Sharpe's Fortress (31 page)

Beny Singh must have been watching his messenger's progress from the palace, for now he
hurried down the path and behind him came his wives, concubines and daughters. Bappoo
walked towards him, followed by Dodd and a score of his white-coated soldiers. The
Killadar must have reckoned that the sight of the women would soften Bappoo's heart, but
the Prince's face just became harder.

“If you want to surrender,” he shouted at Beny Singh, 'then talk to me first!"

“I have authority here,” Beny Singh squeaked. His little lap dog was in his arms, its
small tongue hanging out as it panted in the heat.

“You have nothing!” Bappoo retorted. The women, pretty in their silk and cotton,
huddled together as the two men met beside the snake pit.

“The British are making their breaches,” Beny Singh protested, 'and tomorrow or the
day after they'll come through! We shall all be killed!"

He wailed the prophecy.

“My daughters will be their playthings and my wives their servants.” The women
shuddered.

“The British will die in the breaches,” Bappoo retorted.

“They cannot be stopped!” Beny Singh insisted.

“They are djinns.”

Bappoo suddenly shoved Beny Singh back towards the rock pit where the snakes were kept.
The Killadar cried aloud as he tripped and fell backwards, but Bappoo had kept hold of Beny
Singh's yellow silk robe and now he held on tight so that the Killadar did not fall.

Hakeswill sidled to the pit's edge and saw the monkey bones. Then he saw a curving,
nickering shape slither across the pit's shadowed floor and he quickly stepped back.

Beny Singh whimpered.

“I am the Killadar! I am trying to save lives!”

“You're supposed to be a soldier,” Bappoo said in his hissing voice, 'and your job is to
kill my brother's enemies." The women screamed, expecting to see their man fall to the
pit's floor, but Manu Bappoo kept a firm grip on the silk.

“And when the British die in the breaches,” he said to Beny Singh, 'and when their
survivors are harried south across the plain, who do you think will get the credit for the
victory? The Killadar of the fort, that is who! And you would throw that glory away?"

“They are djinns,” Beny Singh said, and he looked sideways at Obadiah Hakeswill whose
face was twitching, and he screamed.

“They are djinnsl' ”They are men, as feeble as other men," Bappoo said. He reached out
with his free hand and took hold of the white dog by the scruff of its neck. Beny Singh
whimpered, but did not resist. The dog struggled in Manu Bappoo's grip.

“If you try to surrender the fortress again,” Manu Bappoo said, 'then this will be your
fate." He let the dog drop. It yelped as it fell into the pit, then howled piteously as it
struck the rock floor.

There was a hiss, a scrabble of paws, a last howl, then silence. Beny Singh uttered a
shriek of pity for his dog before babbling that he would rather give his women poison to
drink than risk that they should become prey to the terrible besiegers.

Manu Bappoo shook the hapless Killadar.

“Do you understand me?” he demanded.

“I understand!” Beny Singh said desperately.

Manu Bappoo hauled the Killadar safely back from the pit's edge.

“You will go to the palace, Beny Singh,” he ordered, 'and you will stay there, and you
will send no more messages to the enemy." He pushed the Killadar away, then turned his back
on him.

“Colonel Dodd?”

“Sahib?”

“A dozen of your men will make certain that the Killadar sends no messages from the
palace. If he does, you may kill the messenger.”

Dodd smiled.

“Of course, sahib.”

Bappoo went back to the beleaguered Outer Fort while the Killadar slunk back to the
hilltop palace above its green-scummed lake. Dodd detailed a dozen men to guard the palace's
entrance, then went back to the rampart to brood over the ravine. Hakeswill followed him
there.

“Why's the Killadar so scared, sir? Does he know something we don't?”

“He's a coward, Sergeant.”

But Beny Singh's fear had infected Hakeswill who imagined a vengeful Sharpe come back
from the dead to pursue him through the nightmare of a fortress fallen.

“The bastards can't get in, sir, can they?” he asked anxiously.

Dodd recognized Hakeswill's fear, the same fear he felt himself, the fear of the
ignominy and shame of being recaptured by the British and then condemned by a merciless
court. He smiled.

“They will probably take the Outer Fort, Sergeant, because they're very good, and
because our old comrades do indeed fight like djinns, but they cannot cross the ravine. Not
if all the powers of darkness help them, not if they besiege us for a year, not if they
batter down all these walls and destroy the gates and flatten the palace by gunfire,
because they will still have to cross the ravine, and it cannot be done. It cannot be
done.”

