Sharpe's Triumph (30 page)

Wellesley rode two miles eastwards, a string of horsemen behind him. The farmers were
breathless by the time they reached the place where his horse was picketed just beneath a
low hill. The General was kneeling on the crest, staring east through a glass.

“Ask those fellows if there are any fords east of here!” he shouted down to his aides.

A hurried consultation followed, but the farmers were quite sure there was no ford.
The only crossing places, they insisted, were directly in front of Scindia's army.

“Find a clever one,” Wellesley ordered, 'and bring him up here. Colonel? Maybe you'd
translate?"

McCandless picked one of the farmers and led him up the hill.

Sharpe, without being asked, followed and Wellesley did not order him back, but just
muttered that they should all keep their heads low.

“There' the General pointed eastwards to a village on the Kaitna's southern bank
'that village, what's it called?”

Teepulgaon," the farmer said, and added that his mother and two sisters lived in the
huddle of mud-walled houses with their thatched roofs.

Peepulgaon lay only a half-mile from the low hill, but it was all of two miles east of
Taunklee, the village that was opposite the eastern extremity of the Mahratta line. Both
villages were on the river's southern bank while the enemy waited on the Kaitna's
northern side, and Sharpe did not understand Wellesley's interest.

“Ask him if he has any relatives north of the river,” the General ordered
McCandless.

“He has a brother and several cousins, sir,” McCandless translated.

“So how does his mother visit her son north of the river?” Wellesley asked.

The farmer launched himself into a long explanation. In the dry season, he said, she
walked across the river bed, but in the wet season, when the waters rose, she was forced to
come upstream and cross at Taunklee. Wellesley listened, then grunted in apparent
disbelief. He was staring intently through the glass.

“Campbell?” he called, but his aide had gone to another low rise a hundred yards
westwards that offered a better view of the enemy ranks.

“Campbell?” Wellesley called again and, getting no answer, turned.

“Sharpe, you'll do. Come here.”

“Sir?”

“You've got young eyes. Come here, and keep low.”

Sharpe joined the General on the crest where, to his surprise, he was handed the
telescope.

“Look at the village,” Wellesley ordered, 'then look at the opposite bank and tell me
what you see."

It took Sharpe a moment to find Peepulgaon in the lens, but suddenly its mud walls
filled the glass. He moved the telescope slowly, sliding its view past oxen, goats and
chickens, past clothes set to dry on bushes by the river bank, and then the lens slid across
the brown water of the River Kaitna and up its opposite bank where he saw a muddy bluff
topped by trees and, just beyond the trees, a fold of land. And in the fold of land were
roofs, straw roofs.

“There's another village there, sir,” Sharpe said.

“You're sure?” Wellesley asked urgently.

“Pretty sure, sir. Might just be cat de sheds.”

“You don't keep cattle sheds apart from a village,” the General said scathingly, 'not
in a country infested by bandits." Wellesley twisted round.

“McCandless? Ask your fellow if there's a village on the other side of the river from
Peepulgaon.”

The farmer listened to the question, then nodded.

“Waroor,” he said, then helpfully informed the General that his cousin was the
village headman, the naique.

“How far apart are those villages, Sharpe?” Wellesley asked.

Sharpe judged the distance for a couple of seconds.

“Three hundred yards, sir?”

Wellesley took the telescope back and moved away from the crest.

“Never in my life,” he said, 'have I seen two villages on opposite banks of a river
that weren't connected by a ford."

“He insists not, sir,” McCandless said, indicating the farmer.

“Then he's a rogue, a liar or a blockhead,” Wellesley said cheerfully.

“The latter, probably.” He frowned in thought, his right hand drumming a tattoo on the
telescope's barrel.

“I'll warrant there is a ford,” he said to himself.

“Sir?” Captain Campbell had run back from the western knoll.

“Enemy's breaking camp, sir.”

“Are they, by God!” Wellesley returned to the crest and stared through the glass again.
The infantry immediately on the Kaitna's north bank were not moving, but far away, close
to the fortified village, tents were being struck.

“Preparing to run away, I daresay,” Wellesley muttered.

“Or readying to cross the river and attack us,” McCandless said grimly.

“And they're sending cavalry across the river,” Campbell added ominously.

“Nothing to worry us,” Wellesley said, then turned back to stare at the opposing
villages of Peepulgaon and Waroor.

“There has to be a ford,” he said to himself again, so quietly that only Sharpe could
hear him.

“Stands to reason,” he said, then he went silent for a long time.

“That enemy cavalry, sir,” Campbell prompted him.

Wellesley seemed startled.

“What?”

