Sharpe's Fortress (13 page)

“They share tastes.”

“Such as?”

“Women, music, luxury. We really do not need him here.”

Dodd shook his head.

“If you let him go, sahib, then half the damned garrison will want to run away. And if you
let the women go, what will the men fight for? Besides, do you really think there's any
danger?”

“None,” Bappoo admitted. He had led the officers up a steep rock stairway to a
natural bastion where a vast iron gun was trained across the chasm towards the distant
cliffs of the high plateau. From here the far cliffs were almost a mile away, but Dodd could
just see a group of horsemen clustered at the chasm's edge. It was those horsemen, all in
native robes, who had prompted the Outer Fort's gunners to open fire, but the gunners,
seeing their shots fall well short of the target, had given up.

Dodd drew out his telescope, trained it, and saw a man in the uniform of the Royal
Engineers sitting on the ground a few paces from his companions. The engineer was
sketching. The horsemen were all Indians.

Dodd lowered the telescope and looked at the huge iron gun.

“Is it loaded?” he asked the gunners.

“Yes, sahib.”

“A haideri apiece if you can kill the man in the dark uniform. The one sitting at the
cliff's edge.”

The gunners laughed. Their gun was over twenty feet long and its wrought-iron barrel was
cast with decorations that had been painted green, white and red. A pile of round shot, each
over a foot in diameter, stood beside the massive carriage that was made from giant
baulks of teak. The gun captain fussed over his aim, shouting at his men to lever the vast
carriage a thumb's width to the right, then a finger's breadth back, until at last he was
satisfied. He squinted along the barrel for a second, waved the officers who had
followed Bappoo to move away from the great gun, then leaned over the breach to dab his
glowing port fire onto the gun's touch-hole.

The reed glowed and smoked for a second as the fire dashed down to the charge, then the
vast cannon crashed back, the teak runners sliding up the timber ramp that formed the
lower half of the carriage.

Smoke jetted out into the chasm as a hundred startled birds flapped from their nests on
the rock faces and circled in the warm air.

Dodd had been standing to one side, watching the engineer through his glass. For a
second he actually saw the great round shot as a flicker of grey in the lower right
quadrant of his lens, then he saw a boulder close to the engineer shatter into scraps.
The engineer fell sideways, his sketch pad falling, but then he picked himself up and
scrambled up the slope to where his horse was being guarded by the cavalrymen.

Dodd took a single gold coin from his pouch and tossed it to the gunner.

“You missed,” he said, 'but it was damned fine shooting."

“Thank you, sahib.”

A whimper made Dodd turn. Beny Singh had handed his dog to a servant and was staring
through an ivory-barrelled telescope at the enemy horsemen.

“What is it?” Bappoo asked him.

“Syud Sevajee,” Singh said in a small voice.

“Who's Syud Sevajee?” Dodd asked.

Bappoo grinned.

"His father was once kill adar here, but he died.

Was it poison?" he asked Beny Singh.

“He just died,” Singh said.

“He just died!”

“Murdered, probably,” Bappoo said with amusement, 'and Beny Singh became kill adar and
took the dead man's daughter as his concubine."

Dodd turned to see the enemy horsemen vanishing among the trees beyond the far
cliff.

“Come for revenge, has he? You still want to leave?” he demanded of Beny Singh.

“Because that fellow will be waiting for you. He'll track you through the hills,
Killadar, and slit your throat in the night's darkness.”

“We shall stay here and fight,” Beny Singh declared, retrieving the dog from his
servant.

“Fight and win,” Dodd said, and he imagined the British breaching batteries on that far
cliff, and he imagined the slaughter that would be made among the crews by this one vast gun.
And there were fifty other heavy guns waiting to greet the British approach, and hundreds
of lighter pieces that fired smaller missiles. Guns, rockets, canister, muskets and
cliffs, those were Gawilghur's de fences and Dodd reckoned the British stood no chance. No
chance at all. The big gun's smoke drifted away in the small breeze.

“They will die here,” Dodd said, 'and we shall chase the survivors south and cut them down
like dogs." He turned and looked at Beny Singh.

“You see the chasm? That is where their demons will die. Their wings will be scorched, they
will fall like burning stones to their deaths, and their screams will lull your children to a
dreamless sleep.” He knew he spoke true, for Gawilghur was impregnable.

