Sharpe's Fortress Read online

  Yes, sir, three bladders full, sir, and damn your bloody eyes, sir. “Sorry, sir,” Sharpe said instead. So maybe proper officers didn’t piss? He sensed the company was laughing at him and he ran to catch up, fiddling with his buttons. Still there was no gunfire from the Mahratta center. Why not? But then a cannon on one of the enemy flanks fired slantwise across the field and the ball grazed right through number six company, ripping a front rank man’s feet off and slashing a man behind through the knees. Another soldier was limping, his leg deeply pierced by a splinter from his neighbor’s bone. Corporal McCallum, one of the file-closers, tugged men into the gap while a piper ran across to bandage the wounded men. The injured would be left where they fell until after the battle when, if they still lived, they would be carried to the surgeons. And if they survived the knives and saws they would be shipped home, good for nothing except to be a burden on the parish. Or maybe the Scots did not have parishes; Sharpe was not sure, but he was certain the buggers had workhouses. Everyone had workhouses and paupers’ graveyards. Better to be buried out here in the black earth of enemy India than condemned to the charity of a workhouse.

  Then he saw why the guns in the center of the Mahratta line had ceased fire. The gaps between the guns were suddenly filled with men running forward. Men in long robes and headdresses. They streamed between the gaps, then joined together ahead of the guns beneath long green banners that trailed from silver-topped poles. Arabs, Sharpe thought. He had seen some at Ahmednuggur, but most of those had been dead. He remembered Sevajee, the Mahratta who fought alongside Colonel McCandless, saying that the Arab mercenaries were the best of all the enemy troops.

  Now there was a horde of desert warriors coming straight for the 74th and their kilted neighbors.

  The Arabs came in a loose formation. Their guns had decorated stocks that glinted in the sunlight, while curved swords were scabbarded at their waists. They came almost jauntily, as though they had utter confidence in their ability. How many were there? A thousand? Sharpe reckoned at least a thousand. Their officers were on horseback. They did not advance in ranks and files, but in a mass, and some, the bravest men, ran ahead as if eager to start the killing. The great robed mass was chanting a shrill war cry, while in its center drummers were beating huge instruments that pulsed a belly-thumping beat across the field. Sharpe watched the nearest British gun load with canister. The green banners were being waved from side to side so that the silk trails snaked over the warriors’ heads. Something was written on the banners, but it was in no script that Sharpe recognized.

  “Seventy-fourth!” Major Swinton called. “Halt!”

  The 48th had also halted. The two Highland battalions, both under strength after their losses at Assaye, were taking the full brunt of the Arab charge. The rest of the battlefield seemed to melt away. All Sharpe could see was the robed men coming so eagerly toward him.

  “Make ready!” Swinton called.

  “Make ready!” Urquhart echoed.

  “Make ready!” Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. The men raised their muskets chest high and pulled back the heavy hammers.

  Sharpe pushed into the gap between number six company and its left-hand neighbor, number seven. He wished he had a musket. The sabre felt flimsy.

  “Present!” Swinton called.

  “Present!” Colquhoun echoed, and the muskets went into the men’s shoulders. Heads bowed to peer down the barrels’ lengths.

  “You’ll fire low, boys,” Urquhart said from behind the line, “you’ll fire low. To your place, Mr. Sharpe.”

  Bugger it, Sharpe thought, another bloody mistake. He stepped back behind the company where he was supposed to make sure no one tried to run.

  The Arabs were close. Less than a hundred paces to go now. Some had their swords drawn. The air, miraculously smoke-free, was filled with their blood-chilling war cry which was a weird ululating sound. Not far now, not far at all. The Scotsmen’s muskets were angled slightly down. The kick drove the barrels upward, and untrained troops, not ready for the heavy recoil, usually fired high. But this volley would be lethal.

  “Wait, boys, wait,” Pig-ears called to number seven company. Ensign Venables slashed at weeds with his claymore. He looked nervous.

  Urquhart had drawn a pistol. He dragged the cock back, and his horse’s ears flicked back as the pistol’s spring clicked.

  Arab faces screamed hatred. Their great drums were thumping. The redcoat line, just two ranks deep, looked frail in front of the savage charge.

  Major Swinton took a deep breath. Sharpe edged toward the gap again. Bugger it, he wanted to be in the front line where he could kill. It was too nerve-racking behind the line.

