Sharpe's Fortress Page 18

  Dodd himself was allowed to leave, but only to exercise his horse, which he did each day by riding west along the brink of the plateau. He did not go far. There was a tempting price on his head, and though no enemy cavalry had been seen on the plateau since the engineer had made his reconnaissance, Dodd still feared that he might be captured, and so he only rode until he could see the British works far beneath him. Then, protected by a handful of Bappoo’s horsemen, he would stare through a telescope at the ant-like figures laboring so far below. He watched the road widen, and lengthen, and one morning he saw that two battalions of infantry had camped in one of the high valleys, and next day he saw the beginnings of an artillery park: three guns, a forage cart, a spare wheel wagon and four ammunition limbers.

  He cursed Bappoo, knowing that his Cobras could destroy that small park and hurl the British into dazed confusion, yet the Prince was content to let the enemy climb the escarpment unopposed. The road was being remade, yet even so it was still steep enough in places to need a hundred men to haul one gun. Yet day by day Dodd saw the number of guns increase in the artillery park, then inch up the hill and he knew it would not be long before the British reached the plateau and their besieging forces would seal off the narrow isthmus of rock that led from the cliffs to the great fortress.

  And still Manu Bappoo made no proper effort to harry the redcoats. “We shall stop them here,” the Prince told Dodd, “here,” and he would gesture at Gawilghur’s walls, but William Dodd was not so sure that the redcoats would be stopped so easily. Bappoo might be convinced of the fortress’s strength, but Bappoo knew nothing of modern siege craft.

  Each morning, as he returned from his excursion along the cliff top, Dodd would dismount as he reached the isthmus and give his horse to one of his escort so that he could walk the attackers’ route. He tried to see the fortress as the redcoats would see it, tried to anticipate where their attack would come and how it would be made.

  It was, he had to admit, a brutal place to attack. Two great walls protected the Outer Fort, and though the British could undoubtedly breach those walls with cannon fire, the two ramparts stood on a steep slope so that the attackers would need to fight their way uphill to where the defenders would be waiting among the ruins of the breaches. And those breaches would be flanked by the massive round bastions that were too big to be collapsed by the twelve- or eighteen-pounder guns Dodd expected the British to deploy. The bastions would spit round shot, musket balls and rockets down into the British who would be struggling toward the nearer breach, their approach route getting ever narrower until it was finally constricted by the vast tank of water that blocked most of the approach. Dodd walked the route obsessively and could almost feel sorry for the men who would have to do it under fire.

  A hundred paces from the fort, where the defenders’ fire would be most lethal, the attackers would be squeezed between the reservoir and the cliff edge, compressed into a space just twenty paces wide. Dodd stood in that space each day and stared up at the double walls and counted the artillery pieces. Twenty-two cannon were pointing at him and when the redcoats came those barrels would be loaded with canister, and besides those heavy guns there was a mass of smaller weapons, the murderers and spitfires that could be held by one man and which could blast out a fistful of stone scraps or pistol balls. True, the British would have destroyed some of the larger guns, but the barrels could be mounted on new carriages and re-sited behind the vast bastions so that the attackers, if they even succeeded in climbing up to the breach, would be enfiladed by cannon fire. And to reach that far they would need to fight uphill against Bappoo’s Arabs, and against the massed musketry of the garrison.

  It was a prospect so daunting that Prince Manu Bappoo expected most of the attackers would sheer away from the breaches and run to the Delhi Gate, the Outer Fort’s northern entrance. That gate would undoubtedly have been shattered by British cannon fire, but once inside its arch the attackers would find themselves in a trap. The road inside the gate curled up beside the wall, with another great wall outside it, so that anyone on the cobbles was dwarfed by the stone ramparts on either side, and those would be lined with men firing down or else throwing the great rocks that Bappoo had ordered piled onto the fire steps. Inch by bloody inch the redcoats would fight their way up the narrow road between the walls, only to turn the corner to see an even greater gate standing in front of them, and one, moreover, that could not be reached by the besiegers’ cannon fire. Thus, Bappoo reckoned, the British assault would be thwarted.

