Sharpe's Fortress (34 page)

“In ten minutes, Mister Hakeswill, you will lead your company to the palace and you will
order the Arab guards to come and defend the walls.”

Hakeswill's face twitched.

“Don't speak their heathen language, sir, begging your pardon, sir.”

“You don't need their language. You've got a musket, use it. And if anyone questions
your authority, Mister Hakeswill, you have my permission to shoot them.”

“Shoot them, sir? Yes, sir. With pleasure, sir.”

“Anyone at all, Mister Hakeswill.”

Hakeswill's face twitched again.

“That fat little bugger, sir, him what was just here with the curly moustache .. .”

“The Killadar? If he questions you .. .”

“I shoot the bugger, sir.”

“Exactly.” Dodd smiled. He had seen into Hakeswill's soul and discovered it was black
as filth, and perfect for his purposes.

“Do it for me, Mister Hakeswill, and I shall gazette you as a captain in the Cobras. Your
havildar speaks some English, doesn't he?”

“A kind of English, sir,” Hakeswill said.

“Make sure he understands you. The palace guards are to be despatched to the walls.”

“They will, sir, or else they'll be dead 'uns.”

“Very good,” Dodd said.

“But wait ten minutes.”

“I shall, sir. And good day to you, sir.” Hakeswill saluted, about turned and marched down
the ramparts.

Dodd turned back to the Outer Fort. Rockets seared out of the smoke cloud above which Manu
Bappoo's flag still hung. Faintly, very faintly, Dodd could hear men shouting, but the
sound was being drowned by the roar of the guns which unsettled the silver-grey monkeys
in the ravine. The beasts turned puzzled black faces up towards the men on the Inner Fort's
walls as though they could find an answer to the noise and stink that was consuming the
day.

A day which, to Dodd's way of thinking, was going perfectly.

The 33rd's Light Company had been waiting a little to the side of the track and Captain
Morris deliberately stayed there, allowing almost all of Kenny's assault troops to go
past before he led his men out of the rocks. He thus ensured that he was at the rear of the
assault, a place which offered the greatest measure of safety.

Once Morris moved his men onto the fort's approach road he deliberately fell in
behind a sepoy ladder party so that his progress was impeded. He walked at the head of
his men, but turned repeatedly.

“Keep in files, Sergeant!” he snapped at Green more than once.

Sharpe walked alongside the company, curbing his long stride to the slow pace set by
Morris. It took a moment to reach the small crest in the road, but then they were in sight of
the fortress and Sharpe could only stare in awe at the weight of fire that seemed to pour from
the battered walls.

The Mahrattas' bigger guns had been unseated, but they possessed a myriad of smaller
cannon, some little larger than blunderbusses, and those weapons now roared and coughed
and spat their flames towards the advancing troops so that the black walls were half
obscured behind the patchwork of smoke that vented from every embrasure. Rockets added
to the confusion. Some hissed up into the sky, but others seared into the advancing men
to slice fiery passages through the ranks.

The leading company had not yet reached the outer breach, but was hurrying into the
narrow space between the precipice to the east and the tank to the west. They jostled as
their files were compressed, and then the gunfire seemed to concentrate on those men and
Sharpe had an impression of blood misting the air as the round shot slammed home at a range
of a mere hundred paces. There were big round bastions on either flank of the breach, and
their summits were edged with perpetual flame as the defenders took turns to blast
muskets down into the mass of attackers. The British guns were still firing, their shots
exploding bursts of dust and stone from the breach, or else hammering into the
embrasures in an effort to dull the enemy's fire.

An aide came running back down the path.

“Hurry!” he called.

“Hurry!”

Morris made no effort to hasten his pace. The leading Scots were past the tank now and
climbing the gentle slope towards the walls, but that slope became ever steeper as it
neared the breach. The man with the flag was in front, then he was engulfed by Highlanders
racing to reach the stones. Kenny led them, sword in hand. Muskets suddenly flamed from
the breach summit, obscuring it with smoke, and then an eighteen-pounder shot churned up
the smoke and threw up a barrow load of broken stone amidst which an enemy musket
wheeled.

Sharpe quickened his pace. He could feel a kind of rage inside, and he wondered if that
was fear, but there was an excitement too, and an anxiety that he would miss the fight.

He could see the fight clearly enough, for the breach was high above the approach road and
the Scots, scrambling up using their hands, were clearly visible. The British gunners were
still firing, hammering round shot just inches over the Scotsmen's heads to keep the
summit of the breach clear of the enemy, and then, abruptly, the guns stopped and the
redcoats climbed into the dust that hung thick above the shattered stones. A mass of Arabs
climbed the breach's inner slope, coming to oppose the Scots, and scimitars rang against
bayonets. The red coats of the attackers were turned pink by the stone dust. Colonel Kenny
was in the front rank, straddling a chunk of masonry as he parried a scimitar.

