Sharpe's Fortress (39 page)

A Scottish sergeant had shoved and tugged the men into two ranks.

“Load!” Sharpe said, though most of the men were already loaded.

“Sergeant?”

“Sir?”

“Advance along the wall. No one's to fire till I give the word. Sergeant Green?” Sharpe
called, waited.

“Sergeant Green!” Green had evidently not crossed the wall yet, or maybe he had not even
climbed the cliff.

“Sergeant Green!” Sharpe bellowed again.

“Why do you need him?” a voice called.

It was a Scottish captain. Christ, Sharpe thought, but he was outranked.

“To bring the next group on!”

“I'll do it,” the Scotsman said, 'you go!"

“Advance!” Sharpe shouted.

“By the centre!” the Sergeant shouted.

“March!”

It was a ragged advance. The men had no file-closers and they spread out, but Sharpe did
not much care. The thing was to close on the enemy. That had always been McCandless's
advice. Get close and start killing, because there's bugger all you can do at long range,
though the Scottish Colonel would never have used that word. This is for you, McCandless,
Sharpe thought, this one's for you, and it struck him that this was the first time he had ever
taken troops into formal battle, line against line, muskets against muskets. He was
nervous, and made even more nervous by the fact that he was leading a makeshift company in
full view of the thousands of redcoats on the ravine's northern slope. It was like being
trapped on stage in a full theatre; lose here, he thought, and all the army would know. He
watched the enemy officer, a tall man with a dark face and a large moustache. He looked
calm and his men marched in three tight ranks. Well trained, Sharpe thought, but then no one
had ever said William Dodd could not whip troops into shape.

The Cobras stopped when the two units were a hundred paces apart.

They levelled their muskets and Sharpe saw his men falter.

“Keep going!” he ordered.

“Keep going!”

“You heard the man!” the Scottish Sergeant bellowed.

“Keep going!”

Sharpe was at the right-hand flank of his line. He glanced behind to see more men running
to catch up, their equipment flapping as they stumbled over the uneven ground. Christ,
Sharpe thought, but I'm inside! We're in! And then the Cobras fired.

And Sharpe, ensign and bullock driver, had a battle on his hands.

The redcoats stormed the gatehouse a third time, this attempt led by two squads who
hugged the walls either side of the passage and then turned their muskets up to blast the
defenders on the opposite fire step

The tactic seemed to work, for they ripped off their first volley and under its cover a
third squad comprised of axe men charged over the dead and dying and scrambled up the steep
stone path towards the second gate.

Then the lit rockets began to drop from on high. They struck the bodies and then flamed
into life and ricocheted madly about the confined space. They tore into the two musket
squads, flamed among the axe men choked men with their smoke, burned them with flame and
exploded to strew the carnage with more blood and guts. The axe men never even reached the
gate. They died under the musket fire that followed the rockets, or else, wounded, they
tried to crawl back through the thick smoke. Rocks hurtled down from the flanking fire steps
pulping the dead and the living into horror. The survivors fled, defeated again.

“Enough!” Colonel Dodd shouted at his men.

“Enough!” He peered down into the stone chamber. It looked like something from hell, a
place where broken things twitched in blood beneath a reeking pall of smoke. The rocket
carcasses still burned. The wounded cried for help that was not coming, and Dodd felt an
elation sear through him. It was even easier than he had dared to hope.

“Sahib!” Gopal said urgently.

“Sahib?”

“What?”

“Sahib, look!” Gopal was pointing westwards. There was smoke and the crackling sound of a
musket fight. The noise and smoke were coming from just beyond the curve of the hill so Dodd
could not see what was happening, but the sound was enough to convince him that a
considerable fight had broken out a quarter-mile away, and that might not have mattered,
except that the smoke and the noise came from inside the wall.

“Jesus!” Dodd swore.

“Find out what's happening, Gopal. Quick!” He could not lose. He must not lose.

“Where's Mister Hakeswill?” he shouted, wanting the deserter to take over Gopal's
responsibilities on the fire step but the twitching Sergeant had vanished. The musketry
went on, but beneath Dodd there were only moans and the smell of burning flesh. He stared
westwards. If the damned redcoats had crossed the wall then he would need more infantry to
drive them out and seal whatever place they had found to penetrate the Inner Fort.

