Sharpe's Fortress Read online

  Sharpe assumed that Lockhart was talking of his troop commander, but once the pork chops and bread had been eaten, the Sergeant led Sharpe across to the lines of the native cavalry, and then to the tent of the yth Native Cavalry’s commanding officer who, it seemed, was in charge of all the army’s cavalry. “He’s called Huddlestone,” Lock-hart said, “and he’s a decent fellow. He’ll probably offer us another breakfast.”

  Colonel Huddlestone did indeed insist that both Lockhart and Sharpe join him for a breakfast of rice and eggs. Sharpe was beginning to see that Lockhart was a useful man, someone who was trusted by his officers and liked by his troopers, for Huddlestone greeted the Sergeant warmly and immediately plunged into a conversation about some local horses that had been purchased for remounts and which Huddlestone reckoned would never stand the strain of battle, though Lockhart seemed to feel that a few of them would be adequate. “So you’re the fellow who smoked out Naig?” Huddlestone said to Sharpe after a while.

  “Didn’t take much doing, sir.”

  “No one else did it, man! Don’t shy away from credit. I’m damned grateful to you.”

  “Couldn’t have done it without Sergeant Lockhart, sir.”

  “Damned army would come to a stop without Eli, ain’t that so?” the Colonel said, and Lockhart, his mouth full of egg, just grinned. Huddlestone turned back to Sharpe. “So they gave you to Torrance?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He’s a lazy bugger,” Huddlestone said vengefully. Sharpe, astonished at the open criticism, said nothing. “He’s one of my own officers,” Huddlestone went on, “and I confess I wasn’t sorry when he asked to be given duty with the bullock train.”

  “He asked, sir?” Sharpe found it curious that a man would prefer to be with the baggage when he could be in a fighting unit.

  “His uncle is grooming him for a career in the Company,” Huddlestone said. “An uncle in Leadenhall Street

  . Know what Leadenhall Street

  is, Sharpe?”

  “Company offices, sir?”

  “The very same. The uncle pays him an allowance, and he wants Torrance to get some experience in dealing with bhinjarries. Got it all planned out! A few years in the Company’s army, another few trading in spices, then home to inherit his uncle’s estate and his seat in the Court of Directors. One day we’ll all be tugging our forelocks to the lazy bugger. Still, if he wants to run the baggage train it’s no skin off our bums, Sharpe. No one likes the job, so Torrance is welcome to it, but my guess is that you’ll be doing most of his work.” The Colonel frowned. “He arrived in India with three English servants! Can you believe it? It ain’t as if servants are hard to find here, but Torrance wanted the cachet of white scullions. Two of ‘em died of the fever, then Torrance had the nerve to say that one of them hadn’t earned the cost of the voyage out and so he’s forcing the widow to stay on and pay the debt!” Huddlestone shook his head, then gestured for his servant to pour more tea. “So what brings you here, Ensign?”

  “On my way to Deogaum, sir.”

  “He really came to beg his breakfast, Colonel,” Lockhart put in.

  “And I’ve no doubt the Sergeant fed you before you came to steal my victuals?” Huddlestone asked, then grinned. “You’re in luck, Ensign. We’re moving up to Deogaum today. You can ride with us.”

  Sharpe blushed. “I’ve no horse, sir.”

  “Eli?” Huddlestone looked at Lockhart.

  “I’ve got a horse he can ride, sir.”

  “Good.” Huddlestone blew on his tea. “Welcome to the cavalry, Sharpe.”

  Lockhart found two horses, one for Sharpe and the other for Ahmed. Sharpe, ever uncomfortable on horseback, struggled into the saddle under the cavalry’s sardonic gaze, while Ahmed jumped up and kicked back his heels, reveling in being back on a horse.

  They went gently northward, taking care not to tire the horses. Sharpe, as he rode, found himself thinking about Clare Wall, and that made him feel guilty about Simone Joubert, the young French widow who waited for him in Seringapatam. He had sent her there with a southbound convoy and a letter for his friend Major Stokes, and doubtless Simone was waiting for Sharpe to return when the campaign against the Mahrattas was over, but now he needed to warn her that he was being posted back to England. Would she come with him? Did he want her to come? He was not sure about either question, though he felt obscurely responsible for Simone. He could give her a choice, of course, but whenever Simone was faced by a choice she tended to look limp and wait for someone else to make the decision. He had to warn her, though. Would she even want to go to England? But what else could she do? She had no relatives in India, and the nearest French settlements were miles away.

