Sharpe's Tiger (10 page)

Sharpe said nothing. It had taken all his self-discipline not to hit the Sergeant, and Hakeswill knew it and mocked him for it. “Go on, Sharpie! Hit me!” Hakeswill taunted him, and when Sharpe did not move, the Sergeant laughed. “You ain't got the guts, have you?”

“I'll find a place and time,” Sharpe said angrily.

“Place and time! Listen to him!” Hakeswill chuckled, then began pacing around Sharpe once again. “We've made a deal, Nasty and me. Like brothers, we are, me and him, just like brothers. We understand each other, see, and Nasty's right keen on your little Mary. Profit there, you see, boy. And I'll get a cut of it.”

“Mary stays with me, Sarge,” Sharpe said stubbornly, “married or not.”

“Oh, Sharpie, dear me. You don't understand, do you? You didn't hear me, boy, did you? Nasty and me, we've made a bargain. Drunk to it, we did, and not in arrack, neither, but in proper gentlemen's brandy. I give him little Mrs. Bickerstaff and he gives me half the money she earns. He'll cheat
me, of course he'll cheat me, but she'll make so much that it won't signify. She won't have a choice, Sharpie. She'll get snatched on the march and given to one of Nasty's men. One of the ugly buggers. She'll be raped wicked for a week, whipped every night, and at the end of it, Sharpie, she'll do whatever she's told. That's the way the business works, Sharpie, says so in the scriptures, and how are you going to stop it? Answer me that, boy. Are you going to pay me more than Nasty will?” Hakeswill stopped in front of Sharpe where he waited for an answer and, when none came, he shook his head derisively. “You're a boy playing in men's games, Sharpie, and you're going to lose unless you're a man. Are you man enough to fight me here? Put me down? Claim I was kicked by a horse in the night? You can try, Sharpie, but you're not man enough, are you?”

“Hit you, Sergeant,” Sharpe said, “and be put on a flogging charge? I'm not daft.”

Hakeswill made an elaborate charade of looking right and left. “Ain't no one here but you and me, Sharpie. Nice and private!”

Sharpe resisted the urge to lash out at his persecutor. “I'm not daft,” he said again, stubbornly remaining at attention.

“But you are, boy. Daft as a bucket. Don't you understand? I'm offering you the soldier's way out! Forget the bloody officers, you daft boy. You and me, Sharpie, we're soldiers, and soldiers settle their arguments by fighting. Says so in the scriptures, don't it? So beat me now, lad, beat me here and now, beat me in a square fight and I warrant you can keep Mrs. Bickerstaff all to your little self.” He paused, grinning up into Sharpe's face. “That's a promise, Sharpie. Fight me now, fair and honest, and our argument's over. But you're not man enough, are you? You're just a boy.”

“I'm not falling for your tricks, Sergeant,” Sharpe said.

“There ain't no trick, boy,” Hakeswill said hoarsely. He
stepped two paces away from Sharpe, reversed his halberd, and thrust its steel point hard into the turf. “I can beat you, Sharpie, that's what I'm reckoning. I've been around a bit. Know how to fight. You might be taller than me, and you might be stronger, but you ain't as quick as me and you ain't half as dirty. I'm going to pound the bloody guts out of you, and when I've finished with you I'll take little Mary down to Nasty's tents and earn my money. But not if you beat me, boy. You beat me, and on a soldier's honor, I'll persuade Captain Morris to let you marry. You've got my word on it, boy. A soldier's honor.” He waited for an answer. “You ain't a soldier,” he said scornfully when Sharpe still kept quiet. “You ain't got the guts!” He stepped up to Sharpe and slapped him hard across the face. “Nothing but a lily, ain't you? Lieutenant Lawford's lily-boy. Maybe that's why you ain't got the guts to fight for your Mary!”

The last insult provoked Sharpe to hit Hakeswill. He did it hard and fast. He slammed a low blow into Hakeswill's belly that folded the Sergeant over, then cut his other hand hard up into the Sergeant's face to split open Hakeswill's nose and jerk his head back up. Sharpe brought up his knee, missed the Sergeant's crotch, but his left hand had hold of Hakeswill's clubbed hair now and he was just feeling with his right fingers for the squealing Sergeant's eyeballs when a voice was suddenly shouting close behind him.

“Guard!” the voice called. “Guard!”

“Jesus!” Sharpe let go of his enemy, turned, and saw Captain Morris standing just beyond the picketed horses. Ensign Hicks was with him.