He lunged, piercing an enemy's throat, then stepped forward, downwards, knowing he was
across the summit and oblivious of the muskets that flamed above him from the upper wall.
The British gunners, their weapons re laid started to fire at the upper wall, driving the
defenders away from the fire step The Scots rammed their bayonets forward, kicked the dead
off the blades, stepped over the corpses and followed Kenny down to the space inside the
walls.

“This way!” Kenny shouted.

“This way!” He led the rush of men to the left, to where the inner breach waited, its
slope twitching as the round shot slammed home. Some Arabs, fleeing the Scotsmen's snarling
rage, died as they tried to climb the inner breach and were struck by the cannonballs.

Blood spattered across the inner wall, smeared the ramp, then was whitened by the
dust.

Kenny glanced behind to make sure that the column was close behind him.

“Keep them coming,” he shouted to an aide who stood on the summit of the first
breach.

“Keep them coming!” Kenny spat a mouthful of dust, then shouted at the Scots to start
the ascent of the second breach.

“Hurry! Hurry!” Kenny's aides who were still outside the walls urged on the column. The
rearmost ranks of the Colonel's assault party were stringing out, and the second storming
group was not far behind.

“Close up!” the aides urged the laggards.

“Close up!”

Morris reluctantly quickened. The sepoys carrying the ladders were running down
the slight slope which led to the narrow space beside the tank where the enemy's guns were
aimed. All along Gawilghur's walls the smoke jetted, the flames spat and the rockets
blasted out in gouts of smoke and streams of sparks. Even arrows were being fired. One
clattered on a rock near Sharpe, then spun into the grass.

The Scots were climbing the inner breach now, and a stream of men was vanishing over the
rocky summit of the outer breach. No mines had awaited the attackers, and no cannon had
been placed athwart the breach to blast them as they flooded through the wall. Sepoys
scrambled up the stones.

“Hurry!” the aides shouted.

“Hurry!”

Sharpe ran down the slope towards the tank. His canteen and haversack thumped on his
waist, and sweat poured down his face.

“Slow down!”

Morris shouted at him, but Sharpe ignored the call. The company was breaking apart as
the more eager of the men hurried to catch up with Sharpe and the others dallied with
Morris.

“Slow down, damn you!”

Morris called to Sharpe again.

“Keep going!” Kenny's aides shouted. Two of them had been posted beside the tank and
they gestured the men on. The round shot of the breaching batteries hammered above their
heads making a noise like great barrels rolling across floorboards, then cracked into the
smoke rimmed upper wall. A green and red flag waved there. Sharpe saw an Arab aim a musket,
then smoke obscured the sight. A small cannonball struck a sepoy, throwing him back and
smearing the stony road with blood and guts. Sharpe leaped the sprawling body and saw he had
reached the reservoir. The water was low and scummed green. Two Scots and a sepoy lay on the
sun-baked mud, their blood seeping into the cracks that crazed the bank. A musket ball
hammered into the mud, then a small round shot lashed into the rear of Morris's company
and bowled over two men.

“Leave them!” an aide shouted.

“Just leave them!” A rocket smashed close by Sharpe's head, enveloping him in smoke and
sparks. A wounded man crawled back beside the road, trailing a shattered leg.

Another, blood oozing from his belly, collapsed on the mud and lapped at the filthy
water.

Sharpe half choked on the thick smoke as he stumbled up the rising ground. Big black round
shot lay here, left from the cannonade that had made the first breach. Two redcoat bodies
had been heaved aside, three others twitched and called for help, but Kenny had posted
another aide here to keep the troops moving. Dust spurted where musket balls lashed into
the ground, then Sharpe was on the breach itself, half lost his balance as he climbed the
ramp, and then was pushed from behind. Men jostled up the stones, clambered up, hauled
themselves up with one hand while the other gripped their musket. Sharpe put his hand on a
smear of blood. The dusty rubble was almost too hot to touch, and the ramp was much longer
than Sharpe had anticipated. Men shouted hoarsely as they climbed, and still the bullets
thudded down. An arrow struck and quivered in a musket stock. A rocket crashed into the
flood of men, parting it momentarily as the carcass flamed madly where it had lodged
between a boulder and a cannonball. Someone unceremoniously dumped a dead Scotsman
on top of the hissing rocket and the press of men clambered on up over the corpse.

