Sharpe's Fortress Read online

  “I just want to look at his horseshoes,” Sharpe said, “and if they’re army issue then I’ll ram one of them down his bloody throat.”

  The clerk shook his head. “He has guards, sahib. He hasjettisl”

  “I think I might let you go on your own,” the East India Company Lieutenant said, backing away.

  “Jettis?” The light dragoon Sergeant asked.

  “Strongmen,” Sharpe explained. “Big buggers who kill you by wringing your neck like a chicken.” He turned back to the clerk. “Where did Naig get his jettis? From Seringapatam?”

  “Yes, sahib.”

  “I killed enough of the buggers,” Sharpe said, “so I don’t mind killing a few more. Are you coming?” he asked the cavalry Sergeant.

  “Why not?” The man grinned.

  “Anyone else?” Sharpe asked, but no one else seemed to want a fight that afternoon.

  “Please, sahib,” the clerk said weakly.

  Sharpe ignored him and, followed by Ahmed and the cavalryman, went back into the sunlight. “What’s your name?” Sharpe asked the Sergeant.

  “Lockhart, sir. Eli Lockhart.”

  “I’m Dick Sharpe, Eli, and you don’t have to call me ‘sir,’ I’m not a proper bleeding officer. I was made up at Assaye, and I wish the buggers had left me a sergeant now. They sent me to be a bloody bullock driver, because I’m not fit for anything else.” He looked at Lockhart’s six troopers who were still waiting. “What are they doing here?”

  “Didn’t expect me to carry the bloody horseshoes myself, did you?” Lockhart said, then gestured at the troopers. “Come on, boys. We’re going to have a scrap.”

  “Who said anything about a scrap?” Sharpe asked.

  “He’s got horseshoes,” Lockhart explained, “but we don’t have money. So there’s only one way to get them off him.”

  “True,” Sharpe said, and grinned.

  Lockhart suddenly looked oddly shy. “Was you in the Captain’s quarters, sir?”

  “Yes, why?”

  The tough-looking Sergeant was actually blushing now. “You didn’t see a woman there, did you, sir?”

  “Dark-haired girl. Pretty?”

  “That’s her.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Torrance’s servant. A widow. He brought her and her husband out from England, but the fellow died and left her on her own. Torrance won’t let her go.”

  “And you’d like to take her off his hands, is that it?”

  “I’ve only ever seen her at a distance,” the Sergeant admitted. “Torrance was in another regiment, one of the Madrassi’s, but we camped together often enough.”

  “She’s still there,” Sharpe said dryly, “still alive.”

  “He keeps her close, he does,” Lockhart said, then kicked a dog out of his path. The eight men had left the village and entered the sprawling encampment where the merchants with their herds, wagons and families were camped. Great white oxen with painted horns were hobbled by pegs, and children scurried among the beasts collecting their dung which they slapped into cakes that would be dried for fuel. “So tell me about these jettis” Lockhart asked.

  “Like circus strongmen,” Sharpe said, “only it’s some kind of religious thing. Don’t ask me. None of it makes bleeding sense to me. Got muscles like mountains, they have, but they’re slow. I killed four of the buggers at Seringapatam.”

  “And you know Hakeswill?”

  “I know bloody Hakeswill. Recruited me, he did, and he’s been persecuting me ever since. He shouldn’t even be with this army, he’s supposed to be with the Havercakes down south, but he came up here with a warrant to arrest me. That didn’t work, so he’s just stayed, hasn’t he? And he’s working the bleeding system! You can wager your last shilling that he’s the bastard who supplies Naig, and splits the profit.” Sharpe stopped to look for green tents. “How come you don’t carry your own spare horseshoes?”

  “We do. But when they’ve gone you have to get more from the supplies. That’s how the system’s supposed to work. And yesterday’s pursuit left half the hooves wrecked. We need shoes.”

  Sharpe had seen a cluster of faded green tents. “That’s where the bastard is,” he said, then looked at Lockhart. “This could get nasty.”

  Lockhart grinned. He was as tall as Sharpe and had a face that looked as though it had survived a lifetime of tavern brawls. “Come this far, ain’t I?”