“I take pleasure, no, Dilip, make that I take humble pleasure in reporting the
recovery of a quantity of stolen stores.” Captain Torrance paused. Night had just fallen
and Torrance uncorked a bottle of arrack and took a sip.

“Am I going too fast for you?”

“Yes, sahib,” Dilip, the middle-aged clerk, answered.

“Humble pleasure,” he said aloud as his pen moved laboriously over the paper, 'in
reporting the recovery of a quantity of stolen stores."

“Add a list of the stores,” Torrance ordered.

"You can do that later.

Just leave a space, man."

“Yes, sahib,” Dilip said.

“I had suspected for some time,” Torrance intoned, then scowled as someone knocked on
the door.

“Come,” he shouted, 'if you must."

Sharpe opened the door and was immediately entangled in the muslin. He fought his way
past its folds.

“It's you,” Torrance said unpleasantly.

“Me, sir.”

“You let some moths in,” Torrance complained.

“Sorry, sir.”

“That is why the muslin is there, Sharpe, to keep out moths, ensigns and other
insignificant nuisances. Kill the moths, Dilip.”

The clerk dutifully chased the moths about the room, swatting them with a roll of
paper. The windows, like the door, were closely screened with muslin on the outside of
which moths clustered, attracted by the candles that were set in silver sticks on
Torrance's table. Dilip's work was spread on the table, while Captain Torrance lay in a
wide hammock slung from the roof beams. He was naked.

“Do I offend you, Sharpe?”

“Offend me, sir?”

“I am naked, or had you not noticed?”

“Doesn't bother me, sir.”

“Nudity keeps clothes clean. You should try it. Is the last of the enemy dead,
Dilip?”

“The moths are all deceased, sahib.”

“Then we shall continue. Where were we?”

' “I had suspected for some time,” Dilip read back the report.

“Surmised is better, I think. I had surmised for some time.” Torrance paused to draw on
the mouthpiece of a silver-bellied hookah.

“What are you doing here, Sharpe?”

“Come to get orders, sir.”

“How very assiduous of you. I had surmised for some time that depredations I can spell
it if you cannot, Dilip were being made upon the stores entrusted to my command. What the
devil were you doing, Sharpe, poking about Naig's tents?”

“Just happened to be passing them, sir,” Sharpe said, 'when they caught fire."

Torrance gazed at Sharpe, plainly not believing a word. He shook his head sadly.

“You look very old to be an ensign, Sharpe?”

“I was a sergeant two months ago, sir.”

Torrance adopted a look of pretended horror.

“Oh, good God,” he said archly, 'good God alive. May all the spavined saints preserve us.
You're not telling me you've been made up from the ranks?"

“Yes, sir.”

“Sweet suffering Jesus,” Torrance said. He lay his head back on the hammock's pillow
and blew a perfect smoke ring that he watched wobble its way up towards the ceiling.

“Having confidential information as to the identity of the thief, I took steps to
apprehend him. You will notice, Sharpe, that I am giving you no credit in this
report?”

“No, sir?”

“Indeed I am not. This report will go to Colonel Butters, an appallingly bombastic
creature who will, I suspect, attempt to take some of the credit for himself before
passing the papers on to Arthur Wellesley who, as you may know, is our commander. A very
stern man, our Arthur. He likes things done properly. He plainly had a very stern governess
in his nursery.”

“I know the General, sir.”

“You do?” Torrance turned his head to look at Sharpe.

“Socially, perhaps? You and he dine together, do you? Pass the time of day, do you?
Hunt together, maybe? Drink port? Talk about old times? Whore together, perhaps?”
Torrance was mocking, but there was just an edge of interest in his voice in case Sharpe
really did know Sir Arthur.

“I mean I've met him, sir.”

Torrance shook his head as though Sharpe had been wasting his time.

“Do stop calling me ”sir“. It may be your natural subservience, Sharpe, or more likely
it is the natural air of superiority that emanates from my person, but it ill becomes
an officer, even one dredged up from the ranks. A search of his tents, Dilip, secured the
missing items. I then, in accordance with general orders, hanged the thief as an
example. I have the honour to be, et cetera, et cetera.”

“Two thousand muskets are still missing, sir,” Sharpe said.

“Sorry, sir. Didn't mean to call you ”sir“.”

“If it pleases you to grovel, Sharpe, then do so. Two thousand muskets still missing,
eh? I suspect the bugger sold them on, don't you?”

“I'm more interested in how he got them in the first place,” Sharpe said.