Once at the summit the attackers turned to their left and ran down the inside of the
breach to the dry grass that separated the two walls. A fight was going on in the left-hand
breach, and men were bunching behind it, but Sharpe could see the Scots were gradually
inching up the slope. By God, he thought, but they were almost in! The British guns had
ceased firing for fear of hitting their own men.

Sharpe turned right, going to the second inner breach that Morris's company was
supposed to seal off. High above him, from the fire step of the inner wall, defenders
leaned over to fire down into the space between the ramparts. Sharpe seemed to be running
through a hail of bullets that magically did not touch him. Smoke wreathed about him, then
he saw the broken stones of the breach in front and he leaped onto them and clambered
upwards.

“I'm with you, Dick!” Tom Garrard shouted just behind, then a man appeared in the smoke
above Sharpe and heaved down a baulk of wood.

The timber struck Sharpe on the chest, throwing him back onto Garrard who clutched at
him as the two men fell on the stones. Sharpe swore as a fusillade of musket fire came down
from the breach summit. A handful of men was with him, maybe six or seven, but none seemed
to be hit. They crouched behind him, waiting for orders.

“No farther!”

Morris shouted.

“No farther!”

“Bugger him,” Sharpe said, and he picked up his musket. Just then the British guns,
seeing that the right-hand breach was still occupied by the Mahrattas, opened fire again
and the balls hammered into the stones just a few feet over Sharpe's head. One defender was
caught smack in the belly by an eighteen-pounder shot and it seemed to Sharpe that the man
simply disintegrated in a red shower. Sharpe ducked as the blood poured down the stones,
trickling past him and Garrard in small torrents.

“Jesus,” Sharpe said. Another round shot slammed into the breach, the sound of the
ball's strike as loud as thunder. Shards of stone whipped past Sharpe, and he seemed to be
breathing nothing but hot dust.

“No farther!” Morris said.

“Here! To me! Rally! Rally!” He was crouched under the inner wall, safe from the
defenders on the breach, though high above him, on the undamaged fire step Arab soldiers
still leaned out to fire straight down.

“Sharpe! Come here!” Morris ordered.

“Come on!” Sharpe shouted. Bugger Morris, and bugger all the other officers who said
you could put a racing saddle on a cart horse but the beast would not go quick.

“Come on!” he shouted again as he clambered up the stones, and suddenly there were more
men to his right, but they were Scots, and he saw that the leading men of the second assault
group had reached the fortress. A red-haired lieutenant led them, a claymore in his
hand.

The Lieutenant was climbing the centre of the breach, while Sharpe was trying to
clamber up the steeper flank. The Highlanders went past

Sharpe, screaming at the enemy, and the sight of their red coats made the British gunners
cease fire, and immediately the breach summit filled with robed men who carried curved
swords with blades as thick as cleavers. Swords clashed, muskets crashed, and the red-haired
Lieutenant shook like a gaffed eel as a scimitar sliced into his belly. He turned and fell
towards Sharpe, dropping his claymore. A line of defenders was now firing down the
breach, while a huge Arab, who looked seven feet tall to Sharpe, stood in the centre with a
reddened scimitar and dared any man to challenge him. Two did, and both he threw back in a
shower of blood.

“Light Company!” Sharpe shouted.

“Give those bastards fire! Fire!”

Some muskets banged behind him and the row of defenders seemed to stagger back, but
they closed up again, rallied by the huge man with the bloodstained scimitar. Sharpe had his
left hand on the broken shoulder of the wall and he used it to haul himself up, then
twisted aside as the closest Arabs turned and fired at him. The balls whiplashed past as a
naming lump of wadding struck Sharpe on the cheek. He let go of the wall and fell backwards
as a grinning man tried to stab him with a bayonet. Dear God, but the breach was steep! His
cheek was burnt and his new coat scorched. The Scots tried again, surging up the centre of
the breach to be met by a line of Arab blades. More Arabs came from inside the fortress and
poured a volley of musket fire down the face of the ramp. Sharpe aimed his musket at the
tall Arab and pulled the trigger. The gun hammered into his shoulder, but when the smoke
cleared the big man was still standing and still fighting. The Arabs were winning here, they
were pressing down the face of the breach and chanting a blood-curdling war cry as they
killed. A man rammed a bayonet at Sharpe, he parried it with his own, but then an enemy
grasped Sharpe's musket by the muzzle and tugged it upwards. Sharpe cursed, but held on,
then saw a scimitar slashing towards him and so he let go of the musket and fell back
again.