  His thoughts were interrupted at mid-morning when Eli Lockhart spurred alongside his horse. “See it?”

  “See what?”

  “Up there!” Lockhart pointed ahead and Sharpe, peering through the dust haze thrown up by the leading squadrons, saw a range of high hills. The lower slopes were green with trees, but above the timber line there was nothing but brown and gray cliffs that stretched from horizon to horizon. And at the very top of the topmost bluff he could just see a streak of dark wall broken by a gate-tower. “Gawilghur!” Lockhart said.

  “How the hell do we attack up there?” Sharpe asked.

  The Sergeant laughed. “We don’t! It’s a job for the infantry. Reckon you’re better off attached to that fellow Torrance.”

  Sharpe shook his head. “I have to get in there, Eli.”

  “Why?”

  Sharpe gazed at the distant wall. “There’s a fellow called Dodd in there, and the bastard killed a friend of mine.”

  Lockhart thought for a second. “Seven hundred guineas Dodd?”

  “That’s the fellow,” Sharpe said. “But I’m not after the reward. I just want to see the bugger dead.”

  “Me too,” Lockhart said grimly.

  “You?”

  “Assaye,” Lockhart said brusquely.

  “What happened?”

  “We charged his troops. They were knocking seven kinds of hell out of the 74th and we caught the buggers in line. Knocked ‘em hard back, but we must have had a dozen troopers unhorsed. We didn’t stop, though, we just kept after their cavalry and it wasn’t till the battle was over that we found our lads. They’d had their throats cut. All of them.”

  “That sounds like Dodd,” Sharpe said. The renegade Englishman liked to spread terror. Make a man afraid, Dodd had once told Sharpe, and he won’t fight you so hard.

  “So maybe I’ll go into Gawilghur with you,” Lockhart said.

  “Cavalry?” Sharpe asked. “They won’t let cavalry into a real fight.”

  Lockhart grinned. “I couldn’t let an ensign go into a fight without help. Poor little bugger might get hurt.”

  Sharpe laughed. The cavalry had swerved off the road to pass a long column of marching infantry who had set off before dawn on their march to Deogaum. The leading regiment was Sharpe’s own, the 74th, and Sharpe moved even farther away from the road so that he would not have to acknowledge the men who had wanted to be rid of him, but Ensign Venables spotted him, leaped the roadside ditch, and ran to his side. “Going up in the world, Richard?” Venables asked.

  “Borrowed glory,” Sharpe said. “The horse belongs to the 19th.”

  Venables looked slightly relieved that Sharpe had not suddenly been able to afford a horse. “Are you with the pioneers now?” he asked.

  “Nothing so grand,” Sharpe said, reluctant to admit that he had been reduced to being a bullock guard.

  Venables did not really care. “Because that’s what we’re doing,” he explained, “escorting the pioneers. It seems they have to make a road.”

  “Up there?” Sharpe guessed, nodding toward the fortress that dominated the plain.

  “Captain Urquhart says you might be selling your commission,” Venables said.

  “Does he?”

  “Are you?”

  “Are you making
an offer?”

  “I’ve got a brother, you see,” Venables explained. “Three actually. And some sisters. My father might buy.” He took a piece of paper from a pocket and handed it up to Sharpe. “So if you go home, why not see my pater? That’s his address. He reckons one of my brothers should join the army. Ain’t any good for anything else, see?”

  “I’ll think on it,” Sharpe said, taking the paper. The cavalry had stretched ahead and so he clapped his heels back, and the horse jerked forward, throwing Sharpe back in the saddle. For a second he sprawled, almost falling over the beast’s rump, then he nailed wildly to catch his balance and just managed to grasp the saddle pommel. He thought he heard laughter as he trotted away from the battalion.

