Sharpe's Triumph (23 page)

“I might take a walk tomorrow.”

“How's the leg, sir?”

“Mending, Sharpe, mending.” The Colonel put some weight on his left leg and seemed
pleasantly surprised that it did not buckle.

“God has preserved me again.”

“Thank God for that, sir.”

“I do, Sharpe, I do.”

Next morning the Colonel felt better still. He ducked out of the hut and blinked in the
bright sunlight.

“Have you seen any soldiers these last two weeks?”

“Not a one, sir. Nothing but farmers.”

The Colonel scraped a hand across the white bristles on his chin.

"A shave, I think. Would you be so kind as to fetch my box of razors? And perhaps you
could heat some water?"

Sharpe dutifully put a pot of water on the fire, then stropped one of the Colonel's
razors on a saddle's girth strap. He was just perfecting the edge when McCandless called
him from outside the house.

“Sharpe!”

Something in McCandless's voice made Sharpe snatch up his musket, then he heard the beat
of hooves as he ducked under the low doorway and he hauled back the musket's cock in
expectation of enemies, but McCandless waved the weapon down.

“I said Sevajee would find us!”

the Colonel said happily.

“Nothing stays secret in this countryside, Sharpe.”

Sharpe lowered the musket's flint as he watched Sevajee lead his men towards the
widow's house. The young Indian grinned at McCandless's dishevelled condition.

“I heard there was a white devil near here, and I knew it would be you.”

“I wish you'd come sooner,” McCandless grumbled.

“Why? You were ill. The folks I spoke to said you would die.” Sevajee slid out of the
saddle and led his horse to the well.

“Besides, we've been too busy.”

“Following Scindia, I trust?” the Colonel asked.

“Here, there and everywhere.” Sevajee hauled up a skin of water and held it under his
horse's nose.

“They've been south, east, back north again. But now they're going to hold a durbar,
Colonel.”

"A durbar]' McCandless brightened, and Sharpe wondered what on earth a durbar was.

“They've gone to Borkardan,” Sevajee announced happily.

“All of them! Scindia, the Rajah of Berar, the whole lot! A sea of enemies.”

“Borkardan,” McCandless said, summoning a mental map in his head.

“Where's that? Two days' march north?”

“One for a horseman, two on foot,” Sevajee agreed.

McCandless, his shave forgotten, stared northwards.

“But how long will they stay there?”

“Long enough,” Sevajee said gleefully, 'and first they have to make a place fit for a
prince's durbar and that will take them two or three days, and then they'll talk for another
two or three days. And they need to rest their animals too, and in Borkardan they've found
plenty of forage."

“How do you know?” McCandless asked.

"Because we met some brin dames Sevajee said with a smile, and turned at the same time to
indicate four small, lean and riderless horses that were the trophies of that
meeting.

“We had a talk with them,” Sevajee said airily, and Sharpe wondered how brutal that
talk had been.

“Forty thousand infantry, sixty thousand cavalry,” Sevajee said, 'and over a
hundred guns."

McCandless limped back into the house to fetch paper and ink from his saddlebag. Then,
back in the sunlight, he wrote a despatch and Sevajee detailed six of his horsemen to take
the precious news south as fast as they could. They would need to search for Wellesley's army
and Sevajee told them to whip their horses bloody because, if the British moved fast, there
was a chance to catch the Mahrattas while they were encamped for their durbar and then to
attack them before they could form their battle array.

“That would even things up,” McCandless announced happily.

“A surprise attack!”

“They're not fools,” Sevajee warned, 'they'll have a host of picquets."

“But it takes time to organize a hundred thousand men, Sevajee, a lot of time! They'll
be milling about like sheep while we march into battle!”

The six horsemen rode away with the precious despatch and McCandless, tired again, let
Sharpe shave him.

“All we can do now is wait,” the Colonel said.

“Wait?” Sharpe asked indignantly, believing that McCandless was implying that they
would do nothing while the battle was being fought.

“If Scindia's at Borkardan,” the Colonel said, 'then our armies will have to march this way
to reach him. So we might as well wait for them to come to us. Then we can join up again."

It was time to stop dreaming. It was time to fight.