And who rules Gawilghur, Dodd thought, reigns in India.

And within a week he would be Rajah here.

Gawilghur's walls, as Stokes had guessed, were rotten. The first breach, in the outer
wall, took less than a day to make. In mid-afternoon the wall had still been standing,
though a cave had been excavated into the dusty rubble where Stokes had pointed the guns,
but quite suddenly the whole rampart collapsed. It slid down the brief slope in a cloud of
dust which slowly settled to reveal a steep ramp of jumbled stone leading into the space
between the two walls. A low stub of the wall's rear face still survived, but an hour's work
served to throw that remnant down.

The gunners changed their aim, starting the two breaches in the higher inner wall,
while the enfilading batteries, which had been gnawing at the embrasures to dismount
the enemy's guns, began firing slantwise into the first breach to dissuade the
defenders from building obstacles at the head of the ramp. The enemy guns, those which
survived, redoubled their efforts to disable the British batteries, but their shots were
wasted in the gab ions or overhead. The big gun which had inflicted such slaughter fired
three times more, but its balls cracked uselessly into the cliff face, after which the
Mahratta gunners mysteriously gave up.

Next day the two inner breaches were made, and now the big guns concentrated on
widening all three gaps in the walls. The eighteen pounder shots slammed into rotten stone,
gouging out the wall's fill to add to the ramps. By evening the breaches were clearly big
enough and now the gunners aimed their pieces at the enemy's remaining cannon.

One by one they were unseated or their embrasures shattered. A constant shroud of
smoke hung over the rocky neck of land. It hung thick and pungent, twitching every time a
shot whipped through. The enfilading twelve-pounders fired shells into the breaches,
while the howitzer lobbed more shells over the walls.

The British guns fired deep into dusk, and minute by minute the enemy response grew
feebler as their guns were wrecked or thrown off the fire steps Only as black night dropped
did the besiegers' hot guns cease fire, but even now there would be no respite for the enemy.
It was at night that the defenders could turn the breaches into deathtraps. They could
bury mines in the stony ramps, or dig wide trenches across the breach summits or make new
walls behind the raw new openings, but the British kept one heavy gUn firing throughout the
darkness. They loaded the eighteen-pounder with canister and,

three times an hour, sprayed the area of the breaches with a cloud of musket balls to
deter any Mahratta from risking his life on the rub bled slopes.

Few slept well that night. The cough of the gun seemed unnaturally loud, and even in the
British camp men could hear the rattle as the musket balls whipped against Gawilghur's
wounded walls. And in the morning, the soldiers knew, they would be asked to go to those
walls and climb the tumbled ramps and fight their way through the shattered stones. And what
would wait for them? At the very least, they suspected, the enemy would have mounted guns
athwart the breaches to fire across the attack route. They expected blood and pain and
death.

“I've never been into a breach,” Garrard told Sharpe. The two men met at Syud Sevajee's
tents, and Sharpe had given his old friend a bottle of arrack.

“Nor me,” Sharpe said.

“They say it's bad.”

“They do,” Sharpe agreed bleakly. It was supposedly the worst ordeal that any soldier
could face.

Garrard drank from the stone bottle, wiped its lip, then handed it to Sharpe. He admired
Sharpe's coat in the light of the small campfire.

“Smart bit of cloth, Mister Sharpe.”

The coat had been given new white turn backs and cuffs by Clare Wall, and Sharpe had done
his best to make the jacket wrinkled and dusty, but it still looked expensive.

“Just an old coat, Tom,” he said dismissively.

“Funny, isn't it? Mister Morris lost a coat.”

“Did he?” Sharpe asked.

“He should be more careful.” He gave Garrard the bottle, then climbed to his feet.

“I've got an errand, Tom.” He held out his hand.

“I'll look for you tomorrow.”

“I'll look out for you, Dick.”

Sharpe led Ahmed through the camp. Some men sang around their fires, others obsessively
honed bayonets that were already razor sharp. A cavalryman had set up a grinding stone
and a succession of officers' servants brought swords and sabres to be given a wicked
edge. Sparks whipped off the stone. The sappers were doing their last job, making ladders
from bamboo that had been carried up from the plain. Major Stokes supervised the job, and
his eyes widened in joy as he saw Sharpe approaching through the firelight.