Hakeswill had sunk onto the ground, but now hauled himself upright on the staff of his halberd. “Assaulted me, sir, he did!” The Sergeant could scarcely speak for the pain in his belly. “He went mad, sir! Just mad, sir!”
then grinned at Hakeswill. “The boy was faster than you thought, Sergeant.”

“He's a devil, that one, sir, a devil. Broke my nose, he did.” Hakeswill gingerly tried to straighten the cartilage and the bleeding nose made a horrible crunching noise. “But his woman's ours.”

“Tonight?” Morris could not keep the eagerness from his voice.

“Not tonight, sir,” Hakeswill said in a tone that suggested the Captain had made a foolish suggestion. “There'll be enough trouble in the company with Sharpe arrested, sir, and if we go after his
bibbi
tonight there'll be a rare brawl. Half the bastards are full of arrack. No, sir. Wait till the bastard's flogged to death. Wait for that, sir, and then they'll all be meek as lambs. Meek as lambs. Flogging does that to men. Quietens them down something proper, a good whipping does. All be done in a couple of days, sir.”

Morris flinched as Hakeswill tried to straighten his nose again. “You'd better see Mister Micklewhite, Hakeswill.”

“No, sir. Don't believe in doctors, sir, except for the pox. I'll strap it up, sir, and soon be right as rain. Besides, watching Sharpie flogged will be treatment enough. I reckon we done him, sir. You won't have long to wait, sir, not long at all.”

Morris found Hakeswill's intimate tone unseemly, and stepped stiffly back. “Then I'll wish you a good night, Sergeant.”

“Thank you kindly, sir, and the same to you, sir. And sweet dreams too, sir.” Hakeswill laughed. “Just as sweet as sweet can ever be, sir.”

For Sharpie was done.

“Don't worry, Sergeant, Hicks and I both saw it,” Morris said. “Came to check on the horses, ain't that right, Hicks?”

“Yes, sir,” Hicks said. He was a small young man, very officious, who would never contradict a superior. If Morris claimed the clouds were made of cheese Hicks would just stand to attention, twitch his nose, and swear blind he could smell Cheddar. “Plain case of assault, sir,” the Ensign said. “Unprovoked assault.”

“Guard!” Morris shouted. “Here! Now!”

Blood was pouring down Hakeswill's face, but the Sergeant managed a grin. “Got you, Sharpie,” he said softly, “got you. Flogging offence, that.”

You bastard,” Sharpe said softly, and wondered if he should run. He wondered if he would stand any chance of making it safely away if he just sprinted into the dark, but Ensign Hicks had drawn his pistol and the sound of the hammer being cocked stilled Sharpe's tiny impulse to flee.

A panting Sergeant Green arrived with four men of the guard and Morris pushed the horses aside to let them through. “Arrest Private Sharpe, Sergeant,” he told Green. “Close arrest. He struck Sergeant Hakeswill, and Hicks and I witnessed the assault. Ensign Hicks will do the paperwork.”

“Gladly, sir,” Hicks agreed. The Ensign was slurring his words, betraying that he had been drinking.

Morris looked at Sharpe. “It's a court martial offence, Sharpe,” the Captain said, then he turned back to Green who had not moved to obey his orders. “Do it!”

“Sir!” Green said, stepping forward. “Come on, Sharpie.”

“I didn't do nothing, Sergeant,” Sharpe protested.

“Come on, lad. It'll sort itself out,” Green said quietly, then he took Sharpe's elbow and led him away. Hicks went with them, happy to please Morris by writing up the charge.

Morris waited until the prisoner and his escort had gone.

C
olonel McCandless woke as the dawn touched the world's rim with a streak of fire. The crimson light glowed bright on the lower edge of a long cloud that lay on the eastern horizon like the smoke rill left by a musket volley. It was the only cloud in the sky. He rolled his plaid and tied it onto his saddle's cantle, then rinsed his mouth with water. His horse, picketed close by, had been saddled all night in case some enemy discovered McCandless and his escort. That escort, six picked men of the 4th Native Cavalry, had needed no orders to be about the day. They grinned a greeting at McCandless, stowed their meager bedding, then made a breakfast out of warm canteen water and a dry cake of ground lentils and rice. McCandless shared the cavalrymen's meal. He liked a cup of tea in the mornings, but he dared not light a fire for the smoke might attract the pestilential patrols of the Tippoo's Light Cavalry. “It will be a hot day, sahib,” the Havildar remarked to McCandless.

