Sharpe's Fortress Read online

  “Of necessity,” Stokes repeated patiently.

  “We ain’t monkeys, you know,” Kenny complained.

  “I think you’ll find them practical, sir,” Stokes said emolliently. He knew, and Kenny knew, that the breaches could not be improved and must therefore be attempted. Kenny’s grumbling, Stokes suspected, was a disguise for nerves, and Stokes could not blame the man. He would not have wanted to carry a sword or musket up those rugged stone slopes to whatever horrors the enemy had prepared on the other side.

  Kenny grunted. “I suppose they’ll have to suffice,” he said grudgingly, snapping his telescope shut. He flinched as one of the eighteen-pounders roared and billowed smoke all about the battery, then he strode into the acrid cloud, shouting for Major Plummer, the gunner officer.

  Plummer, powder-stained and sweating, loomed out of the smoke. “Sir?”

  “You’ll keep your pieces firing till we’re well on the breaches?”

  “I will, sir.”

  “That should keep their damned heads down,” Kenny said, then fished a watch from his fob. “I make it ten minutes after nine.”

  “Eight minutes after,” Plummer said.

  “Exactly nine o’clock,” Stokes said, tapping his watch to see if the hands were stuck.

  “We’ll use my timepiece,” Kenny decreed, “and we’ll move forward on the strike of ten o’clock. And remember, Plummer, keep firing till we’re there! Don’t be chary, man, don’t stop just because we’re close to the summit. Batter the bastards! Batter the bastards!” He frowned at Ahmed who was staying close to Stokes. The boy was wearing his red coat which was far too big for him, and Kenny seemed on the point of demanding an explanation for the boy’s odd garb, then abruptly shrugged and walked away.

  He went to where his men crouched on the track that led to the fortress gate. They were sheltered from the defenders by the lie of the land, but the moment they advanced over a small rocky rise they would become targets. They then had three hundred yards of open ground to cross, and as they neared the broken walls they would be squeezed into the narrow space between the tank and the precipice where they could expect the fire of the defenders to be at its fiercest. After that it was a climb to the breaches and to whatever horrors waited out of sight.

  The men sat, trying to find what small shade was offered by bushes or rocks. Many were half drunk, for their officers had issued extra rations of arrack and rum. None carried a pack, they had only their muskets, their ammunition and bayonets. A few, not many, prayed. An officer of the Scotch Brigade knelt bare-headed among a group of his men, and Kenny, intrigued by the sight, swerved toward the kneeling soldiers to hear them softly repeating the Twenty-Third Psalm. Most men just sat, heads low, consumed by their thoughts. The officers forced conversation.

  Behind Kenny’s thousand men was a second assault force, also composed of sepoys and Scotsmen, which would follow Kenny into the breach. If Kenny failed then the second storming party would try to go farther, but if Kenny succeeded they would secure the Outer Fort while Kenny’s troops went on to assault the Inner. Small groups of gunners were included in both assault groups. Their orders were to find whatever serviceable cannon still existed in the Outer Fort and turn them against the defenders beyond the ravine.

  An officer wearing the white facings of the 74th picked his way up the track between the waiting troops. The man had a cheap Indian sabre at his waist and, unusually for an officer, was carrying a musket and cartridge box. Kenny hailed him. “Who the devil are you?”

  “Sharpe, sir.”

  The name rang a bell in Kenny’s mind. “Wellesley’s man?”

  “Don’t know about that, sir.”

  Kenny scowled at the evasion. “You were at Assaye, yes?”

  “Yes, sir,” Sharpe admitted.

  Kenny’s expression softened. He knew of Sharpe and he admired a brave man. “So what the devil are you doing here, Sharpe? Your regiment is miles away! They’re climbing the road from Deogaum.”

  “I was stranded here, sir,” Sharpe said, deciding there was no point in trying to deliver a longer explanation, “and there wasn’t time to join the 74th, sir, so I was hoping to go with my old company. That’s Captain Morris’s men, sir.” He nodded up the track to where the 33rd’s Light Company was gathered among some boulders. “With your permission of course, sir.”

