Sharpe's Fortress (5 page)

Yes, sir, three bladders full, sir, and damn your bloody eyes, sir.

“Sorry, sir,” Sharpe said instead. So maybe proper officers didn't piss?

He sensed the company was laughing at him and he ran to catch up, fiddling with his
buttons. Still there was no gunfire from the Mahratta centre. Why not? But then a cannon
on one of the enemy flanks fired slantwise across the field and the ball grazed right through
number six company, ripping a front rank man's feet off and slashing a man behind through
the knees. Another soldier was limping, his leg deeply pierced by a splinter from his
neighbour's bone. Corporal McCallum, one of the file-closers, tugged men into the gap
while a piper ran across to bandage the wounded men. The injured would be left where they
fell until after the battle when, if they still lived, they would be carried to the
surgeons. And if they survived the knives and saws they would be shipped home, good for
nothing except to be a burden on the parish. Or maybe the Scots did not have parishes;
Sharpe was not sure, but he was certain the buggers had workhouses. Everyone had
workhouses and paupers' graveyards. Better to be buried out here in the black earth of
enemy India than condemned to the charity of a workhouse.

Then he saw why the guns in the centre of the Mahratta line had ceased fire. The gaps
between the guns were suddenly filled with men running forward. Men in long robes and
headdresses. They streamed between the gaps, then joined together ahead of the guns
beneath long green banners that trailed from silver-topped poles. Arabs, Sharpe thought. He
had seen some at Ahmednuggur, but most of those had been dead. He remembered Sevajee, the
Mahratta who fought alongside Colonel McCandless, saying that the Arab mercenaries were
the best of all the enemy troops.

Now there was a horde of desert warriors coming straight for the 74th and their kilted
neighbours.

The Arabs came in a loose formation. Their guns had decorated stocks that glinted in
the sunlight, while curved swords were scabbarded at their waists. They came almost
jauntily, as though they had utter confidence in their ability. How many were there? A
thousand? Sharpe reckoned at least a thousand. Their officers were on horseback. They did
not advance in ranks and files, but in a mass, and some, the bravest men, ran ahead as if
eager to start the killing. The great robed mass was chanting a shrill war cry, while in its
centre drummers were beating huge instruments that pulsed a belly-thumping beat across
the field. Sharpe watched the nearest British gun load with canister. The green banners
were being waved from side to side so that the silk trails snaked over the warriors' heads.
Something was written on the banners, but it was in no script that Sharpe recognized.

'74th!" Major Swinton called.

“Halt!”

The 78th had also halted. The two Highland battalions, both under strength after
their losses at Assaye, were taking the full brunt of the Arab charge. The rest of the
battlefield seemed to melt away. All Sharpe could see was the robed men coming so eagerly
towards him.

“Make ready!” Swinton called.

“Make ready!” Urquhart echoed.

“Make ready!” Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. The men raised their muskets chest high and
pulled back the heavy hammers.

Sharpe pushed into the gap between number six company and its left-hand neighbour,
number seven. He wished he had a musket. The sabre felt flimsy.

“Present!” Swinton called.

“Present!” Colquhoun echoed, and the muskets went into the men's shoulders. Heads bowed
to peer down the barrels' lengths.

“You'll fire low, boys,” Urquhart said from behind the line, 'you'll fire low. To your
place, Mister Sharpe."

Bugger it, Sharpe thought, another bloody mistake. He stepped back behind the company
where he was supposed to make sure no one tried to run.

The Arabs were close. Less than a hundred paces to go now. Some had their swords drawn. The
air, miraculously smoke-free, was filled with their blood-chilling war cry which was a
weird ululating sound.

Not far now, not far at all. The Scotsmen's muskets were angled slightly down. The kick
drove the barrels upwards, and untrained troops, not ready for the heavy recoil, usually
fired high. But this volley would be lethal.

“Wait, boys, wait,” Pig-ears called to number seven company. Ensign Venables slashed
at weeds with his claymore. He looked nervous.

Urquhart had drawn a pistol. He dragged the cock back, and his horse's ears flicked back as
the pistol's spring clicked.