  Gawilghur soared above the plain like a threat and Sharpe felt like a poacher with nowhere to hide. From up there, Sharpe reckoned, the approaching British army would look like so many ants in the dust. He wished he had a telescope to stare at the high, distant fortress, but he had been reluctant to spend money. He was not sure why. It was not that he was poor, indeed there were few soldiers richer, yet he feared that the real reason was that he felt fraudulent wearing an officer’s sash, and that if he were to buy the usual appurtenances of an officer—a horse and a telescope and an expensive sword—then he would be mocked by those in the army who claimed he should never have been commissioned in the first place. Nor should he, he thought. He had been happier as a sergeant. Much happier. All the same, he wished he had a telescope as he gazed up at the stronghold and saw a great billow of smoke jet from one of the bastions. Seconds later he heard the fading boom of the gun, but he saw no sign of the shot falling. It was as though the cannonball had been swallowed into the warm air.

  A mile short of the foothills the road split into three. The sepoy horsemen went westward, while the 19th Light Dragoons took the right-hand path that angled away from the domineering fortress. The country became more broken as it was cut by small gullies and heaped with low wooded ridges—the first hints of the tumultuous surge of land that ended in the vast cliffs. Trees grew thick in those foothills, and Deogaum was evidently among the low wooded hills. It lay east of Gawilghur, safely out of range of the fortress’s guns. A crackle of musketry sounded from a timbered cleft and the 19th Dragoons, riding ahead of Sharpe, spread into a line. Ahmed grinned and made sure his musket was loaded. Sharpe wondered which side the boy was on.

  Another spatter of muskets sounded, this time to the west. The Mahrattas must have had men in the foothills. Perhaps they were stripping the villages of the stored grain? The sepoys of the East India Company cavalry had vanished, while the horsemen of the 19th were filing into the wooded cleft. A gun boomed in the fort, and this time Sharpe heard a thump as a cannonball fell to earth like a stone far behind him. A patch of dust drifted from a field where the shot had plummeted, then he and Ahmed followed the dragoons into the gully and the leaves hid them from the invisible watchers high above.

  The road twisted left and right, then emerged into a patchwork of small fields and woods. A large village lay beyond the fields—Sharpe guessed it must be Deogaum—then there were shots to his left and he saw a crowd of horsemen burst out of the trees a half-mile away. They were Mahrattas, and at first Sharpe thought they were intent on charging the 19th Light Dragoons, then he realized they were fleeing from the Company cavalry. There were fifty or sixty of the enemy horsemen who, on seeing the blue-and-yellow-coated dragoons, swerved southward to avoid a fight. The dragoons were turning, drawing sabres and spurring into pursuit. A trumpet sounded and the small fields were suddenly a whirl of horses, dust and gleaming weapons.

  Sharpe reined in among a patch of trees, not wanting to be at the center of a Mahratta cavalry charge. The enemy horses pounded past in a blur of hooves, shining helmets and lance points. The Company cavalry was still a quarter-mile behind when Ahmed suddenly kicked back his heels and shot out of the hiding place to follow the Mahratta cavalry.

  Sharpe swore. The little bastard was running back to join the Mahrattas. Not that Sharpe could blame him, but he still felt disappointed. He knew he had no chance of catching Ahmed who had unslung his musket and now rode up behind the rearmost enemy horseman. That man looked around, saw Ahmed was not in British uniform, and so ignored him. Ahmed galloped alongside, then swung his musket by its barrel so that the heavy stock cracked into the Mahratta’s forehead.

  The man went off the back of his horse as though jerked by a rope. His horse ran on, stirrups flapping. Ahmed reined in, turned and jumped down beside his victim. Sharpe saw the flash of a knife. The sepoy cavalry was closer now, and they might think Ahmed was the enemy, so Sharpe shouted at the boy to come back. Ahmed scrambled back into his saddle and kicked his horse to the trees where Sharpe waited. He had plundered a sabre, a pistol and a leather bag, and had a grin as wide as his face. The bag held two stale loaves of flat bread, some glass beads and a small book in a strange script. Ahmed gave one loaf to Sharpe, threw away the book, draped the cheap beads about his neck and hung the sabre at his waist, then watched as the dragoons cut into the rearward ranks of the fugitives. There was the blacksmith’s sound of steel on steel, two horses stumbled in flurries of dust, a man staggered bleeding into a ditch, pistols banged, a lance shivered point downward in the dry turf, and then the enemy horse was gone and the British and sepoy cavalry reined in.

  “Why can’t you be a proper servant?” Sharpe asked Ahmed. “Clean my boots, wash my clothes, make my supper, eh?”

  Ahmed, who did not understand a word, just grinned.

