Sharpe's Fortress Page 33

  A Scottish sergeant had shoved and tugged the men into two ranks. “Load!” Sharpe said, though most of the men were already loaded. “Sergeant?”

  “Sir?”

  “Advance along the wall. No one’s to fire till I give the word. Sergeant Green?” Sharpe called, waited. “Sergeant Green!” Green had evidently not crossed the wall yet, or maybe he had not even climbed the cliff. “Sergeant Green!” Sharpe bellowed again.

  “Why do you need him?” a voice called.

  It was a Scottish captain. Christ, Sharpe thought, but he was outranked. “To bring the next group on!”

  “I’ll do it,” the Scotsman said, “you go!”

  “Advance!” Sharpe shouted.

  “By the center!” the Sergeant shouted. “March!”

  It was a ragged advance. The men had no file-closers and they spread out, but Sharpe did not much care. The thing was to close on the enemy. That had always been McCandless’s advice. Get close and start killing, because there’s bugger all you can do at long range, though the Scottish Colonel would never have used those words. This is for you, McCandless, Sharpe thought, this one’s for you, and it struck him that this was the first time he had ever taken troops into formal battle, line against line, muskets against muskets. He was nervous, and made even more nervous by the fact that he was leading a makeshift company in full view of the thousands of redcoats on the ravine’s northern slope. It was like being trapped on stage in a full theater; lose here, he thought, and all the army would know. He watched the enemy officer, a tall man with a dark face and a large mustache. He looked calm and his men marched in three tight ranks. Well trained, Sharpe thought, but then no one had ever said William Dodd could not whip troops into shape.

  The Cobras stopped when the two units were a hundred paces apart.

  They leveled their muskets and Sharpe saw his men falter. “Keep going!” he ordered. “Keep going!”

  “You heard the man!” the Scottish Sergeant bellowed. “Keep going!” Sharpe was at the right-hand flank of his line. He glanced behind to see more men running to catch up, their equipment flapping as they stumbled over the uneven ground. Christ, Sharpe thought, but I’m inside! We’re in! And then the Cobras fired.

  And Sharpe, ensign and bullock driver, had a battle on his hands.

  The redcoats stormed the gatehouse a third time, this attempt led by two squads who hugged the walls either side of the passage and then turned their muskets up to blast the defenders on the opposite fire step. The tactic seemed to work, for they ripped off their first volley and under its cover a third squad comprised of axemen charged over the dead and dying and scrambled up the steep stone path toward the second gate.

  Then the lit rockets began to drop from on high. They struck the bodies and then flamed into life and ricocheted madly about the confined space. They tore into the two musket squads, flamed among the axemen, choked men with their smoke, burned them with flame and’ exploded to strew the carnage with more blood and guts. The axemen never even reached the gate. They died under the musket fire that followed the rockets, or else, wounded, they tried to crawl back through the thick smoke. Rocks hurtled down from the flanking fire steps, pulping the dead and the living into horror. The survivors fled, defeated again.

  “Enough!” Colonel Dodd shouted at his men. “Enough!” He peered down into the stone chamber. It looked like something from hell, a place where broken things twitched in blood beneath a reeking pall of smoke. The rocket carcasses still burned. The wounded cried for help that was not coming, and Dodd felt an elation sear through him. It was even easier than he had dared to hope.

  “Sahib!” Gopal said urgendy. “Sahib?”

  “What?”

  “Sahib, look!” Gopal was pointing westward. There was smoke and the crackling sound of a musket fight. The noise and smoke were coming from just beyond the curve of the hill so Dodd could not see what was happening, but the sound was enough to convince him that a considerable fight had broken out a quarter-mile away, and that might not have mattered, except that the smoke and the noise came from inside the wall.

  “Jesus!” Dodd swore. “Find out what’s happening, Gopal. Quick!” He could not lose. He must not lose. “Where’s Mr. Hakeswill?” he shouted, wanting the deserter to take over Gopal’s responsibilities on the fire step, but the twitching Sergeant had vanished. The musketry went on, but beneath Dodd there were only moans and the smell of burning flesh. He stared westward. If the damned redcoats had crossed the wall then he would need more infantry to drive them out and seal whatever place they had found to penetrate the Inner Fort. “Havildar!” He summoned the man who had accompanied Hakeswill to the palace. “Go to the Southern Gate and tell them to send a battalion here. Quick!”