  “Seventy-fourth!” Swinton shouted, then he paused. Men’s fingers curled about their triggers.

  Let them get close, Swinton was thinking, let them get close.

  Then kill them.

  Prince Manu Bappoo’s brother, the Rajah of Berar, was not at the village of Argaum where the Lions of Allah now charged to destroy the heart of the British attack. The Rajah did not like battle. He liked the idea of conquest, he loved to see prisoners paraded and he craved the loot that filled his storehouses, but he had no belly for fighting.

  Manu Bappoo had no such qualms. He was thirty-five years old, he had fought since he was fifteen, and all he asked was the chance to go on fighting for another twenty or forty years. He considered himself a true Mahratta; a pirate, a rogue, a thief in armor, a looter, a pestilence, a successor to the generations of Mahrattas who had dominated western India by pouring from their hill fastnesses to terrorize the plump princedoms and luxurious kingdoms in the plains. A quick sword, a fast horse and a wealthy victim, what more could a man want? And so Bappoo had ridden deep and far to bring plunder and ransom back to the small land of Berar.

  But now all the Mahratta lands were threatened. One British army was conquering their northern territory, and another was here in the south. It was this southern redcoat force that had broken the troops of Scindia and Berar at Assaye, and the Rajah of Berar had summoned his brother to bring his Lions of Allah to claw and kill the invader. This was not a task for horsemen, the Rajah had warned Bappoo, but for infantry. It was a task for the Arabs.

  But Bappoo knew this was a task for horsemen. His Arabs would win, of that he was sure, but they could only break the enemy on the immediate battlefield. He had thought to let the British advance right up to his cannon, then release the Arabs, but a whim, an intimation of triumph, had decided him to advance the Arabs beyond the guns. Let the Lions of Allah loose on the enemy’s center and, when that center was broken, the rest of the British line would scatter and run in panic, and that was when the Mahratta horsemen would have their slaughter. It was already early evening, and the sun was sinking in the reddened west, but the sky was cloudless and Bappoo was anticipating the joys of a moonlit hunt across the flat Deccan Plain. “We shall gallop through blood,” he said aloud, then led his aides toward his army’s right flank so that he could charge past his Arabs when they had finished their fight. He would let his victorious Lions of Allah pillage the enemy’s camp while he led his horsemen on a wild victorious gallop through the moon-touched darkness.

  And the British would run. They would run like goats from the tiger. But the tiger was clever. He had only kept a small number of horsemen with the army, a mere fifteen thousand, while the greater part of his cavalry had been sent southward to raid the enemy’s long supply roads. The British would flee straight into those men’s sabres.

  Bappoo trotted his horse just behind the right flank of the Lions of Allah. The British guns were firing canister and Bappoo saw how the ground beside his Arabs was being flecked by the blasts of shot, and he saw the robed men fall, but he saw how the others did not hesitate, but hurried on toward the pitifully thin line of redcoats. The Arabs were screaming defiance, the guns were hammering, and Bappoo’s soul soared with the music. There was nothing finer in life, he thought, than this sensation of imminent victory. It was like
a drug that fired the mind with noble visions.

  He might have spared a moment’s thought and wondered why the British did not use their muskets. They were holding their fire, waiting until every shot could kill, but the Prince was not worrying about such trifles. In his dreams he was scattering a broken army, slashing at them with his tulwar, carving a bloody path south. A fast sword, a quick horse and a broken enemy. It was the Mahratta paradise, and the Lions of Allah were opening its gates so that this night Manu Bappoo, Prince, warrior and dreamer, could ride into legend.

  Chapter 2

  “Fire!” Swinton shouted.

  The two Highland regiments fired together, close to a thousand muskets flaming to make an instant hedge of thick smoke in front of the battalions. The Arabs vanished behind the smoke as the redcoats reloaded. Men bit into the grease-coated cartridges, tugged ramrods that they whirled in the air before rattling them down into the barrels. The churning smoke began to thin, revealing small fires where the musket wadding burned in the dry grass.

  “Platoon fire!” Major Swinton shouted. “From the flanks!”

  “Light Company!” Captain Peters called on the left flank. “First platoon, fire!”