  “Is that thing loaded?” Sharpe nodded at the pistol at Lockhart’s belt. A sabre also hung there, just like the one at Sharpe’s hip.

  “It will be.” Lockhart drew the pistol and Sharpe turned to Ahmed and mimed the actions of loading the musket. Ahmed grinned and pointed to the lock, indicating that his weapon was already charged.

  “How many of the buggers will be waiting for us?” Lockhart asked.

  “A dozen?” Sharpe guessed.

  Lockhart glanced back at his six men. “We can deal with a dozen buggers.”

  “Right,” Sharpe said, “so let’s bloody well make some trouble.” He grinned, because for the first time since he had become an officer he was enjoying himself.

  Which meant someone was about to get a thumping.

  Chapter 3

  Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley rode northward among a cavalcade of officers whose horses kicked up a wide trail of dust that lingered in the air long after the horsemen had passed. Two troops of East India Company cavalry provided the General’s escort. Manu Bappoo’s army might have been trounced and its survivors sent skeltering back into Gawilghur, but the Deccan Plain was still infested with Mahratta cavalry ready to pounce on supply convoys, wood-cutting parties or the grass-cutters who supplied the army’s animals with fodder and so the two troops rode with sabres drawn. Wellesley set a fast pace, reveling in the freedom to ride in the long open country. “Did you visit Colonel Stevenson this morning?” he called back to an aide.

  “I did, sir, and he’s no better than he was.”

  “But he can get about?”

  “On his elephant, sir.”

  Wellesley grunted. Stevenson was the commander of his smaller army, but the old Colonel was ailing. So was Harness, the commander of one of Wellesley’s two brigades, but there was no point in asking about Harness. It was not just physical disease that assaulted Harness, for the Scotsman’s wits were gone as well. The doctors claimed it was the heat that had desiccated his brains, but Wellesley doubted the diagnosis. Heat and rum, maybe, but not the heat alone, though he did not doubt that India’s climate was bad for a European’s health. Few men lived long without falling prey to some wasting fever, and Wellesley was thinking it was time he left himself. Time to go back home before his health was abraded and, more important, before his existence was forgotten in London. French armies were unsettling all Europe and it could not be long before London dispatched an army to fight the old foe, and Wellesley wanted to be a part of it. He was in his middle thirties and he had a reputation to make, but first he had to finish off the Mahrattas, and that meant taking Gawilghur, and to that end he was now riding toward the great rampart of cliffs that sealed off the plain’s northern edge.

  An hour’s ride brought him to the summit of a small rise which offered a view northward. The plain looked dun, starved of water by the failed monsoon, though here and there patches of millet grew tall. In a good year, Wellesley guessed, the millet would cover the plain from horizon to horizon, a sea of grain bounded by the Gawilghur cliffs. He dismounted on the small knoll and took out a telescope that he settled on his horse’s saddle. It was a brand new glass, a gift from the merchants of Madras to mark Wellesley’s pacification of Mysore. Trade now moved freely on India’s eastern flank, and the telescope, which had been specially ordered from Matthew Berge of London, was a generous token of the merchants’ esteem, but Wellesley could not get used to it. The shape of the eyepiece was less concave than the one he was used to, and after a moment he snapped the new telescope shut and pulled out his old glass which, though lower powered,
was more comfortable. He stared for a long time, gazing at the fort which crowned the rock promontory. The black stone of the fortress walls looked particularly sinister, even in the sunlight. “Good God,” the General muttered after a while. Fail up there, he thought, and there would be no point in going home. He could go to London with some victories under his belt, and men would respect him even if the victories had not been against the French, but go with a defeat and they would despise him. Gawilghur, he thought sourly, had the look of a career-breaker.

  Colonel Wallace, Wellesley’s healthy brigade commander, had also dismounted and was inspecting the fortress through his own glass. “Devil of a place, Sir Arthur,” Wallace said.

  “How high is it, Blackiston?” Wellesley called to one of his aides, an engineer.

  “I took a triangulation yesterday, sir,” Blackiston said, “and discovered the fortress walls are eighteen hundred feet above the plain.”