  “No doubt Morris will be glad of your help, Sharpe,” Kenny said, “as will I.” He was impressed by Sharpe’s appearance, for the Ensign was tall, evidently strong and had a roguish fierceness about his face. In the breach, the Colonel knew, victory or defeat as often as not came down to a man’s skill and strength, and Sharpe looked as if he knew how to use his weapons. “Good luck to you, Sharpe.”

  “And the best to you, sir,” Sharpe said warmly.

  He walked on, his borrowed musket heavy on his shoulder. Eli Lockhart and Syud Sevajee were waiting with their men among the third group, the soldiers who would occupy the fort after the assault troops had done their work, if, indeed, the leading two thousand men managed to get through the walls. A rumor was spreading that the breaches were too steep and that no one could carry a weapon and climb the ramps at the same time. The men believed they would need to use their hands to scramble up the stony piles, and so they would be easy targets for any defenders at the top of the breaches. The gunners, they grumbled, should have brought down more of the wall, if not all of it, and the proof of that assertion was the guns’ continual firing. Why would the guns go on gnawing at the wall if the breaches were already practical? They could hear the strike of round shot on stone, hear the occasional tumble of rubble, but what they could not hear was any fire from the fortress. The bastards were saving their fire for the assault.

  Sharpe edged among sepoys who were carrying one of Major Stokes’s bamboo ladders. The dark faces grinned at him, and one man offered Sharpe a canteen which proved to contain a strongly spiced arrack. Sharpe took a small sip, then amused the sepoys by pretending to be astonished by the liquor’s fierceness. “That’s rare stuff, lads,” Sharpe said, then walked on toward his old comrades. They watched his approach with a mixture of surprise, welcome and apprehension. When the 33rd’s Light Company had last seen Sharpe he had been a sergeant, and not long before that he had been a private strapped to the punishment triangle; now he wore a sword and sash. Although officers promoted from the ranks were not supposed to serve with their old units, Sharpe had friends among these men and if he was to climb the steep rubble of Gawilghur’s breaches then he would rather do it among friends.

  Captain Morris was no friend, and he watched Sharpe’s approach with foreboding. Sharpe headed straight for his old company commander. “Good to see you, Charles,” he said, knowing that his use of the Christian name would irritate Morris. “Nice morning, eh?”

  Morris looked left and right as though seeking someone who could help him confront this upstart from his past. Morris had never liked Sharpe, indeed he had conspired with Obadiah Hakeswill to have Sharpe flogged in the hope that the punishment would end in death, but Sharpe had survived and had been commissioned. Now the bastard was being familiar, and there was nothing Morris could do about it. “Sharpe,” he managed to say.

  “Thought I’d join you, Charles,” Sharpe said airily. “I’ve been stranded up here, and Kenny reckoned I might be useful to you.”

  “Of course,” Morris said, conscious of his men’s gaze. Morris would have liked to tell Sharpe to bugger a long way off, but he could not commit such impoliteness to a fellow officer in front of his men. “I never congratulated you,” he forced himself to say.

  “No time like the present,” Sharpe said.

  Morris blushed. “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Charles,” Sharpe said, then turned and looked at the company. Most grinned at him, but a few men avoided his gaze. “No Sergeant Hakeswill?” Sharpe asked guilelessly.

  “He was captured by the enemy,” Morris said. The Captain was staring at Sharpe’s coat which
was not quite big enough and looked, somehow, familiar.

  Sharpe saw Morris frowning at the jacket. “You like the coat?” he asked.

  “What?” Morris asked, confused by his suspicions and by Sharpe’s easy manner. Morris himself was wearing an old coat that was disfigured by brown cloth patches.

  “I bought the coat after Assaye,” Sharpe said. “You weren’t there, were you?”

  “No.”

  “Nor at Argaum?”

  “No,” Morris said, stiffening slightly. He resented the fact that Sharpe had survived those battles and was now suggesting, however delicately, that the experience gave him an advantage. The truth was that it did, but Morris could not admit that any more than he could admit his jealousy of Sharpe’s reputation.

  “So what are our orders today?” Sharpe asked.

  Morris could not accustom himself to this confident Sjharpe who treated him as an equal and he was tempted not to answer, but the question was reasonable and Sharpe was undoubtedly an officer, if merely an ensign. “Once we’re through the first wall,” Morris answered unhappily, “Kenny’s going to attack the left-hand upper breach and he wants us to seal off the right upper breach.”

