Sharpe's Tiger (43 page)

Baird pushed through the waiting men to find Sergeant Graham. Graham would lead one of the two Forlorn Hopes and, if he lived, would be Lieutenant Graham by nightfall. The Sergeant was scooping a last ladleful of water from one of the barrels that had been placed in the trenches to slake the thirst of the waiting men. “Not long now, Sergeant,” Baird said.

“Whenever you say, sir.” Graham poured the water over his bare head, then pulled on his shako. He would go into the breach with a musket in one hand and a British flag in the other.

“Whenever the guns give their farewell volley, Sergeant.” Baird clicked open the watch again and it seemed to him the
hands had scarcely moved. “In six minutes, I think, if this is accurate.” He held the watch to his ear. “It usually loses a minute or two every day.”

“We're ready, sir,” Graham said.

“I'm sure you're ready,” Baird said, “but wait for my order.”

“Of course, sir.”

Baird looked at the volunteers, a mix of British and sepoys. They grinned back at him. Rogues, he thought, every last man jack of them, but what splendid rogues, brave as lions. Baird felt a pang of sentimentality for these men, even for the sepoys. Like many soldiers the Scotsman was an emotional man, and he instinctively disliked those men, like Colonel Wellesley, who seemed passionless. Passion, Baird reckoned, was what would take men across the river and up the breach. Damn scientific soldiering now. The science of siege warfare had opened the city, but only a screaming and insane passion would take men inside. “God be with you all, boys,” he said to the Forlorn Hope and they grinned again. Like every man who would cross the river today none of them was encumbered with a pack. They had all stripped off their stocks, too. They carried weapons and cartridges and nothing else, and if they succeeded they would be rewarded with General Harris's thanks and maybe a pittance of coins.

“Is there food in the city, sir?” one of the volunteers asked.

“Plenty, boys, plenty.” Baird, like the rest of the army, was on half-rations.

“And some
bibbi
, sir?” another man asked.

Baird rolled his eyes. “Running over with it, lads, and all of them just panting for you. The place is fair crammed with
bibbi
. Even enough for us old generals.”

They laughed. General Harris had given strict orders that the inhabitants were not to be molested, but Baird knew that the terrible savagery of an assault on a breach almost
demanded that the men's appetites be satisfied afterward. He did not care. So far as Major General David Baird was concerned the boys could play to their loins' content so long as they first won.

He edged his way through the crush of men to a point midway between the two Forlorn Hopes. The watch still ticked, but again the minute hand seemed scarcely to have moved since he last looked at the face. Baird closed the lid, pushed the watch into his fob, then peered again at the city. The undamaged parts of the wall glowed white in the sun. It was, with its towers and shining roofs and tall palms, a beautiful place, yet it was there that Baird had spent close to four years as a prisoner of the Tippoo. He hated the place as he hated its ruler. Revenge had been a long time coming, but it was here now.

He drew his claymore, a brutal Scottish blade that had none of the finesse of more modern swords, yet Baird, at six feet four inches tall, had little need of finesse. He would carry his butcher's blade into a breach of blood to pay back the Tippoo for forty-four months of hell.

In the batteries behind Baird the gunners blew on their linstocks to keep the fire burning. General Harris pulled out his watch. Colonel Arthur Wellesley, who would lead the second wave of attackers through the breach, adjusted his cravat, and thought of his responsibilities. The bulk of his men were from the Régiment de Meuron, a Swiss battalion that had once fought for the Dutch, but which had put itself under the command of the East India Company when the British had captured Ceylon. The men were mostly Swiss, but with a leavening from the German states, and they were a sober, steady battalion that Wellesley planned to lead to the Inner Palace to protect its contents and its harem from the ravages of the attackers. Seringapatam might fall, and the Tippoo might die, but the important thing was to gain
Mysore's friendship and Wellesley was determined to make certain that no unnecessary atrocities soured its citizens' new allegiance. He adjusted the silver-gilt gorget about his neck, drew his sword an inch or two, then let it fall back into its scabbard before momentarily closing his eyes to say a prayer beseeching Cod's protection on his men.

The Forlorn Hopes, their muskets loaded and tipped with steel, crouched in the trenches. The officers' watches ticked on, the river ran gentle across its stones, and the silent city waited.