“How very tedious of you,” Torrance said lightly.

“I'd suggest talking to Sergeant Hakeswill when he gets back,” Sharpe said.

“I won't hear a word spoken against Obadiah,” Torrance said.

“Obadiah is a most amusing fellow.”

“He's a lying, thieving bastard,” Sharpe said vehemently.

“Sharpe! Please!” Torrance's voice was pained.

“How can you say such wicked things? You don't even know the fellow.”

“Oh, I know him, sir. I served under him in the Havercakes.”

“You did?” Torrance smiled.

"I see we are in for interesting times.

Perhaps I should keep the two of you apart. Or perhaps not. Brick!"

The last word was shouted towards a door that led to the back of the commandeered
house.

The door opened and the black-haired woman slipped past the muslin.

“Captain?” she asked. She blushed when she saw Torrance was naked, and Torrance, Sharpe
saw, enjoyed her embarrassment.

“Brick, my dear,” Torrance said, 'my hookah has extinguished itself.

Will you attend to it? Dilip is busy, or I would have asked him. Sharpe?

May I have the honour of naming you to Brick? Brick? This is Ensign Sharpe. Ensign
Sharpe? This is Brick."

“Pleased to meet you, sir,” the woman said, dropping a brief curtsey before she stooped
to the hookah. She had clearly not told Torrance that she had met Sharpe earlier.

“Ma'am,” Sharpe said.

“Ma'am!” Torrance said with a laugh.

“She's called Brick, Sharpe.”

“Brick, sir?” Sharpe asked sourly. The name was utterly unsuited to the
delicate-featured woman who now deftly disassembled the hookah.

“Her real name is Mrs. Wall,” Torrance explained, 'and she is my laundress, seamstress
and conscience. Is that not right, little Brick?"

“If you say so, sir.”

“I cannot abide dirty clothes,” Torrance said.

“They are an abomination unto the Lord. Cleanliness, we are constantly told by
tedious folk, is next to godliness, but I suspect it is a superior virtue. Any peasant
can be godly, but it is a rare person who is clean. Brick, however, keeps me clean. If you
pay her a trifle, Sharpe, she will doubtless wash and mend those rags you are pleased to call
a uniform.”

“They're all I've got, sir.”

“So? Walk naked until Brick has serviced you, or does the idea embarrass you?”

“I wash my own clothes, sir.”

“I wish you would,” Torrance said tartly.

“Remind me why you came here, Sharpe?”

“Orders, sir.”

“Very well,” Torrance said.

“At dawn you will go to Colonel Butters's quarters and find an aide who can tell you what
is required of us. You then tell Dilip. Dilip then arranges everything. After that you may
take your rest. I trust you will not find these duties onerous?”

Sharpe wondered why Torrance had asked for a deputy if the clerk did all the work, then
supposed that the Captain was so lazy that he could not be bothered to get up early in the
morning to fetch his orders.

“I get tomorrow's orders at dawn, sir,” Sharpe said, 'from an aide of Colonel
Butters."

“There!” Torrance said with mock amazement.

“You have mastered your duties, Ensign. I congratulate you.”

“We already have tomorrow's orders, sahib,” Dilip said from the table where he was
copying a list of the recovered stores into Torrance's report.

“We are to move everything to Deogaum. The pioneers' stores are to be moved first,
sahib. The Colonel's orders are on the table, sahib, with the chitties Pioneers' stores
first, then everything else.”

“Well, I never!” Torrance said.

“See? Your first day's work is done, Sharpe.” He drew on the hookah which the woman had
relit.

"Excellent,

my dear," he said, then held out a hand to stop her from leaving. She crouched beside the
hammock, averting her eyes from Torrance's naked body. Sharpe sensed her unhappiness, and
Torrance sensed Sharpe's interest in her.

“Brick is a widow, Sharpe,” he said, 'and presumably looking for a husband, though I
doubt she's ever dared to dream of marrying as high as an ensign. But why not? The social
ladder is there to be climbed and, low a rung as you might be, Sharpe, you still represent a
considerable advancement for Brick. Before she joined my service she was a
mop-squeezer. From mop-squeezer to an officer's wife! There's progress for you. I think
the two of you would suit each other vastly well. I shall play Cupid, or rather Dilip will.
Take a letter to the chaplain of the 94th, Dilip. He's rarely sober, but I'm sure he can
waddle through the marriage ceremony without falling over."