  “Sahib,” the man said, and ran.

  Dodd found that he was shaking slightly. It was just a small tremor in his right hand which he stilled by gripping the gold elephant-shaped hilt of his sword. There was no need to panic, he told himself, everything was under control, but he could not rid himself of the thought that there would be no escape from this place. In every other fight since he had defected from British service he had made certain of a route along which he could retreat, but from this high fortress on its soaring bluff there was no way out. He must win, or else he must die. He watched the smoke to the west. The firing was constant now, suggesting that the enemy was inside the fort in force. His hand twitched, but this time he did not notice as, for the first time in weeks, the Lord of Gawilghur began to fear defeat.

  The volley from the company of white-coated Cobras hammered toward Sharpe’s men, but because they were spread more widely than usual many of the balls wasted themselves in the gaps between the files. Some men went down, and the rest instinctively checked, but Sharpe shouted at them to keep marching. The enemy was hidden in smoke, but Sharpe knew they would be reloading. “Close the files, Sergeant,” he shouted.

  “Close up! Close up!” the Scots Sergeant called. He glanced at Sharpe, suspecting that he was taking the small company too close to the enemy. The range was already down to sixty yards.

  Sharpe could just see one of the Indians through the smoke. The man was the left flanker of the front rank, a small man, and he had bitten off his cartridge and was pouring the powder down the muzzle of his musket. Sharpe watched the bullet go in and the ramrod come up ready to plunge down into the barrel. “Halt!” he called.

  “Halt!” the Sergeant echoed.

  “Present!”

  The muskets came up into the men’s shoulders. Sharpe reckoned he had about sixty men in the two ranks, fewer than the enemy’s three ranks, but enough. More men were running up from the ladder all the time. “Aim low,” he said. “Fire!”

  The volley slammed into the Cobras who were still loading. Sharpe’s men began to reload themselves, working fast, nervous of the enemy’s next volley.

  Sharpe watched the enemy bring their muskets up. His men were half hidden by their own musket smoke. “Drop!” he shouted. He had not known he was going to give the order until he heard himself shout it, but it suddenly seemed the sensible thing to do. “Flat on the ground!” he shouted. “Quick!” He dropped himself, though only to one knee, and a heartbeat later the enemy fired and their volley whistled over the prostrate company. Sharpe had slowed his men’s loading process, but he had kept them alive and now it was time to go for the kill. “Load!” he shouted, and his men climbed to their feet. This time Sharpe did not watch the enemy, for he did not want to be affected by their timing. He hefted the claymore, comforted by the blade’s heaviness.

  “Prepare to charge!” he shouted. His men were pushing their ramrods back into their musket hoops, and now they pulled out their bayonets and twisted them onto blackened muzzles. Eli Lockhart’s cavalrymen, some of whom only had pistols, drew their sabres.

  “Present!” Sharpe called, and the muskets went up into the shoulders again. Now he did look at the enemy and saw that most of them were still ramming.

  �
��Fire!” The muskets flamed and the scraps of wadding spat out after the bullets to flicker their small flames in the grass. “Charge!” Sharpe shouted, and he led the way from the right flank, the claymore in his hand. “Charge!” he shouted again and his small company, sensing that they had only seconds before the enemy’s muskets were loaded, ran with him.

  Then a blast of musketry sounded to Sharpe’s right and he saw that the Scottish Captain had formed a score of men on the flank and had poured in a volley that struck the Cobras just before Sharpe’s charge closed the gap.

  “Kill them!” Sharpe raged. Fear was whipping inside him, the fear that he had mistimed this charge and that the enemy would have a volley ready just yards before the redcoats struck home, but he was committed now, and he ran as hard as he could to break into the white-coated ranks before the volley came.