  “Instead I get some murderous urchin. So come on, you bugger.” Sharpe kicked his horse toward the village. He passed a half-empty tank where some clothes lay to dry on bushes, then he was in the dusty main street which appeared to be deserted, though he was aware of faces watching nervously from dark windows and curtain-hung doorways. Dogs growled from the shade and two chickens scratched in the dust. The only person in sight was a naked holy man who sat cross-legged under a tree, with his long hair cascading to the ground about him. He ignored Sharpe, and Sharpe ignored him. “We have to find a house,” Sharpe told the uncomprehending Ahmed. “House, see? House.”

  The village headman, the naique, ventured into the street. At least Sharpe assumed he was the naique, just as the naique assumed that the mounted soldier was the leader of the newly arrived cavalrymen. He clasped his hands before his face and bowed to Sharpe, then clicked his fingers to summon a servant carrying a small brass tray on which stood a little cup of arrack. The fierce liquor made Sharpe’s head feel suddenly light. The naique was talking ten to the dozen, but Sharpe quietened him with a wave. “No good talking to me,” he said, “I’m nobody. Talk to him.” He pointed to Colonel Huddlestone who was leading his Indian cavalrymen into the village. The troopers dismounted as Huddlestone talked to the headman. There was a squawk as the two chickens were snatched up. Huddlestone turned at the sound, but his men all looked innocent.

  High above Sharpe a gun banged in the fortress. The shot seared out to fall somewhere in the plain where the British infantry marched. The dragoons came into the village, some with bloodied sabres, and Sharpe surrendered the two horses to Lockhart. Then he searched the street to find a house for Torrance. He saw nothing which had a walled garden, but he did find a small mud-walled home that had a courtyard and he dropped his pack in the main room as a sign of ownership. There was a woman with two small children who shrank away from him. “It’s all right,” Sharpe said, “you get paid. No one will hurt you.” The woman wailed and crouched as though expecting to be hit. “Bloody hell,” Sharpe said, “does no one in this bleeding country speak English?”

  He had nothing to do now until Torrance arrived. He could have hunted through the village to discover paper, a pen and ink so he could write to Simone and tell her about going to England, but he decided that chore could wait. He stripped off his belt, sabre and jacket, found a rope bed, and lay down.

  Far overhead the fortress guns fired. It sounded like dist
ant thunder. Sharpe slept.

  Sergeant Obadiah Hakeswill tugged off his boots, releasing a stench into the room that caused Captain Torrance to close his eyes. “Good God,” Torrance said weakly. The Captain felt ill enough already. He had drunk the best part of a bottle of arrack, had woken in the night with gripes in the belly, and then slept unevenly until dawn when someone had scratched at his door and Torrance had shouted at the pest to go away, after which he had at last fallen into a deeper sleep. Now he had been woken by Hakeswill who, oblivious of the stench, began to unwrap the cloths that bound his feet. It smelled, Torrance thought, like rotted cheese that had been stored in a corpse’s belly. He shifted his chair slightly toward the window and pulled his dressing gown tighter about his chest. “I’m truly sorry about Naig,” Torrance said. Hakeswill had listened in disbelief to the tale of Naig’s death and seemed genuinely saddened by it, just as he had been shocked by the news that Sharpe was now Torrance’s assistant.

  “The bleeding Scotch didn’t want him, sir, did they?” Hakeswill said. “Never thought the Scotch had much sense, but they had wits enough to get rid of Sharpie.” Hakeswill had uncovered his right foot and Torrance, barely able to endure the stink, suspected there was black fungus growing between the Sergeant’s toes. “Now you’ve got him, sir,” Hakeswill went on, “and I pities you, I does. Decent officer like you, sir? Last thing you deserved. Bleeding Sharpie! He ain’t got no right to be an officer, sir, not Sharpie. He ain’t a gentleman like your good self, sir. He’s just a common toad, like the rest of us.”

  “So why was he commissioned?” Torrance asked, watching as Hakeswill tugged at the crusted cloth on his left foot.

  “On account of saving the General’s life, sir. Leastwise, that’s what is said.” Hakeswill paused as a spasm made his face twitch. “Saved Sir Arthur’s life at Assaye. Not that I believe it, sir, but Sir Arthur does, and the result of that, sir, is that Sir Arthur thinks bloody Sharpie is a blue-eyed boy. Sharpie farts and Sir Arthur thinks the wind’s turned southerly.”