Sharpe's Fortress (29 page)

“Stone cold shot,” he explained to Stokes, 'so I'm pointing her a bit high. Maybe a half
turn more." He hammered the screw with the heel of his hand.

“Perfect,” he said.

The pucka lees were bringing water which they poured into great wooden tubs. The water
was not just to slake the gunners' thirst and soak the sponges that cleaned out the barrels
between shots, but was also intended to cool the great weapons. The sun was climbing, it
promised to be a searing hot day, and if the huge guns were not drenched intermittently
with water they could overheat and explode the powder charges prematurely. The Sergeant
was choosing his shot now, rolling two eighteen-pounder balls up and down a stretch of bare
earth to judge which was the more perfect sphere.

“That one,” he said, spitting tobacco juice onto his chosen missile.

Morris's Light Company trailed back up the road, going to the camp where they would
sleep. Stokes watched them pass and thought of Sharpe. Poor Sharpe, but at least, from
wherever he was imprisoned inside the fortress, he would hear the siege guns and know that
the redcoats were coming. If they got through the breach, Stokes thought gloomily, or if
they ever managed to cross the fortress's central ravine.

He tried to suppress his pessimism, telling himself that his job was simply to make the
breach, not win the whole victory.

The chosen shot was rolled into the gun's muzzle, then rammed down onto the canvas bags
of powder. The Sergeant took a length of wire that hung looped on his belt and rammed it
through the cannon's touch-hole, piercing the canvas bag beneath, then selected a
priming tube, a reed filled with finely milled powder, and slid it down into the powder
charge, but leaving a half-inch of the reed protruding above the touchhole.

“Ready when you are, sir,” he told the Major commanding the battery who, in turn, looked
at Stokes.

Stokes shrugged.

“I imagine we wait for Colonel Stevenson's permission.”

The gunners in the second breaching battery which lay fifty yards west of the first had
trained their telescopes over the gab ions to watch where the first shot fell. The scar it
left in the wall would be their aiming mark. The two enfilading batteries also watched.
Their work would begin properly when the first of the three breaches was made, but till
then their twelve-pounders would be aimed at the cannon mounted on Gawilghur's ramparts,
trying to dismount them or tumble their embrasures into rubble.

“That wall won't last long,” the battery Major, whose name was Plummer, opined. He was
staring at the wall through Stokes's telescope.

“We'll have it opened up today,” Stokes agreed.

“Thank God there ain't a glacis,” Plummer said.

“Thank God, indeed,” Stokes echoed piously, but he had been thinking about that lack and
was not so sure now that it was a blessing. Perhaps the Mahrattas understood that their
real defence was the great central ravine, and so were offering nothing but a token
defence of the Outer Fort. And how was that ravine to be crossed? Stokes feared that he would
be asked for an engineering solution, but what could he do? Fill the thing with soil? That
would take months.

Stokes's gloomy presentiments were interrupted by an aide who had been sent by Colonel
Stevenson to enquire why the batteries were silent.

“I suspect those are your orders to open fire, Plummer,” Stokes said.

“Unmask!” Plummer shouted.

Four gunners clambered up onto the bastion and manhandled the half-filled gab ions
out of the cannon's way. The Sergeant squinted down the barrel a last time, nodded to
himself, then stepped aside.

The other gunners had their hands over their ears.

“You can fire, Ned!”

Plummer called to the Sergeant, who took a glowing linstock from a protective barrel,
reached across the gun's high wheel and touched the fire to the reed.

The cannon hammered back a full five yards as the battery filled with acrid smoke. The
ball screamed low across the stony neck of land to crack against the fort's wall. There was a
pause. Defenders were running along the ramparts. Stokes was peering through the glass,
waiting for the smoke to thin. It took a full minute, but then he saw that a slab of stone
about the size of a soup plate had been chipped from the wall.

“Two inches to the right, Sergeant,” he called chidingly.

“Must have been a puff of wind, sir,” the Sergeant said, 'puff of bloody wind, 'cos there
weren't a thing wrong with gun's laying, begging your pardon, sir."

“You did well,” Stokes said with a smile, 'very well." He cupped his hands and shouted at
the second breaching battery.

“You have your mark! Fire on!” A billow of smoke erupted from the fortress wall, followed
by the bang of a gun and a howl as a round shot whipped overhead. Stokes jumped down into the
battery, clutching his hat.