  “Is there water up there?” Colonel Butters, the chief engineer, asked.

  “We hear there is, sir,” Blackiston said. “There are tanks in the fort; huge things like lakes.”

  “But the water level must be low this year?” Butters suggested.

  “I doubt it’s low enough, sir,” Blackiston murmured, knowing that Butters had been hoping that thirst might defeat the garrison.

  “And the rascals will have food, no doubt,” Wellesley commented.

  “Doubtless,” Wallace agreed dryly.

  “Which means they’ll have to be prized out,” the General said, then bent to the glass again and lowered the lens to look at the foothills below the bluff. Just south of the fort was a conical hill that rose almost halfway up the flank of the great promontory. “Can we get guns on that near hill?” he asked.

  There was a pause while the other officers decided which hill he was referring to. Colonel Butters flinched. “We can get them up there, sir, but I doubt they’ll have the elevation to reach the fort.”

  “You’ll get nothing bigger than a twelve-pounder up there,” Wallace said dubiously, then slid the telescope’s view up the bluff to the walls. “And you’ll need bigger shot than twelve-pounders to break down that wall.”

  “Sir Arthur!” The warning call came from the officer commanding the East India Company cavalry who was pointing to where a group of Mahratta horsemen had appeared in the south. They had evidently been following the lingering dust cloud left by the General’s party and, though the approaching horsemen only numbered about twenty men, the sepoy cavalry wheeled to face them and spread into a line.

  “It’s all right,” Wellesley called, “they’re ours. I asked them to meet us here.” He had inspected the approaching horsemen through his telescope and now, waving the sepoy cavalry back, he walked to greet the silladars. “Syud Sevajee,” Wellesley acknowledged the man in the shabby green and silver coat who led the cavalrymen, “thank you for coming.”

  Syud Sevajee nodded brusquely at Wellesley, then stared up at Gawilghur. “You think you can get in?”

  “I think we must,” Wellesley said.

  “No one ever has,” Sevajee said with a sly smile.

  Wellesley returned the smile, but slowly, as if accepting the implied challenge, and then, as Sevajee slid down from his saddle, the General turned to Wallace. “You’ve met Syud Sevajee, Wallace?”

  “I’ve not had that pleasure, sir.”

  Wellesley made the introduction, then added that Syud Sevajee’s father had been one of the Rajah of Berar’s generals.

  “But is no longer?” Wallace asked Sevajee.

  “Beny Singh murdered him,” Sevajee said grimly, “so I fight with you, Colonel, to gain my chance to kill Beny Singh. And Beny Singh now commands that fortress.” He nodded toward the distant promontory.

  “So how do we get inside?” Wellesley asked.

  The officers gathered around Sevajee as the Indian drew his tulwar and used its tip to draw a figure eight in the dust. He tapped the lower circle of the eight, which he had drawn far larger than the upper. “That’s what you’re looking at,” he said, “the Inner Fort. And there are only two entrances. There’s a road that climbs up from the plain and goes to the Southern Gate.” He drew a squiggly line that tailed away from the bottom of the figure eight. “But that road is impossible. You will climb straight into their guns. A child with a pile of rocks could keep an army from climbing that road. The only possible route into the Inner Fort is through the main entrance.” He scratched a brief line across the junction of the two circles.

  “Which will not be easy?” Wellesley asked dryly.

  Sevajee offered the General a grim smile. “The main entrance is a long corridor, barred by four gates and flanked by high walls. But even to reach it, Sir Arthur, you will have to take the Outer Fort.” He tapped the small upper circle of the figure eight.

  Wellesley nodded. “And that, too, is difficult?”

  “Again, two entrances,” Sevajee said. “One is a road that climbs from die plain. You can’t see it from here, but it twists up the hills to the west and it comes to the fort here.” He tapped the waist of the figure eight. “It’s an easier climb than the southern road, but for the last mile of the journey your men will be under the guns of the Outer Fort. And the final half-mile, General, is steep.” He stressed the last word. “On one side of the road is a cliff, and on the other is a precipice, and the guns of the Outer Fort can fire straight down that half-mile of road.”