“There, sir.” Campbell pointed westwards to a large group of enemy horsemen who had
appeared from a grove of trees, but who seemed content to watch Wellesley's group from a
half-mile away.

“Time we were away,” Wellesley said.

“Give that lying blockhead a rupee, McCandless, then let's be off.”

“You plan to retreat, sir?” McCandless asked.

Wellesley had been hurrying down the slope, but now stopped and stared in surprise at
the Scotsman.

“Retreat?”

McCandless blinked.

“You surely don't intend to fight, sir, do you?”

"How else are we to do His Majesty's business? Of course we'll fight!

There's a ford there." Wellesley flung his arm east towards Peepulgaon.

“That wretched farmer might deny it, but he's a blockhead! There has to be a ford. We'll
cross it, turn their left flank and pound them into scraps! But we must hurry! Noon already.
Three hours, gentlemen, three hours to bring on battle. Three hours to turn his flank.” He
ran on down the hill to where Diomed, his white Arab horse, waited.

“Good God,” McCandless said.

“Good God.” For five thousand infantry would now cross the Kaitna at a place where men
said the river was uncross able then fight an enemy horde at least ten times their
number.

“Good God,” the Colonel said again, then hurried to follow Wellesley south. The enemy
had stolen a march, the redcoats had journeyed all night and were bone tired, but Wellesley
would have his bat de

“There!” Dodd said, pointing.

“I can't see,” Simone Joubert complained.

“Drop the telescope, use your naked eye, Madame. There! It's flashing.”

“Where?”

“There!” Dodd pointed again.

“Across the river. Three trees, low hill.”

“Ah!” Simone at last saw the flash of reflected sunlight from the lens of a telescope
that was being used on the far bank of the river and well downstream from where Dodd's
Cobras held the left of Pohlmann's line.

Simone and her husband had dined with the Major who was grimly happy in anticipation
of a British attack which, he claimed, must inevitably fall hardest on his Cobras.

“It will be slaughter, Ma'am,” Dodd said wolfishly, 'sheer slaughter!" He and Captain
Joubert had walked Simone to the edge of the bluff above the Kaitna and shown her the fords,
and demonstrated how any men crossing the fords must be caught in the mangling crossfire
of the Mahratta cannon, then maintained that the British had no option but to walk forward
into that weltering onslaught of canister, round shot and shell.

“If you wish to stay and watch, Madame,” Dodd had offered, “I can find a place of safety
for you.” He gestured towards a low rise of ground just behind the regiment.

“You could watch from there, and I credit no British soldier will come near you.”

“I could not bear to watch a slaughter, Major,” Simone had said feelingly.

“Your squeamishness does you credit, Ma'am,” Dodd had answered.

“War is man's work.” It was then that Dodd had spotted the British soldiers on the
opposite bank and had trained his telescope on the distant men. Simone, knowing now where
to look, rested the glass on her husband's shoulder and trained its lens on the far hill.
She could see two men there, one in a cocked hat and the other in a shako. Both were keeping
low.

“Why are they so far down the river?” she asked.

“They're looking for a way round our flank,” Dodd said.

“Is there one?”

“No. They must cross here, Ma'am, or else they don't cross at all.”

Dodd gestured at the fords in front of the compoo. A band of cavalrymen was galloping
through the shallow water, spraying silver from their horses' hooves as they crossed to
the Kaitna's south bank.

“And those horsemen,” Dodd explained, 'are going to see whether they will cross or
not."

Simone collapsed the telescope and handed it back to the Major.

“They might not attack?”

“They won't,” her husband answered in English for Dodd's benefit.

“They have too much sense.”

“Boy Wellesley don't have sense,” Dodd said scathingly.

“Look how he attacked at Ahmednuggur? Straight at the wall! A hundred rupees says he
will attack.”

Captain Joubert shook his head. 'I do not gamble, Major."

“A soldier should relish risk,” Dodd said.

“And if they don't cross,” Simone asked, 'there is no battle?"

“There'll be a battle, Ma'am,” Dodd said grimly.

“Pohlmann's gone to fetch Scindia's permission for us to cross the river. If they won't
come to us, we'll go to them.”

Pohlmann had indeed gone to find Scindia. The Hanoverian had dressed for battle,
donning his finest coat, which was a blue silk jacket, trimmed in scarlet and decorated
with loops of gold braid and black aiguillettes. He wore a white silk sash on which was
blazoned a star of diamonds and from which hung a gold-hiked sword, though Dupont, the
Dutchman, who accompanied Pohlmann to meet Scindia, noted that the Colonel's breeches and
boots were old and shabby.

“I wear them for luck,” Pohlmann said, noting Dupont's puzzled glance at his decrepit
breeches.