  The havildar commanding the Cobra company had been appalled to see the redcoats charging. He should have fired, but instead he ordered his men to fix their own bayonets and so the enemy was still twisting the blades onto their muskets when the leading redcoats burst through the smoke. Sharpe hacked his heavy sword at the front rank, felt it bite and slide against bone, twisted it free, lunged, kicked at a man, and suddenly Eli Lockhart was beside him, his sabre slashing down, and two Highlanders were stabbing with bayonets. Sharpe hacked with the sword two-handed, fighting in a red rage that had come from the nervousness that had assailed him during the charge. A sepoy trapped the Cobras’ havildar, feinted with the bayonet, parried the tulwar’s counter-lunge, then stabbed the enemy in the belly. The white coats were running now, fleeing back toward the smoke that boiled up from the gatehouse which lay beyond the bulge of the hill. Tom Garrard, his bayonet bloodied to the hilt, kicked at a wounded man who was trying to aim his musket. Other men stooped to search the dead and dying.

  The Scottish Captain came in from the flank. He had the winged epaulettes of a light company. “I didn’t know the 74th were up here,” he greeted Sharpe, “or is it the 33rd?” He peered at Sharpe’s coat, and Sharpe saw that Clare’s newly sewn facings had been torn in the climb, revealing the old red material beneath.

  “I’m a lost sheep, sir,” Sharpe said.

  “A very welcome lost sheep,” the Captain said, holding out his hand. “Archibald Campbell, Scotch Brigade. Brought my company up here, just in case they got bored.”

  “Richard Sharpe, 74th,” Sharpe said, shaking Campbell’s hand, “and bloody glad to see you, sir.” Sharpe suddenly wanted to laugh. His force, which had pierced the Inner Fort’s defenses, was a ragged mix of Indians and British, cavalrymen and infantry. There were kilted Highlanders from the y8th, some of Campbell’s men from the 94th, maybe half of the 33rd’s Light Company, and a good number of sepoys.

  Campbell had climbed one of the low timber platforms that had let the defenders peer over the fire step, and from its vantage point he stared at the gatehouse which lay a quarter-mile eastward.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Mr. Sharpe?” he asked.

  “I’m thinking we should take the gatehouse,” Sharpe said, “and open the gates.”

  “Me too.” He shifted to make room for Sharpe on the small platform. “They’ll no doubt be trying to evict us soon, eh? We’d best make haste.”

  Sharpe stared at the gatehouse where a great smear of smoke showed above the ramparts that were thick with white-coated Cobras. A shallow flight of stone stairs led from inside the fortress to the fire step, and the gates could not be opened until that fire step was cleared of the enemy. “If I take the fire step,” he suggested to Campbell, “you can open the gates?”

  “That seems a fair division of labor,” Campbell said, jumping down from the platform. He had lost his hat and a shock of curly black hair hung over his narrow face. He grinned at Sharpe. “I’ll take my company and you can have the rest, eh?” Campbell strode up the hill, shouting for his own Light Company to form in a column of three ranks.

  Sharpe followed Campbell off the platform and summoned the remaining men into line. “Captain Campbell’s going to open the gates from the inside,” he told them, “and we’re going to make it possible by clearing the parapets of the bastards. It’s a fair distance to the gate, but we’ve got to get there fast. And when we get there, the first thing we do is fire a volley up at the fire step. Clean some of the buggers off before we go up there. Load your muskets now. Sergeant Green!”

  Green, red-faced from the effort of climbing up the ravine and running to join Sharpe, stepped forward. “I’m here, sir, and sir—”

  “Number off twenty men, Green,” Sharpe ordered the panting Sergeant. “You’ll stay down below and provide covering fire while we climb the steps, understand?”

  “Twenty men, sir? Yes, sir, I will, sir, only it’s Mr. Morris, sir.” Green sounded embarrassed.

  “What about him?” Sharpe asked.

  “He’s recovered, sir. His tummy, sir, it got better”—Green managed to keep a straight face as he delivered that news—”and he said no one else was to climb the cliff, sir, and he sent me to fetch the men what had climbed it back down again. That’s why I’m here, sir “

  “No, you’re not,” Sharpe said. “You’re here to number off twenty men who’ll give the rest of us covering fire.”

  Green hesitated, looked at Sharpe’s face, then nodded. “Right you are, sir! Twenty men, covering fire.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant,” Sharpe said. So Morris was conscious again and probably already making trouble, but Sharpe could not worry about that. He looked at his men. They numbered seventy or eighty now, and still more Scotsmen and sepoys were coming up the cliff and crossing the wall. He waited until they all had loaded muskets and their ramrods were back in their hoops. “Just follow me, lads, and when we get there kill the bastards. Now!” He turned and faced east. “Come on!”