Wellesley's army had crossed the Godavery and marched towards Aurungabad, then heard
that Scindia's forces had gone far to the east before lunging south towards the heartland
of Hyderabad, and the report made sense for the old Nizam had just died and left a young son
on the throne and a young ruler's state could make for rich pickings, and so Wellesley had
turned his small army and hurried back to the Godavery.

They laboriously recrossed the river, swimming the horses, bullocks and elephants
to the southern bank, and floating the guns, limbers and wagons across on rafts. The men
used boats made from inflated bladders, and it took two whole days to make the crossing and
then, after a day's march south towards threatened Hyderabad, more news came that the
enemy had turned about and gone back northwards.

“Don't know what they're bleeding doing,” Hakeswill declared.

“Captain Mackay says we're looking for the enemy,” Private Lowry suggested
helpfully.

“Looking for his arse, more like. Bloody Wellesley.” Hakeswill was sitting beside the
river, watching the bullocks being goaded back into the water to cross once again to the
north bank.

“In the water, out the water, up one road, down the next, walk in bleeding circles, then
back through the bleeding river again.” His blue eyes opened wide in indignation and his
face twitched.

“Arthur Wellesley should never be a general.”

“Why not, Sarge?” Private Kendrick asked, knowing that Hakeswill wanted the
opportunity to explain.

“Stands to reason, lad, stands to reason.” Hakeswill paused to light a clay pipe.

“No bleeding experience. You remember that wood outside Seringapatam? Bloody chaos,
that's what it was, bloody chaos and who caused it? He did, that's who.” He gestured at
Wellesley who, mounted on a tall white horse, had come to the bluff above the river.

“He's a general,” Hakeswill explained, 'because his father's an earl and because his
elder brother's the Governor General, that's why. If my father had been a bleeding
earl, then I'd be a bleeding general, says so in the scriptures. Lord Obadiah Hakeswill,
I'd be, and you wouldn't see me buggering about like a dog chasing fleas up its arse. I'd
bleeding well get the job done. On your feet, lads, look smart now!"

The General, with nothing to do except wait while his army crossed the river, had
turned his horse up the bank and his path brought him close to where Hakeswill had been
seated. Wellesley looked across, recognized the Sergeant and seemed about to turn away, but
then an innate courtesy overcame his distaste for speaking with the lower ranks.

“Still here, Sergeant?” he asked awkwardly.

“Still here, sir,” Hakeswill said. He was quivering at attention, his clay pipe thrust
into a pocket and his firelock by his side.

“Doing my duty, sir, like a soldier.”

“Your duty?” Wellesley asked.

“You came to arrest Sergeant Sharpe, isn't that right?”

“Sir!” Hakeswill affirmed.

The General grimaced.

“Let me know if you see him. He's with Colonel McCandless, and they both seem to be
missing. Dead, probably.” And on that cheerful note the General tugged on his reins and
spurred away.

Hakeswill watched him go, then retrieved his clay pipe and sucked the tobacco back to
glowing life. Then he spat onto the bank.

“Sharpie ain't dead,” he said malevolently.

“I'm the one who's going to kill Sharpie. Says so in the scriptures.”

Then Captain Mackay arrived and insisted that Hakeswill and his six men help organize
the transfer of the bullocks across the river. The animals carried packs loaded with
spare round shot for the artillery, and the Captain had been provided with two rafts for
that precious ammunition.

"They're to transfer the shot to the rafts, understand?

Then swim the beasts over. I don't want chaos, Sergeant. Make them |, line up decently.
And make sure they don't roll the shot into the river w to save themselves the bother of
reloading it.“ y ”It isn't a soldier's job," Hakeswill complained when the Captain was ||
gone.

“Chivvying bullocks? I ain't a bleeding Scotchman. That's all ?l they're good for,
chivvying bullocks. Do it all the time, they do, down ”' the green roads to London, but it
ain't a job for an Englishman." But [ he nevertheless did an effective job, using his
bayonet to prod men and animals into the queue which slowly snaked its way down to the
water. By nightfall the whole army was over, and next morning, long | before dawn, they
marched north again. They camped before midday, thus avoiding the worst of the heat, and by
mid-afternoon me first 164.

enemy cavalry patrols showed in the distance and the army's own cavalry rode out to
drive the horsemen away.