“They're from my old East India Company uniform.” The Hanoverian was in a fine mood.
His short march eastwards had achieved all he had desired, for it had brought one of the two
small British armies into his lap while it was still far away from the other.

All he needed to do now was snap it up like a minnow, then march on Stevenson's force,
but Scindia had been insistent that no infantry were to cross the Kaitna's fords without
his permission and Pohlmann now needed that permission. The Hanoverian did not plan to
cross immediately, for first he wanted to be certain that the British were retreating,
but nor did he wish to wait for permission once he heard news of the enemy's
withdrawal.

“Our lord and master will be scared at the thought of attacking,” Pohlmann told Dupont,
'so we'll flatter the bugger. Slap on the ghee with a shovel, Dupont. Tell him he'll be lord
of all India if he lets us loose."

“Tell him there are a hundred white women in Wellesley's camp and he'll lead the attack
himself,” Dupont observed drily.

“Then that is what we shall tell him,” Pohlmann said, 'and promise him that every little
darling will be his concubine."

Except that when Pohlmann and Dupont reached the tree-shaded stretch of ground above the
River Juah where the Maharajah of Gwalior had been awaiting his army's victory, there was
no sign of his lavish tents. They had been struck, all of them, together with the striped
tents of the Rajah of Berar, and all that remained were the cook tents that even now were
being collapsed and folded onto the beds of a dozen ox carts.

All the elephants but one were gone, the horses of the royal bodyguards were gone, the
concubines were gone and the two princes were gone.

The one remaining elephant belonged to Surjee Rao and that minister, ensconced in
his howdah where he was being fanned by a servant, smiled benevolently down on the two
sweating and red-faced Europeans.

“His Serene Majesty deemed it safer to withdraw westwards,” he explained airily, 'and
the Rajah of Berar agreed with him."

“They did what?” Pohlmann snarled.

“The omens,” Surjee Rao said vaguely, waving a bejewelled hand to indicate that the
subtleties of such supernatural messages would be beyond Pohlmann's comprehension.

“The bloody omens are propitious!” Pohlmann insisted.

“We've got the buggers by the balls! What more omens can you want?”

Surjee Rao smiled.

“His Majesty has sublime confidence in your skill, Colonel.”

“To do what?” the Hanoverian demanded.

“Whatever is necessary,” Surjee Rao said, then smiled.

"We shall wait in Borkardan for news of your triumph, Colonel, and eagerly anticipate
seeing the banners of our enemies heaped in triumph at the foot of

His Serene Majesty's throne." And with that hope expressed he snapped his fingers and the
mahout prodded the elephant which lumbered away westwards.

“Bastards,” Pohlmann said to Dupont, loudly enough for the retreating minister to
hear.

“Lily-livered bastards! Cowards!” Not that he cared whether Scindia and the Rajah of
Berar were present at the battle;

indeed, given the choice, he would much prefer to fight without them, but that was not
true of his men who, like all soldiers, fought better when their rulers were watching, and
so Pohlmann was angry for his men. Yet, he consoled himself as he returned southwards,
they would still fight well. Pride would see to that, and confidence, and the promise of
plunder.

And Surjee Rao's final words, Pohlmann decided, had been more than enough to give him
permission to cross the River Kaitna. He had been told to do whatever was necessary,
and Pohlmann reckoned that gave him a free hand, so he would give Scindia a victory even if
the yellow bastard did not deserve it.

Pohlmann and Dupont cantered back to the left of the line where they saw that Major Dodd
had called his men out from the shade of the trees and into their ranks. The sight suggested
that the enemy was approaching the Kaitna and Pohlmann spurred his horse into a gallop,
clamping one hand onto his extravagantly plumed hat to stop it falling off. He slewed to a
stop just short of Dodd's regiment and stared above their heads across the river.

The enemy had come, except this enemy was merely a long line of cavalrymen with two
small horse-drawn galloper guns. It was a screen, of course. A screen of British and
Indian horsemen intended to stop his own patrols from discovering what was happening
in the hidden country beyond.

“Any sign of their infantry?” he called to Dodd.

“None, sir.”

“The buggers are running!” Pohlmann exulted.

“That's why they've put up a screen.” He suddenly noticed Simone Joubert and hastily
took off his feathered hat.

“My apologies for my language, Madame.” He put his hat back on and twisted his horse
about.

“Harness the guns!” he shouted.

“What is happening?” Simone asked anxiously.

“We're crossing the river,” her husband said quietly, 'and you must go back to
Assaye."

Simone knew she must say something loving to him, for was that not expected of a wife
at a moment such as this?