“Coat off,” Sharpe said to Lawford, instinctively lapsing back into the relationship that had existed between them when they had served in Gudin's battalion. “No point in showing a red coat till we have to,” Sharpe explained, turning his own coat inside out. He did not put it back on, but knotted its sleeves about his neck so that the claw-torn jacket hung down against his scarred and naked back. The two men were crouched in a byre off the alley that led from the courtyard. Colonel McCandless had gone, led away to Appah Rao's house, and Sharpe and Lawford were alone. “I don't even have a gun,” the Lieutenant said nervously.

“Soon remedy that.” Sharpe said confidently. “Come on now.”

Sharpe led, plunging into the intricate maze of small streets that surrounded the palace. A white man's face was not so unusual as to attract attention in Seringapatam, for there were plenty of Europeans serving the Tippoo, but even
Sí
) Sharpe did not fancy his chances in a red coat. He did not fancy his chances much at all, but he would be damned before he abandoned his fellow soldiers to the Tippoo's mine.

He hurried past a shuttered goldsmith's shop and half glimpsed, deep in its shadowed entrance, an armed man who
was standing guard on the property. “Stay here,” he told Lawford, then slung the musket on his shoulder and doubled back. He pushed a wandering cow out of his way and ducked into the goldsmith's entrance. “How are you feeling today?” he said pleasantly to the man who, speaking no English, just frowned in confusion. He was still frowning when Sharpe's left fist buried itself in his belly. He grunted, but then the right fist smacked him on the bridge of his nose and he was in no state to resist as Sharpe stripped him of musket and cartridge box. For good measure Sharpe gave the man a tap on the skull with the butt end of the musket, then went back to the street. “One musket, sir, filthy as hell, but she'll fire. Cartridges too.”

Lawford opened the musket's pan to check that it was loaded. “Just what do you plan to do, Sharpe?” the Lieutenant asked.

“Don't know, sir. Won't know till we get there.”

“You're going to the mine?”

“Aye, sir.”

“There'll be guards.”

“Like as not.”

“And only two of us.”

“I can count, sir.” Sharpe grinned. “It's reading I find hard. But my letters are coming on, aren't they?”

“You're reading well,” Lawford said. Probably, the Lieutenant thought, as well as most seven-year-olds, but it had still been gratifying to see the pleasure Sharpe took from the process, even if his only reading matter was a crumpled page of the Revelation full of mysterious beasts with wings that covered their eyes. “I'll get you some more interesting books when we're out of here,” Lawford promised.

“I'd like that, sir,” Sharpe said, then ran across a street junction. The fear of an imminent assault had served to empty the streets of their usual crowds, but the alleys were
clogged with parked carts. Stray dogs barked as the two men hurried southward, but there were few people to remark their presence. “There, sir, there's our bloody answer,” Sharpe said. He bad run from a street into a small square, and now jerked back into the shadows. Lawford peered about the corner to see that the small open space was filled with handcarts, and that the handcarts were piled with rockets. “Waiting to take them up to the wall, I daresay,” Sharpe said. “Got so many up there already they have to store the rest down here. What we do, sir, is take one cart, go down that next street, and have a private Guy Fawkes day.”

“There are guards.”

“Of course there are.”

“I mean on the rocket carts, Sharpe.”

“They're nothing,” Sharpe said scornfully. “If those fellows were any good they'd be up on the walls. Can't he nothing but maimed men and grandfathers. Rubbish. All we have to do is shout at the buggers. Are you ready?”

Lawford looked into his companion's face. “You're enjoying this, aren't you, Sharpe?”

“Aye, sir. Aren't you?”

“I'm scared as hell.” Lawford admitted.

Sharpe smiled. “You won't be when we're through, sir. We're going to be all right. You just behave as though you owned the bloody place. You officers are supposed to be good at that, aren't you? So I'll grab a cart and you shout at the rubbish. Tell them Gudin sent us. Come on, sir, time's wasting. Just walk out there as though we owned the place.”

Sharpe brazenly walked into the sunlight, his musket slung on his shoulder, and Lawford followed him. “You won't tell anyone that I confessed to being scared?” the Lieutenant asked.