  “At the double!” Campbell called to his company. “Forward!”

  The fox was in the henhouse. Feathers would fly.

  Chapter 11

  The 74th, climbing the road that led from the plain to Gawilghur’s Southern Gate, could hear the distant musketry sounding like a burning thorn grove. It crackled, flared up to a crescendo, then faded again. At times it seemed as though it would die altogether and then, just as sweating men decided the battle must be over, it rattled loud and furious once more. There was nothing the 74th could do to help. They were still three hundred feet beneath the fortress and from now on they would be within killing range of the guns mounted on Gawilghur’s south-facing ramparts. Those guns had been firing at the 74th for over an hour now, but the range had been long and the downward angle steep, so that not a ball had struck home. If the 74th had had their own artillery, they could have fired back, but the slope was too steep for any gun to fire effectively. The gunners would have had to site their cannon on a steep upward ramp, and every shot would have threatened to turn the guns over. The 74th could go no farther, not without taking needless casualties, and so Wellesley halted them. If the defenders on the southern wall looked few he might contemplate an escalade, but the sepoys carrying the ladders had fallen far behind the leading troops so no such attack could be contemplated yet. Nor did the General truly expect to try such an assault, for the 74th’s task had always been to keep some of the fort’s defenders pinned to their southern walls while the real attack came from the north. That purpose, at least, was being accomplished, for the walls facing the steep southern slope looked thick with defenders.

  Sir Arthur Wellesley dismounted from his horse and climbed to a vantage point from which he could stare at the fortress. Colonel Wallace and a handful of aides followed, and the officers settled by some rocks from where they tried to work out what the noise of the battle meant. “No guns,” Wellesley said after cocking his head to the distant sound.

  “No guns, sir?” an aide asked.

  “There’s no sound of cannon fire,” Colonel Wallace explained, “which surely means the Outer Fort is taken.”

  “But n
ot the Inner?” the aide asked.

  Sir Arthur did not even bother to reply. Of course the Inner Fort was not taken, otherwise the sound of fighting would have died away altogether and fugitives would be streaming from the Southern Gate toward the muskets of the 74th. And somehow, despite his misgivings, Wellesley had dared to hope that Kenny’s assault would wash over both sets of ramparts, and that by the time the 74th reached the road’s summit the great Southern Gate would already have been opened by triumphant redcoats. Instead a green and gold flag hung from the gate-tower which bristled with the muskets of its defenders.

  Wellesley now wished that he had ridden to the plateau and followed Kenny’s men through the breaches. What the hell was happening? He had no way of reaching the plateau except to ride all the way down to the plain and then back up the newly cut road, a distance of over twenty miles. He could only wait and hope. “You’ll advance your skirmishers, Colonel?” he suggested to Wallace. The 74th’s skirmishers could not hope to achieve much, but at least their presence would confirm the threat to the southern walls and so pin those defenders down. “But spread them out,” Wellesley advised, “spread them well out.” By scattering the Light Company across the hot hillside he would protect them from cannon fire.

  Beyond the southern ramparts, far beyond, a pillar of smoke smeared the sky gray. The sound of firing rose and fell, muted by the hot air that shimmered over the fort’s black walls. Wellesley fidgeted and hoped to God his gamble would pay off and that his redcoats, God alone knew how, had found a way into the fort that had never before fallen.

  “Give them fire!” Major Stokes roared at the men on the ravine’s northern side. “Give them fire!” Other officers took up the call, and the men who had been watching the fight across the ravine loaded their firelocks and began peppering the gatehouse with musket balls. Stokes had climbed back up the northern side of the ravine so that he could see across the farther wall, and he now watched as the two small groups of redcoats advanced raggedly over the hillside. A column was farthest away, while the nearer men were in a line, and both advanced on the strongly garrisoned gatehouse which had just repelled yet another British attack through the broken gate. Those defenders would now turn their muskets on the new attackers and so Stokes roared at men to fire across the ravine. The range was terribly long, but any distraction would help. The gunners who had smashed down the gate fired at the parapets, their shots chipping at stone. “Go, man, go!” Stokes urged Sharpe. “Go!”