“It seems we've woken them up,” he remarked as a dozen more Mahratta guns fired. The
enemy's shots smacked into the gab ions or ricocheted wildly along the rocky ground. The
second British battery fired, the noise of its guns echoing off the cliff face to tell the
camp far beneath that the siege of Gawilghur had properly begun.

Private Tom Garrard of the 33rd's Light Company had wandered to the edge of the cliff
to watch the bombardment of the fortress. Not that there was much to see other than the
constantly replenished cloud of smoke that shrouded the rocky neck of land between the
batteries and the fortress, but every now and then a large piece of stone would fall from
Gawilghur's wall. The fire from the de fences was furious, but it seemed to Garrard that it
was ill aimed. Many of the shots bounced over the batteries, or else buried themselves in
the great piles of protective gab ions The British fire, on the other hand, was slow and
sure. The eighteen-pound round shots gnawed at the wall and not one was wasted. The sky was
cloudless, the sun rising ever higher and the guns were heating so that after every
second shot the gunners poured buckets of water on the long barrels. The metal hissed and
steamed, and sweating puckakes hurried up the battery road with yet more skins of water to
replenish the great vats.

Garrard was sitting by himself, but he had noticed a ragged Indian was watching him.
He ignored the man, hoping he would go away, but the Indian edged closer. Garrard picked
up a fist-sized stone and tossed it up and down in his right hand as a hint that the man
should go away, but the threat of the stone only made the Indian edge closer.

“Sahib!” the Indian hissed.

“Bugger off,” Garrard growled.

“Sahib! Please!”

“I've got nothing worth stealing, I don't want to buy anything, and I don't want to roger
your sister.”

“I'll roger your sister instead, sahib,” the Indian said, and Garrard twisted round,
the stone drawn back ready to throw, then he saw that the dirty robed man had pushed back his
grubby white head cloth and was grinning at him.

“You ain't supposed to chuck rocks at officers, Tom,” Sharpe said.

“Mind you, I always wanted to, so I can't blame you.”

“Bloody hell!” Garrard dropped the stone and held out his right hand.

“Dick Sharpe!” He suddenly checked his outstretched hand.

“Do I have to call you ”sir“?”

“Of course you don't,” Sharpe said, taking Garrard's hand.

"You and me? Friends from way back, eh? Red sash won't change that, Tom.

How are you?"

“Been worse. Yourself?”

“Been better.”

Garrard frowned.

“Didn't I hear that you'd been captured?”

“Got away, I did. Ain't a bugger born who can hold me, Tom. Nor you.” Sharpe sat next to
his friend, a man with whom he had marched in the ranks for six years.

“Here.” He gave Garrard a strip of dried meat.

“What is it?”

“Goat. Tastes all right, though.”

The two sat and watched the gunners at work. The closest guns were in the two
enfilading batteries, and the gunners were using their twelve pounders to
systematically bring down the parapets of the ramparts above Gawilghur's gate. They had
already unseated a pair of enemy guns and were now working on the next two embrasures.
An ox-drawn limber had just delivered more ammunition, but, on leaving the battery,
the limber's wheel had loosened and five men were now standing about the canted wheel
arguing how best to mend it. Garrard pulled a piece of stringy meat from between his
teeth.

“Pull the broken wheel off and put on a new one,” he said scornfully.

“It don't take a major and two lieutenants to work that out.”

“They're officers, Tom,” Sharpe said chidingly, 'only half brained."

“You should know.” Garrard grinned.

“Buggers make an inviting target, though.” He pointed across the plunging chasm which
separated the plateau from the Inner Fort.

"There's a bloody great gun over there.

Size of a bloody hay wain, it is. Buggers have been fussing about it for a half-hour
now."

Sharpe stared past the beleaguered Outer Fort to the distant cliffs.

He thought he could see a wall where a gun might be mounted, but he was not sure.

“I need a bloody telescope.”

“You need a bloody uniform.”

“I'm doing something about that,” Sharpe said mysteriously.

Garrard slapped at a fly.

“What's it like then?”

“What's what like?”

“Being a Jack-pudding?”

Sharpe shrugged, thought for a while, then shrugged again.