  “Sounds like a decent morning’s work,” Sharpe said happily, then raised a hand to Garrard. “How are you, Tom?”

  “Pleased you’re here, sir.”

  “Couldn’t let you babies go into a breach without some help,” Sharpe said, then held out his hand to Sergeant Green. “Good to see you, Sergeant.”

  “Grand to see you too, sir,” Green said, shaking Sharpe’s hand. “I heard you’d been commissioned and I hardly dared believe it!”

  “You know what they say about scum, Sergeant,” Sharpe said. “Always floats to the top, eh?” Some of the men laughed, especially when Sharpe glanced at Morris who had, indeed, expressed that very opinion not long before. Others scowled, for there were plenty in the company who resented Sharpe’s good fortune.

  One of them, a dark-faced man called Crowley, spat. “You always were a lucky bastard, Sharpie.”

  Sharpe seemed to ignore the remark as he stepped through the seated company and greeted more of his old friends, but when he was behind Crowley he turned abruptly and pushed out the butt of his slung musket so that the heavy stock thumped into the private’s head. Crowley let out a yelp and turned to see Sharpe standing above him. “The word, Crowley,” Sharpe said menacingly, “is ‘sir.’”

  Crowley met Sharpe’s gaze, but could not hold it. “Yes, sir,” he said meekly.

  “I’m sorry I was careless with the musket, Crowley,” Sharpe said.

  There was another burst of laughter, making Morris scowl, but he was quite uncertain of how to deal with Sharpe and so he said nothing. Watson, a Welsh private who had joined the regiment rather than face an assize court, jerked a thumb toward the fort. “They say the breaches are too steep, Mr. Sharpe.”

  “Nothing to what you Welsh boys climb every day in the mountains,” Sharpe said. He had borrowed Major Stokes’s telescope shortly after dawn and stared at the breaches, and he had not much liked what he had seen, but this was no time to tell the truth. “We’re going to give the buggers a right bloody thrashing, lads,” he said instead. “I’ve fought these Mahrattas twice now and they don’t stand. They look good, but press home on the bastards and they turn and run like jackrabbits. Just keep going, boys, keep fighting, and the buggers’ll give up.”

  It was the speech Morris should have made to them, and Sharpe had not even known he was going to make any kind of speech when he opened his mouth, but somehow the words had come. And he was glad, for the men looked relieved at his confidence, then some of them looked nervous again as they watched a sepoy coming up the track with a British flag in his hands. Colonel Kenny and his aides walked behind the man, all with drawn swords. Captain Morris drank deep from his canteen, and the smell of rum wafted to Sharpe.

  The guns fired on, crumbling the breaches’ shoulders and filling the air with smoke and dust as they tried to make the rough way smooth. Soldiers, sensing that the order to advance was about to be given, stood and hefted their weapons. Some touched rabbits’ feet hidden in pockets, or whatever other small token gave them a fingerhold on life.

  One man vomited, another trembled. Sweat poured down their faces.

  “Four ranks,” Morris said.

  “Into ranks! Quick now!” Sergeant Green snapped. A howitzer shell arced overhead then plummeted toward the fort trailing its wisp of fuse smoke. Sharpe heard the shell explode, then watched another shell follow. A man dashed out of the ranks into the rocks, lowered his trousers and emptied his bowels. Everyone pretended not to notice until the smell struck them, then they jeered as the embarrassed man went back to his place. “That’s enough!” Green said.

  A sepoy drummer with an old-fashioned mitered shako on his head gave his drum a couple of taps, while a piper from the Scotch Brigade filled his bag then settled the instrument under his elbow. Colonel Kenny was looking at his watch. The guns fired on, their smoke drifting down to the waiting men. The sepoy with the flag was at the front of the forming column, and Sharpe guessed the enemy must be able to see the bright tip of the color above the rocky crest.

  Sharpe took the bayonet from his belt and slotted it onto the musket. He was not wearing the sabre that Ahmed had stolen from Morris, for he knew the weapon would be identifiable, and so he had a tulwar that he had borrowed from Syud Sevajee. He did not trust the weapon. He had seen too many Indian blades break in combat. Besides he was used to a musket and bayonet.