“I shall pray for you,” she said shyly.

“Go back to Assaye,” her husband said again, noting that she had not given him any love,
'and stay there till it is all over."

It would not take long. The guns needed to be attached to their limbers, but the
infantry were ready to march and the cavalry were eager to begin their pursuit. The
existence of the British cavalry screen suggested that Wellesley must be withdrawing,
so all Pohlmann needed to do was cross the river and then crush the enemy. Dodd drew his
elephant-hilted sword, felt its newly honed edge and waited for the orders to begin the
slaughter.

The Mahratta cavalry pursued Wellesley's party the moment they saw that the General
was retreating from his observation post above the river.

“We must look to ourselves, gentlemen!” Wellesley had called and driven back his heels
so that Diomed had sprung ahead. The other horsemen matched his pace, but Sharpe, on his
small captured Mahratta horse, could not keep up. He had mounted in a hurry, and in his
haste he could not fit his right boot into the stirrup and the horse's jolting motion made
it all the more difficult, but he dared not curb the beast for he could hear the enemy's
shouts and the beat of their hooves not far behind. For a few moments he was in a panic. The
thud of the pursuing hooves grew louder, he could see his companions drawing ever
farther ahead of him and his horse was blowing hard and trying to resist the frantic kicks
he gave, and each kick threatened to unseat him so that he clung to the saddle's pommel and
still his right boot would not find the stirrup. Sevajee, racing free on the right flank,
saw his predicament and curved back towards him.

“You're not a horseman, Sergeant.”

“Never bloody was, sir. Hate the bloody things.”

“A warrior and his horse, Sergeant, are like a man and a woman,” Sevajee said, leaning
over and pushing the stirrup iron onto Sharpe's boot. He did it without once checking his
own horse's furious pace, then he slapped Sharpe's small mare on the rump and she took off
like one of the enemy's rockets, almost tipping Sharpe backwards.

Sharpe clung on to the pommel, while his musket, which was hanging by its sling from his
left elbow, banged and thumped his thigh. His shako blew off and he had no time to rescue it,
but then a trumpet sounded off to his right and he saw a stream of British cavalrymen
riding to head off the pursuit. Still more cavalrymen were spurring north from Naulniah
and Wellesley, as he passed them, urged them on towards the Kaitna.

“Thank you, sir,” Sharpe said to Sevajee.

“You should learn horsemanship.”

“I'll stay a foot soldier, sir. Safer. Don't like sitting on things with hooves and
teeth.”

Sevajee laughed. Wellesley had slowed now and was patting the neck of his horse, but the
brief pursuit had only increased his high spirits. He turned Diomed to watch the Mahratta
cavalry spur away.

“A good omen!”

he said happily.

'For what, sir?" Sevajee asked.

Wellesley heard the Indian's sceptical tone.

“You don't think we should give battle?”

Sevajee shrugged, seeking some tactful way of expressing his disagreement with
Wellesley's decision.

“The battle isn't always to the largest army, sir.”

“Always, no,” Wellesley said, 'but usually, yes? You think I am being impetuous?"
Sevajee refused to be drawn and simply shrugged again in answer.

“We shall see, we shall see,” the General said.

“Their army looks fine, I grant you, but once we break the regular compoos, the others
will run.”

“I do hope so, sir.”

“Depend on it,” Wellesley said, then spurred on.

Sharpe looked at Sevajee.

“Are we mad to fight, sir?”

“Quite mad,” Sevajee said, 'completely mad. But maybe there's no choice."

“No choice?”

“We blundered, Sergeant. We marched too far and came too close to the enemy, so either we
attack him or run away from him, and either way we have to fight. By attacking him we just
make the fight shorter.” He twisted in the saddle and pointed towards the now hidden
Kaitna.

“Do you know what's beyond that river?”

“No, sir.”

"Another river, Sharpe, and they meet just a couple of miles downstream' he pointed
eastwards towards the place where the waters met 'and if we cross that ford we shall find
ourselves on a tongue of land and the only way out is forward, through a hundred
thousand

Mahrattas. Death on one side and water on the other." Sevajee laughed.

“Blundering, Sergeant, blundering!”

But if Wellesley had blundered he was still in high spirits. Once back at Naulniah he
ordered Diomed unsaddled and rubbed down, then began issuing commands. The army's
baggage would stay at Naulniah, dragged into the village's alleyways which were to be
barricaded so that no marauding Mahratta cavalry could plunder the wagons which would
be guarded by the smallest battalion of sepoys. McCandless heard that order given,
understood its necessity, but groaned aloud when he realized that almost five hundred
infantrymen were thus being shorn from the attacking army.