“Don't seem real. Well, it does. I dunno.” He sighed.

“I mean I wanted it, Tom, I wanted it real bad, but I should have known the bastards
wouldn't want me. Some are all right. Major Stokes, he's a fine fellow, and there are
others. But most of them? God knows. They don't like me, anyway.”

“You got 'em worried, that's why,” Garrard said.

“If you can become an officer, so can others.” He saw the unhappiness on Sharpe's
face.

“Wishing you'd stayed a sergeant, are you?”

“No,” Sharpe said, and surprised himself by saying it so firmly.

"I can do the job, Tom."

“What job's that, for Christ's sake? Sitting around while we do all the bloody work?
Having a servant to clean your boots and scrub your arse?”

“No,” Sharpe said, and he pointed across the shadowed chasm to the Inner Fort.

“When we go in there, Tom, we're going to need fellows who know what the hell they're
doing. That's the job. It's beating hell out of the other side and keeping your own men
alive, and I can do that.”

Garrard looked sceptical.

“If they let you.”

“Aye, if they let me,” Sharpe agreed. He sat in silence for a while, watching the far gun
emplacement. He could see men there, but was not sure what they were doing.

“Where's Hakeswill?” he asked.

“I looked for him yesterday, and the bugger wasn't on parade with the rest of you.”

“Captured,” Garrard said.

“Captured?”

“That's what Morris says. Me, I think the bugger ran. Either ways, he's in the fort
now.”

“You think he ran?”

“We had two fellows murdered the other night. Morris says it were the enemy, but I
didn't see any of the buggers, but there was some fellow creeping round saying he was a
Company colonel, only he weren't.” Garrard stared at Sharpe and a slow grin came to his
face.

“It were you, Dick.”

“Me?” Sharpe asked straight-faced.

“I was captured, Tom. Only escaped yesterday.”

“And I'm the king of bloody Persia. Lowry and Kendrick were meant to arrest you, weren't
they?”

“It was them who died?” Sharpe asked innocently.

Garrard laughed.

“Serve them bloody right. Bastards, both of them.”

An enormous blossom of smoke showed at the distant wall on the top of the cliffs. Two
seconds later the sound of the great gun bellowed all around Sharpe and Garrard, while the
massive round shot struck the stalled limber just behind the enfilading battery. The
wooden vehicle shattered into splinters and all five men were hurled to the ground where
they jerked bloodily for a few seconds and then were still.

Fragments of stone and wood hissed past Sharpe.

“Bloody hell,” Garrard said admiringly, 'five men with one shot!"

“That'll teach 'em to keep their heads down,” Sharpe said. The sound of the enormous gun
had drawn men from their tents towards the plateau's edge. Sharpe looked round and saw that
Captain Morris was among them. The Captain was in his shirtsleeves, staring at the great
cloud of smoke through a telescope.

“I'm going to stand up in a minute,” Sharpe said, 'and you're going to hit me."

“I'm going to do what?” Garrard asked.

“You're going to thump me. Then I'm going to run, and you're going to chase me. But
you're not to catch me.”

Garrard offered his friend a puzzled look.

“What are you up to, Dick?”

Sharpe grinned.

“Don't ask, Tom, just do it.”

“You are a bloody officer, aren't you?” Garrard said, grinning back.

“Don't ask, just do it.”

“Are you ready?” Sharpe asked “I've always wanted to clobber an officer.”

“On your feet then.” They stood.

“So hit me,” Sharpe said.

“I've tried to pinch some cartridges off you, right? So give me a thump in the belly.”

“Bloody hell,” Garrard said.

“Go on, do it!”

Garrard gave Sharpe a half-hearted punch, and Sharpe shoved him back, making him fall,
then he turned and ran along the cliff's edge.

Garrard shouted, scrambled to his feet and began to pursue. Some of the men who had
gone to fetch the five bodies moved to intercept Sharpe, but he dodged to his left and
disappeared among some bushes.

The rest of the 33rd's Light Company was whooping and shouting in pursuit, but Sharpe
had a long lead on them and he twisted in and out of the shrubs to where he had picketed one
of Syud Sevajee's horses. He pulled the peg loose, hauled himself into the saddle and
kicked back his heels. Someone yelled an insult at him, but he was clear of the camp now and
there were no mounted picquets to pursue him.