  “Fix bayonets!” Morris ordered, prompted by the sight of Sharpe’s blade.

  “And save your fire till you’re hard in the breach,” Sharpe added. “You’ve got one shot, lads, so don’t waste it. You won’t have time to reload till you’re through both walls.”

  Morris scowled at this unasked-for advice, but the men seemed grateful for it, just as they were grateful that they were not in the front ranks of Kenny’s force. That honor had gone to the Grenadier Company of the g4th who thus formed the Forlorn Hope. Usually the Hope, that group of men who went first into a breach to spring the enemy traps and fight down the immediate defenders, was composed of volunteers, but Kenny had decided to do without a proper Forlorn Hope. He wanted to fill the breaches quickly and so overwhelm the defenses by numbers, and thus hard behind the Scotch Brigade’s grenadiers were two more companies of Scots, then came the sepoys and Morris’s men. Hard and fast, Kenny had told them, hard and fast.

  Leave the wounded behind you, he had ordered, and just get up the damned breaches and start killing.

  The Colonel looked at his watch a last time, then snapped its lid shut and put it into a pocket. He took a breath, hefted his sword, then shouted one word. “Now!”

  And the flag went forward across the crest and behind it came a wave of men who hurried toward the walls.

  For a few seconds the fortress was silent, then the first rocket was fired. It seared toward the advancing troops, trailing its plume of thick smoke, then abruptly twisted and climbed into the clear sky.

  Then the guns began.

  Colonel William Dodd saw the errant rocket twist into the sky, falter amid a growing tumult of its own smoke, then fall. Manu Bappoo’s guns began to fire and Dodd knew, though he could not see over the loom of the Outer Fort, that the British attack was coming. “Gopal!” he called to his second in command.

  “Sahib?”

  “Close the gates.”

  “Sahib?” Gopal frowned at the Colonel. It had been agreed with Manu Bappoo that the four gates that barred the entranceway to the Inner Fort would be left open so that the defenders of the Outer Fort could retreat swiftly if it was necessary. Dodd had even posted a company to guard the outermost gate to make sure that no British pursuers could get in behind Manu Bappoo’s men, yet now he was suggesting that the gates should be shut? “You want me to close them, sahib?” Gopal asked, wondering if he had misheard.

  “Close them, bar the
m and forget them,” Dodd said happily, “and pull the platoon back inside the fort. I have another job for them.”

  “But, sahib, if—”

  “You heard me, Jemadar! Move!”

  Gopal ran to do Dodd’s bidding, while the Colonel himself walked along the fire step that edged the entranceway to make certain that his orders were being obeyed. He watched, satisfied, as the troops guarding the outer gate were brought back into the fortress and then as, one by one, the four vast gates were pushed shut. The great locking bars, each as thick as a man’s thigh, were dropped into their metal brackets. The Outer Fort was now isolated. If Manu Bappoo repelled the British then it would be a simple matter to open the gates again, but if he lost, and if he fled, then he would find himself trapped between Dodd’s Cobras and the advancing British.

  Dodd walked to the center of the fire step and there climbed onto an embrasure so that he could talk to as many of his men as possible. “You will see that I have shut the gates,” he shouted, “and they will stay shut! They will not be opened except by my express permission. Not if all the maharajahs of India stand out there and demand entrance! The gates stay shut. Do you understand?”

  The white-coated soldiers, or at least those few who spoke some English, nodded while the rest had Dodd’s orders translated. None showed much interest in the decision. They trusted their Colonel, and if he wanted the gates kept closed, then so be it.

  Dodd watched the smoke thicken on the far side of the Outer Fort. A grim struggle was being waged there, but it was nothing to do with him. He would only begin to fight when the British attacked across the ravine, but their attacks would achieve nothing. The only way into the Inner Fort was through the gates, and that was impossible. The British might batter down the first gate with cannon fire, but once through the arch they would discover that the entranceway turned sharply to the left, so their gun could not fire through the passage to batter down the three other doors. They would have to, fight their way up the narrow passage, try to destroy the successive gates with axes, and all the while his men would be pouring slaughter on them from the flanking walls.