. Sharpe! It had to be Sharpe!

And a terror grew in Hakeswill so that his face twitched and his hands shook.

“Think, you bugger,” he told himself, 'think!"

And the answer came, a sweet answer, so obvious that he wondered why he had taken so long to find it.

Sharpe was alive, he was not a prisoner in Gawilghur, but haunting the British camp, which meant that there was one place that would be utterly safe for Hakeswill to go. He could go to the fortress, and Sharpe would never reach him there for the rumour in the camp was that the assault on Gawilghur was likely to be a desperate and bloody business.

Likely to fail, some men said, and even if it did not, Hakeswill could always pretend he had been taken prisoner. All he wanted at this moment was to be away from Sharpe and so he sidled southwards, down the hill, and once he reached the flatter ground, he ran towards the now dark walls of the fort through the drifting skeins of foul-smelling powder smoke.

He ran past the tank, along the approach road, and round to the left where the great gatehouse loomed above him in the dark. And once there he pounded on the massive, iron-studded doors.

No one responded.

He pounded again, using the butt of his musket, scared witless that the sound would bring an avenging horror from the dark behind, and suddenly a small wicket gate in the larger door was pulled open to flood flame light into the night.

“I'm a deserter!” Hakeswill hissed.

“I'm on your side!”

Hands seized him and pulled him through the small doorway. A smoking torch burned high on the wall to show Hakeswill the long, narrow entranceway, the dark ramparts, and the dark faces of the men who had him prisoner.

“I'm on your side!” he shouted as the gate was closed behind him and his musket was snatched away.

“I'm on your side!”

A tall, hawk-faced man strode down the stone road.

“Who are you?”

he asked in English.

“I'm someone willing to fight for you, sir. Willing and able, sir. Old soldier, sir.”

“My name is Manu Bappoo,” the man said in a sibilant voice, 'and I command here."

“Very good, sir. Sahib, I mean, very good.” Hakeswill bobbed his head.

“Hakeswill, sir, is my name. Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill.”

Manu Bappoo stared at the redcoat. He disliked deserters. A man who deserted his flag could not be trusted under any other flag, but the news that a white soldier had run from the enemy ranks could only hearten his garrison. Better, he decided, to leave this man alive as a witness to the enemy's crumbling morale than shoot him out of hand.

“Take him to Colonel Dodd,” he ordered one of his men.

“Give him back his firelock. He's on our side.”

So Hakeswill was inside Gawilghur and among the enemy. But he was safe from the terror that had turned his life to sudden nightmare.

He was safe from Sharpe.