  Colonel Butters shook his head in gloomy contemplation of Sevajee’s news. “How come you know all this?” he asked.

  “I grew up in Gawilghur,” Sevajee said. “My father, before he was murdered, was killadar of the fortress.”

  “He knows,” Wellesley said curtly. “And the main entrance of the Outer Fort?”

  “That,” Sevajee said, “is the fortress’s weakest point.” He scratched a line that pierced the uppermost curve of the small circle. “It’s the only level approach to the fortress, but it’s very narrow. On one side”—he tapped the eastern flank of the line—”the ground falls steeply away. On the other side is a reservoir tank. So to reach the fort you must risk a narrow neck of land that is swept by two ramparts of guns, one above the other.”

  “Two walls?” Wallace asked.

  “Set on a steep hill,” Sevajee said, nodding. “You must fight uphill across both walls. There is an entrance, but it’s like the Inner Fort’s entrance: a series of gates with a narrow passage leading from one to the other, and men above you on both sides hurling down rocks and round shot.”

  “And once we’ve captured the Outer Fort,” Wellesley asked, “what then?”

  Sevajee offered a wolfish smile. “Then your troubles are just beginning, Sir Arthur.” He scuffed out the diagram he had made in the dust and scratched another, this one showing two circles, one large and one small, with a space between them. “The two forts are not connected. They are separated here”—he tapped the space between the circles with his tulwar—”and that is a ravine. A deep ravine. So once you have the Outer Fort, you still have to assault the Inner Fort, and its defenses will be untouched. It has a wall which stands at the top of the ravine’s cliff, and that is where your enemy will be taking refuge; inside the wall of the Inner Fort. My father reckoned no enemy could ever capture Gawilghur’s Inner Fort. If all India should fall, he said, then its heart would still beat at Gawilghur.”

  Wellesley walked a few paces north to stare at the high promontory. “How big is the garrison?”

  “Normally,” Sevajee said, “about a thousand men, but now? It could be six or seven times that many. There is room inside for a whole army.”

  And if the fort did not fall, Wellesley thought, then the Mahrattas would take heart. They would gather a new army and, in the new year, raid southward again. There would be no peace in western India till Gawilghur fell. “Major Blackiston?”

  “Sir?”

  “You’ll make an exploration of the plateau.” The General turned to Sevajee. “Will you esco
rt Major Blackiston up into the hills? I want sketches, Blackiston, of the neck of land leading to the main entrance. I want you to tell me where we can place breaching batteries. I need to know how we can get guns up to the tops of the hills, and I need to know it all within two days.”

  “Two days?” Blackiston sounded appalled.

  “We don’t want the rascals to take root up there, do we? Speed, Blackiston, speed! Can you leave now?” This question was directed at Sevajee.

  “I can,” Sevajee answered.

  Wellesley waved Blackiston on his way. “Two days, Major! I want you back tomorrow evening!”

  Colonel Butters frowned at the far hills. “You’re taking the army to the top?”

  “Half the army,” Wellesley said, “the other half will stay on the plain.” He would need to hold Gawilghur between his redcoats like a nut, and hope that when he squeezed it was the nut, and not the nutcracker, that broke. He pulled himself back into the saddle, then waited as the other officers mounted. Then he turned his mare and started back toward the camp. “It’ll be up to the engineers to get us onto the heights,” he said, “then a week’s hard carrying to lift the ammunition to the batteries.” The thought of that job made the General frown. “What’s the problem with the bullock train?” he demanded of Butters. “I’m hearing complaints. Over two thousand muskets stolen from convoys, and Huddlestone tells me there are no spare horseshoes; that can’t be right!”

  “Torrance says that bandits have been active, sir,” Butters said. “And I gather there have been accidents,” he added lamely.

  “Who’s Torrance?” Wellesley asked.

  “Company man, sir, a captain. He took over poor Mackay’s duties.”

  “I could surmise all that for myself,” the General said acidly. “Who is he?”

  Butters blushed at the reproof. “His father’s a canon at Wells, I think. Or maybe Salisbury? But more to the point, sir, he has an uncle in Leadenhall Street

  .”

  Wellesley grunted. An uncle in Leadenhall Street