Arab faces screamed hatred. Their great drums were thumping. The redcoat line, just two
ranks deep, looked frail in front of the savage charge.

Major Swinton took a deep breath. Sharpe edged towards the gap again. Bugger it, he
wanted to be in the front line where he could kill. It was too nerve-racking behind the
line.

'74th!" Swinton shouted, then he paused. Men's fingers curled about their triggers.

Let them get close, Swinton was thinking, let them get close. It Then kill them. it Prince
Manu Bappoo's brother, the Rajah of Berar, was not at the village of Argaum where the
Lions of Allah now charged to destroy the heart of the British attack. The Rajah did not
like battle. He liked the idea of conquest, he loved to see prisoners paraded and he
craved the loot that filled his storehouses, but he had no belly for fighting.

Manu Bappoo had no such qualms. He was thirty-five years old, he had fought since he was
fifteen, and all he asked was the chance to go on fighting for another twenty or forty
years. He considered himself a true Mahratta; a pirate, a rogue, a thief in armour, a
looter, a pestilence, a successor to the generations of Mahrattas who had dominated
western India by pouring from their hill fastnesses to terrorize the plump princedoms
and luxurious kingdoms in the plains. A quick sword, a fast horse and a wealthy victim,
what more could a man want? And so Bappoo had ridden deep and far to bring plunder and
ransom back to the small land of Berar.

But now all the Mahratta lands were threatened. One British army was conquering their
northern territory, and another was here in the south. It was this southern redcoat
force that had broken the troops of Scindia and Berar at Assaye, and the Rajah of Berar
had summoned his brother to bring his Lions of Allah to claw and kill the invader. This
was not a task for horsemen, the Rajah had warned Bappoo, but for infantry. It was a task
for the Arabs.

But Bappoo knew this was a task for horsemen. His Arabs would win, of that he was sure,
but they could only break the enemy on the immediate battlefield. He had thought to let
the British advance right up to his cannon, then release the Arabs, but a whim, an
intimation of triumph, had decided him to advance the Arabs beyond the guns. Let the
Lions of Allah loose on the enemy's centre and, when that centre was broken, the rest of
the British line would scatter and run in panic, and that was when the Mahratta horsemen
would have their slaughter. It was already early evening, and the sun was sinking in the
reddened west, but the sky was cloudless and Bappoo was anticipating the joys of a
moonlit hunt across the flat Deccan Plain.

“We shall gallop through blood,” he said aloud, then led his aides towards his army's
right flank so that he could charge past his Arabs when they had finished their fight. He
would let his victorious Lions of Allah pillage the enemy's camp while he led his
horsemen on a wild victorious gallop through the moon-touched darkness.

And the British would run. They would run like goats from the tiger.

But the tiger was clever. He had only kept a small number of horsemen with the army, a
mere fifteen thousand, while the greater part of his cavalry had been sent southwards to
raid the enemy's long supply roads. The British would flee straight into those men's
sabres.

Bappoo trotted his horse just behind the right flank of the Lions of Allah. The British
guns were firing canister and Bappoo saw how the ground beside his Arabs was being
flecked by the blasts of shot, and he saw the robed men fall, but he saw how the others did
not hesitate, but hurried on towards the pitifully thin line of redcoats. The Arabs were
screaming defiance, the guns were hammering, and Bappoo's soul soared with the music.
There was nothing finer in life, he thought, than this sensation of imminent victory.
It was like a drug that fired the mind with noble visions.

He might have spared a moment's thought and wondered why the British did not use their
muskets. They were holding their fire, waiting until every shot could kill, but the Prince
was not worrying about such trifles. In his dreams he was scattering a broken army,
slashing at them with his tulwar, carving a bloody path south. A fast sword, a quick horse
and a broken enemy. It was the Mahratta paradise, and the Lions of Allah were opening
its gates so that this night Manu Bappoo, Prince, warrior and dreamer, could ride into
legend.

“Fire!” Swinton shouted.

The two Highland regiments fired together, close to a thousand muskets flaming to
make an instant hedge of thick smoke in front of the battalions. The Arabs vanished behind
the smoke as the redcoats reloaded. Men bit into the grease-coated cartridges, tugged
ramrods that they whirled in the air before rattling them down into the barrels. The
churning smoke began to thin, revealing small fires where the musket wadding burned in the
dry grass.