  Dodd was not so sure. The Prince was right in thinking that there was no way in through the Delhi Gate, but Dodd suspected the breaches would be less formidable. He had begun to see weaknesses in the ancient walls, old cracks that were half hidden by weeds and lichen, and he knew the skill of the British gunners. The wall would break easily, and that meant the breaches would be big and wide, and Dodd reckoned the British would fight their way through. It might be a hard fight, but they would win it. And that meant the British would capture the Outer Fort.

  But Dodd did not express that opinion to Bappoo, nor did he urge the Prince to build an earthen glacis outside the wall to soak up the fire of the breaching batteries. Such a glacis would delay the British for days, even weeks, but Dodd encouraged the Prince to believe that the Outer Fort was impregnable, for in that misapprehension lay Dodd’s opportunity.

  Manu Bappoo had once told Dodd that the Outer Fort was a trap. An enemy, if they captured the Outer Fort, would think their battle won, but then they would come to Gawilghur’s central ravine and find a second, even greater fort, waiting on its far side. But for Dodd the Outer Fort was Manu Bappoo’s trap. If Manu Bappoo lost the Outer Fort then he, like the enemy, would have to cross the ravine and climb to the Inner Fort, and it was there that Dodd commanded and, try as Dodd might, he could see no weaknesses in the Inner Fort’s defenses. Neither Manu Bappoo nor the British could ever cross the ravine, not if Dodd opposed them.

  The Inner Fort was quite separate from the Outer. No wall joined them, only a track that dropped steeply to the bed of the ravine and then climbed, even more steeply, to the intricate gateway of the Inner Fort. Dodd used that track each day, and he tried to imagine himself as an attacker. Twenty more guns faced him from the Inner Fort’s single wall as he descended the ravine, and none of those guns would have been dismounted by cannon fire. Muskets would be pouring their shot down into the rocky ravine and rockets would be slashing bloodily through the British ranks. The redcoats would die here like rats being pounded in a bucket, and even if some did survive to climb the track toward the gate, they would only reach Gawilghur’s last horror.

  That horror was the entrance, where four vast gates barred the Inner Fort, four gates set one after another in a steep passage that was flanked by towering walls. There was no other way in. Even if the British breached the Inner Fort’s wall it would not help, for the wall was built on top of the precipice which formed the southern side of the ravine, and no man could climb that slope and hope to survive. The only way in was through the gate, and Wellesley, Dodd had learned, did not like lengthy sieges. He had escaladed Ahmednuggur, surprising its defenders by sending men with ladders against the unbreached walls, and Dodd was certain that Wellesley would similarly try to rush the Inner Fort. He could not approach the wall, perched on its cliff, so he would be forced to send his men into the ghastly entrance that twisted as it climbed, and for every steep step of the way, between each of the four great gates, they would be pounded by muskets, crushed by stones, blasted by cannon and savaged by rockets dropped from the parapets. It could not be done. Dodd’s Cobras would be on the fire steps and the redcoats would be beneath them, and the redcoats would die like cattle.

  Dodd had no great opinion of Indian rockets, but he had stockpiled more than a thousand above the Inner Fort’s murderous entrance, for within the close confines of the walled road the weapons would prove lethal. The rockets were made of hammered tin, each one about sixteen inches long and fou
r or five inches in diameter, with a bamboo stick the height of a man attached to each tin cylinder that was crammed with powder. Dodd had experimented with the weapon and found that a lit rocket tossed down into the gate passage would sear and bounce from wall to wall, and even when it finally stopped careering madly about the roadway, it went on belching out a torch of flame that would scorch trapped men terribly. A dozen rockets dropped between two of the gates might kill a score of men and burn another score half to death. Just let them come, Dodd prayed as he climbed each morning toward the Inner Fort. Let them come! Let them come and let them take the Outer Fort, for then Manu Bappoo must die and the British would then come to Dodd and die like the Prince.

  And afterward the fugitives of their beaten army would be pursued south across the Deccan Plain. Their bodies would rot in the heat and their bones whiten in the sun, and the British power in India would be broken and Dodd would be Lord of Gawilghur.

  Just let the bastards come.