"Richard! Is it you? Dear me, it is!

Well, I never! And I thought you were locked up in the enemy's dungeons! You
escaped?"

Sharpe shook Stokes's hand.

“I never got taken to Gawilghur. I was held by some horsemen,” he lied, 'but they didn't
seem to know what to do with me, so the buggers just let me go."

“I'm delighted, delighted!”

Sharpe turned and looked at the ladders.

“I didn't think we were making an escalade tomorrow?”

“We're not,” Stokes said, 'but you never know what obstacles have to be overcome inside
a fortress. Sensible to carry ladders." He peered at Ahmed who was now dressed in one of
the sepoy's coats that had been given to Syud Sevajee. The boy wore the red jacket
proudly, even though it was a poor, threadbare and bloodstained thing.

“I say,” Stokes admired the boy, 'but you do look like a proper soldier. Don't he
just?"

Ahmed stood to attention, shouldered his musket and made a smart about-turn. Major
Stokes applauded.

“Well done, lad. I'm afraid you've missed all the excitement, Sharpe.”

“Excitement?”

"Your Captain Torrance died. Shot himself, by the look of things.

Terrible way to go. I feel sorry for his father. He's a cleric, did you know? Poor man,
poor man. Would you like some tea, Sharpe? Or do you need to sleep?"

“I'd like some tea, sir.”

“We'll go to my tent,” Stokes said, leading the way.

“I've still got your pack, by the way. You can take it with you.”

“I'd rather you kept it another day,” Sharpe said, “I'll be busy tomorrow.”

“Busy?” Stokes asked.

“I'm going in with Kenny's troops, sir.”

“Dear God,” Stokes said. He stopped and frowned. “I've no doubt we'll get through the
breaches, Richard, for they're good breaches. A bit steep, perhaps, but we should get
through, but God only knows what waits beyond. And I fear that the Inner Fort may be a much
bigger obstacle than any of us have anticipated.” He shook his head.

"I

ain't sanguine, Sharpe, I truly ain't."

Sharpe had no idea what sanguine meant, though he did not doubt that Stokes's lack of it
did not augur well for the attack.

"I have to go into the fort, sir. I have to. But I wondered if you'd keep an eye on

Ahmed here." He took hold of the boy's shoulder and pulled him forward.

“The little bugger will insist on coming with me,” Sharpe said, 'but if you keep him out
of trouble then he might survive another day."

“He can be my assistant,” Stokes said happily.

“But, Richard, can't I persuade you to the same employment? Are you ordered to
accompany Kenny?”

“I'm not ordered, sir, but I have to go. It's personal business.”

“It will be bloody in there,” Stokes warned. He walked on to his tent and shouted for his
servant.

Sharpe pushed Ahmed towards Stokes's tent.

“You stay here, Ahmed, you hear me? You stay here!”

“I come with you,” Ahmed insisted.

“You bloody well stay,” Sharpe said. He twitched Ahmed's red coat.

“You're a soldier now. That means you take orders, understand? You obey. And I'm
ordering you to stay here.”

The boy scowled, but he seemed to accept the orders, and Stokes showed him a place where
he could sleep. Afterwards the two men talked, or rather Sharpe listened as Stokes enthused
about some fine quartz he had discovered in rocks broken open by the enemy's counter
battery fire. Eventually the Major began yawning. Sharpe finished his tea, said his
good night and then, making certain that Ahmed did not see him go, he slipped away into the
dark.

He still could not sleep. He wished Clare had not gone to Eli Lockhart, although he was
glad for the cavalryman that she had, but her absence made Sharpe feel lonely. He walked
to the cliff's edge and he stood staring across the great gulf towards the fortress. A few
lights showed in Gawilghur, and every twenty minutes or so the rocky isthmus would be lit
by the monstrous flame of the eighteen-pounder gun. The balls would rattle against stone,
then there would be silence except for the distant sound of singing, the crackle of
insects and the soft sigh of the wind against the cliffs. Once, when the great gun fired,
Sharpe distinctly saw the three ragged holes in the two walls. And why, he wondered, was he
so intent on going into those deathtraps? Was it revenge? Just to find Hakeswill and Dodd?
He could wait for the attackers to do their work, then stroll into the fort unopposed, but
he knew he would not choose that easy path. He would go with Kenny's men and he would fight
his way into Gawilghur for no other reason than pride. He was failing as an officer. The
74th had rejected him,