“They're all hot,” McCandless answered. “Haven't had a cold day since I came here.” He thought for a second, then worked out that it must be Thursday the twenty-eighth of March. It would be cold in Scotland today and, for an indulgent moment, he thought of Lochaber and imagined the snow lying deep in Glen Scaddle and the ice edging the loch's foreshore, and though he could see the image clearly enough, he could not really imagine what the cold would feel
like. He had been away from home too long and now he wondered if he could ever live in Scotland again. He certainly would not live in England, not in Hampshire where his sister lived with her petulant English husband. Harriet kept pressing him to retire to Hampshire, saying that they had no relatives left in Scotland and that her husband had a wee cottage that would suit McCandless's declining years to perfection, but the Colonel had no taste for a soft, plump, English landscape, nor, indeed, for his soft, plump sister's company. Harriet's son, McCandless's nephew William Lawford, was a decent enough young fellow even if he had forgotten his Scottish ancestry, but young William was now in the army, here in Mysore indeed, which meant that the only relative McCandless liked was close at hand and that circumstance merely strengthened McCandless's distaste for retiring to Hampshire. But to Scotland? He often dreamed of going back, though whenever the opportunity arose for him to take the Company's pension and sail to his native land, he always found some unfinished business that kept him in India. Next year, he promised himself, the year of our Lord 1800, would be a good year to go home, though in truth he had promised himself the same thing every year for the last decade.

The seven men unpicketed the horses and hauled themselves into their worn saddles. The Indian escort was armed with lances, sabres, and pistols, while McCandless carried a claymore, a horse pistol, and a carbine that was holstered on his saddle. He glanced once toward the rising sun to check his direction, then led his men northward. He said nothing, but he needed to give these men no orders. They knew well enough to keep a keen lookout in this dangerous land.

For this was the kingdom of Mysore, high on the southern Indian plateau, and as far as the horsemen could see the land was under the rule of the Tippoo Sultan. Indeed this was the
Tippoo's heartland, a fertile plain rich with villages, fields, and water cisterns; only now, as the British army advanced and the Tippoo's retreated, the country was being blighted. McCandless could see six pillars of smoke showing where the Tippoo's cavalry had burned granaries to make sure that the hated British could not find food. The cisterns would all have been poisoned, the livestock driven westward, and every storehouse emptied, thus forcing the armies of Britain and Hyderabad to carry all their own supplies on the cumbersome bullock carts. McCandless guessed that yesterday's brief and unequal battle had been an attempt by the Tippoo to draw the escorting troops away from the precious baggage onto his infantry, after which he would have released his fearsome horsemen onto the wagons of grain and rice and salt, but the British had not taken the bait which meant that General Harris's ponderous advance would continue. Say another week until they arrived at Seringapatam? Then they would face two months of short rations and searing weather before the monsoon broke, but McCandless reckoned that two months was plenty enough time to do the job, especially as the British would soon know how to avoid the Tippoo's trap at the western walls.

He threaded his horse through a grove of cork trees, glad of the shade cast by the deep-green leaves. He paused at the grove's edge to watch the land ahead, which dropped gently into a valley where a score of people were working in rice paddies. The valley, McCandless supposed, lay far enough from the line of the British advance to have been spared the destruction of its stores and water supply. A small village lay to the west of the rice paddies, and McCandless could see another dozen people working in the small gardens around the houses, and he knew that he and his men would be spotted as soon as they left the cover of the cork grove, but he doubted that any of the villagers would investigate seven
strange horsemen. The folk of Mysore, like villagers throughout all the Indian states, avoided mysterious soldiers in the hope that the soldiers would avoid them. At the far side of the rice paddies were plantations of mango and date palms, and beyond them a bare hill crest. McCandless watched that empty crest for a few minutes and then, satisfied that no enemy was nearby, he spurred his mare forward.

The people working the rice immediately fled toward their homes and McCandless swerved eastward to show them he meant no harm, then kicked the mare into a trot. He rode beside a grove of carefully tended mulberry trees, part of the Tippoo's scheme to make silk-weaving into a major industry of Mysore, then he spurred into a canter as he approached the bed of the valley. His escort's curb and scabbard chains jingled behind him as the horses pounded down the slope, splashed through the shrunken stream that trickled from the paddies, then began the gentle climb to the date palm grove.