  “Kill them! Your mothers are watching!” Colonel Harness shouted. The Colonel of the 48th was mad as a hatter and half delirious with a fever, but he had insisted on advancing behind his kilted Highlanders. He was being carried in a palanquin and, as the platoon fire began, he struggled from the litter to join the battle, his only weapon a broken riding crop. He had been recently bled, and a stained bandage trailed from a coat sleeve. “Give them a flogging, you dogs! Give them a flogging.”

  The two battalions fired in half companies now, each half company firing two or three seconds after the neighboring platoon so that the volleys rolled in from the outer wings of each battalion, met in the center and then started again at the flanks. Clockwork fire, Sharpe called it, and it was the result of hours of tedious practice. Beyond the battalions’ flanks the six-pounders bucked back with each shot, their wheels jarring up from the turf as the canisters ripped apart at the muzzles. Wide swaths of burning grass lay under the cannon smoke. The gunners were working in shirtsleeves, swabbing, ramming, then ducking aside as the guns pitched back again. Only the gun commanders, most of them sergeants, seemed to look at the enemy, and then only when they were checking the alignment of the cannon. The other gunners fetched shot and powder, sometimes heaved on a handspike or pushed on the wheels as the gun was relaid, then swabbed and loaded again. “Water!” a corporal shouted, holding up a bucket to show that the swabbing water was gone.

  “Fire low! Don’t waste your powder!” Major Swinton called as he pushed his horse into the gap between the center companies. He peered at the enemy through the smoke. Behind him, next to the 74th’s twin flags, General Wellesley and his aides also stared at the Arabs beyond the smoke clouds. Colonel Wallace, the brigade commander, trotted his horse to the battalion’s flank. He called something to Sharpe as he went by, but his words were lost in the welter of gunfire, then his horse half spun as a bullet struck its haunch. Wallace steadied the beast, looked back at the wound, but the horse did not seem badly hurt. Colonel Harness was thrashing one of the native palanquin bearers who had been trying to push the Colonel back into the curtained vehicle. One of Wellesley’s aides rode back to quieten the Colonel and to persuade him to go southward.

  “Steady now!” Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. “Aim low!”

  The Arab charge had been checked, but not defeated. The first volley must have hit the attackers cruelly hard for Sharpe could see a line of bodies lying on the turf. The bodies looked red and white, blood against robes, but behind that twitching heap the Arabs were firing back to make their own ragged cloud of musket smoke. They fired haphazardly, untrained in platoon volleys, but they reloaded swifdy and their bullets were striking home. Sharpe heard the butcher’s sound of metal hitting meat, saw men hurled backward, saw some fall. The file-closers hauled the dead out of the line and tugged the living closer together. “Close up! Close up!” The pipes played on, adding their defiant music to the noise of the guns. Private Hollister was hit in the head and Sharpe saw a cloud of white flour drift away from the man’s powdered hair as his hat fell off. Then blood soaked the whitened hair and Hollister fell back with glassy eyes.

  “One platoon, fire!” Sergeant Colquhoun shouted. He was so shortsighted that he could barely see the enemy, but it hardly mattered. No one could see much in the smoke, and all that was needed was a steady nerve and Colquhoun was not a man to panic.

  “Two platoon, fire!” Urquhart shouted.

  “Christ Jesus!” a man called close to Sharpe. He reeled backward, his musket falling, then he twisted and dropped to his knees. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” he moaned, clutching at his throat. Sharpe could see no wound there, but then he saw blood seeping down the man’s gray trousers. The dying man looked up at Sharpe, tears showed at his eyes, then he pitched forward.

  Sharpe picked up the fallen musket, then turned the man over to unstrap the cartridge box. The man was dead, or so near as to make no difference.

  “Flint,” a front rank man called. “I need a flint!”

  Sergeant Colquhoun elbowed through the ranks, holding out a spare flint. “And where’s your own spare flint, John Hammond?”

  “Christ knows, Sergeant.”

  “Then ask Him, for you’re on a charge.”

  A man swore as a bullet tore up his left arm. He backed out of the ranks, the arm hanging useless and dripping blood.