  That evening Sergeant Hakeswill pushed aside the folds of muslin to enter Captain Torrance’s quarters. The Captain was lying naked in his hammock where he was being fanned by a bamboo punkah that had been rigged to a ceiling beam. His native servant kept the punkah moving by tugging on a string, while Clare Wall trimmed the Captain’s fingernails. “Not too close, Brick,” Torrance said. “Leave me enough to scratch with, there’s a good girl.” He raised his eyes to Hakeswill. “Did you knock, Sergeant?”

  “Twice, sir,” Hakeswill lied, “loud and clear, sir.”

  “Brick will have to ream out my ears. Say good evening to the Sergeant, Brick. Where are our manners tonight?”

  Clare lifted her eyes briefly to acknowledge Hakeswill’s presence and mumbled something barely audible. Hakeswill snatched off his hat. “Pleasure to see you, Mrs. Wall,” he said eagerly, “a proper pleasure, my jewel.” He bobbed his head to her and winked at Torrance, who flinched.

  “Brick,” Torrance said, “the Sergeant and I have military matters to discuss. So take yourself to the garden.” He patted her hand and watched her leave. “And no listening at the window!” he added archly. He waited until Clare had sidled past the muslin that hung over the kitchen entrance, then leaned precariously from the hammock to pick up a green silk robe that he draped over his crotch. “I would hate to shock you, Sergeant.”

  “Beyond shock, sir, me, sir. Ain’t nothing living I ain’t seen naked, sir, all of ‘em naked as needles, and never once was I shocked, sir. Ever since they strung me up by the neck I’ve been beyond shock, sir.”

  And beyond sense, too, Torrance thought, but he suppressed the comment. “Has Brick left the kitchen?”

  Hakeswill peered past the muslin. “She’s gone, sir.”

  “She’s not at the window?”

  Hakeswill checked the window. “On the far side of the yard, sir, like a good girl.”

  “I trust you’ve brought me news?”

  “Better than news, sir, better than news.” The Sergeant crossed to the table and emptied his pocket. “Your notes to Jama, sir, all of them. Ten thousand rupees, and all paid off. You’re out of debt, sir, out of debt.”

  Relief seared through Torrance. Debt was a terrible thing, a dreadful thing, yet seemingly inescapable if a man was to live to the full. Twelve hundred guineas! How could he ever have gambled that much away? It had been madness! Yet now it was paid, and paid in full. “Burn the notes,” he ordered Hakeswill.

  Hakeswill held the notes into a candle flame one by one, then let them shrivel and burn on the table. The draft from the punkah disturbed the smoke and scattered the little scraps of black ash that rose from the small fires. “And Jama, sir, being a gendeman, despite being an heathen bastard blackamoor, added a thankee,” Hakeswill said, putting some gold coins on the table.

  “How much?”

  “Seven hundred rupees there, sir.”

  “He gave us more, I know that. You’re cheating me, Sergeant.”

  “Sir!” Hakeswill straightened indignantly. “On my life, sir, and I speak as a Christian, I ain’t ever cheated a soul in my life, sir, not unless they deserved it, in which case they gets it right and proper, sir, like it says in the scriptures.”

  Torrance stared at Hakeswill. “Jama will be back in the camp in a day or two. I can ask him.”

  “And you will find, sir, that I have treated you foursquare and straight, sir, on the nail, sir, on the drumhead, as one soldier to another.” Hakeswill sniffed. “I’m hurt, sir.”

  Torrance yawned. “You have my sincerest, deepest and most fervent apologies, Sergeant. So tell me about Sharpe.”

  Hakeswill glanced at the punkah boy. “Does that heathen speak English, sir?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Sharpie’s no more, sir.” Hakeswill’s face twitched as he remembered the pleasure of kicking his enemy. “Stripped the bastard naked, sir, gave him a headache he won’t ever forget, not that he’s got long to remember anything now on account of him being on his way to meet his executioner, and I kept him trussed up till Jama’s men came to fetch him. Which they did, sir, so now he’s gone, sir. Gone for bleeding ever, just as he deserves.”

  “You stripped him?” Torrance asked, puzzled.

  “Didn’t want the bastards dropping off a body all dressed up in an officer’s coat, sir, even though the little bleeder should never have worn one, him being nothing more than a jumped-up dribble of dried toad-spittle, sir. So we stripped him and burned the uniform, sir.”

  “And nothing went wrong?”