“Platoon fire!” Major Swinton shouted.

“From the flanks!”

“Light Company!” Captain Peters called on the left flank.

“First platoon, fire!”

“Kill them! Your mothers are watching!” Colonel Harness shouted. The Colonel of the y8th
was mad as a hatter and half delirious with a fever, but he had insisted on advancing
behind his kilted Highlanders. He was being carried in a palanquin and, as the platoon
fire began, he struggled from the litter tojoin the battle, his only weapon a broken
riding crop. He had been recently bled, and a stained bandage trailed from a coat
sleeve.

“Give them a flogging, you dogs! Give them a flogging.”

The two battalions fired in half companies now, each half company firing two or three
seconds after the neighbouring platoon so that the volleys rolled in from the outer
wings of each battalion, met in the centre and then started again at the flanks. Clockwork
fire, Sharpe called it, and it was the result of hours of tedious practice. Beyond the
battalions' flanks the six-pounders bucked back with each shot, their wheels jarring up
from the turf as the canisters ripped apart at the muzzles. Wide swathes of burning grass
lay under the cannon smoke. The gunners were working in shirtsleeves, swabbing, ramming,
then ducking aside as the guns pitched back again Only the gun commanders most of them
sergeants, seemed to look at the enemy, and then only when they were checking the alignment
of the cannon. The other gunners fetched shot and powder, sometimes heaved on a handspike
or pushed on the wheels as the gun was re laid then swabbed and loaded again.

“Water!” a corporal shouted, holding up a bucket to show that the swabbing water was
gone.

“Fire low! Don't waste your powder!” Major Swinton called as he pushed his horse into
the gap between the centre companies. He peered at the enemy through the smoke. Behind
him, next to the 74th's twin flags, General Wellesley and his aides also stared at the
Arabs beyond the smoke clouds. Colonel Wallace, the brigade commander, trotted his horse
to the battalion's flank. He called something to Sharpe as he went by, but his words were
lost in the welter of gunfire, then his horse half spun as a bullet struck its haunch.
Wallace steadied the beast, looked back at the wound, but the horse did not seem badly hurt.
Colonel Harness was thrashing one of the native palanquin bearers who had been trying to
push the Colonel back into the curtained vehicle. One of Wellesley's aides rode back to
quieten the Colonel and to persuade him to go southwards.

“Steady now!” Sergeant Colquhoun shouted.

“Aim low!”

The Arab charge had been checked, but not defeated. The first volley must have hit the
attackers cruelly hard for Sharpe could see a line of bodies lying on the turf. The
bodies looked red and white, blood against robes, but behind that twitching heap the Arabs
were firing back to make their own ragged cloud of musket smoke. They fired haphazardly,
untrained in platoon volleys, but they reloaded swiftly and their bullets were striking
home. Sharpe heard the butcher's sound of metal hitting meat, saw men hurled backwards, saw
some fall. The file-closers hauled the dead out of the line and tugged the living closer
together.

"Close up!

Close up!" The pipes played on, adding their defiant music to the noise of the guns.
Private Hollister was hit in the head and Sharpe saw a cloud of white flour drift away from
the man's powdered hair as his hat fell off.

Then blood soaked the whitened hair and Hollister fell back with glassy eyes.

“One platoon, fire!” Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He was so shortsighted that he could
barely see the enemy, but it hardly mattered.

No one could see much in the smoke, and all that was needed was a steady nerve and
Colquhoun was not a man to panic.

“Two platoon, fire!” Urquhart shouted.

“Christ Jesus!” a man called close to Sharpe. He reeled backwards, his musket falling,
then he twisted and dropped to his knees.

“Oh God, oh God, oh God,” he moaned, clutching at his throat. Sharpe could see no wound
there, but then he saw blood seeping down the man's grey trousers. The dying man looked up at
Sharpe, tears showed at his eyes, then he pitched forward.

Sharpe picked up the fallen musket, then turned the man over to unstrap the cartridge
box. The man was dead, or so near as to make no difference.

“Flint,” a front rank man called.