“Havildar!”

He summoned the man who had accompanied Hakeswill to the palace.

“Go to the Southern Gate and tell them to send a battalion here. Quick!”

“Sahib,” the man said, and ran.

Dodd found that he was shaking slightly. It was just a small tremor in his right hand
which he stilled by gripping the gold elephant-shaped hilt of his sword. There was no need
to panic, he told himself, everything was under control, but he could not rid himself of
the thought that there would be no escape from this place. In every other fight since he had
defected from British service he had made certain of a route along which he could retreat,
but from this high fortress on its soaring bluff there was no way out. He must win, or else he
must die. He watched the smoke to the west. The firing was constant now, suggesting that
the enemy was inside the fort in force. His hand twitched, but this time he did not notice
as, for the first time in weeks, the Lord of Gawilghur began to fear defeat.

The volley from the company of white-coated Cobras hammered towards Sharpe's men,
but because they were spread more widely than usual many of the balls wasted themselves in
the gaps between the files. Some men went down, and the rest instinctively checked, but
Sharpe shouted at them to keep marching. The enemy was hidden in smoke, but Sharpe knew
they would be reloading.

“Close the files, Sergeant,” he shouted.

“Close up! Close up!” the Scots Sergeant called. He glanced at Sharpe, suspecting that he
was taking the small company too close to the enemy. The range was already down to sixty
yards.

Sharpe could just see one of the Indians through the smoke. The man was the left flanker
of the front rank, a small man, and he had bitten off his cartridge and was pouring the
powder down the muzzle of his musket. Sharpe watched the bullet go in and the ramrod come
up ready to plunge down into the barrel.

“Halt!” he called.

“Halt!” the Sergeant echoed.

“Present!”

The muskets came up into the men's shoulders. Sharpe reckoned he had about sixty men in
the two ranks, fewer than the enemy's three ranks, but enough. More men were running up from
the ladder all the time.

“Aim low,” he said.

“Fire!”

The volley slammed into the Cobras who were still loading. Sharpe's men began to reload
themselves, working fast, nervous of the enemy's next volley.

Sharpe watched the enemy bring their muskets up. His men were half hidden by their own
musket smoke.

“Drop!” he shouted. He had not known he was going to give the order until he heard
himself shout it, but it suddenly seemed the sensible thing to do.

“Flat on the ground!” he shouted.

“Quick!” He dropped himself, though only to one knee, and a heartbeat later the enemy
fired and their volley whistled over the prostrate company. Sharpe had slowed his men's
loading process, but he had kept them alive and now it was time to go for the kill.

“Load!” he shouted, and his men climbed to their feet. This time Sharpe did not watch the
enemy, for he did not want to be affected by their timing. He hefted the claymore,
comforted by the blade's heaviness.

“Prepare to charge!” he shouted. His men were pushing their ramrods back into their
musket hoops, and now they pulled out their bayonets and twisted them onto blackened
muzzles. Eli Lockhart's cavalrymen, some of whom only had pistols, drew their
sabres.

“Present!” Sharpe called, and the muskets went up into the shoulders again. Now he did
look at the enemy and saw that most of them were still ramming.

“Fire!” The muskets flamed and the scraps of wadding spat out after the bullets to
flicker their small flames in the grass.

“Charge!” Sharpe shouted, and he led the way from the right flank, the claymore in his
hand.

“Charge!” he shouted again and his small company, sensing that they had only seconds
before the enemy's muskets were loaded, ran with him.

Then a blast of musketry sounded to Sharpe's right and he saw that the Scottish Captain
had formed a score of men on the flank and had poured in a volley that struck the Cobras just
before Sharpe's charge closed the gap.

“Kill them!” Sharpe raged. Fear was whipping inside him, the fear that he had mistimed
this charge and that the enemy would have a volley ready just yards before the redcoats
struck home, but he was committed now, and he ran as hard as he could to break into the
white-coated ranks before the volley came.