  Hakeswill’s face twitched as he shrugged. “His boy got away, but he didn’t make no trouble. Just vanished. Probably went back to his mummy.”

  Torrance smiled. All was done, all was solved. Even better, he could resume his trade with Jama, though perhaps with a little more circumspection than in the past. “Did Sajit go with Sharpe?” he asked, knowing he would need an efficient clerk if he was to hide the treacherous transactions in the ledger.

  “No, sir. He’s with me, sir, outside, sir.” Hakeswill jerked his head toward the front room. “He wanted to go, sir, but I gave him a thumping on account of us needing him here, sir, and after that he was as good as gold, sir, even if he is an heathen bit of scum.”

  Torrance smiled. “I am vastly in your debt, Sergeant Hakeswill,” he said.

  “Just doing my duty, sir.” Hakeswill’s face twitched as he grinned and gestured toward the garden window. “And hoping for a soldier’s reward, sir.”

  “Brick, you mean?” Torrance asked.

  “Me heart’s desire, sir,” Hakeswill said hoarsely. “Her and me, sir, made for each other. Says so in the scriptures.”

  “Then the fruition of the prophecy must wait a while,” Torrance said, “because I need Brick to look after me, and your duty, Sergeant, is to assume Mr. Sharpe’s responsibilities. We shall wait till someone notices that he’s missing, then claim that he must have been ambushed by Mahrattas while on his way here. Then you’ll go up the mountain to help the engineers.”

  “Me, sir?” Hakeswill sounded alarmed at the prospect of having to do some real work. “Up the mountain?”

  “Someone has to be there. You can’t expect me to do it!” Torrance said indignantly. “Someone must stay here and shoulder the heavier responsibilities. It won’t be for long, Sergeant, not for long. And once the campaign is over I can assure you that your heart’s desires will be fully met.” But not, he decided, before Hakeswill paid him the money Clare owed for her passage out from England. That money could come from the cash that Jama had given Hakeswill this night which, Torrance was sure, was a great deal more than the Sergeant had admitted. “Make yourself ready, Sergeant,” Torrance ordered. “Doubtless you will be needed up the road tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir,” Hakeswill said sullenly.

  “Well done, good and faithful Hakeswill,” Torrance said grandly. “Don’t let any moths in as you leave.”

  Hakeswill went. He had three thousand three hundred rupees in his pocket and a fo
rtune in precious stones hidden in his cartridge box.

  He would have liked to have celebrated with Clare Wall, but he did not doubt that his chance would come and so, for the moment, he was a satisfied man. He looked at the first stars pricking the sky above Gawilghur’s plateau and reflected that he had rarely been more content. He had taken his revenge, he had become wealthy, and thus all was well in Obadiah Hakeswill’s world.

  Chapter 6

  Sharpe knew he was in an oxcart. He could tell that from the jolting motion and from the terrible squeal of the ungreased axles. The oxcarts that followed the army made a noise like the shrieking of souls in perdition.

  He was naked, bruised and in pain. It hurt even to breathe. His mouth was gagged and his hands and feet were tied, but even if they had been free he doubted he could have moved for he was wrapped in a thick dusty carpet. Hakeswill! The bastard had ambushed him, stripped him and robbed him. He knew it was Hakeswill, for Sharpe had heard the Sergeant’s hoarse voice as he was rolled into the rug. Then he had been carried out of the tent and slung into the cart, and he was not sure how long ago that had been because he was in too much pain and he kept slipping in and out of a dreamlike daze. A nightmare daze. There was blood in his mouth, a tooth was loose, a rib was probably cracked and the rest of him simply ached or hurt. His head throbbed. He wanted to be sick, but knew he would choke on his vomit because of the gag and so he willed his belly to be calm.

  Calm! The only blessing was that he was alive, and he suspected that was no blessing at all. Why had Hakeswill not killed him? Not out of mercy, that was for sure. So presumably he was to be killed somewhere else, though why Hakeswill had run the terrible risk of having a British officer tied hand and foot and smuggled past the picket line Sharpe could not tell. It made no sense. All he did know was that by now Obadiah Hakeswill would have teased Sharpe’s gems from their hiding places. God damn it all to hell. First Simone, now Hakeswill, and Hakeswill, Sharpe realized, could never have trapped Sharpe if Torrance had not helped.