“I need a flint!”

Sergeant Colquhoun elbowed through the ranks, holding out a spare flint.

“And where's your own spare flint, John Hammond?”

“Christ knows, Sergeant.”

“Then ask Him, for you're on a charge.”

A man swore as a bullet tore up his left arm. He backed out of the ranks, the arm hanging
useless and dripping blood.

Sharpe pushed into the gap between the companies, put the musket to his shoulder and
fired. The kick slammed into his shoulder, but it felt good. Something to do at last. He
dropped the butt, fished a cartridge from the pouch and bit off the top, tasting the salt in
the gunpowder. He rammed, fired again, loaded again. A bullet made an odd fluttering
noise as it went past his ear, then another whined overhead. He waited for the rolling
volley to come down the battalion's face, then fired with the other men of six company's
first platoon. Drop the butt, new cartridge, bite, prime, pour, ram, ramrod back in the
hoops, gun up, butt into the bruised shoulder and haul back the dog-head, Sharpe did it as
efficiently as any other man, but he had been trained to it. That was the difference, he
thought grimly. He was trained, but no one trained the officers. They had bugger all to do,
so why train them? Ensign Venables was right, the only duty of a junior officer was to
stay alive, but Sharpe could not resist a fight. Besides, it felt better to stand in the
ranks and fire into the enemy's smoke than stand behind the company and do nothing.

The Arabs were fighting well. Damned well. Sharpe could not remember any other enemy
who had stood and taken so much concentrated platoon fire. Indeed, the robed men were
trying to advance, but they were checked by the ragged heap of bodies that had been their
front ranks. How many damned ranks had they? A dozen? He watched a green flag fall, then the
banner was picked up and waved in the air.

Their big drums still beat, making a menacing sound to match the redcoats' pipers. The
Arab guns had unnaturally long barrels that spewed dirty smoke and licking tongues of
flame. Another bullet whipped close enough to Sharpe to bat his face with a gust of warm
air.

He fired again, then a hand seized his coat collar and dragged him violently
backwards.

“Your place, Ensign Sharpe,” Captain Urquhart said vehemently, 'is here! Behind the
line!" The Captain was mounted and his horse had inadvertently stepped back as Urquhart
seized Sharpe's collar, and the weight of the horse had made the Captain's tug far more
violent than he had intended.

“You're not a private any longer,” he said, steadying Sharpe who had almost been pulled
off his feet.

“Of course, sir,” Sharpe said, and he did not meet Urquhart's gaze, but stared bitterly
ahead. He was blushing, knowing he had been reprimanded in front of the men. Damn it to
hell, he thought.

“Prepare to charge!” Major Swinton called.

“Prepare to charge!” Captain Urquhart echoed, spurring his horse away from Sharpe.

The Scotsmen pulled out their bayonets and twisted them onto the lugs of their musket
barrels.

“Empty your guns!” Swinton called, and those men who were still loaded raised their
muskets and fired a last volley.

'74th!" Swinton shouted.

“Forward! I want to hear some pipes! Let me hear pipes!”

“Go on, Swinton, go on!” Wallace shouted. There was no need to encourage the
battalion forward, for it was going willingly, but the Colonel was excited. He drew his
claymore and pushed his horse into the rear rank of number seven company.

“Onto them, lads! Onto them!”

The redcoats marched forward, trampling through the scatter of little fires started by
their musket wadding.

The Arabs seemed astonished that the redcoats were advancing.

Some drew their own bayonets, while others pulled long curved swords from scabbards.

“They won't stand!” Wellesley shouted.

“They won't stand.”

“They bloody well will,” a man grunted.

“Go on!” Swinton shouted.

“Go on!” And the 74th, released to the kill, ran the last few yards and jumped up onto the
heaps of dead before slashing home with their bayonets. Off to the right the y8th were also
charging home. The British cannon gave a last violent blast of canister, then fell silent
as the Scots blocked the gunners' aim.