“Of course not, sir. You think I'm not scared myself? Jesus, I almost fouled my breeches when that bloody tiger jumped
at me. I've never seen a thing move so bloody fast. But I wasn't going to show I was seared in front of bloody Hakeswill. Hey, you! Are you in charge?” Sharpe shouted imperiously at a man who squatted beside one of the carts. “Move your bloody self, I want the cart.”

The man sprang aside as Sharpe jerked up the handles. There must have been fifty rockets in the cart, more than enough for Sharpe's purpose. Two other men shouted protests at Sharpe, but Lawford waved them down. “Colonel Gudin sent us. Understand?” Lawford said. “Colonel Gudin. He sent us.” The Lieutenant followed Sharpe down the street leading south from the square. “Those two men are coming after us,” he said nervously.

“Shout at the buggers, sir. You're an officer!”

“Back!” Lawford shouted. “To your duties! Go on! Now! Do as I say, damn your eyes! Go!” He paused, then gave a delighted chuckle. “Good God, Sharpe, it worked.”

“Works with us, sir, should work with them,” Sharpe said. He turned a corner and saw the towering sculptures of the big Hindu temple. He recognized where he was now and he knew the alley leading to the mine was only a few yards away. It would be filled with guards, but Sharpe now had a whole arsenal of his own.

“We can't do anything if there isn't an attack,” Lawford said.

“I know that, sir.”

“So what do we do if there isn't an assault?”

“Hide, sir.”

“Where, for God's sake?”

“Lali will take us in, sir. You remember Lali, don't you, sir?”

Lawford blushed at the memory of his introduction to Seringapatam's brothels. “You really believe she'll hide us?”

“She thinks you're sweet, sir.” Sharpe grinned. “I've seen
her a couple of times since that first night, sir, and she always asks after you. I reckon you made a conquest there, sir.”

“Good God, Sharpe, you won't tell anyone?”

“Me, sir?” Sharpe pretended to he shocked. “Not a word, sir.”

Then, very suddenly, and far off, muffled by distance so that it was thin and wavering, a trumpet sounded. And every gun in creation seemed to fire at once.

Baird clambered up the trench wall, climbed over the sandbags and turned to face his men. “Now, my brave fellows,” he shouted in his broad Scottish accent, waving his sword toward the city, “follow me and prove yourselves worthy of the name British soldiers!”

The Forlorn Hopes were already on their way. The moment Baird had climbed out of the trench the seventy-six men of the two Hopes had scrambled over the lip and begun running. They splashed through the Little Cauvery, then sprinted toward the larger river. The air about them churned with noise. Every siege gun had fired at almost the same instant and the breach was a boiling mass of dust, while the huge sound of the guns was echoing back from the walls. The banners of Britain streamed as the leading men ran into the South Cauvery. The first bullets plucked at the water, throwing up small fountains, but the Forlorn Hopes did not notice the firing. They were screaming their challenge and racing each other to be first up the breach.

“Fire!” the Tippoo shouted, and the walls of the city were rimmed with flame and smoke as a thousand muskets poured lead down into the South Cauvery and out toward the trenches. Rockets hissed off the walls, their trails twisting madly as they tangled in the hot air. The trumpet was still sounding. The musketry of the defenders was unending as men simply dropped their empty guns, snatched up loaded
ones, and fired into the smoke cloud that edged the city. The sound of their guns was like a giant fire crackling, the river was foaming with bullets and a handful of redcoats and sepoys were jerking and thrashing as they drowned or bled to death.

“Come on!” Sergeant Graham roared as he stumbled over the remains of the mud wall that had penned in the water behind the glacis. A foot of muddy water still lay in the old ditch, but Graham ran through it as though he had wings. A bullet plucked at the flag in his left hand. “Come on, you bastards!” he shouted. He was on the lower slope of the breach now, and his whole world was nothing but noise and smoke and whipsawing bullets. It was a tiny place, that world, a hell of dust and fire above a rubble slope. He could see no enemy, for those above him were hidden by their own musket smoke, but then the defenders on the inner wall, who could stare straight down the throat of the breach in the outer wall, saw the redcoats clambering up the ramp and opened fire. A man behind Graham collapsed backward with blood gurgling from his throat. Another pitched forward with a shattered knee.