They did not move at all for the next two days. Cavalry scouts tried to discover the
enemy's intentions, while Company spies spread gold throughout the north country in
search of news, but the gold was wasted for every scrap of intelligence was
contradicted by another. One said Holkar had joined Scindia, another said Holkar was
declaring war on Scindia, then the Mahrattas were said to be marching west, or east, or
perhaps north, until Wellesley felt he was playing a slow version of blind man's buff.

Then, at last, some reliable news arrived. Six Mahratta horsemen in the service of
Syud Sevajee came to Wellesley's camp with a hastily written despatch from Colonel
McCandless. The Colonel regretted his absence and explained that he had taken a wound
that had been slow to heal, but he could assure Sir Arthur that he had not abandoned his
duty and could thus report, with a fair degree of certainty, that the forces of Dowlut
Rao Scindia and the Rajah of Berar had finally ceased their wanderings at Borkardan.
They planned to stay there, McCandless wrote, to hold a durbar and to let their animals
recover their strength, and he estimated those intentions implied a stay in Borkardan
of five or six days. The enemy numbered, he reported, at least eighty thousand men and
possessed around a hundred pieces of field artillery, many of inferior calibre, but an
appreciable number throwing much heavier shot.

He reckoned, from his own earlier observations in Pohlmann's camp, that only fifteen
thousand of the enemy's infantry were trained to Company standards, while the rest were
make weights but the guns, he added ominously, were well served and well maintained. The
despatch had been written in a hurry, and in a shaky hand, but it was concise, confident
and comprehensive.

The Colonel's despatch drove the General to his maps and then to a flurry of orders. The
army was readied to march that night, and a galloper went to Colonel Stevenson's force,
west of Wellesley's, with orders to march north on a parallel course. The two small armies
should combine at Borkardan in four days' time.

“That will give us, what?”

Wellesley thought for a second or two.

“Eleven thousand prime infantry and forty-eight guns.” He jotted the figures on the
map, then absentmindedly tapped the numbers with a pencil.

“Eleven thousand against eighty,” he said dubiously, then grimaced.

“It will serve,” he concluded, 'it will serve very well."

“Eleven against eighty will serve, sir?” Captain Campbell asked with astonishment.
Campbell was the young Scottish officer who had thrice climbed the ladder to be the first
man into Ahmednuggur and his reward had been a promotion and an appointment as
Wellesley's aide.

Now he stared at the General, a man Campbell considered as sensible as any he had
ever met, yet the odds that Wellesley was welcoming seemed insane.

“I'd rather have more men,” Wellesley admitted, 'but we can probably do the job with
eleven thousand. You can forget Scindia's cavalry, Campbell, because it won't manage a
thing on a battlefield, and the Rajah of Berar's infantry will simply get in everyone
else's way, which means we'll be fighting against fifteen thousand good infantry and rather
too many well-served guns. The rest don't matter. If we beat the guns and the infantry, the
rest of them will run. Depend on it, they'll run."

“Suppose they adopt a defensive position, sir?” Campbell felt impelled to insert a
note of caution into the General's hopes.

“Suppose they're behind a river, sir? Or behind walls?”

“We can suppose what we like, Campbell” but supposing is only fancy, and if we take
fright at fancies then we might as well abandon soldiering. We'll decide how to deal with
the rogues once we find them, but the first thing to do is find them." Wellesley rolled up the
map.

“Can't kill your fox till you've run him down. So let's be about our business.”

The army marched that night. Six thousand cavalry, nearly all of them Indian, led the
way, and behind them were twenty-two pieces of artillery, four thousand sepoys of the
East India Company and two battalions of Scots, while the great clumsy tail of bullocks,
wives, children, wagons and merchants brought up the rear. They marched hard, and if any man
was daunted by the size of the enemy's army, they showed no sign of it. They were as well
trained as any men that had ever worn the red coat in India, they had been promised victory
by their long-nosed General, and now they were going for the kill. And, whatever the
odds, they believed they would win. So long as no one blundered.