The Havildar commanding the Cobra company had been appalled to see the redcoats
charging. He should have fired, but instead he ordered his men to fix their own bayonets
and so the enemy was still twisting the blades onto their muskets when the leading
redcoats burst through the smoke. Sharpe hacked his heavy sword at the front rank, felt it
bite and slide against bone, twisted it free, lunged, kicked at a man, and suddenly Eli
Lockhart was beside him, his sabre slashing down, and two Highlanders were stabbing with
bayonets. Sharpe hacked with the sword two-handed, fighting in a red rage that had come
from the nervousness that had assailed him during the charge. A sepoy trapped the Cobras'
Havildar, feinted with the bayonet, parried the tulwar's counter-lunge, then stabbed the
enemy in the belly. The white coats were running now, fleeing back towards the smoke that
boiled up from the gatehouse which lay beyond the bulge of the hill. Tom Garrard, his
bayonet bloodied to the hilt, kicked at a wounded man who was trying to aim his musket.
Other men stooped to search the dead and dying.

The Scottish Captain came in from the flank. He had the winged epaulettes of a light
company.

“I didn't know the 74th were up here,” he greeted Sharpe, 'or is it the 33rd?" He peered at
Sharpe's coat, and Sharpe saw that Clare's newly sewn facings had been torn in the climb,
revealing the old red material beneath.

“I'm a lost sheep, sir,” Sharpe said.

“A very welcome lost sheep,” the Captain said, holding out his hand.

“Archibald Campbell, Scotch Brigade. Brought my company up here, just in case they got
bored.”

“Richard Sharpe, 74th,” Sharpe said, shaking Campbell's hand, 'and bloody glad to see you,
sir." Sharpe suddenly wanted to laugh. His force, which had pierced the Inner Fort's de
fences was a ragged mix of Indians and British, cavalrymen and infantry. There were
kilted Highlanders from the 78th, some of Campbell's men from the 94th, maybe half of the
33rd's Light Company, and a good number of sepoys.

Campbell had climbed one of the low timber platforms that had let the defenders peer
over the fire step and from its vantage point he stared at the gatehouse which lay a
quarter-mile eastwards.

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking, Mister Sharpe?” he asked.

“I'm thinking we should take the gatehouse,” Sharpe said, 'and open the gates."

“Me too.” He shifted to make room for Sharpe on the small platform.

“They'll no doubt be trying to evict us soon, eh? We'd best make haste.”

Sharpe stared at the gatehouse where a great smear of smoke showed above the ramparts that
were thick with white-coated Cobras. A shallow flight of stone stairs led from inside the
fortress to the fire step and the gates could not be opened until that fire step was cleared
of the enemy.

“If I take the fire step he suggested to Campbell, 'you can open the gates?”

“That seems a fair division of labour,” Campbell said, jumping down from the platform.
He had lost his hat and a shock of curly black hair hung over his narrow face. He grinned at
Sharpe.

“I'll take my company and you can have the rest, eh?” Campbell strode up the hill,
shouting for his own Light Company to form in a column of three ranks.

Sharpe followed Campbell off the platform and summoned the remaining men into
line.

“Captain Campbell's going to open the gates from the inside,” he told them, 'and we're
going to make it possible by clearing the parapets of the bastards. It's a fair distance
to the gate, but we've got to get there fast. And when we get there, the first thing we do is
fire a volley up at the fire step Clean some of the buggers off before we go up there. Load
your muskets now. Sergeant Green!"

Green, red-faced from the effort of climbing up the ravine and running to join Sharpe,
stepped forward.

“I'm here, sir, and sir-' ”Number off twenty men, Green," Sharpe ordered the panting
Sergeant.

“You'll stay down below and provide covering fire while we climb the steps,
understand?”

“Twenty men, sir? Yes, sir, I will, sir, only it's Mister Morris, sir.”

Green sounded embarrassed.

“What about him?” Sharpe asked.

“He's recovered, sir. His tummy, sir, it got better' Green managed to keep a straight
face as he delivered that news 'and he said no one else was to climb the cliff, sir, and he
sent me to fetch the men what had climbed it back down again. That's why I'm here, sir.”

“No, you're not,” Sharpe said.

“You're here to number off twenty men who'll give the rest of us covering fire.”

Green hesitated, looked at Sharpe's face, then nodded.