  Sharpe pushed into the gap between the companies, put the musket to his shoulder and fired. The kick slammed into his shoulder, but it felt good. Something to do at last. He dropped the butt, fished a cartridge from the pouch and bit off the top, tasting the salt in the gunpowder. He rammed, fired again, loaded again. A bullet made an odd fluttering noise as it went past his ear, then another whined overhead. He waited for the rolling volley to come down the battalion’s face, then fired with the other men of six company’s first platoon. Drop the butt, new cartridge, bite, prime, pour, ram, ramrod back in the hoops, gun up, butt into the bruised shoulder and haul back the dog-head, Sharpe did it as efficiently as any other man, but he had been trained to it. That was the difference, he thought grimly. He was trained, but no one trained the officers. They had bugger all to do, so why train them? Ensign Venables was right, the only duty of a junior officer was to stay alive, but Sharpe could not resist a fight. Besides, it felt better to stand in the ranks and fire into the enemy’s smoke than stand behind the company and do nothing.

  The Arabs were fighting well. Damned well. Sharpe could not remember any other enemy who had stood and taken so much concentrated platoon fire. Indeed, the robed men were trying to advance, but they were checked by the ragged heap of bodies that had been their front ranks. How many damned ranks had they? A dozen? He watched a green flag fall, then the banner was picked up and waved in the air. Their big drums still beat, making a menacing sound to match the redcoats’ pipers. The Arab guns had unnaturally long barrels that spewed dirty smoke and licking tongues of flame. Another bullet whipped close enough to Sharpe to bat his face with a gust of warm air. He fired again, then a hand seized his coat collar and dragged him violently backward.

  “Your place, Ensign Sharpe,” Captain Urquhart said vehemently, “is here! Behind the line!” The Captain was mounted and his horse had inadvertently stepped back as Urquhart seized Sharpe’s collar, and the weight of the horse had made the Captain’s tug far more violent than he had intended. “You’re not a private any longer,” he said, steadying Sharpe who had almost been pulled off his feet.

  “Of course, sir,” Sharpe said, and he did not meet Urquhart’s gaze, but stared bitterly ahead. He was blushing, knowing he had been reprimanded in front of the men. Damn it to hell, he thought.

  “Prepare to charge!” Major Swinton called.

  “Prepare to charge!” Captain Urquhart echoed, spurring his horse away from Sh
arpe.

  The Scotsmen pulled out their bayonets and twisted them onto the lugs of their musket barrels.

  “Empty your guns!” Swinton called, and those men who were still loaded raised their muskets and fired a last volley.

  “Seventy-fourth!” Swinton shouted. “Forward! I want to hear some pipes! Let me hear pipes!”

  “Go on, Swinton, go on!” Wallace shouted. There was no need to encourage the battalion forward, for it was going willingly, but the Colonel was excited. He drew his claymore and pushed his horse into the rear rank of number seven company. “Onto them, lads! Onto them!” The redcoats marched forward, trampling through the scatter of little fires started by their musket wadding.

  The Arabs seemed astonished that the redcoats were advancing. Some drew their own bayonets, while others pulled long curved swords from scabbards.

  “They won’t stand!” Wellesley shouted. “They won’t stand.”

  “They bloody well will,” a man grunted.

  “Go on!” Swinton shouted. “Go on!” And the 74th, released to the kill, ran the last few yards and jumped up onto the heaps of dead before slashing home with their bayonets. Off to the right the ySth were also charging home. The British cannon gave a last violent blast of canister, then fell silent as the Scots blocked the gunners’ aim.

  Some of the Arabs wanted to fight, others wanted to retreat, but the charge had taken them by surprise and the rearward ranks were still not aware of the danger and so pressed forward, forcing the reluctant men at the front onto the Scottish bayonets. The Highlanders screamed as they killed. Sharpe still held the unloaded musket as he closed up on the rear rank. He had no bayonet and was wondering whether he should draw his sabre when a tall Arab suddenly hacked down a front rank man with a scimitar, then pushed forward to slash with the reddened blade at the second man in the file. Sharpe reversed the musket, swung it by the barrel and hammered the heavy stock down onto the swordsman’s head. The Arab sank down and a bayonet struck into his spine so that he twisted like a speared eel. Sharpe hit him on the head again, kicked him for good measure, then shoved on. Men were shouting, screaming, stabbing, spitting, and, right in the face of number six company, a knot of robed men were slashing with scimitars as though they could defeat the 74th by themselves. Urquhart pushed his horse up against the rear rank and fired his pistol. One of the Arabs was plucked back and the others stepped away at last, all except one short man who screamed in fury and slashed with his long curved blade. The front rank parted to let the scimitar cut the air between two files, then the second rank also split apart to allow the short man to come screaming through on his own, with only Sharpe in front.