Some of the Arabs wanted to fight, others wanted to retreat, but the charge had taken
them by surprise and the rearward ranks were still not aware of the danger and so pressed
forward, forcing the reluctant men at the front onto the Scottish bayonets. The
Highlanders screamed as they killed. Sharpe still held the unloaded musket as he closed up
on the rear rank. He had no bayonet and was wondering whether he should draw his sabre when
a tall Arab suddenly hacked down a front rank man with a scimitar, then pushed forward to
slash with the reddened blade at the second man in the file. Sharpe reversed the musket,
swung it by the barrel and hammered the heavy stock down onto the swordsman's head The Arab
sank down and a bayonet struck into his spine so that he twisted like a speared eel. Sharpe
hit him on the head again, kicked him for good measure, then shoved on. Men were shouting,
screaming, stabbing, spitting, and, right in the face of number six company, a knot of
robed men were slashing with scimitars as though they could defeat the 74th by themselves.
Urquhart pushed his horse up against the rear rank and fired his pistol. One of the Arabs was
plucked back and the others stepped away at last, all except one short man who screamed in
fury and slashed with his long curved blade. The front rank parted to let the scimitar cut
the air between two files, then the second rank also split apart to allow the short man to
come screaming through on his own, with only Sharpe in front.

“He's only a lad!” a Scottish voice shouted in warning as the ranks closed again.

It was not a short man at all, but a boy. Maybe only twelve or thirteen years old, Sharpe
guessed as he fended off the scimitar with the musket barrel. The boy thought he could win
the battle single-handed and leaped at Sharpe, who parried the sword and stepped back to
show he did not want to fight.

“Put it down, lad,” he said.

The boy spat, leaped and cut again. Sharpe parried a third time, then reversed the musket
and slammed its stock into the side of the boy's head. For a second the lad stared at Sharpe
with an astonished look, then he crumpled to the turf.

“They're breaking!” Wellesley shouted from somewhere close by.

“They're breaking!”

Colonel Wallace was in the front rank now, slicing down with his claymore. He hacked like
a farmer, blow after blow. He had lost his cocked hat and his bald pate gleamed in the late
sunlight. There was blood on his horse's flank, and more blood spattered on the white turn
backs of his coat tails. Then the pressure of the enemy collapsed and the horse twisted
into the gap and Wallace spurred it on.

“Come on, boys! Come on!” A man stooped to rescue Wallace's cocked hat.

Its plumes were blood-soaked.

The Arabs were fleeing.

“Go!” Swinton shouted.

“Go! Keep 'em running! Go!”

A man paused to search a corpse's robes and Sergeant Colquhoun dragged the man up and pushed
him on. The file-closers were making sure none of the enemy bodies left behind the
Scottish advance were dangerous. They kicked swords and muskets out of injured men's
hands, prodded apparently unwounded bodies with bayonets and killed any man who showed
a spark of fight. Two pipers were playing their ferocious music, driving the Scots up the
gentle slope where the big Arab drums had been abandoned. Man after man speared the drum
skins with bayonets as they passed.

“Forward on! Forward on!” Urquhart bellowed as though he were on a hunting field.

“To the guns!” Wellesley called.

“Keep going!” Sharpe bellowed at some laggards.

“Go on, you bastards, go on!”

The enemy gun line was at the crest of the low rise, but the Mahratta gunners dared not
fire because the remnants of the Lions of Allah were between them and the redcoats. The
gunners hesitated for a few seconds, then decided the day was lost and fled.

“Take the guns!” Wellesley called.

Colonel Wallace spurred among the fleeing enemy, striking down with the claymore, then
reined in beside a gaudily painted eighteen pounder

“Come on, lads! Come on! To me!”

The Scotsmen reached the guns. Most had reddened bayonets, all had sweat streaks
striping their powder-blackened faces. Some began rifling the limbers where gunners
stored food and valuables.

“Load!” Urquhart called.

“Load!”

“Form ranks!” Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He ran forward and tugged men away from the
limbers.

“Leave the carts alone, boys! Form ranks! Smartly now!”

Sharpe, for the first time, could see down the long reverse slope. Three hundred paces
away were more infantry, a great long line of it massed in a dozen ranks, and beyond that
were some walled gardens and the roofs of a village. The shadows were very long for the sun
was blazing just above the horizon. The Arabs were running towards the stationary
infantry.